cfr_2005-2006_part7 cfr_2005-2006_part8 cfr_2005-2006_part9 ocr document book reviews running wolf, michael b. and patricia clark smith. on the trail of elder brother: glous'gap stories of the micmac indians. illustrations by michael b. runningwolf. new york: persea books, 2000. $16.95 hc. 160 pages from the inside cover: "michael b. runningwolf grew up in maine and in canada, a direct descendant of beminuit, the grand chief of the micmac nation. a master storyteller, he tells micmac tales in libraries, schools, parks, and museums. he lives in los lunas, new mexico. patricia clark smith is of irish, french-canadian, and micmac descent. she is the author of two volumes of poetry and many essays and stories. she teaches native american literature and creative writing at the university of new mexico, albuquerque." each of the sixteen tales included in this refreshing collection begin with the ancient words: "wodin'it atog'agan" (woh-dehn-eet ahtoogah-gahn) –"this is a story." the authors gave their readers "the micmac words for things as often as possible," (xii), and pronouncing aloud the soft sounding words helps to draw the reader into a distant time and place the micmac, which means "allies," are part of the eastern algonquin nation and live in nova scotia, cape breton island, prince edward island, new brunswick, quebec, and maine. they once fought as allies to the french in the french and indian wars. in earlier days, their explorations and wanderings took them as far south as delaware and as far west as minnesota and the great lakes. sometimes called "keepers of the sunrise" or "children of the dawn," a portion of their traditional stories has been shared here by runningwolf and smith. pen and ink illustrations by runningwolf at the beginning of each story include "traditional designs and symbols from micmac quill and bead work, hide paintings, and writings on rock and birchbark" (xii). the narrators have selected stories which connect us to a far-away past by using complex twists and unexpected continuities. we are led along the knowledge path by glous'gap the micmac embodiment of god's power. a spiritual trickster, the ultimate warrior, and a medicine person, he leads us through woodland forests to bubbling waters. then we are transported to soaring bluffs and chilly ocean depths. the reader meets young wolf, pine marten, mrs. bear, grandfather turtle, and others. glous'gap's actions and words are models for the micmac people, and we learn consequences, the way things 112 book reviews are, from the experiences glous'gap has with other creatures including wa'sis (wah-seez) a baby and tji'nou (jee-noo) a cannibal. laws, morals, and wisdom are presented in action stories like "the boy in the birchwood box." when he was a man, he remembered his experiences as a boy, and "if ever he felt a little impatient or dissatisfied with his lot, he always recalled the time he had spent as a boy in a birchwood box, and he shuddered and gave thanks for his life" (91). the stories give answers to questions you perhaps have not asked. have you ever wondered why a bullfrog's skin is wrinkled, or where the painted turtle came from? have you ever thought about why turtles lay their eggs in sand, or why the gopher has a handprint at the end of its tail? or even why the stones are red at pipestone national monument in minnesota? it was glous'gap in his wisdom, the lord of men and beasts, who helped the animals and plants evolve and made the earth the way we know it. these are more than simple origin myths. the stories reflect the human condition and what it is to learn to survive emotionally and physically in a vast, mysterious, and often threatening world. the tales are narrative forms that link the reader to ancient belief systems among the micmac. annette kolodny said of this book: "through these stories the general reader will enter a world of monsters, magic, sorceresses, spring flowers, irascible porcupines, and troubling prophecies. . . . for the scholar," she continued, "this collection provides invaluable lessons about the persistence of narrative forms, aesthetic codes, and inherited belief systems among the eastern algonquin peoples." it is a good collection for almost any age and would be particularly useful for reading aloud. the stories are complete in themselves but have linking threads that create a continuing saga. the micmac language sprinkled throughout the book provides an interesting challenge but not a stumbling block. there is a glossary which includes pronunciation guides in the back of the book as well as a map of glous'gap's trail. the stories take the reader into an unfamiliar world that is sensitively rendered. i would recommend it for ages ten through adult. jacqueline thursby, ph. d. brigham young university, english department, assistant professor 113 vanity plate children! the american propensity towards naming monica foote in american culture, we like namesaking. we like to call our children after ourselves, our relatives, or after other people who are important to us. sometimes this practice is taken to extremes. people are familiar with boxer george foreman, his five sons all named george and his daughters freeda george and georgetta (foreman 2005). most families do not go this far, but alice rossi has found that a high percentage of families include at least one child named for someone else. namesaking does, however, take more than this one form and is even more widespread than is readily obvious. while very few people actually know a family containing six people named george and two with derivatives of that name, most people know at least one family that practices namesaking by way of semihomonymous naming, in which the children are given names that resemble those of others without being identical to them. this frequently, but not always, takes the fonn of a recurring initial letter. it is not at all uncommon to come across a family in which the parents are named jack and june and their bright-eyed children are john, julie, jeff, and jamie. in this paper, the factors that have been found to be most important to the naming choices that american parents make will be explored, followed by an examination of the studies that suggest that these factors frequently lead specifically to children being named after someone else. both direct namesaking and semihomonymous naming will be taken into account and answers as to why people would make these kinds of choices will be sought in the traditions of the people who tend to do this more frequently as well as in the realm of cognitive psychology and the unconscious thought processes that inform our preferences. finally, a look at a certain aspect of american world view will enlighten us as to why this practice of namesaking has been described as a particularly american phenomenon. americans use a rather small pool of forenames. the dictionary of american family names (dafn), which gives information on the provenance and meaning of some 70,000 surnames, and these are only the surnames that occur i 00 times or more in the phonebook, states that in contrast to this huge pool of surnames, where forenames are concerned, 95% of the population possesses 1% of the forenames that are currently in use. this means that 5% of the population uses very uncommon or entirely unique forenames, but the vast majority tends to reuse the same names over and over. we shall begin our exploration of why that might be with a look at the things that go into a parent's child naming decision-making process. 33 cfr_2005-2006_part10 cfr_2005-2006_part11 cfr_2005-2006_part12 7 preface for special issue of children’s folklore review: mormon children’s folklore tom mould this special issue on the study of children’s folklore among latter-day saints signifies an important contribution to the study of mormon folklore. it is from this perspective—mormon folklore rather than children’s folklore—that i first approached these papers when i served as a discussant at the annual meeting of the american folklore society in new orleans in 2012 when brant ellsworth, spencer green and jared rife first presented their work. it is with that same lens that i introduce their articles here. the study of mormon folklore has been fairly consistent over time but inconsistent in its attention to certain topics, genres and groups. the supernatural has received more attention than the mundane, oral genres more than customary or material, and white u.s. westerners more than non-white, international or east of the mississippi mormons. in terms of the most commonly studied folklore genres, legends have dominated, with the three nephites and j. golden kimball serving as the poster children of lds folklore. i use that cliché intentionally if ironically. neither the three nephites nor j. golden kimball are ever depicted as children. and a survey of the verbal, material and customary lore of latter-day saints reveals a similar vacuum when it comes to children. to be fair, j. golden kimball could be accused of treating many of his fellow saints as children in his frequent chastising, and occasionally, he unleashed his wrath on young as well as old, as when he was discussing the worth of an individual and turned his attention to his son: “kimball said that he had a son—the finest son in the world—really a marvel—and that he wouldn’t take a million dollars for him. and, he added, he wouldn’t give ten cents for another like him” (eliason 2007, 114). in fact, his critiques regularly treated youth and adult indistinguishably, as in the story boyd k. packer related in his book teach ye diligently: “the story is told that someone stopped elder j. golden kimball on the street on one occasion. there had been a little difficulty in elder kimball’s family that had become publicly known, and whoever it was who stopped him, no doubt with a mind to injure, said, ‘brother kimball, i understand you’re having some problems with one of your children.’ his answer was, ‘yes, and the lord is having some problems with some of his, too’” (1975, 287). in this story, j. golden kimball suggests that the category of children is dynamic and contextually defined, a reminder that defining children, and children’s folklore is not as easy as it may first appear (sutton-smith 1999, 3). more obviously, but in some ways more interestingly, kimball also references common imagery of mortals as god’s children, an image understood as literal rather than metaphoric in mormonism. it is this constellation of beliefs in a pre-mortal life, a god of flesh and blood, and spirit children waiting to become mortal in order to achieve the status of gods themselves that has, perhaps not surprisingly, received significant scholarly attention from folklorists, providing grist for some of the few preface mould 8 studies of mormon folklore that address children explicitly. consider, for example, the study of spirit children narratives, stories that describe revelatory dreams about unborn children (see brady 1987, mitchell 2004, and mould 2011, 268-79). all of these studies have examined the impact of the experience and the subsequent narratives on the adults involved. importantly, these studies also address how children are viewed by both narrator and audience. accordingly, we are afforded a glimpse of children through folklore, if not of the folklore of children. it is within this line of inquiry—children as a topic in folklore rather than children as producers, consumers and performers of folklore—that spencer green situates his study of the wise child in the lds church discourse. green’s work goes one step further towards traditional folklore analysis, however, by considering children not only as a concept within lds theology, personal belief and public performance, but also as a specific motif found in folk traditions around the globe. how, green asks, might our understanding of the widespread motif of the wise child (j120) as it appears in official mormon discourse inform our understanding of mormon worldview? his answer sheds light on how children are viewed and used in religious discourse in ways that highlight paradoxes in church hierarchies. where green follows lds scholarship conventions but diverges from those of most children’s folklore scholarship, rife and ellsworth do the reverse, bringing long overdue attention to younger members of the lds faith by examining the folk traditions and performances of children. the lack of attention to the folklore of children is ironic since theologically, doctrinally and ideologically, children are such a central part of lds religion and culture. further, children are incorporated into church services and service at a very early age. many young children bear their testimonies during fast and testimony meetings long before the still young age of eight, the “age of awareness” among latter-day saints when children are assumed to be mature and competent enough to make at least one choice of their own free will: the choice to be baptized. not all children born into the covenant—that is, born of mormon parents whose marriage has been sealed at the temple and raised in the church—make this choice at age eight, but many do. by age twelve, young men are typically ordained into the aaronic priesthood and help serve the sacrament, and by eighteen, into the melchizedek priesthood, having the full powers and duties of adult men in the church conferred upon them. young women cannot hold the priesthood, but they move through the ranks of young women’s organizations until at eighteen, they too join the ranks of full adult members of the church by becoming members of the relief society. in other words, young people in the lds church are granted responsibility and authority from a fairly young age. yet despite what may seem an accelerated trajectory into adulthood, as rife and ellsworth show, lds children find ample time to play, both outside and inside church meetings. jared rife takes us into sacrament meeting—usually the first hour of a three hour block sunday mornings that comprises the formal church service—to explore both how adults devise activities for children to keep them entertained, and how children devise their own play to stave off boredom. in his survey of these games, rife examines the range of types, origins and functions of games played by toddlers to mould preface 9 teens. while his focus is on how these games function, his work opens up fruitful avenues for analysis in structural taxonomies of lds games, theological cultural constructs of play within the lds church, gender differences, and shifting social norms of sanctioned and unsanctioned behaviors within formal church spaces. brant ellsworth, on the other hand, takes us outside these formal church spaces and into the homes of lds children to consider how “playing the piano” differs from “piano play.” while green and rife provide glimpses into lds culture through children’s folklore, ellsworth provides glimpses of children’s culture through lds folklore. ellsworth notes that while his participants were all mormon, the performances and patterns he observed are likely indicative of children in the u.s. more generally. that said, he does wonder whether the role of the piano in lds church services both domestically and internationally impacts piano play among lds children differently, if perhaps only in scope, than non-lds children where the piano may not have as clear and widely shared symbolic meaning. while these articles are not the first to examine the performances and folklore of children in the lds church—elaine lawless for example takes a brief look at how children’s testimonies compare to adult ones in order to highlight the wellworn patterns recognized and performed by even the youngest members of the church (1984)—they are some of the first to do as their focus. further, many of the themes and topics engaged within these studies of folklore of and by lds children can be read into larger bodies of lds scholarship. spencer green’s work should be read within the deep and rich body of scholarship of lds oral narrative and discourse by authors such as margaret brady (1987), eric eliason (1999), carolyn gilkey (1979, 1994), tom mould (2011) and george schoemaker (1989). jared rife’s work on games and play can at least partially be understood in the context of lds humor by authors such as jan harold brunvand (1970), ed geary (1999), steve siporin (2009) and william wilson (1982 and 1985), as well as in the context of the creative dating invitations of young men and women as studied by kristi young (2005). and brant ellsworth’s study of piano play, while most obviously relevant to children’s folklore scholarship rather than lds scholarship, can nonetheless be understood as part of a deep musical tradition within lds culture, righted noted by ellsworth when he argues that “from their earliest existence, mormons have been a musical people.” folklorists of lds musical traditions have focused primarily on song and ballad—thomas cheney (1968), austin and alta fife (1947), austin fife (1953), gustive larson (1971), jill terry rudy (2013), barre toelken (1959); one can only hope that the attention ellsworth pays to the music, not just the lyrics, will encourage other folklorists and ethnomusicologists to do the same. with the publication of this special issue, the same can be hoped for the study of lds children’s folklore more generally. works cited brady, margaret k. 1987. transformations of power: women’s visionary narratives. journal of american folklore 100(398): 461-8. brunvand, jan. 1970. as the saints go marching by: modern jokelore concerning mormons.” journal of american folklore 83:53–60. preface mould 10 cheney, thomas edward. 1968. mormon songs from the rocky mountains: a compilation of mormon folksong. austin: publications for the american folklore society by university of texas press. eliason, eric a. 1999. toward the folkloristic study of latter-day saint conversion narratives. byu studies 38(1):137–50. 2007. the j. golden kimball stories. urbana: university of illinois press. fife, austin e. 1953. a ballad of the mountain meadows massacre. western folklore 12:229–41. fife, austin, and alta s. fife. 1947. folk songs of mormon inspiration.” western folklore 6:42–52. geary, edward a. 1999. sanpete county humor: the tales and the tellers. aml annual 1999: papers from the annual meeting 28 february, 1998, 12:10111. edited by lavina fielding anderson. salt lake city: association for mormon letters. gilkey, carolyn flatley. 1979. mormon testimony meeting: some aspects of a narrating event.” southwest folklore 3(4):45–59. 1994. verbal performance in mormon worship services. phd diss., university of pennsylvania. larson, gustive o. 1971. orrin porter rockwell — the modern samson. in lore of faith and folly, ed. thomas e. cheney, 179–90. salt lake city: university of utah press. lawless, elaine j. 1984. “i know if i don’t bear my testimony, i’ll lose it”: why mormon women bother to speak at all. kentucky folklore record 30:79-96. mitchell, scott. 2004. “you have no right to do such a thing”: an insider study of entitlement of spirit child narratives in mormon communities. m.a. thesis, english, university of missouri, columbia. mould, tom. 2011. still, the small voice: narrative, personal revelation, and the mormon folk tradition. logan: utah state university press. packer, boyd k. 1975. teach ye diligently. salt lake city: deseret book company. rudy, jill terry. 2013. portraits in song: gleanings from the brigham young folk song cycle. in latter-day lore: mormon folklore studies, ed. eric eliason and tom mould, 337-48. salt lake city: university of utah press. schoemaker, george h. 1989. made in heaven: marriage confirmation narratives among mormons. northwest folklore 7: 38–53. siporin, steve. 2009. for time and eternity: byu coed jokes and the complexity of mormon humor. in folklore in a changing world, ed. jawaharlal handoo and reimund dvideland, 209–27. mysore, india: zooni publications. sutton-smith, brian. 1999. children’s folklore: a source book. logan: utah state university press. toelken, j. barre. 1959. the ballad of the mountain meadows massacre. western folklore 18:169–72. william a. wilson. 1982. on being human: the folklore of mormon missionaries. new york folklore 8(3–4):5–27. 1985. the seriousness of mormon humor. sunstone 10: 6–13. young, kristi w. 2005. “now that i’ve kissed the ground you walk on”: a look at gender in creative date invitations. marriage & families (winter): 10–17. ocr document "aunt betts' attic": monroe, michigan i was in monroe, michigan, just about an hour southwest of detroit, in october of 2004 to attend my younger son's wedding. having some time on our hands, my wife and i, accompanied by our older son and his wife, decided to visit the monroe county historical museum. we knew little else but that they had an extensive exhibit of historical materials about general george armstrong custer, who had once resided in monroe. i enjoyed the custer exhibit as i had expected to, but i was delightfully surprised to discover an exhibit entitled "aunt bett's attic." elizabeth upham mcwebb, usually called aunt betty or aunt bett to her relatives and youthful fans and known for her "little brown bear" stories, donated a life-long collection of children's games and toys to the monroe museum. there are awards there from individuals, organizations, and government officials, as well as a bust of aunt bett herself and two lifesized papier maché figures-"grandma," seated in a chair, and "maude," her favorite elementary school teacher-that she made herself. but the bulk of the collection consists of dolls, dollhouses, stuffed animals, and a variety of other toys, some of which were given to her as gifts or were used by her as storytelling props. most of these items are early mid-twentieth century and are in excellent condition. there is also a typewriter table and set of paints that aunt bett used to decorate souvenir cups that she presented to friends and admirers, and her signature hat and locket are displayed on the bust. as simon bronner has observed on various occasions, the study of children's material culture has a long way to go. if you are in the detroit area and can spend the time, you might want to visit the monroe county historical museum and take a look at "aunt bett's attic." monroe county historical museum 126 south monroe street monroe, michigan 4861-2275 telephone: 734-240-7780 c.w. sullivan iii east carolina university if you know of other, perhaps out-of-the-way museums that have collections of children's material culture, please do a short write-up like the one above and send it to the children’s folklore review. 108 the war on youth: a modern oedipal tragedy joann conrad the janus-faced angelic/monstrous child is deeply etched onto the popular imagination. adult attitudes towards children can be typified as ambivalentswinging between the dual images of the threatened child and the threatening child which mirror a fear/fantasy complex and which manifest in a confused and contradictory array of imagery, ideology, and policy. literally emblematic poster children for the missing children's movement allow for a public show of concern and elicit calls for child protection which bolster america's self-image as caring and child-friendly, while the public voting record shows a steady tendency to gut the very social programs that would ensure the well being of millions of (faceless) children. positive images of childhood and youth today appear stable, in fact, only in the imaginary past. there, good kids, nostalgic simulacra of now-aging baby boomers, live relatively uncomplicated and safe lives in the good old days that never were; the promise of the future insured by the uncontested adult-controlled social order. the conceptual category of "adolescence" or "youth" as a differentiated age group, one which is governed by special rules, restrictions, and protection, only fully emerged in the u.s. public imagination in the postwwii period, when the economic and ideological requirements of peace time demanded a longer period of "immaturity," fostering more dependency, leisure, and consumerism—an about-face reversal of the practice of determining young males to be psychologically mature to satisfy the demands of war time conscription (enright 541-59). adolescence thus constituted the third leg of the triangulated american nuclear family— "purified of toxins [and] fully adapted to the requirements of discipline within an advanced capitalist system" (ivy 97). adolescence, however was an inherently volatile, fertile, and ambiguous site-the source of adult fascination and emulation as well as fear. the boundaries of adolescence were also flexible and permeable, difficult to fix and maintain. if, in this period, we can say that adolescence represented an extension of the privileged space of childhood, with a few additional freedoms, the concept a "juvenile criminal justice system" also provided for a legal and vernacular space for "wayward" youth that sought to protect them from the adult judicial and penal systems. but the very articulation of the category of "juvenile delinquent" provided the basis for an official discourse on youth as potentially falling into the category of deviant which was threatening to the institution of the american family. public imagery reflected a dual epistemology in which youths within the normative sphere were extended the same privilege as their younger siblings, while both children and youth outside this racially and class-segregated sphere were consistently denied access to the protected space of childhood. policy responses to this dual system hinged on the concept of "containment"—the increased control, management, observation, and restriction of movement of all youth—in the maintenance of the separate normative and pathological spheres. real-life children and youth today don't "conform to the imperatives of adults and mainstream culture," and have become "alien and sometimes hazardous in the public eye" (giroux 13), embodiments of a racial, economic, social, and cultural future which appears threatening and foreign to many adults. in the past two decades, significant demographic shifts and economic restructuring have signalled a crisis in our collective understanding of youth—the "face" of the future is increasingly multicultural, and children, once thought of as economic assets are now seen more as liabilities or as competitors for an ever-shrinking resource pool. this paper is about the ideological response to this crisis—those mediated and narrated reconfigurations of the adult-youth relationship which can be seen as recuperative strategies which encompass all youth into the potential pathological sphere. in addition, this paper seeks to investigate the convergence of public perception, ideology, media, and politics which has emerged as a generalized and naturalized discourse on youth, and which is manifest in the educational and criminal justice systems. the paper is based on the premise that contemporary popular representations of youth are a dominant form of cultural politics which reinforce the normalization of certain adult-based violent behavior as they demonize and commoditize youth, validating the claim that those relegated to childhood and adolescence –disenfranchised minors—are consistently denied voice and power in contemporary american culture. on april 20, 1999, two students from columbine high school in littleton, colorado, opened fire on their school mates, killing 15 people (including themselves) and wounding 23 others. this, the deadliest school massacre in u.s. history, coming at the end of a series of similar-appearing school shootings beginning in october 1997, has been portrayed as the watershed mark for american youth. events and policy implementation are conceptualized as being "pre-" or "post-columbine." we are now in the postcolumbine age-a new era of "killer kids" and "zero tolerance" where a generalized "columbine effect" determines school policy.l but this kind of rhetoric suggests a causality inherent in the event itself. rather, i would like to suggest that the event makes the story but the story conceptualizes the event (oring). in other words, the meaning that accrues around the event is dependent on the particular representation of it. representations of columbine, thus, constitute the event, and the ways in which we make this event meaningful, the ways in which it is narrativized and represented, conrad 34 the war on youth are dependent on an already in-place communicative system, a set of culturally agreed-upon signifying practices. additionally, the consumers of such images are implicated in the production of meaning, and this shared cultural map pre-exists in an ideological and discursive field which is hospitable to a particular representation of these school shootings. in this ideological field, contemporary youth have been collectively demonized, with individual instances of violent behavior generalized and presented as trends or epidemics. this growing "epidemic" of juvenile lawlessness, addiction to violence, drug abuse, and general monstrousness has been presented by politicians, lawmakers, and news media, and has sedimented into public consciousness—into the stories we tell and the ways in which we order reality. these stories have helped to construct a generation of deviants through what foucault has called a "literature of criminality," affirming that an "ever-present [juvenile] criminality is a constant menace to the social body as a whole" (foucault 142). more and more teenagers, acting individually or in gangs, are running amuck. -. . . juvenile crime appears to be more widespread and vicious than ever before. adolescents have always been violence prone, but there are horrendous crimes being committed by even younger adults. the teen crime wave flows across all races, class and lifestyles (toufexis 52), -crime may be down, but juvenile crime is way up (alter 30). juvenile offenses have soared since the mid-1980s, while adult violent crime rates have remained fairly steady (us news and world report 29). in the last three and one-half years, the crime rate is down, but the violence among young people under eighteen is up (males 82). this public belief in the growing problem of violent youth, which is disproportionate to current statistical information,2 and which is, furthermore, in contrast to most adults' actual experiences, should be seen as what lawrence grossberg calls an "affective epidemic;" a fetishized site, disconnected and disproportionate to its actual worth, ideological in intent, and fed by the "daily economy of saturated panics" (acland 284). since 1997, the highly-exposed and repetitively-aired school shootings in more suburban, or rural, middle-class white schools have been conflated with the already-existing category of the inner-city gang in a perverse affirmative action which criminalizes all youth. the serialized, repetitive 35 conrad presentations of this violence in the news imply that it is "routine," ubiquitous, and is occurring at younger and younger ages. pathologizing and marginalizing such youth by means of psychological analyses and after-thefact profiling and typologizing transforms individuals into "types," their behavior into "patterns," obscuring the common social and cultural milieu in which these events not only arise, but in which they become newsworthy, and denying the fact that violence is "jointly constructed through the interaction of agent and institution, individual and society" (devine 3). we need to read these moves to fix the meaning of youth as ideological, but we also need to understand the processes by which these cultural constructs have become so natural, so commonsensical in popular perception. the narratives which organize our everyday experiences are increasingly being guided by the visual logic of mass media. that is, visual pop culture regulates "conventional" meanings and social practices. thus visual imagery, and the visual logic of commercial media which relies on shallow but repetitive impact which is "cognitively diminished but emotionally charged," provides the basis for our cognitive and narrative categories. we need to interrogate the repetitive, serialized images of school shootings, particularly of columbine—how do these images, embedded in periodic news stories that revisit the sites, tend to attenuate affective response while they build consensus through volume, through constant repetition? the naturalization of such ideological and cultural constructions of youth tend to carry over into policy when the organization of reality that is increasingly structured according to a mediated logic carries over into other areas of public life, notably the educational and criminal justice systems. the representation and popular perception of children and youth as "out of control" and antagonistic toward, if not dangerous to, adults and adult privilege is politically potent, and has spawned a host of mean-spirited, ideologically conservative, racist and ageist policies and pedagogies that are far ranging in scope, but singular in purpose—the repression and restriction of youth. the public perception that youth generally constitute a threat to society has resulted in predictable "solutions" that are increasingly punitive,3 and which call for greater restrictions and surveillance of all kids, such as the imposition of curfews and the use of metal detectors and surveillance cameras in schools, the early identification of "problem kids," and their subsequent institutionalized removal from the social sphere, either through the use of psychotropic drugs or through incarceration—"zero tolerance no nonsense tough love." the latest of these "solutions" is california's proposition 21. 36 the war on youth on march 7, 2000, californians voted 62% to 38% in favor of proposition 21, known as the "youth crime initiative," or "gang violence and juvenile crime prevention act," but perceptively dubbed the "war on youth" by its opponents, most of whom were under-age teens of color. riding the crest of the public panic about "killer kids" that was spectacularly brought to prominence by school shootings such as columbine, this redundant, punitive initiative targets youth—particularly loosely-defined "gangs" lowering the age at which youths accused of serious offenses would automatically be tried and sentenced as adults to 14,4 and the age at which they could be incarcerated in adult prisons to 16, while it stiffens many of the penalties for crimes committed by gang members, although the definition of "gang" is nefariously vague and racist in implementation. prop 21 effectively rolls back a 100-year-old juvenile criminal justice code that sought to protect and rehabilitate children and youths more than it sought punishment or retribution, and more generally follows a growing california tendency of building prisons while gutting the educational system, so that today there are more youths in the penal system than there are attending the university of california. the rhetoric surrounding the initiative is generally presented in terms of "us versus them," those with power versus those without, and adults against youth. former california governor, pete wilson, who sponsored prop 21, spoke to voters' visceral fears of "kids gone bad," and framed the initiative in clearly generational (and false) terms, saying: "while adult crime has been falling dramatically, the same cannot be said for youth violence and gang violence" (ellis b4). prop 21, and its run-away support by voters, is the latest in a series of measures that are fed by special interests and by fear mongering, but that also gain strength and credibility, in part, by tapping into a pre-existing cultural landscape of sedimented folklore, belief, and popularized psychology which aggregate around the intergenerational strife narrative—oedipus. the oedipal complex was primary to freud and his "family romance," and freud, and a vernacularized freudian psychology, has been thoroughly imbricated into popular american consciousness in the second half of the 20th century. accordingly, oedipus has become, according to marina warner, a "dominant tale in our time" (warner 68). the privileging of this tale, and the subsequent silencing of others that place more emphasis on murderous, cannibalistic, and rapacious fathers, and the dominance of the freudian reading of the oedipal tale itself, which obscures the original crime of oedipus's father laius, is a master plot of the late 19th and 20th century, and is echoed in contemporary "get tough" policies toward youth. we have to reintegrate this master plot of the symbolic imagination into the cultural and ideological context out of which it emerged. the 37 conrad oedipal complex as a by-now naturalized psychoanalytic construct is historically situated within the discourses of modern capitalism, and in this sense, the oedipus complex is the "figurehead of imperialism" (foucault xx), one of the most persuasive agents in the modern micro-physics of power. seen in this light, we can begin to divest the oedipus tale of its individualistic family romance status and read it as a metaphor for society. freudians and folklorists alike become complicit in their unquestioned reaffirmation of the patriarchal privilege in their embrace of this tale and its normalizing interpretation which are reinscribed in the legal, social, and political complex that emerged in the early modern period which naturalized paternal authority, infantilized citizenship, and bifurcated the concept of the child, who could be either incorporated or incarcerated in the maintenance of patriarchal privilege. today's rhetoric in support of measures such as prop 21 seemingly upholds such a freudian oedipal logic and is also putatively defensive: protecting us from "the most violent juvenile criminals and gang offenders" (california voter 48), justifying the escalation of draconian measures directed against youth. the classic oedipus begins with a prophecy, as do contemporary narratives which flow from our oracle, the media, and from our prophets, the "experts." according to time's cover article on "teen age time bombs," they are just four, five and six years old right now, but already they are making criminologists nervous [. . .]. by the year 2005 they will be teenagers—[. . .] "temporary sociopaths—impulsive and immature," in the words of northeastern u. criminologist james alan fox. (zoglin) similarly, under the headline "the coming mayhem," la times editor richard rodriguez echoes oedipus's banishment in his demands to incarcerate contemporary youth: . . . a growing population of teenage boys will mean an increase in murders, rapes, and muggings. a new type of criminal is emerging. . . remorseless, vacant-eyed, sullen-and very young. . . we are entering a stephen king novel. we are entering an america where adults are afraid of children. where children rule the streets. where adults cower at the approaching tiny figure on the sidewalk ahead," (rodgriguez 36) vladimir propp's observation that the oedipal "prophecy does not determine the outcome; rather the outcome determines the prophecy" (propp 83) perhaps illuminates a paternal animus that is occulted in the dominant freudian oedipal interpretation. the naturalized status of the oedipal complex in modern discourses has, in fact, reaffirmed this animus 38 the war on youth by only focusing on some aspects of the oedipal plot and rejecting or ignoring others. this is the tyranny of oedipus in which analysis is prior to data. the current focus on a generation of killer kids likewise tends to ignore obvious contemporary statistics to the contrary: not only are many more adults killed by other adults than by children each year, but more children are killed by adults than adults by children and youth in any given time periodincluding the 2,000 to 3,000 children and youths reported murdered by their own parents every year (males 99). couple this with staggering figures of child poverty, neglect, and abuse, along with the systematic abandonment of children in both the social and educational systems, and the case for paternal animus becomes fairly persuasive. clearly there is a generational tragedy, but its story is just as clearly topsy-turvy. the stories we tell and the narrative paradigms we use to construct them both derive and shape perceptions about our relationships as human beings, and "reality" is constituted and acted upon according to such conceptual and narrative models. contemporary representations simultaneously project youth as the object of adult violence and rage, the object of adult moralistic antiviolence campaigns (violently implemented), and the object of adult desires. in our contemporary narratives about collective fears of monstrous youth, and the affective crisis that these narratives have engendered, what we can see are the machinations of hegemony (acland 19), in a recuperative narrative strategy. like the family romance, "family values," that thin smokescreen for a conservative economic drive in which "capital has taken upon itself the relations of alliance and filiation (deleuze and guattari 263)," is more appropriately seen as an adult fantasy which has "exonerated the real exterior family of any wrongs. . .[by] posit[ing] autonomous repression [as] independent of social repression. . ." abandoning the child in order to "substitute the individual fantasy that makes the real parents into so many innocents or even victims (deleuze and guattari 270)." notes 1. see for example: "the columbine effect: 'zero tolerance' sounds like a good way to treat violence in our schools. but does it go too far?" time v154, n23 (dee 6, 1999):51+. 2. in an article in the san francisco chronicle dated oct. 18, 1999, entitled "arrests for juvenile crimes drop across nation," (a2), fbi "figures" are reported to indicate that "juvenile arrests for serious and violent crimes fell nearly 11 percent from 1997 to 1998." 39 conrad 3. for example the "juvenile superpredator incapacitation act," which passed in the house of representatives on may 8, 1997. by a vote of 286 to 132 and which was supported by president clinton. rep. bill mccollum (r) florida sponsored the punitive bill by stating, ". . . there's so many new and increasing and alarming numbers on violent crime among teenagers. . . we need to provide a change, a repair in a broken juvenile justice system in this nation we have one out of every five violent crimes in america being committed by those under 18 years of age..." [not mentioning that 4 out of 5 are therefore over 18, but are not also a superpredator age group]. 4. in california, prior to prop 21, it was legally possible to try a 14-year-old as an adult, but on a judge's recommendation, whereas after prop. 21 this is at the recommendation of prosecutors. works cited acland, charles r. youth, murder, spectacle. boulder, co: westview press, 1995. alter, jonathan. newsweek (28 april 1997): 30. "argument in favor of proposition 21." california voter information guide for primary (7 march 2000):48. clinton, bill. speech. 11 june 1996. albuquerque, nm. deleuze, gilles, and felix guattari. anti-oedipus: capitalism and schizophrenia. minneapolis: u of minnesota p, 1983. devine, john. "violence; the latest curricular speciality." hfg review 2.1 (1997). from «www.hfg.orglhtml/pages/devine.htm» enright, robert d., victor m. levy, jr., deborah harris, and daniel k. lapsley. "do economic conditions influence how theorists view adolescents?" journal of youth and adolescence 16.6 (1987): 541-59. ellis, john. "wilson seeks stiffer juvenile terms." the fresno bee: metro (4 february 2000): b4. foucault, michel. "the dangerous individual." in michel foucault: politics, phi losophy, culture. trans. alan sheridan. new york: routledge, 1988. 121-51. ______. "introduction." anti-oedipus: capitalism and schizophrenia. xx. giroux, henry. fugitive cultures: race, violence, and youth. new york: routledge, 1996. ivy, marilyn. "have you seen me?" in children and the politics of culture. ed sharon stephens. princeton: princeton up, 1995. 79-104. oring, elliott. "legend, truth, news." southern folklore (1998): 163-77. males, mike. framing youth. monroe, me: common courage, 1999. propp, valdimir. "oedipus in the light of folklore." in oedipus: a folklore casebook. eds. alan dundes and lowell edmunds. madison: u of wisconsin p, 1995.76-121. rodriguez, richard. "the coming mayhem." los angeles times (21 janu ary 1996). quoted in mike males, framing youth, 36. toufexis, anastasia. "our violent kids." time (12 june 1989): 52ff. us news & world report (25 march 1996): 29. 40 the war on youth warner, marina. no go the bogeyman. new york: farrar, straus, and giroux, 1999. zoglin, richard. "now for the bad news: a teenage time bomb." time (15 january 1996). from: «www.time.com/time/magazine/...e/1996/dom/ 960115/cover.teens.html» 41 pages from cfr_2002_part10 cfr_2002_part11 cfr_2002_part12 cfr_2002_part13 cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 23 nursery school museum, martonvásár, hungary c.w. sullivan iii the brunszvik family of martonvásár, hungary, is famous for its connection and friendship with ludwig von beethoven, but on my visit there, while i was spending the spring on a fulbright at debrecen university, i discovered a very interesting nursery school museum. most of what follows is paraphrased from the official handouts at the museum; all quotations come from the visitor’s guide. theresa brunsszvik, a close friend of beethoven’s, was one of the best educated and most well-informed women of her time, and she became one of the pioneers of nursery school education in europe. the nursery school she established in buda, then the capital of hungary, in 1828 was not only the first in hungary but the first in all of central europe. through her influence, the first nursery schools were later opened in austria and southern germany. the exhibit is divided into three parts. the first part includes a picture of the house in buda where teresa opened the first nursery school, and there is also a model of the school based on the original inventory and written descriptions. the teaching materials show that the children there were taught to read, write, and count in german. the teaching aids were developed by the german nursery school specialist friedrich fröbel and became widespread in hungary during the latter half of the nineteenth century. the second part of the exhibit focuses on nursery education in the latter part of the nineteenth century and the first part of the twentieth. until the 1870s, only men taught in these schools, and their classes ranged from 60 to 100 students. this part of the exhibit contains toys and teaching aids made by teachers and students from local products. there are dolls made of rags and “maize” cobs, toy soldiers, building blocks, and more. there is also an inkwell, a goose-feather pen, and a “clapper” to set the rhythm of physical exercises. private nursery schools using the montessori method became popular after about 1910. the third part of the exhibit looks at nursery education from the end of world war ii though the 1960s when it became normal practice for children to be at school all day. during the early years of communist rule, the nursery school “was the first stage in socialist education.” in the early years after the war, there were no toys in the schools, and children had to bring chairs or stools on which to sit. after 1960, hungarian schools began to regain their earlier status. the museum is working to move to a larger building and create exhibits covering nursery education from 1960 to 1990. to say that this material is fascinating is an understatement; the fulbrighters who went on this trip (sponsored by the hungarian fulbright commission) spent more time and displayed more interest in the nursery school museum than in any other part of the brunszvik estate. should you be in budapest, the brunszvik estate is an easy day trip and well worth the effort. cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 23 11/6/08 11:46:05 am polar: the most famous bear of them all! j. joseph edgette the story of polar, the titanic bear, is one that has resulted from a careful blending of history, folklore, legend, and children's literature with an appropriate sprinkling of oral narrative and verifiable testimony and documentation. it is a tale that evolved from a "real life" event that was later set down in writing by daisy spedden, the mother of the child whose experience this account recalls. had it not been for the accidental discovery of an old trunk in the barn of l. h. coleman, esq. by his grandson in august of 1982,1 the life of polar never would have been told and, subsequently, become known. the purpose of this article is to present the background, evolution, chronology, and afterward of the story of polar, the titanic bear. before relating the details leading up to the event that catapulted the five-by-two-and-a-quarter-inch stuffed toy into the realm of titanic lore, it is necessary and appropriate to start many years prior even to titanic's own inception as well as polar's creation. the year was 1902, the town was giengen an der brenz, germany, and the creator of the first teddy bear was a young inventor, innovator, and dreamer named richard steiff. he had studied art and was intrigued and captivated by the bears he would observe while sketching them at the stuttgart zoological gardens.2 he worked in his aunt's small toy factory, the steiff company. after much effort and pleading, he finally convinced margarete steiff, a loving but very strong-willed and determined woman, to approve plans to produce his bear. the prototypes were considered to be too large and heavy, not to mention the fact that the mohair used to make them was difficult to obtain. however, later that same year, "friend petz" was put on display at the leipzig toy fair in 1902 to test the interest of toy buyers, but it was deemed a complete failure by most who had seen and inspected the newly created stuffed bear toy. buyers of toys were just not interested it. this setback would eventually be reversed thanks to the creativity and foresight of the american toy giant, f. a. o. schwarz. frederick august otto schwarz, known today as f. a. o. schwarz and probably the most famous seller of toys in the world, emigrated to the united states from westphalia, germany, in 1857, settling in bal polar: the most famous bear of them all edgette timore, maryland, where he operated a small toy shop until 1870. moving on to new york, he began in humble quarters on broadway, opening the schwarz toy bazaar; but by 1880, he had moved to the city's fashionable union square business district housing such companies as tiffany.3 schwarz quickly established a reputation as having a "toy store with distinction."4 with the help of his three brothers, schwarz kept in constant touch with the major toy sources in europe. while attending the leipzig toy fair in 1902, f.a.o. schwarz, unlike other buyers, found the steiff bear a fascinating toy that had much potential for sales in the united states. according to jorg junginger, steiff's manager of development and steiff family member, schwarz "placed an order for 3,000 bears and changed the name to 'teddy' to help the stuffed animal appeal to american children"5 according to folklore, there are two explanations for the origin of the name 'teddy' as it applies to the toy bears. in the first it was said that schwarz had changed the steiffgiven name to 'teddy' because he was inspired by the president and believed that children who have a greater affinity to the toy with such a moniker. a second origin has been attributed to the u. s. navy. it was reported that president theodore roosevelt accompanied by a few friends went to mississippi to hunt wild animals. having found none a guide came across a small bear. asked to shoot the bear, the president refused and instructed the guide to release it. word of this kindness on mr. roosevelt's part spread throughout the country. in fact, not long after, political cartoonist clifford berryman drew a cartoon depicting the event.6 further, and this is the probable connection to swartz's origin, it was said that a brooklyn toy store owner saw the cartoon and asked permission to name the toy bears in his shop "teddy's bear." this was to serve as a reminder of roosevelt's good deed. permission was given by president roosevelt. both of these origins are plausible and are actually connected. as american folklorist horace beck has a habit of saying, "you pays your money, you takes your choice." according to steiff company records, by 1907 they had produced over 974,000 bears, most of which were sold in the united states through the f. a. o. schwarz toy company of new york. in addition to teddy bears in all sizes and kinds, many ancillary items were also made available. these included bear games, clothes, cars, carts, boats, and the like designed for teddy bears. in terms of popular culture, there are currently collectors' organizations and clubs that boast of large memberships. the teddy bear still ranks high among those best sellers in the toy industry. 40 edgette polar: the most famous bear of them all exactly, how did polar become such a notable toy bear? the story continues. tuxedo park, new york, was a very upscale community during the early 1900s. one of this community's leading citizens and wealthiest of the families living there included frederic spedden, his wife, daisy, and their son robert douglas, who would be known as "douglas." mr. spedden was heir to a very sizeable banking fortune. this young couple devoted their lives to douglas, their travels, and their pastimes. during the spring, frederic tended to his business, summers were spent in bar harbor, maine, autumns spent at home, and winters used for travel. such a routine was not uncommon among wealthy american families during the edwardian age. it should be noted that mrs. spedden was heiress to the corning glass fortune as well as an equally lucrative shipping fortune.7 daisy spedden's sister, nan, was very fond of little douglas. in late 1911, the family had decided to visit algiers and had booked passage aboard the steamship caronia. prior to her seeing the speddens off at the docks, aunt nanny had visited the f.a.o. schwarz company in manhattan where she purchased a small white steiff polar bear for douglas. before leaving the ship as visitors were asked to disembark, she presented her bon voyage gift to the child and asked what he might name it. he responded that it would be called polar. later, the famous bear would be known as polar the titanic bear.8 the spedden's trip to algiers was a lengthy one that would take them through the panama canal area. little douglas and polar were inseparable throughout the journey. the family stayed a few months on the island of madeira, near portugal. by mid-march they had arrived on the south coast of france and stayed at monte carlo. in early april, mr. spedden decided it was time to return home to america. they had booked first class passage aboard another steamship rather than the adriatic whose scheduled departure was cancelled as a result of a coal strike in england. instead, mr. speddin was able to secure first class accommodations aboard the titanic, a new ship that was described as being the greatest ship ever to sail the ocean. mr. and mrs. spedden and douglas together with daisy's maid, helen wilson, and douglas' nanny, elizabeth burns,9 arrived in paris the first week in april. then, by a special train, they made their way to cherbourg from where they would depart for home aboard the titanic. as first class passengers, the spedden family shared the company of many other very wealthy american families aboard the "millionaires express." some of the more notable family names were widener, astor, guggenheim, straus, brown, cardeza, carter, millet, and butt, the last being personal attaché to president william h. taft. 41 polar: the most famous bear of them all edgette there is only one photograph in existence of little douglas and his father aboard the titanic, and that shows the boy on deck playing with a spinning top, another toy he had acquired while traveling abroad.10 the photo was taken during the first day enroute to new york, the final destination that they would eventually—but not aboard the titanic. another passenger, father frank browne, s.j., had been given a birthday present from his uncle—a ticket aboard the titanic from southampton to cherbourg to queenstown. he left the ship in the irish seaport as the doomed vessel continued its journey to new york. during his time on the titanic, father browne managed to shoot nearly a hundred photos. these pictures are the only ones in existence showing the interior of the great ship and views of life aboard her. little douglas was captured on film while playing on deck as his father watched. the tragic event that transpired on that fateful night of 14 april 1912 off the coast of newfoundland in the icy waters of the north atlantic is now history. the major account is well known and has been told and retold for nearly ninety-one years now. it was this foundering of the largest luxury ship of its day that would figure dramatically into the escalation of polar's notoriety unbeknownst to anyone save his owner, mrs. spedden, and a crewman aboard the rescue ship carpathia. testimony given before the united states senate, as part of their official investigation into the loss of the titanic,11 produced revealing information about the sinking that would eventually impact on the story of polar and douglas. once the alarm had been given following the iceberg impact, most of the passengers began to leave their cabins and assemble at or near their predetermined lifeboat stations. the speddens and their servants were assigned to lifeboat 3, located on the starboard side of the ship.12 it became the responsibility of nanny, elizabeth burns, whom douglas called "muddie boons," to care for the young boy during this anxious and fearful experience. (the child had difficulty pronouncing his nanny's name; thus, the variation.) it has been said that his nanny woke the sleeping child and told him they were going to take a trip to see the stars and that he would therefore need to wear warm clothing. once all women and children had been placed safely into the limited number of lifeboats, the men were permitted to join them. frederic spedden was one of the fortunate few who was able to join his family aboard lifeboat 3 that fateful night. based on witnesses who were passengers in lifeboat 3, it was reported that douglas slept through the night cradled in the arms of his nanny. when he woke at dawn, he saw the icebergs all around them and excitedly, as only a child could do, exclaimed, " oh, muddie, look 42 edgette polar: the most famous bear of them all at the beautiful north pole with no santa claus on it."13 by 4: 15 a.m. the morning of 15 april 1912, the rescue ship carpathia commanded by captain frederick rostron had arrived at the site and began the careful process of rescuing the survivors. lifeboat 3 was supervised by able-bodied seaman george alfred moore, and it was he who would later place young douglas into a net that would raise the child to the deck level of the rescue ship.14 nets were used to raise the children from the lifeboats for fear they might fall in their attempt to climb the ladders. it would not be until later that morning douglas would soon realize that polar had not made it. he had the stuffed toy bear with him in the lifeboat at the time they entered and gotten under way; however, now it was missing. the grieving child shared his sad realization with his nanny and his mother. a couple of the crew from the carpathia also tried to comfort him, but it was to no avail. as was standard procedure aboard any rescue vessel, captain rostron ordered all of the then empty lifeboats to be brought aboard and stowed safely for the long, arduous trip to new york. a hook on the end of a line was put through the eye bolt at the front of a lifeboat, and it was then hoisted aboard the ship. in so doing, each of the miniature boats would stand on end while being raised through the air. many of the articles would fall from the boat into the water below; however, when lifeboat 3 had cleared the railing and was being lowered into its new position, a small water soaked stuffed toy rolled out onto the deck at the feet of a crewman.15 according to mrs. spedden's later conversation with the man, he leaned down, picked it up, squeezed the excess water from it, and stuck it into his pocket. he had intended to take it home to his child. later that day, the crewman came across douglas who was still upset at the loss of polar. in a conversation with the boy the crewman suddenly realized what he had retrieved from the deck beneath lifeboat 3. douglas and polar had been happily reunited. he too had been saved. mr. spedden sent a marconigram (the newest type of wireless telegram of its day) from the carpathia to relatives in connecticut on the 18th of april that informed them the family was safe and would be arriving in new york the following night.16 once having arrived at the white star line wharf in new york, the family was taken to the waldorf astoria, along with many others from first class, to spend the night before departing for tuxedo park the next day. it is interesting to note that the astor family arranged transportation from the ship's terminal to their hotel for many of the first class passengers that were rescued by the carpathia. later, mr. spedden would participate in the awarding of a silver trophy to captain rostron and silver medals to mem 43 polar: the most famous bear of them all edgette bers of his crew in appreciation for the kindness and professionalism they showed during the terrible tragedy that had befallen them on the titanic. once the family had returned to their home, life returned to the normalcy they had had prior to their most recent catastrophic trip. daisy took a photograph of douglas at christmas in 1912 showing him standing next to a table on which can be seen polar. they planned to travel again after the holidays that year and then return to maine that following summer. the next year as a christmas surprise for douglas, his mother decided to write a small book that would feature polar (the titanic bear) recounting his own creation, purchase, and life with douglas including his fate by nearly becoming a titanic victim. she entitled it my story, christmas 1913. in addition to the text she did the illustrations herself. this short manuscript would be published as a children's book in 1994, eighty-one years later.17 daisy and frederic would experience one more great tragedy, perhaps the worst imaginable, the death of douglas in the late summer of 1915 at grindstone neck winter harbor, maine. according to the death certificate, the cause of douglas' death was "concussion of the brain-struck by automobile."18 as a matter of fact, douglas was the first recorded fatality resulting from an automobile accident in the state of maine. according to the accident report, the youngster attempted to retrieve a tennis ball, emerging suddenly from some thick shrubbery close to the side of the road. when he did, he collided with the car. unconscious, he was taken to his home where he succumbed to head injuries sustained from the accident. the boy died on the 8th of august, 1915, at the age of nine years, eight months, and nineteen days. he is buried in the corning family plot at greenwood cemetery, brooklyn, new york. it has been said that daisy never again had the same zest for life following the tragic loss of her son, douglas. in 1947 her husband frederic died of a heart attack while diving into a pool in palm beach, florida. his body was cremated.19 following his death, daisy discontinued keeping her diaries, but she did continue her interests in photography and travel. three years later daisy died at her home in tuxedo park on february 11, 1950, at age 78, following a brief illness.20 she was interred in the corning family plot at greenwood cemetery along side her son robert douglas. following the death of daisy, a trunk containing her diaries, ephemera, and 24 photograph albums was left to her cousin, jane foster coleman. the trunk was stored in the barn on the family farm and actually forgotten21 (jane was the grandmother of l. h. coleman, iii.) 44 edgette polar: the most famous bear of them all l. h. coleman, esq. asked his grandson l.h., iii to clean out the old barn. the trunk was given to the younger coleman on his 21st birthday in 1985. earlier, in 1963, the titanic historical society was founded in part to preserve the history of the titanic and ocean liner travel in general. aware of this mission, young coleman donated copies of daisy's story along with some photographs of family members to the society in august of 198522 by 1992 it was suggested to young coleman that the story would make a great book for children. the title was changed to polar the titanic bear, and it was published in 1994. since then it has sold more than 250,000 copies.23 to help launch the release of the book, the strieff company produced 1912 replicas of the polar bear, together with a certificate of authenticity that the original was once owned by douglas spedden. the book will ensure that the memory of this child will live on just as the memory of the titanic never fades. from its origin in germany to its home in america and subsequent adventures, a little stuffed toy polar bear became the impetus for the story of polar the titanic bear. it is a piece of non-fiction that has successfully and creatively blended history, legend, folklore, and children's literature while simultaneously presenting a human interest story of top quality. notes 1 "stories from the titanic: douglas spedden." geocities. 04 january 2003. www.geocities.com/athens/ agora/6683/spedden. 2 "the first teddy." tripod. 04 january 2003. www.members.tripod.com/ -sunbear 2/history. 3 "history of f.a.o. schwarz company." f.a.o. schwarz. 04 january 2003. www.fao.com/aboutfao/history.cfm. 4 "about fao schwarz." macromedia. 04 january 2003 www.macro media.com/macromedia/prom/pr/2 00 l/fao schwab». 5 "the first teddy." 6 "origin of the teddy bear." factmonster. c. 2002 family education network. 04 january 2003. www.factmonster.com/ipka/a0872806. 7 "the boy with the bear: the story of douglas spedden." stories from the titanic. 04 january 2003 www.geocities.com/athens/agora/6683/spedden. 8 daisy corning stone spedden. polar the titanic bear. new york:little, brown and company, 1994. 9 "robert douglas spedden." encyclopedia titanica. 04 january 2003. http://www.encvclopedia-titanica.org/bio/p/ 1 stlspedden rd.html. 10 e.e. o'donnell, sj. the last days of the titanic. dublin: roberts rinehart publishers, 1997, p.66. 11 tom kuntz. the titanic disaster hearings: the official transcripts 45 polar: the most famous bear of them all edgette of the 1912 senate investigation. los angeles:new star publishing, 1998. 12 judith b. geller. titanic: women and children first. new york:w.w. norton, 1998, p.73. 13 "douglas spedden "a life cut short for a boy with a bear." the real titanic. 04 january 2003. http://www.expage.com/douglasspedden.html. 14 "george alfred moore." encyclopedia titanica. 04 january 2003. http:/ /www.encyc1opedia-titanica.orglbio/c/a/moore ga. html. 15 daisy corning stone spedden, p. 46. 16 marconi corporation pic archives. 17 "polar the titanic bear genealogy and chronology." spedden family genealogy. 04 january 2003. http://www.polarthetitanicbear.comgenepage. html. 18 "state of maine record of death." titanica document archive. 04 j anu ary 2003. www.encyclopediatitanica.org/documents/spedden rd cert.html 19 "mrs. frederic spedden." titanica document archive. 04 january 2003. www.encvclopedia-titanica.org/documents/suedden fo 048247. 20 "mrs. frederic spedden." titanica document archive. 04 january 2003. www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/documents/spedden fo2 1025. 21 "spedden family chronology." p.3. 22 "spedden family chronology." p.3. 23 douglas spedden "a life cut short for a boy with a bear." 46 pages from cfr_2002-2003_part12 cfr_2002-2003_part13 cfr_2002-2003_part14 pages from cfr_2002-2003_part15 a fear of adolescent cruising: adult reactions to a tradition that won't go away charlie mccormick growing up in snyder, texas, my friends and i spent our friday and saturday nights cruising—what we referred to as "making the drag." we drove down college avenue-snyder's main strip, turning around in the bar-h-bar parking lot on one end of our circuit and at the sonic drive-in on the other end. were i able to go back and interview myself as i was then, i think i would describe those hours i spent on the drag as being "really cool." whatever the phrase lacks in articulateness, its connotation is unmistakable. cruising was important to me. it was important for lots of reasons but especially because of how it changed me: it made me feel tougher while i was out there commanding a few thousand pounds of metal to drive me around; it made me feel older than my years sneaking smokes and sipping beer from a can; it made me feel like i had sexual potential as me and my car full of male friends imagined—incorrectly as it turned out that the young women out cruising found us desirable and sexy; and it made me feel connected to something larger than myself since i knew from hearing them recount their own experiences on college avenue that my older sisters, cousins, and parents had made the drag when they were in high school. "really cool," indeed. these days, my interests in cruising are much less experiential than they are intellectual, but i still find cruising "pretty cool." apparently, some towns and cities across the u.s. do too since cruising remains as traditional today as it has been for the last fifty years in these places. i have been surprised, however, to find that in an increasing majority of locales around the nation, this folk performance has come to be regarded by many adults as the scourge of their community.1 i explain these differing adult perceptions of adolescent cruising by arguing that as adolescent cruising-one of the traditional and informal performances of white middleclass adolescents due to its socialization and enculturation potential (mccormick)-became appropriated by those outside the target audience (i.e. ethnic minorities and those presumed to be in the lower class) its legitimacy was attacked. therefore, when cruising the mall emerged as a new means of facilitating socio-cultural reproduction among middle-class adolescents, many communities had voices calling for the criminalization of the performance and its performers. ultimately, then, these differing perceptions of adolescent cruising—as traditional activity and as criminal activity—have much less to do with the performance's changing nature and much more to do with the fear of middle-class adults that they will be mccormick unable to make the adolescents for which they are responsible grow up to be middle-class adults. in explanation of this position, let me briefly sketch the relevant datain this case a sequence of events which traces the development of adolescent cruising on the strip—on which i base my argument.2 cruising's golden days began in the mid-1950s due—in large part-to the entertainment industry's strategic use of the hot rod culture as a marketing tool. a flood of movies like rebel without a cause, drag strip girl, hot rod gang, and ghost of drag strip hollow; songs like i get around, little old lady from pasadena, little deuce coupe, and mustang sally; and even texts like the hot rod happy comic strips all exploited the taboo of the hot rod culture in the hopes of attracting a newly emerging and potentially powerful market segment: baby boom teenagers. in doing so, the idea of a tripartite performance of adolescents, automobiles, and commercial strip was aggressively marketed to these teenagers. it became so attractive, in fact, that by the mid-1960s adolescent cruising on the commercial strip had become an increasingly traditional way for adolescents to spend some of their non-institutional time. by about 1975 (though i don't mean for any of these dates to be precise, they're meant to be touchstones which give the historical sequence a rough placement in time3), adolescent cruising on the commercial strip began to be transformed. the oil embargo and the rise of the regional shopping mall were two economic reasons for this transformation, but social and cultural forces—which i will address momentarily—were also at work. by 1985, the future of adolescent cruising on the commercial strip was no longer just in jeopardy, it was being actively dismantled in newspapers and local political meetings around the nation. none of this is to say that cruising is dead or dying, because it certainly isn't. in fact, adolescent cruising was reborn in the shopping mall. interestingly, cruising the mall seems to have followed the same sort of development as cruising on the commercial strip. it was accepted by the middle-class—if not eagerly than at least willing—as an appropriate way and place for their teens to hang out, it was traditionalized, and very recently, cruising the mall has begun to show signs of having its legitimacy challenged by voices in the local community. given this data, adolescent cruising on the strip appears to have devolved unidirectionally through time. in fact, letters, editorials, and articles in newspapers from around the country seem to indicate that, in today's performance of adolescent cruising on the commercial strip, kids hurt each other—even kill each other—and property is damaged. the seemingly levelheaded response to these charges would be to keep adolescent cruising from occurring. but the level-headedness of this response can be challenged by correlating the perception of cruising's increasingly dark 56 a fear of adolescent cruising menace with its shifting demographics: from a performance which was controlled primarily by white, middle-class adolescents to a performance which is increasingly being adopted by those outside the white middleclass. examining cruising's receptions in their historical context suggests that as adolescent cruising becomes increasingly performed by those outside the white middle-class, the white middle-class apparently finds adolescent cruising less effective at reproducing its target population, and it therefore has no reason to perpetuate the performance. make no mistake, i understand that it seems like i am, at best, making an argument that is purely academic or, at worst, naive. cruising, after all, has been and is the venue for fearful activities: assault, rape, homicide, drug abuse, and property damage. this is all well documented (if, i believe, exaggerated in terms of its epidemic proportions and endemic nature). but my reading of the performance suggests that cruising has always had the specter of menace hovering around it.4 the significance of this menacewhether it is seen as pranksterism or as criminal—i believe, is contingent on whether or not the performance is perceived as achieving its reproductive potential. in paul lyons' book, class of '66, the perception of white, middle-class adolescent menace as pranksterism in a white, middle-class town in new jersey is evident. he reports these memories from a middle-age, middle-class informant: ".we hung the assistant principal in effigy the first week he was at school. . . . he was a real nice guy, mr. turner; it was just that we disliked the idea of having an assistant principal. about two weeks after he arrived, we passed the word that we were packing guns, and within two or three days, they did a complete search of the whole school building—we didn't have any guns." dave, roaring with laughter, tells of boyish pranks: "we did a mock shooting on the steps of the local diner. davy hunter had a '57 chevy; he pulled up in front of the diner and got out, and we had these cap guns, but they were real loud; [davy] pulled it out, pulled up in front of the diner, shot this guy on the steps, ketchup packets all over, picked him up off the steps—this was saturday night, busiest night of the week," he interjects, "threw him in the trunk of this car, and sped off. . . we drove [the cops] crazy." (46) even more relevant to my argument, howard and barbara myerhoff reported on the way in which the menace of adolescent cruising—menace as pranksterism—was handled by the authorities in early 1960s california. they wrote that [t]here is a mischievous, often amusing overtone to all these incidents; they are not the kind likely to be malicious or violent. rather, they are 57 mccormick spontaneous and gratuitous, proving nothing but providing "kicks." an incident was observed in which a boy was picked up for drinking and curfew violation. in the patrol car he expressed his concern lest the occasion jeopardize his chances for entering college. the officer, who had until that point been rather surly, hastened to reassure the boy that such a possibility was quite unlikely, and implied that nothing would come of the visit to the station. (285-86) in these examples, the menace of adolescents—while frustrating to adults— is finally laughable—even capable of evoking nostalgic remembrance sometime later—because it appears to be developmental: it was simply what kids did when growing up. therefore, adolescent menace was considered pranksterism rather than criminal behavior. today, however, cruising and the menace which surrounds it is not viewed as pranksterism; instead, it is perceived as a much darker and more dangerous sort of threat. adolescent cruising on salt lake city's state street provides an example of adolescent cruising having its menace transformed into criminal behavior. reporter rebecca walsh described the cruising on state street in 1999 as a night club on asphalt. site of a mating dance of sorts, punctuated by stops for drinks at the chevron, where tailing is flirting, and two drivers exchanging phone numbers can reduce traffic to gridlock. it's a social, at times violent, tradition salt lake city police want to end. using two murders in two years as a catalyst, city police claim cruising state has spun out of control. decades of harmless fun has taken on a sinister cast. ("tracking taillights . . . ") shortly after her report, the salt lake city city council passed a ban on cruising state street (egan 1999: online). reading the newspaper accounts leading up to, during, and following the elimination of adolescent cruising on state street, it becomes clear that the cruising menace which was once pranksterism had become criminalized. assistant police chief roy wasden described his changing perception of the activity like this: "[cruising has] changed a lot in 25 years. . . . there's just a lot more of everything: more traffic, more weapons, more violence" (walsh, "tracking taillights. . . "). salt lake city resident don steiner, in his public forum letter in the salt lake tribune, supported this position as well. he asserts that state street cruising "was not american graffiti, where cute little kids honk at each other for attention; it had become a continual crime scene on weekends. i applaud salt lake city for its efforts to make state street once again safe 58 a fear of adolescent cruising for all citizens" (steiner). because of cruising's transformation into a criminal menace, it seemed self-evident that the performance had to be abolished. therefore, when salt lake city decriminalized many traffic violations, it left cruising state street—along with drunken driving, excessive speeding, and reckless driving—"a more serious criminal offense" (kennedy). the logic of cruising's criminalization, however, has been challenged by individuals who fear that criminalizing cruising only appears to be an appropriate response to cruising's menace. in salt lake city, it was among others—aclu legal director stephen clark who urged city council members to proceed cautiously with criminalizing cruising. he argued, "i'm very concerned about how the cruising ordinance will be implemented and enforced. it's one more opportunity for people who are marginalized in our community to be targeted and harassed" (walsh "new slc law . . . "). and in denver, for instance, it was hispanic voices who noted in an article in la voz that "[ w]hat the media failed to see, but what was clearly evident to anyone on federal [street] over the weekend, was in its so-called "random" stopping of vehicles, the dpd [denver police department] systematically pulled over and impounded vehicles driven by people who were young and brown or who displayed mexican flags. anglos drove by untouched" ("crusade for justice. . . "). these voices of dissent argue that it seems to be part of human nature to fear that which is different and that is what is driving the criminalization of cruising. researcher doreen massey concurs with the general principle: "attempts to forbid behaviour which is different have always been part of the armoury of those who insist on establishing their own behaviour as 'normal' and 'natural', and therefore by some leap of logic to be conformed to by everyone" (127). the implication would be, then, that if cruising's performers were homogeneous they would not elicit the same sort of fear that a heterogeneous group of cruising performers would. according to this reasoning, cruising should have been much more homogenous when its menace evoked, at best, frustration than it is now when its menace evokes fear. james bradley's 1971 master's thesis in sociology on a relatively unthreatening performance of adolescent cruising in san leandro, california, seems to confirm this condition. in san leandro, for instance, there were "few mexican-americans" (51) and no blacks (49-50) who cruised. in other words, a lack of difference correlated with a lack of threatening menace. according to this theory, then, as cruising becomes a more diverse activity (as it had on salt lake city's state street), fears would begin to surface. tim lucas unpacks the process through which the white middle-class fear of cruising becomes a public policy which criminalizes cruising. first, he argues, the word "gang" becomes confused 59 mccormick with "race" (146-47). next, the media creates a moral panic around "gangs" (that is, "minority youth") so as to titillate an audience which assumes it is being informed (152). finally, lucas argues that this moral panic leads to the "terrifying visions of white suburbanites. . . of the migration of drive-byshooting gangbangers in south-central (la) to the more prosperous (white) peripheral neighbourhoods" (152). to stop this migration, cruising becomes outlawed. compelling as this explanation of the adult fear of cruising which is characterized by its difference is at first glance, cruising seems less about the performance of difference than it is about different people coming together to perform the same thing. in fact, cruising is arguably much more about assimilation than differentiation. certainly, there are good reasons for those adolescents outside the white middle-class to want to participate not only in cruising but in all sorts of middle-class leisure activities. as regina austin argues in an article on governmental restraints on black leisure in southern california law review, the appropriation of middle-class leisure spaces and practices results in the creation of "real and symbolic capital" by those nonmiddle-class adolescents who appropriate them. but assuming assimilation is trying to be achieved, the question remains why adults—and white, middle-class adults in particular—would criminalize cruising if difference was not heightened but diminished during the performance. barbara ehrenreich suggests an answer when she argues that the middle-class (she claims an interest in the "professional" middle-class alone, but i think her argument applies to a greater or a lesser extent to the middleclass generally) is not concerned with those who are different per se but about losing its own status. she writes that the middleclass is "insecure and deeply anxious. . . . it is afraid, like any class below the most securely wealthy, of misfortunes that might lead to a downward slide. . . . whether the middle class looks down towards the realm of less, or up toward the realm of more, there is the fear, always, of falling" (15). if cruising is one of the traditional mechanisms for reproducing middle-class behaviors and values, then when this mechanism runs the risk of becoming either "clogged" by too many users or too effective at moving others into the middle-class (which results in either kicking others out or limiting the participation of all those involved), the mechanism itself comes under attack. don merten offers a brilliant case study of how this process is initiated when a burnout becomes a cheerleader. he argues that having a burnout as a cheerleader was so problematic. . . . [because] it violated an implicit assumption that the hierarchies of status categories and activities were congruent. but at a far more fundamental level, sta 60 a fear of adolescent cruising tus categories and activities not only identified types of people but also separated types of people. since status categories and activities were expected to be hierarchically congruent, people who were near the bottom of the status hierarchy were not supposed to be in high-prestige activities. having a burnout as a cheerleader was not just an isolated violation of this expectation but rather, like a taboo violation, threatened the integrity of these two categorical systems and their assumed congruence. . . . in other words, if a burnout could be a cheerleader, was there any limit as to what could happen; were any expectations valid? (65) likewise, when cruising became perceived as inefficiently socializing and enculturating middle-class adolescents, it became feared, criminalized, and dismantled. still, though, the need to socialize and enculturate middle-class adolescents remained; therefore, new mechanisms were constructed to achieve these ends. enter cruising the shopping mall, a landscape which serves as an escape from and defense against intrusions from outsiders—just as the commercial strip once did. i suspect that the recent challenge to cruising the mall's legitimacy as a middle-class leisure activity is a result of middleclass fears over the efficacy of the performance's ability to reproduce middle-class values and behaviors within the target population. given what i've learned about adolescent cruising, i don't think this will be the blow that finally destroys the performance. as much as middle-class adults fear cruising's menace, they also seem to fear the loss of its reproductive potential. cruising, after all, changes people. i know that from personal experience. this is precisely why middle-class adults have a love/hate relationship with the performance. and because of the power in this traditional performance, people change cruising. cabrini college radnor, pennsylvania notes 1. for example, i was surprised to find that in abilene, texas—my fieldsite— cruising has begun to come under attack. this, in fact, was what originally caused me to look to other attacks on cruising around the nation so as to understand the motivations for this attack. 2. this is not to suggest that cruising exists as some sort of transcendent, universal (or national) tradition. rather, adolescent cruising is always localized from popular culture representations even as these localizations build the popular culture representations. this does not, however, preclude me from making general statements about the phenomenon. 3. for example, in my fieldsite of abilene, texas, it is only now—in the late 1990s—that this transformation to the tradition of adolescent cruising is becom 61 mccormick ing manifest in the local government as it considers whether to enact adolescent curfews on the weekend. 4. this inherent menace is a result, at least in part, of the inherent menace in adolescent themselves. as ambiguous figures, adolescents pose a threat to the normative order, and their activities—however tame they may actually be—have at least the specter of this menace hovering around them. works cited austin, regina. "'not just for the fun of it!' governmental restraints on black leisure, social inequality, and privatization of public space." southern cali fornia law review 71 (1998): available lexis-nexis. bradley, james p. cruising the strip: a report on youth. thesis for m.a. in soci ology at california state college, hayward (1971). "crusade for justice angered by actions of denver police." la voz may 14: 6, available northern light's special collection, 1997 egan, rick. "welcome to s.l., and no, you can't." the salt lake tribune june 1999, b1, available tribune archive online. ehrenreich, barbara. fear of falling: the inner life of the middle class. new york: harperperennial, 1990. kennedy, kelly. "gotten a routine traffic ticket? you're no longer a criminal in slc." the salt lake tribune (final) nov. 12 1999: b5. available tribune archive online. lucas, tim. "youth gangs and moral panics in santa cruz, california." in cool places: geographies of youth cultures, eds. tracey skelton and gill valen tine. new york: routledge, 1998. 145-60. lyons, paul. class of '66: living in suburban middle america. philadelphia: temple up, 1994. massey, doreen. "the spatial construction of youth cultures." in cool places: geographies of youth cultures, eds. tracey skelton and gill valentine. new york: routledge., 1998. 121-29. mccormick, charlie. "the origins of adolescent cruising: reconciling popular belief and local history." journal of the american studies association of texas 31 (2000): 64-81. merten, don e. "burnout as cheerleader: the cultural basis for prestige and privi lege in junior high school." anthropology & education quarterly 27.1 (1996): 51-70. myerhoff, howard l., and barbara g. myerhoff. "field observations of middle class 'gangs.'" in juvenile delinquency: a book of readings, 2nd edition. ed. rose giallombardo. new york: john wiley and sons, 1972.279-89. steiner, don. public forum letter: "cruising law needed." the salt lake tribune (final) july 14, 1999: a12. available tribune archive. walsh, rebecca. "new slc law brings tradition of cruising to a screeching halt." the salt lake tribune june 9, 1999: di. available tribune archive. 62 a fear of adolescent cruising ______. "tracking taillights on state street, cops to discontinue thrill seekers on the prowl, cruising state street now discouraged." the salt lake tribune may 23. 1999: c1. available tribune archive. 63 cfr_2002_part17 cfr_2002_part18 cfr_2002_part19 pages from cfr_2002_part20 67 disastrous alternatives: boy scout disaster stories and legends and imagining the natural world spencer lincoln green introduction hiking the narrows in zion national park as an adolescent, i remember well the stories we shared of the flash flood that killed an entire scout troop earlier that year or the year before. it was recent. the troop had been hiking up the narrows just like we were, on a clear day, just like this was. although they had taken all necessary precautions, the clear sky above them hid the fact that farther upstream a storm was adding large quantities of water into the canyon. out of nowhere the flash flood came and killed the entire troop. although we may have wondered why we hadn’t heard about it at the time, or why we were allowed to hike the same area, we did not challenge the veracity of the tale since someone had read, or had heard from someone who had read, the news article or seen it on tv. this was news, not legend we were sharing. the similarities between the ill-fated troop and ours gave it an ominous reality. just like us, the scout troop had come from northern utah and just like us, they had walked past these narrow sandstone canyons with the detritus of past flash floods as living proof that the stories were true. on another trip, a scout cuts a green branch to roast a hot dog. another scout warns him that green branches have poisons that can seep into the hot dog when it gets hot. the scout abandons his green branch to find one less likely to kill him. scouting legends such as these do more than exert social control on scouts liable to damage local trees or get themselves into danger in the outdoors; they express deeply felt fears and values in how humans relate to the outdoors: the scene and subject of many of these fearsome tales. jay mechling suggests that campfire legends and lore, with their thematic obsessions with death and disaster, meet the psychic needs of those who share them. beyond the obsession with death and injury we see here, mechling notes a preoccupation with sexuality and resistance to authority (1980, 43). these are the taboos against which children’s folklore often pokes and prods, looking for a way to handle these serious issues about which they are aware, but unable to talk openly for fear of censure. mechling describes these camps as an “exaggerated male group experience” for pubescent boys seeking to differentiate themselves “from the other gender” (1980, 45, 47). while i did not observe nor recall explicit needs to differentiate from the other gender in the present legends, there is an intense masculinity at work, and young boys seeking to differentiate themselves from their urban lives and the authority figures who dominate it become their own authority figures in a frontier or wilderness setting which hearkens to past modes of manliness. the scout troop i was part of included fifteen to twenty boys, ages twelve to seventeen, all latter-day saints, all members of the same ward, and all from an upper middle-class neighborhood of provo, utah, a college town of about 100,000 cfr_2011_r.indb 67 10/31/11 8:57:40 am disastrous alternatives green 68 people. our troop was fairly informal. while we did have different patrols, they were rarely, if ever, recognized or used in camp activities; we rarely brought our uniforms on campouts and were organized loosely in terms of camp duties. we hiked and associated with our usual friends rather than having to confine our activities to those in our patrols. the older boys sometimes gave orders to the younger boys that were usually followed. we shared tents, scattered around our site in the national park’s campground, with our friends and siblings. we were boys camping with three to four adult supervisors who also came from our lds ward. scouts at camp are betwixt and between in many ways. as adolescents, they are between childhood and adulthood, the worlds of sheltered life and direct confrontation with the world. with limited oversight at camp, they are between the stricter parental oversight they know at home and the freedom of being with their peers. they are also between the city and the wilderness, where they imaginatively play out various possible consequences and dangers of life in their wilderness setting. bill ellis notes that camping, in the united states, “involves playacting, by its very nature. adults and adolescents, mainly from the city and the suburbs, voluntarily give up modern comfort to live for a while in an imaginative recreation of the ‘frontier’ world” (1981, 486). the world they are going out to experience is fueled by nostalgia and full of the drama, heroes, and excitement of the old west. and just as the homesteaders and pioneers encountered a land that did not conform to their myths and ideals, modern campers do not find a land that conforms to the dreams of nostalgia that often propel them there. more than a place to experience nature and prove one’s manhood, the scout camp can be a place of tedium and struggling to participate in domestic chores that are more tedious and difficult than they were at home. rather than trading the comforts of home for the excitement of the wilderness, they find they have traded the comforts of home for greater difficulty in accomplishing similar menial tasks. cooking is more time consuming; cleaning requires multiple trips down to the river; only making your bed is easier, and the absence of expectations to wash mitigates the increased difficulty of many necessary tasks. the role of these disaster narratives, the poison lurking in branches, or the death that can descend without notice on a clear day are ways of infusing the quotidian experience of camp life with the intensity of the frontier drama. these stories bridge the gap between lived experience and the world of the legend by transforming the natural surroundings of the scout camp into the world of the legend. how is this done? victor turner speaks of liminal monsters that are not intended to terrorize initiates but to startle them “into thinking about objects, persons, relationships, and features of their environment they have hitherto taken for granted” (1967, 105). often the legends told between scouts at a camp involve fearful figures who inhabit the geographical area like bigfoot, the wendigo, or more local figures like jack haggerty of northern california (see gyemant 1965). the zion narrows legend does not involve a fearful figure so much as the fearful presence of nature. hiking up the narrows, river debris and drying tree stumps seen high up the canyon walls act as reminders that a flash flood would rise far above the scout’s ability to escape and come with such power that we would be overwhelmed. cfr_2011_r.indb 68 10/31/11 8:57:40 am green disastrous alternatives 69 seen in this way, stories of death and injury in the outdoors can foster a ritualistic experience with nature that prompts a reevaluation of the teller’s relationship with the land. in this case, the legends and stories transform the land into the setting of the legend, which the scouts are then able to inhabit with its attendant masculinity and independence. it not only allows adolescents to change their relationship with the land, but also their relationship with reality. are these stories legends, though? there are documented accounts of people experiencing some versions of the story that was told in my scout troop in the summer of 1994. while the story we heard and shared involved the deaths of an entire scout troop in the zion narrows, where we were hiking, there is an account of a group of three leaders and five explorer scouts descending nearby kolob canyon when, due to high water levels, the canyon became dangerous and two of the leaders died. the remaining leader and all five boys were rescued after four days in the canyon (see burrows 2002, canyoneering 2005, and hanscom 1996). this was certainly a real event that was well documented and debated. the debates surrounding the tragedy center on the dangers: who was responsible for those dangers, the leaders or the park rangers, and how to avoid them for one’s own group. but those sorts of debates do not make a legend according to linda dégh who, in legend and belief, writes that a legend “entertains debate about belief … informs, explains, instructs, warns, or exemplifies through the telling of an extraordinary, unexplainable experience that a known person has encountered” (2001, 97-98). the original story does not entertain debate about belief, although it is often used to explain, instruct and warn. one informant, inspired by some beautiful pictures, planned a hike in the zion narrows in the summer of 2003 with a roommate. another roommate’s girlfriend, hearing their plans, told him to be careful because “my cousin went to hike the narrows with his boy scout troop and got caught in a flash flood. a wall of water came and he died” (ellsworth 2009). similar to the stories we shared on our scout trip, my informant was told that “a storm up in the nether regions caused a flash flood that came down and killed him.” certainly the message of the story was one of warning. another informant heard about a scout troop camping in a dry creek bed “somewhere in southern utah” when a flash flood during the night — “which often happens in those areas” — wiped most if not the entire troop away (rife 2011). this version lacks many of the specifics of the other accounts but maintains some of the story’s most basic elements: the desert of southern utah, boy scouts, death, water, and unseen danger. while news accounts of disasters in zion are not numerous, an article in the salt lake tribune sought to identify the major disasters that have occurred there since 1927. the two leaders dying in kolob canyon is mentioned as well as two hikers dying in the narrows in 1998 in a flash flood (havnes 2009). the article adds that most people die falling from cliffs rather than drowning. however, in the world of our scout camp, it was not the precipitous cliffs our stories led us to fear, but the canyon and the unpredictable water. it seems it is the unlikely fear that is most compelling. looking over the side of a cliff, the outcome of inching towards it is obviously death. but in our scout disaster narratives, it is the unlikely danger cfr_2011_r.indb 69 10/31/11 8:57:40 am disastrous alternatives green 70 of being drowned in a desert, the rare surge of massive amounts of water where there is so little, that inspires fear and the excitement of danger. zion national park’s website contains a page outlining safety information. steep cliffs come in at the top of the list, followed by water (as in drinking and staying hydrated), driving, heat exhaustion, heat stroke, hypothermia, and firearms (your safety). the main warnings that have anything to do with the narrows come from hypothermia or the temperature of the water, rather than the amount encountered. on hot days walking up the knee-deep waters, the temperature doesn’t seem to be a major concern, nor does the amount of water, so why do these fearsome tales center on them? why these many discrepancies in the accounts versus the stories we told ourselves? there were many differences between the stories we told and the event we were supposedly recounting. we told stories of an entire boy scout troop from salt lake city being wiped out by a flash flood in the narrows, the canyon we were then hiking. the facts of the story had been altered in transmission. the original troop was not boy scouts but explorer scouts, older and more experienced. we imagined the disaster hitting the scouts when it was the leaders who died in the real event. and while the two troops did indeed come from the same area, northern utah, the explorer scouts were hiking in nearby kolob canyon, not the narrows. while geographically near each other, they are vastly different canyons. kolob canyon, the site of the disaster, is a narrow slot canyon requiring a wet or dry suit, rock climbing gear for one hundred fifty-foot rappels, and a permit that indicates the water flow expected based on the release of a dam above the canyon. the narrows, on the other hand, while sounding like a narrow canyon, is wide enough for two to six lanes of car traffic through most of its length and requires very little equipment beyond what any hiker might need. the narrows do not require a permit, though they do post general conditions for the causal hikers who come to hike part or all of the canyon. looking closely at what changed, we can piece together how this local story went from a news story to a local legend told and modified to apply to those telling the story. returning to dégh’s definition of a legend, we see that some of the changes involved making the story come more from a “known person.” what we lacked in actual knowledge of these people was made up for by making the characters as similar to ourselves as we could. thus the explorer scouts were made into younger boy scouts, the tragedy fell on those we identified more closely with, the scouts, rather than the leaders, and, what needed no modification, they were a troop coming from northern utah to southern utah, and the differences of the specific canyons were erased by trading the one we were hiking for the one where the tragedy actually occurred. were the events extraordinary? extraordinarily regrettable, certainly. the increased drama involved in the eradication of an entire troop was certainly an extraordinary aspect of the event as we knew it. the story did entertain debate about belief, in that the apparent veracity of the tale was part of what gave the tale so much force in our young minds. as robert gyemant writes, “as it is with most legends, there is historical detail enough to imply historical truth” (1965, 106). the accuracies and cfr_2011_r.indb 70 10/31/11 8:57:40 am green disastrous alternatives 71 inaccuracies indicate that folkloric processes were at work in digesting the facts of the event into the details of the legend. on the same trip to zion’s, as with many scout troops, we hiked not only the narrows, but angel’s landing, where more people die and where the danger is more apparent. so why hadn’t we heard or why didn’t we share any stories about that hike? we certainly enjoyed it through the heat and the arduous hike and the amazing panorama of the three canyons meeting in the valley around us. at times on the trail, cliffs drop away on either side. it is a site of actual excitement and danger that does not inspire stories like the seemingly placid and safer narrows. why that discrepancy? part of it may be in the combination of thrill and safety in the narrows. with less immanent danger, we are left to enjoy the thrill of danger at a safe remove through story and imagination rather than through bodily risk. the thought of danger is, in this case, far more enjoyable than actual danger. water holds a mystery of danger that heights and heat, which kill more people in the park yearly than does excess of water, do not. part of the reason is found in the material conditions of the west. scouts growing up in or familiar with the west know the importance of water and their reliance on it. droughts, water rationing, and children’s folklore in the west emphasize the importance of water. “one two, three, water hog!” and “save some for the whales!” are good examples of children’s folklore emphasizing the importance of water. as lds youths, the scouts were familiar with scenes of water-based destruction. biblical stories including the flood, the destruction of the egyptians in the red sea, jonah and the fish, and even christ calming the sea of galilee as he walked on the water show that water can be a source of punishment and an unruly element. although water is used in one of the holiest ordinances in mormonism, baptism, and symbolizes a new birth, it also symbolizes death and is a frequent scene of hardships. the book of mormon tells of the dangers for lehi and his family as they crossed the ocean to the promised land. later the jaredites also experience difficulty as they cross the ocean. further, when christ visits the americas, he punishes the wickedness by sinking many cities in the ocean (see 3 nephi 8 and 9). in the doctrine and covenants, a more modern book of scripture, there are many pronouncements about the dangers of water. in a revelation given after some dangers experienced by early church elders as they canoed down the missouri and after one saw “in a daylight vision … the destroyer riding in power upon the face of the waters,” warning about the dangers of water abound: “behold, there are many dangers upon the waters, and more especially hereafter” (d&c 61:4), “for i, the lord, have decreed in mine anger many destructions upon the waters; yea, and especially upon these waters” (meaning the missouri) (d&c 61:5), “behold, i, the lord, in the beginning blessed the waters; but in the last days … i cursed the waters” (d&c 61:14), “wherefore, the days will come that no flesh shall be safe upon the waters” (d&c 61:15), and others. while water as an evil force is certainly not a pervasive doctrine and receives such specific focus in only one chapter of scripture, combined with the stories, they may account for a tendency to vilifying water. combine that with the west’s reliance on the peskily absent element, and water becomes a dangerous element in need of such legends to explain, warn, and instruct us to be wary. cfr_2011_r.indb 71 10/31/11 8:57:40 am disastrous alternatives green 72 legends of disasters in the wilderness often act as explanation, instruction, or warning. when brant ellsworth heard from his roommate’s girlfriend about her cousin who had died in the narrows in a flash flood, she told it, and he heard it, as a cautionary tale. the warning included the knowledge that the danger might be unseen, “you won’t see it overhead. but ten miles upstream there could be a massive downpour which will cause the flash flood,” and summarized by his roommate’s words “yeah, people die down there” (ellsworth 2011). here, dégh’s interpretation of the function of the legend fits perfectly with its function in the urban world, but to read the meaning of the legend as it was told in the setting where it occurred, we look at elliot oring’s definition of the legend. oring writes that legends are about “the creation of a story which requires the audience to examine their world view — their sense of the normal, the boundaries of the natural, their conceptions of fate, destiny, and coincidence” (1986, 126). beyond requiring the audience to examine their worldview, these stories allowed our troop to re-imagine the boundaries of the natural world and place ourselves in the most dangerous, exciting version of that natural as exemplified in the legend. rather than live in the hot, weary, sometimes menial and tedious world of camping, it allowed us to immerse ourselves in a world of dangerous possibilities where we could play with the possibilities of death and disaster. part of what makes that playing possible is the immediacy of the natural details of the legend. while there are many definitions of what makes a legend, the “message” is only part of what makes this legend so persistent and vivid. the immediacy of the physical facts of the legend, and how that immediacy imbues the geographic area with a heightened sense of excitement, is what lends the legend such force and narrative power. while tales of entire scout troops being washed away in desert floods are amazing enough, walking the very banks of the calm river while noting the stumps and debris of the flood forty feet above you on a cliff wall, a vivid reminder of the tale’s reality, emphasizes the potential threat and actual excitement. in the vanishing hitchhiker jan brunvand discusses the function of legends. they can be entertaining, validate cultural ideals or institutions, explain the unusual or supernatural happenings of the world or they can “show that the prosaic contemporary scene is capable of producing shocking or amazing occurrences which may have actually happened to friends or to nearacquaintances but which are nevertheless explainable in some reasonably logical terms” (1981, 12). the legends and legend telling can infuse a boring situation with more excitement because of the possibility that something amazing will happen. in one space, many places mary hufford makes the observation that “through stories people deepen their relationship to the places surrounding them” (1986, 8). these particular stories deepen that relationship by infusing it with the drama, excitement, and mythos of the frontier where life was hard, but real men were made. this kind of play with danger is distinct from legend trips and what bill ellis terms “mock ordeals,” in that the legends and stories are evoked by the place rather than the other way around, as in legend trips. further, the ordeal is real only in that there is a heightened sense of potential danger while experiencing cfr_2011_r.indb 72 10/31/11 8:57:40 am green disastrous alternatives 73 the more mundane discomforts of camping life. and here is where playing with masculinities and adulthood enters into the stories and their appeal. the adult world, as well as the natural world, is largely unknown and as such can be a source of anxiety and fear for adolescents. imagining the dramatic danger transforms the discomforts of camping life into more exciting, manly adventures; gives them a handle on perceived, real, but unrealized fears; and serves as an outlet for the fears and anxieties of wilderness, manhood, and adulthood. conclusion legends lie on a spectrum between the real and the imaginary. these scouting stories and legends, like many others, are drawn from real stories and become legends only in their telling and retelling as fact surrenders to a good, gripping story. in moving each way, towards the more imaginative and towards the more real, an interesting picture of why we create, share, and perpetuate stories of disaster emerges. if we move first towards the more fictive side, susan sontag, in the imagination of disaster, contends that the strength of science fiction films is “their immediate representation of the extraordinary” (1976, 119). in what she calls “sensuous elaboration,” these films allow viewers to participate in the fantasy of their own death, or the destruction of the world itself. sontag privileges the spectacle over the words or story, but in the case of disaster narratives in and of the wilderness, they combine to create a vivid, participatory narrative the boys can enter and come to the edge of death and destruction, take a look around, and return unharmed and victorious. similar to the monsters in science fiction, nature as liminal monster seeks not only to kill them, but to obliterate them, just as it has the other scout groups in the stories (127). sontag concludes that the imagery of disaster in science fiction is above all the emblem of an inadequate response … which shows “the inadequacy of most people’s response to the unassimilable terrors that infect their consciousness” (130). sontag’s hyperbole aside, the terrors being dealt with in science fiction are the same ones being escaped in the wilderness: an urban world dictated by forces more powerful than the boys such as parents, mothers, or school or work schedules. moving towards the more factive, we might look at the anticipatory response to hurricane irene this summer. the wind of irene held many comparisons with hurricane katrina, which was similar in size and force to irene. cbs news warned that “irene could bring katrina-style flooding to coast” (condon 2011). while other predictions were more accurate, like the loss of power to much of the affected areas, the comparison of katrina to irene seemed to ignore some vital facts — such as the levees in new orleans which caused most of the deaths and damage and their absence anywhere in irene’s path — and focus on mother nature as monster and force of immanent destruction. she “slammed” into the coast, “marched” up the coast. similar to how scout legends can imbue an area with potential danger, many news accounts wrote of the potential dangers of the real storm, the “potentially affected population” and “potential damage” (ranii 2011). anticipation of the actual event, while very different from the imaginary cfr_2011_r.indb 73 10/31/11 8:57:40 am disastrous alternatives green 74 anticipation experienced by scouts hiking in the zion narrows, shared with the scout’s anticipation an entrance into the realm of fantasy. just as legends combine truth and fiction, so too do our views of the future, even the immediate future, partake of imagination. while the scouts were able to use this imagination to imbue the present with greater excitement, intensifying that potential danger even a bit can turn it into the great fear and panic in anticipation of irene. sacvan bercovitch, in the american jeremiad, explains how this might happen. the particularly american form of the jeremiad, he explains, rhetorically fused the sacred, supernatural world of god’s will with the secular, natural world of man’s actions (1978, 9). the legend, for many and these disaster legends in particular, seems to elevate the commonplace and everyday into a world of the supernatural. there is something proleptic in this exercise when we compare the legends with its cousins on the extremes of the fictive/factive spectrum. in all of them, science fiction, fact-based scouting legends, and anticipation of natural disasters, we are again fusing those supernatural and everyday worlds in mixtures to excite, appall, or amaze ourselves or others. as such, legends, like news and science fiction, are a way we invent and interpret the world. as invention and interpretation they can be productive or destructive: ways to increase excitement, ways for urbanites to respond to the crushing demands of modernity, and added fuel for widespread panics. seen this way, the legend is not merely a way to negotiate the possible and the actual, but is a persistent and pervasive human negotiation between our imagined world and our lived experience. works cited bercovitch, sacvan. 1978. the american jeremiad. madison: university of wisconsin press. the book of mormon. 1989. the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints: salt lake city. brunvand, jan harold. 1981. the vanishing hitchhiker. new york: w. w. norton and company. burrows, shane. 2002. kolob canyon disaster: zion national park. climb utah. http://climb-utah.com/zion/kolob1.htm. canyoneering usa. 2005. kolob creek canyoneering route. tom’s utah canyoneering guide. http://canyoneeringusa.com/utah/zion/kolob.htm. condon, stephanie. 2011. hurricane irene could bring katrina-style flooding to the coast, fema warns. cbsnews.com, 26 august. dégh, linda. 2001. legend and belief: dialectics of a folklore genre. bloomington: indiana university press. the doctrine and covenants. 1989. the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints: salt lake city. ellis, bill. 1981. the camp mock-ordeal theater as life. journal of american folklore. oct-dec, 486-505. ellsworth, brant. 2011. personal interview. 25 august. gyemant, robert e. 1965. “jack haggerty” and a california legend. western folklore. apr, 105-108. cfr_2011_r.indb 74 10/31/11 8:57:40 am green disastrous alternatives 75 hanscom, greg. 1996. feds set ‘terrible precedent” with kolob canyon settlement. high country news. paonia, co. 5 august. http://www.hcn.org/ issues/87/2695. havnes, mark. 2009. disasters are a part of zion national park’s history. the salt lake tribune. utah, 5 june http://www.sltrib.com/outdoors/ci_12513410. hufford, mary. 1986. one space, many places. american folklife center: washington dc. mechling, jay. 1980. the magic of the boy scout campfire. journal of american folklore. jan-mar, 35-56. oring, elliot. 1986. folk narratives. folk groups and folklore genres: an introduction. ed. elliot oring. logan: utah state university press. ranii, david. 2011. hurricane irene slams north carolina coast, targets northeast. miami herald, 27 august. rife, jared. 2011. personal interview. 26 august. sontag, susan. 1976. the imagination of disaster. science fiction: a collection of critical essays, ed. mark rose, 116-31. englewood cliffs, nj: prentice-hall. turner, victor. 1967. the forest of symbols. ithaca: cornell university press, 1967. your safety. zion national park. 2011. national park service us department of the interior, 7 july http://www.nps.gov/zion/planyourvisit/your-safety.htm. cfr_2011_r.indb 75 10/31/11 8:57:40 am cfr_2011_part13 cfr_2011_part14 "everybody is their enemy": goths, spooky kids, and the american school shooting panic allen berres one of the earliest details to leak out about eric harris and dylan klebold following their horrifying shooting spree at columbine high school was that they were supposedly members of a clique that called itself "the trench coat mafia." this name was readily snapped up by the journalists covering the story, and by the evening following the shootings, numerous news organizations were running pieces about this group in an attempt to shed greater light on the reasons why harris and klebold killed thirteen people and themselves. although the trench coat mafia clique was confined to columbine high school, journalists quickly pointed out many supposed links between this clique and two larger music fan cultures whose members occasionally wear black trench coats that are found in almost every american high school: goths and marilyn manson fans. a wave of anti-goth, anti-marilyn manson sentiment immediately followed this over-hasty association, motivated by the overwhelming fear that any member of these black-clad legions could turn out to be the next school shooter. the label "goth" (an abbreviation of "gothic") was adopted by a culture of music fans that started in the late 70s and early 80s as an offshoot of punk. goths are fans of a variety of generally gloomy bands, including the sisters of mercy, bauhaus, siouxsie and the banshees, and the cure. they are also known for favoring black clothing, ranging from lacy gowns to biker jackets to band t-shirts. one of the bands that is occasionally included in the list of goth musical acts is a band named marilyn manson. marilyn manson is led by a front man of the same name, an ohio native originally named brian warner. manson has received more radio and mtv exposure in the 90s than any other goth-associated act, and as such he has spawned a horde of young devotees who are not yet aware of the wider range of gothic music. manson fans, sometimes called spooky kids after the original name of the band, marilyn manson and the spooky kids, also often wear black. some goths are marilyn manson fans (this researcher included), but many goths despise manson for his popularity, and many young manson fans will stop listening to manson and follow some other musical fad in a year or so without ever expanding their tastes to other goth musicians. in fact, as of the publication of this paper marilyn manson's status as the bad boy of mtv seems to have been usurped by the rapper eminem; manson's third album, released in 2000, produced only two mtv berres broadcast videos; the first video was only in rotation for a few weeks, and the second has been nearly invisible. although the trench coat mafia apparently included some students who were marilyn manson fans, klebold and harris were fringe members of the group at best. according to dave cullen of salon.com, they did not like manson's music or image, and there has been absolutely no credible evidence to the contrary (cullen 4). there is also no evidence that they were members of the goth scene; the closest connection is that the two were fans of industrial music, a genre that has a lot of fan crossover with goths, especially the german bands kmfdm and rammstein. it has been cynically noted by many commentators (including marilyn manson himself) that mr. manson (and, by extension, the goth scene that he is often wrongly equated with) became the center of the post-littleton controversy only because of his previously established controversial reputation (he was a favorite target of former vice-presidential candidate joe lieberman and his conservative cohort william bennett) and the extensive conservative christian protests against his concerts. these later revelations, however, were no help in preventing the anti-goth media panic over the days immediately following the shootings. two news articles which were published on april 21, 1999, initiated the association of the trench coat mafia with goth culture. one, "'trench coat' mafia spun dark fantasy," appeared the washington post and was written by marc fisher it maintained that the shooters who turned columbine high school into an unspeakable landscape of carnage yesterday were members of a small clique of outcasts who always wore black trench coats and spent their entire adolescence deep inside the morose subculture of gothic fantasy. (fisher 1) fisher goes on to explain that black trench coats are a consistent theme in the gothic subculture that has attracted many teenagers to the poetry, music, and costumes of a scene that ranges from benign fantasy to violent reality. inspired by fantasy games such as dungeons and dragons, gothic has become a fascination of many american high schoolers, some of whom simply dress and paint their fingernails black while others immerse themselves in a pseudo-medieval world of dark images. (fisher 1) we can see a number of propositions here that remained prominent throughout the post-columbine goth panic: 1) all goths are teenagers, 2) all goths are prone to confusing fantasy and reality, and 3) their immersion in dark images has a strong potential to lead goths to participation in murder 44 everybody is their enemy sprees. fisher, apparently inspired by reports of the killers' fascination with german fascism, also associates goths with neo-nazis, noting that "yesterday [the 20th] was hitler's birthday, an occasion for demonstrations, mock funerals, and other macabre celebrations among both neo-nazis and parts of the gothic scene" (fisher 1). in my six years of involvement in goth culture, i have never heard anything about hitler's birthday celebrations; where mr. fisher got his information is anybody's guess, as he does not cite a source, the second article, "opinions run gamut on suspects among neighbors, friends," by jim hughes, is from the denver post. hughes states that a classmate of the boys said klebold adopted the "goth" –short for gothic—appearance in the past year, wearing black clothing and growing out his once-short hair. the "goth" scene draws from satanic worship and medieval europe [sic] barbarism. (hughes 17) in hughes' article we see the first post-columbine association of goths (and klebold and harris) with satanism. this accusation had an extremely long life prior to columbine; it is primarily due to the fact that goths wear black clothing, which is also supposedly the favored color of witches and satanists. while there are satanist goths and gothic satanists, the two identities are by no means synonymous. hughes also seems to confuse our modern goths with goths, such as the ostrogoths or visigoths, the tribes of barbarians active at the time of the fall of rome (for a full discussion of the evolution of the modern use of "gothic," ask any scholar familiar with the development of the gothic novel). in any event, hughes' picture of the latest barbarians at our gates associates goths with violence, ignorance, and, in a vein followed by many other commentators, the fall of civilization. a third news article completed the foundation of the anti-goth narrative; it was a segment on the television news show 20/20, broadcast on the evening of the 21st. this segment, rich in marilyn manson concert footage, featured a police officer from the denver police department named steve rickard. the segment introduces rickard as follows: . . . for the last seven years, steve rickard of the denver police department gang unit has been trying to spread the word of how the so-called gothic movement has helped fuel a new kind of teenage gang white suburban gangs built around a fascination with the grotesque and with death. (ross) brian ross, the segment's reporter, claims that "there have been a series 45 berres of violent episodes around the country linked to teenagers who call themselves goths" (ross). rickard portrays goths as a new, even scarier form of gang: with traditional gangs, their enemies are pretty well-defined. with suburban groups, their enemies are not defined. i think everybody is their enemy. . . . anybody who would gel in their way, i think they would potentially kill. (ross) in this scheme, the goth is even scarier than the usual (ethnic) gang member in that they could attack and kill anyone, presumably even white kids who are apparently minding their own business. in an apparent attempt to be fair, ross states that "for most goths, it's just an act, but apparently not for all" (ross), and rickard notes that "all gothic young people are not the same. there's the gothic scene where kids are just dressing the part, listening to the music" (ross). "just an act" and "just dressing the part" imply that the goth identity is essentially a violent one or that the goth is intentionally dressing to intimidate or threaten outsiders. according to this logic, dressing like a goth or listening to gothic music and then not engaging in violent or hateful behavior is thus a shallow act, devoid of its original meaning: a goth is either a murderer or a poseur. on the april 22, the denver post ran an article documenting various threats made against goths in the denver area. the article features a doctoral student at the university of denver, derek sweet, who is quoted as stating that his research on goths indicates they're not violent. they're not racist. they're not into this whole hate mentality. . . . these are not people who are out looking for trouble. they're just looking for a place to hang out and have fun. . . . but now this group is really scared. and they are angry that they're being alienated and attacked once more just for being different. (briggs and greene 11) although most of the article defends goths from the threats being made against them, the article ends, however, on a much more sinister note, quoting yvonne peterson, a san antonio nurse: "i don't think the gothic movement created this situation at the school. but. i do think that the gothic movement can give teachers in the future some tips. these kids are in trouble. . . . they're looking for attention" (briggs and greene 11). in other words, even if goths aren't murderous, they are mentally ill and a threat to themselves. the strongest example of this anti-goth attitude can be found in articles consulting or written by anti-satanist carl raschke immediately fol 46 everybody is their enemy lowing the shooting. with only the sketchy information about klebold and harris that was available following the first few days of media coverage, raschke concludes the klebold and harris were part of the youth satanist movement that he has been writing about since the early nineties. in an editorial piece he wrote, published in the rocky mountain news on april 25, raschke maintains that the columbine attack was "carefully planned and superbly executed terrorist violence" and goes on to explain that these types of disquieting adolescents have been a routine item in suburban high schools and urban dance clubs since the early 1980s. they have gone by diverse and sundry names punkers, stoners, metalheads, skinheads, headbangers and, now, "goths." they are the minions of a flourishing youth anti-culture, which from year to year, concert to concert and album to album finds novel and creative ways of celebrating the emblems of apocalyptic violence and trashing minimal standards of human decency. they think of it as fashion, if not "art." "revolutionary" art. they aim to frighten and to shock. (raschke 1b) in raschke's view, goths and marilyn manson fans set out to "frighten and shock" the moral and decent world, and as such they are terrorists just as much as klebold and harris were terrorists; he bitterly claims that columbine administrators ignored the "obvious" threat posed by the trench coat mafia because had they acted, "they would be branded by various educated apologists for teenage excess as too authoritarian and intolerant of those who opt for 'alternative lifestyles'" (raschke 1b). it is not too difficult to see raschke's plan for preventing future school shootings in this complaint: make the "misfits" conform to mainstream conceptions of normalcy. they are not protected by free speech or any other protections because they are supposedly using their freedoms only to oppress, threaten, and harass normal people. showing sympathy towards goths or excusing them as troubled or mentally ill just perpetuates the problem; raschke declares that we are so mesmerized by the saccharine rhetoric of the "human services" professions, which has convinced us there is always an excuse for someone's outrageous criminal behavior, that we can't imagine a set of circumstances when someone is self-conscious about what they are doing and, as saint paul once put it, without excuse. (raschke 1b) in this scheme, even those whom ross and his informant rickard would regard as harmless poseurs or yvonne peterson would classify as mentally ill and needing therapy are an "anti-culture," deadly threats to social order and civilization itself. 47 berres a plausible explanation for the widespread insistence on goths as a convenient explanation for the school shooting crisis is offered by robert snyder in an essay for anthropology news: the typical narrative for suburban teens might thus go as follows. one should grow up to be a good student, athletic, monetarily care free (in a dual income household), religious and bound [or college. suburban, middle-class teenage "massacre" does not fit the traditional narrative that has been socialized into north american society. the littleton massacre is a prime example of media attention to an event that does not follow a "traditional" social narrative. . . . high tech video games, sci-fi movies and goth subculture are created as the primary social pressures that corrupt middleclass suburban teenagers. (snyder ii) this "corruption through invasion" metaphor is prominent in carl raschke's work, but there are other examples as well. in june 1999, the conservative publication the new american ran an article referring to "manson's anti-hero acolytes harris and klebold," describing marilyn manson as "an androgynous creature who works at being as repulsive as possible (and succeeds wildly!) [parenthetical aside in original]" whose '''music' revels in nihilistic rebellion, rage, alienation, death, and despair" (jasper). the article goes on to comment that "the columbine killers and their fellow teen sociopaths imbibed deeply of the toxic waste that courses through the culture of death now engulfing our whole society"; this "toxic waste" has filled "the god-shaped vacuum" created by "the militant secularists of academe, the decadent culture vultures of hollywood, and the left-wing activists in the courts and legislatures" (jasper). manson, at the head of a phantom army of drooling, psychotic fans, serves here as a powerful symbol of an invading force that is the ultimate cause of everything that is wrong with the united states. another call for action against the goth menace is she said yes, the story of the supposed martyrdom of cassie bernall, one of klebold and harris' victims, as written by her mother, misty bernall. it was widely believed following the shooting that one of the shooters had approached cassie and asked her if she believed in god; she was said to have said yes, and that is when she was killed. the way misty tells it, cassie was a basically good child until she fell in with an ill-behaved, black-wearing, pink-haired friend named mona (a psuedonym) in her early high school years. one of the key signs that misty and her husband, brad, focused on as an indication of trouble was the music that cassie and mona were listening to: i don't know exactly when it was, but at some point brad began examining some of cassie's music and realized that it wasn't "just" entertain 48 everybody is their enemy ment. despite the innocuous covers, the lyrics themselves often carried an unmistakable message. (bernall 45) misty then includes a brief sample of lyrics from one of marilyn manson's songs, claiming that the group was "a favorite of the two boys at columbine who killed [cassie]." the quoted song is "get your gunn," the two n's on "gunn" referring to a murdered abortion doctor, david gunn (manson). misty misquotes the song's lyrics, however, transforming the song's refrain from "get your gunn" (as indicated clearly in the album's liner notes and on any internet listing of the song's lyrics) to "get your gun" (berna1l45). with a slight misrepresentation of its lyrics, the song is transformed from an ironic commentary on a murder committed by pro-life zealots into an apparent endorsement of gun violence. the possibility that cassie and mona posed an immanent danger to brad and misty's lives is confirmed for misty when she discovers a series of letters from mona that cassie was hiding in her room: there was endless talk about the "sexiness" of black clothes and makeup, the "fun" of contraband alcohol, marijuana, and self-mutilation, and the adventures of a classmate whose girlfriend went to "this satanic church, cult thing where you have to drink a kitten's blood to get in." several of the letters advised cassie to do away with us and thus solve her innumerable problems. one ended, "kill your parents! murder is the answer to all of your problems. make those scumbags pay for your suffering. love you, me." (bernall 38-9) misty and brad see these letters as a sure sign that cassie is up to no good, and they report the children to the police. at a meeting with a police detective and the bernalls, mona's parents don't see what the big problem is. misty reports that mona's mother "could not understand why we had the need to bring [the letters] to the attention of the law, or to involve her husband in the matter," but that thankfully the detective and the investigator took the situation as seriously as we did, and supported our desire for a restraining order to bar mona from further contact from cassie. among other things, the sheriff told mona's parents that the letters were the worst he had seen during more than a decade in juvenile crime, and he warned them that if mona had had any sort of prior record, she would have been called before a judge. still they showed no surprise or remorse. (bernall 52-3) the narrative we see developing here is one insisting on parental authority, specifically that misty and brad bernall were right in splitting up mona and cassie's friendship. mona's parents are presented as gullible, over 49 berres indulgent monsters; misty reports that she was traumatized by their behavior, claiming i can still feel their cold, level stares. nor will i forget how mona's mother walked her back to their car after our meeting, rubbing her shoulder and reassuring her, as if to say "oh, honey, it's okay, the bernalls are just mean people." (bernall 52) the proof that the bernalls acted appropriately comes in the actions of other black-clad trouble children. although mona is never referred to again after her exorcism from cassie's life, misty mentions a case in 1997 when a fourteen-year-old from a nearby suburb "said he was going to kill his parents" and then subsequently stabbed his father the next day. misty notes that "after the stabbing, satanic carvings and other goth trappings were discovered in the boy's bedroom" (bernall 61). she maintains that "in a time when supposedly peaceful middle-class suburbs like ours are breeding children capable of such things, you begin to realize that talk is never just talk" (bernal1 61). the ultimate proof that the bernalls acted in cassie's best interests is that cassie was a devout, genuine born-again christian by the time she was killed at columbine high school by the very type of black-wearing, marilyn manson-listening, murderous freaks that she could have ended up being. this is demonstrated when misty sympathizes with the klebolds and harrises after she receives an apology letter from the klebolds: even if cassie were still alive, we would be able to understand their hurt and humiliation. before she changed directions, we agonized over her in the same way the parents of her killer surely agonize over him now. and even if we could never compare the weight of our separate griefs, we have at least one comfort: the knowledge that our daughter died nobly. what balm do they have? (bernall13l) misty bernall's message to parents is that they must intervene when children rebel; even a minor rebellion or demonstration of a warning sign can have life or death consequences. the overt anti-goth panic has largely disappeared now, more than two years after the columbine shootings. a series of pro(or at least not anti-) goth news articles that followed the anti-goth articles discussed here was partially responsible for the shift, and it didn't hurt matters that the media, for the most part, decided that the gun control issue was going to be their primary target issue. with this is mind, however, the image of the immanent threat posed by the gothic rebel child still retains its power in the discussion of school safety. a particularly vivid example appeared in april 50 everybody is their enemy 2001 in an ap article by dan elliott, "columbine killers icons to some." although most of the article discusses klebold and harris's appeal to generic "angry, disaffected youth," james gerbarino, author of lost boys: why our sons turn violent and how we can save them is quoted as saying, thirty-five years ago, if a kid walked into your school with body piercing and black makeup, almost certainly somebody would say, "we've got to find out what's troubling this kid. . . . adolescent culture has taken on this foray into the dark side. for troubled kids, this feeds their trouble. (elliott) here we see the use of the goth as a potent visual metaphor; even though neither klebold or harris, or any other school shooter to date, fit the description above, the personal style of the goth is still specifically invoked as a symbol of sociological and psychological dysfunction and, simultaneously, as a sort of supernatural evil, as using the phrase "the dark side" inevitably conjures up both darth vader of the star wars trilogy and legends of satanic worship. with the latest bout of school shootings following the shooting at santee high school in california, however, most of the media's focus has shifted to a call for greater surveillance to spot potential troublemakers. a series of researchers have tried to create a typical profile of the school shooter, much in the same way that profiling is used to pursue serial killers. these profilers, especially profilers working for the secret service and fbi, appear to be very careful about dismantling certain stereotypes about serial killers, among them the anti-goth concerns discussed here. for example, a paper written jointly by members of the secret service and the department of education for a 2001 issue of psychology in the schools states: decision makers who rely on characteristics that appear to be more typical or representative of the category, to determine whether an object belongs in that category, may inadvertently render faulty decisions. . . . for example, a school administrator who believes she should be concerned about a particular student because the student wears a black trench coat similar to the ones worn by the shooters at columbine high school would be relying inappropriately on such information to determine risk. (reddy et. al. 163) while this article points out that while a student's making threats should be taken seriously, it also maintains that a student making a threat is not always going to become a school shooter (reddy, et. al. 168). since 51 berres the santee shooting, however, threats issued by students are popularly believed to be an accurate indicator of potential trouble. an ap article written by greg toppo, for example, ends with the following passage: john kotnour, a police officer with the overland park, kan., police department, works in shawnee mission south high school. he said his job often makes him feel like "a small-town sheriff." the most effective deterrent to school violence, he said, is a staff that makes students feel comfortable sharing their fears. "most of the people here at south don't want the liability of letting a rumor go unchecked," he said. among the most important conversations he has with students and teachers, he said, are those that begin with these five words: "this may be nothing, but. . ." [ellipses in original]. (toppo) among school administrators and local law enforcement, the fear of being held legally responsible for a school shooting because a threat was not taken seriously is very strong, and also very understandable, given the lawsuits filed after the columbine shooting against columbine high school and the jefferson county sheriff. in such an environment of fear, the caution advised by the federal authorities is likely to be abandoned in the same way that local authorities ignored national, official skepticism regarding satanic crime in the 1980s and 1990s (as documented in jeffrey victor's satanic panic, among other sources). as such, i am reluctant to declare the goth panic dead; as demonstrated by the previous examples, the anti-goth panic immediately following the littleton shooting is probably best understood as part of a larger move to cement parental control over adolescents and over society in general. it is likely that as long as there are goths, anti-goth sentiment will continue. ohio state university works cited bemall, misty. she said yes: the unlikely martyrdom of cassie bernall. farmington, pa: plough publishing house, 1999. briggs, bill, and susan greene. "suspects embraced world of darkness: com fortable suburbs harbor troubled teens." the denver post. april 22, 1999, a-11. cullen, dave. "inside the columbine high investigation." <http://www.salon.com/ news/feature/1999/09/23/columbine/index.html> (march 16,2000). elliott, dan. "columbine killers icons to some." associated press. april 16, 2001. fisher, marc. "trench coat mafia spun dark fantasy." the washington post. april 21, 1999: a-1. 52 everybody is their enemy hughes, jim. "opinions run gamut on suspects among neighbors, friends." the denver post. april 21, 1999: a-17. jasper, william f. "lessons from columbine high." the new american. <http:/ /www.thenewamerican.com/tna/1999/06-07-99/vol5no12_lessons.htm> (december 8,1999). manson, marilyn. "columbine: whose fault is it?" rolling stone. <http:// rollingstone.tunes.com/sections/new> (august 31, 1999). raschke, carl. "the ultimate outrage as our shock tolerance rises, disaffected youth raise the stakes." the rocky mountain news. april 25, 1999: lb. reddy, marisa, et. al. "evaluating risk for targeted violence in schools: compar ing risk assessment, threat assessment, and other approaches." psycho-l ogy in the schools 38.2 (2001): 157-172. ross, brian. "the goth phenomenon" from 20/20, wednesday, april 21, 1999. <http://www.abcnews.go.com/onair/2020/transcripts/2020_ 990421_shootings_goth_trans.html> (april 24, 1999). snyder, robert. "consider the littleton narrative" anthropology news 41:2, february 2000: 11-12. toppo, greg. "schools tighten security, open ears." associated press. march 13,2001. 53 pages from cfr_2002_part13 cfr_2002_part14 cfr_2002_part15 cfr_2002_part16 pages from cfr_2002_part17 book reviews 90 study, but to many. indeed, she makes a lofty attempt to tackle several key issues surrounding this topic, and the reader may find her/himself wishing the chapters were longer and referenced more texts. however, even if the argument is restricted by page numbers, the book should incite discussion across academic disciplines, bringing together folklorists and child-rights activists, cultural studies and children’s literature scholars. for this reason, the book is invaluable to anyone interested in childhood studies, no matter what their academic or professional angle. overall, the book serves as an extensive study of childhood agency through food lore. while folklorists and cultural studies scholars may recognize references to jay mechling and clifford geertz, and to roland barthes and antonio gramsci, respectively, the book is also pertinent to child-rights activists. honeyman, an associate professor of english and a cultural studies scholar, does not claim to be a strict folklorist, but she does argue for the importance of folklore to a variety of disciplines, including popular culture and cultural studies more generally. folklorists hoping for an ethnographic approach to childhood studies should consult another resource; those more inclined toward textual analysis will enjoy honeyman’s decadent assortment of fairy tales, lore, and literature references. because of its interdisciplinary nature, academics and professionals in the fields of folklore, childhood studies, children’s literature, fairy tale studies, and cultural studies should find significant the arguments made in this book, relevant to their specific discipline. consuming agency is particularly useful to the student seeking to make connections across these fields. children’s folklore: a handbook. by elizabeth tucker. (westport, ct: 2008. pp. 1-164, preface, introduction, glossary, bibliography, web resources, index.) michele d. castleman elizabeth tucker’s children’s folklore: a handbook (2009) is an introductory guide to the “traditional knowledge shared by a group of two or more children, usually without the involvement of adults” (p. 1). the handbook is a comprehensive survey that considers both historical approaches and recent developments in the study of children’s folklore. according to tucker, its purpose is to “provide an overview of children’s folklore since the late 1800s” within the major genres (p.vii). she defines and provides examples of riddles, jokes, rhymes, taunts, songs, cheers, games, pranks, narratives, rituals and material culture. the vast majority of the folktales incorporated in the survey are from english-speaking countries, although occasional indo-european lore and personal narratives are included as well. tucker generally provides the context for each sample — the time and place it was recorded, the age of the children involved, and the source where it appears — and a few brief analytical statements. tucker notes that her handbook emphasizes “nature lore and imaginative, dangerous, and sexually oriented games” more than previous surveys have (p. 2). she regularly interprets the case studies for their sexual content or for their implications about gender, race and power relations, as well as for other matters of cultural significance. book reviews 91 tucker’s discussions of dirty jokes, boy/girl games, and her attention to routines of victimization and to online forums for the transmission of children’s folklore make this a noteworthy handbook. she also includes helpful references that could initiate more extensive research on the part of the reader. some of the most common citations are to the works of brian sutton-smith, iona and peter opie, william wells newell and some other recognizable names in the field. in addition, the use of internet-derived children’s folklore material as well as the inclusion of a list of web resources in the appendix emphasizes emerging trends and avenues of research. the handbook suggests further sources for investigation, including youtube.com videos, movies and children’s books. in chapter two: definitions and classifications, tucker’s exploration of the terms and categories of children’s folklore are usually accompanied by a brief listing of examples of each tale-type or game. these descriptions could be overwhelming if the reader is not already familiar with the subject. for example, tucker mentions william wells newell’s study of “call-ball” and describes it as resembling “the contemporary game of spud” (p. 34), which may not be familiar to all readers. in addition, some of the broader definitions to key terms like “childhood” and “folklore” could be explored in greater depth. one of the potential difficulties with the handbook is the separation between the definitions and classifications (chapter two) and the examples and texts (chapter three) sections. the division between the definitions and the detailed case studies is inconvenient when examining ethnic jokes as well as other topics and genres included in both chapters, since the reader must flip back and forth between them to understand the items in their full analytic and ethnographic context. readers could be better served if the definition and examples were paired together in a single chapter, as it would aid them in distinguishing among the categories of children’s folklore. in the scholarship and approaches section (chapter four), tucker describes past children’s folklore research and lists potential lenses for future research, including the perspectives of performance, psychoanalysis, gender studies, spatial analysis, the supernatural, violence studies and cross-cultural research. she highlights sutton-smith’s seven rhetorics of fate, power, communal identity, etc. as “possible directions for a new science of play for our current era” (p. 104). despite this, the handbook lacks information on ethnographic methods in children’s folklore research. in its place, the contexts section (chapter five) lists autobiographies, children’s literature, film, television, toys, games and dolls as recommended media for exploring children’s folklore without presenting the reader with rigorous methodologies for data collection among children and youth. as such, this presentation of sources would be beneficial to new folklore students who are not ready to go out in the field or who have limited time to analyze children’s folklore texts. children’s folklore: a handbook provides a strong introduction to types of, and studies about, children’s folklore. tucker’s attention to sexuality, violence and to the technological dispersion of children’s folklore makes this a timely text to assign or recommend to novice or undergraduate students interested in the subject. pages from cfr_2010 pages from cfr_2010_part29 the ugly duckling, hans christian anderson: a story of transformation anita l. gambos introduction the ugly duckling is a small story that offers universal hope to the disenfranchised. here, a misfit, rejected by family and society, makes the microcosmic journey of all who seek self-actualization. in fairy tales and the art of subversion, jack zipes notes in his chapter, "hans christian andersen and the discourse of the dominated": (the ugly ducking) has generally been interpreted as a parable of andersen's own success story because the naturally gifted underdog survives a period of "ugliness" to reveal its innate beauty. (87) therefore, to understand the significance of the transformation, from ugly to beautiful, it is important to view the passage against the backdrop of andersen's life. andersen's life influences hans christian andersen was clearly a product of the nineteenth century, a period of broad-sweeping changes in both world and national views, when tenets of biology, eugenics and race became subjects of public discourse. andersen was born to poverty in 1805 in the old provincial danish town of odense. the son of a cobbler who loved books and taught himself and his son to read, andersen grew up hearing his father say that he (the father) was of aristocratic origin. andersen's mother worked as a washerwoman; she was uneducated and superstitious, but introduced andersen to folklore. he was also greatly influenced by his grandmother, a grounds person at odense hospital, a local workhouse. andersen spent a great deal of time there listening to elderly, female inmates who repeated old stories and the traditional folk tales of denmark. these made a deep and lasting impression. andersen was a poor student and received little education. he spent much of his time alone writing short plays and dreaming of becoming an actor. encouraged by his parents, he composed his own fairy tales and arranged puppet shows. andersen was fortunate to live in one of the few towns outside of copenhagen that housed a public theater. he often accompanied his father to the town's playhouse. the ugly duckling when he was 11, andersen's life was seriously disrupted when his father died, and the family became even more destitute. he was forced to go to work. for a short time, he apprenticed to a weaver and a tailor, and also worked at a tobacco factory. at the age of 14, he fled to copenhagen to find his way in the theater. during his first years in copenhagen, andersen fought to gain a toehold in the theater as a ballet dancer, actor and singer. eventually, he succeeded in becoming associated with the royal theater, but had to leave it when his voice began to change. one of the directors of the royal theater, an influential government official, jonas collins, provided andersen the means to be educated and eventually gain admission to copenhagen university. these educational experiences broadened andersen's perspective and put him in touch with the dramatic social changes of his day. zipes notes: throughout the western world, a more solidified bourgeois public sphere was establishing itself and replacing feudal systems, as was clearly the case in denmark. (76) it might be said that andersen in his subsequent life became living proof of the social mobility made possible by the bourgeois democracy that arose after the signing of denmark's constitution in 1849. after his school years, copenhagen at last came to mean something positive for andersen, and he began his writing in earnest. the university of southern denmark's center on hans christian andersen notes on its website: here the proletarian andersen acquired the culture and education associated with bourgeois circles in the golden age that encompassed the last years of absolute monarchy. . . . andersen' s entire production of tales is, as it were, suspended between these two poles. . . having broken with his family and social class, but not yet a member of the moneyed class, andersen understood that he could realize his potential and gain greater social standing only through the world of art, the only outlet the times provided. the center's web site also remarks: here, too, he came to know both the bourgeois upper class of the capital and the very lowest stratum of its proletariat. he came to know the fight for survival at the subsistence level and the bitterness of being a supplicant dependent on the good will of others. 64 anita gambos it is zipes' s opinion that this duality produced deep self-doubts in andersen that impelled him to constantly reprove his value. . . . to show his aptitude and disposition were noble and that he belonged to the elect. this is apparent in the referential system built into most of his tales which are discourses on the dominated. (79) his friends were patrons rather than intimates, and his constant sense of indebtedness to them weighed heavily and perpetuated his isolation. throughout his life, from his own perspective and despite his fame as a writer, andersen was the dominated subject within the dominant social circles. andersen never felt himself to be fully accepted by any group. he lived as an outsider, a loner, unable to enjoy the deep attachments and obvious social identification that a wife and family would have bestowed. perhaps it is for this reason that he began to travel extensively. he considered germany to be his second home but was also comfortable in italy. his journeying paved the way for international literary fame as his first work published in 1829 described his trek from holmens canal to the east point of amager, a fantastic tale set in the style of german romantic writers. the work was well received. andersen was considered to be the most widely traveled danish writer of his day. he spent over nine years of his life outside denmark. andersen's literary fame grew rapidly from the mid-1830s when his novels became widely accepted in germany. however, from 1839 onwards, it was his fairy tales that earned him acclaim until his death in 1875. imbedded in the straightforward narrative easily understood by children are subtler and deeper meanings to which adults respond. it is to these symbols and meanings that attention is next turned. understanding tale symbolism and meaning the oxford english dictionary defines symbol as something that stands for, represents or denotes something else; a material object representing or taken to represent something immaterial or abstract, as a being, idea, quality or condition. meaning is defined as that which is intended to be or actually is expressed or indicated; the intent, the spirit. archeologists, seeking to discover historic and cultural meaning from artifacts, offer an evolution of symbolic capacity. the auckland center for the arts notes that our physical and mental capacity for symbolic thought and its representation in language is the result of evolution. the ability to reason, plan and communicate in symbols sets us 65 the ugly duckling apart from other animals. this generates our culture capacity. therefore, the ability to derive symbolic meaning from tales helps preserve and expand the cultural underpinnings that link us all. this is one of storytelling's most important functions. on an individual level, different cognitive maps guide personal actions. people sense/sample the world and then interpret! give meaning to, according to these cognitive maps. just as language has an internal organization called grammar, cognitive maps are given organization and structure through sets of related symbols and meaning. folk tales, fairy tales, myths, lore, are the organizing principles of cognitive maps. therefore, through either the collective or the individual pathways, the symbolism of tales helps to organize the internal operating systems both for culture in general and for its singular components. thus, the auckland center proposes that "approaches that look at symbols and meaning may generate coherence and sense." in interpretation of fairy tales, marie louise von franz speaks to four basic cognitive maps for those interpreting fairy tales. actually you can interpret a fairy tale with any of the four functions of consciousness. the thinking type will point out the structure and the way in which all the motifs connect. the feeling type will put them into value order (a hierarchy of values) which is also completely rational. with the feeling function, a good and complete fairy tale interpretation can be made. the sensation type will just look at the symbols and amplify them. the intuitive will see the whole package (of fairy tale) in its oneness, so to speak; he will be most gifted in showing that the whole fairy tale is not a discursive story but is really one message split up into many facets. (24) the cognitive map of this report will follow an intuitive interpretation of the major symbols and meaning of the ugly duckling. symbolic analysis of the ugly duckling from the very first paragraph, story symbols that evoke multiple meanings are plentiful. the opening paragraph that describes the long golden days of summer, sweet air, tall com and freshly-cut hay leads the reader to a pastoral/earth setting, a time of fullness and ripening, a time of maturation after quickening. but, beyond the open sunlight, there are the shaded deeps (cool lakes of the unconscious where new life can be born.) near the lake shore, storks (symbols of fertility and birth) wade. birds (symbols of freedom that fly with new hopes and dreams of the future) chatter overhead. even the manmade objects like the old mansion surrounded by a 66 anita gambos moat are contained and defined by the watery unconscious. along the stone walls of the mansion, "huge burdock plants with leaves as big as platters grow thick and tall. beneath their leaves it was like a secret room." (it is interesting to note that burdock leaves are usually heartshaped near the bottom of the plant and egg-shaped at the top.) in this womb-like place, recreating the ancient mysteries, the mother duck waits for her eggs to hatch, each egg enfolding its own primeval, cosmic universe. after the ducklings begin to hatch, "the mother let them look as much as they liked, for green is good for the eyes." (through the connection with the green, fertile earth, all living things are made whole, and life is supported.) the mother duck must still sit on the nest to hatch the last and largest egg. an older duck (crone/elder/shaman) cautions the mother duck that the egg could be a turkey egg (note the quality of trickster), clearly inferior in the animal hierarchy. the mother duck was encouraged to make sure that the product of this larger egg could swim (navigate the world emotionally.) when the ugly duckling hatched, he (advisedly a "he" in this case) was gray, not a golden yellow like the other ducklings. this gray duckling was suspect, "in the gray zone," not fully accepted, but not yet rejected, while the yellow ducklings, the color of sun and summer and life, were perceived as the "real ducklings." after a swim in the moat (a journey of initiation), the mother duck cautions the ducklings to beware of the "mean old cat" living the barnyard. the cat can represent the feminine aspect of the personality, the unexplored unconscious. it is interesting to note that after the ducklings had proven themselves by performing in the moat (masculine activity), they were now being cautioned to pay attention to the feminine principle, the aspect of being. they could even find it to be dangerous. the exhortation to pay attention to appearances is primary. the mother duck equates her worth to the perceived value that others place on her "well bred" ducklings and, commensurately, on her success as a mother. she instructs them to keep their toes turned out properly (be outward turning and explore.) particularly evocative is her social instruction to bow to the respected older female duck who is of chinese heritage (ancient wis dom). she is also addressed as "your grace," a designation of nobility. she notes that the older duck has a bit of red cloth on her leg so that everyone would "take notice of her and treat her with respect." red is the color of blood, of kinship and, in some cultures, of initiation. (the ducklings were to be presented to their new tribe.) more directly, in the chinese culture, red is the color of good fortune and abundance. (by honoring the duck of greater social standing, honor and riches might also be conferred on the mother duck and her ducklings.) 67 the ugly duckling it was the old duck who commented on what a nice family the mother duckling had, but notably excluded the ugly duckling from this evaluation. she even went so far as to say "too bad you can't start over again with him." (abundance will not come to the ugly ducking in his current form.) on that first day, the barnyard animals' abuse of the ugly ducking began. (the barnyard can be equated to the town square, the gathering place of the lower classes where justice was dispensed.) though the cat never made an appearance, the chickens and ducklings shouted that "the cat should grab you," an indication that they wanted some super natural force to intervene in the destruction/transformation of the ugly duckling. early one morning (at the beginning of his quest), the ugly duckling ran away. almost immediately, he encountered animals in the wild and assumed they ran/flew away because he was so ugly. the cognitive map he carried had to be tested in the wild (the subconscious) to gain the truth of his own inner map. thus, he began a hero's journey, with the hero's task of encountering and overcoming his demons. he first met wild birds who flew away. (his hopes, his dreams had changed.) next, he met wild ducks who thought him strange and, curiously, said that he could remain in the marsh as long as he didn't marry into their family. (this is the psychological distancing device used to guard and protect the status quo and keep the tribe intact.) one morning, he met a pair of young, wild geese who invited him to join them on their side of the marsh. they acknowledged his ugliness (differences), but were willing to include him in their community. (through younger, less stultified beings, the order of the status quo begins to weaken, and messages from the unconscious arise. hints are given to what is possible.) unfortunately, just as the clues are evidenced, a hunter shoots the wild geese as they fly from the rushes. (so, too, are many new ideas gunned down aggressively when they land in the sights of the guns of established thinking and tried-and-true systems like the proverbial "old boys network. ") it was when a huge dog, "its eyes gleaming horribly," came upon the ugly duckling, pushing his dog's nose right into the duckling's face, then departing, that the ugly duckling decided to leave the swamp. (in ancient babylon, the goddess of fate is represented by a dog, and often, gods accompanying traveling goddesses took the forms of dogs. the dog is a sign of protection and power.) it is interesting that it was the appearance of a dog that precipitated the ugly duckling's hurrying out of relatively known safety to the truly unknown. having left the marsh (the world in-between the solid land and the watery depths), the ugly duckling came to a "sad-looking little farmhouse" which housed an old woman, a cat and a hen. not seeing well, the old woman thought that the duckling was a hen and put him on a 68 anita gambos nest in hope of his laying eggs. (many will not see who we really are.) after a period of time, "the duckling sat in the comer feeling very, very sad. (his feelings began to match the sad environment.) thoughts of fresh air and sunshine came to his mind, and he was filled with an extraordinary longing to swim" (to return to his true nature). when he expressed his desire to the hen and cat, they were scornful. they encouraged him to be grateful for "a warm room and pleasant company." but the ugly duckling left the sure comforts of the poor farmhouse (where he would have been safe but unrealized), and set out on his own path. (the hero could not be seduced from his quest.) he came to a beautiful pond (an enclosed pool of emotional content, where he could explore his identity). he tried swimming near the other ducks, but they turned away. (the journey to self-realization is a solitary one.) winter (the period of frozen time and inward space, the dark night of the soul) was coming. a raven (the prophetic bird of death) squawked. (our hero was about to go through the transformative death to self.) one evening, he saw a flock of swans fly overhead, and though he did not know their identity, he called out to them and felt strangely excited. (his intuition and his instincts were waking up, and he was beginning to know himself differently.) his voice was so loud and so shrill it frightened him. (he was afraid of embracing this new voice/identity that was emerging.) then he dived down to the bottom of the pond (the unconscious) and "when he came up again, he was even more excited than before." (he was willing to engage deeply for only a moment, but a moment was enough to fire his imagination and keep him alive during the upcoming wintry trial. it gave him a hint to his most secret, and his truest identity.) winter came. "the duckling had to swim round and round in the water to keep it from freezing right up. but every night the pool in which he swam grew smaller and smaller." (self-actualization is not gained through a mental process. though our minds go "round and round," transformation happens only when the circuitous thoughts get smaller and smaller, as we tire of the mind's game and let it stop.) "at last he froze fast into the pond. " (we surrender to our fate, the outward, seemingly constricting construct arising from our deepest unconscious.) it was a peasant (someone of the land) who found the duckling, "broke up the ice with his wooden clog" (a strong, sturdy shoe indicating that the duckling was headed in a new direction) and carried the little ducking home to his wife (the feminine principle accessed fully only when we allow ourselves to be carried along.) the peasant's children who wanted to play with him made the ugly duckling "afraid they might hurt him and he fluttered away." (though not necessarily malignant, we tend to be afraid of the primal, previously-unknown forces that present themselves and flee from them emo 69 the ugly duckling tionally lest we be harmed.) the duckling flew into the milk (the substance of creation,) butter (a source of richness and abundance,) and flour (a distillation of earth energy.) finally, he darted out of the open door (means of escape from our darkest parts) and "lay exhausted in the new-fallen snow." (having courage to face his inner genius which is just as frightening as facing the demons, the duckling comes to the neutral place of inner stasis where transformation happens.) he drags himself to the reeds at the edge of the frozen pond (suspended between two worlds where his mind no longer works) and survives the winter. when spring came (the time of rebirth, renewal and igniting of the light), the ducking "woke to find the sky bright and the larks (harbingers of new life) singing." he found that his wings were stronger and carried him swiftly away. (he objectified this new found strength not yet realizing that it was a part of him.) the duckling found himself in a large garden (a place of spiritual growth and healing; renewal of energy and focus) where "apple trees blossomed (death and rebirth, the fruit of the tree of life) and sweetsmelling lilacs (rich, perfumed, sensory conveyors of new life and tantalizing possibilities) dangle their long branches over the waters of a lake." (larger that his former pond, the ugly duckling now claims a larger space for himself.) "right ahead of him, out of the leafy shadows, came three beautiful white swans." (emerging from the unconscious into the light of day, the duckling sees his desire embodied.) he felt a strange sadness (mourning and letting go of the hero's journey space) and determined to be with them "even though they will peck me to death because i am so ugly." though he feared personal harm and rejection (as he was living in his old paradigm), he preferred death to winter's isolation or a return to is former life. (once there is transformation, there is no turning back.) when the duckling bowed his head to the water, he saw his reflection (the outward manifestation of the inner transformation that had taken place during the solitary winter). for the first time, he was then able to see himself for who he truly had become. "it did not matter that he was born in a duck's nest. he was hatched from a swan's egg!" this time, he did not go round and round in his head in fruitless mental exercise. instead, "the three lovely swans circled round and round and stroked him gently with their beaks." (he made the transition from his head to his heart. for this he was rewarded.) some little children (reflection of his newly-found ego; he was not afraid of them as he was the peasant's children) came into the garden (the protected space) and threw bits of bread (the foundational nourishment of life). note that three ingredients that previously he had fled from in fear—milk, butter and flour—now, in the fire of his transfor 70 anita gambos mation, had become bread, something that could sustain him). the outer response (to his inward self acceptance) came from the smallest child. "look! a new swan! the new one is the prettiest one of all." the old swans (those who had made a similar journey) bowed their heads in agreement. (instead of his bowing his head to the old barnyard duck, these elegant creatures were now bowing to him.) "this made the duckling feel quite shy, and he tucked his head under his wing. (initially, we are not always comfortable with the changes that transformation brings and sometimes "hide out. ") "his heart filled with joy, and he ruffled his feathers and raised his slender neck, for he had never dreamed of so much happiness when he was an ugly duckling." (having once been bitten in the neck by the chickens, and receiving the necessary wound that initiated the quest, the duckling now stretches his elegant neck and claims his new swan self identity. the hero's journey is ended. ) autobiographical parallels to andersen's life andersen fled from his home to escape poverty and social status. though born in the slums, andersen always believed himself to be misplaced, an unacknowledged aristocrat, a beautiful swan. he suffered at the hands of the "barnyard animals," those lesser childhood beings who wounded him by their taunts about his appearance and his mannerisms. though the trappings changed, and he was later adopted by the wealthy collin family, andersen was always out to prove to others (and to remind himself) that he really had the right, despite his poor birth circumstances, to "live in the large garden" of his life. he always wanted "the little people" to exclaim at his talent and honor him for his aristocratic spirit. there is little mention made of andersen's mother in his many biographical sketches, though his father and grandmother play prominently. in the tale, the mother duckling is resigned to his oddness and gives the duckling a brief chance to fit into the family. but, she quickly aligns with public opinion when family and neighbors turn against the ugly duckling. though not explicitly stated, one wonders how much of this treatment is autobiographical as well. andersen's family and friends could not have been happy to have been so deliberately left behind. the tale even describes the ugly duckling's family as "cruel." the poultry yard scene is interesting. clearly, the mother duck sees herself and her family as more distinguished than the chickens, roosters and geese, but not as distinguished as the elder china duck. andersen shows his bias here for hierarchy the titled, the pedigreed, qualities that he obviously lacks. zipes notes: 7i the ugly duckling a dominated voice of his narration does not condemn his former social class, rather andersen loses contact with it by denying the rebellious urges of his class within himself and making compromises that affirmed the rightful domination of the middle class ethic. . . . (andersen) rarely suggested alternatives or rebellion (in his tales.) rather, he placed safety before idealism and chose moral compromise over moral outrage, individual comfort and achievement over collective struggle and united goals. he aimed for identification with the power establishment that humiliates subjects rather than opposition to autocracy to put an end to exploitation through power. (83 & 84) andersen was not particularly interested in changing the system, but in changing himself to fit into the system. this is further evidenced in the instructions that the mother duck gives before the first barnyard foray when she tells her ducklings that the world is a place of squabbling and snapping. she implies that it is necessary to accept the world the way it is. the goal is not to try to change the world, but to hurry past any frays that are encountered and survive by looking good. going out into the world and meeting with other creatures who rejected the ugly duckling, who tried to use him, or who offered him help have probable parallels to andersen's international travels. in seeking out the literati of his time, andersen seemed to be seeking out "those of his own kind." he did not return to his birth home, but, instead, searched for outward validation of self-worth. like the ugly duckling, andersen was slow to see himself as a member of the company of swans. the ending of the ugly duckling is like anderson's cry for the world's accreditation. he wants endless confirmation that despite his poor beginnings, he had become a true swanand not just a beautiful swan, but the best of them all. the story of the ugly duckling viewed from the perspective of andersen's life is a tale of one who achieved his dream, but who then spent a lifetime trying to believe it. transformation themes in the ugly duckling the number three is frequently repeated in the story. the duckling left the protection of the marsh on the third day. three dwelled in the small farmhouse (old woman, cat and hen). the duckling flew in a panic into three household ingredients (milk, butter and flour). some character identification can be made with the maiden/mother/crone, the triple goddess archetype, as the reader watches the duckling from hatching to maturity. after the winter, the ugly duckling was surrounded by three swans. his transformation occurred in the third season. three is the number of completion, of perfection, the number of 72 anita gambos integrated divinity. three also mirrors the death-resurrection cycle found in many religions and traditions. it is also embodied in the three alchemical phases of transformation where the crude prima material is transformed into gold. von franz describes the three-fold alchemical process as progressing through the negredo, the latin word for the blackness of the material when subjected to fire; the albedo, the white substance which becomes silver when washed, and the rubedo (the red) which through further heating turns into gold. the albedo signifies the individual's first clear awareness of the unconscious... it means the cool, detached attitude, a stage where things look remote and vague, as though seen in the moonlight. in the albedo, therefore, it is said that the feminine and the moon are ruling. it also means a receptive attitude towards the unconscious. "washing off is the ordeal of coming to terms with the shadow; whereas the former stage, the negredo marks the first terrible facing of the shadow which is torture, and should be followed by working on and differentiating one's inferior side. the alchemists call this "the hard work." with the progress of the albedo, the main stream is relieved. then simple heating changes the albedo into the rubedo, which is ruled by the sun and heralds a new state of consciousness. (117) in the ugly duckling, the negredo is the period during the darkness of the marsh and the subsequent "walkabout" of experience. the albedo is the time of frozen white winter, and the rubedo is the rush of blood, the emergence of sun in the return of spring, the season of transformation. finally, in a psychiatric study of myths and fairy tales, julius heuscher notes: it is admittedly an oversimplification to reduce the basic challenge to our evolution to three stages: one, progressive feeling of loss of unity with our (spiritual) origins; two, gaining awareness of our identity in the course of contact with the material world; and three, eventual synthesis on a higher plane. (95) these three stages are congruent with the alchemical motif already described. 73 the ugly duckling role of the mother/stepmother figure in the ugly duckling jacqueline schectman, in the stepmother in fairy tales, makes interesting observations pertinent to the role of the tale duckling. the stepmother. . . is emblematic of whole family systems gone awry in the face of inevitable growth and change. to know the stepmother. . . is to understand her in the context of relationship and the stages of her family life. (100) the mother duck is rust introduced when she is nesting, waiting for her eggs to hatch. "she had been sitting a long time, or so it seemed to her, and she missed the company of all the other ducks." after the other eggs hatched, she realized that the biggest one of all still remained unhatched. she complains that she is "so tired of waiting," but settles to do just that. the mother duckling seems content in her nesting until an elder duck raises doubts about the real nature of the large egg. the mother duck's response is, "but i've already waited so long. i may as well wait a little longer," reflecting the mother duck's concern about her time investment, but not necessarily about her duckling. when the first ducklings hatch, she quacks at them for maternal identification, and they respond with the predictable peeps. however, when the ugly duckling finally hatches, she "just looked at him" wondering about his true identity. her first thought is, "into the water he'll go, even if have to push him in myself." from the very beginning, the mother duckling was worried about how the ugly duckling would reflect on her. during the first swim, when she saw how well the ugly duckling "uses his legs and how straight he holds himself," she concluded that "he is my own child after all, and really not so ugly when you look at him properly." though not indicative of unconditional love, the mother duck evidences at least some maternal acceptance. before the ducklings enter the barnyard, the mother duck explains how to look good and behave correctly so that they are considered to be a fine, well-bred family, and she, then, is deemed to be a good mother. soon after they enter, the ugly duckling is attacked by the chickens. the mother duck cries, "leave him alone! he's doing no harm." she even defends him to the old china duck, "he is good tempered and he swims as well as the others. and i am sure he will turn out all right." andersen states ominously, "but that was only the first day." afterwards, the ugly duckling's troubles grew until even his own brothers and sisters chased him and made fun of him. at this point, "the mother duck looked at him sadly and wished he were far away." that is the last the reader hears of the mother duck as she is not mentioned after the ugly duckling runs away. one can only hope in 74 anita gambos schectman's words that . . . in becoming who they truly are, her (stepmother's) children bring a necessary healing to the home. (101) in the drama of the gifted child: the search for the true self, alice miller explores in detail the mother-child dynamic. in treating children, she states: if we start from the premise that a person's whole development (and his balance, which is based on it) is dependent on the way his mother experienced his expression of needs and sensations during his first days and weeks of life, then we must assume that it is here that the beginning of a later tragedy might be set. if a mother cannot take pleasure in her child as he is but must have him behave in a particular way, then the first value selection takes place for the child. now "good" is differentiated from "bad," "nice" from nasty," and "right" from "wrong." against this background will follow all his further valuations of himself. (italics are alice miller's) (85) given that the ugly duckling is a semi-autobiographical tale and so few facts are available about his mother, the conclusions are obvious. that is why the ugly duckling's flight from the barnyard and subsequent solitary winter were so critical. as miller states, his plight is no doubt the result of social pressures, but these do not have their effect on his psyche through abstract knowledge; they are firmly anchored in his earliest affective experience with his mother. thus his problems cannot be solved with words, but only through experience-not merely corrective experiences as an adult but, above all, through a conscious experience of his early fear of his beloved mother's contempt and his subsequent feelings of indignation and sadness. (104) mothers who derive their own value and self-worth by vicariously living their children's lives can create real tragedies. these women, having never received nurturance from their own mothers, create another generation of emotionally-truncated individuals, another tragic reenactment of lack and isolation. until the gifted child, the true swan, takes the first step out of the barnyard and into the marsh to begin the hero's journey of transformation, nothing changes for the individual or for the mother. miller notes, 75 the ugly duckling in order to become whole we must try, in a long process, to discover our own personal truth, a truth that may cause pain before giving us a new sphere of freedom. we choose instead to content ourselves with intellectual "wisdom," we will remain in the sphere of illusion and self-deception. (i) conclusion the ugly duckling is a tale for all persons, a tale for those who wish to dive deeply into the realm of the unconscious. it is a story of transformation, of liberation, of rebirth. written by a man caught between two worlds, two times, it reveals valuable insights for this time, this history. life is the hero's journey. it's time to stop blaming our mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, life in general. transformation is a choice. works cited heuscher, julius. a psychiatric study of myths and fairy tales. springfield, il: charles c. thomas, 1974. miller, alice. the drama of the gifted child: the search for the true self new york, ny: perseus, 1997 revised edition. oxford english dictionary. oxford, england: oxford up, 2002. schectman, jacqueline. the stepmother in fairy tales. boston, ma: sigo, 1993. von franz, marie louise. interpretation of fairy tales. dallas, tx: spring publications, 1970. zipes, jack. fairy tales and the art of subversion. london, england: methuen., 1988. university of southern denmark, website of the center of hans christian an dersen, "short biography." http://www.andersen.sdu.dk/liv/minibio/ in dex_e.html 76 pages from cfr_2003-2004_part20 cfr_2003-2004_part21 cfr_2003-2004_part22 cfr_2003-2004_part23 cfr_2003-2004_part24 pages from cfr_2003-2004_part25 expanding a traditional ballad: tam lin in the picture book fantasies of jane yolen and susan cooper janis dawson o i forbid you, maidens a,' that wear gowd on your hair, to come or gae by caterhaugh, for young tam lin is there. there's nane that gaes by caterhaugh but they leave him a wad, either their rings, or green mantles, or else their maidenhead. janet has kilted her green kirtle a little aboon her knee, and she has broded her yellow hair a liitle aboon her bree, and she's awa' to carterhaugh. as fast as she can hie. -tam lin (child 39a)1 tam lin is one of the better known of the traditional scottish fairy ballads. this highly romantic story of a young woman who rescues her lover from the fairy queen was noted in written sources as early as the sixteenth century. although the ballad itself, set in the wild border lands of scotland, appears to be unique to the scottish people, folklorists have connected the story with greek popular traditions older than homer (child 336)2 the story has also been linked to other traditional ballads and tales, including thomas the rhymer, the faerie oak of corriewater, alice brand, the king’s daughter jane, and beauty and the beast, and it has been described as the canonical ballad ("legends"). in more recent times, the story has continued to inspire artists, writers, and musicians.3 tam lin has even entered the electronic age with an extensive web site devoted to the discussion and interpretation of the ballad.4 expanding a traditional ballad dawson romance aside, however, tam lin is a dark, violent and highly complex story that in its various manifestations deals with rape, abortion, abduction, torture, and human sacrifice. it also draws on primal fears of abandonment, darkness, madness, and the power of evil. this is adult material, to be sure; nonetheless, the ballad has inspired a number of fantasy stories and novels for children and young adults including the gold of fairnilee (1888) by andrew lang, thursday by catherine storr (1971) the queen of spells by dahlov ipcar (1973), the perilous gard by elizabeth marie pope (1974), and fire and hemlock by diana wynne jones (1984), as well as illustrated children's books by jane yolen (1990) and susan cooper (1991)5 many of these authors have been drawn to the character of the determined young woman who redeems her lover from the fairy queen.6 indeed, the fair janet, or margaret, as she is variously known, has been represented as a kind of protofeminist in a number of modern discussions of the ballad. john niles writes that in its portrait of janet, a young woman willing to venture her life in defiance of all restrictions in an attempt to win her lover back to human form, the scottish ballad reflects an ideal of feminine behavior which is refreshingly unlike that which is reflected in most polite literature of recent centuries. the ballad itself has no use for pale, passive princesses. it shows us a spunky and defiant young woman who is both willing and able to help herself. the song is rooted in rough soil, and its protagonist shows the kind of toughness necessary for survival in such terrain. (346). colin manlove expresses a similar view, noting that, "it must be said that there is a strong 'feminist' element to many scottish (not gaelic) fairy tales" (22). manlove seems to see feminism as women pitted against one another, however, for his discussion is as much about the fairy queen as janet. "the whole tale is a picture of feminine resolution-and even dominance," he writes, "for tam is the slave of the fairy queen and cannot escape by himself" (32). not surprisingly, authors who have used this ballad to structure their own works have emphasized female strength, boldness, perseverance and indepen dence.7 this search for the female hero, at the expense, perhaps, of other elements in the traditional story, naturally raises the issue of how authors use traditional literature in the creation of fantasy for young readers. however, as c. w. sullivan iii notes, "little attention has been given to the work of authors of fantasy for children and 24 dawson expanding a traditional ballad adolescents who have drawn directly on traditional plot structures upon which to expand and build whole novels" ("traditional ballads" 145). sullivan has identified three major ways in which authors have used traditional materials to structure or help structure their novels: expanding, interweaving, and inventing (welsh celtic myth x)8 it is understood that regardless of the method used, a careful writer will use the materials conscientiously and respect the essence of the traditional work. for the purposes of this paper, however, i will refer to sullivan's first method, expanding, in my discussion of modern versions of the ballad by jane yolen and susan cooper. the version of the traditional ballad that will serve as the reference point for this examination will be the one listed as number 39a in francis james child's collection of english and scottish popular ballads published between 1882 and 1898. child's 39a appears to be one of the oldest printed versions of the ballad.9 according to sullivan, expanding refers to the way in which a modern author "expands upon the original material-adding, as it were, flesh to the skeleton [. . .]." in this manner, the modern author "adds detail and texture, filling in the background, developing major and minor characters more fully, borrowing from other compatible sources, and creating new material that complements the original" (welsh celtic myth 13). jane yolen and susan cooper, both well respected authors of fantasy for children, have followed the traditional ballad closely in their respective works, but each has expanded the ballad in interesting ways. both publications are illustrated and designed for younger readers. in addition to expanding the ballad, however, both yolen and cooper have chosen to omit some traditional material because they are writing for a younger audience. the ways in which these omissions affect the retelling of tam lin will be discussed in this paper. although there are some fifteen versions of the ballad (including fragments) in child's collection, the general story line may be described as follows: a young man (tam lin)10 haunts a wild area (carterhaugh)11 threatening young maidens by demanding things of value including rings, green mantles, and even their maidenheads. one young woman, janet or margaret,12 refuses to heed the warnings and proceeds to visit the dangerous place. she plucks a rose, thereby summoning the young man. he challenges her, but she declares her right to be there because it is "my ain, /my daddie gave it me." she dallies with the young man, and when she returns home, she is with child. she returns at a later time, summons him again by plucking a rose, and asks his identity. he explains that many years ago, he was 25 expanding a traditional ballad dawson abducted by the elfin queen (or queen of the fairies), but now he is about to be given up as a "tithe to hell" unless the young woman agrees to save him. the young man's instructions are explicit: she must meet him at the crossroads on halloween night (or midsummer's eve) when the queen and her court ride abroad and pull him from his horse. she must then hold fast to him while he undergoes successive terrifying changes of shape ending in a burning rod of iron. once he has returned to his human form, she must immerse him in a body of water and then wrap him in her mantle. the young woman follows her lover's instructions and thereby wins him for herself. yolen begins her retelling of tam lin not with the familiar warning to maidens but with a description of a ruined castle, "strange and forbidding," set on "a weedy piece of land called carterhaugh." readers are told that, "many years had passed since humans had lived there," and that "now all the children were warned against it." yolen has thus expanded the ballad to include an eerie atmosphere and a warning to all children, not just maidens she alters the warning still further by having older boys go secretly to carterhaugh on dares, "leaving tokens of their passing-garlands or rings, and once a fine green mantle." while yolen's addition of atmospheric detail enhances the supernatural aspects of the tale and effectively prepares the reader for the appearance of the enchanted knight and the faery queen, her alterations are, in effect, omissions-tam lin does not demand a toll and there is no reference to the loss of maidenheads (rape or seduction)-and they deprive the story of its ability to function as a cautionary tale. these changes, dictated, one must assume, by the fact that yolen is writing for a younger audience, also affects the nature of the relationship between tam lin and the young maiden called jennet. yolen expands jennet's character by describing her beauty and emphasizing her boldness. yolen also makes jennet's determination to claim her inheritance the motivation for her otherwise unexplained journey to carterhaugh in defiance of the warning: jennet always had a mind of her own, even as a wee girl. the villagers all said she would never marry, no matter that her father was chief of the clan. no man would want her, even for all her beauty and her father's name. for she always spoke what she thought. and what she thought was never quite proper for a young lady. "i will go," jennet said, "for i am not afraid. i will go when i am old enough to win back carterhaugh for our clan." 26 dawson expanding a traditional ballad in the ballad, however, jennet's reference to her inheritance is presented simply as her defiant answer to tam lin's demand to know why she is plucking a rose at carterhaugh: carterhaugh, it is my ain, my daddie gave it me; i'll come and gang by carterhaugh and ask nae leave at thee. (child 39a verse 7) yolen has thus expanded the original narrative to make janet's actions more understandable and to present her as a determined, strong-willed young woman—a female hero. yolen also gives jennet a last name which further identifies her as a strong woman determined to claim her rights. true to her promise, yolen's jennet goes to carterhaugh on her sixteenth birthday to claim her inheritance. yolen embellishes the ballad's reference to jennet's dress and again emphasizes her reason for going to carterhaugh: on the day she turned sixteen, the day she came into her inheritance, jennet twisted her long, red-gold hair into a braid and pinned it to the top of her head. she put on her brand new birthday gown, as green as a young willow. she fastened the mackenzie plaid across her shoulder and secured it with a golden brooch. [. . .] jennet pulled the plaid up over her hair. she put on her walking shoes, tucked her skirts above her knees, and bounded up and over the heather hills toward the tumbledown towers of carterhaugh. once at carterhaugh, "in a voice that was strong, though the echo of it trembled," jennet announces her claim to carterhaugh before she plucks the rose that will summon tam lin: this reversal of events allows yolen's jennet more power in her encounter with tam lin; she is in a less vulnerable position than her counterpart in the ballad. a further significant addition is jennet's claim that carterhaugh was stolen from her ancestors by the fairies. by plucking the rose, jennet states that she is making a pledge that she will "take back carterhaugh and restore it to humankind." there is, of course, no sexual encounter between jennet and tam lin, and yolen's jennet has no need to make a second journey to carterhaugh to either confront her lover or gather herbs to induce a miscarriage (depending on the version of the ballad used). jennet and 27 expanding a traditional ballad dawson tam lin quickly fall in love, and as in the traditional ballad, he describes his enchantment and tells her how she can win him away from the fey. yolen follows the ballad closely up to jennet's victory over the faery queen, combining details from different versions that require jennet to carry holy water and earth from her own garden as additional protection from the power of the fey.13 however, rather than end the story with the queen's angry curse, shame betide her ill-fared face, and an ill death may she die, for she's taen way the bonniest knight in a' my companie. (child 39 a verse 41) yolen's tam lin laughs at the queen's curse, and dismisses her power: "we stand here protected by a circle of earth, with holy water upon our heads. your curses return from us to thee, o queen of the everfair. and look!" he pointed to the horizon where the sun was just dawning. "your power is over. be gone." yolen then provides a fairy tale conclusion: and so jennet and tam lin were married. it is said in selkirk that they lived a long and happy life together in the great stone castle jennet restored and renamed carter hall. and that their children's children's children lived there happily ever after. by ending her book in this way rather than with the curse, yolen removes the possibility that the queen will return to harm jennet, tam lin, or their future offspring. where the ballad leaves the reader or listener conscious of the lingering threat of evil and danger, yolen provides a "happily ever after" picture. this removes the tension and upsets the fine balance in the ballad which begins with a warning and ends with a threat. tam lin's original audience would have understood that the queen's threat was no idle utterance; it is powerful and malevolent, and it carries with it the weight of traditional lore rich in stories of changelings, stolen children, faery possession, and human sacrifice. in terms of jennet herself, the ending seems to diminish her character as if her struggle with the fairy queen has robbed her of her essential boldness and vigour. the image of jennet at the end of the book is inconsistent with the strong-minded young woman yolen establishes in the opening paragraphs. 28 dawson expanding a traditional ballad evelyn perry argues that yolen's ending diminishes the ballad by downplaying the struggle between good and evil that is an essential part of the story. in perry's words, "the fairy queen's final threat to the couple, the understanding that we must never relax our fight against evil, and the touching appeal to the hero in all of us, have been plowed under by the promise of happily ever after and the distillation of evil" (40). unfortunately, however, perry, preoccupied with the hero's journey, is less than clear about what this good and evil might represent, and consequently her critique of yolen falls short. if the ballad is read through its symbolism, however, good and evil are not vague and amorphous; what is represented is a struggle between christianity and the still powerful ancient gods and spirits of nature. the symbols are janus-like; they may be christian or pagan, and this creates a powerful tension in the ballad. the rose, the central image here, represents virginity, passion and seduction, but in christian symbolism, it also represents the blood christ shed on the cross. the thorn, as dominant in the illustrations as the rose itself, also recalls christ's crown of thorns. the christian symbolism, indeed, cannot be downplayed without violating the integrity of the ballad. in the ballad, janet's action turns on her desperate hope that her lover is a mortal and a christian. pregnant with their child, she returns to carterhaugh to confront him: o tell me, tell me, tam lin, she says, for's sake that dies on tree, if e' er ye was in holy chapel, or christendom did see. (child 39a verse 21) once she receives the assurance she seeks, she is prepared to follow his instructions. this sequence is important because it helps to explain janet's action from this point forward. janet is motivated not just by love but also by her real need for a christian union for the sake of her unborn child. although yolen has reduced the ballad through her happily-ever-after ending, in her defense, it must be said that she has, nonetheless, preserved a sense of the religious struggle at the heart of the ballad by having jennet bring a bottle of holy water (blessed by the priest) and earth from her garden (earth from a christian precinct) to her meeting with the faery queen. in yolen's retelling of the ballad, the holy water and the earth playa crucial part in the redemption of tam lin. tam lin, in thrall to the dark powers of the faery queen, is indeed a 29 expanding a traditional ballad dawson fallen man; by claiming him from the queen, jennet, a christian woman, redeems not only his body but also his soul. his immersion in the holy well is his baptism. charles mikolaycak's full page lavish illustrations are well suited to yolen's retelling of tam lin and contribute in their own way to the expansion of the ballad. his illustrations, in fact, provide the sexual imagery that yolen's text omits. he uses strong lines and bold and vivid colours that complement and emphasize jennet's strong character. gray and black are used to emphasize the darkness of the story and the eerieness of the setting, but red and green predominate, reinforcing the christian and celtic symbolism in the story: red for the rose that symbolizes virginity, seduction, passion, fertility, and the blood of sacrifice; green for fertility, renewal, envy, and deceit. green is also the colour traditionally associated with the fairy folk. the central image in the ballad, the rose, becomes a focal point in mikolaycak's illustrations, expanding from a small rosebud crushed in an old woman's hand, to a full blown rose in the wilderness at carterhaugh. it is the full-blown rose that jennet picks to summon her lover; it also signals her deflowering. the thorn joins the rose as a dominant image in the illustrations, representing not only the blood and passion of christ, but also untilled soil, and by association, virginity. in christian symbolism, "christ's crown of thorns celebrates the marriage of heaven with the virgin earth"; it is "the wedding ring of the word—the son of man—and the earth, virgin and still to be made fertile" (chevalier and gheerbrant 990). the colours are woven into the lovers' clothing, reinforcing the dual nature of the symbolism of the ballad. jennet's gown is green and her mantle is a red and green plaid when she first goes to carterhaugh; when she returns to confront the queen, she wears a rose/blood red gown and a green mantle. tam lin's plaid is black and white; his colours recall the black thorn, but in the final illustration of the text, the artist has added the colours of jennet's plaid. through colour imagery, the union of jennet and tam lin represents the marriage of heaven and earth and the victory over the dark forces represented by the faery queen.14 susan cooper's retelling of tam lin is based on several versions of the ballad rather than on the better known child 39 a. here jennet is called margaret, and she is presented as the king's daughter rather than the daughter of a clan chieftain. cooper follows the outline of the traditional ballad closely, but like yolen, cooper expands the ballad by adding details that provide atmosphere and texture and contribute to the development of the young woman's character. cooper begins, as yolen does, not with the traditional warning, 30 dawson expanding a traditional ballad but with a description of the setting; however, cooper's setting is pleasant rather than eerie and forbidding: the clouds marched over the blue summer sky, and the cloudshadows slid purple and grey across the hills of scotland, as margaret sat beside her window, sewing. she was not fond of sewing. she longed for adventure. but because she was the daughter of the king she was supposed to set a good, gentle example to all the other girls. every morning they sat with her in the great tower of her father's castle, sewing, listening to the stories told by margaret's old nurse and waiting to be married. true to the spirit of the ballad, margaret is presented as bolder than other girls, but cooper's maiden seems to lack jennet's vivacious manner. the soft tones of warwick hutton's watercolour illustrations contribute to this impression of a less confident, more subdued character for margaret; unlike mikolaycak's jennet, she strikes no bold poses. her sudden decision to go to carterhays is prompted not by her determination to claim her estate, as in yolen's retelling, but rather by her rebelliousness. she does not want to sit and sew and listen to instructions about maidenly behaviour. "rub your skin with cucumber for softness," said fat jana, the steward's daughter. "behave modestly with young men," said soft-voiced alison, "as is fitting for a maid." the old nurse nodded in approval. "and never travel the roads alone, or go near carterhays." "i don't see why not," margaret said. "carterhays is the pret tiest wood in my father's kingdom. roses grow there. we rode by it last week." "but it's haunted!" jana said. "the elfin knight waits there, to trap young girls!" "tam lin," said margaret. "yes. but have you ever seen him?" "if once you saw him it would be the end of you," the old nurse said sharply. "no man would marry you then." margaret jumped up impatiently. "marry, marry, marry! can't you think about anything else?" she flung down her em broidery and ran out of the room. "where are you going?" cried the old nurse in alarm. "to pick roses!" margaret shouted back up the curving stairs. "at carterhays!" 31 expanding a traditional ballad dawson cooper's margaret, keeping to the detail in the ballad's refrain, hitches up her green skirts (she wears no bold plaid), loops up her hair, and runs away to carterhays. once there, she enters the wood. "oak, and ash and thorn grew in the wood," cooper writes, introducing or interweaving (to use sullivan's term), details that are not included in the ballad but which are, nonetheless, significant elements in traditional literature and therefore not out of place in her retelling of the ballad. the oak, ash, and thorn, sometimes referred to as "the magical trilogy," are often associated with fairies, spirits, and the supernatural generally (briggs 159).15 the thorn, as already noted, also has christian connotations. cooper describes the old gardens of the former estate where wild red roses ramble up into the apple trees. the rose is the central motif in the ballad, as already noted, but cooper's addition of the apple tree, found only in two lesser-known versions of the ballad (child 39g and k), adds another significant detail from fairy lore. this fruit tree is thought to have particularly magical properties associated with power, knowledge and youth, and, of course, the temptation of eve in the judeo-christian tradition. however, according to traditional literature, there is some danger associated with this particular tree, because a "ymp-tree" or grafted apple tree was considered to be under fairy influence (briggs 160). those who rested or fell asleep under such trees were particularly vulnerable to capture by the fairy folk; sir lancelot and thomas the rhymer are just two examples of fairy capture in this manner. cooper, by referring specifically to magical trees, links her retelling of tam lin to other examples of traditional literature and subtly weaves an atmosphere of enchantment and the supernatural. when tam lin appears after margaret plucks the rose, she is surprised to see that he does not look like an enchanted or "elfin knight," for "he wore a country tunic, and his feet were bare." yolen's knight, on the other hand, is "dressed in velvet and kilt." here the illustrations in each case work to reinforce the descriptions provided by the authors. enhanced by the strong lines and colours of the accompanying illustrations, yolen's tam lin looks every inch the romantic knight while cooper's knight, outlined in pen and washed in soft browns, looks nondescript and even bewildered by his situation. margaret defends her right to pluck roses at carterhays in the usual way, saying, "why should i ask leave of you? [. . .] carterhays belongs to my father the king, and i can come and go as i please. and pick roses." but, in an interesting departure from the traditional ballad, tam lin pulls a red apple from the tree to offer to margaret: 32 dawson expanding a traditional ballad "margaret bit into the crisp, juicy flesh. she smiled back at the young man, quite forgetting that apple trees do not normally bear ripe apples in june." enchanted fruit is a common motif in folklore, and the significance of apples in particular has been noted. but the fact that tam lin offers a ripe juicy apple to margaret is an important detail, for this is, in fact, cooper's method of dealing with margaret's sexual encounter in the traditional ballad. although there is no overt reference to rape or sexual activity here, margaret lingers at carterhays. they spent all day together in the wood, happy with one another, until the sun dropped low in the sky and all at once the daylight was gone—and so, in a flash, was the young man with the golden skin and curly hair. sorrowful, margaret ran home through the glimmering twilight [. . .]. margaret arrives home to find that the household has been looking for her not just for one day but for a week; time passes differently in the other world according to fairy lore. margaret's enchantment is consistent with one version of the ballad (child 39g). here the sexual encounter is described, not just implied: when he had got his wills of her, his wills as he had taen, he's taen her by the middle sma, set her to feet again. she turned her right and round about, to spier her true-love's name, but naething heard she, not naething saw, as a' the woods grew dim. seven days she tarried there, saw neither sun nor meen; at length, by a sma glimmering light came thro the wood her lane. (child 39g verses 8-10) in the ballad, margaret is presumed to be pregnant sometime after she returns home; in a number of versions (child 39a, b, i, k), she is actually described as looking "as green as onie glass" (a,b) and "pale and wan" (i). the household is concerned, prompting "an auld grey 33 expanding a traditional ballad dawson knight" to express his fear that "we'll be blamed a'." margaret denies that anyone of her father's men is the father of her child. because no sexual encounter, real or implied, occurs in yolen's tam lin, there is no need for any discussion with members of the household. cooper, however, recreates the scene with the old grey knight. since margaret has stayed with tam lin for a week, she has disgraced the household and cannot expect to marry any man in the kingdom. cooper has managed to remain faithful to the spirit of the ballad without stating outright that sexual activity has occurred and that a child is expected. cooper's margaret returns to carterhays to see tam lin and question him about his history. he tells her that, when he was just three years old and asleep in his father's garden, he was stolen by the elfin queen. hutton's hunched and furtive looking elfin queen, represented in the accompanying illustration, presents a striking contrast to mikolaycak's proud and commanding queen of the fey. cooper's detail of tam lin's abduction, while consistent with three versions of the ballad (g; i, k),16 also links tam lin to traditional lore about changelings and lost children. yolen's tam lin, by contrast, was older when he was carried off by the fairy queen after falling from his horse. after hearing tam lin's history and learning how she might save him from being sacrificed to hell, margaret returns home. although cooper follows various versions of the ballad closely through to margaret's confrontation with the elfin queen, she does make one notable change. in the various child versions of the ballad, halloween is given as the occasion of the fairy ride and the sacrifice,17 but in cooper's retelling of the ballad, the ride takes place on midsummer's eve. there seems to be no reason for this change apart from consistency; the descriptions of scenery-the summer sky outside margaret's window, the green fields, the old orchard at carterhays—all suggest midsummer. however, because midsummer's eve was, like halloween, a significant celtic festival and a time when the fairy folk were abroad, cooper has remained faithful to the sense of the ballad. cooper emphasizes the regenerative aspects of the ballad in the final scenes of her book. tam lin's emergence from the well following his final transformation is clearly a resurrection: then light was growing in the eastern sky, and tam lin was climbing out of the well where margaret had dropped the [burning] iron. his hair dripped wet and he wore no clothes; he was naked as the day he was born. she swung her mantle 34 dawson expanding a traditional ballad from her shoulders and he wrapped it around himself, and through the greyness of the night the cloth shone suddenly brilliant green, as the sun rose behind the wood and brought color back into the world. margaret looked down at her hands. the palms were pink and clear with no sign of any burn at all. tam lin said, "you have brought me to life again. one day we shall have a child, you and i, as naked and glad as the knight born today out of this well." "we'll teach her to pick roses," margaret said. cooper, like yolen, chooses a happy ending for tam lin. without even a hint of a curse from the elfin queen, tam lin and margaret ride back to the castle, "through carterhays wood and the green fields of scotland, as the clouds marched over the blue summer sky and the cloud shadows slid purple and grey across the hills." by returning to her opening sentences, cooper tells her readers that the story has come full circle. bringing the story back to the beginning in this way, however, has the effect of diminishing the ballad in cooper's work. cooper's conclusion seems to contradict entirely the significance of margaret's struggle, and, as perry might argue, it ignores or dismisses the tension between good and evil that is an essential aspect of the ballad. hutton's water colour washes in soft earth and pastel tones give a dream-like quality to cooper's tam lin and this has the effect of further diminishing the ballad. although cooper's tam lin is more complex than yolen's in terms of the ways in which she deals with the traditional materials, cooper's work is far less compelling. neither the prose style nor the illustrations seem to adequately represent the elemental power of this traditional ballad. both yolen and cooper attempt to present their heroines as strong female characters that dare to challenge traditional female roles and expectations, but neither character is very successful as a feminist model because the happily ever after endings that both authors adopt rob their female protagonists of any power they might have acquired through their struggles with supernatural forces. jennet and margaret live happily ever after with their respective tam lins. but there is still another reason why these characters do not work as feminist heroines. while yolen and cooper have remained faithful to the outline of the ballad, they have failed to adequately represent the real nature of the young woman's heroism that relates to her sexual encounter with tam lin and her resulting pregnancy. yolen and coo 35 expanding a traditional ballad dawson the real nature of the young woman's heroism that relates to her sexual encounter with tam lin and her resulting pregnancy. yolen and cooper have given readers twentieth-century female characters who may be admired for speaking their minds and flouting convention, but the traditional janet, a sixteenth-century woman, must worry about more fundamental problems. she is pregnant and unmarried and she must deal with the moral and social consequences of her boldness. she has violated the norms of her society not only in terms of her pregnancy, but also by her dalliance with an enchanted knight, she has had commerce with the dark side; this puts her at serious risk of being named as a witch. will she abort her child and risk censure by the church and her community, or will she dare to struggle with dark powers to redeem its father? what if her courage fails? will she damn herself and her unborn child to hell? in the end, janet's strength and courage prevail and she does redeem tam lin from hell, but the there is no happy ending because the faery queen's curse lingers even after janet's victory is acknowledged. yolen and cooper have provided faithful outlines of the ballad, but they have failed to capture its essence and complexity. in terms of their ability to represent janet's sexual encounter, both authors are constrained by the consideration that their books are directed toward younger readers, and this raises the inevitable issue of the appropriateness of the ballad for this audience. but even more troublesome is the fact that in their determination to see janet as an assertive modern female hero, they have removed her from her historical context, glossed over her religious and moral struggles, and misrepresented her character and her achievement; they have, in effect, reduced her and remade her as the heroine of a romantic story. notes 1. these first verses are taken from francis james child's five volume collection, english and scottish popular ballads, first published between 1882 and 1898. tam lin appeared in the first volume as ballad no. 39 with ten versions (a j). some of the versions collected by child are fragments. further additions and corrections to the ballad were included in later volumes. 2. child connects the ballad to a cretan fairy tale "through the principal feature in the story, the transformation of tam lin" (336). 3. two of the better-known recent recordings of the ballad are by steeleye span and fairport convention. 4. see "the tam lin pages" by abigail acland (<tam-lin.org>). this site makes no claim for accuracy, but it includes useful references and links to 36 dawson expanding a traditional ballad other sites dealing with fantasy, folklore and mythology. it is probably the best place to begin to investigate this ballad. 5. related works by pamela dean, ellen kushner, and patricia mckillip, though not marketed as young adult novels, have also attracted the interest of young readers. 6. see, for example, jones's essay, "the heroic ideal-a personal odyssey. " 7. a feminist interpretation of the ballad is adopted by ethel phelps who includes the story as "janet and tam lin" in tatterhood and other tales, a prose collection of feminist folk and fairy tales published by feminist press that portrays "active and courageous girls and women in the leading roles." according to phelps, "the protagonists [in tatterhood] are heroines in the true and original meaning of the word—heroic women distinguished by extraordinary courage and achievements, who hold the center of interest in the tales "(xv). 8. expanding refers to the way in which modern authors add "detail and texture" to a traditional narrative (sullivan, welsh celtic myth 13); interweaving refers to the way in which authors select materials from a tale or from a group of complementary tales and then "weave these materials together into a cohesive whole" (35); and inventing refers to the way in which authors create their own plots and characters but use traditional materials "to give their novels mythic and legendary depth and texture" (x). 9. version a was collected in johnson's museum (1792). 10. variously known as tom-lin, tam lien, tam lane, tom line, tomlin, tam o linn, tam blain, thomas, true tammas, earl thomas, and lord robinson's only child. variations on the names of the characters and setting are summarized by john niles in "tam lin: form and meaning in a traditional ballad." 11. also kertonha, charter's ha', cartershay, charter's wood, chester's wood, chaster's wood, gordon's wud, moorcartney, the greenwood. 12.also jennet, lady margaret, leady margat, fair margret, may margery, may, the maid of katherine's hall. 13 although these symbolic items are not mentioned in child 39a, refer ence is made to holy water in versions d, g, and j. 14. mikolaycak created the tartans for the story because, as yolen writes in her background notes, "a faery tale demands its own colours and plaids." the plaids emphasize the fact that tam lin is a scottish ballad. 15. briggs provides an extensive discussion of these magical trees and others, including apple trees, under "fairy trees" in her encyclopedia of fairies, hobgoblins, brownies, bogies, and other supernatural creatures (159-161 ). 16. in child g, three-year-old tam lin falls asleep under an apple tree. 17. in child g, tam lin refers to halloween as the night of the fairy ride, but acland suggests that the last verse of the story places the activity in may based on her reading of the lines: 37 expanding a traditional ballad dawson she borrowed her love at mirk midnight, bare her young son ere day, and though ye'd search the warld wide, ye'll nae find sic a may. (verse 59) see her notes at <http://tam-lin.org/storyline.html>. it seems more likely that "may" is a textual error or a misreading on acland's part. there is no other reference to may in the ballad. nonetheless, may eve, also known as beltaine, was an important celtic festival (briggs 108). works cited child, francis james, ed. the english and scottish popular ballads. 1882-1898. new york: dover, 1965. acland, abigail. "the tam lin pages." 3 july 2000 <http://tam-lin.org>. briggs, katharine. an encyclopaedia of fairies. hobgoblins. brownies, bogies, and other supernatural creatures. new york: pantheon, 1976. chevalier, jean, and alain gheerbrant. the penguin dictionary of symbols. trans. john buchannan-brown. london: penguin, 1996. cooper, susan. tam lin. illus. warwick hutton. new york: mcelderry books, 1991. dean, pamela. tam lin. new york: tor, 1991. ipcar, dahlov. the queen of spells. new york: viking, 1973. jones, diana wynne. fire and hemlock. 1985. london: harper, 2000. _______. "the heroic ideal-a personal odyssey." the lion and the unicorn 13.1 (1989): 129-40. kushner, ellen. thomas the rhymer. new york: tor, 1991. lang, andrew. the gold of fairnilee and other stories. ed. gillian avery. london: victor gollancz, 1967. "legends-ballads and broadsides-tam lin." 20 june 2000 <http://legends.dm.net/ ballads/tamlin.html>. manlove, colin. scottish fantasy literature: a critical survey. edinburgh: canongate,1994. mckillip, patricia. winter rose. new york: ace, 1997. niles, john d. "tam lin: fonn and meaning in a traditional ballad." modern lan guage quarterly 38 (1977): 336-47. pope, elizabeth marie. the perilous gard. 1974. london: penguin, 1992. perry, evelyn m. "the ever-vigilant hero: revaluing the tale of tam lin." children’s folklore review 19.2 (1997): 31-49. phelps, ethel johnston. tatterhood and other tales. new york: feminist, 1978. storr, catherine. thursday. london: faber, 1971. sullivan, c. w. iii. "traditional ballads and modern children's fantasy: some com ments on structure and intent." chla quarterly 11.2 (1986): 145-47. _______. welsh celtic myth in modern fantasy. westport, ct: greenwood, 1989. yolen, jane. tam lin. illus. charles mikolaycak. new york: hbj, 1990. 38 cfr_2002-2003_part7 cfr_2002-2003_part8 cfr_2002-2003_part9 cfr_2002-2003_part10 cfr_2002-2003_part11 cfr_2002-2003_part12 67 book reviews recess battles: playing, fighting, and storytelling. by anna r. beresin. foreword by brian sutton-smith. (jackson: university of mississippi, 2010. pp. xii + 168. appendixes, notes, bibliography, index.) simon j bronner a spate of books lately have signaled a dire warning about the threat to free play with the elimination of recess by school administrations and the regimentation of children at camps and after-school programs. folklorists have much to contribute to this discourse in the “war on recess” because of the association of recess play with spontaneous, evolving traditional practices controlled by children rather than administrated by adults or influenced by corporations (in the form of video games and other gadgets directing play). some advocates such as joe l. frost have even referred to a movement to counter the detrimental effects on child development with the redesign of playgrounds and the war on recess with the urgency of a “child-saving movement” (see his a history of children’s play and play environments: toward a contemporary child-saving movement, 2009). to date, much of the folkloristic attention to the issue of the decline of free play seems to have been centered in great britain with the publication of steve roud’s sweeping tome, the lore of the playground (2010), and julia c. bishop and mavis curtis’s editing of nine insightful essays in play today in the primary school playground (2001). to this bookshelf can now be added an incisive ethnography by anna r. beresin of recess at one american urban school between 1991 and 2004. readers might wonder if this focus on one school severely limits the possibility of generalizing about play and the framed activity of recess. beresin is good about contextualizing the distinctive background of the children and their environment, and yet at the same time she draws lessons from what she saw in the schoolyard that could contribute to the discourse on “the war on recess.” she clearly falls on the side of advocates for recess as essential to children’s development and she views detrimental effects to children when recess is removed. she explains the assault on recess as an adult fear of violence and she uses ethnography to show that the “roughness” of time that children have to themselves occurs primarily in the transitions in and out of organization time rather than in the activities of recess. she confirmed this observation with video and showed it to administrators who set new guidelines for moving in and out of recess. this section is probably the most revealing of the book, not only for childhood and play studies, but for the uses of ethnography. beresin also uses a narrow ethnographic lens for a wider vision about play in her drawing out children’s own views on what constitutes play—and for that matter violence—in a brief but provocative section on “keywords of the playground.” she raises, as others have done, the linkage in children’s cognition of cfr_2012.indb 67 10/19/12 9:25:38 am book reviews bronner 68 play and “fun,” and readers might wish for conversation that reveals the rhetoric of play as a mode of self-awareness. also on the wish list is visual material, since recess battles more than other studies of children’s play refers to patterns evident in visual terms. to be sure, she includes illustrations rendered by the children themselves, a reminder of the “native” terms she seeks through ethnography, but perhaps out of concern for children’s privacy, photographic figures are omitted from the book. to beresin’s credit, the photography is instrumental not only as a tool but also as a concept of frame and paradox borrowed from bateson. she sees, perhaps more readily than many folklorists, the power of child-controlled frames in the form of supposedly invented games to resist, and comment on, adult control. there is text, and musical transcription, that add to the understanding of changing expressive forms in twenty-first century childhood environments. beresin is especially concerned with a reading of the many adaptation, and in many instances, apparently unique expressions, that draw on commercial references (“mine costs more, yours costs less, mine footlocker, yours payless”). she considers the reflection of corporate exploitation of inner-city youth in this folkloric “incorporation” on the playground. she also astutely interprets the “old school” rhymes, or rather their adaptation (e.g., “mailman mailman, do your duty, ‘cause here come miss american beauty, she can do the pom pom, she can do the twist, most of all, she can make the boys kiss”) as framed performances of bodily asset and control. this question of children’s culture in conflict when expressed as free play with adult sense of restricting movement, and hence the body, also comes into play in the resources of popular culture, and especially hip-hop music, in the content of rhymes and actions. beyond this one schoolyard, beresin coins the term “gamestory” to designate the narrative intrinsic in activities children associate with the playground. her book is a starting point to decode the frames and patterns elsewhere, that is, if recess survives administrative fiats that beresin shows to derive from serious misunderstandings of what children do when they play. cfr_2012.indb 68 10/19/12 9:25:38 am cfr_2009_r4.indb book reviews 83 from nursery rhymes to nationhood: children’s literature and the construction of canadian identity. by elizabeth a. galway. (new york and london: routledge, 2008. pp. 1 + 196, notes, selected bibliography, index.) jon d. lee focusing on children’s literature from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, from nursery rhymes to nationhood provides scholars of folklore, literature and history with a much-needed text that examines the role children’s literature played in forming canadian national identity. as a whole, the book is well-written and free of academic jargon, and galway, using 115 primary sources (i.e. 19th and 20th century children’s literature) and at least twice as many secondary sources (largely contemporary academic texts from various disciplines, including history and english), details well the many themes and ideals that permeated children’s literature in this formative era. galway argues that literature provides a source for ongoing contemplation of identity and that children’s literature plays a crucial role in their own understanding of belonging and difference. she examines how the books and stories of the age dealt with questions of loyalty, differing in their opinions about whether canadians should remain faithful to the british empire, show greater political and cultural alignment with the united states, or attempt to establish themselves as independent of both. next, galway demonstrates how, on the basis of these three alternatives, authors proposed varying ideas for how to best construct a national identity, some attempting to do so on “a racial or ethnic basis” that placed dividers among anglophones, francophones, and first nations people and others adopting a “biracial, bilingual system” free of hierarchies (175). finally, she establishes that the literature was also attempting to formulate national values like pacifism, environmental concern and freedom, around which canadian citizens could unite. as galway proves, the problems associated with the struggle between belonging and differentiation are numerous and varied. some of these problems were overt, such as questions relating to which country canadians should remain loyal, or indecision concerning how “indians” should be represented in stories— as “noble savages,” as unmitigated protagonists, or (as was unfortunately less common) as equals. paraphrasing canadian children’s literature critic roderick mcgillis, galway notes that the treatment of first nations people functioned “as a means of negotiating the boundary between ‘self’ and ‘other,’” a debate that helped structure “who and what the canadian identity should represent” (114). another debated issue was the fact that much of the children’s literature available at the time was published not in canada, but in britain or the united states, and was often written by citizens of those countries. as post-confederation canada struggled to form a national identity separate from that of england, children’s literature increasingly featured canadian, english, and american children interacting, with canadian children having to instruct or rescue their foreign friends. for example, in the captain of the club, a novel from 1889 that galway references frequently, the author presents canadian children cfr_2009_r4.indb 83 10/25/09 6:19:28 pm book reviews 84 as “physically superior to their american counterparts” at canoeing (68) and instinctively aware of landscape as “a source of pride” (159) as they teach their friends about the benefits of interacting positively with nature. galway makes a valuable contribution to the study of children’s literature as a source of debates on identity and nation-building. as she traces these arguments galway maintains an intelligent, objective, and insightful commentary. the scholarship is impressive for its coherent synthesis of a wide scope of data, resulting in a text that should be easily accessible to undergraduates. indeed, a class on children’s literature in canada would be remiss not to assign this as a textbook, so valuable are the ideas presented here. the book is not without its small faults, however, and there are some sections where data could have been better organized. for instance, page twelve of the introduction lists the assassination of louis real, the boer war of 1899, and the 1903 alaska boundary question as important historical points in the development of children’s literature. however, these events receive no elaboration until pages thirty-eight, forty-six, and fifty-five, respectively, and there is no notice in the introduction that these elaborations are forthcoming. it would be easy for readers—especially if they are unfamiliar with this era of canadian history—to glean from such an introduction that the book assumes a far greater comprehension than it actually does. still, such faults are relatively minor, and are few in number. overall, the text is exceedingly well-organized and lucid. though the book focuses only on canadian children’s literature of a specific period, it should be required reading for students of any aspect of children’s literature, regardless of concentration. the lessons learned in these pages about the importance of literature for national identity would be well emphasized in other works, and galway provides an excellent and attentionworthy method of analysis and discussion. the book is a wonderful and valuable contribution to the field. haunted halls: ghostlore of american college campuses. by elizabeth tucker. (jackson: university press of mississippi, 2007. pp. vii + 241, illustrations, references, index.) jodi mcdavid haunted halls is a unique approach to the somewhat familiar subject matter of campus legends. elizabeth tucker, a professor of english at binghamton university, comes to this material through an interesting set of circumstances; she has been faculty master of a residential community on the binghamton campus for a number of years. her experience as a folklorist and residence coordinator creates a unique viewpoint for this readable and academically grounded book. haunted halls straddles the line between legend collection and analytic text quite well, providing tale type and motif index references for many of the narratives. the chapters all stand well on their own, due in part to some of their previous lives as articles which have been edited for the current publication. four chapters draw on articles which were published elsewhere. tucker links legends thematically across campuses, for example, finding “wailing women” at a variety cfr_2009_r4.indb 84 10/25/09 6:19:28 pm 27 sutton-smith’s five easy pieces jay mechling brian sutton-smith was a sprite. i searched my vocabulary far and wide and settled on this word, this reference to lively, mythological creatures among the fairies and elves. i never met anyone like him. there is a long line of anthropologists and folklorists who have studied children’s games and folklore, stretching back into the nineteenth century (bronner 1988; bronner 2011:196–247; mcneil 1988). brian belongs in that scholarly history, of course, but he was also the sort of charismatic leader a scholarly field, especially an interdisciplinary one, needs to thrive. brian was a founding father of the children’s folklore section of the american folklore society (sutton-smith 2008:96) in 1978, and by the time i joined the association for the anthropological study of play (then taasp, now just tasp, dropping the narrower disciplinary designation) in 1978, i could see in both organizations how his energy and personality and intelligence was at the center of both groups. he was the force behind the children’s folklore section’s collaborating on a first-ever “sourcebook” for the study of children’s folklore (sutton-smith, mechling, johnson, and mcmahon 1995). i first met brian at the meeting of taasp at the university of notre dame (indiana) in 1978. i came from an interdisciplinary home of american studies, where i had all my degrees and my academic employment, and on the recommendation of an american studies friend, bernard “barney” mergen, i decided to try a taasp meeting and present my first paper based on my fresh fieldwork with a troop of boy scouts. thanks to folklorist henry glassie, who was a fellow with me at the yale national humanities institute in 1975-76, i had moved my boy scout research from historical, documentary evidence to observational, ethnographic evidence in the field—in this case, the summer encampment of a california boy scout troop high in the sierra nevada. by the time of the taasp call for papers and then meeting, i was ready to present my first paper based on that work (mechling 1980). at that taasp meeting, i saw first-hand brian’s genuine love of and enthusiasm for the study of play, especially the play of children and adolescents. i am certain that my great affection for taasp and for brian was that first encounter, where he treated me like a colleague whose work was intensely interesting to him. there were no academic hierarchies or accompanying snobbism at those taasp meetings, in part because everyone there was studying something thought “trivial” by disciplinary colleagues back home (see brian’s “triviality barrier” essay, discussed below) and partly because the gathering was so interdisciplinary. someone there could be a famous giant in his or her home discipline but at taasp people were unlikely to know that. you were just brian or barney or garry or jay. i think the best way to honor the memory of brian sutton-smith and his work is to give people unfamiliar with his work an easy way to access his thinking on the play of children and adolescents. i have selected five key essays which, if cfr_2015_r.indb 27 11/22/15 10:41 am sutton-smith’s five easy pieces mechling 28 you read nothing else by brian, would give you a good enough grasp of what he had to say to us and why he is so important to the study of the folk cultures of children and adolescents. some familiar with brian’s massive work might choose a different five; these are mine, essays i return to for ideas and a reminder of why we (i) pursue the study of children’s cultures. and, seriously, i see something new in these essays each time i reread them. what more could you ask of an essay? i do not offer here summaries of each essay. instead, i provide something of a reader’s guide that signals what i find to be important in the essay. i also show the connections between the essays. i refer often to my own work to testify to the fount of ideas i draw upon in each of these five essays. i take them in chronological order. one final note. i have struggled with what to call brian in this article—suttonsmith or s-s for short or simply “brian.” i have chosen “brian,” which is probably too informal for an article somewhere between a personal reminiscence and a scholarly discussion of his ideas, but “brian” seems right to me. i. brian sutton-smith. 1959. “a formal analysis of game meaning.” western folklore 18:13–24. brian began his study of children’s folklore with his dissertation, eventually published as a history of children’s play: new zealand, 1840-1950 (1982). he had already published the folkgames of children in 1973. the 1959 “formal analysis” article reflects brian’s dissertation work and his attempt to take a scientific approach (as a developmental psychologist) to the study of children’s games. anthropologists and others had been collecting children’s games since the late nineteenth century, but brian wanted to establish a more systematic, scientific, reproducible approach to describing and analyzing meanings of games. in part he wanted to elevate the legitimacy of the study of children’s games and children’s folklore in general (see the “triviality barrier” article, below), but he also realized that the scientific approach would require the comparative study of games across cultures to see the ways cultures shape children’s games and play. to accomplish his goals and bring other scholars into the circle of those studying children’s games, brian’s strategy in the “formal analysis” article is to describe, categorize, and analyze a single game called “bar the door” in new zealand, but going by many names in the united states (perhaps “red rover” is the most familiar to american children). brian describes the game briefly and then proceeds to analyze its play, proposing a system of “ludic analysis” based on five major game features: (1) the game challenge, (2) player participation, (3) player performance, (4) the spatial scene, and (5) the temporal structure. i will not reproduce his analysis here, but i do want to point to a few important points he introduces in his analysis. first, brian’s analysis of this “central person game” (where one player has the power over many others, a central feature of “chase and capture” games like tag) shows his interest in the ways children’s games reflect their lives in cfr_2015_r.indb 28 11/22/15 10:41 am mechling sutton-smith’s five easy pieces 29 formal and informal institutions, in this case their lives in families and schools, where children have little power in relation to the “central persons” (parents and teachers) in charge of those institutions. the reader might think that brian’s point is that games are “anticipatory socialization” for their adult roles, and there is some of that here, but brian goes beyond what he would consider a narrowly reductionist, sociobiological understanding of the functions of play. brian always attributed more agency to children than do most adults, including many scholars who study children’s lives. no, brian’s linking the “game challenge” in central person games like “bar the door” to their lives in institutions is in the service of understanding how children experience the game. even when describing and analyzing the formal structures of a game and the meanings of that structure, brian never considers the analysis complete (or even adequate) without some effort to understand the experience of the game. the second thing to notice in this article is brian’s attention (this early, 1959) to the effects of the mass media on children’s games and folklore. he notes that the earlier animal symbolism and fabulous characters in the play of their games has been replaced (in the postwar era of television) with “modern symbolisms of the mass media” (p. 19). he later picks up this appropriation of mass media by children in his 1981 book, the folkstories of children, and in his commentary on ethnographic observations by his students in preschool and elementary school play settings (e.g., see the “playfighting” article, below). third, brian is ever-attentive to the similarities and differences between the sexes in children’s play and folklore. i discuss his unique book chapter, “the play of girls,” below, but in this 1959 article he observes that the increasing mixing of boy and girls on the playground has meant that girls are as likely as boys to play games like “bar the door” and that the girls sometimes invent “feminine variants” of the game (p. 19). fourth, brian’s portrait of both boys and girls at play far from romanticizes children; in fact, he understands fully that children’s play is sometimes violent, mean, aggressive, obscene, and profane. chasing and capture (tagging) games provide children with the perfect frame (bateson 1972) for expressing aggression, sometimes real aggression but more often stylized aggression (p. 20). the folklore of male friendship groups depends on stylized aggression as the alternative to real aggression, and one of the paradoxes in this stylized aggression in games and play in boys’ folk groups (e.g., rough-and-tumble playfighting) is that the stylized aggression is a signal of closeness and trust. similarly, brian sees value in the stylized fear in the chasing and capture games. “in the game,” he writes, “fear may be experienced and yet it is not limitless. it exists within a controlled setting. the players control the fear, the fear does not control the players” (p. 20). in fact, the play frame of the chase and capture game provides a safe place and time for the child to experiment with power and control; the central person game, for example, temporarily gives power to even the less skilled player (p. 21). in the 1960s brian collaborated with anthropologist john roberts on the crosscultural study of games, a collaboration garry chick discusses in this special issue. using ethnographic evidence and at times the human relations area file, brian and roberts formulated and tested with the available data hypotheses about cfr_2015_r.indb 29 11/22/15 10:41 am sutton-smith’s five easy pieces mechling 30 the ways games (e.g., games of chance, of skill, of strategy, and combinations of these) reflect the cultures represented in the ethnographies (e.g., roberts and sutton-smith 1962). the connection is not simply anticipatory socialization, letting youth play at games that provide skills for their lives as adults in institutions, though there is some of that in the games. the relationship is more complicated. my own example from my work with a boy scout troop at their camp uses the roberts and sutton-smith categories and thesis to understand some of the games the troop played, in particular their “treasure hunt” game and ensuing “nugget auction” at the evening campfire. in my analysis (mechling 2001:254–57) i observed that, although the main message of the boy scout camp activities is the notion that hard work (skill plus strategy) yields success, a message in keeping with the ethos of capitalism, the game of treasure hunt and the nugget auction actually undermined that message by having luck play such a large role in both games. so although the games look like anticipatory socialization preparing the boys for a life in a capitalistic society, the games revealed (and disguised, the value of folklore) an ugly truth about capitalism. it is in folklore, like games, that young people can be schooled in the cultural contradictions of capitalism. ii. brian sutton-smith. 1970. “the psychology of childlore: the triviality barrier.” western folklore 29:1–8. if folklorists studying the play of children and adolescents know any piece of writing by brian, it is probably this 1970 essay, a plea for scholars to take seriously what he calls “childlore.” advanced, industrialist societies like ours tend to value work foremost and play only for its temporary, restorative relief from work (as “recreation”). in such a society, brian argues, “fun” (a main feature of play) is thought to be trivial. work requires a “mature” attitude in contrast with the “immaturity” of play. people in an industrial, competitive culture like ours value instrumental behavior more than expressive behavior. and apparently so do scholars of play, argues brian, in that those scholars tend to emphasize the functionalist interpretation of the instrumental behavior—play as anticipatory socialization for what skills the adult will need in that society, for example—rather than add to their analysis an understanding of the expressive pleasure of play. the child’s play is “autotelic,” self-sustaining, fun (p. 4). a developmental psychologist himself, brian makes the surprising complaint that psychology has “little to offer” in understanding these expressive dimensions of play. the humanists are the scholars who understand and appreciate the joyful, expressive, autotelic dimensions of play (p. 4). for this reason, brian insists that the study of play must be interdisciplinary. there is room for the developmentalists, of course, but the literary scholars, the historians, the art historians, and the humanistic social scientists provide necessary views. actually, brian sees two new (in 1970) areas of psychological research that promise an understanding of expressive behavior—research on creativity, and observational cfr_2015_r.indb 30 11/22/15 10:41 am mechling sutton-smith’s five easy pieces 31 research (in head start and poverty programs) that temper the sociobiological enthusiasms of developmental psychology and show us that “there is no natural and universal language of lore for all children” (p. 5). sociohistorical forces lead to different “expressive formal systems” in childlore (p. 5; see goodwin 1991 for an example of the work by one of his students). to demonstrate the power of an interdisciplinary analysis of the particular influences of culture on childlore, brian offers an example from the work he did with anthropologist john roberts studying children’s games cross-culturally (see above). the example is the game of tick tack toe (pp. 6–8). i shall not reproduce that discussion here but want to note simply that understanding the cultural variants in playing this seemingly simple game, including the gender differences, require perspectives from anthropology and history. iii. brian sutton-smith. 1979. “the play of girls.” in women in context: becoming female, ed. by c. b. kopp and m. kirkpatrick, 228–57. new york: plenum. we have seen in the first two articles discussed here that from his earliest work brian was interested in gender differences in children’s play and childlore. this interest was not unusual among developmental psychologists, but their studies in controlled settings (e.g., schools and labs) spoke only to issues of human development. brian was rare among the developmental psychologists in that he wanted to study children in natural settings, where children exercise a great deal more freedom and agency than they do in classrooms and labs. he wanted to understand children’s lives as much as possible as they were experiencing everyday life, not through the controlled lenses of adults who themselves projected so much upon the children. the scholarly and everyday cultural landscapes of the 1970s saw the rise of feminist theory and its challenge to the generalizations in psychology, history, and other disciplines based on the study of men’s lives. in psychology, perhaps the most influential book coming out of this era was carol gilligan’s in a different voice (1982), in which she sparred with lawrence kohlberg and his characterization of girls as “less mature” than boys in their moral reasoning. not less mature, argued gilligan, just different. the feminist research of the 1970s provided the ideas for the rise of interdisciplinary women’s studies courses and programs in universities. the sociocultural landscape in the u.s. was changing, as well. the social movements of the 1960s challenged the patriarchy. the women’s movement and, after stonewall in 1969, the gay rights movement challenged masculine, heteronormative understandings of gender and sexuality. laws in cities, states, and at the federal level increasingly forbade discrimination based on gender, and although it failed to gain the necessary number of ratifications from state legislatures by the 1979 deadline, the proposed (in 1972) equal rights amendment cfr_2015_r.indb 31 11/22/15 10:41 am sutton-smith’s five easy pieces mechling 32 (“equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the united states or by any state on account of sex”) to the constitution came very close to passing. what did become federal law was title ix of the u.s. education amendments of 1972, a law of significant relevance to the play of girls and young women. title ix forbids discrimination in school activities on the basis of gender, thereby opening to girls and women equal opportunities in organized sports. in many ways title ix is the most important, empowering social experiment in the past forty years, and brian understood that. his 1979 book chapter was published in that new world. in an effort to push the study of play beyond the textual approach and into the realm of context, brian here proposes that “sports themselves can be used as the metaphor for preliminary thinking about the context of play,” and his communication approach to sports requires seeing the roles and performances of the “quadralogue”: coach, player, co-player, and spectators (p. 231). brian then proceeds to review the current research on the play of girls using this “sportive theory of play.” here is what i find so significant about this chapter by brian, apart from its being the first comprehensive survey of what we know about the play of girls (we need another). first, brian shows how the arc of the history of girls’ play is toward bringing it closer to boys’ play. the games of girls shifted in the twentieth century from a focus on themes of status and marriage to themes of egalitarian competition (p. 233). title ix accelerated that change in the 1970s, notes brian, as girls and young women have access to team sports previously played exclusively by boys and men. note that brian added an “epilogue” to this chapter just as he was preparing it for publication, an epilogue that discusses some research by one of his students on the advice manuals for professional women in the 1970s, advice manuals that recognize that one of the goals of title ix was to give girls and young women a socialization in play and games closely resembling the socialization experiences boys and young men bring to the professional, bureaucratic, patriarchal organizations the women were entering in increasing numbers in the 1970s (pp. 251–54). second, brian’s survey of girls’ play and games (always drawing comparisons with boys’ play and games) introduces ethnic differences as another source of variation. brian’s chapter takes advantage of the new attention to ethnicity and social class in the 1960s and 1970s. oddly missing from this chapter is the attention brian pays elsewhere to the influences of the mass-media (especially television) on girls’ play and games. he and his graduate students at the university of pennsylvania were paying attention to this influence at the same time (e.g., sutton-smith 1981). it is important to recognize before leaving the discussion of this important chapter that brian mentored a good many female graduate students and young female scholars, and they, in turn, have provided us with the close ethnography of children’s play, especially the play of games and girls, which only female researchers can accomplish. i have in mind scholars like diana kelly-byrne (1989), linda hughes (1993; 1995), marjorie goodwin (1991; 2006), and felicia r. mcmahon (2007), among others. cfr_2015_r.indb 32 11/22/15 10:41 am mechling sutton-smith’s five easy pieces 33 iv. brian sutton-smith and diana kelly-byrne. 1984. “the masks of play.” in the masks of play, ed. by brian sutton-smith and diana kelly-byrne, 184– 99. new york: leisure press. i return to this essay more often than to any other by sutton-smith. a fan of bateson’s work, i also recognize that bateson’s idea of the play frame and its paradoxes betrays an uncharacteristically romantic view from someone whose scientific credentials and rhetoric do not really prepare the reader to see that romantic notion. but sutton-smith, also a fan of bateson’s theory of play and fantasy, saw early the romantic streak in bateson. goffman’s appropriation in frame analysis (1974) of bateson’s notion of frame recognizes what bateson apparently did not—namely, that not all players are in the frame voluntarily, that players bring to the frame different power, and that some players can use the play frame for ulterior motives. hence, goffman argues that all social reality is constructed, maintained, and repaired using the same communication devices as one finds in the confidence game, a social constructionist view that i have embraced and used since reading berger and luckmann (1967) in the early 1970s. sutton-smith and kelly-byrne’s (hereafter s-s/k-b) way of making this point is to provide a typology and examples of the ways people mask other motives with the play frame, as when a sibling uses the “i was only playing” defense when using the play frame to hurt a sibling more than necessary in a game. i have found the idea of the masks of play, including the “deep play” geertz writes about, endlessly useful in my writing (e.g., about deep play by warriors and veterans—see mechling 2012; wallis and mechling, in press). on re-reading the essay for this occasion, though, i have seen some things that are there—some things that have always been there—that have slipped my mind. for instance, s-s/k-b take a gentle swipe at all the authors in the volume they edited, a volume of papers first delivered at a taasp meeting. it seems to s-s/k-b that despite all the research on play presented at the conference and in this volume, the “most general strategy for not studying child play seems to be to write articles on their functions and pretty much to ignore the detailed moment by moment description of the experience itself as if we already know what that experience is” (1984:186). ouch. that sentence summarizes beautifully and accusingly the purely functionalist approach to play, a critique s-s repeatedly made throughout his career. he did not deny that play has functions, but why (he asks here and elsewhere) stand so far away from play that the scholar cannot attempt to express the inexpressible, the pure joy and fun that the player experiences when entering that state of flow described by csikszentmihalyi (1975)? amidst all the analysis in the ambiguity of play (1997), brian’s point in that book is that is that we need to understand that play is not merely instrumental, that it is expressive, consummatory, joyful, and fun. this is why brian appreciated so much the research that somehow approached the child’s experience of play, not an easy task for adults trying to access the “experience” a child is having while playing. cfr_2015_r.indb 33 11/22/15 10:41 am sutton-smith’s five easy pieces mechling 34 it may seem contradictory that, immediately after making the point that a functionalist analysis of play may be a necessary but not sufficient moment in understanding play, s-s/k-b begin their catalog of ways play masks motives and ways other frames mask play, a “function” of play. but s-s/k-b are alert to the pleasures of these masked activities, most of which boil down to the pleasure of exercising power in a situation. “children would rather argue the game than play it. the joy is the power of control rather than the play” (1984:190). note how between brian’s earlier interest (with john roberts) in the structures and functions of games and the 1984 “masks” essay, brian has come to see more interesting the pleasures of power children experience in playing and arguing the game. the example s-s/k-b use in the section of this essay on “masks for power” is childhood initiation rites, a topic of great usefulness to me as i have explored folk initiations in scouting and in fraternities and sports teams (mechling 2008b; 2009; see also bronner 2006; 2012). usually the players in children’s folk initiations, both those being initiated and those doing the initiation, are enjoying the event, though a few of those doing the hazing or initiating may be using the ritual or play frame as a mask for other motives. s-s/k-b recognize that a great deal of the power play in children’s and adolescents’ folk initiations puts forbidden parts of the body and taboo functions (urination, for example) at the center of the invented initiation, just as they are in much of children’s lore (mechling 1986). brian understood that children’s lore is profane and “dirty”; i think that is why he appreciated my first taasp paper on the game of poison pit played by the boys scouts i studied, a game involving urine and references to menstruation (mechling 1980; 2001). when geertz (1983) outlined the qualities of “common sense,” a type of knowledge deeply implicated in the study of folk ideas and folklore, he added “earthy” after a list that includes “naturalness,” “practicalness,” and “immethodicalness.” “earthiness” is geertz’s (1983:93) polite term for transgressive, profane, obscene, and taboo. as far as brian was concerned, if the scholar clings to the romantic view of the child and ignores the fact that children enjoy forbidden, obscene, profane, and cruel play, that scholar has no hope of understanding the child’s experience of play. in my own work i have found very useful the s-s/k-b discussion of play as a “mask for danger,” recognizing the thrill and pleasure of risk-taking. they make room for what geertz (1973) calls “deep play,” a phrase originated by jeremy bentham for play in which the stakes are so high (loss of fortune, health, or life) that the play is irrational from the utilitarian standpoint. s-s/k-b had their college students give accounts of their own experiences with dangerous, “deep play,” and the authors reproduce several examples (college students continue the patterns of adolescent play). even without the irrational risk, “dark play” (with death, for example) carries pleasure. i see this in the sorts of vernacular photography (snapshots) by warriors (mechling 2012) and in the accounts of dark play in warriors’ memoirs and fiction (wallis and mechling, in press). s-s/k-b, near the end of this chapter, come back to their critique of the scholars of play, and their surprising turn is to accuse even bateson of creating a metamask. put briefly, they focus on bateson’s point (in his “theory of play and fantasy,” the foundational essay on play frames) that “the peculiarity of play … cfr_2015_r.indb 34 11/22/15 10:41 am mechling sutton-smith’s five easy pieces 35 is that it is a mixture of primary and secondary process (s-s and k-b 1984:195; bateson 1972:185). s-s/k-b fault bateson for dwelling only on the secondary (conscious) process of play’s psychodynamics while neglecting the primary (unconscious) process: because his [bateson’s] own concern was largely with communication and metacommunication, he has made it easier to talk about the logic of play than about its illogic. unwittingly, he has contributed to the idealization and bowdlerization of play, which has been a part of the twentieth century’s “scientific” approach to play. (sutton-smith and kelly-byrne 1984:196) the corrective prescribed by s-s/k-b is to bring to the analysis of play both “bateson’s paradox” and “freud’s disguise,” to see the ways play both is like a dream (the title of bateson’s essay is “toward a theory of play and fantasy,” after all) and not like a dream; play both is about reality and not about reality (p. 196). the authors propose that we who study play “combine the freudian view of ambivalence with the batesonian attitude to paradox” (p. 197), and they suggest the neologism play as paraguise to capture the “scientific unidealized study of play” they hope for. v. sutton-smith, b., j. gerstmyer, and a. meckley. 1988. “playfighting as folkplay amongst preschool children.” western folklore 47 (3):161–76. when teaching and writing about bateson’s frame theory of play and fantasy, i have always found playfighting to be the best example of framed communication where the messages exchanged within the frame (ruled by the metamessage “this is play”) do not mean what they would mean outside the frame. most recently, john paul wallis and i found in bateson’s paradoxical playfighting frame the key to understanding why soldiers and marines in combat zones engage in rough-andtumble (r&t) playfighting, a surprising example of deep play when played in an active combat zone (wallis and mechling, in press). as brian and his co-authors note, playfighting has been of interest to scholars of play for a long time, but what brian’s team of graduate students brings to the topic is access to philadelphia preschools and the ability to record actual instances of playfighting in “natural settings,” in context. brian and his co-authors plunge into the 1980s debate about “war play” and whether children should be allowed to play with toy guns, a debate that rages today (mechling 2008a). this is a topic of great concern to parents and teachers, sometimes to politicians, and to the general public. the death of a twelve-year-old boy, tamir rice, in cleveland on march 2, 2015, shot dead almost instantly by a police officer arriving on the scene and taking the boy’s pellet gun for a real one, is only one among many tragedies and near-tragedies involving children’s play cfr_2015_r.indb 35 11/22/15 10:41 am sutton-smith’s five easy pieces mechling 36 with toy guns. so the debate brian and his students entered in the 1980s is far from old and far from trivial. what brian’s team of graduate students can contribute to this debate is actual ethnographic description and analysis of children’s playfighting. brian gave his student researchers two tasks in their fieldwork in the preschools: “to look for the relationships between playfighting and aggression and for any distinctions between them, and to look for the influences of television and of the teachers upon the children’s play” (p. 164). with this assignment, the researchers worked in nine preschools, taking notes on the play of two hundred children aged three to five years. as in my discussion of the first four “easy pieces,” i shall not summarize the findings here except to say what i find so useful in the article for my own work. first, boys’ drive to play with guns is almost impossible to extinguish, even in those schools (e.g., university-related schools and quaker schools) where the antigun, anti-wartoy policies were most strict (p. 169–70). the power of that drive obviously is something scholars and policymakers need to be able to understand. second, most of the aggression in these playfighting games is stylized aggression, often cloaked literally in the folk-contrived costumes suggesting superheroes and fantasy characters the children observe on television and in movies (p. 168). while the authors do not explicitly make the points i draw from this observation, i want to make the connections here. i concur with jones (2002) that children need early experience with stylized aggression, especially as an alternative to real aggression. in fact, brian’s students discovered cases where the children actually controlled and contained the real aggression of a player by making him abide by the rules of the fantasy play and stylized aggression (p. 174). third, and still on this topic of stylized aggression, the researchers found what was to them a surprising degree of folk-imposed sex segregation, and it was primarily (by far) the boys who participated in the playfighting (p. 171). looking back at brian’s “the play of girls” and his brief discussion of the changes wrought by title ix, one wonders where and how girls and young women acquire the skills of stylized aggression they will need to perform in organizational cultures that still resemble the culture of the male friendship group as honed on playing field. fourth, i value the ethnographic confirmation in this work that television programs aimed at kids clearly influence the playfighting. and the fieldwork observations should put to rest (but they won’t—this is a resistant belief) adults’ worried view that aggression and violence in children’s television programs results in real violence and aggression in children. what the ethnographic evidence shows is what i found to be true in the boy scout troop i studied, namely, that children and youth appropriate from mass-mediated, popular culture those symbols and narrative themes they find useful in their own folk cultures, their own folkplay. put differently, those adults who still believe in the direct influence of popular culture on children fail to appreciate the true agency of children and youth. and the only way to appreciate fully that agency is to observe carefully and for prolonged periods of time the actual ways children play. cfr_2015_r.indb 36 11/22/15 10:41 am mechling sutton-smith’s five easy pieces 37 conclusion the most recent of the sutton-smith “five easy pieces” i have recommended here was published in 1988, very nearly thirty years ago. brian continued writing through those years, and luckily for us he wrote a substantial memoir about his life and work in 2008 for the newly launched american journal of play. that memoir, “play theory: a personal journey and new thoughts” (2008), recounts the phases of his thinking about play and sketches his journey from naughty play in his new zealand youth to the project he was working on in his last days, a book that was to be titled play as emotional survival, ideas which he presented in his keynote address at a tasp conference in 2007 at the strong national museum of play (which holds the sutton-smith papers). in that address brian explained that (as the handout outline for his address puts it) the address and book would be “my response to my deconstruction of play theories without providing an alternative in the ambiguity of play, 1997.” what is clear from brian’s lecture is that he was drawn more and more to a darwinian explanation for the power and durability of the play instinct. neuroscientist antonio damasio’s 2005 book, descartes’s error (see also damasio 1999) gave brian scientific support for his belief that within us is a dualism, a struggle between the “primary emotions” of fear, anger, happiness, and so on, all expressed in play one way or the other, and the “secondary emotions” (pride, envy, guilt, shame), which “act as basic play regulators from rules to referees” (keynote lecture abstract 2007). play’s evolutionary role, argues brian, is “to bond all of these opposites (a synergy) into this new form of behavior” (keynote lecture abstract 2007). in evolutionary terms, as animals evolved from the “reflexivity” of reptiles to the “reflectivity” of mammals, play emerges as a behavior that enables mammals “to balance these two adaptive systems [reflexivity and reflectivity] without choosing the wrong one on any given occasion” (keynote lecture abstract 2007). play is “an alternative theatric synthesis of reflexive and reflective response systems (which is supported in neural terms by the interaction between amygdala and frontal lobes)” (keynote lecture handout 2007). in terms of my own research, for example, the stylized aggression in playfighting among male warriors in combat zones provides a “theatric synthesis” of the two adaptive systems, reflexivity and reflectivity, under stressful circumstances (wallis and mechling, in press). brian did not live to complete this work, but he left us enough of a trail for us to follow him toward a theory of play that incorporates the most recent thinking in evolution and brain science. in the 2008 article he called this his “third theory of play” (the first being “play as a viability variable” and the second being “culturally relative play forms”) and he outlined the theory in terms of four “adaptive layers” (2008:113–17). it is up to us to see where brian’s third theory of play leads us in understanding the play experience in children, adolescents, and adults. in all of brian’s work, then, from early to late, you can find the distinct perspective he began with, i.e., a commitment to understanding children’s play as experienced by the children, a firm confidence that children’s experiences can be studied scientifically without losing the magic of their play, a respect for cfr_2015_r.indb 37 11/22/15 10:41 am sutton-smith’s five easy pieces mechling 38 the agency of children, a refusal to romanticize the child, an understanding that children can be mean and obscene and profane, a commitment to championing children’s right to free play, and an insistence that functionalist analysis of play must be complemented by analysis that understands the autotelic nature of play. sadly, what has changed is the flow of ethnographic work directed by and inspired by brian. it is difficult to see whether the decline in ethnographic studies of the folk cultures of children and youth is due to waning interest by scholars or to the cultural and legal difficulties of studying children in “natural settings” rather than in classrooms and laboratories, controlled settings subject to the governmental and institutional rules for studying “human subjects.” there are occasional bright spots, like clark’s in a younger voice (2011), and clark shares brian’s views of how to study children (see also clark 1995). in gatherings of folklorists and others who know the unique value of ethnographic study of children’s lives, though, scholars often exchange stories and laments about the difficulty of getting their university irbs (institutional review boards—those committees that approve research with human subjects) to even understand the nature of qualitative research on children in natural settings, much less approve the research. usually staffed by natural scientists and social scientists who take seriously the word “scientist” in their field and only rarely staffed by the lone humanist or two, most irbs see our fieldwork with children as unscientific and maybe dangerous. indeed, another genre of stories shared by male folklorists who have attempted to study children in the natural settings of playgrounds and neighborhood streets and beaches is the “the time mothers on the playground called the police when i was trying to talk with their kids” story. parents’ concerns are understandable, if overblown (see best 1993), but a combination of the difficulty of getting a research project approved by the irb and then, if approved, the difficulty of getting adults in those natural settings to understand and accept the research methods of fieldwork with children has meant that many folklorists find it much easier to abandon the ethnography of children’s lives altogether. this is a great loss. brian’s grand project, passed down to his students and to those like-minded colleagues who knew him, and the principles guiding his project are in danger of being extinguished. i do not have a solution to the irb problem or to the problems in american culture that nurture fear for and over-protection of children (e.g., witness the recent debate over “free range children” parenting practices and the actual legal trouble for parents who let their kids roam free). we will always have our own children and grandchildren and nieces and nephews to study and write about, but that “sample” is limited and skewed. i wish, for example, that we had enough fieldwork based on the play of girls in formal and informal settings that someone will write an updated version of “the play of girls.” brian never accepted the ways adults (parents, teachers, coaches, politicians) project their fears onto children or the many ways adults try to contain and control the play of children. my wish is that this very personal review of five of the essays by brian that i return to again and again will recruit readers to brian’s “project,” that there are enough sprites or even sprites-in-training reading this that we will cfr_2015_r.indb 38 11/22/15 10:41 am mechling sutton-smith’s five easy pieces 39 conspire somehow to continue brian’s work, even against the bureaucratic and cultural forces against us. for the children. works cited bateson, gregory. 1972. “a theory of play and fantasy.” in steps to an ecology of mind, 177–93. new york: ballantine. berger, peter l., and thomas luckmann. 1967. the social construction of reality: a treatise on the sociology of knowledge. new york: anchor books. best, joel. 1993. threatened children: rhetoric and concern about child victims. chicago: university of chicago press. bronner, simon j. 1988. american children’s folklore. little rock, ar: august house. ___________. 2006. crossing the line: violence, play, and drama in naval equator traditions. amsterdam, nl: amsterdam university press. ________. 2011. explaining traditions: folk behavior in modern culture. lexington: university press of kentucky. ________. 2012. campus traditions: folklore from the old-time college to the modern mega-university. jackson: university press of mississippi. clark, cindy dell. 1995. flights of fancy, leaps of faith: children’s myths in contemporary america. chicago, il: university of chicago press. ________. 2011. in a younger voice: doing child-centered qualitative research. new york: oxford university press. csikszentmihalyi, mihaly. 1975. beyond boredom and anxiety: experiencing flow in work and play. san francisco, ca: jossey-bass. damasio, antonio. 1999. the feeling of what happens. boston: houghton mifflin harcourt. ________. 2005. descartes’ error: emotion, reason, and the human brain. new york: penguin. geertz, clifford. 1973. “deep play: notes on the balinese cockfight.” in the interpretation of cultures: selected essays by clifford geertz, 412–53. new york: basic books. ________. 1983. “common sense as a cultural system.” in local knowledge: further essays in interpretative anthropology, 73–93. new york: basic books. gilligan, carol. 1982. in a different voice. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. goffman, erving. 1974. frame analysis: an essay on the organization of experience. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. goodwin, marjorie harness. 1991. he-said-she-said: talk as social organization among black children. bloomington: indiana university press. ________. 2006. the hidden life of girls: games of stance, status, and exclusion. hoboken, nj: wiley-blackwell. hughes, linda a. 1993. “‘you have to do it with style’: girls’ games and girls’ gaming.” in feminist theory and the study of folklore, edited by s. t. hollis, l. pershing, and m. j. young, 130–48. urbana: university of illinois press. cfr_2015_r.indb 39 11/22/15 10:41 am sutton-smith’s five easy pieces mechling 40 ________. 1995. “children’s gaming.” in children’s folklore: a sourcebook, edited by b. sutton-smith, j. mechling, t. johnson, and f, mcmahon, 93–119. logan: utah state university press. jones, gerard. 2002. killing monsters: why children need fantasy, super heroes, and make-believe violence. new york: basic books. kelly-byrne, diana. 1989. a child’s play life: an ethnographic study. new york: teacher’s college press. kopp, claire b., ed., with martha kirkpatrick. 1979. becoming female: perspectives on development. new york: plenum press mcmahon, felicia r. 2007. not just child’s play: emerging tradition and the lost boys of sudan. oxford: university press of mississippi. mcneil, w. k. 1988. “introduction.” in american children’s folklore, by simon j. bronner, 11–23. little rock, ar: august house publishers. annotated edition. mechling, jay. 1980. “sacred and profane play in the boy scouts of america.” in play and culture, edited by helen b. schwartzman, 206–13. west point, ny: leisure press. ________. 1986. “children’s folklore.” in folk groups and folklore genres: an introduction, edited by elliott oring, 91–120. logan: utah state university press. ________. 2001. on my honor: boy scouts and the making of american youth. chicago, il: university of chicago press. ________. 2008a. “gun play.” american journal of play 1 (2):192–209. ________. 2008b. “paddling and the repression of the feminine in male hazing.” thymos: journal of boy studies 2 (1):60–75. ________. 2009. “is hazing play?” in transactions at play, edited by cindy dell clark, 45–61. lanham, md: university press of america. ________. 2012. soldier snaps. in warrior ways: explorations in modern military folklore, edited by eric a. eliason and tad tuleja, 222–47. logan: utah state university press. roberts, john m., and brian sutton-smith. 1962. “child training and game involvement.” ethnology 1 (2):166–85. sutton-smith, brian. 1973. the folkgames of children. austin: university of texas press. ________. 1981. the folkstories of children. philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press. ________. 1982. a history of children’s play: new zealand, 1840-1950. philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press. ________. 1997. the ambiguity of play. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. ________. 2007. “play as emotional survival: keynote address abstract.” ipa-tasp joint annual conference, april 27. ________. 2008. “play theory: a personal journey and new thoughts.” american journal of play 1 (1):80–122. sutton-smith, brian, jay mechling, thomas w. johnson, and felicia r. mcmahon. 1995. children’s folklore: a sourcebook. new york: garland publishing, inc. wallis, john paul, and jay mechling. in press. “devil dogs and dog piles.” western folklore 74 (3), forthcoming. cfr_2015_r.indb 40 11/22/15 10:41 am cfr_2015_part7 cfr_2015_part8 cfr_2015_part9 cfr_2015_part10 7 help! i’m a feminist but my daughter is a “princess fanatic”! disney’s transformation of twenty-first-century girls1 alisa clapp-itnyre as i began this paper, my then four-year-old daughter, annetta, sat singing “part of your world” from disney’s little mermaid, playing with her pocahontas barbie doll, wearing her cinderella dress, and planning to watch disney’s snow white for the umpteenth time that night ... and i wondered where i had gone wrong. from dolls to lamps, bikes and bathing suits, underpants and toothpaste, the “princess theme” is everywhere. disney is cleverly pulling together all its heroines from earlier film classics — snow white, cinderella, and sleeping beauty — and adding the latest versions — belle, jasmine, ariel, now even tiana — to create a whole world populated by women whose only desire is to marry a prince. kids now attend “princess” ice shows in costume and throw “princess” birthday parties — while parents (like me) pay for all the souvenirs and party supplies. is there anything that goes beyond consumerism and sexist fairy tales in the disney formula? i am not the only scholar-parent asking this question and, drawing upon the published record as well as my own very “intimate” knowledge of disney’s princesses, i will consider in this paper the transformation of girls today into “sleeping beauties,” “material girls,” and potentially even “radical feminists” after having been “touched” by the disney spell. ironically, the princess phenomenon started with a disney ice show which disney consumer products president andy mooney attended in 2000 and there witnessed, as he says, “thousands of young girls dressed in costumes, mulan and snow white. it was like a rock concert for little princesses” (qtd. in wloszczyna 2003)). he was inspired to combine the “princess” heroines together into one brand, a “pretty controversial” move, he says, given how these princesses had only ever existed “in their own mythological worlds. […] but young girls and mothers voted with their dollars. they believed in the unifying attributes of the disney princesses” (qtd. in wloszczyna 2003). geared towards little girls, three to five, this line has created a financial explosion. between 2002 and 2005 the princess brand grew a whopping 300% (business wire), and has now overtaken both disney’s winnie-the-pooh and mickey mouse himself as their most popular brand (arkoff 2009). since its inception, disney princess merchandise has garnered $3.4 billion in profits (arkoff 2009). today it is the largest “global girls franchise” (business wire) with markets in ninety countries (arkoff 2009) , including russia, china, and india (millard 2006). three of the ten top-selling videos around the world are princess films (beauty and the beast, aladdin, and pocahontas; artz 2004, 117); five of the top six disney videos ever released have been princess films (arkoff 2009).2 raves entertainment editor for sweet sixteen magazine, vicki arkoff, “moms embrace it because, in a time when little girls are maturing at a much faster pace, disney princess lets little girls remain children for a little longer time. disney aims to empower girls with the wholesome stories about virtues of integrity, honor, discovery, friendship, and love” (2009). “princess fanatic” clapp-itnyre 8 scholarly opinion, on the other hand, has been more wary of the intense consumerism and social implications of disney tales. the original “princess” tales (snow white, cinderella, and sleeping beauty) have especially come under intense scrutiny. from frances clarke sayers in 1965, kay stone in 1975, jill may in 1981, to jack zipes in 1995, all have regretted disney’s distortions of folk literature.3 as jack zipes has said, “there is something sad in the manner in which disney ‘violated’ the literary genre of the fairy tale and packaged his versions in his name through the merchandising of books, toys, clothing, and records” (1995, 40). kay stone, in her classic “things walt disney never told us,” further pointed out the feminist implications: “the only tests of most [disney] heroines require nothing beyond what they are born with: a beautiful face, tiny feet, or a pleasing temperament. […] [yet] to judge from the 186 heroines found in five major angleamerican folktale collections, oral narrators do not confine themselves to passive princesses” (1975, 45). i will divide my own examination into three sections, examining first the “princess” movies under walt disney’s own direction (snow white, cinderella, sleeping beauty); the second “golden age” of disney in the 1990s under eisner and “team disney” which began with the little mermaid (1989) (i will not include aladdin in this discussion since it is mainly aladdin’s story, not jasmine’s); and then the phase we are experiencing right now in the 21st century, when disney is regurgitating its “masterpieces” through products and re-releases, while apparently also trying to inaugurate another decade of princess films with the princess and the frog (2009) and tangled (anticipated late 2010). within each era, i will analyze 1) the narratives, 2) the images, and 3) the songs that indoctrinate and influence successive generations. i do believe, along with many scholars, that disney’s attempts in the 1990s to become more politically correct were fairly successful and can become a positive model for our young girls. the other eras, the 1930s through 50s, due to patriarchal bias, and now our own, due to crass consumerism, have been less golden. “someday my prince will come”: princesses of the ‘walt era’ perhaps disney’s princess theme seems so engrained within the imagination and corporation of disney because its first full-length feature was a princess film: snow white (1937). marie claire simonelli feels that “disney breathed new life into a genre that had long been forgotten” with his films snow white and cinderella (1999, 69). from snow white, to cinderella, to sleeping beauty, early “princesses” were undeniably sweet, patient, and obedient girls whose only emotions ranged from extreme happiness to utter dejection.4 it is likely due to these fairly dull heroines that the narratives containing them so quickly move to other characters and stories: it is indeed a breath of fresh air when the dwarves and talking mice arrive on the scene. artz even argues that sleeping beauty failed at the box office because it was the only disney film “without an animal sidekick” (2004, 121). the plots involving the heroines are simplistic and standard fairy-tale narrative, with heroines portrayed as “helpless, passive victims who need protection” (henke, umble, and smith 1996, 234); they receive this protection from princes, fairies, clapp-itnyre “princess fanatic” 9 even male mice. as m. thomas inge sums up, “[snow white] accurately reflected the general public attitude toward the place of women in society [of the 1930s] and continued a long tradition in western culture of portraying women as passive vessels of innocence and virtue, although [he adds] disney’s snow white shows a good deal more spunk than most fairy tale princesses” (2004, 141).5 in terms of image, early princesses were, obviously, stereotypically slender, beautiful, and elegant, modeled after current stars and icons of the time. snow white “was envisioned as a ‘janet gaynor’ type” (inge 141); “under the peasant costume,” writes rebecca anne c. dorozario, “snow white is a 1920s/’30s starlet with a flapper’s haircut, rosebud mouth, and highpitched warble” (2004, 38), yet drawn to be about fourteen. cinderella may look older, but, like snow white, even she looks amazingly elegant even under the most impoverished of circumstances.6 finally there is sleeping beauty who, as dorozario points out, is “a prototype baby boomer,” walking about barefoot, crushed when she misses her date with a boy. like her barbie doll image, which came out in 1959, too, she represents “the idealized american teen” of the 1960s (2004, 38). these are the images still being pushed and packaged as seen on the re-released vhs and dvd covers. my special interest is in the songs that accompany these firms, which carry ideological meaning more strongly than any dialogue because viewers still sing the songs well after they have stopped watching the films. who does not know the song “someday my prince will come” with or without watching snow white, after all? my four-year-old daughter did and pointed out an error in one of scholarly articles i was reading to her which erroneously credited sleeping beauty with the song! little girls are bombarded with “happily-ever-messages” even from the first moments of snow white, which, in fact, opens with six songs in just the first thirty minutes. as simonelli writes, “songs carried the central themes of the stories, conveyed the personality of the characters who sang them, and finally helped unify the whole works through musical themes” (1999, 65). the words exude romantic ideals now parodied and problematic by today’s standards: “someday my prince will come … and away to his castle we’ll go. to be happy forever, i know … and the birds will sing and wedding bells will ring. someday when dreams come true.” as journalist jami bernard described in 1993, at the film’s re-release, the song is “eminently hummable, ennobling the virtues of passivity and prefigure 1. annetta as belle, age three. photograph by alisa clapp-itnyre. “princess fanatic” clapp-itnyre 10 determined happy endings. […] that song sets up little girls for a lifetime of feverish romantic expectations that don’t easily mix with the jungle out there that is the modern dating scene” (qtd. in inge 2004, 141). these songs suggest more potent influence on little girls since it is their tunes and words which little girls remember long after viewing the film itself. cinderella is especially known for its songs and had academy award nominations for best musical score and best song (bibbidi-bobbidy-boo; o’brien 168).7 “a dream is a wish your heart makes” could be a complex statement about abject poverty and how to face it: “in dreams you will lose your heartaches. whatever you wish for, you keep. have faith in your dreams and someday, your rainbow will come smiling through. no matter how your heart is grieving, if you keep on believing the dream that you wish will come true.” cinderella uses aesthetics to escape the reality of her life though, like snow white, cinderella lacks any motivation to change her and others’ poor circumstances: note that the only time she shows any kind of anger is in this song--to the clock for waking her up: “o that clock! killjoy! i hear you! come on, get up, you say. time to start another day. even he orders me around. well, there’s one thing: they can’t stop me from dreaming.” it is interesting that this appears to be the only time cinderella gets angry, yet she reverts to dreaming as escape. the male-identified clock further is significant; cinderella is living under patriarchal rule. as naomi wood writes, “cinderella’s challenge over the course of the movie is to hold on to her dreams … [but she learns that] all wishes have to be earned by obedience to the dream-fulfilling authorities who reward good behavior and innocent faith. […] her acceptance and promotion of patriarchal values […] provide the justification for the fulfillment of her dream” (1996, 37-8). her relationship with the prince is given very little film space, limited to just the dorisday-like ballad “so this is love,” a duet in which, significantly, the prince only echoes cinderella throughout. this, and a similar love duet from sleeping beauty based on the tchaikovsky ballet score (“i know you! i walked with you once upon a dream”) are significant not only in that men share the songs with the women (a trend dropped in 1990s films) but also in reinforcing the concept of “dreaming,” taking young women’s minds away from realistic problems and relationships, and letting “fate” work its magic. figure 2. annetta as snow white, age three, at a disney ice show with “princess” friends: andrea pegg, madelyn brunton, and natalie pegg. photograph by alisa clapp-itnyre. clapp-itnyre “princess fanatic” 11 “i want so much more than they’ve got planned”: princesses by ‘team disney’ after walt disney’s death in 1966, the walt disney company, led by family members who often lacked business savvy, began to flaunder (o’brien 1996, 168). churning out simplistic, “cutesy” films like the fox and the hound (1981), disney began to lose money and viewers. by 1984, disney stockholders brought in new leaders from other studios, with michael eisner from paramount as chairman of the board (o’brien 1996, 169). termed “team disney,” this committee led by eisner, determined to return to disney’s very successful fairy-tale adaptations of earlier years.8 a number of recent critics are willing to praise “team disney’s” attempts to rectify gender and cultural biases of past films: “[l]ater films shift from simple stories of passive, young virgins in conflict with evil, mature women to more complex narratives about rebellion, exploration, and danger” according to henke, umble, and smith (1996, 234). two sociological studies of disney films (hoerrner; towbin et al.) both find that, though not completely free of gender stereotyping, recent films show stronger women “with problem-solving abilities and actions on a more equal footing with their male peers” (hoerrner 1996, 225). not that the little mermaid (1989) was any immediate break-through; regina bendix, in “seashell bra and happy end,” argues that “the little mermaid follows the same formula disney created with his snow white adaptation” (1993, 289). admittedly, ariel is now spunky and feisty but channels this towards obtaining a man, at great cost: as henke, umble, and smith write, “little wonder […] that alarms sound for feminists concerned with the psychological development of girls and women’s sense of self when ariel literally sacrifices her voice” (1996, 237). disney makes this condition more sexist than in anderson; note ursula’s quips such as “it’s she who holds her tongue who gets a man.” leading a barrage of critics,9 roberta trites, in her 1991 article, concluded, “the movie depicts women as either self-effacing or evil, incapable of creating their own responsible power without either depending on men or stealing power from them. thus, disney’s interpretation of anderson’s story perpetuates sexist values by teaching those values to a new generation” (152). some critics found “team disney’s” next production, beauty and the beast (1991), to be “the same old story, a romance plot that robs female characters of self-determination and individuality,” to quote june cummins (1995, 22). others, myself included, found that the film really did break new ground in greatly submerging the fairy-tale-romance ending almost to an afterthought. additionally, the agency accorded to belle is ground-breaking: she “exercises more power on her own behalf than previous disney heroines” (henke, umble, and smith 1996, 238) and claims literally twice as much screen time as any other character in the film (thomas in henke, umble and smith 1996, 238). belle resists societal pressures by engaging in reading, dreaming beyond “provincial” norms, rejecting the town suitor, and even defying the beast himself. as henke, umble, and smith explain, “no victim, belle sets the terms for the bargains she makes. in this sense, she exercises more power on her own behalf than previous disney heroines. […] she preserves her own options […] [and] by freeing her father from the beast’s “princess fanatic” clapp-itnyre 12 prison, becoming a prisoner herself, and saving the beast from the wolves, [s] he holds their futures in her hands” (1996, 239). in stark contrast to those lightlyglossed-over relationships of the early princess films, “it offers to viewers a model for intimacy which presumes that both partners must seek wholeness of self before either can find wholeness in relationship,” according to susan z. swan (350), with belle choosing a man “who wants the same things [books and intellect], [thus] symbolically [… ] marrying an aspect of herself” (ross 2004, 63). i am pleased to say that my daughter annetta’s first princess favorites were, in fact, belle and pocahontas. acknowledging that there has been a large outcry especially from native americans and cultural critics against pocahontas (1995),10 from a strictly feminist perspective, i still do appreciate “team disney” portraying a minority heroine who shows even greater personal risk in “saving her man” than even ariel or belle and who, in other ways, goes against the grain. forget that we know from the historical record that pocahontas in fact married someone else and migrated to england, or that race relations could not be mitigated by simply one strong person. it is enough, i think, that the last image we see on the screen is of a courageous woman standing alone without a husband but with a mighty purpose to undertake. as henke, umble, and smith write, “our reading of pocahontas implies that she is clearly the most elaborate and complex character in this group of heroines. […] [she is] an adventurous female who […] chooses a destiny other than that of heterosexual romantic fulfillment” (1996, 240-1). “team disney”’s last “princess” movie, mulan (1998), is possibly their best. again i admit that cultural critics have much maligned the film in its huge deviations from traditional renderings of the mulan legend, using clichéd images of the east, and using “streetwise black lingo” through the character of eddy murphy’s mushu character (ma 2003, 151).11 nevertheless, there are important strides here in showing a strong, independent, brave woman whose story, for the most part, does not even rely on a romance plot but is one about martial bravery and quick-thinking as mulan concocts strategies for defeating the huns and rescuing the emperor. in the first instance, she cleverly aims her gun not at one soldier but at a snow-covered to create an avalanche that subdues the entire hun figure 3. annetta as pocahantas, age two, trick-or-treating on halloween. photograph by alisa clapp-itnyre. clapp-itnyre “princess fanatic” 13 army. she then creates a plan to save the emperor when the huns kidnap him and, knowing her resourcefulness by now, the men immediately follow her. many of the strides made in narrative strategy are backed by more politically acceptable physical images. belle and mulan, for instance, reveal fewer curves, and flaunt “untidy” hair which shows rebellion of society’s codes of neat femininity. in fact, mulan is androgynous for most of the movie. of course, the same could not be said for ariel and pocahontas. ariel is barely clothed with small shells to cover her breasts while pocahontas is leggy with hardly any waist, an off-the-shoulder look to show off her voluptuous breasts. dorozario refers to their athleticism, “enact[ing] a shift from the ‘princesses’ of ballet to the ‘heroes’ of sport” (2004, 47) and describes them as moving with “the grace of sportswomen. ariel performs underwater feats and rescues eric from drowning in a storm. […] pocahontas dives off waterfalls, sings a solo while shooting the rapids and duets while running cross-country” (46-7). however, as bean notes, they are “maledefined fantasies of female biological perfection. drawn according to the same impossible dimensions as the barbie doll — or any number of surgically altered hollywood actresses — disney’s heroines all feature tiny waists, large breasts, curvy hips, and sensuous hair” (2003, 55). queries jacquelyn kilpatrick, “would [pocahontas], like barbie, fall over if really given those dimensions?” the simple image of her body threatens to undermine any powerful feminist or ecological message she might promote, kilpatrick writing, “she does sing to john about living naturally in tune with the earth […] but does she have to do it in an off-theshoulder miniskirt?” (1995, 36-7) but the 1990s disney films would still probably have failed had they not been enhanced by incredibly promoted soundtracks. the little mermaid won an oscar for “under the sea”12 while celine dion and peabo bryson’s pop version of “tale as old as time” blared over all radio stations in 1991-2. the “princess” songs from these films now appear in various sing-along and princess collection cd’s, dispersing their ideologies to more and more generations of kids. i find “kiss the girl” masking some dangerous sentiments (“you know she wants it”) with our increased attention to date rape in recent decades. but many of the others, including ariel’s song, “part of your world,” belle’s song, pocahontas’ “just around the river bend,” and “mulan’s “reflection,” are all about a young woman’s sense of confinement under patriarchal laws; to quote ariel, “bright young women, sick of swimmin’, ready to stand.” most speak about defying society and choosing their own course of action, as belle sings: “i want adventure in the great, wide somewhere, i want it more than i can say … i want so much more than they’ve got planned.” “mulan’s “reflection,” though least known, probably best sums up this powerful trend in revealing women’s anger and rebellion in a patriarchal society: now i see, that if i were truly to be myself, i would break my family’s heart. … somehow i cannot hide, who i am, though i’ve tried. when will my reflection show who i am inside? “princess fanatic” clapp-itnyre 14 if there is a problem in these songs, it is the self-deprecating way that each woman begins her song, ariel asking “maybe there is something wrong with me,” for example. pocahontas, in “colors of the wind” is made to blindly state, “you think i’m an ignorant savage, and you’ve been so many place, i guess it must be so” while even mulan begins her reflection by admitting, “look at me, i will never pass for a perfect bride or a perfect daughter.” too, as i have just delineated, most of the songs’ feminist stances run counter to the ultimate romance plots; despite defying society’s marriage expectations, all women end up married or sought after by the end.13 i would argue that, taken independent of their opening recitatives and especially the ultimate outcomes in the films, though, these songs, sung on their own, are fairly liberating “hymns to her.” “look at this stuff, isn’t it neat?” 21st century manifestations of the disney princesses i end, then, with contemporary manifestations of the disney princesses. indeed, the re-releases and sequels of these now classic films keep their images alive on the screen for each new generation. the disney company tries to redeem the historical record by having pocahontas marry john rolfe in england in pocahontas ii: journey to a new world (1998); ariel, ironically, succumbs to overly-protective motherhood herself in little mermaid ii: return to the sea (2000) while we learn of her own mother’s tragic adventure in the little mermaid: ariel’s beginning (2008); and mulan and her romantic interest li shang, in un-asian fashion, try to prevent three arranged marriages in mulan ii (2004). in the midst of my revision of this article, disney unveiled their first princess movie in eighteen years, the princess and the frog (december 2009). clearly, disney was attempting to address earlier “sins:” tiana is the first african-american princess and her dream is to own her own restaurant, not find a “prince;” in fact, her rich, white friend, lotty, whose only aspiration is to find a prince becomes easy fodder in the “evil plot.” in the end, it is tiana who gets the prince, and her dream becomes his, so she achieves that twentieth-first-century, feminist goal of having a man and a successful career, too. but tiana’s desire to own her own restaurant is, in large part, an extension of her dead father’s dream, and much of the movie serves to point out her almost foolish one-tracked obsession with it, figure 4. annetta as mulan, age six, and cousin becca as ariel, age five. photograph by alisa clapp-itnyre. clapp-itnyre “princess fanatic” 15 to the exclusion of “finding love.” further, disney playfully inverts the princessand-the-frog motif so that both tiana and prince naveen spend most of their on-screen time as amphibians; this thus limits the amount of time disney can devote to exploring human gender roles. its release has not, ultimately, seemed to have made a huge impact. it made only $263 million worldwide at the box-office and $67 million on dvd sales (by comparison, the next big children’s film, toy story 3 [june 2010] grossed $984 million world-wide; the-numbers.com). though nominated for best animated feature film of 2010 at the academy awards, it lost to pixar’s up; ticket sales, too, confirmed popular preference for up (#4 in ticket sales for 2009) than princess and the frog (which was 38th). even disney seems to have pulled back in promoting the film: their official princess magazine highlighted tiana in their october 2009 magazine in anticipation of the film, but subsequent issues have simply shown her as part of the princess line-up at the back, with no feature stories. internet articles and blogs show viewers divided on disney’s achievement, commending tiana’s minority status while complaining that she follows the stereotype of a poor black in the segregated south, that she marries a “whiter” prince, and that the use of voodoo is overwhelming and frightening. maybe their next princess movie, tangled, set to be released in november 2010, with a feisty — albeit still blonde and sexy — rapunzel, will bring back a flamboyant 1990s heroine. it may be no surprise, then, that disney has continued to promote their other princesses. for our twenty-first century computer-savvy little girls, disney has its own princess website at http://disney.go.com/princess where “happily ever after happens every day.” ironically, much of the website is devoted to more consumerism: purchasing princess products and videos, viewing disney theme parks, etc. when girls are asked to participate, it is to paint, hear a story, decorate a room, or to help a princess dress. girls love this: the princesses call the girls their “friends,” play their favorite songs in the background, and “you get to pick out their clothes and they’re all so pretty,” my eight-year-old tells me. yet i respond that it is too bad she wasn’t asked to greet the guests, help rule the kingdom, or do other more meaningful work! as meghan sweeney recently pointed out, the covert messages are still conservative: princesses look coy, are overly appreciative and sweet, while the little girls’ own agency — simply dressing and decorating — is severely limited.14 book publishers are also eager to share the princess market. random house uses princesses in their step into reading series. redan publishing, using disney artwork by permission, publishes a disney princess magazine targeting girls 3-8 years old with crafts and stories. a plethora of golden and other such books repeat the film’s versions of these fairy tales. scholastic books publishes a line of books through their princess book club: the disney princess collection. these books are aesthetically weak, using disney princesses to tote pedantic stories about being brave, paying attention, taking turns, and telling the truth. what is potentially useful about the books is that they enlarge the meaning of “princess” beyond those who are royal or rich, and clearly define it as a character trait — something any brave or clever girl could emulate — by giving a problem and then asking, “what would a princess do?” the books further disavow the princesses’ “princess fanatic” clapp-itnyre 16 royal and/or romantic status by setting books before they have married their prince, or quickly dismissing their princely-husband. in the first instance, we often find cinderella back dealing with problems with her stepsisters and see mulan back as a man among the troops. in the second instance, princess snow white will leave her prince to visit the dwarves, and when her prince is off visiting another kingdom, princess cinderella cavorts around the castle with the mice, often dressed very much like the servant cinderella. in several pocahontas books, pocahontas actually plays with capt. radcliffe’s dog percy, reminding readers that the context is post-smith but not once mentioning him while pocahontas carries on her daily routine with fellow villagers. this is fascinating to me because it suggests that, despite the “hype” over the princess status — as romantic and royal — it is much more interesting to tell stories of their lives as single, poor women. it is not a bad reminder to make to girls. and girls everywhere need to be reminded of this to offset the bombardment of images on everything from cereal boxes to pajamas. combining the princesses erases any individuality among them: belle is simply not snow white if you have seen the movies. the most common combination of princesses is the caucasian cinderella, belle, and sleeping beauty, as we see on towels, clothes, and many other products. pocahontas, mulan, even tiana are still shown much less often, defeating the cultural strides the films had made. too, the princesses are now usually shown in very regal and sexual ways, again disappointing given the statements of the actual movies: the book-worm belle now has a cleavage, the modest aurora looks alluring, and jasmine often seems to be starting a striptease.15 all of these points are manifested visibly at walt disney world itself where my daughter (in 2008, age six) and her four-year-old cousin stood in half-hour lines to be photographed with the royal belle, aurora, and cinderella in the magic kingdom. mulan, on the other hand, was showcased only briefly, and without wait, at the china exhibit in epcot — as if she were an exotic cultural icon like the great wall. pocahontas is easy to miss in animal kingdom, appearing in her own small nature show completely dwarfed by the lion king show next door … and was never available to be photographed with little girls. both facts suggest pocahontas as an “animal-other”, housed far from humans, used only to teach ecology lessons.16 and what songs are ringing in little girls’ ears these days? when not singing along to soundtracks and sing-along cds — which encourage rote memory of potentially problematic lyrics just discussed — little girls may be singing adulterated versions of classic and folk songs; my daughter owns a princess fairy tale song book in which irving berlin’s classic “in my easter bonnet” is now perverted to “smile and show your dimples”! when disney tries to be original, with their much heralded 2004 release of a newly written song, the “princess anthem,” ‘if you can dream,’ on walt disney record’s the ultimate song collection, performed by many of the original soloists of princess films (judy kuhn, jodi benson, paige o’hara, and lea salonga, etc.), a ridiculous hodgepodge of clichés from all the princess songs are put together into unrealistic, romantic sentiments: clapp-itnyre “princess fanatic” 17 there is a world where hope and dreams can last for all time a wondrous place to go you’ll know it when your heart finds … hearing our song as old as rhyme, hold my hand, we’re gonna’ fly what a magic ride, and just a kiss away … [refrain] if you can dream, the wish we’re making on a star is coming true the colors of the wind will lead my heart right back to you ‘cause if you can dream, reflections in a diamond sky come shinin’ on through romance will always be so new and love will save the day. i am especially disturbed to see the “colors of the wind” phrase torn from its environmental theme and appropriated into the romantic message. if this is as good as disney can now do, i am turning off my cd player. conclusion and so we come to some conclusions as i ponder the eminent fate of my eightyear-old daughter, now in her sixth year of “princess fan-dom.” bendix reminds us that “how children ultimately process their encounters with [disney] […] remains a largely unexplored domain. […] it remains to be hoped that children around the world will be resilient enough to challenge the commodified fantasies that are coming their way” (1993, 290). hastings warns that “such moral simplification [of good/bad people; of all desires fulfilled] increases the likelihood that these children will become adults who find the causes of their own unhappiness in personalized, ‘evil’ antagonists — a sure formula for continued conflict” (1993, 90). yet o’brien points out that children usually use the characters, not the plots, in their play so rebellious girls from the 1990s films still offer positive role models (1996, 178). in 2004, alexander m. bruce conducted a study of secondand thirdgraders about the disney princesses, concluding that “the girls did tend toward one general reaction: they want the life of the princess — just not necessarily the prince himself” (2005-2006, 7).17 though reassured that girls may be shaking off some of disney’s romantic notions and are becoming more independent (paralleled, in fact, by the phenomenon found in scholastic’s book-series where the men actually disappear), i note the troubling extension of this: that to be a princess yet means “to have all the beautiful possessions they could hope for” with great significance placed on physical beauty (bruce 2005-2006, 15). in my limited experience, i do find that annetta has always been more fascinated by the characters themselves, not the storylines or romantic endings. she and her friends love waltzing into a room in full princess regalia or stealing around the backyard as pocahontas and friends, creating their own stories. we talk about the physical beauty, tiny waists, jewelry, and moments of complete acquiescence not being necessary or even appropriate to being a “princess.” indeed, mia adessa towbin and others suggest using the films as a “springboard for family discussion. if parents watch the movies with their children and ask questions before, during, “princess fanatic” clapp-itnyre 18 and after, parents can begin to increase their children’s media literacy” of how to read films (2003, 40). i cannot ignore the look of rapture whenever my daughter dons her sleeping beauty dress or meets ariel at walt disney world. so i am going to continue to let annetta enjoy her princess dolls and dresses, but i am also going to be a continual presence in the reading, listening, and viewing of anything “princess.” to enjoy, with an analytical eye; to share, while developing a critical world view: these can be the feminist attitudes i can pass on to my exuberant “princess fanatic.” acknowledgements i would like to thank my sister, amy clapp, and friends kristen brunton and beverly pegg for reading and discussing portions of this paper, and for allowing me to showcase their daughters in the imbedded images: rebecca salmonson, madelyn brunton, and andrea and natalie pegg, respectively. i would also like to thank dr. elizabeth tucker, editor of children’s folklore review, for an incredibly enjoyable experience publishing this paper. finally, i thank my daughter, annetta itnyre, and husband, ron itnyre, who have been with me every step of the way with this project! notes 1. this study originated as a conference paper given at the annual children’s literature association conference, manhattan beach, california, 10 june 2006. 2. i am using internet articles and ebscohost database news-articles: vicki arkoff, “how disney princess works,” howstuffworks. 2006-9. howstuffworks, inc. may 31, 2009. <entertainment.howstuffworks.com>; rosie millard, “in five years, disney princess has bloomed into a hugely successful multinational brand,” in new statesman (january 9, 2006); “disney princess proves she’s still the fairest of the land,” “business wire” (new york, june 21, 2005); and susan wloszczyna, “disney princesses wear merchandising crown,” in usa today (sept. 17, 2003). see also lee artz, “the righteousness of self-centered royals: the world according to disney animation.” critical arts: a journal of south-north cultural and media studies. 18. 1 (2004): 116-46. 3. frances clarke sayers accused disney of “sweeten[ing] a folk tale … [which] destroys the proportion and purpose of the story, the conflict and its resolution” (118). jill may has regretted that “one of disney’s greatest achievements in the realm of film was to replace the reader’s desire to pursue a book’s theme through the viewing pleasure of light-hearted american entertainment” (464). 4. their sweetness is amplified by consistently including older women — not their mothers — who are the antagonists of the films, from snow white’s evil stepmother, to lady trumain, to millicifent, those “femme fatales” ably discussed in henke, umble, and smith; bell; and dorozario. the princess’s “weaknesses are contrasted with the awesome and awful power of the evil women with whom they struggle” (hemke, umble, and smith 234). clapp-itnyre “princess fanatic” 19 5. see both of their articles for close analyses of what disney changed from the original grimm version. 6. naomi wood suggests the voyeurism of cinderella, as when the duke looks at her through his monocle which “serves to focus on and frame cinderella, particularly her legs and feet, and places us as the audience in the same appreciative position” (32). 7. with cinderella, walt disney used every star and advertising gimmick to sell the movie through its songs, with well-known singers such as dinah shore and bing crosby signed on to sing promotional versions of “bibbidi-bobidi-boo” on radio and recordings (o’brien 166). 8. noting the lack of fathers in these earlier films now often corrected in this new films, dorozario writes that “team disney’s re-affirmation of a closer bond suggests the company’s own paternal attachment to the more challenging daughters of the late twentieth-century and early twenty-first, to whom walt disney himself is little more than a black and white photograph of a rather oldfashioned looking man” (36). 9. see bendix; hastings; o’brien; henke, umble, and smith; finkelstein in ayres; and ross. 10. see edgerton; kilpatrick; kiyomi; and perekh. 11. it is regrettable that team disney felt so unsure of their story that they had to add the sassy dragon voiced by eddy murphy whose jokes are not only culturally inappropriate but bordering on the disrespectful at times. too, its ending, mulan returning to her home with a suitor soon following, is a bit disappointing. 12. lyricist howard ashman, co-author of the little shop of horrors, and composer alan menken came together to write the songs for the little mermaid; eisner credits ashman as being “the most important creative decision we made on” the film (qtd. in dorozario 48). 13. it is significant that ashman and menken wrote the songs to the little mermaid before the animation was started (sells 183), because there is a sharp disconnect between the liberating lyrics here and the ultimate conclusion of her tale: as ross puts it, “yes, she gets her legs, she makes her stand, she marches — but only down the aisle, to marry some guy named eric” (60). 14. meghan sweeney, “we have an opening for a princess: disney princess culture on the web,” 37th annual international conference of the children’s literature association, eastern michigan university, 11june 2010. 15. see bean for a discussion about the erotic portrayal of these princesses in the films and elsewhere. 16. kenneth b. kidd problematizes the animal kingdom in other ways in “disney of orlando’s animal kingdom.” 17. bruce and his students asked useful, probing questions of their elementary students, such as “do you think cinderella was right to act as she did?” and “how do belle (beauty and the beast) and mulan differ from aurora (sleeping beauty) and snow white?” see alexander m. bruce, “princesses without a prince: a consideration of girls’ reactions to disney’s ‘princess” movies” in children’s folklore review, 28 (2005-6): 7-21. “princess fanatic” clapp-itnyre 20 works cited arkoff, vicki. 2009. how disney princess works. howstuffworks. 2006-9. howstuffworks, inc. may 31. entertainment.howstuffworks.com (accessed may 31, 2009). artz, lee. 2004. the righteousness of self-centered royals: the world according to disney animation. critical arts: a journal of south-north cultural and media studies 18(1): 116-46. ayres, brenda, ed. 2003. the emperor’s old groove: decolonizing disney’s magic kingdom. new york: peter lang. bean, kellie. 2003. stripping beauty: disney’s ‘feminist’ seduction. in the emperor’s old groove: decolonizing disney’s magic kingdom, ed. brenda ayres, 53-64. new york: peter lang. bell, elizabeth. 1995. constructing the pentimentos of women’s animated bodies. in from mouse to mermaid: the politics of film, gender, and culture, ed. elizabeth bell, lynda haas, and laura sells, 107-124. bloomington: indiana university press. bell, elizabeth, lynda haas, and laura sells, eds. 1995. from mouse to mermaid: the politics of film, gender, and culture. bloomington: indiana university press. bendix, regina. 1993. seashell bra and happy end: disney’s transformation of the little mermaid. fabula. 34(3-4): 280-90. bruce, alexander m. 2005-2006. princesses without a prince: a consideration of girls’ reactions to disney’s ‘princess’ movies. children’s folklore review 28: 7-21. budd, mike and max h. kirsch, eds. 2005. rethinking disney: private control, public dimensions. middleton, ct.: wesleyan university press. cummins, june. 1995. romancing the plot: the real beast of disney’s beauty and the beast. children’s literature association quarterly 20(1): 22-28. disney princess proves she’s still the fairest of the land. 2005. business wire. 21 june. lexis-nexis academic. dorozario, rebecca anne c. 2004. the princess and the magic kingdom: beyond nostalgia, the function of the disney princess.women’s studies in communication. 27(1): 34-59. downey, sharon d. 1996. feminine empowerment in disney’s beauty and the beast. women’s studies in communication 19(2): 185-211. edgerton, gary and kathy merlock jackson. 1996. redesigning pocahontas: disney, the ‘white man’s indian,’ and the marketing of dreams. journal of popular film and television 24(2): 90-98. finkelstein, richard. 2003. disney’s tempest: colonizing desire in the little mermaid. in the emperor’s old groove: decolonizing disney’s magic kingdom, ed. brenda ayres, 131-48. new york: peter lang. hastings, a. waller. 1993. moral simplification in disney’s the little mermaid. the lion and the unicorn 17: 83-92. clapp-itnyre “princess fanatic” 21 henke, jill birnie, diane zimmerman umble, and nancy j. smith. 1996. construction of the female self: feminist readings of the disney heroine. women’s studies in communication. 19(2): 229-49. hoerrner, keisha l. 1996. gender roles in disney films: analyzing behaviors from snow white to simba. women’s studies in communication 19(2): 213-228. inge, m. thomas. 2004. walt disney’s snow white: art, adaptation, and ideology. journal of popular film and television 32(3): 132-44. jeffords, susan. 1995. the curse of masculinity: disney’s beauty and the beast. in from mouse to mermaid: the politics of film, gender, and culture, ed. elizabeth bell, lynda haas, and laura sells, 161-74. bloomington: indiana university press. kidd, kenneth b. 2004. disney of orlando’s animal kingdom. in wild things: children’s culture and ecocriticism, ed. sidney i. dobrin and kenneth b. kidd, 267-88. detroit: wayne state university press. kilpatrick, jacquelyn. 1995. disney’s “politically correct” pocahontas: race in contemporary american cinema: part 5. cineaste: america’s leading magazine on the art and politics of the cinema. 21(4): 36-37. kiyomi, kutsuzawa. 2004. disney’s pocahontas: reproduction of gender, orientalism, and the strategic construction of racial harmony in the disney empire. atlantis: a women’s studies journal 29(1): 43-53. ma, sheng-mei. 2003. mulan disney, it’s like, re-orients: consuming china and animating teen dreams. in the emperor’s old groove: decolonizing disney’s magic kingdom, ed. brenda ayres, 149-66. new york: peter lang. may, jill p. 1981. walt disney’s interpretation of children’s literature. language arts 58 (4): 463-72. millard, rosie. 2006. in five years, disney princess has bloomed into a hugely successful multinational brand. new statesman. 9 january. lexis-nexis academic. o’brien, pamela colby. 1996. the happiest films on earth: a textual and contextual analysis of walt disney’s cinderella and the little mermaid. women’s studies in communication 19(2): 155-83. perekh, pushpa naida. 2003. pocahontas: the disney imaginary. in the emperor’s old groove: decolonizing disney’s magic kingdom, ed. brenda ayres, 16778. new york: peter lang. rollins, lucy. 1987. fear of faerie: disney and the elitist critics.” children’s literature association quarterly. 12: 90-3. ross, deborah. 2004. escape from wonderland: disney and the female imagination. marvels and tales: journal of fairy-tale studies 18(1) : 53-66. sayers, frances clarke. 1973. walt disney accused. 1965. in children and literature: views and reviews, ed. virginia haviland, 116-25. glenview, il: scott, foresman. sells, laura. 1995. where do the mermaids stand? voice and body in the little mermaid. in from mouse to mermaid: the politics of film, gender, and culture, ed. elizabeth bell, lynda haas, and laura sells, 175-92. bloomington: indiana university press. “princess fanatic” clapp-itnyre shortsleeve, kevin. 2004. the wonderful world of the depression: disney, despotism, and the 1930s. or, why disney scares us. the lion and the unicorn. 28(1): 1-30. simonelli, marie. 1999. a facelift for timeworn tales: walt disney’s vision in snow white and cinderella. creative screenwriting 6(3): 63-69. stone, kay. 1975. things walt disney never told us. journal of american folklore 88 ( ): 42-50. swan, susan z. 1999. gothic drama in disney’s beauty and the beast: subverting traditional romance by transcending the animal-human paradox. critical studies in mass communications. 16: 350-69. sweeney, meghan. 2010. we have an opening for a princess: disney princess culture on the web. 37th annual international conference of the children’s literature association. eastern michigan university. 11 june. towbin, mia adessa, shelley a. haddock, toni schindler zimmerman, lori k. lund, and litsa renee tanner. 2003. images of gender, race, age, and sexual orientation in disney feature-length animated films. journal of feminist family therapy. 15(4): 19-44. trites, roberta. 1991. disney’s sub/version of anderson’s the little mermaid. the journal of popular film and television 18(4): 145-52. wloszczyna, susan. 2003. disney princesses wear merchandising crown. usa today. 17 september.ebsco-host. wood, naomi. 1996. domesticating dreams in walt disney’s cinderella. the lion and the unicorn 20: 25-49. zipes, jack. 1995. breaking the disney spell. in from mouse to mermaid: the politics of film, gender, and culture, ed. elizabeth bell, lynda haas, and laura sells, 21-42. bloomington: indiana university press. cfr_2010_part2 cfr_2010_part3 cfr_2010_part4 cfr_2010_part5 cfr_2010_part6 pages from cfr_2010_part7 ocr document book reviews romano, lilia e. italian fairy tales. new york: hippocrene books, 1999. 16.95 hc. 134 pp. italian fairy tales, called a wonder book, was originally published before 1920, and it represents a sampling of italian folklore. this "original" collection of eleven stories filled with fairy magic, goblins, beautiful maidens, brave youths, giants, and exquisite italian names ("gennareillo," "giovannion," "luciella," "filandoro," and "cecella") is as refreshing as the perfume of orange groves and myrtle trees that figuratively waft through its pages. maria tatar remarked that fairy tales "circulate in multiple versions, reconfigured by each telling to form kaleidoscopic variations with distinctly different effects" (ix).1 as i read these stories, i found sparkling twists and gentle turns of familiar threads with "distinctly different effects." the first story, "the quest of the bird with the golden tail," begins with a prince being turned into a pig because his mother, a queen, laughed at a lame child. he learned in a dream that his only hope would be to be loved by a beautiful girl who would marry him. of course, this is familiar, but there is more. he finds the girl, and with a twist on psyche and eros, the groom turns into a beautiful young man at night when he is with her, and then appears as a pig to others during the day. the queen is exceedingly curious about her pig-son's appeal to his beautiful bride, and finally intrudes on his privacy. this results in his turning into a bird (with a golden tail), and it begins the searching quest for him by his beautiful bride who must wear medieval-like iron shoes (another familiar motif). she is given three nuts, a chestnut, walnut, and peanut, from three kind ogresses she meets on her journey, and she is told to "open when you are in need." the story becomes more complicated but ultimately has a happy ending. though it is "original", it is reconfigured from other tales. the text is profusely illustrated with pen and ink drawings and reproductions of paintings. the illustrations, by howard davie, are reminiscent of h.j. ford, fp jacomb hood, and lancelot speed, whose works appear in andrew lang's fairy book series. the pictures provide an education in material lore: furniture, clothing, architecture, foods, and even a parade celebration are pictured with revealing detail. the second story, "malconseil," is illustrated with a gestural line drawing of fantina, a water-temptress, that has so much energy one can almost feel the wet chill. 114 book reviews "the legend of the white chamois," about a mountain animal called the slarorog, takes the reader to the italian alps: "up to the sky in a mass of abrupt peaks and deep precipices. . . slopes where only the hardy rhododendron and chilly edelweiss grow. . ." (romano, 30). there, on monte ricco, spirits of the mountain guard a treasure cove, and there the heroic youth risks everything. "little goat-face" includes spinning flax, "luciella" has a cinderella theme and includes another psyche and eros-like scene: "the lantern threw out a drop a burning oil which fell on the youth man's shoulder, and, awakening with a start. . . "oh why have you done this?" he cried. . .and at that moment everything vanished from sight." (58). "viola," the sixth story, has an ogre, a garden, three sisters (the older two surpassed in beauty by the youngest), a prince, and a thimble. it is a good story and ends, like many of the stories, with a verse: they lived in bliss till a hundred years old, and so my story is said and told. (70) "the child of the myrtle tree" is a story of a mother who had seven sons. they pined for a daughter and sister. soon, the family bargained with an old woman for a little girl, and the tale continues. the boys become prisoners of an ogre, and the little girl is born out a myrtle tree. it is a delightful story enriched by helpful animals. "filadoro," the next story, has another very familiar element: "there was no staircase in the house, and filadoro had to put down her hair for her mother to get up and down" (92). "the fairy kittens" and "the three pomegranates" have princes, beautiful maiden, and excellent descriptive passages. the last story "little good-for-nothing" tells the story of rosella, and has reminders of rumpelstiltskin because of secret and mysterious naming. the stories are captivating and engaging. for one not familiar with european folk tales, the stories would be enjoyable and entertaining. for a reader familiar with western lore and tales, the stories provide creative new twists and reconfigurations of familiar themes. these are stories of romance, mischief, and adventure suitable for all ages. part of the enjoyment in these tales comes from the descriptive, impressionistic prose: "an almost invisible path to a beautiful spot where the poplars, the oaks, the chestnut trees, and the beeches joined overhead their marvelous foliage" (72), or "thousands and thousands 115 book reviews of skeins of the softest silk and finest thread beautifully tied together with lovely pale pink ribbons" (127). often, according to max luthi2, descriptive prose is kept to a minimum in fairy tales. he stated: "this absence of all desire to describe unessential details gives the european fairy tale its clarity and precision." (50). but in these italian gems, the author's descriptive imagination was in full force. the tales are beautiful, and they are written to be read silently or aloud and enjoyed. jacqueline thursby livo, norma j. and george livo. the enchanted wood and other tales from finland. englewood, co.: libraries unlimited, 1999. 188pp. $27.50 some finlanders will tell you that hidden deep in the waters and forests of their rugged country are trolls or peikkos, human-like creatures who live in clans or families. the peikkos also inhabit the craggy mountains and rolling hills. some are noisy and have tails (hiisi), some are giants (jattilainen), some are dwarfs (kaapio), and still others (keiju fairies) are beautiful females who can entice beautiful but unsuspecting men. woven into a collection of nineteen folktales, these characters assume tasks and mischiefs that make it difficult (and maybe unnecessary) for some believers to separate myth from reality. to help charm and engage the rest of us with this ancient and complex culture, the livos have put together a carefully researched and accessible text that documents and preserves the folk literature and culture of finland. from the finnish national anthem in the beginning of the book, to part iv which includes a helpful reference section, a bibliography, and an index, the book is informative, lucid, and engaging. part i describes the folklife of the finns, and is contextualized by the creation myth from the finnish national epic, kalevala. the land and climate are described, and the complex early history is carefully explained. the text systematically explains the adverse climatic conditions and how the finns have occasionally used those conditions to their advantage the introduction in part i invites the reader into a mysterious world. "come with us to the north woods," it says, "and meet the people with sisu" (5) (sisu represents guts, tenacity, and/or perseverance.) 116 cfr_2005-2006_part2 cfr_2005-2006_part3 cfr_2005-2006_part4 cfr_2005-2006_part5 cfr_2005-2006_part6 81 book reviews designing modern childhoods: history, space, and the material culture of children. by marta gutman and ning de coninck-smith, eds. (new brunswick, n.j.: rutgers university press, 2008. pp. vii + 346, introduction, photographs, epilogue, index.) catharina i. kessler designing modern childhoods is a collection of fifteen illustrated essays that draw from a vast variety of sources, accompanied by a foreword by paula s. fass and an epilogue by social and cultural historian john r. gillis. marta gutman is an associate professor in the school of architecture, urban design and landscape architecture at the city college of new york, and ning de conninck-smith is an associate professor in the department of educational sociology at the school of education at aarhus university in denmark. the book is partly a result of an international, multidisciplinary conference organized by the two at the university of california, berkeley in 2002 and assembles contributions from architectural historians, social historians, social scientists, and architects. the essays are grouped into four parts: ‘child saving and the design of modern childhoods’; ‘the choreography of education and play’; ‘space, power and inequality in modern childhoods’; and ‘consumption, commodification, and the media: material culture and contemporary childhoods.’ drawing on data from the usa, canada, new zealand, south africa, europe, turkey, senegal and indonesia from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the collection covers a broad spectrum of landscapes and time periods. the essays are framed by the thesis “that spaces and settings made for children are pivotal to the construction of modernity in global society” (2). the first two sections of the book are mainly historical and discuss and challenge the concept of the “islanding of children,” described by gutman and de conninck-smith in the introduction as “the specialization of space and material culture” (5) designed by adults for children, thus systematically separating the lives of the two groups by relegating children to the home (as in the paper by annmarie adams and peter gossage), schools (anne-marie châtelet, zeynep kezer, kristin juul), special children’s hospitals (david c. sloane), playgrounds and special parks (roy kozlovsky, anéne cusins-lewer and julia gately), and summer camps (abigail a. van slyck). an essay by annmarie adams and peter gossage on “sick children and the thresholds of domesticity” sits well in this volume and highlights the large “extent of healthcare practices that took place beyond the thresholds of the bedroom and the home” of canadian families of the victorian era (77). the authors ask to reconsider notions of the passive child in their analysis of letters written by members of john william dawson’s family, culled from the mcgill university archives. adams and gossage show cfr_2009_r4.indb 81 10/25/09 6:19:27 pm book reviews 82 how dawson’s healthy teenage daughter manages the everyday affairs of her sick siblings while her mother is away, actively reordering the domestic spaces, opening windows to provide them with fresh air, and reporting back to her mother about her activities, in which she is aided by a close network of relatives and other families (70). the study challenges historians’ suggestion that in the past, sick children of middle-class canadian families were tended by mothers before being admitted to hospital, isolated from other families or outside institutions. rather, it argues that sick children inspired travel and connection beyond the home. the second half of the collection is mostly ethnographic, focusing on the historical present of childhood with one section on power and inequality, and another on consumption, commodification and the media. the chapters in this section complement the first, historically-oriented portion of the volume in positioning children as actors in their own right. they highlight children’s strategies of using, co-creating and influencing spaces of the house and backyard (rebecca ginsburg), street (harriot beazley) and school (mary s. hoffschwelle), or their use of material goods and associated cultural practices such as presents (alison j. clarke), mcdonald’s happy meals (helene brembeck), snowboards (olav christensen) and anime media (mizuko ito). the insightful essay by architectural historian rebecca ginsburg on “the view from the back step,” set in the context of south african apartheid, draws attention to the tight nexus of dominant social values and spatial order by examining how white children learned about apartheid by observing and partaking in its racial geography. through the analysis of interviews with white people who were children in the 1960s and 1970s and former african servants from the same period, ginsburg traces the relationships of white children and their black nannies, who used to live in huts in their backyard. the authors show how their understanding of racial hierarchies led many children to change their views of these maids from integral figures to peripheral ones, while others defied their parents’ expectations by regularly venturing into the backyards and spending time with their nannies. the chapter provides a nuanced view of children’s varied responses and actions in a social world where behaviour appears to be spatially restricted. overall, the volume is a good example of comparative, multidisciplinary childhood studies, demonstrating especially the importance of material culture to, and the impact of design on, children’s lived experience. the broadly conceptualized book appears to be very useful for classroom instruction in folklore, childhood studies, architecture and history, as it introduces readers to a wide-range of topics as well as to different forms of data and analysis, making it a valuable source for any instructor willing to contextualize the special scientific and theoretical backgrounds of the different chapters. cfr_2009_r4.indb 82 10/25/09 6:19:27 pm pages from cfr_2008-2009_part25 pages from cfr_2008-2009_part26 ocr document book reviews of skeins of the softest silk and finest thread beautifully tied together with lovely pale pink ribbons" (127). often, according to max luthi2, descriptive prose is kept to a minimum in fairy tales. he stated: "this absence of all desire to describe unessential details gives the european fairy tale its clarity and precision." (50). but in these italian gems, the author's descriptive imagination was in full force. the tales are beautiful, and they are written to be read silently or aloud and enjoyed. jacqueline thursby livo, norma j. and george livo. the enchanted wood and other tales from finland. englewood, co.: libraries unlimited, 1999. 188pp. $27.50 some finlanders will tell you that hidden deep in the waters and forests of their rugged country are trolls or peikkos, human-like creatures who live in clans or families. the peikkos also inhabit the craggy mountains and rolling hills. some are noisy and have tails (hiisi), some are giants (jattilainen), some are dwarfs (kaapio), and still others (keiju fairies) are beautiful females who can entice beautiful but unsuspecting men. woven into a collection of nineteen folktales, these characters assume tasks and mischiefs that make it difficult (and maybe unnecessary) for some believers to separate myth from reality. to help charm and engage the rest of us with this ancient and complex culture, the livos have put together a carefully researched and accessible text that documents and preserves the folk literature and culture of finland. from the finnish national anthem in the beginning of the book, to part iv which includes a helpful reference section, a bibliography, and an index, the book is informative, lucid, and engaging. part i describes the folklife of the finns, and is contextualized by the creation myth from the finnish national epic, kalevala. the land and climate are described, and the complex early history is carefully explained. the text systematically explains the adverse climatic conditions and how the finns have occasionally used those conditions to their advantage the introduction in part i invites the reader into a mysterious world. "come with us to the north woods," it says, "and meet the people with sisu" (5) (sisu represents guts, tenacity, and/or perseverance.) 116 book review.s the second section of part i, culture and traditions, begins with a description of independence day (december 6, 1917) and continues with leading folk practices of today's christmas celebrations in finland. "the word joulupukki is the finnish word for father christmas and literally translates to christmas goat" (33). the old custom is unique and it is remembered today by straw goat figurines that hang above the christmas table or tree. part ii takes the reader through a spectrum of vernacular traditions including proverbs, folk beliefs, and folktales. from weather proverbs, "if a cat sits looking out the window, it means rain is coming." (59) to "the tree of life," a great oak often pictured at the center of shamanistic drums. to make a prediction using the drum, the shaman placed a small piece of reindeer bone on the top of the drum and then shook it. the path that the piece of bone took and where it stopped was then read to reveal information thought to be from the spirit world. this section of the book also includes an explanation of the sampo, the magical millstone and producer of plenty. the nineteen folktales following include two stories about the sampo: the taiga sampo (the magic mill) and "the magic millstone." other stories resonate with vaguely familiar folk practices from other parts of the northern world. the story of "the amazing towel" as an episode where an underwater bride distributes gifts of remembrance to her guests: "beautiful shirts, stockings, gloves, and other fine handiwork" (113) were given away similar to potlatch traditions in the american northwest. in the story "sacks of cold and heat," i was reminded of the character sampson's comment in shakespeare's romeo and juliet. the finnish tale has the protagonist say, "they promised to be grateful, but they were merely biting their thumbs at me" (156). the last tale, a fictionalized account of a 1600s witch trial, ends with the shaman's "death by fires and stake along with his magical drum" (170). there is historical accuracy to the tale; many of finland's shaman were put to death for practicing magic during the days of the european witch hunts. part iii is made up of intriguing recipes, most of which have common ingredients and uncomplicated methods. finnish pancakes (pannukakku), salmon stew (lohikeitto) or the famous lutefish (keitetty lipekala) are all here for the adventuresome novice or master chef to try. at the end of the recipe section are color plates of well-chosen 117 book reviews paintings and photographs. three of artist akseli galien-kallela's wellknown paintings are reproduced.. they are illustrations from the kalevala. "lemminkainen's mother," (1897) was so popular that copies of it were displayed for many decades in finnish schools. the lore is that the face of the mother in the painting was that of gallen-kallela's own mother who modeled for him. supposedly he told her horrible stories until her face took on the fear and tragic expression he sought. this text provides a wide range of valuable information about finland, a little known country and yet the fifth largest (in land size) in europe. the book is an historical and cultural overview with an appeal for any age. from notes on architecture to literary contributions, from saunas to folktales, it can be used as an accurate research resource or for pleasurable reading aloud. the national epic of the finns, the kalevala, is an expression of finnish nationalism. "through this work came a national movement to establish proof of an ancient culture that solidified an identity distinct from their nordic neighbors and russian rulers" (39). the enchanted wood might have developed more specific information about the establishment of finnish identity through that work. more information should have been included about the region of karelia. many karelian songs had "analogues in finland's national epic, the kalevala."3 elias lonnrot "trekked countless miles through the sparsely populated country north and east of kajaani and across the nearby russian border in karelia, collecting these backwoods areas a large store of epic songs no longer to be found in southwestern finland."4 karelia was mentioned in the text but not given the discussion it deserved considering its importance in influencing finnish nationalism. in spite of that, the book would be a valuable addition to school and public libraries. "the stories can be used as read-alouds with younger students; older students will find valuable material for reports. storytellers, folklorists, and general readers, especially those with an interest in finland, will also appreciate the book."5 jacqueline thursby 118 103 film review let’s get the rhythm!: the life and times of miss mary mack. directed by irene chagall (new york: women make movies/city lore & public art films, 2014, 53 mins., color.). director irene chagall’s let’s get the rhythm!: the life and times of miss mary mack covers familiar folkloric territory: hand-clapping and rhythm games among young girls. the wide-ranging film frames rhythmic play as something inherent to human beings, particularly girls, with foundations in psychology and anthropology and connected to other forms of artistic expression. chagall takes her camera around the world and through long stretches of human history to develop the film’s thesis that clapping games are serious business for the girls who play them and that such games are worthy of focused attention. students of other social sciences will find as much to contemplate in the film as folklorists, a testament to the richness of source materials and scholarship found in its hour-long running time. while chagall offers a great deal of enriching context, let’s get the rhythm! also leaves a number of avenues unexplored and unresolved, creating both a problem for a viewer who wants more and an opportunity for ongoing scholarly work. as an instructor in san francisco’s community music center specializing in children’s musical education, chagall spent thirty years working with city youth and learning about the music they create. her study of that rhythmic expression earned her a smithsonian research fellowship, and she spent several years assembling footage from archival sources and gathering her own fieldwork. chagall knows she is not covering new ground at a broad level, and draws upon bess lomax hawes’ 1967 film, pizza pizza daddy-o frequently for both footage and conceptual underpinnings about the role of hand-clapping among girls. hawes herself is a frequent onscreen presence, giving her perspectives on the interpretation of the game-playing rituals shown to the audience in both her own film and in chagall’s examples. the film’s other experts include kyra gaunt, author of the games black girls play, and ellen dissanayake, author of art and intimacy, as well as experts from fields, including african art history and cultural anthropology. methodologically, the film presents copious ethnographic footage of girls playing the games or speaking about the games. some elements of the film work remarkably well to serve both chagall’s thesis and the viewer’s understanding of the clapping games in local and global contexts. one particularly engaging sequence follows the game “hello operator,” a game that traffics in near-miss ribaldry, through around a dozen different iterations, including historical and contemporary versions played among girls from different age groups, localities, and backgrounds. at the heart of the film are questions about how society values its girls and their culture, and the cultural habit of discounting such games as “mere play.” chagall deftly demonstrates the ways that film review 104 the games not only create social bonds among the girls who play them—as shown when an american girl travels to tanzania to meet a pen pal and plays clapping games to break the ice with the local girls—but also address large-scale cultural and social issues. one of chagall’s interviewees makes the point that the games are a form of “graffiti with your hands,” a motif reflected in the paint-splash palm prints used to accentuate onscreen text in the film. clapping games, demonstrates chagall, can address problems like jim crow segregation or the high incidence of sickle cell anemia in sierra leone, where the girls play a clapping game called “ah mella sickle cella.” chagall’s particular exploration of rhythmic-clap sophistication among children elevates the discussion of the games. informants like hawes and jazz musician bobby sanabria repeatedly show that these games are not always simple, but often require a very sophisticated understanding of patterns and rhythm. the clapping patterns in a game called “numbers,” which requires ever-more complex rhythms as the girls play it, appears onscreen as an equation. the informants, largely children and teens from diverse cultural backgrounds, come largely from american cities like san francisco and new york but also from international locations including japan, south korea, mexico, brazil, russia, spain, and israel, do much to reinforce chagall’s points about the pervasive importance of the games. a strong current of what nina glick-schiller and others have termed “cosmopolitan sociability” pervades the presentation, too, offering a way of contextualizing what the viewer sees as a transnational phenomenon. the film’s wide range of subjects, experts, and ideas all keep it lively and engaging, but do sacrifice some depth to meet the timeframe. a number of speculative points in the film appear and disappear with a frustrating evanescence. chagall relates egyptian hieroglyphics to the hand-clapping games she records, but the claim has only a small piece of interpretive text to stand on, and seems as flimsy as william wells newell’s claim that girls play these sorts of games merely to warm their hands in the winter. similarly, ellen dissanayake attempts to connect hand-clapping with the production of oxytocin in the body, and then makes some sweeping claims about gender roles related to that hormone. gender also becomes problematic, as one self-described “tomboy” struggles to connect with the handclapping rhymes, which has the—hopefully unintended—effect of making her look “broken” as a woman because of her limited ability to interact through the games. chagall does explore the ways in which girls’ games get appropriated by men, particularly in popular music, but interestingly presents a pair of girls later playing a game that clearly appropriates a portion of k.c. & the sunshine band’s “that’s the way i like it” without discussing the folkloric process of that counterappropriation. strangely, despite the film’s subtitle, the actual discussion of the game “miss mary mack” occupies only about ten minutes of the film’s runtime. such unexplored, underexplored, or problematic presentations read much more like opportunities for future scholars, however, than any sort of failure on chagall’s part. the immense scope of let’s get the rhythm! necessarily requires a tight editorial hand in order to accommodate the timeframe of the presentation. chagall’s previous work on the subject, published in 2005/2006’s children’s folklore review, presented a rough draft of the film’s thesis while answering some of the questions the video version of her work merely skimmed, such as the issue film review 105 of counter-appropriation. in this article, chagall quotes simon bronner on the evanescent but vital role these games play in the lives of young girls, noting that these games merge “performance and integration of different expressive behaviors that [defy] easy typology” (bronner 1988:166). that typological defiance is clear in chagall’s work as well, and students of folklore have no shortage of raw material or refined analysis available between her earlier article and this film. in the end, the film will likely be a strong future companion piece to bess lomax hawes’ earlier work, and set the stage for scholars who follow to build upon what chagall has done. cory thomas hutcheson pennsylvania state university, harrisburg bronner, simon. 1988. american children’s folklore. little rock: august house, quoted in irene chagall. 2005/2006. “let’s get rhythm,” children’s folklore review 28:42-63. pages from cfr_2017_part24 pages from cfr_2017_part25 11 and a child shall lead them: the wise child folk motif in mormon discourse spencer lincoln green prevalent in folktales throughout the world and in popular media in america, the “wise child” whose innocence sees through the deceptions, greed, envy, and ingratitude of his or her elders flourishes in mormon official and lay discourse. paradoxical in its inherent reversal of hierarchies in a religion often noted for its hierarchies, the wise child, rather than challenging adults and exposing adult foibles to mockery, is used to gently remind all members of their shortcomings and encourage greater adherence to church doctrines. since the wise child in folk and popular culture is most often a trickster figure who points out foibles and follies in adults, how has it come to be used so often in mormon discourse by those very adults and authority figures who are usually the butt of its jokes? this paper seeks to look at the significance of the wise child in mormon official discourse, the transformation it has undergone there, and what that has to say about mormon culture. while the wise child is prevalent throughout mormon discourse, this study is limited to the examples in the spring and fall sessions of general conference. general conference is a biannual meeting consisting of five two hour meetings over a saturday and sunday in april and october when church leaders present doctrinal and exhortive talks to church membership worldwide. this has been occurring since 1830 and each general conference is identified by season or month and number ordinal number. my texts then come from the 182nd spring and fall or april and october general conferences of the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints. general conference is a time when the church general authorities address the church as a whole. the general authorities is a term for the highest authorities of the church. at the head is the president or prophet of the church and the first-presidency which includes the prophet, thomas s. monson and his two counselors. beneath them, but still regarded as “prophets, seers, and revelators,” are the quorum of the twelve apostles, who are ranked in order of when they entered the quorum. next comes a presidency of the seventy, a group of 7 men who help direct the work of the first and second quorums of the seventies, known as seventies because of christ appointing “other seventy” to preach the gospel in luke 10:1. there is also a ruling bishopric who take care of church humanitarian efforts, and the different auxiliary general presidencies of the relief society, the church’s women’s organization; the young women and young men, organizations for twelve to eighteen year old members; and primary, organizations for the children of the church. all these presidencies, like local presidencies and the first presidency, consist of 3 members: a president and first and second counselors. general conference is an important part of the year for active lds church members and is often used in lessons and talks throughout the year by members and a child shall lead them green 12 when they give talks in their local, weekly meetings. further study on the wise child’s use in local meetings will certainly reveal local variations, general conference talks represent the church’s most public and widely recognized corpus of doctrine and knowledge beyond the “standard works.” the standard works are the old and new testaments, the book of mormon, the doctrine and covenants, and the pearl of great price. my citations for these scriptures follow the standard lds conventions. the wise child in folklore the wise child, folk motif j120 in the stith thompson motif index, includes tales from many cultures describing how a child’s actions produce knowledge or wisdom in adults. often it is the child’s naiveté that produces the knowledge, and often in the form of a rebuke, in their elders. for example, motif j121 tells of a certain son being reproved by his own son’s imitation of him. after a man gives his aged father half a carpet to keep warm, his own son keeps the other half, telling him that he is keeping it for him when he’s older. sometimes the situation is reversed as when a father tells a son to only drag him to the threshold, but no farther, because that is as far as he dragged his father. the themes of old age, decrepitude, and a simple, naïve sense of justice are all features of these stories. the wisdom produced in these tales comes from both the child’s interpretations of his father’s actions and the father’s subsequent revelation of the justice of his own actions. the child then, knowingly or not, is active in creating the story’s moral (thompson). motifs j122 and j125 follow this pattern. motif j122 features the naïve remarks of children rebuking or uncovering the sins of their parents. in one a forgetful father wonders what he’s forgotten and his naïve son suggests that he forgot to strike mother, as he was an abusive man. in another a seducer is stopped short by a child lamenting that his mother is open to just the crime he aims to commit. in motif j125, children uncover their parent’s misdeeds such as an innkeeper’s wife who has watered down the wine, or the child who innocently reveals that the father’s secretary has been having an affair with his wife. while the targets of the knowledge often changes—though is always composed of adults—the revelation in these stories is also a dialogic act between the child and the adult (ibid.). motifs j123 and j124 don’t rely on the child’s innocence and naiveté to uncover wisdom, nor do they rely on the child’s innocence. here the children can be either a passive object lesson or the agent who actively produces the wisdom in the tale. a king who judges a lawsuit wisely after observing a child’s game and seeing the principles of justice present in the game earns his wisdom on his own without significant participation from the children. here they seem to act more as object lessons rather than being involved in the meaning-making of the tale. but there are also the cases of a clever prince overruling the seemingly just decision of the king with greater wisdom, and the j124 motif which encourages the learning of virtues from children who can exhibit patience when their food is stolen. adults can learn patience when they see the children search quietly for their food rather than crying or getting distressed. in these cases, the child is actually regarded green and a child shall lead them 13 as wise either through having a rare wisdom beyond his years as the prince exhibited, or an innate quality that is seen as desirable in the adult world (ibid.). there seem to be two spectrums at work in creating the central action and conflict in these stories. one is a passive/active spectrum. active children interact with adults in some way to create the moral of the story. passive children’s actions are only significant when the observing adult draws wisdom from the child in a way that might be available to any observer. the other main spectrum is between the naïve and knowing child. again, the bulk of stories feature children who possess their wisdom naively. their sense of justice is innate, or their fears real and guileless, and it is simply in voicing those pure, innocent, and honest values that creates wisdom in the adults around them. in this way they are valued as speakers of widely known but unacknowledged truths as in “the emperor’s new clothes.” the lone instance of the clever prince whose actions are indicative of wisdom in and of themselves without the interpretation or transfer of that wisdom to a corresponding adult is an exception that seems to prove that most of the wise children in folktales rely on being active but naïve. the wise child is a liminal figure that both divides and bridges the worlds of children and adults. a child is often seen as passive and naïve, as an object rather than a subject (de schweinitz 126). as they grow more active, and more knowing, they come to enter more and more the adult world. as such, the best bridge between the two worlds are children who partake of both the childlike and the adult. these wise children exist somewhere between the wholly naïve and passive child of popular imagination and the active knowledge associated with adults and are indeed the most popular in folklore. this would suggest that the knowing, passive child would be the next most common, but there are no examples of passive, knowing children. this could be due to narratives preferring the more dynamic “active” child. tales with passive wise children are more rare than the active because knowledge seems to presuppose or be indicated by activity. in other words, a child can act naively, but a knowing child will show it through his or her actions. finally, the next most uncommon category seems to be knowing and active children as they partake too much of the adult world and or no longer childlike. thus they are no longer liminal, trickster figures who can instruct and delight. it is important to note that these categories are etic constructions and don’t always reflect the use of the wise child motif. the speaker and audience may not care whether child characters are active or passive, naïve or knowing, especially in the context of a didactic discourse such as general conference. within the general conference talks i surveyed, the most common child was an active, naïve child, but there were also numerous examples of the knowing, passive child. the requirements of a good story or performance also influence how wise children are used in mormon discourse. active children are certainly more interesting than passive, while naïve and knowing children both have their narrative uses, and can both create interesting, artistically satisfying, story arcs and turnarounds. other scholars have noticed some of these contrasts at use in mormon culture. kristine haglund harris studied changes in the children’s songbook and found “that early primary songs presume that young people will play significant roles and a child shall lead them green 14 in building the kingdom while later songs try to limit children’s activity (think ‘reverence’) and suggest that children prepare themselves for future contributions” (qtd. in de schweinitz 135). harris found mormon culture favoring passive children more recently, but the use of the wise child in general conference shows that lds still prefers active children for use in official narratives. categorizing wise children in mormon discourse with these traits was sometimes unclear. active or passive traits, while seemingly obvious, were often unclear in context, and naïve and knowing were even less clear, and sometimes less relevant. henry eyring, first counselor in the first presidency , spoke on the seeming difficulty in knowing or perceiving god in the world. in his address he relates the story of his three year old granddaughter visiting an open house of a temple, sacred structures to latter-day saints said to be a house of god. in one of the beautiful rooms, she asks her mother, “mommy, where is jesus?” her mother responds that she wouldn’t literally see jesus in the temple, but could feel his presence. after considering this, the child, eliza, responds with “oh, jesus is gone helping someone.” is this child naïve in taking literally the “house of the lord” title latter-day saints use in talking about the temple, or is she knowing in her realization that this is a physical building where the physical presence of jesus is expected to be found? obviously the child’s mother interprets it as naiveté while president eyring goes on to comment, “no pavilion obscured eliza’s understanding…of reality” (eyring, pavilion), so president eyring obviously sees eliza as a knowing child, and yet the meaning of the story rests on eliza being both a naïve and a knowing child. it is faith that reconciles these two opposing forces. she is innocent and knowing in that her faith, or belief, in what she has been told is literal whereas her parent’s understanding seems more figurative, and yet, with faith, it is the literal that is favored. so the older, wiser-in-the world parent has come to interpret doctrine as figurative instead of literal and thus is not as knowledgeable as her daughter in certain spiritual truths. she has something to learn from her daughter. by including this in his talk, president eyring implies that all latter-day saints have something to learn from this young girl. this dichotomy between worldly and spiritual things in mormon thought is relevant to the wise child and one of the reasons that the mormon variants differ so much from the folk variants. in the book of mormon, the prophet jacob speaks of this dichotomy: “o the vainness, and the frailties, and the foolishness of men! when they are learned they think they are wise, and they hearken not unto the counsel of god, for they set it aside, supposing they know of themselves, wherefore, their wisdom is foolishness and it profiteth them not” (2 ne. 9: 28). paul, in his epistle to the corinthians, echoes the sentiment with “if any man among you seemeth to be wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise. for the wisdom of this world is foolishness with god. for it is written, he taketh the wise in their own craftiness” (1 cor. 3: 18-19). paul’s words seem like they would support the traditional folk use of the wise child, as a figure who reveals the foolishness of its elders through mockery and ‘taking them in their craftiness,’ as it says. the differences become more fully explained if we look at its use in its performance context of general conference. i will discuss this later, green and a child shall lead them 15 but first another example where the division between the naïve and knowing child seems less relevant in the context of the story. russell osguthorpe, sunday school general president, recounts a story of his son calling, wondering why russell hasn’t told them one of his articles was appearing in the church’s magazine, the ensign. russell responds with “i just wanted to see if you were reading the church magazine.” his son says it was actually his daughter who brought it to his attention. “she got the ensign from the mailbox, came into the house, and read it. then she came up to our room and showed us your article.” russell concludes with “my granddaughter read the ensign because she wanted to learn. she acted on her own by exercising her agency. the first presidency recently approved new learning resources for youth that will support the innate desire of young people to learn, live, and share the gospel” (osguthorpe, emphasis mine). it is obvious by his wording that russell sees his granddaughter as an active child, but his wording also suggests she is a passive child. this desire to learn certainly exhibited itself in an active way, reading an entire magazine meant for adult members (young children and teenagers have church magazines aimed more at them), is certainly an active thing, but this desire russell sees as innate, and thus is the source of knowledge coming from what she did, or the innate desire to do it? depending on how one sees children, this granddaughter can be knowing or naive. either she knows that she is doing a good thing, or she is simply doing what she likes, and that thing happens to be an action russell wants his adult listeners to imitate. it is obvious that this action in an adult member would be seen as active and elder osguthorpe is seeking to instill the knowledge of the value of that action, but it seems clear that for children, the assumptions are different. that this is not as volitional, that it is more innate and thus an expression of personality rather than an indication of one’s use of free will. the message seems clear, that a desire to learn is a good thing that adults should learn but which seems to come naturally to children. adults, the message is, be like your wise child. the cultural beliefs inherent in this dichotomy involve religious beliefs in the innate goodness of children and the cultural and religious beliefs that children are blank slates in need of instruction. both of these ideas lead to assumptions in stories that divide how mormons view adults and these wise children. the wise child in mormon scripture and tradition probably the most important example of the wise child culturally is joseph smith who, as a fourteen year old boy, had the wisdom to “ask of god” when he was confused about which religion to join. this act by a fourteen year old boy is often referenced and framed in a way that emphasizes both his youth and his wisdom— particularly as opposed to the religious leaders in his area at the time. other scriptural precedents include many prophets in the book of mormon. nephi, the first writer in the book of mormon, is still a child of his father, a prophet in jerusalem and begins the book of mormon with “i, nephi, having been born of goodly parents (1 ne. 1:1).” later, when recounting his conversion, nephi mentions that he was “exceedingly young” when he came to “believe all and a child shall lead them green 16 the words which had been spoken by my father.” it is significant that he is able to convince his younger brother to also believe, but his older brothers, laman and lemuel, harden their hearts to his, and his father’s, words (1 ne 2: 16-18). alma, a later prophet in the book of mormon, is described as a wicked priest to a corrupt king when he hears the testimony of the prophet abinadi. alma, at the time, is described as “a young man” who “believed the words which abinadi had spoken, for he knew concerning the iniquity which abinadi had testified against them [meaning the wicked king noah and his priests] (mosiah 17:2).” alma believes and must flee the court of king noah and the older, still wicked priests who seek to kill him and put abinadi to death. later still, captain moroni, the nephite leader in some of their most intense wars with the lamanites is mentioned for being “only twenty and five years old when he was appointed chief captain over the armies of the nephites (alma 43: 17).” while 25 can hardly be said to be a child, his youth is certainly emphasized and in the succeeding chapters his wisdom is demonstrated as he prepares the nephites for war against the lamanites led by a rebel nephite. he prepares his soldiers with various armor, and constructs ditches, walls and fortifications around their border cities ensuring those cities which had been weakest were now strongholds. the invading lamanites are at first too scared to attack these heavily fortified cities. finally using a combination of spies and prophecy, moroni traps the main lamanite army as they cross a river and completely defeats them (see alma 43:17-44:24). when war returns a few years later, moroni is again instrumental in securing peace from war and the stability of their main government. while the war moroni is engaged in is started by a nephite dissenter, it is the sons of lamanite converts that help turn the tide. these converts are called the people of ammon and, after their conversion, make an oath to never “tak(e) up arms against their brethren (alma 53: 11).” when the war against the lamanites gets long, they consider breaking their vow for the greater good. they are “moved with compassion” at seeing “the danger, and the many afflictions and tribulations the nephites bore for them… and were desirous to take up arms in the defence of their country (alma 53: 13).” their spiritual leaders urge them not to, and they send, instead, 2000 of their sons, “who had not entered into a covenant that they would not take their weapons of war to defend themselves against their enemies,” so they are mobilized instead, and join the war under the command of their spiritual leader, helaman (alma 53: 16-18). are these good examples of the wise child? their youth is certainly a vital part of their identity. rather than the wisdom, or cunning, exhibited by captain moroni, it is often their faith that is seen as praiseworthy and what continuously saves them. they are promised by their mothers, “that if they did not doubt, god would deliver them,” sure enough, in their first battle, “not one soul of them [had] fallen to the earth (alma 56: 47, 56).” in a later battle, while casualties mount on both sides of the conflict, their faith in their mother’s words are confirmed again when “there was not one soul of them who did perish; yea, and neither was there one soul among them who had not received many wounds (alma 57: 25).” while this may green and a child shall lead them 17 not qualify as “wisdom,” according to the worldly/spiritual split mentioned earlier, the youth are indeed being set up as figures whose actions and faith adults can and should learn from. the bible has its wise children too. before joseph becomes second only to pharaoh in egypt, he is the second youngest of 12 brothers, loved by his father, and envied and hated by his brothers. at 17, “the lad” tends sheep with his older brothers. he dreams dreams which indicate his parents and brothers will bow down to him. it may not be seen as wise to share those with said brothers, but in the end, the dreams come to pass, and joseph is vindicated (see gen. 37, 39-41). samuel is promised by his mother, hannah, to serve the lord, and so she gives him to the high priest of the time, eli. eli, while a good man we are told, allows his sons to mismanage the sacrifices of israel, and so, eli’s house is condemned. samuel, while still a child, is called of god in the night time. he finally responds “speak; for thy servant heareth,” and is finally told the calamities that will befall eli and his sons and is set to be the next prophet (1 samuel 3). young samuel, is remarkable in receiving revelations from lord at a time when “the word of the lord was precious in those days; there was no open vision (1 samuel 3: 1).” samuel however is innocent and good and honest. he even reveals god’s word of destruction towards the current prophet, eli, when asked to do so (1 samuel 3: 19). samuel is instrumental in anointing david as the king of israel after saul sins and loses his mandate to rule god’s people. when samuel sees david’s oldest brother, eliab, he thinks he must be the future king of israel, but the lord counsels him to “look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature; because i have refused him: for the lord seeth not as a man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the lord looketh on the heart (1 samuel 16: 7). this is even a “scripture mastery” scripture that is one of 25 in the old testament emphasized in seminary, a daily spiritual study class many mormon youth of high school age take. seminary students will focus on and often memorize scripture mastery scriptures. as for david’s wisdom, his encounter with goliath is telling. while all the armies of israel fear the mighty philistine goliath, david asks “for who is this uncircumcised philistine, that he should defy the armies of the living god?” (1 samuel 17: 26) david, in opposition to his older brothers and king saul who notes “thou art but a youth, and he a man of war from his youth,” but david insists on his ability to defeat their champion and, without the traditional armor and weapons favored by the more experienced, he approaches goliath with his staff, “five smooth stones,” and his sling (1 samuel 17: 40). goliath is insulted, david, undaunted, tells goliath he’s about to die and that david comes in the “name of the lord of hosts,” and that “this day will the lord deliver thee into mine hand; and i will smite thee, and take thine head from thee…that all the earth may know that there is a god in israel (1 samuel 45-46).” david does so, and is set up as a model of exemplary faith. finally, jesus is a prime example of the wise child when, at only 12 years old, he is left behind in jerusalem after a passover feast and is found, finally, “in the temple, sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them, and asking and a child shall lead them green 18 them questions. and all that heard him were astonished at his understanding and answers (luke 2: 46-47).” jesus is a wise child who is wise beyond his years and astonishes those around him at his understanding of the scriptures and the law. further, he is the source of many teachings that emphasize what people can learn from children. in matthew 18: 2-4 “jesus called a little child unto him, and set him in the midst of them, and said, “verily i say unto you, except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven.” in matthew 19: 14, “jesus said, suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven.” the emphasis on wise children in general conference may reflect this precedent and desire to emulate jesus christ’s example, and align themselves with his teachings. the wise child that jesus speaks of, and that appears most frequently in scriptures, is strikingly different from the wise child of the folktales. these scriptural variants of the wise child share some similarities with the folk variants. the folk variants and the scriptural variants both emphasize rebuking elders, though those elders are less often parents. in the case of nephi, it’s his older brothers, david rebukes king saul, joseph smith rebukes the religious leaders of his area, and jesus rebukes his mother. these rebukes are different in that the youths in these examples are both active, and knowledgeable although they retain a naiveté as well. they are able to be both knowledgeable and naïve by being naïve to worldy things, and knowledgeable about spiritual things. as such, they come across as less caustic than the folk examples in their efforts to instruct and exhort people on spiritual things. the child in mormon and american culture scholars of american culture have identified two contrasting views of childhood: as a “tabula rasa” in need of “acculturation,” protection, or shelter, and the child as “specula naturae,” the mirrors of nature, or a type of noble savage. gary cross notes the connection between the romantic era and the idea of the pure, innocent child. he quotes wordsworth as saying children come “fresh from the hand of god.” mormon speakers in general conference are fond of wordsworth and have quoted his ode: intimations on immortality which includes “our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:/ the soul that rises with us, our life’s star, / hath had elsewhere its setting, / and cometh from afar: / not in entire forgetfulness, / and not in utter nakedness, / but trailing clouds of glory do we come / from god, who is our home: / heaven lives about us in our infancy!” this quote has been used in general conference two or three times a decade over the past three decades, twice by president monson in 2012 and 2007. it portrays the child not as a blank slate, but a noble, pure, innocent being close to heaven and divinity. the rise of mormonism during the romantic movement supports this connection, as do numerous mormon scriptures. rebecca de schweinitz also sees evidence of an aristotelian view of children where “the child is important, not for herself or himself, but for his or her potential” (136-7). green and a child shall lead them 19 support for this idea in mormon doctrine is surprisingly hard to find. if asked for scriptures that indicate children’s innate goodness, many members might quote the prophet mormon condemnation of infant baptism. however, his reasons don’t necessarily indicate it is because children are good, but because they are innocent and unaccountable for their actions. mormon writes that “their little children need no repentance, neither baptism…but little children are alive in christ…for the power of redemption cometh on all them that have no law” (moroni 8: 11, 22). other reasons include the injustice of a god that would condemn innocent children to hell for failure to do something they have no knowledge of or power to do. his reasons focus not on children’s goodness, but their innocence or, the term i’ve been using, naiveté. there is, however, some scriptural support for the idea that children are innately good. christ encourages his disciples to “become as little children,” and “humble himself as this little child” (matt. 18: 3-4). invoking the difference between the natural (or worldly) sphere and the spiritual, king benjamin says that all men are enemies to god and in a fallen state “unless he yields to the enticings of the holy spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of christ the lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father” (mosiah 3: 19). looked at as a syllogism, if saints should be good, and saints should be like children, children must be good. the difficulty of differentiating between good and innocent children is still present however because the examples here, and elsewhere in latter-day saint scripture, could still be read as seeing children not as acting righteously, but as being innately righteous. while much maligned by other christian sects as ‘trying to save ourselves through works,’ mormon theology does require knowledge to act righteously and places prime importance on agency or free will. while mormon theology asserts that “salvation was and is and is to come…through the atoning blood of christ (mosiah 3: 18), joseph smith reveals that “it is impossible for a man to be saved in ignorance” (d&c 131: 6). the goal seems to be a fusion of the inherently good qualities of a child—especially those of submission to a heavenly father—fused with the understanding, knowledge, and decision-making ability of an adult. the problem, finally, with the syllogism is a difference in expectations. children are seen as inherently innocent, and so good or bad applies less to them—forget the conspicuous absence in any scriptures of the crying, willful children filling the pews each sunday—while adults, with full agency, are expected to act good, knowing that those actions are good. the wise child in mormon folklore helps clarify these expectations by presenting the naïve goodness of the child as an example to the knowing, but not always good, consideration of the adults. the child as a blank slate is prevalent in american culture and, if not explicitly stated in mormon theology, implicit in mormon culture. the child of the blank slate needs acculturation, needs guidance, needs protection. gary cross would say the child needs “shaping.” mormon doctrine speaks of a “veil” that has caused people on earth to forget their premortal life where they knew and lived with god and jesus christ. the veil is there so that people can exercise faith, and so that and a child shall lead them green 20 faith and obedience can be tested. the veil of the tabernacle moses erected in the wilderness to “divide unto you between the holy place and the most holy,” is a symbolic representation of this separation between our world and god’s (see ex 26: 33). scriptures speak of a book of mormon prophet, the brother of jared, who was so righteous he “could not be kept from beholding within the veil (ether 3: 19; 12: 19). joseph smith speaks of the veil being “taken from our minds” so that they can behold the lord (d&c 110: 1), and later, explaining perhaps the physical workings of this veil, joseph smith records that “all spirit is matter, but it is more fine or pure, and can only be discerned by purer eyes; we cannot see it; but when our bodies are purified we shall see that it is all matter” (d&c 131: 7-8). while generally the veil is a kind of tabula rasa, a blank slate that erases the memories of people’s premortal existence, it is also used, folklorically, to indicate that children are inherently good—not just innocent—but that they have an “innate connection to spiritual realms” (de schweinitz 134). you can often hear speakers speak of good children and end with something like ‘the veil is very thin for children, who have recently come from god.’ looking at general conference talks, mormons would seem to agree. while the wise child folk motif is the subject of this paper, the protected child who needs shaping and the watchful care of parents is just as, if not more, prevalent in official discourse. “train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it” (proverbs 22: 6), is more than just a proverb in mormon families. after giving moses the law, god commands that these things be taught to their children on multiple occasions (see deut. 4: 10; 6: 7; and 11: 19-21). ephesians, in the new testament encourages us to “bring up [children] in the nurture and admonition of the lord (eph. 6: 4), the book of mormon includes numerous examples of children being taught (like the aforementioned stripling warriors), nephi and enos both reflect on words they were taught by their fathers (see 1ne 1: 1 and enos 1: 1), and lehi preaches to and corrects his children many times (see 1 ne 2: 8-9, 1 ne 8: 37), king benjamin exhorts his people to “teach [their children] to walk in the ways of truth and soberness” (mosiah 4: 15), and the doctrine and covenants include the injunction to “bring up your children in light” (d&c 93: 40), and a warning for parents who do not teach their children (d&c 68: 25).1 in any general conference or sacrament meeting, members hear counsel about the importance of and how to raise their children. beyond that, there are two magazines especially for youth, the friend for pre-teen youth, and the new-era for teens. beyond that, the first presidency—the highest authority in the church comprising the president and his two councilors—has a message at the beginning of each issue of the ensign, a magazine for adult members of the church. the message is meant to be shared in month family visits by pairs of male members known as home teachers. these messages now include special teaching ideas and examples for “youth” and “children.” obviously the training and teaching of youth and children is a high priority for the church, and the members that comprise it. all of which indicate a strong belief in and support of the child as a blank slate, the child in need of acculturation and guidance to become proper adults. green and a child shall lead them 21 methodology while the current lds prophet, president thomas monson, is well known for his use of stories and anecdotes that would include the wise child, i have instead chosen to focus on the use of the wise child folk motif in the last two general conferences of the church when church leaders speak to members all over the world. although the topics and discussions are often familiar, the messages in these biennial meetings represent the most current word of the lord available to church members. i have looked at each talk in these conferences and noted each use of the wise child. the wise child in the folk motif stories were classified based on someone learning something based on the actions of a child, and the person who learned was usually an adult. based on these broad similarities, the criteria for which stories i included as an example of the wise child included two main components. first, the story had to be about a child and secondly the child, knowingly or not, had to be the source of the knowledge the adult gained. thus a story about a child who dies and the family who learns to cope with and overcome trials would not necessarily count as a wise child because the learning comes more from the child’s death, an event, rather than the child herself. there were other border cases. for example, david f. evans spoke of a young man who was not a member of the church but had many friends who were and came to many ward activities as a youth. after high school, he became roommates with an lds friend who had not gone on a mission due to certain issues he was working through. they spoke about it and soon the boy was meeting with the lds friend’s bishop and was baptized. the purpose of the story was to show how conversion can often be a slow process, but many will eventually enter the church through the efforts of friends and church members. the teaching that occurs is from boy to boy rather than child to adult, but later, when the speaker talks of what he learned from this example, and makes the point to share that with church members listening to general conference, it becomes a more obvious example of the wise child, as the actions of a young man are presented as exemplary, and thus something all can and should learn from. even within the narrative when evans remarks “what an invitation!” after the lds boy invites his friend to come meet with his bishop, we see that he is being set as an example, and someone to learn from, a wise child (evans). some cases were not clear-cut. while parts of joseph smith’s story includes moments of the wise child, only references dealing specifically with him as a wise child were included. jesus is an even more complicated example because his “son-ness” is emphasized much more often than the wisdom and learning he had to offer when he was a child. i have not included any references of jesus as a child of god, but have included any references made to his mortal childhood. this dual quality of jesus as father and son, parent and child, will be discussed later in my interpretation of the wise child motif. finally, i have included wise children used in talks aimed at youth or children as well as children as old as missionaries if the youth or “child-ness” of the missionaries was given as a defining feature. if it and a child shall lead them green 22 was important enough to stress, then it seemed fair to include it as an example of the wise child. in looking at the last two general conferences of the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints, there were a total of sixty-seven talks, thirty-two of which used the wise child motif with forty-nine unique instances. so if a story of a wise child started at the beginning of a talk and was references towards the end, it still only counted once. however, if one speaker gave numerous stories about different children who taught or whom the audience could learn from, each instance was counted. so this year, the wise child figured in nearly half of all talks given by general authorities at general conference. the unique instances shows that it can be used numerous times—five was the most—in a given talk and that depending on topic and speaker, it can feature quite prominently in a talk. when a primary president or a young men president speaks, or when the topic is what parents can learn from their children, the speaker often uses numerous examples. general conference: the authoritative/exhortative frame at general conference, leaders of the lds church present talks of varying length to church members around the world and, implicitly or explicitly, to non-members. the purpose of general conference talks is to present doctrine and exhortations to live by gospel principles. conference talks, like many talks in weekly church meetings, include exhortations, scripture quoting, personal experience, the experiences of others, and usually end with a declaration of testimony, or conviction of truth. current events, references to magazine articles, or pop-culture references happen, but are less common. like sacrament meeting talks, general conference addresses are monologic, and are the most public speech act in lds culture. as richard bauman says, in most communicative acts, an interpretive frame sets up how things are to be interpreted (292). while i have defended various aspects of the wise child in mormon discourse on narrative grounds, general conference frames the speech acts as authoritative and exhortative. general conference is set apart as a very special verbal event in mormon life. it happens only twice a year and overrides the usual schedule of weekly meetings. rather than meeting in their regular church buildings on sunday during the regularly scheduled three hour block of meetings, latter-day saints across the world watch online or via satellite the conference center in salt lake city. in supplanting regular worship services, general conference is marked as more important and of more authority than regular worship services. further, it places salt lake and the leadership who reside there as the loci of the lds world. not only is it authoritative, but possesses the most authority. similar to any classroom or auditorium, the leaders of the church sit around and behind the raised lectern from which speakers address their live audience of 21,000 and their televised audience of millions. the general authorities are raised, literally, above the crowd to address the entire church membership. this most authoritative and exhortative frame may be one reason why general authorities employ children to communicate their messages. tom mould notes that green and a child shall lead them 23 the cultural norm for humility in mormon culture. by making the child the source of wisdom, even church leaders, those highest in the hierarchy, are able to achieve a level of humility by learning things from the humblest among us, children. we see this in fact, in the many examples of experiences that involve children in the third world in abject poverty. in terms of humility there is the added implication that even the “greatest” in the kingdom have something to learn from the lowest. a message echoed in the new testament. in one instance, christ tells his apostles “whosoever shall receive this child in my name receiveth me:…for he that is least among you all, the same shall be great” (luke 9: 48). boyd k. packer’s talk in the april session of general conference is a good example of this humility before children and even impoverished children. the title of packer’s talk “and a little child shall lead them,” references the wise child. accordingly, he cites many examples of children he learned something from. he begins his talk with the story of seeing an orphan beggar in japan freezing, dressed in rags, covered in scabies, and holding a rusty tin can and a spoon. he’d knocked on the door of his train. elder packer tried to open the door to give him some money but the train pulled out. elder packer ends the story by commenting “i will never forget that starving little boy left standing in the cold, holding up an empty tin can. nor can i forget how helpless i felt as the train slowly pulled away and left him standing on the platform.” elder packer is not explicit in what he has learned or what he intends his audience to learn at this point, but the idea that children can help us understand and know the purpose of life becomes more clear as he continues. in cusco, peru, another “starving street orphan” enters the meeting house and tries to make for the sacrament bread. a stern look from a woman causes him to leave, but he returns and, when elder packer opens his arms for him, comes to sit on his lap. again, he offers little explanation beyond sharing it with then prophet president kimball, who notes “that experience has far greater meaning than you have yet come to know.” next elder packer tells of a boy in salt lake running around in the winter with no coat. he concludes that story with the moral “at night, when i pull the covers over me, i offer a prayer for those who have no warm bed to go to.” he has learned, or hopes to teach something about compassion (packer). the wise children elder packer tells about in these stories are largely passive. what the children do is less important than who they are, poor, destitute, and children. elder packer’s next example includes a girl in japan at the close of wwii. she goes about “busily gathering yellow sycamore leaves in a bouquet,” seemingly “unaware of the devastation that surrounded her.” elder packer is impressed by her ability to find “the one beauty left in her world,” and adds that thinking of her increases his faith, concluding “embodied in the child was hope.” the child is naïve in the wisdom she produces, which is produced in both active and passive ways. her actions of gathering the leaves are the catalyst for elder packer’s revelation, but his interpreted focuses on an innate quality in the child (ibid). later in his talk, elder packer notes, “one of the great discoveries of parenthood is that we learn far more about what really matters from our children than we ever did from our parents. the role reversal here is obvious, but done very differently than it would be in american culture or even many folk tales. in american culture, and a child shall lead them green 24 there is more conflict and thus more victory for the child and more humiliation for the parent when roles are reversed. the wise child in folktales is also often a trickster figure who will turn the tables on their foolish, stingy, or conniving parents. here the second most senior member in the church, and a father and grandfather himself, cites this role reversal. there is no trace of the trickster, or humiliation for anyone involved, but is presented more as a simple fact of life. parents are not necessarily diminished by it, and yet, children do rise to the role of teacher in the reversal (ibid). this role reversal is well known in scriptures. jesus rebukes his disciples for keeping a child from him and uses the opportunity to teach them that “of such is the kingdom of god,” and “whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of god as a little child, he shall not enter therein” (mark 10: 14-15). the book of mormon also has much to say on the matter. mosiah 3: 19 reads that “the natural man is an enemy of god, and has been from the fall of adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the holy spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of christ the lord, and becometh as a little child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father.” here sainthood, is equated with becoming like a child. and the child indicated is not the tabula rasa but, but the noble savage in direct contrast with the “natural man” who is the carnal aspect of people who prioritize their physical desires. the naturally innocent and pure child must be worked towards once someone has become an adult and their natural desires grow stronger. there seems to be a pre-puberty purity and post-purity tendency towards physical appetite and “the natural man.” as far as the wise child goes, this corresponds to the passive child in the folktypes whose wisdom is outside its own knowledge. the child may have things to teach, but those things are merely attributes of who the child is, and thus the child can teach simply by being a child, good, pure, obedient, etc. some speakers we expect to use the wise child. primary, young women, and young men general presidency members might all be expected to use children as examples of good action because their intended audience are children. ann m. dibb, 2nd counselor in the general young women presidency begins her talk with the example of a fifteen year old girl she saw standing in a line, wearing a shirt that said, “i’m a mormon, are you?” sister dibb was impressed with her confidence in her identity. she was a passive but knowing child. later she mentions a girl who joined the church because she finally found one that taught modesty and standards. sister dibb presents this young woman as having an innate knowledge of the importance of standards and modesty, she had a spiritual knowledge that general members, and other young women, can learn from. she even mentions jesus as god’s son in the garden of gethsemane being obedient and submissive to his father (dibb). other speakers mention wise children similar in some ways to the wise children of the folktales who are naively wise. quentin r. cook, a member of the 12 apostles, mentions a young man who is realizes that society recognizes many things latter-day saints see as wrong, but not when it comes to pornography. this green and a child shall lead them 25 boy is set up as being wiser than much of american society, and cook follows this up by citing himself the boy’s exhortation that primary is not too early to start warning and protecting children from society (cook). here we have a wise child being used by a general authority to evoke the sheltered or protected child in need of educating by parents and leaders. truly a dizzying interplay of authority and subservience. rebecca de schweinitz notes the sentimental use of children in mormon culture and argues that lds culture “(however unconsciously)…link(s) emotional responses to religious beliefs [] to reinforce adult agendas” (135). and certainly that is true. children, especially the impoverished ones used by boyd k. packer, can produce powerful emotional responses, and in the hands of authority figures will not criticize the very people using the trope. further explanation for this interplay comes from the earlier discussion of humility in mormon culture, but it is important to note that the wise child is not just a way to borrow humility, but can also be seen as a democratic expression of heavenly virtues. cook’s talk is a good example. beyond quoting this unnamed 15 year old boy, cook also quotes c. s. lewis—a highly respected and often quoted christian author—past presidents of the church, joseph smith, george albert smith, ezra taft benson, and gordon b. hinkley; scriptures from the book of mormon and both old and new testaments; english poet william wordsworth; new york times columnist ross douthat; wall street journal columnist peggy noonan; and even dr. r. albert mohler jr., president of the southern baptist theological seminary. the inclusion of children into the cannon of both spiritual and worldly greats presents an incredibly democratic cosmology. in the book of mormon, alma speaks of this democratic ideal when he says “and we see that [god’s] arm is extended to all people who will repent and believe on his name” (alma 19:36). i will discuss further evidence and implications of this worldview in the conclusions. craig christensen shares the story of going through a temple open house— before a temple is dedicated, anyone is allowed to go through and view much of the interior. his 6 year old son accompanies him and remarks “what is happening? what am i feeling?” elder christensen’s talk credits his son for the wisdom he exhibited in noting not the fine and beautiful art and architecture which he and others were appreciating, but the spirit of the place, the spiritual importance of it, that was more important (christensen). henry b. eyring shares a similar story about his granddaughter who “illustrated the power of innocence and humility to connect us with god.” she went to the temple open house and asked, “mommy, where is jesus?” as the “house of the lord” she had expected to see jesus. her mother explained that she wouldn’t be able to “see” jesus in the temple, but could feel his influence in her heart. considering this, she decided, “jesus is gone helping someone.” while her naiveté seems evident, elder eyring praises her for not having things obscure or obstructing her view of reality, that god is close, and can be felt by anyone. he adds that she had a good understanding of jesus’s corporeal body, that he can only be in one place at a time, and that what jesus was most often doing, was performing miracles. he adds that “the spirit could reveal to her childlike mind and heart the comfort all of us need and want” (eyring). the point is that the and a child shall lead them green 26 adults listening to elder eyring’s talk should be as childlike in their faith of gospel truths. d. todd christofferson tells the story about a 14 year old boy in india who works two jobs, goes to school, and studies into the night to help support his family and prepare for a brighter future. elder christofferson praises the boy’s “diligence and courage,” and continues, “he is doing the very best he can with his limited resources and opportunities, and he is a blessing to his family.” the boy is wise and very active, an example of work and activity elder christofferson wants church members to emulate regardless of their circumstances. the boys hard work is central to elder christofferson’s talk which repeats numerous times “brethren, we have work to do” (christofferson). clearly, this child is the example priesthood holders should follow. conclusions terryl givens in people of paradox reveals one reason why the wise child may be a popular motif in mormon discourse. givens identifies four fundamental paradoxes in mormon thought, the first two relate to the wise child: authority and radical freedom and searching and certainty. the hierarchical structure of the church and the equating of priesthood power and authority with god’s authority has been examined and criticized by many writers and scholars who see the unquestioning obedience that often results. on the other hand the lay clergy and the emphasis on personal revelation support a radical individuality and disruption of those hierarchies. if any worthy member can hold a leadership position in the church, then there is something of a meritocracy in the power structure of the church albeit a meritocracy based on spiritual rather than worldly values. this mixing of clergy and member, officials and officiated, does establish a hierarchy, but a fluid one, where members can find themselves on either side. a member may be a bishop for a while, and called to the family history center afterwards. the wise child reveals a similar flattening between youth and adults, the knowing and the naïve, as categories are mixed or fluid. the second paradox relevant to the wise child relates to the wisdom of the child. givens notes that joseph smith’s experience in physically meeting god the father and jesus the son, having actual angelic hands placed on his head to confer the power of the priesthood, and translating 50 lb. golden plates imbued him and mormonism with a predilection for certain knowledge. contemporary evidence of this can be seen in the monthly testimony meetings in any ward or branch in the church where members are encouraged to proclaim before their fellow congregants the things they know to be true. the emphasis is more on knowledge than simply belief. general conference also emphasizes certainty as members hear testimonies from “special witnesses of christ.” on the other hand, joseph smith also taught that knowledge and progression were a ceaseless struggle that took not only entire lives but were something to work on “a great while after you have passed through the veil (qtd. in givens 30).” this paradox between certain knowledge in the form of testimonies and ceaseless striving for ever greater knowledge and righteousness extends the green and a child shall lead them 27 spectrum between naiveté and knowledge out to eternity. when using such a measure, even the most elder apostles and prophets giving talks in general conference can be viewed as little more than wise children themselves. wilford woodruff recorded some words of the joseph smith on this subject. at the conclusion of a conference joseph smith stated “brethren, i have been very much edified and instructed in your testimonies here tonight, but i want to say to you before the lord, that you know no more concerning the destinies of this church and kingdom than a babe upon its mother’s lap. you don’t comprehend it” (woodruff). this was the prophet speaking to the whole priesthood of the church at the time. while his comment was specific to knowing the destinies of the church, the comparison of even the highest in the church hierarchy to “a babe upon its mother’s lap,” is an aspect of the doctrine of eternal progression. anyone in mortality can be seen as a child, but hopefully a wise one. seen in this light, the wise child is not necessarily a trickster figure of role-reversals in mormon culture and can be used with gentle humor since members share its naiveté and searching for truth. mormon teaching treats all people on earth as sons and daughters of god and thus spiritual siblings, but also focuses on the importance of the family consisting of a husband and wife, raising and teaching children. in a church where common addresses involve “brother” and “sister,” what is the role of the child in lds religious discourse? for a religion that has been criticized for being patriarchal, and a gerontocracy, what view of childhood emerges from looking at the official statements and faith-promoting stories given out by the church? the democratic nature of mormon cosmology is even more profound. not only are all people brothers and sisters, and not only are all beings on an eternal path of progression, but all have the most grand potential. church president lorenzo snow is often quoted as saying, “as man now is, god once was; as god is now man may be” (snow). joseph smith also stated that “god himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens!” (“god”). latter-day saints believe that this potential is open to all men, women, and children on earth. the prevalent use of the wise child—and possibly even the short shrift given to rowdy children in official discourse—is a consequence of this democratic and egalitarian cosmology. there is a flip side to this egalitarian view. elder packer’s talk, mentioned previously, notes that “the ultimate end of all activity in the church is to see a husband and his wife and their children happy at home, protected by the principles and laws of the gospel, sealed safely in the covenants of the everlasting priesthood (packer).” although husbands and wives, mothers and fathers, are often reminded of the need to protect their children, here they are in need of protection as much as their children. this is not unique. if the sheltered or protected child is prevalent in american and mormon discourse, the protected parent and adult, is just as, if not more prevalent in mormon discourse. scriptures are full of warnings for all people to continually beware temptation’s lure. doctrine and covenants 20: 33 reads “therefore let the church take heed and pray always, lest they fall into temptation;” the same basic sentiment is repeated in d&c 31: 12. d&c 75: 11 and 88: 126 talk about praying always that people “faint not.” matthew 26: 11 and mark and a child shall lead them green 28 14: 38 both exhort to “watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation.” the lord’s prayer includes the plea to “lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil,” again indicating the ever-present nature of temptation and risk of falling to it. the book of mormon prophet, nephi when he is older, laments “the temptations and the sins which do so easily beset me” (2 nephi 4: 18). alma 34: 39 states “yea, and i also exhort you, my brethren, that ye be watchful unto prayer continually, that ye may not be led away by the temptations of the devil, that he may not overpower you, that ye may not becomes his subjects at the last day; for behold, he rewardeth you no good thing.” clearly the danger of sin is prevalent, and the solution watchfulness, prayer, and, as elder packer states, the protection that righteous living offers. all people are like the protected child, in need of shelter and protection. these connections between children and adults go further. other conference addresses note that most things done in the church are begun when we are children. president monson, in april 2012 conference, notes that “in one capacity or another, in one setting or another, i have been attending priesthood meetings for the past 72 years—since i was ordained a deacon at the age of 12” (monson). often, the comparison is made between the newest and most senior members of the priesthood having access to the same or similar power, that it is all based on righteousness rather than age or experience. a great way to teach this basic belief is to use children as examples of power to prove that very point. it deemphasizes age, seniority, experience, other hierarchical structures for one that is more merit-based which, in this religious setting, means merits of morality, goodness, righteousness. julie b. beck, then president of the lds women’s organization, the relief society, shared a similar message. she notes that “every year hundreds of thousands of women and young women become part of this ever-expanding “circle of sisters” [meaning the relief society]” and “wherever a sister lives and wherever she serves, she retains her membership and association in relief society.” at eighteen women go from being in the “young women” organization of the church to the “relief society” (beck). this change comes at the cusp of adulthood and lasts the rest of their lives. further essential rituals and practices of church membership are begun when children are young and continue into adulthood. just as president monson noted that he’d attended, and thus entered and continued in, priesthood since he was 12. according to the “articles of faith” penned by joseph smith, the first principles of the gospel are “first, faith in the lord jesus christ; second, repentance; third, baptism by immersion for the remission of sins; fourth, laying on of hands for the gift of the holy ghost” (1:4). these principles are prerequisites for the ordinances of baptism and confirmation which commonly happen when children turn eight. thereafter, as noted in 2 nephi, chapter 31, the main thing is to “endure to the end.” there are certainly other ordinances and rituals which only adults participate in, but the most basic and essential are done when members are children and simply continue on through adulthood and, as mentioned earlier, into eternity. the wise child is not a real child but a narrative device. as a narrative device, the wise child is based on cultural concepts of childhood and how children green and a child shall lead them 29 differ from adults. the wise child of folklore, the trickster figure who ridicules and confounds adults, has been transformed in lds culture into a common trope on par with almost any other source of wisdom. this transformation indicates mormonism’s egalitarian ideals and cosmology as well as its unique views of children as agents and adults as young in an eternal perspective. in short, the wise child in mormon discourse has been transformed from a trickster figure to a standard authority figure because mormons already see themselves as liminal figures between a spiritual infancy and exalted adulthood. in such a worldview, the child as trickster loses its fangs and settles in as another member of the community. note 1. d&c is the abbreviation of doctrine & covenants, one of the standard scriptures of the lds church. works cited articles of faith. 2013. lds.org. the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints. http://www.lds.org/topics/articles-of-faith?lang=eng bauman, richard. 1975. verbal art as performance. american anthropologist. 77(2): 290-311. beck, julie b. 2012. the vision of prophets regarding relief society: faith, family, relief. ensign. may. https://www.lds.org/ensign/print/2012/05/the-vision-ofprophets-regarding-relief-society the book of mormon: another testament of jesus christ. 1981. trans. joseph smith, jr. salt lake: the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints. cook, quentin r. 2012. can ye feel so now? ensign. nov. http://www. mormonchannel.org/magazines/ensign/2012/11/can-ye-feel-so-now christensen, craig. 2012. an unspeakable gift from god. ensign. nov. http:// www.lds.org/general-conference/2012/10/an-unspeakable-gift-fromgod?lang=eng christofferson, d. todd. 2012. brethren, we have work to do. ensign. nov. http:// www.mormonchannel.org/magazines/ensign/2012/11/brethren-we-havework-to-do cross, gary. 2004. the cute and the cool: wondrous innocence and modern american children’s culture. new york: oxford university press. de schweinitz, rebecca. 2012. where nothing is long ago: child and youth in mormon history. journal of mormon history 38 (2, spring): 125-138. dibb, ann m. 2012. arise and shine forth. ensign. may. http://www. mormonchannel.org/magazines/ensign/2012/5/arise-and-shine-forth the doctrine and covenants of the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints: containing revelations given to joseph smith, the prophet, with some additions by his successors in the presidency of the church. 1981. salt lake city: the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints. and a child shall lead them green 30 evans, david f. 2012. was it worth it? ensign. may. http://www.mormonchannel. org/magazines/ensign/2012/5/was-it-worth-it eyring, henry b. 2012. where is the pavilion? ensign. nov. http://www. mormonchannel.org/magazines/ensign/2012/11/where-is-the-pavilion god the eternal father. 2013. teachings of presidents of the church: joseph smith. lds.org, https://www.lds.org/manual/doctrines-of-the-gospel-teacher-manual/ chapter-3-god-the-eternal-father?lang=eng givens, terryl l. 2007. people of paradox. oxford: oxford university press. hansen, chadwick. 1963. the character of jim and the ending of “huckleberry finn.” the massachusetts review 5 (1, autumn): 45-66. monson, thomas s. 2012. willing and worthy to serve. ensign. may. https://www. lds.org/general-conference/2012/04/willing-and-worthy-to-serve?lang=eng neustadter, roger. 2009. the obvious child. new york: university press of america. osguthorpe, russell t. 2012. one step closer to the savior. ensign. nov. https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2012/10/one-step-closer-to-thesavior?lang=eng packer, boyd k. 2012. and a little child shall lead them. ensign. may. https:// www.lds.org/general-conference/2012/04/and-a-little-child-shall-leadthem?lang=eng scriptures. 2013. lds.org. the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints. http:// www.lds.org/scriptures?lang=eng&cid=rdscriptures thompson. stith. 1955-58. motif-index of folk-literature: a classification of narrative elements in folktales, ballads, myths, fables, medieval romances, exempla, fabliaux, jest-books, and local legends. revised and enlarged ed. bloomington: indiana up. woodruff, wilford. 1898. conference report, apr. 57. pages from cfr_2013_part2 cfr_2013_part3 cfr_2013_part4 cfr_2013_part5 cfr_2013_part6 51 the appropriation of a commercial trademark: the golliwog as a cultural marker robert macgregor peebles is an ancient small rural town in the border region of southern scotland. it was granted a royal burgh charter in 1140 by king david i of scotland. a major claim to fame is that it is the home of and a key breeding center for the worldfamous border collie. infamy surrounded the town in june 1991, when what should have been a joyous annual children’s parade turned into a national incident over a small number of children who were “blackened” up in a minstrel/samboesque mode of dress. critics of the costumes and “blacken-faced” young people saw them as golliwogs, a highly criticized doll-like figure from enid blyton’s “noddy series” of children’s books. others saw them as a golliwog, the international trade character, of a major british jam manufacturer, james robertson and sons. numerous dimensions that surrounded this incident and many other related points of view will be critically analyzed. the golliwog, a brief history historically, in britain, florence k. upton (1873-1922) used a golliwog figure in a series of children’s books. soon after the publication of the first book in 1895 it became a commercially used symbol to sell a large array of products, such as toys, games, dolls, postcards, novelties, dishes, packaging, and, in the 1920s, food products. from the late 1920s until 2001, the golly was used by robertson’s, the jam manufacturer (nicholson 1981; hartlap 1984, fisher 1975). throughout the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, controversy has ranged from the local grassroots to public debates, discussions of the golliwog in the house of commons, letters to her majesty the queen, and many other avenues of discourse. all of these discussions have basically focused on whether or not the golliwog was a cherished doll, a cultural icon, an integral toy/doll that many british children had played with and loved; or was it a racist image, a play object that could instill racist values in children and psychologically harm minority, non-white british children? january of 1987 marked a watershed point in this ongoing heated debate. british book publisher macdonald purnell decided to delete the golliwogs from enid blyton’s “noddy series.” the director of children’s publishing at macdonald purnell said: we have produced a completely new noddy library and the decision was taken to revise the text, the illustrations and characters. a decision was taken to take the golliwogs out. a lot of people feel uncomfortable about gollies either because they are felt to be racist or because they always seem to be villains (bates 1987, 2). cfr_2011_r.indb 51 10/31/11 8:57:38 am the appropriation of a commercial trademark macgregor 52 the new noddy books of 1987 were welcomed by the commission for racial equality (c.r.e.). a spokesperson said, “we had a number of complaints from people who felt that the depiction of the noddy characters was insensitive.” writers and critics of children’s literature dixon (1978) and mullan (1987) discussed at length the serious, damaging implications that these grotesque, malevolent characters may perhaps have conveyed to young minds. dixon believed that the golliwog was a part of most children’s fictional nursery. he suggested focusing upon two considerations. firstly, the golliwog was a standardized racial caricature, the sambo, the minstrel, a creation of whites. secondly, the names of the characters were widely used as racial epithets. seemingly, this grotesque doll, dixon believed, was meant to confirm the connection and association of fear with black faces in particular. these naughty, mean, evil and menacing roles allowed blyton to portray blackness a la golliwogs a sufficient cause for their dislike by young readers. her “the three golliwogs,” published in the early 1940s, had three golliwogs called golly, wollie, and nigger who were disliked by angelae, their mistress, because of “the blackness of their faces.” the names, as stated previously, did not change until 1973, and the “three golliwogs” book was sold into the early 1990s. as early as 1964 some libraries phased out the blyton books. mullan reinforced the outlook that it was extremely important not to perpetuate racism by drawing misleading stereotypes of cultures and races in literature, especially those focused on children, where the images tended to work on a symbolic and unconscious level. as elaine moss (1986) has argued, the 1970s were years in which “britain was coming to terms with its post-imperial role as a multicultural nation” and this had its effect on the content of the content of children’s books. the editors of children’s books for a multi-cultural society (1985) argued that unless: we want our children to develop an inward-looking, insular perspective, educating them for the future must imply educating them to live and play a positive role in a society where cultural diversity is recognised and respect (mullan 1987, 124). wilkinson (1984, 1987) discussed the psycho-cultural analysis and impact of black dolls and role stereotypes. she believed the vivid symbolic artifact called the golliwog was a most grotesque example of frightening images. ironically, she stated, psychologists continued to criticize children’s play with golliwogs “on the grounds that the black face, the pop eyes and the red mouth are the unconscious source of many childish nightmares” (wilkinson 1987, 21). forster (1989) condemned blyton’s the little black doll (1937, 1964) because of its character ‘sambo’ and oliver tinkle’s the golliwog (1982). forster stated the golliwog had rapidly established itself among the characters of the english nursery, but by way of its longstanding use as a commercial trademark, it had entered the repertory of contemporary racist abuse (73) ; more on this point later. opposition to macdonald purnell’s decision was immediate. critics of the changes saw it as a process of degollification, a bowdlerisation of the 1940s cfr_2011_r.indb 52 10/31/11 8:57:38 am macgregor the appropriation of a commercial trademark 53 classic. newspaper columnists called opponents of the golliwog ‘barmy’, ‘the loony left’, left-wingers, labour councillors, left-wing councils dividing the right from the left with political labels such as those forementioned. newspapers that carried articles on the macdonald purnell decision would include the news of the world, the daily mail, the daily star, the guardian, the sun, the daily mirror, and the daily telegraph; see works cited for more complete details. as previously stated, many other forms of protest against the golliwog gained national momentum in the 1980s. although protestations against the trademark had begun approximately 30 years previous to the blyton affair, historically, robertson’s golliwog appears to have been used by the firm since about 1910. it was in 1928, however, that the lapel badge began to be used as a three-token redemption item. children and mothers were encouraged to buy a jar of jam, cutting from the label a small stamp-like token, collect three, mail them to the company, and receive an enamel badge of the golliwog. to date, well over twenty million badges of the golliwog have been distributed. the golliwog also appeared on cups, towels, pens, pencils, writing pads, erasers, cutlery, ties, and other items, all purchasable from robertsons (see examples). one major campaigner against the perceived racist promotional items was the national council against racism in children’s books; other institutions would include the commission for racial equality, the greater london council, the camden council for community relation, searchlight magazine, dragon’s teeth, the north lewisham project, the george jackson media collective, the merseyside labour council, and many, many individuals from various walks of life. all protesting discourses intersected on the complex, multidimensional, widely circulated stereotype. the ‘grotesque’ golliwogs, whether portrayed in books, commercial trademarks, or numerous and varied commercial items, all had a wide, simple grin, large, bulbous, round eyes, a shock of fuzzy/wool-like hair, and thick lips. the clothes are always in bright, basic colours: usually red blue, green and yellow. the trousers frequently have blue and white stripes; the brightly colored jacket is short, and the golliwog usually wears a bow tie. this image clearly indicated the historical associations, the southern sambo, the minstrels of ‘burnt cork’, vaudeville, theatrical fame and infamy. one must also remember that until the 1973 pan edition, when golliwogs’ names change, the three blyton characters were called ‘nigger’, ‘wollie’, and ‘golly’. these racial and racist epithets were changed to ‘wiggie’, ‘waggie’, and ‘wollie’. examination of racial labels and their conventional meanings, as in blyton’s golliwog trio, reveals some insights into britain’s racial outlook towards such names; that is, they were acceptable. macgregor (1993) highlighted examples where the word ‘golly’ and golliwog epithets were used in numerous social settings. salman rushdie, in hamilton’s new yorker article (1996), recalled the school life of the well-known author in england. in 1961, at the age of 13, rushdie was sent to rugby public school in england, his time there was one of taunts and anti-indian jokes. he described catching a studymate crayoning “wogs go home” on a wall. the slogan, he thought, was clearly aimed at him. he said, “i went insane … i banged him as hard as i could against the wall he was writing on “ (94). rushdie has called this a determining moment in his school career; indeed, cfr_2011_r.indb 53 10/31/11 8:57:39 am the appropriation of a commercial trademark macgregor 54 his whole attitude toward life in england. it was the moment when he learned how to strike back. later, in an end-of-term satirical revenue during his final year, he heard himself lampooned: “what is this shape ‘midst the nebulous fog?’ merely the resident bradley house wog” (95). rushdie, in his book of essays, imaginary homelands (1991), openly discussed racism in britain; he believed that the english language historically coined many terms of racial abuse such as ‘nigger’ and ‘wog’ and posed the question, “can there be another language with so wide-ranging a vocabulary of racist denigration”(130). he went on to say, “yes, the golliwog, too; at football grounds, black players are taunted with the cry, “get back on your jam jar’” (146). this last example was widely used as one of many racist slogans that football hooligans hurled at black soccer players in the 1980s. describing in some detail numerous examples of racial labeling and role stereotypes from various written sources, we now turn our attention to the 1991 golly parade at the peebles beltane festival. the golliwog controversy: beltane festival on february 15, 1991, the peebleshire news reported that the wearing of golliwogs costumes had been banned from the 1991 beltane festival parade in peebles. it was found that the costume contravened the spirit of the regional guidelines on multicultural education. the costumes owned by the beltane committee and stored at the town’s kingsland primary school were not to be used in the children’s parade. in 1990, a mrs. margaret macintosh, a retired schoolteacher living in edinburgh expressed her concern about the costumes she was shocked when she saw ten children riding on the back of a truck dressed as golliwogs and in blackface. she thought that the costumes and blackface were racist and she offered fifty pounds to help replace the gowns. the festival committee met with the local school board and the “no” golliwog decision was reached, reluctantly. it is worthwhile to note that the regional guidelines on multi-cultural education were established in 1986 by a special working group under the title “multi-cultural education in primary schools.” it was up to the head teachers to figure 1. marchers in the beltane parade in peebles, 1991. cfr_2011_r.indb 54 10/31/11 8:57:39 am macgregor the appropriation of a commercial trademark 55 decide on the implementation of the guidelines and until mrs. macintosh’s protest no one locally had thought about or given their opinions on the beltane costumes. the document stated: “everyone involved in education must instill in children a respect for themselves and other human beings regardless of race, color, or creed.” it was not clear why it took five years for the guidelines to be applied to the beltane costumes and why other stereotypical costumes — arabs, chinese — were also not affected and eliminated. once the banning decision was made public, there arose much local protest against that outcome. the first major player to enter the fray was the former principal and teacher of history at peebles high school. ted smith “begged” the committee to reconsider its decision. part of the text of his letters follows: two of the highlights of the beltane festival are the children’s procession and the parade of floats containing numerous characters, some of which represent real-life people but not all. the rest may be mythical creatures, animals, or even toys such as soldiers and golliwogs. the latter simply depict dolls or inanimate objects which like teddy bears are usually to be seen on a child’s pillow. to pretend that they are racially offensive is so ludicrous that one is inclined to retort ‘you cannot be serious’ (keddie 1991, 1). mr. turnbull, the chairperson, of the annual general meeting for the festival, went on to read a second letter that had been sent to a national newspaper. scott kerr believed that mrs. macintosh’s offer of fifty pounds was offensively patronizing. he believed that she evidently failed to understand that education was about establishing children’s community identity and had nothing to do with indoctrinating socialist shibboleths. this is an interesting last comment, particularly since it invokes the word ‘socialist,’ which has somewhat specific politically ideological overtones. this reference to socialism and the political left reappeared in numerous ways throughout the golliwog debate. during the week of march 15, 1991, the beltane festival committee announced that it had reached a compromise with the head teachers of the three local primary schools. the members felt that under the education guidelines covering multicultural education in schools the following changes would be made: as far as the beltane committee is concerned these costumes were never intended to be seen as any form of racial jibe, but were meant to represent a golliwog doll, as they have done for many years. however, we agree that perhaps the term ‘golliwog’ was now outdated and could, in some eyes, cause offence. the golliwog costumes will be used within new characters to be created, called rag dolls. they will be placed in the beltane programme under ‘toyland.’ it is hoped that this clarification of the much loved character will end this controversy (golliwogs 1991, 1, 2). cfr_2011_r.indb 55 10/31/11 8:57:39 am the appropriation of a commercial trademark macgregor 56 the statement did not specify if the new characters would be “blacked up,” but one committee member believed that the black make-up would cover the entire face and not leave white rings around the eyes and the mouth, as had been the case with the previous golliwogs. he believed that the woolly wigs would continue to be used. the golliwog compromise did not succeed and one week later, it was announced by lan thorburn that although there had been initial agreement, the staff of kingsland primary school, who had to handle the costumes, refused to accept the compromise. on march 22, the school staff gave mr. thorburn the following statement: although it was felt after a meeting between beltane committee office-bearers and the head teachers of peebles primary schools that a compromise could be reached as to how the golliwog’s costumes may be used in future years, this has proved not to be the case. the staff of kingsland feel that to use the costumes with accompanying blackface and hair is unacceptable. it is with regret, therefore, that we have decided that the costumes be returned to the beltane committee (it’s goodbye gollies 1991, 1). head teacher of kingsland mrs. marlene galashan, who had agreed to the compromise solution of renaming the dolls, said that her staff believed that the costumes were still “golliwogs with another name” and felt unable to administer them (golliwogs renamed 1991). reaction to the banning of the golliwogs was quick and, at times, demeaning. ex-provost alex walker told the peebleshire news: i can contain myself no longer. as far as i can see there are a few jackaroos who are posing a threat to our way of life and creating problems where none existed. howard purdie, the local self-styled bard of traquair, had the following satirical article published in the local newspaper. he called mrs. macintosh a mrs. mary maclntrouble who, at 91, objected to the peebles police wearing black uniforms: “your policemen, i see a black-and-white minstrel. that is a racial stereotype and should not be tolerated.” when she was asked what sort of uniform would fit the situation in peebles: “oh, i envisage something really colourful,” trilled the excitable lady who used to teach mixamotosis at the golliwog’s primary school. “something like funny-worded t” shirts, tartan boxer shorts and american baseball caps.” “after all, our friendly bobbies should keep up with fashionable trends” (1991). cfr_2011_r.indb 56 10/31/11 8:57:39 am macgregor the appropriation of a commercial trademark 57 in the satire, mrs. maclntrouble sent the fifty pounds to the desk sergeant for new-style uniforms. the bard asked the policeman, al jolson, aged 113, if he was concerned about the lady in question. “mammy!” sang the policeman, frantically waving his white-gloved hands. “i’d walk a million miles for one of your smiles, mammy!” eyes bulging enormously, our friendly bobby tap-danced on the pavement outside the police station, causing acute embarrassment to a person from edinburgh (keddie 1991). by may 31, the controversy had reached a national audience and more and more attention was focused on the parade and the town. sides in the issue were chosen, and it was rumored that the national front would be at the festival to defend the pro-golliwog side and that anti-racists groups would give their support to the ban the golliwog position. the situation was getting out of hand. there was also a proposed mass “black-up” by peebleans protesting mrs. macintosh’s ‘outside interference’ in seeking to have the golliwogs banned. a mr. white, a local businessman, put up a prize of fifty pounds for the ‘best beltane golly.’ mr. edge, a local hotel owner, announced that he would change the name of his hotel, the green tree, to the golliwog’s rest, for june 21 and 22. doug mann, the peebles singer-songwriter, saw his protest song “i wanna be a golly in the beltane parade” become a local cu!t hit and eventually sell almost 2,000 copies (mann 1991). a well-known black dancer and television personality, clive donaldson, would support the pro-golliwog group. ironically, his stage name is wiggi, which is one of the golliwogs in the enid blyton series the three golliwogs. he read some of the newspaper reports, and he was not offended at all by the golliwog costumes. two weeks before the six days of festivities, some of the local officials started to worry about the “untold damage” to the event and to the future well-being of the event. an editorial of june 7, 1991, tried in an objective manner to clearly outline the two positions in the golliwog controversy. the writer went on to say that in fact the picture of the pros and cons of the golliwog were more complicated than they seemed and the nuances might be lost in some of the stories that were published in the tabloid press. a golliwog parade might be portrayed as some kind of ku klux klan rally in a red-neck backwater of scotland. throughout the newspaper articles, there appeared to be a growing acceptance that there would be a golly protest parade. seeing this protest as an inevitability, the local authorities pleaded with the would-be marchers to take to the street on friday night and not to interfere with the saturday’s red letter day parade for the local children. throughout the major protest time frame, the peebleshire news started a “golliwog forum” to allow people to voice their opinions with letters to the newspaper. from february 22 to june 28, 1991, 37 letters were printed in the paper. from february 22 to june 28, 1991, 37 letters were printed in the paper. there were twenty-eight letters for keeping the golliwog costumes, eight against keeping the costumes, and one neutral reply; approximately seventy-five percent cfr_2011_r.indb 57 10/31/11 8:57:39 am the appropriation of a commercial trademark macgregor 58 of the respondents wanted to keep the golliwog costumes and the woolly hair and the blacked face. trying to discover just how long the golliwog imagery had been part of the children’s parade was difficult. some of the age estimates say that the golliwogs had been in the festivities since 1901 (ninety years), one said seventy years or sixty years. whatever date was the real one was not that important; what was more germane was that the tradition of the golliwog was old and firmly fixed and accepted by the majority of the respondents. initially, mrs. macintosh was the lone dissident, with some slowly growing support. the major theme that repeatedly appeared in the golliwog support letters was basically that the costume and the blackface were traditional images that were part and parcel of britain’s heritage. the image was simply that of a harmless doll and only that, with no possible racist connotations. numerous people also strongly indicated that mrs. macintosh was a limousine liberal from edinburgh, a sociologist, and not a true native peeblean (a gutterbluid). in fact, mrs. macintosh was born in peebles and had worked in the community before moving to edinburgh. this idea of an outsider causing trouble in a local community was echoed time and time again, as my on-site interviews and correspondence will show. as a stoorie foot (someone who had left the community), mrs. macintosh defended her opinions and her six-month campaign to get rid of the golliwogs in the following manner: 1. she firmly believed that this was not the most important issue but it is an issue. she believed that to many people the golliwog was an offensive image. 2. the abusive term ‘wog’ which black people have to endure daily comes from this innocent source. 3. britain in general was becoming more racist and there were many ways of combating it. this protest was her way. she believed that schools should be promoting positive images of all ethnic and racial groups. she believed that golliwogs were unhelpful and were an impediment to good teaching. 4. her offer of a cash donation for the cost of the replacement costumes was neither generous nor patronizing. she felt if change occurred because of her action she should contribute to that change (macintosh 1991, 7). for the persons who saw the costumes as unacceptable, their basic point was that the united kingdom was becoming a multi-racial society where greater tolerance and humanity to others were a necessity. peebles was seen as a town that was parochial, insular and unsympathetic to the needs and feelings of ethnic minorities. cfr_2011_r.indb 58 10/31/11 8:57:39 am macgregor the appropriation of a commercial trademark 59 what i have tried to convey in the previous pages about the golliwog is that the image and name, in many different forums, have been controversial for many years. considering the length of the controversy and the widely debated, widely reported nature of the various incidents, it is difficult to believe that some people of peebles were not aware of the incidents; more and more the image of the golliwog was being seen as racist by a substantial segment of the population in britain. within the town itself, a number of local “poets” and a well known folk singer had their works published and recorded which in themselves are revealing, the three verses of george lewis clearly showed his sentiment and the frequent tie-in to the robertson’s jam product: “the birth of a rag doll” sin-how nice to learn my golliwog wasn’t just a jolly wog, but sad his smiling black friendly face, not longer will my table grace. the golden shreds, and orange jelly too, hot buttered toast, and tea to brew, there’s something missing, this i know, i don’t want my golliwog to go. but nothing now can bring him back, you see his face was much too black for two-bob-bits afraid to see, he’s just another chap, like thee and me (1991). part of the wording in “the birth of a rag doll” clearly echoed the long held outlook by the traditionalists that the golliwog image is nothing more than a doll, a cultural artifact, of folkloric and commercial britain; note the references to jams. perhaps the artistic endeavor with the greatest longevity was doug mann’s recording of “i wanna be a golly in the beltane parade” (golly song released 1991, 2). the words suggest the importance of rules, the interference by outside forces, yet acknowledge the golly problem did exist. doug eventually became so identified with the song that he was called “the golly man.” all the sales, the attention, and the controversy apparently delighted the artist. these words were recorded from the tape of the song sent to the author by the writer doug mann: i wanna be a golly in the beltane parade i’d just one ambition when i was but a boy, just one ambition tae fill my heart with job, no to enter a profession or tae tak a trade but just to be a golly in the beltane parade. chorus: in the beltane parade, in the beltane parade, i wanna be a golly in the beltane parade. cfr_2011_r.indb 59 10/31/11 8:57:39 am the appropriation of a commercial trademark macgregor 60 a wifie up in edinburgh frustrated aw’ my plans, declaring golly’s racial and said they should be banned, she read it in some guidelines and guidelines must be right, and who would are tae argue when it’s doon in black and white tae dress as an egyptian i hear wid be just fine, a geisha or a gaucho frae distant argentine, a songie hielan laddie or ev’n an injun brave, so what’s so wrong with gollies in the beltane parade? peebles golly problem is important there’s nae doubt, ye’d think from a’ bickering, sae bitter is the rage, small wonder they’re a symbol on a jar o’marmalade. the parade and the gollies’ protest the first evidence of a “golly” protest took place on wednesday, when two gollies waded across the river tweed. some say there were fifty; some counted seventysix, and other observers say over one hundred golliwog protesters marched in the parade. the actual figure was not all that important, but the fact did remain that despite the national media attention given to the event a sizeable section of the community dressed as gollies and blackened their faces, all to protest the withdrawal of the ten children’s golly costumes. some of the titles and images that i researched include the following: kingsland escapees (primary school “home” of the costumes), gollie busters (ghost busters film), golly for us, i am no golly, robertsons, oily and his golliwog, persil washes gollies whiter, jollie gollies, rev. i. m. golly, a funeral cortege, a golly detector van, and mrs. maclntrouble. for some of the actual costumes that were used in the parade, see figure 1. rumors had circulated throughout the town on friday that contingents of the national front and the anti-racist league would be making an appearance, but they did not prevail. nevertheless the media was out in force, and a bbc television crew did record the parade. their interviewer and spokesperson was the black actor craig charles. charles told the viewers of the eventual program “them and us” that he found the golliwog costumes “a hideous caricature of black people and offensive.” after interviewing the owner of the green tree hotel who had changed its name to the golly rest for two days, he turned to the still running camera and said: “i think the people of peebles need a good kick up the backside.” some other media personnel believed that the golly protesters showed “a good humored gesture of defiance.” mrs. galashan, of kingsland primary school, closed off the school’s involvement by saying: as an educational establishment we are concerned with the academic and social education of our pupils in preparing them for life in the modern world. we must not be seen to promote anything that might be taken as racially offensive. cfr_2011_r.indb 60 10/31/11 8:57:39 am macgregor the appropriation of a commercial trademark 61 sadly, however, the staff of kingsland primary believed they had been let down by the border’s area school administration. mrs. galashan took a swipe at the educationalists by saying: we have not actually had any official backing from any official body even among professionals, the whole of the region. i don’t know what that says, but i find it rather sad (it’s goodbye gollies 1991, 1). as one writer from the region wrote: “if golliwog costumes in a children’s parade are an anachronism they are not alone. why it happened this year, and not during the jam jar row of the ‘70s, is still a mystery.” cultural markers and the appropriation of names and images said (1993) believed that self-definition is one of the activities practiced by all cultures. it has a rhetoric, a set of occasions, such as festival, and a local and regional acceptance and familiarity all its own. peebles had its beltane festival and parade for close to one hundred years. this festival and parade were part of the local cultural traditions. in 1991 an ‘outsider’ threatened the longevity and continuation of a black-face’ tradition. the ‘insiders,’ the locals, took to the walls and defended this cultural icon atavistically. according to said, people were mobilized, throwing their outlooks and discourses back to an earlier imperial, colonialistic time (1993, 37). he also believed that culture comes to be associated, often aggressively, with a nation that differentiates ‘us’ from ‘them.’ rehin (1975, 1981) discussed the long history of the harlequin character, jim crow, to blackface minstrels in victorian london and its seaside resorts. hern (1967) discussed blackfaced minstrelsy in england’s seaside resorts and theatres. pickering (1986) was interested in how minstrelsy symbolically worked out questions about the status of white victorians posed within a framework of social and biological and class orders and distinctions. he went on to say that minstrelsy in britain was responsible for crystallizing and establishing certain stereotypes of blacks and black ‘racial’ characteristics in britain. in helping to shape a symbolic lexicon that people carried away in their minds after leaving minstrel shows, the presentations contributed to the development of racial prejudice. later, when scapegoating took place towards blacks and other visible minorities, they had a ready-made lexicon of derogatory ideas, images, and names at hand: ‘sambo’, ‘wog’, ‘golliwog’, and ‘nigger’. as of november 2000, this lexicon, this ideological legacy in britain had still to be overcome (pickering 87). lively (1999) briefly mentioned the successful television show in britain ‘the black and white minstrel show,’ which, in the 1960s, attracted an audience of over twenty million viewers on approximately fifty percent of britain at that time. it ran until 1978. even today, a continuing debate appears in the media concerning ai jolson impersonators who appear in british benevolent venues and local halls (kuttner et al. 1987). cfr_2011_r.indb 61 10/31/11 8:57:39 am the appropriation of a commercial trademark macgregor 62 britain has a long tradition of differentiating blacks as ‘them’ from its white population as ‘us,’ the insiders; this ideological outlook almost always is discussed with some degree of xenophobia. culture and its racial markers provide a source of identity. the numerous arguments that have been presented in this paper against changing the cultural icon known as the golliwog were linked to the ‘loony left’ a liberal discourse and philosophy associated with hybridity and multiculturalism. culture conceived in this way can become a protective boundary, an enclosure supported in some instances by manufactured commercial constructions such as the golliwog stereotype. ziff and rao (1997) have defined cultural appropriation as ‘the taking’ from a culture that is not one’s own of intellectual property or cultural expressions. expressions include artifacts, history and knowledge (1). cultural appropriation is a multidimensional phenomenon. in the case of the golliwog, the ‘black-faced’ minstrel-like figure, where and when and how did the act of cultural blackening one’s face begin? lively and rehlins both discussed the very origins of the practice of’ ‘blacking up.’ in the context of english morris dancing, lively traces its origins to africa and especially morocco. the french harlequin, or italian arlecchino, may have had its origins in the late middle ages. rehlins discussed the early english example of 1377, when the lord mayor of london visited king richard ii at kensington. then and there mummers disguised as african princes, for example, danced and entertained the audience. in 1510, at the court of henry vii, foreign ambassadors were entertained by henry in a ‘blackface’ disguise, dressed as a turk accompanied by twelve torchbearers “like moreskoes, their faces blacke” (rehlins 1975, 686). the humorous negro made his appearance on the english stage in the latter half of the eighteenth century. throughout most of the nineteenth century negro minstrelsy was popular as vaudeville, theatrical entertainment. the idea, the process of taking, appears to have a long, long tradition: maybe first african, then european, with other appropriations of the jim crow representational format from america. the doll-like images, the representations of a minstrel-like, samboesque figure, however were already widely seen and accepted by large sections of the british public. the stereotype of the dandified, brightly clothed persona of the black comic figure had already been somewhat fixed with british theatrical and other venues of popular culture, parades, dances, children’s puppet shows, jokes, cartoons, and vernacular expressions, for example. what seems to have happened is a chronological serialization of cultural appropriation taking place over many centuries. the pro-golliwog protesters in 1991 were a fleeting continuation of this adaptational process. they basically converted a ‘black-faced’ brightly costumed child into a somewhat parallel, similar image, the robertson’s golliwog. much of the discourse and protestations for and against the golliwog clearly used the commercial trademark as the anchor, the cornerstone for all discussions. in 1991 the golliwog, as a cultural icon, was part of the symbolically constructed social order of britain. however, as we have previously discussed in this work, there has been a growing demand from 1950 to the present, for a recognition and re-allocation, of social status by visible minorities in british society. the historically collective identity was fragmenting, due mainly by the cfr_2011_r.indb 62 10/31/11 8:57:39 am macgregor the appropriation of a commercial trademark 63 large influx of non-whites, and images such as the golliwog were oriented and constructed with the view of a white britain. with the growing awareness of their own collective identity and power, black britons and their supporters began to express their displeasure with numerous institutions (publishing houses and football teams and manufacturers, for example) and demanded change. there was a victory in 1991. the beltane festival stopped the ‘black-faced’ dolls. robertson’s and sons, in 2000, continued to use the golliwog trade character. the pressure for change in the symbolic cultural capital in britain is changing, but resistance to change also presently continues into the new millennium. works cited akass, john. 1987. i can’t bear it. daily express (5 january): 9. barmy 87! the sun (2 january): 17. bates, stephen. 1987. golliwogs lose their place in noddy’s tales. daily telegraph (2 january): 17. bell, colin. 1987. al jolson lookalike is blacked. daily express (28 march): 25. black and white set? 1986. the standard. (23 october): 14. blyton, enid. 1951. here comes noddy again. london: sampson low, marston and co., ltd. breton, raymond. 1984. the production and allocation of symbolic resources: an analysis of the linguistic and ethnocultural fields in canada. the canadian review of sociology and anthropology 21 (2): 123-44. camden ccr campaign. 1980. dragon’s teeth 2 (september): 6. clark, beverly lyon. 1992. american children’s literature; background and bibliography. american studies international 30:1 (april): 4-40. cockrill, pauline. 1997. teddy bears and soft toys. buckinghamshire, england: shire publications ltd. deleting golliwogs. 1987. the daily telegraph (2 january): 16. dixon, bob. 1978. catching them young 1. london: pluto press. dixon, bob. 1980. money for jam. dragon’s teeth 2:3 (september): 15. ezard, john. 1987. outlook not all black for golly. the guardian (2 january): 3. fisher, marjery. 1975. who’s who in children’s books: a treasury of the familiar characters of childhood. new york: holt, rinehart, and winston. forster, imogen. 1985. i love my golly but ... dragon’s teeth 21 (spring). ______. 1989. nature’s outcast child: black people in children’s books. race and class 31 (1): 59-77. fraser, pamela. 1991. boycott. peebleshire news (12 july): 6. golliwogs renamed. 1991. peebleshire news (22 march): 1, 2. golly gets the sack. 1987. the sun (1 january): 9. golly song released. 1991. peebleshire news (10 may): 2. golly what a silly row. 1987. daily star (5 january): 18. good golly! 1987. daily mirror (12 january): 4. hamilton, ian. 1996. the first life of salman rushdie. the new yorker (25 december): 90-97, 100-102, 104-108, 110-113. cfr_2011_r.indb 63 10/31/11 8:57:39 am the appropriation of a commercial trademark macgregor 64 hartlap, diane. 1984. florence upton and the golliwogg doll. the black memorabilia collector’s monthly newsletter. mt. arlington, new jersey: jacquie greenwood, 1-5. hern, anthony. 1967. the seaside holiday. london: cresset press. it’s goodbye gollies. 1991. peebleshire news (29 march): 1. keddie, andrew. 1991. gollywogs miss out on beltane parade. peebleshire news (15 february): 1. ______. 1991. golly cash arrives. peebleshire news (22 february): 1, 6. kuttner, julia. 1987. jolson blacked out as irene sees red. the standard (27 march): 3. lewis, george. 1991. the birth of a rag doll. peebleshire news (29 march): 6. lively, adam. 1999. masks. london: vintage. macgregor, robert m. 1993. the beltane festival golliwog controversy: moral entrepreneurs and symbolic restructuring of social order in british society. paper presented at the conference “studying human lived experience: symbolic interaction and ethnographic research,” 1993, university of waterloo, waterloo, ontario, may 14-22. macintosh, margaret m. 1991. defending my beliefs on golliwogs. peebleshire news (8 march); 7. mann, doug. 1991. golliwog. peebleshire news (26 april): 6. mullan, bob. 1987. the enid blyton story. london: boxtree ltd. newman , david. 1987. noddy blacks golly! daily star (1 january): 7. newton, neil jessup. 1997. memory and misrepresentation; representing crazy horse in tribal court. borrowed power, ed. bruce ziff and pratima v. rao. new brunswick. new jersey: rutgers university press, 195-224. nicholson, susan. 1981. the golliwog. collectibles. spinning wheel (january/ february): 12-14. pickering, michael. 1986. white skin, black masks: ‘nigger’ minstrelsy in victorian england. music hall: performance and style, ed. j.s. bratton. milton keynes, england: open university press, 70-91. purdie, howard. 1991. racism in peebles, the latest. peebleshire news (12 april): 16. rehin, george f. 1975. harlequin jim crow: continuity and convergenie in blackface clowning. journal of popular culture 9: 682-701. ______. 1981. blackface street minstrels in victorian london and its resorts: popular culture and its racial connotations as revealed in polite opinion. journal of popular culture 15 (1): 19-38. said, edward w. 1993. culture and imperialism. new york: vintage books. the naughty gnomes oust those robber golliwogs in the alternative noddy. 1987. the daily mail (1 january): 3. the press, the jam jar, and the gollywog. 1984. searchlight (september): 16, 17. trew, winston. 1985. campaign report. dragon’s teeth 21 (spring): 5. waterhouse, keith. 1987. golly gumdrops. daily mail (5 january): 5. welcome to toytown: no golliwogs! 1987. daily mail (2 january): 15. wilkinson, doris y. 1987. the doll exhibit”: a psycho-cultural analysis of black female role stereotypes. journal of popular culture 21 (2): 19-29. cfr_2011_r.indb 64 10/31/11 8:57:40 am macgregor the appropriation of a commercial trademark 65 ______. 1988. the toy menagerie: early images of blacks in toys, games and dolls. images of blacks in american culture, ed. jessie carney smith. new york, greenwood press, 273-287. wyatt, woodrow. 1987. golly! what a load of noddy nonsense. news of the world (4 january): 8. young, sydney.1987. toyiand kicks out noddy’s gollies. daily mirror (2 january): 3. ziff, bruce and pratima v. rao. 1997. introduction to cultural appropriation: a framework for analysis. borrowed power, ed. bruce ziff and pratima v. rao. new brunswick, new jersey: rutgers university press, 1-27. cfr_2011_r.indb 65 10/31/11 8:57:40 am cfr_2011_part10 cfr_2011_part11 cfr_2011_part12 61 the white lady of devil’s elbow elizabeth tucker while doing research for my book haunted southern tier (2011), i found a relationship between a local “vanishing hitchhiker” legend and a murder that took place near owego, new york about 180 years ago. this legend, “the white lady of devil’s elbow,” raises an interesting question. to what extent can speculation about a violent death that happened many years ago influence the development of a local legend that belongs to a migratory legend pattern? this essay will explore the development of “the white lady of devil’s elbow” from the early 1900s to the present, examining legend texts and reports of “white lady” pranks played by teenagers. it will also delve into the white lady’s symbolic meaning, in an effort to explain why she has been important to young people in upstate new york for many years. near owego, new york on route 17c, some people who have driven past a hill called devil’s elbow have claimed to have startling experiences. legends about these experiences describe a young woman wearing a long white dress. narrators who learned her story in the early twentieth century have described her as a young victorian lady carrying calling cards who travels in a horse-drawn carriage. in the 1980s, 1990s, and early twenty-first century, adolescent and young adult narrators have described her as a prom queen or a bride. before vanishing, she asks the driver to stop at the bottom of devil’s elbow hill. when the driver goes to a nearby house to ask about the young woman, he learns that she died in an accident on the hill many years ago. in some versions he sees her in a portrait, wearing a lovely white dress. from the mid-1920s to the present, teenagers have enjoyed playing pranks with white dresses, using flashlights and other special effects to scare passing motorists. in 1932, a steam shovel operator digging up some dirt near devil’s elbow hill discovered the skull of a young woman who seemed to have been murdered with an axe or a long, flat board about a hundred years ago. almost sixty years later, tioga county historian thomas c. mcenteer wrote that this young woman, who was killed near the site of a tavern built in the early 1800s, may have become the central character of “white lady” legends. mcenteer suggests that belief in a “real ghost” has grown from this evidence of a local murder but that clever pranks, such as a teenaged girl standing below devil’s elbow hill wearing a white dress covered in scotch-lite tape, have made the ghost seem less serious and less believable (1990, 750). my own fieldwork with owego area residents during the past two years has resulted in a different conclusion: both legends about the murder and pranks by teenagers have encouraged belief in “white lady” legends. all of the people who have talked with me about the murder have found it to be a significant event closely connected to “white lady” legends. i have learned two versions of the story of the young woman’s murder around 1832. the first version explains that the young woman was killed by a rough, drunken tavern visitor after going out cfr_2012.indb 61 10/19/12 9:25:37 am the white lady of devil’s elbow tucker 62 alone, while the second states that both she and her husband died at the hands of a greedy tavern owner who had stolen their cow (or cows) and did not want to give up his new livestock. the second version is, of course, more prosaic than the first; the murder of a married couple in order to keep a cow or cows seems less mysterious and troubling than the murder of a lone woman near a tavern. as jan harold brunvand has noted, horror legends tend to emphasize the vulnerability of young women and men who go out on their own, especially at night (1981, 11). legends about young women dying after going out alone deliver warnings about staying safe and following guidelines for proper behavior. this legend pattern has been firmly established in american culture. since american legends tend to emphasize dangers for young women, it is not surprising that few of the legend texts i have collected in recent years mention a husband. over time, owego’s “white lady” legends seem to have become more like other “vanishing hitchhiker” legends that are well known across the united states. the legend cycle explicated by brunvand (1981) and others generally features one person (usually a woman but sometimes, in “jesus hitchhiker” versions, a man) hitchhiking alone. the following “white lady” legend, told by my student and owego area resident irene in 2004, includes a husband whose body vanishes: a long time ago, on a dark and stormy night, a newlywed couple was driving over devil’s elbow hill road. it was so foggy that they never saw the headlights of the oncoming truck—the groom’s body flew out of the car on impact. the body was never found. the bride, however, was crushed in the car. she died instantly. sometimes, on a dark and stormy night, if the fog is just thick enough, you will see the bride standing in the road waiting for her groom to join her. just for reference, devil’s elbow is called that for a specific reason. the road goes almost vertically up to a point and down again very steeply. the road isn’t in use any more, but the story is still told and some have even been said to see a white figure standing on the old abandoned road. devil’s elbow hill is located on the way to waverly, new york if you’re taking old 17. perhaps this vanishing husband is a vestige of the murder story that includes both a husband and a wife. only the wife becomes a visible ghost, although the husband presumably dies too: an indication that the young woman’s plight requires more attention than her husband’s does. this “white lady” variant and others focus on young women who die after a wedding or prom. the sudden downshift from joy to tragedy highlights life’s fragility and warns young women to be careful. somewhat similarly, teenagers’ pranks combine joy with tragedy; besides giving kids the chance to have some illicit fun, they highlight deaths and hauntings described in local legends and films. scholars of children’s and adolescents’ folklore have noted the shock value of such pranks and the importance of the link between the legend and the prank or joke. sheldon posen’s “pranks and practical cfr_2012.indb 62 10/19/12 9:25:37 am tucker the white lady of devil’s elbow 63 jokes at children’s summer camps,” for example, describes the dramatic impact of a ghost seeming to appear immediately after its legend is told (1974, 303-9). linda dégh’s “symbiosis of joke and legend: a case of conversational folklore” (1976) shows how easily people can move from horror to humor when discussing local legends. i have studied “scary maze game” pranks, in which a child or adolescent frightens a younger sibling by making him or her play an internet game in which the face of linda blair from the exorcist suddenly pops up on the screen (tucker 2011). such pranks have given their players so much pleasure that they have become the subjects of youtube videos for the entertainment of friends and others: an audience that seems to be virtually limitless. researching “scary maze game” videos and comments online has helped me understand the relationship between fright and delight in young people’s prank playing. a prank that suddenly scares someone belongs to the broad category of ilinx play: the kind of play defined by roger caillois (1961) as vertigo-inducing playful behavior. in contrast to agon (competition), alea (chance), and mimicry (simulation), ilinx subjects the player to dizziness and disorientation. swinging or twirling on a merry-go-round can cause dizziness; so can the sudden appearance of something shocking and/or frightening. ghosts that appear quickly not only shock viewers through the rapidity of their appearance, but also scare them by bringing to mind tragic events delineated in legends. the child or adolescent who plays the prank can enjoy the pleasure of victimization, while the one upon whom the prank is played may enjoy the stimulation of getting scared and can certainly take pride later on in having survived that process. since scary pranks tend to be highly memorable, they reinforce awareness of legends and films to which they are related. i have learned, while talking with students of mine who lived in the owego area during their teenaged years, that “white lady” pranks sharpen young people’s awareness of local legends. in order to play a good prank related to this legend, it is necessary to know the legend’s details well. after the prank takes place, the story of its occurrence—either by its players or by others—refers to aspects of the legend that local residents find to be important, as well as highlighting the audaciousness of the kids who dared to go out on the road to scare drivers passing by. owego teenagers’ “white lady” pranks have ranged from simple displays of a white dress at the base of devil’s elbow hill to elaborate use of flashlights, reflecting tape, pulleys, ropes, and other materials. since flashing lights can cause accidents at night, local police have pursued and, in some cases, apprehended “white lady” prank-players (mcenteer 1990, 750). since police have gone after these pranksters, the stakes of playing such pranks have become very high. according to my students, successful “white lady” prank-players have earned admiration from friends for their bravery, especially around halloween. besides tracing the development of these local legends and pranks, i have wondered why legends about the young female ghost of devil’s elbow have kept the descriptive term “white.” all of her outfits—visiting dress, prom dress, and wedding gown—are white, a color that suggests innocence and joy. godey’s lady’s book, a popular periodical from the nineteenth to the twentieth century, includes lyric poems such as “leura” by anson g. chester, in which a young woman cfr_2012.indb 63 10/19/12 9:25:37 am the white lady of devil’s elbow tucker 64 receives praise for having “a brow pure as snow-flakes/from winter’s white wing” (1850). white wedding dresses have been common in england and the united states since 1840, when queen victoria married prince albert. unlike queen victoria, the white lady is a young woman alone (or at least separated from her husband) on a dangerous country road next to a hill with an evil-sounding name. perhaps she wears white to show that she represents goodness and proper female behavior that will resist the devil’s influence. her story works well as a warning legend for young women, reminding them to preserve their safety, innocence, and happiness. another reason for the white lady’s persistence may be the prominence in the owego area of german immigrants, including some from southern germany. german immigrants have also settled in nearby pennsylvania, which has a “white lady” legend associated with a curve called “devil’s elbow” on wopsononock (wopsy) mountain. the famous german legend of the “white lady,” about a countess who kills her two children after coming to the conclusion that her husband will not let them live, originated from schloss plassenburg in bavaria in the fourteenth century. like other “la llorona” legends, this one emphasizes the horror of a mother killing her own offspring. although scholars have determined that the countess kunigunde of plassenburg never had children, the story of her child-killing has been remarkably durable and is still told by guides at schloss plassenburg today (nickell). in his scholarly study die weisse frau (1984 [1931]), martin wachler mentions that members of the plassenburg court used to dress up as the white lady to scare people away from the castle. young people who heard stories about pranks of this kind may have tried similar pranks of their own. even if they didn’t play pranks, they knew the legends and could tell them to their own children later on. any ghost that insists on staying in one place for hundreds of years accrues multiple layers of meaning. in possessions: the history and uses of haunting in the hudson valley (2003), judith richardson analyzes information about the ghost of a young woman from the village of leeds who has been important to her community for almost 250 years. this young woman, anna dorothea swarts, was the black, german, scottish, spanish, or indian servant or slave of a rich man named william salisbury; she died after her master beat her and had her dragged behind a horse in 1762. although not all the facts of this woman’s terrible death are known, it is clear that her ghost is as firmly attached to the place where she died as the white lady’s ghost is to devil’s elbow hill. richardson notes that “the ghost is both vestige and novelty, positive and negative, powerful and powerless, a possessing force that descends upon the town and through history, and something passive that is possessed” (123). this intriguing set of antitheses reminds us that ghosts are powerful and enigmatic beings who do not give up easily. it may be difficult for us to understand their motivations, but if they stick around for many years, we can feel sure that they have a reason for staying; and that reason probably goes beyond the traditional idea that ghosts like to haunt the locations of their deaths. there are plenty of reasons why the white lady persistently haunts devil’s elbow. representing young women’s hopes for safety, respectability, and joy, she cfr_2012.indb 64 10/19/12 9:25:37 am tucker the white lady of devil’s elbow 65 guards a dangerous curve next to the site of a tavern where a young woman died violently and was buried furtively during the town’s early days. is the white lady herself this young woman? some townspeople, including the county historian, think she is. it is also possible to view her as a spiritual descendant of the white lady of schloss plassenburg, who suffered from a difficult relationship with her husband, killed her own children, and gradually became a frightening figure for members of the court. the thread that connects this fourteenth-century countess to the twenty-first-century bride or prom queen is young women’s suffering, which takes many forms and leaves a lasting legacy. the “la llorona” legend pattern is an especially important part of this history. although the local “white lady” legend that i have studied does not include death of a child or children, its counterpart in pennsylvania does. teenagers’ perception of our local white lady tends to be more upbeat. for high school students who live near owego now, the white lady is both familiar and strange, a famous ghost who makes both kids and adults shiver around halloween. kids with an adventurous spirit may want to play a “white lady” prank or two, because this ghost isn’t just scary; she’s also fun to imitate and encourages escapes from the police. from a kid’s perspective, the white lady is a cool community member who is there to stay. works cited brunvand, jan harold. 1981. the vanishing hitchhiker. new york: norton. caillois, roger. 1961. man, play and games. new york: free press of glencoe. chester, anson g. 1850. leura. godey’s lady’s book. november. http://www. history.rochester.edu/godeys/12-50.htm. dégh, linda. 1976. symbiosis of joke and legend: a case of conversational folklore. in folklore today: a festschrift for richard dorson, ed. linda dégh, henry glassie, and felix j. oinas. bloomington: indiana universitypress, 101–122. mcenteer, thomas. 1990. seasons of change. owego, new york: tioga county legislature. nickell, joe. 2003. legend of the white lady. csi 13:1 (march). http://www.csicop. org/sb/show/legend_of_the_white_lady/ posen, i. sheldon. 1974. pranks and practical jokes at children’s summer camps. southern folklore quarterly 38: 299–309. richardson, judith. 2003. possessions: the history and uses of haunting in the hudson valley. cambridge: harvard university press. tucker, elizabeth. 2012. “lmao—that wasnt (sic) even scary”: legend-related performances on youtube. contemporary legend series 3(l):1–14. wachler, martin. 1984 [1931]. die weisse frau. reprinted kulmbach: freunde der plassenburg. cfr_2012.indb 65 10/19/12 9:25:37 am cfr_2012_part12 pages from cfr_2012_part13 ocr document book reviews yolen, jane. touch magic: fantasy, faerie and folklore in the literature of childhood. 2nd edition. little rock: august house, 2000. 128p. paper $11.95. it was with great delight and the feeling of sitting down with a trusted old friend that i read this second edition. the original essays, to which i have turned to again and again in the past nineteen years, were as fresh and as relevant as they were on my first reading. the only change i noticed was a reference to xena and hercules. there is a magic in yolen's writing style, allowing the reader to become a listener to her story about story. in her opening essay, "how basic is shazam" she talks of the importance of introducing mythology to children: these four functions of myth and folklore should establish the listening to and learning of the old tales as being among the most basic elements of education: creating a landscape of allusion, enabling us to understand our own and other cultures from the inside out, providing an adaptable tool of therapy, and stating in symbolic or metaphoric terms the abstract truths of our common human experience. in those first essays, yolen explains the ability stories have to empower and to transform lives, how they provide a sense of good and evil, and link us not only to our past but to our future. she explores the roles of teller and listener, the spirit of "once upon a time," and the need for children to receive not only the gift of words, but also the capacity to wonder. she talks about the need for "tough magic" the understanding that to receive, one has to give, and the importance of children hearing stories and reading books that confront the evils, fantasy, and real, and stand up to them. when one came to the end of the first edition, there was a feeling of completeness, but yolen has added part four, called touchtones, which contains six new essays. here she, among other things, writes about story when censorship and morality come calling. "story in ten fits" tells, with great humor, what story is not, and thus explains what 119 book reviews story is. in "touchstones" yolen chooses five children's books which she considers the touchstones of fantasy writing. "fabling to the near night" uses seven books to explore prejudices or "cultural baggage" with a plea that we be aware of both the "hidden and open messages" in every story. yolen tackles three popular folktales in "killing the other" and points out the need to read below the surface and to examine the layers of story to find the true richness. with "an experiential act" she uses time-travel books and her writing of the devil's arithmetic to show how the past can be interwoven with the present and the future-a living and continuous process of which they are a part. in the final essay, she reflects on how, and maybe why, we live our lives through metaphor, and this reader truly felt that she had touched magic and had the power to pass it on. a selective bibliography of books and articles that have been "very special, helpful stimulating companions and resources" follow the essays. touch magic is all of the above and more; it is a book that can, and should, be read again and again. jane yolen writes "a book remains for the life of its paper and print and thus its imprint persists on the lives of its hundreds, even thousands of readers." for children everywhere, my hope is that this imprint will persist on the lives of millions. merla harris, storyteller 1 tatar, maria, ed. the classic fairy tales: texts, criticism. a norton critical edition. new york: w.w. norton, 1999. 2 luthi, max. once upon a time: on the nature of fairy tales. bloomington: indiana university press, 1976. 3 wilson, william a. "sibelius, the kalevala and karelianism." in the sibelius companion. edited by glenda dawn goss. westport, ct: greenwood press, 1996, 43-60. 4 wilson, 48. 5 libraries unlimited: books & resources for librarians & media specialists. 120 41 young children’s table talk with peers in early childhood settings robyn m holmes as mechling (2000) noted, mealtime is both a biological necessity and a social activity. mealtime has been acknowledged as a context and setting in which children can acquire language competencies and skills. during mealtime, young children have the opportunity to interact socially with both adults and peers. for example, cote (2001) compared the mealtime experiences of preschool children in two different classroom settings. she found that the structure of mealtimes was related to children’s language learning opportunities. she compared language use during mealtimes to other times of the day and introduced strategies to help encourage children’s discourse during mealtime events. other studies such as those by snow and beals (2006) have explored mealtime events as they relate to children’s language competencies and skills. the relationship between mealtime and language development has also been investigated cross-culturally. for example, majorano, cigala, and corsano (2009) explored teacher-child and peer to peer speech in italian nursery schools. they found that children were linguistically active during mealtime compared to other times in their routine such as free play. in fact, they found that children produced longer utterances and more complex speech during mealtime. thus the nature and context of this activity helped shaped children’s language skills, development, and competencies. others cross-cultural comparisons on children’s conversations include tulviste et al’s (2010) work on estonian, finnish, and swedish children’s peer discourse. they focused more upon the types of speech children use and how culture guides peer conversations. employing participant observation, stone (1992) analyzed preschoolers’ spontaneous conversation that takes place in the classroom. using categories such as content, structure, and form, he found that children typically utilize three forms of narrative. in the classroom context, the greatest number of narratives were produced during lunchtime and directed toward teachers. he found that preschoolers, similar to adults discuss events that happen outside of the classroom and also use a “show and tell approach” (375). in his sample, children’s narratives focused upon personal experiences, family and friends, and dreams or movies. he concluded that adults and children should share mealtime as the child searches for a responsive partner. many previous studies on children’s conversations have focused upon adult to child rather than child to child speech. as blum-kulka and snow (2004) noted, few studies have systemically explored peer to peer conversation outside of the play context. exceptional studies that have investigated the content of young children’s peer to peer conversations during non-play contexts include works by o’neill et al. (2009) and holmes (2011). o’neill et al. (2009) investigated the content of young children’s speech in peer conversations. they video recorded the conversations of a class of preschool children during snack time, twice a week for cfr_2012.indb 41 10/19/12 9:25:36 am young children’s table talk with peers holmes 42 approximately 500 speech episodes. raw linguistic material was coded for speech initiations, person reference, semantic content, time, and location. they found boys were slightly more verbally active than girls, conversations were primarily dyadic, most topics involved people, jokes were infrequent, food was a topic in only a small percentage of conversations, and children produced more comments than questions. they concluded that preschoolers are working on a theory of mind through their social and linguistic interactions with peers. other studies have focused upon the social nature of children’s speech. for example, hamo and blum-kulka (2007) explored the purpose and function of language in israeli preschoolers’ peer interactions. in their view, discourse is a unique linguistic, social, and cultural phenomenon. in their work, they acknowledged the daily moment by moment social construction of peer culture in addition to the collaborative creation of discourse as it relates to individual development. their focus was twofold; talk as activity and the use of conversation as a medium to help children develop social ability. in a related work, kryatzis and green (1997) used a vygotskian lens to examine the relationship between the social construction of children’s narratives and peer relationships. using subsamples of preschool and middle school children, they suggested that children’s discourse serve as a medium through which children socially construct. there are peer culture, identity, and friend relationships rather than linguistically analyzing children’s speech, another approach to understand children’s language use has addressed preschool children’s understanding of conversational structure. the sociolinguist william corsaro (1986; 1990; 1997) has extensively studied how young children use language and discourse to communicate their social status and understand their position within their peer groups. in the interpretist view, children use language to both collaboratively construct and understand their social worlds. kryatzis (2004) presents a review of this approach and its focus upon how children utilize language to both create and reflect their social worlds and relationships. one issue that surfaces is the concern children, even young children, have with power in their peer groups. in this case, children’s ability to establish and maintain relationships with peers is reflected in their ability to use communication effectively to create and maintain social order. this can be accomplished by teasing, manipulating adult categories, and controlling conversations. this is the essence of peer talk (see also karrebæk 2011; kryatzis, ross and koymen 2010). empirical studies on children’s use of language to reflect their social status include kyratzis, marx, and wade’s (2001) ethnographic work. they examined how preschoolers use language to mark social status and ranking in a friend group and found that children used specific control acts to regulate the behavior of others in the group. powerful girls used mitigated pretend statements, whereas powerful boys employed unmitigated declaratives and direct commands. researchers such as anderson (1990) focused upon children’s use of linguistic markers for power in pretend play. in the neighborhood setting, goodwin (1990, 1993) explored african american children’s strategies for establishing dominance hierarchies and alliances. she continued this line of inquiry (2007) by focusing cfr_2012.indb 42 10/19/12 9:25:36 am holmes young children’s table talk with peers 43 upon language as a medium through which young children mark their power. as wolf (1996) suggested, child to child conversations may provide the context for critical language lessons, since the inequality and power differentials in adult to child speech are not present in peer speech interactions. finally, in her work with preschoolers, holmes (2011) investigated the nature and content of peer conversations in a classroom context during lunchtime. she also explored how the activity of eating at school framed the children’s conversation and play and the role of gender in guiding the conversations and play forms. audio and written recordings of conversation using a time sampling unit of five minutes were employed. simultaneous play and non-verbal behavior were also recorded. she found that children primarily conversed with peers and not with adults. pervasive conversation topics were food, family, and daily events. child to teacher speech frequently involved requests for assistance. girls were more active verbally than boys in almost all instances except in asking the teacher questions. boys played with their food, told jokes and engaged in taboo humor and language play more than the girls did. the present work is aligned with the following viewpoints. first, children are regarded as active agents in their own socialization (schwartzman 2001). second, setting is acknowledged as guiding the behavior that occurs within it. in agreement with mechling (2000), children’s meal times are viewed as social contexts that frame the conversation and behavior that emerges in that setting and playing with food is a normative behavior for children. third, peer conversations serve as a medium in which children create their own culture, manage their relationships, convey social status, and discuss what is culturally relevant to them. in short, children’s peer conversations reflect children’s everyday experiences in their micro and macro social worlds (göncü 1999). this project on children’s mealtime conversations is framed within the sociocultural perspective which emphasizes the social functions of children’s discourse (corsaro 1990; hamo and blum-kulka 2002). this view focuses upon the interconnectedness between culture and behavior as it is reflected in children’s conversational skills. such interactions take place within a social context in which cultural norms and social relationships are constructed. this project focuses upon the role of children’s conversations in providing a medium by which children convey and share commentary on their social world, relationships, status, everyday events, and the adult world. of particular importance are conversation and language. one might expect preschool and kindergarten children’s conversations to vary according to cognitive understanding and language competencies; popular children will control table talk; status will shift situationally; and girls and boys will engage in these acts in different ways. method participants participants included preschool children who attended a private, not for profit learning institution primarily for children 3-5 years of age with additional enrichment programs for older preschoolers. there were 70 children (31 boys, cfr_2012.indb 43 10/19/12 9:25:36 am young children’s table talk with peers holmes 44 39 girls). ages ranged from 38-70 months with a mean age of 48.2 months. children were primarily from middle income families of european american heritages. parental /guardian consent return rate was 78% (70/90). some children attended school every day, some three days a week, and others two days a week. all children were eligible for the lunchtime program. an institutional review board granted approved for this project and the director and caregivers granted additional consent. children were treated according to the american psychological association’s guidelines for ethical treatment of participants (american psychological association, 2002). since the participants were minor children additional resources were consulted (christensen and james 2008; fraser 2004). there were seven kindergarten children (two boys, five girls). the children attended a private, for profit learning center whose mission includes teaching educational as well as life skills while emphasizing all domains of development. children who attended the center may be between 6 weeks and 12 years of age. the participants attended a full day kindergarten program, ranged in age from 5-6 ½ years, and were of diverse ethnic heritages. parental consent return rate was 75%. all children were treated according to the american psychological association’s (2002) guidelines for ethical treatment of human participants (see greene and hogan 2005 for information on conducting research with children). an institutional review board, the cooperating preschool and learning center, and parents/guardians granted approval for this project. design and procedure this project utilized a qualitative design, a naturalistic observation approach, and the technique employed was written and audio recordings of children’s conversations in the natural setting of the classroom during lunchtime. in the preschool, raw material was gathered between spring 2009 and fall 2010. the children were visited three days a week for 25 weeks. lunchtime lasted for approximately one hour per visit. total observation time was approximately 75 hours. the author and her four research assistants were naturalistic observers in the classroom. they neither initiated conversations nor engaged the children in interactions. within several weeks the children acclimated to the researchers’ presence, although sometimes the children invited them into their conversation or asked them for assistance with their lunch. the latter requests included opening a lunch box, pouring a drink, or inserting straws into juice boxes. the kindergarten fieldwork period took place between fall 2007 and spring 2008. the following procedure was maintained in the preschool field site. after the children had selected their seats for lunch, the researchers filled in a seating chart. they then graphically noted the individual children for whom they had permission to record. initially, teachers provided the children’s names for the seating chart to ensure accuracy. even after the researchers learned the children’s names, teachers were consulted when the researchers were uncertain about a child’s identity. after the seating charts were completed, the researchers positioned themselves on different sides of the tables so they could record independently the children’s conversations from different vantage points. each researcher had a notebook and pen with which to record the children’s speech. conversations were also cfr_2012.indb 44 10/19/12 9:25:36 am holmes young children’s table talk with peers 45 audiorecorded to verify the quality and accuracy of the written notes. on some occasions, the volume of the children’s voices during lunchtime was so loud that the researchers had to rely exclusively on written field notes. the researchers selected tables for recording conversations based upon which table had the greatest number of children for whom consent was granted. order of observation and recording proceeded from most to least number of children for whom consent was granted. on some occasions when children were silent at a table, researchers moved on to the next table. in the preschool, table compositions changed with every lunch time in part because attendance was voluntary and different children attended preschool on different days of the week. to begin recording conversations, the researchers synchronized their start time and each began recording the children’s conversations at the designated tables. each table was time sampled for five minutes since lunchtime lasted approximately 30 minutes. when the 5 minute period had elapsed, the researchers moved on to the next table. all of the children’s speech was recorded as well as any accompanying play and non-verbal behavior. children who were seated at the table for whom consent was not granted were simply marked with an x in the field notes. several trial sessions were accomplished prior to the start of the project. the researchers then compared field notes to determine discrepancies and gaps in the recorded material. after ten trials, the researchers were able to achieve 88% compatibility. undecipherable words and phrases were discussed immediately after the recording session in a quiet room of the preschool. the author was the only observer in the kindergarten field site. she adhered to the same procedures as those used in the preschool classroom. coding the author trained the four research assistants to code the children’s speech. first, all the researchers independently transcribed their recorded material. next, these transcriptions were compared across all researchers to verify their accuracy. once the accuracy of the transcriptions was verified, sample text was selected for training the researchers how to content code the material. a sample category was selected and each researcher worked independently coding randomly selected material from the children’s actual conversations. additional categories were added and all coders worked independently on the selected material. first, text was highlighted in different colors each color corresponding to a different category label. then coders exchanged the highlighted material to discuss any discrepancies. next, phrases that could be subsumed into a larger category were extracted. these were also checked for accuracy. when a discrepancy arose it was discussed at that time. after ten trials, no discrepancies arose and the actual coding began. the coding procedure was performed following guidelines that appear in the methodological literature (e.g., bernard 2006; côtê, salmela, and russell 1995) and utilized by the author in an earlier study (holmes 2011). first, verbatim phrases were extracted from the children’s conversations. next, phrases that contained a particular person, idea or thought were grouped together. these phrases were used to form higher order categories. for example, if children spoke about a cfr_2012.indb 45 10/19/12 9:25:36 am young children’s table talk with peers holmes 46 family member, pet, or an event these were incorporated into the cultural domains of family and life events. if children conversed about a food item such as when two children were conversing about their lunch, these events were subsumed into the higher order category, food. next, transcribed text was highlighted using different colors to designate larger cultural domains. color coding larger domains helped the coders compare material and efficiently locate raw material and examples for larger cultural categories. sometimes a child’s conversation might contain criteria for more than one category. for example, john and joe were involved in a conversation that contained multiple topics. they shared stories about their siblings and the food in their lunchboxes. utterances that contained different people, ideas, or thoughts were coded for every response, placed into their respective higher order categories, and counted separately. this coding procedure has been employed in other studies that utilize semi-structured interviewing and open ended questioning (dupuis, bloom, and loughead 2006; holmes 2005; holmes 2011). category frequencies were tallied to yield percentages of behavior. speech responses were used rather than conversational units given the pervasive occurrence of transduction reasoning (piaget 1952). results in this section the nature and content of the children’s conversations with both peers and teachers are presented. all raw material was coded, analyzed, and tallied for descriptive statistics and is presented by sex of child and the conversational partner. in table 1, the content and frequency of the children’s conversations to peers and teachers are presented (see table 1). this group of children, both boys and girls, spent the majority of their lunchtime speaking with peers. the nature of these linguistic acts focused upon food and making general declarative statements. these accounted respectively for 36.0% and 39.4% of all peer conversations. by contrast, children spent only 10.9% of their time engaged in conversation with their teachers. gender differences surfaced with respect to both the nature and the content of the children’s speech to peers and teachers. one major pattern that emerged was that girls were responsible for most of the conversation during lunchtime. second, only a few major cultural domains or higher order categories were uncovered from the children’s conversations. food was a major topic of conversation for these children. however, girls spent more than twice as much time (68.6%) on this topic than boys (31.1%). similarly, girls made approximately twice as many declarative statements (60.1%) than boys (39.9%) and interjected daily events in their conversations. girls accounted for 75% of these instances. in addition, girls (86%) spoke about their families much more at lunchtime than boys did. as a group girls approached and spoke with their teachers more (76.7%) to their teachers than boys did (23.3%). cfr_2012.indb 46 10/19/12 9:25:36 am holmes young children’s table talk with peers 47 there were two categories in which boys and girls participated equally. one was related to speech content; the other was behavior that accompanied speech and eating. for example, boys (41.2%) and girls (58.8%) gave almost equal attention to games and things related to play in their conversations and in this sample both boys (47.6%) and girls (52.4%) played with their food. worthy of mention is the category family and the nature of the children’s conversations. interestingly, pets were the topic of conversation more so than either siblings or parents. in the latter subcategory, only mothers were mentioned in conversation. not one child included his or her father in conversations on the topic of family. examples of child speech to teacher both preschooler and kindergartener speech interactions with their teachers were similar. most were phrased in the form of questions either for assistance or information. for example, one preschooler, michele, asked her teacher, “can you open this [a snack container].” similarly, jeff, a kindergartener, asked his teacher, “is tia coming today?” his classmate, linda, asked her teacher for another helping, “miss lynn, can i have more spaghetti please?” declaratives also appeared in the children’s speech to their teachers but with less frequency than questions. for example, on separate occasions two different preschooler girls announced to their teacher, “kristin has tic tacs!” and “i ate my sandwich.” kindergarten children used more declarative speech to their teachers and asked them fewer questions than preschool children did. one major difference was the length of the utterance. kindergarteners tended to use longer sentences than most preschoolers, often by several words. table 1: frequencies for topical categories during mealtime categories sex of children boys girls total peer discourse talk about food 75 165 240 general declarative statements 105 158 263 talk about daily events 6 18 24 talk about play or games 7 10 17 talk about family 7 43 50 child to teacher discourse talk with the teacher 17 56 73 peer play play with food 10 11 21 cfr_2012.indb 47 10/19/12 9:25:36 am young children’s table talk with peers holmes 48 the topic of food for both preschoolers and kindergarteners, food was a major topic of conversation. children asked questions about food, declared their gustatory likes and dislikes, traded and shared food, and described their food. some interactions were simple rhetorical questions. for example, mira, a preschool girl, asked her tablemate, “i don’t like chicken. do you want it?” other speech interactions were simple declarative statements such as when uma told tess, “i have chocolate juice.” her tablemate, alana declared to her table, “this is not good, i have a bagel. my mom put jelly on my bagel. my sister has a spoon.” sometimes the conversation involved several preschool children at the table who participated. michael: this french fry is big. richard: look at my dorito. jill: this is not a burrito, that’s lemonade. richard: it’s a capri sun and i said dorito. it’s spicy nacho. it’s so spicy. trish: it’s fruit punch. richard: it’s capri sun. trish: no, it’s lemonade. similarly: christina: i don’t want these. hope: so don’t eat them. christina: can i have fruit snacks? hope: those are sour. ellen: what are (points to fruit holly)? adam: i have an ice pack to keep my food cold. do you want this? (to his sister) i don’t want my yogurt. interestingly, kindergarten children frequently stayed on topic when discussing food and rarely included or moved to another topic of conversation. for example, the following conversation illustrates the children’s ability to contribute to a conversation while centering on the topic of food: kevin: drink your milk if you want to get strong. kim: i don’t like the soup. kevin: do you like chicken noodle? kim to the teacher: i like those (pears) julia to amy: can i have your green beans? i like green beans. amy: i don’t like cheese. i don’t like this. is this white cheese or yellow cheese? on some occasions, conversations included more than one topic, such as this one that began with food. the following conversation was between two preschool cfr_2012.indb 48 10/19/12 9:25:36 am holmes young children’s table talk with peers 49 boys, one of whom began his conversation about food using the home context to initiate the dialogue: brian: i don’t have anything in my house to eat. tim: you should have gotten mcdonald’s. brian: i wanted burger king for the spiderman toy. preschooler conversations were typical of this age group and often included more transductive thinking and rapid movement from one topic to the next in a given speech event. for example, the following conversation began with a query about beverages and concluded with the children’s pets. taylor: what flavor is your juice? steven: strawberry. oliver: but they have chocolate in them. i think my mom’s going to take me to the beach. taylor: the other day was hot. steven: yeah, i was burning myself. taylor: i got two star war ships. steven: yeah my dog’s a girl. she’s my sister. oliver: when i first got my dog i was dressing her up in girls’ clothes. one time my dog bit me on my side. when the teacher was a participant in the conversation, her speech helped shaped the conversation. todd to rosie: we have a fish. melissa to teacher and table mates: i have a pet that’s a sandwich to me. teacher to melissa: what’s its name? melissa: wingnut! i have a hamster. teacher: who named it? melissa: me! my mom calls me that, i named the hamster that. that’s why. it’s a guinea pig from a guinea pig pond. you could rent a hippo there. teacher: have you ever done that? melissa: no, mommy won’t let me. hamsters are small and fat. i’m all done. this is my hamster. family family was a major topic of conversation that illustrated the importance of the children’s ever increasing social worlds. family members, events, and pets often were shared with table mates. in many cases, conversations began with either a declarative fact about family or a question about one’s family. the following conversation is illustrative. cfr_2012.indb 49 10/19/12 9:25:36 am young children’s table talk with peers holmes 50 jenn: enrique! enrique: what? jenn: one of my cousins has a real phone. enrique: she’s only 8. maryanne: i have two brothers, one is seventeen and he has a girlfriend, a real phone, and an ipod. michaela: i’m not allowed to have one. younger children’s declaratives regarding family often contained instances of transductive thinking as in the following example: teresa: my aunt cut my hair. i have a cheese bar! i love chocolate chips! i love chocolate chips! they’re so yummy. some children made a public announcement at their table and depending on social status, the child’s utterance might receive a response. for example, when jimmy stated, “my sister’s in the girl scouts,” the table ignored the statement and continued the conversation on the topic already on hand. jimmy had lower social status than the children controlling the conversation at the time. kindergarten children’s conversation regarding family paralleled the preschoolers’ with less of an emphasis on pets, though they also were mentioned. amy to teacher: do you have a mom? jack: my brother’s name is alex. amy to jack: my sister and other sister. she’s 18. jack to amy: how old is your brother? play with food both preschool and kindergarten children played with their food. it served as a focal point of the conversation, to help the children pass time while they were eating, and it helped socially construct playful interactions. much of the play was transformational, and in assimilative fashion children substituted food for real life objects that they resembled either in form or function. for example, michaela manipulated a banana like it was a telephone and shaped the peels like a slide, saying “now i made a slide” while using the table. maria transformed her circular ice pack into a food item: “look at my ring today” as she put her finger through the hole of her ice pack. kindergarten children were also creative with their food play, turning peas into necklaces and mashed potatoes into volcanoes. media influence as is common with children of this generation, these children were heavily invested in cultural experiences the media provided for them. this included movies, dvds, computer games, and television. these experiences became fodder for their conversations. for example, the following conversation was generated from the princess diaries movie at an all girls table: cfr_2012.indb 50 10/19/12 9:25:36 am holmes young children’s table talk with peers 51 michaela: my favorite princess is cinderella! amy: i have all the princess movies! michaela: which is your favorite? i like cinderella. [gather around lunch bag pointing to] “i like that one.” similarly, at her all girls table stephania stated, “i watched hannah montana and at the end jackson was in the tub and the kitties were in the tub. you have twinkle toes. are you three? i’m five.” conversational topics regarding media were often gender specific. for example, the following dialogue occurred at an all boys’ table. girls never discussed these tv and comic characters. david: i like power rangers. noel: is there a red one? david: yes and a blue and red one like spiderman. noel: are spiderman power rangers? jamie: there’s a pink one. kindergarten children also integrated the media in their conversation though their understanding and memory, for the material was more detailed than preschoolers’. for example, the following conversation took place during one lunch and continued for the next few days as a topic. it was based upon the movie “alvin and the chipmunks.” jenn, a child with higher social status, controlled the conversation. jenn: chicky chicky wow wow and dances. [noel sings with her in a duet]. jenn: now was that a boy or a girl who did this? [she is rotating her hips as she sings]. amy adds: alvin and the chipmunks did it like this in the movie. then they threw something at the daddy. julia: then alvin hid it behind his head like this and then he sang chicky wow wow. gender both the preschool and the kindergarten children used more linguistic markers for gender in their conversations and speech. the following is a typical example of preschooler speech that highlights gender as a social category. michaela: we want to play with the boys. amy: yeah, the boys. michaela: we do want to play. kindergarten children illustrated their understanding of gender identity, awareness, and gender as a social construct in the following speech events. jack was the most popular boy in class and regularly controlled both the topic and the tempo of lunchtime conversations. cfr_2012.indb 51 10/19/12 9:25:36 am young children’s table talk with peers holmes 52 jack: you are a girl and i am a boy. i’m on your team and you’re on my team. jenn: i’m going on, the boys team that mean to chase us. jack to table counting the table: there’s five girls and three boys. bobby: raise your hand if you are a girl. amy: raise your hand if you’re a boy. jack to jenn: you need to get someone else on your side. jenn and wendy: no, she’s on my side. i’m on the boy’s side. friends both the preschool and kindergarten children were aware of the importance of friends as playmates. for example, these two preschoolers illustrate their conceptions of friends and their ability to categorize friends by setting. james: the other day i slept over my nana’s house. do you know joseph? nicky: no. james: he’s my friend. i play with him at home. the kindergarten children often discussed play dates at their table. talia to jenn: i’m having a play party and tom is going to invite you? can you come to my house? jack to bobby: i’m still your friend and are you coming to my party? some preschool children drew attention to degrees of friendship when it came time to food sharing. this event was reserved only for one’s best friend. for example, carin to jackie: want a punch (fruit punch)? nicola: he’s my best friend. jackie: you don’t even know him. nicola: yes, i do. he’s in my gym class. daily events the children’s daily, everyday experiences were often the topic of conversation. in many instances, children both commented on and tried to process their everyday experiences. for example, talia, a kindergartener, couldn’t wait to tell her tablemates about her impending visit to the dentist. talia: i have to go to the dentist. he is going to take pictures. he puts a little thing in and then he takes it out. cfr_2012.indb 52 10/19/12 9:25:37 am holmes young children’s table talk with peers 53 amy: if your tooth is wiggling, they take a picture. talia: i need to take pictures. steven to talia: pictures don’t hurt i got a picture right here. my friend used to live across from me. she got a shot in her mouth. talia to amy and jenn: you have to go to the dentist even if you don’t have a cavity. in families with siblings often children recounted for their table mates the arrival and/or birth of their new sibling. for example, jenn to david: “my mom’s tummy came apart when she had the baby and they had to put it back together. next they do that for all moms.” play with language unexpectedly, kindergarten children enjoyed word play more than the preschool children did. preschool children tended to sing nonsense syllables or meaningless words. kindergarten children enjoyed using ordinary words in comical if not borderline taboo ways, hoping to get the attention of adults within earshot. amy: know what, my brother says “butt.” it’s a potty word. my other brother says the word too. i eats butt. mine’s a chicken butt, butt, butt. taboo humor only the kindergarten children seemed to include taboo topics such as bathroom humor, parodies on etiquette, and things that grossed each other and adults out. the children seemed to take pleasure in these topics and did not seem deterred even if their teacher was within listening distance of their conversation. jack, one of the most popular boys in class, often introduced the topic and controlled the flow of the conversation. jack to his table: raise your hand if you eat poop. all raise their hands. jackie: i do like the brains (he talking about the broccoli in the chicken soup) david: brains taste like worms. i ate all of mine. they taste like book racks. jackie: did you hear me? listen, i am making farting sounds. amy to jenn: everybody poops. everybody eats. everybody drinks. everybody pees. cfr_2012.indb 53 10/19/12 9:25:37 am young children’s table talk with peers holmes 54 discussion the preschool and kindergarten children in this project found table talk to be a social and enjoyable activity. mealtime conversation was widespread and began as soon as the children unwrapped their food and prepared for mealtime. although much of the literature has focused upon adult involvement and participation in children’s language development, these children primarily conversed with and preferred peer partners during mealtime, even when their teachers were present in the setting. for example, massey’s (2004) and dickinson et al.’s (2008) work reported that children were more talkative when an adult was present and seated with the children. teachers in this project were always in the classroom and near the children, though they never sat with the children while they ate. interestingly, the children actively engaged their peers in conversation throughout the lunch period and interacted with adults only when they needed assistance of some kind. this was true for both age groups. girls were primarily responsible for child-initiated speech to their teacher and asked their teachers for assistance more than boys. boys asked their teachers questions more so than girls. this contrasts with leman et al.’s (2005) findings where boys dominated their teacher’s attention. this may be due in part to differences in age and contexts. leman et al.’s work was with older children in collaborative learning groups. the present study involved younger children during mealtime. as a group, girls were more heavily invested in lunchtime conversation than boys and this may be partially explained by differential socialization processes in which girls are more likely to concentrate on the social aspects of their world (maccoby 1998, 2007). with respect to conversational topics, food was discussed more than any other topic followed by general declarative statements and family. as mechling (2000) noted, the most discussed topic – food – was framed in part by the setting. children also conversed about topics relevant to them such as their family and friends while including topics that are framed by the setting itself such as food. interestingly, girls were responsible for more than half of conversations revolving around food and this may also be due in part to socialization differences where girls are more attuned to body image and what they eat than boys are (maccoby 1998; 2007). these findings contrast with those o’neill et al. (2009) reported. several possible factors may explain the differences between their study and the present work. first, in o’neill et al’s work, conversations were mainly dyadic, adults were not present in their setting, the setting was a laboratory preschool, and children from eastern european heritages were included in their sample. they also recorded conversations during snack time rather than lunchtime, seating was prescribed, and food was served buffet style. it is possible that the findings in the current study differ from o’neill et al due in part to the differences in the setting, freely selected seating, differing meal time events, and the fact that children brought their lunches from home. family and daily events surfaced in the children’s conversations in part because they were culturally relevant to them and part of their social world (göncü, 1999). cfr_2012.indb 54 10/19/12 9:25:37 am holmes young children’s table talk with peers 55 interestingly, children included their pets in family topics and when individuals were involved, mothers were the focal family member. none of the children mentioned their fathers in any family conversations. as expected, girls discussed these topics more than boys did. interestingly, boys talked to each other more than girls and conversed more about family, play dates, and personal events than girls did. jokes and teasing were rarely observed. this is supported by other empirical findings (holmes 1992; reifel 1986). as mechling (2000) noted, mealtime frames the content of children’s speech and their play behavior. children frequently played with their food and appeared to enjoy doing so (reifel 1986). gender differences also surfaced during play at lunchtime. both boys and girls enjoyed playing with their food, and this supports holmes’ (1992) work where girls engaged in play with food along with the boys. as mechling (2000) noted, children’s play with food often takes place in the presence of peers and facilitates the use of food as a prop in pretend play. holmes (1992; 2011) also found that play during mealtime also centered upon the food. numerous examples in the literature support mechling’s (2000) and bronner’s (1995) utilization of food in this unique way in children’s cultures (holmes 1992; 2011). although there is an existing literature on the influence of gender on children’s conversations (leman 2002; leman, ahmed, and ozarow 2005; leman and lam 2008), surprisingly few, if any studies have explored how gender influences the extent and content of children’s conversations. for example, leman et al. (2005) found that in mixed collaborative groups, boys capture their teacher’s attention more than girls do. in line with maccoby (1998; 2007), differential gender socialization should influence children’s conversations in content, interaction style, and quantity. if one accepts the two cultures approach, girls in the united states generally are socialized to be more cooperative and attuned to social relationships than most boys are. in contrast, boys are socialized to be more competitive and dominant than most girls are (leman et al. 2005). also of interest, findings from this study support those of holmes (1992) in so far as boys were primarily responsible for the taboo humor and jokes and rhymes. it is possible that engaging in such acts helped boys established their social status in the classroom, whereas girls used conversation as the mechanism with which to solidify this social status. boys may have played with food more than girls did; however, girls clearly talked about their food more than boys did. one interesting difference between the preschoolers and kindergarten children was the occurrence of conversations that included taboo humor and bathroom etiquette. although guerra (1989) found preschoolers engaged in verbal swaggering – attempts to leave conversations in children’s control – these preschooler children neither uttered declarative statements nor discussed any off color material during their lunch time. by contrast, kindergarten children seemed to take pleasure in trying to gross each other out or moving into fuzzy boundaries with taboo body humor such as farting. there were some limitations and challenges to this study. first, the sample was homogeneous with respect to ethnicity and socioeconomic status. second, in the preschool lunchtime attendance varied widely. third, children freely chose their own seats, which often produced single-sex tables. finally, there was no attempt cfr_2012.indb 55 10/19/12 9:25:37 am young children’s table talk with peers holmes 56 to control for the children’s familiarity with one another. thus, some conversations may have been influenced by the children’s prior relationships. future research might pursue content and text analyses of young children’s peer conversations. such studies will help expand our knowledge about the cultural transmission of knowledge between children, the role of language in that process, and the role of children’s peer conversations in helping them interpret and rebel against the adult world. other studies might focus upon young children’s talk as power with peers, given the importance of forming and maintaining friendships in children’s lives. finally, the inclusion of different settings and diverse cultures and the nature of same-age and cross-age conversations would also be interesting avenues to pursue. notes 1. the author gratefully acknowledges the cooperation of the director, caregivers, teachers, and, of course, the children. she also extends her thanks to her 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cfr_2000fall.pdf 27 “there’s an app for that”®: ghost hunting with smartphones elizabeth tucker almost everywhere we go these days—airports, subways, highways, stores, and classrooms—we see people using cellphones. many of these qualify as “smartphones”: tiny computers that perform an amazing variety of functions. with smartphones, we can send and receive messages, check the internet, take pictures, and make videos. because of their fantastic versatility, smartphones have their own kind of magic. jeff stahler’s widely-circulated cartoon shows the wicked queen from “snow white” holding a smartphone on a selfie stick and gazing at its surface, asking “smartphone, smartphone on a stick, who has the fairest profile pic?” (stahler 2015). this cartoon wryly recognizes the smartphone as an arbiter of status and places it in the long tradition of oracle consultation that scholars have documented for many years (stoneman 2011). if the smartphone is a source of magic, its applications, downloadable programs for mobile devices known colloquially as “apps,” provide a cornucopia of wondrous possibilities. apps, obtainable from “app stores,” offer access to delicious food, comfortable hotels, quick transportation, and other pleasing commodities. unstinting in their provision of choices, they remind us of the genie that emerges from a bottle in the arabian nights (mahdi 2008). there are apps for courtship, weddings, pregnancy, and other life crises. in 2010 the apple corporation registered a trademark for its slogan “there’s an app for that,” which appeared in its 2009 commercials. gradually, this slogan has proved its validity. in june of 2016, apple’s app store offered two million apps and android’s app store offered 2.2 million (“number of apps” 2016). besides satisfying people’s practical needs, apps respond to their spiritual needs and interests. a few examples of spiritually-oriented apps are archangel oracle cards, buddha mantra, wicca spells, and dialing god. ghost hunting is one of the many expressions of interest in life after death. a broad range of ghost-hunting apps—ghost radar, phantom radar, spirit story box, ghost hunter, and others— makes ghost hunting easier than ever for those who want to take legend trips to haunted places. this essay will explore how smartphone apps have influenced legend trips during the second decade of the twenty-first century. since the late 1960s, folklorists have recognized that visitors to legend-related sites tend to follow a certain sequence: telling stories during travel to the site; participating in ritualistic, possibly rebellious behavior; and telling stories during travel home (dégh 1968, thigpen 1971, ellis 1982-1983). when smartphone technology becomes dominant, does this sequence change in any way? because it seems important to consider both long-established and more recent aspects of legend trip behavior, both will receive careful consideration here. all the four legend trippers whose adventure i will analyze in this essay are college students. in haunted halls: ghostlore of american college campuses “there’s an app for that”® tucker 28 (2007), i explore reasons why late adolescents who are attending college may have a strong interest in taking legend trips. intensely interested in learning, both in and outside the classroom, they may choose to enter “a mysterious realm filled with sensory stimulation and ambiguity” (2007:182). older adolescents’ reasons for visiting legend sites include “desires to understand death, probe the horror of domestic violence, confront racism, and express the uneasy relationship between humans and technology” (2007:182). but of course, college students’ legend trips are not just attempts to learn; they also combine fear with excitement, allowing for thrills under safe circumstances. important insight into late adolescents’ legend trips comes from simon j. bronner, whose campus traditions: folklore from the old-time college to the modern mega-university (2012) analyzes college students’ folklore in depth and detail. in the “legend quests” section of his chapter about “legendary locations, laughs, and horrors,” bronner notes, “on these playfully framed trips, students talk to one another about frightening scenarios under the cloak of legend, and they experience for themselves the reality of the spooky sites, even as they confront their own cloudy fears and doubts” (2012: 323). emphasizing the centrality of late adolescents’ own fears and uncertainties, bronner reminds us that play provides a frame for trips to legendary locations. like other forms of play that late adolescents and young adults enjoy, legend trips are spontaneous, exciting, creative, and fun. after graduating from college, people tend to cherish their memories of legend trips, as bronner does in recalling his trip to visit a rural graveyard with friends from indiana university on a foggy summer night (2012: 319). both playful and meaningful, these trips offer intriguing ambiguities that provoke reflection long after the experience ends. hypermodern ostension as linda dégh and andrew vázsonyi explain in their article “does the word ‘dog’ bite? ostensive action: a means of legend-telling,” ostension is “presentation as contrasted to representation” (1983:6). dégh and vázsonyi identify three forms of ostension: pseudo-ostension (hoaxing), proto-ostension (appropriating a legend as one’s own experience), and quasi-ostension (misunderstanding something that happens in a legend) (1983:18-20). in relation to slenderman, the fictive bogeyman created on the internet in 2009, jeffrey a. tolbert identifies reverse ostension, which “weav[es] together diverse strands of ‘experience’ (in the form of personal encounters with the creature, documentary and photographic evidence, etc.) into a more or less coherent body of narratives (2013:3). tolbert’s recognition of reverse ostension on the internet shows that this medium of communication is making further forms of ostension possible. according to sociologist avery gordon, author of ghostly matters, some of the most “dominant and disturbing” aspects of american culture are “the commodification of everyday life, the absence of meaning and the omnipresence of endless information,” as well as “the relentless fascination with catastrophes” (1997:14). gordon characterizes our information-overload era with eerie precision; during the years since her book was published, we have seen the rise of fake tucker “there’s an app for that”® 29 news and other phenomena documented by russell frank in his study newslore (2011). the ubiquity of internet rumors and legends about politics, health, and other important subjects makes ostension even more meaningful than it might be otherwise. for legend trips involving significant use of smartphone and internet technology, a new kind of ostension emerges. in putting the supernatural in its place: folklore, the hypermodern, and the ethereal, jeannie banks thomas introduces the term “hypermodern folklore”: “lore that emerges from, deals with, or is significantly marked by contemporary technology and media (including the omnipresent internet) or consumerism (with all its accessible excesses and its ability to generate pleasure mixed with anxiety)” (2015:7-8). this term works very well for folklore related to digital technology. during legend trips influenced by smartphone apps, hypermodern ostension takes place. presentation of legends during these trips relies upon smartphone technology and popular media, as well as consumerism. “accessible excesses” of consumerism appear during hypermodern ostension. people who want to use their smartphones to find ghosts can choose among a dizzying array of ghost hunting apps, including phantom radar, ghost radar, ghost hunter, haunted house, ghost locator, ghost communicator, ghost detector, ghost observer, spirit story box, and many others. app stores generally offer multiple versions of ghost-hunting apps that have become popular. because such apps tend to cost very little, it is easy for people to download multiple apps to try out. many ghost-hunting apps cost ninety-nine cents, and many are free. evaluative articles on the internet such as “we tested every ghosthunting app in the haunted buildings of nyc” (crowley 2014), encourage consumers to try out new apps. as a result of low prices and high praise of new products, experimentation with numerous apps has become very common. this experimentation involves both hunting for ghosts with apps and posting videos of ghost-hunting experiences on youtube. the first ghost-hunting app for smartphones was ghost radar, introduced by spud pickles in 2009. ghost radar free, developed for iphones, became known as phantom radar later; phantom radar was the app that the four students used in the ghost hunt analyzed in this chapter (phantom radar 2017). ghost radar has an “faq” (frequently asked questions) page that gives consumers helpful information. the question “is ghost radar real?” is followed by the reply, “it is as effective as an emf detector or a kii [electromagnetic frequency detector]. the theory of what is happening is that intelligent energy can be made aware of their ability to influence the sensors of the device. you must decide for yourself if the readings are indicative of actual paranormal activity” (ghost radar® 2016). it is important to note that the app developer encourages the consumer to trust his or her own judgment. as linda dégh and andrew vázsonyi demonstrate in “dialectics of the legend” (1973), a wide range of beliefs keeps legends alive; skepticism is one reaction that keeps both narratives and descriptions of legend trips circulating. ghost radar’s developer, jack jones, welcomes questions submitted online. when i asked him how successful his apps have been, he answered, “the apps “there’s an app for that”® tucker 30 have simply been more successful than we ever anticipated. the ghost radar® apps have been downloaded tens of millions of times.” jones also mentioned that this app appeals to “people of all ages” (jones 2016). he did not, however, answer my question about the role of stories in usage of ghost radar. although his website does not emphasize app users’ stories, the websites of many other ghosthunting apps do. for example, spirit story box’s website encourages app users to submit stories about their own experiences. spirit story box’s homepage includes a running feed of users’ personal experience stories that describe their successes using the app (spirit story box 2016). as lynne mcneill notes in “contemporary ghost hunting and the relationship between proof and experience,” placement of personal experience stories on ghost hunters’ websites can make the website seem more persuasive (2006:105). no personal experience stories appear on the download page for phantom radar, the app chosen by many college students i know. available on itunes and in other app stores at no cost, this app has been popular among young people. its developer, inner four, inc., understands the appeal of easy availability. phantom radar has received enthusiastic reviews in youtube videos (e.g. blast process 2014). there are, of course, other factors besides cost. how much does use of ghosthunting apps depend upon narration of legends and personal experience stories? answers to this question vary according to the app and its user or group of users. people can use ghost-hunting apps anywhere, not just in places known through legends, but legends attract visitors to promising places and encourage hope for having a similar experience. in “the commodification of culture,” diane goldstein observes that in belief tourism, “the real sought-after experience [is] the potential for one’s own supernatural encounter” (2007:197). although using one’s own smartphone to hunt ghosts is not the same as participating in belief tourism, the goal is the same: experiencing something supernatural that can become an exciting story to share with others. roots in nineteenth-century spiritualism ghost hunting with smartphone apps derives from american spiritualism, which began in the mid-nineteenth century. in 1848 two teenaged sisters, margaret and kate fox, claimed that spirits were contacting them by making rapping noises in their home in hydesville, new york. news of their claim spread rapidly through the media of that period: telephone, telegraph, and newspaper. the fox sisters gave many lectures and psychic readings, becoming international celebrities. even though margaret admitted in 1888 that the spirit rappings had been a hoax, she recanted her confession afterwards, and most of the sisters’ followers remained loyal to them (weisberg 2005:1-4). by the 1870s there were spiritualist churches in both the united states and great britain. members of the spiritualist church believe that the dead can send messages to the living through psychic mediums and by other means. lily dale assembly in western new york, founded in 1879, is one spiritualist village that has remained active up to the present. visitors to lily dale consult psychic mediums, attend lectures, and view paintings and writings said to have been generated by spirits. tucker “there’s an app for that”® 31 they also hear stories about the fox sisters’ experiences in hydesville and see pictures of early mediums’ contact with spirits through table tipping (tucker 2015). the first efforts to record spirits’ voices involved long-playing records in the 1940s; in 1982, sarah estes founded the american association of electronic voice phenomena. frank sumption created the ghost box, also known as frank’s box, in 2002. this box generates white noise and captures bits of sound from an am radio receiver. smartphone apps that are supposed to respond to sound patterns and electromagnetic frequencies belong to the tradition established by frank’s box. through generation of words and symbols such as dots of different colors, these apps offer messages from nearby spirits. legends of old dickinson users of ghost-hunting apps tend to bring them to places that have a reputation for being haunted. old houses and hotels make especially good legend trip sites, as do cemeteries hospitals, schools, colleges, and universities. institutions whose existence began some time ago have an intriguing connection to the past. for college students, haunted places have a particular appeal. while pursuing their educations and preparing for future careers, students may feel a heightened sense of their environment’s possibilities. legends that tell of statues coming to life and students walking through a gate that marks the mouth of hell or flunking out because they have stepped on the wrong spot contribute to the impression that the college campus is a strange, enchanted place. many campus legends tell of hauntings in residence halls, viewed as liminal places because students both study and sleep there. in the liminal zone between alertness and sleep, ghosts become non-living residents of the campus environment. as i discovered when doing the research for my book haunted halls (2007), it is common for each campus to have its own haunted places. simon j. bronner’s campus traditions documents an intriguing range of haunted locations on college campuses (2012: 277-332). a well-known haunted place on the campus of binghamton university inspired the legend trip that four of my students took on may 2, 2014. mike, amy, jack, and simon, all of whom were residents of newing college, decided to venture into the dark, semi-deserted basement of old rafuse, a former residence hall that now holds administrative offices and a couple of classrooms. old rafuse is part of old dickinson, a complex of eight former residence halls that has gradually begun to serve other purposes. across the street from old dickinson stand the current dickinson community and newing college. old dickinson no longer functions primarily as a residential area at binghamton university, but it has an invisible network of legends about which students quickly learn. many of these legends focus on the sub-basement, where a student supposedly hanged himself back in the 1970s. students have told the story of this suicide with minor variations, including the names of two residence halls in which the suicide took place. in haunted halls, i explore several variants of this legend, one of which describes a female student seeing the face of a male student in the mirror of her room. after going down to the sub-basement with a friend to try to “there’s an app for that”® tucker 32 figure out what she has seen, she realizes that this was the face of the student who committed suicide by hanging from a pipe many years ago (tucker 2007: 98-99). there have also been legends about a cleaning lady fainting in the subbasement and refusing to clean there again. this legend is based on an upsetting experience that a member of the custodial staff went through. when she was reaching up to clean a light fixture, she fainted and fell off a stepladder. upon awakening from the faint, she declared that she had felt the spirit of a student named michael pass through her body. both students and staff members were troubled by the report of this incident, but staff members did not worry about it for long. students, however, found stories about what had happened to be very intriguing. some of them brought ouija boards down to the sub-basement to see if they could find any ghosts there. once a small group of students tried to summon spirits in the sub-basement with a ouija board and claimed that handprints of little baby ghosts had appeared on the surface of windows there. this claim would sound familiar to anyone who had heard a legend about a “gravity hill,” including the one that carl lindahl examines in his “ostensive healing: pilgrimage to the san antonio ghost tracks” (2005). as lindahl explains, legend trips to the san antonio train tracks inspire a sense of wonder; similarly, students who explore old rafuse’s sub-basement approach their destination with excitement and awe. when old rafuse still functioned as a residence hall, the sub-basement contained a room full of washers and dryers. one legend tells of a demonic face appearing in the glass windows of washing machines, frightening students who had nervously come down to the subbasement alone, late at night, to do their laundry. a small room that contained an incinerator did not inspire legends while students still lived in the building but gained a reputation for being haunted once the students moved out. when people perceive a building as abandoned or semi-abandoned, ghost stories tend to multiply. the comforting routines of daily life no longer make the place seem familiar, so legends about ghosts become more common. such was the case at mansfield university, when a temporarily abandoned building inspired many rumors and legends (glimm 1983:120-22). down to the depths of the sub-basement at the beginning of their adventure in old rafuse on may 2, 2014, amy, mike, jack, and simon felt excited and curious. their first attempt to enter the building failed, because the doors were locked when classes were not in session. on their second try, however, they entered the building holding two smartphones: one for making a video of the trip and the other for using the phantom radar app. bright-colored dots appeared on the screen as they walked down the two flights of stairs that led to their destination: the sub-basement. simon shouted, “we got a shiny blue dot and a big red dot! oh, yeah! red, that means something!” on phantom radar, red means a strong ghostly presence; yellow means the presence is less strong, and blue means it is weak. going beyond those explanations, one of the male students wondered whether the color red showed how the ghost was responding to their visit: “red on the thing, i saw it! maybe it’s angry!” his mention of anger coincided with their arrival in the dimly lit, shadowy sub-basement, tucker “there’s an app for that”® 33 where they saw pipes protruding from the walls. mike said, “there’s a story about a guy hanging himself on a pipe” and simon replied, “oh god, creepy!” then they took a quick look at the laundry room, where students had seen scary faces. with these reminders of the building’s invisible, inherited story structure, the legend quest moved forward. as dots appeared on the screen, words also came up. the first two words, “height” and “introduce,” got no reaction from the students, but the next, “maria,” fully engaged their attention. “are there any stories about a ghost named maria?” amy asked. the others shook their heads as they entered one of the subbasement’s storage rooms, which contained old music stands, books, boxes of old clothes used by a group of performers, a few compact discs, and other castoffs jumbled together. mike plunged his arm into a box of women’s clothes and blankets, shouting, “oh, my god, it’s some girl’s bed stuff! it smells!” his reaction reminded me of a visit to the boys’ unit of a camp with my girl scouts in the late 1970s in southern indiana; the sights and smells of the boys’ tents and bathrooms at the camp fascinated the girls. although this group of students was much older, three out of four of them were young men who seemed eager to find clues about a mysterious female ghost, so gender was a factor in their quest. one of the clues they discovered in the storage room was a video, “the little princess,” which jack pulled out of the bottom of the box of clothes. holding the video up, jack asked, “could this be maria?” amy had seen the movie, but the three male students hadn’t. as i watched their video i remembered that the 1995 film a little princess, based on the 1905 novel by the same name by frances hodgson burnett, shows the quasi-magical transformation of a dreary boarding school bedroom into a luxurious, delightful place to live. to some extent, that transformation resembled the one that these four students were experiencing: a change from a dull basement to a space haunted by significant ghosts from the building’s past. the next two words that appeared on the screen were “july” and “sunday.” as soon as they heard “july,” the students got excited. “i was born in july!” shouted jack; amy said, “so was i!” mike commented in a sepulchral voice, “jack, you’re going to die.” amy added ominously, “it’s really cold.” with a little help from phantom radar, they were establishing the time frame of a possible story and predicting a grim denouement for their own legend trip. their prediction may have been influenced by the blair witch project, the 1999 film in which all three student filmmakers die, or, more generally, by the many horror films in which visitors to creepy places do not survive. one prototype for this expectation is the legend “the fatal initiation,” in which a fraternity initiate spends a night in a graveyard and dies of fright. right after mike’s prediction of jack’s demise, the four students walked into the scariest room in rafuse’s sub-basement. they could see it was the scariest room, because a few years ago someone had written a message on its door: “rumor has it that a ghost haunts this room.” maintenance staff kept the door closed, so anyone brave enough to go into the room had to push the door open. the room was small and did not contain much: just a pile of trash, a plug surrounded by “there’s an app for that”® tucker 34 soot, a dirty sink with a red spot that looked like blood, graffiti, and an incinerator. part of the pile of trash was a heap of broken glass. the room looked as if it had been abandoned and left to fall apart for many years, even though students had lived in the building just a few years before. no wonder someone had designated this creepy room with the closed door the haunted room! as sylvia ann grider observes, basements of houses have a “subliminal association…with castle dungeons and torture chambers” (155). this association comes through even more strongly in the basements of residence halls, which belong to campus legend landscapes involving stories of suffering students who commit suicide, get possessed by spirits, and experience other kinds of misery. the longer a residence hall basement is left mostly unoccupied and the dirtier it gets, the better it works as a setting for a legend trip in which seekers confront decay, suffering, and the presence of a ghost. and a room within the basement that seems to be secret is particularly intriguing, as the well-known folktale “bluebeard” suggests (tatar, 2006). who was the ghost in this strange, uncomfortable room? as they stood there, the four students saw two new words pop up on phantom radar: “couple” and “forget.” at this point they did something they had not done before: they started talking to the smartphone as if it were a ouija board. jack asked, “what does sunday mean, and who is maria? are you maria? do you have anything to do with a sunday in july?” mike asked, “what do you want us to forget? what does this word mean?” no more words appeared on the smartphone, but something else happened: the students heard noises that scared them. some of them heard water dripping, and others heard broken glass crunching on the floor. maybe a ghost was signaling its presence, as it did in so many folktales, including those that contained the motif e402, “mysterious ghostlike noises heard.” “run!” said jack. “run for your lives!” they scrambled up the two flights of stairs and exited the building. once they were safely outside, mike summed up what had happened: “looks like this was a pretty productive ghost hunt. we found out something about this girl, maria, and a sunday in july. it was probably in the sub-basement, where it said there was a ghost and something having to do with a couple. it could have been a summer program when they were in high school. maybe maria was a girlfriend with a boyfriend. that’s all we know. there were a bunch of noises in that room. it sounded like water dripping, something on the floor. there was a lot of broken glass. we are not going back there!” feeling good about having made it through their descent to rafuse’s sub-basement, he and the other students posted their video of the trip on youtube (old dickinson 2014). conclusions this exciting ghost hunt followed the classic legend trip sequence identified by dégh, thigpen, and ellis in many respects. the four students discussed dickinson legends before choosing old rafuse hall and making their way down into its dark, spooky sub-basement. with some trepidation, they entered the laundry room, the storage room, and finally the furnace room that earlier students had identified as tucker “there’s an app for that”® 35 a haunted place. when they heard strange noises, they got scared and ran back up the stairs, exiting the building as fast as they could. immediately after the hunt they told a story about what had happened; then they ambled across the street to their well-lit, comfortably-furnished residential community. there was, however, an important change in the older pattern. besides recalling details from the stories they had learned from oral tradition, the students used a smartphone app as their guide for the hunt. phantom radar supplied a tantalizing series of colored dots that told them where ghosts might be; it also gave them words that became a story. to some extent, these words facilitated reverse ostension, defined by jeff tolbert as creation of a story through combination of digital elements. the words that appeared on phantom radar’s screen could be recognized as a narrative, although this narrative’s disjointedness made it seem unlikely to become part of old dickinson’s enduring legends. the most significant change was the students’ use of hypermodern ostension: representation of legend elements that demonstrates reliance on the contemporary era’s “accessible excess” (thomas 2015:7). using one smartphone to record their trip and another to run ghost radar, amy, simon, jack, and mike made constant use of digital technology. they used ghost radar as both a guide and an oracle to which they could speak directly, as people would speak to a ouija board. they planned to upload their video to youtube and did so immediately after their ghost hunt ended. because of this plan, they were aware of performing for an audience throughout their search for ghosts. their video might have “gone viral” and reached many viewers; most youtube videos do not become that famous, but one never knows which way the fickle finger of fame will point. mike’s summary of his group’s hunt shows that he wanted it to be “productive.” the students would have been disappointed if nothing much had happened and they had simply left the building. using the phantom radar app helped them put together a scenario in which something exciting would take place. a name, a month, a day of the week, and other information gave them ingredients from which a narrative could grow. significantly, the story about mysterious “maria” did not matter as much to the students as their own experience did. mock-seriously predicting their own death, hearing scary sounds, and feeling uncomfortable in the dirty, haunted room scared them enough that they ran away from the basement. although the dots and words on phantom radar intrigued them, what they saw, heard, and felt in the sub-basement affected them more deeply than messages received on the machine. they were proud of having experienced something frightening in that spooky place underground and enjoyed posting their video for others to view on youtube. information flows constantly from phantom radar, ghost radar, spirit story box, and other ghost-hunting apps that we can buy for low prices or download for free. these images and sounds not only offer guidelines for locating ghosts; they also represent our current era of semi-reliable electronic communication. at the center of each college ghost hunt stand young people whose eagerness to confront their own fears motivates them to move forward. as long as they keep daring to undertake such quests, their stories deserve to be told. “there’s an app for that”® tucker 36 works cited the blair witch project. directed by daniel myrick and eduardo sanchez. 1999. haxan films. dvd. blastprocess 2014. app review: phantom radar the ghost detector. 24 march. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjgyshmdf4w/. accessed november 26, 2016. bronner, simon j. 2012. campus traditions: folklore from the old-time college to the modern mega-university. jackson: university press of mississippi. burnett, frances hodgson. 2013. a little princess. new york: oxford university press. dégh, linda. 1968. the haunted bridges near avon and danville and their role in legend formation. indiana folklore 1: 77-81. ellis, bill. 1982-83. legend-tripping in ohio: a behavioral study. in papers in comparative studies 2, eds. daniel barnes, rosemary o. joyce, and steven swann jones, pp. 61-73. columbus: center for comparative studies in the humanities, ohio state university. frank, russell. 2011. newslore: contemporary folklore on the internet. jackson: university press of mississippi. glimm, james york. 1983. flat-landers and ridge-runners. pittsburgh: university of pittsburgh press. goldstein, diane e. 2007. the commodification of belief. in haunting experiences: ghosts in contemporary folklore, eds. diane e. goldstein, sylvia ann grider, and jeannie banks thomas, pp. 171-205. logan: utah state university press. gordon, avery. 1997. ghostly matters: haunting and the sociological imagination. minneapolis: university of minnesota press. grider, sylvia ann. 1999. the haunted house in literature, popular culture, and tradition: a consistent image. contemporary legend, new series 2:174-204. lindahl, carl. 2005. ostensive healing: pilgrimage to the san antonio ghost tracks. journal of american folklore 118: 164-85. a little princess. directed by alfonso cuarón. 2006. warner home video. mahdi, muhsin, ed. and trans. 2008. the arabian nights. new york: norton. mcneill, lynne s. 2006. contemporary ghost hunting and the relationship between proof and experience. contemporary legend 9: 96-110. number of apps available in leading app stores as of june 2016. 2016. statista: the statistics portal. https://www.statista.com/statistics/276623/number-ofapps-available-in-leading-app-stores/. accessed november 21, 2016. phantom radar—the ghost detector. 2017. cnet. http://download.cnet.com/ phantom-radar-the-ghost-detector/3000-2094_4-75186987.html. accessed march 18, 2017. stahler, jeff. 2015. smartphone, smartphone on a stick, who has the fairest profile pic? 2015. [cartoon]. universal uclick for ufs. tatar, maria. 2006. secrets beyond the door: the story of bluebeard and his wives. princeton: princeton university press. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjgyshmdf4w/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/276623/number-of-apps-available-in-leading-app-stores/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/276623/number-of-apps-available-in-leading-app-stores/ http://download.cnet.com/phantom-radar-the-ghost-detector/3000-2094_4-75186987.html http://download.cnet.com/phantom-radar-the-ghost-detector/3000-2094_4-75186987.html tucker “there’s an app for that”® 37 thigpen, kenneth a. 1971. adolescent legends in brown county: a survey. indiana folklore 4:2 (1971): 141-215. tolbert, jeffrey a. 2013. the sort of story that has you covering your mirrors: the case of slender man. semiotic review 2 (november). http://www. semioticreview.com. accessed 23 november 2016. tucker, elizabeth. 2007. haunted halls: ghostlore of american college campuses. jackson: university press of mississippi. http://www.semioticreview.com http://www.semioticreview.com pages from cfr_2017_part6 cfr_2017_part7 cfr_2017_part8 pages from cfr_2017_part9 annotated bibliography: children's folklore review, volumes 1-24 c.w. sullivan iii the following articles have appeared in the first 24 volumes of the children’s folklore review (originally the children’s folklore newsletter). an asterisk (*) indicates that the article won the children's folklore section's newell prize. arleo, andy. "strategy in counting-out: evidence from saint-nazaire, france." 14.1 (1991): 25-29. an examination of french counting-out techniques and how they contribute to cross-cultural studies in children's folklore. beresin, ann richman. '''sui' generis: mock violence in an urban school yard." 18.2 (1996): 25-35. an examination of the non-violent/violent handball game of "suicide" which argues that the hybridity of the game reflects its para doxical status as a mixed genre and unique cultural marker. berres, allen. "'everybody is their enemy': goths, spooky kids, and the american school shooting panic." 24.1&2 (2002): 4353. discusses the stereotyping that has led school administrators and others to erroneously class all high school students of a particular sub-group as potentially dangerous. branigan, michelle. "blocks and matchboxes: negotiation of a shared reality between two siblings." 16.1 (1993): 3-31. * an examination of an episode of play between two siblings that ob serves the static and dynamic aspects of their interaction. bronner, simon. "expressing and creating ourselves in childhood: a commentary." 15.1 (1992): 47-59. general thoughts on the evolution of the study of children's folklore and reviews of narrative articles in the same issue. ________. "history and organization of children's folklore in the american folklore society." 20.1-2 (1997-1998): 57-62. annotated bibliography sullivan a discussion of the place of children's folklore in the history of the american folklore society. ________."introduction: folklore responds to columbine and ado lescence." 24.1&2 (2002): 7-20. an introduction to the papers from children's folklore section panel at the 2000 afs meetings on folklore, adolescence, and the columbine shootings by the panel's respondent. see also: bill ellis, joann conrad, allen berres, and charlie mccormick. carnes, pack. "arnold lobel's fables and traditional fable features." 15.2 (1993): 3-19. an investigation of the role of traditional elements in lobel's fables and of the relationship between folklore and a literary text. carpenter, carole h. "developing an appreciation for the cultural significance of child lore." 17.1 (1987): 19-29. a study of the ways in which childlore contributes to "the develop ment and expression of individual, group, and national iden tity." chinery, david. "snooping for snipes: america's favorite wild goose chase." 10.1 (1987): 3-1, 10.2 (1987): 3-4. a presentation of variations on the traditional snipe hunt and conjec tures about the continuance of the tradition. conrad, joann. "bedtime stories." 21.1 (1998): 43-53. a preliminary examination of the narrative interactions between a mother and a small child that occur as a part of a regular bedtime ritual. __________."the war on youth: a modern oedipal tragedy." 24.1&2 (2002): 33-41. a discussion of california's "youth crime initiative" and other mea sures designed to deal with rising juvenile crime rates. cox, cynthia anne. "'postmodern fairy tales' in contemporary children's literature." 16.2 (1994): 13-19. an exploration of postmodern elements in new fairy tales: denial of order, antiheroes, the lack of control over human experience and perception, and subjectivity. 106 sullivan annotated bibliography davey, gwenda beed. '''what's for dinner?' 'duck under the table': traditional verbal sayings addressed to children by adults." 19.1 (1996): 13-18. a study of folklore for children and how adults convey their folklore about children through "family sayings." edgette, j. joseph. "'now i lay me down to sleep. . . ": symbols and their meaning on children's gravemarkers." 22.1 (1999): 7-24. an examination, with illustrations, of the symbols commonly found of gravestones for children. ellis, bill. "hitler's birthday: rumor-panics in the wake of the col umbine shootings." 24.1&2 (2002): 21-32. discusses the processes by which unsubstantiated rumors of impend ing violence become "fact" in school communities. fowke, edith. "books for children." 14.1 (1991): 39-44. a review essay of pertinent studies of the folklore of canadian children. freed, shaari. "spooky activities and group loyalty." 16.1 (1993): 33-39. an assertion that intimacy among friends is increased by participation in supernatural beliefs and practices. friel, tara. "'once upon a time' to 'happily ever after': the devel opment of children's narrative skill." 18.1 (1995): 3-52* an analysis of the process by which children learn and develop the ability to tell stories. gelwicks, jesse. "redwood grove: youth culture within a group home." 24.1&2 (2002): 66-87. * a case study of male preadolescent and early adolescent folklore in the controlled community of a group home. grider, sylvia anne. "dorothy howard: pioneer collector of children's folklore" 17.1 (1994): 3-17. some notes on the life and achievements of dorothy howard. groth, susan charles t. '''here we sit like birds in the wilderness waiting for our dessert': the girl scout program and ordering space in camp sacajawea's dining hall/main house." 19.2 (1997): 3-30* an examination of the presence of themes of "domesticity" and "play 107 annotated bibliography sullivan ing indian" in girl scout camping and the way in which a dining hall chant exhibits these themes. haut, judith. "'i believe in santa claus, but i know he's not real': the role of ambivalence in belief." 13.2 (1991): 3-12. an examination of the way uncertainty and degrees of possibility play into distinguishing knowledge from belief. _________. "'i know a story about that': one young child's use and understanding of narrating." 1 5.1 (1992): 3 3-46. a case study examining one child's development of voice and skill in narration. ________. "of related interest: children's music." 14.2 (1992): 23 27. reviews of various collections of "folk" music for children. hurlston, nicola. "who's the boss? a study of power-defining folk lore among children." 13.1 (1990): 10-16. * an analysis of power struggles among young children observed at play in a college daycare program. johnson, sharon peregrine. "'the hare and the tortoise race': eleven variations." 18.2 (1996): 3-24* a comparison of eleven different printed versions of the traditional story that discusses its origins and structure and provides a great deal of comparative analysis. kjaer, bjorg. "childhood narrated and negotiated: children's, parents' and teacher's views on childhood." 21.1 (1998): 3542. a look at the ways in which children, parents, and teachers define childhood. klutz, catherine. "friendship bracelets," 12.1 (1989): 4-5. a discussion of the traditions behind the making and sharing (and not sharing) of friendship bracelets among junior high school girls. lanclos, donna m. "bare bums and wee chimneys: rudeness and defining the line between child and adult." 22.2 (2000): 748. * a examination of rude or "dirty" folklore on belfast playgrounds that compares and contrasts children's understandings and usages with those of adults. 108 sullivan annotated bibliography lapp, dean m. "systematic investigation of jump rope rhymes: computer applications for field collected cultural material." 11.1 (1988): 35, 6.* relates children's psychological development with the folklore, specifically jump-rope rhymes, in which they participate. lenz, millicent. "mythologizing chief seattle: susan jeffers' brother eagle, sister sky or how to make a myth in ten easy steps." 19.1 (1996): 3-11. an inquiry into the responsibility of writers to transmit myths accu rately and without enhancing them. lester, neal a. "nappy happy: a review of bell hooks' happy to be nappy." 22.1 (1999): 45-55. a discussion of the folklore of hair among african americans as it relates to carolivia herron's nappy hair and bell hooks' happy to be nappy. lonnqvist, bo. "the concept 'toy' and cultural research." 14.1 (1991): 31-38. a study of how adults' conceptions of children's reality is reflected in mass-produced toys and how actual child culture has been rela tively ignored. mccormick, charlie. "a fear of adolescent cruising: adult reactions to a tradition that won't go away." 24.1&2 (2002): 55-63. a look at the way cruising has changed over the decades and a discus sion of changing adult attitudes. mcgonnagill, laurie. "preschool protolore." 16.1 (1993): 41-47. an examination of the ways in which children's immature social and cognitive skills explain their brand of prototypical folklore that imitates more developed forms of folklore. mechling, jay. "don't play with your food." 23.1 (2000): 7-24. begins with a look at theoretical perspectives that underlie the study of playing with food and opens up into a discussion of the "diverse meanings and functions of playing with food." meley, patricia m. "adolescent legend trips as teenage cultural re 109 annotated bibliography sullivan sponse: a study of lore in context." 14.1 (1991): 5-24.* a presentation of results from a group study of the "legend trips" of adolescents examined in light of recent scholarship on the topic. _______. "paper power: a search for meaning in the folded paper toys of pre-adolescents." 11.2 (1989): 3-5* an examination of the ways in which the making and sharing of paper toys among children illustrates their need to establish an iden tity apart from adult culture. ord, priscilla. '" curiouser and curiouser!': narration and mimicry in literature about and for children." 15.1 (1992): 5-16. a consideration of the ability of children to narrate, mimic, and reen act, illustrated in characterizations of children in children's stories. perry evelyn m. "the ever-vigilant hero: revaluing the tale of tam lin." 19.2 (1997): 31-49. a description of "current devaluations of folk literature" through close reading of the original text and comparison with contempo rary literary texts for child and adolescent readers. riley, linda. "extremes: how girls play slaughter, how boys play slaughter at valley oak elementary." 13.1 (1987): 10-16. * an argument that the variations on the game's rules indicate shared group meaning and identity for each gender-distinct team. ruppert, erica lynn. "folklore and persistence in lewis carroll's alice s adventures in wonderland." 20.1-2 (1997-1998): 43-55* an assertion that the folklore in lewis carroll's classic story is largely responsible for its continuing popularity. rush, judith. "twin pranks and practical jokes" 10.3 (1987): 3-6* a suggestion that twin' pranks afford them the opportunity to estab lish individuality and to distinguish their personalities. sains, ariane. "the latest teen rage? embroidery." 13.1 (1990): 23 24. a response to catherine klutz's "friendship bracelets," 12.1 (1989):4 5. 110 sullivan annotated bibliography samuelson, sue. "a review of the distinctive genres of adolescent folklore." 17.2 (1995): 13-31. an argument that adolescents create their own distinct folklore to define for themselves the transition from childhood to adult hood. edited and introduced by simon j. bronner. sherman, josepha. "gopher guts to army trucks: the modern evo lution of children's folklore rhymes." 21.2 (1999): 17-24. a discussion of formula and variation over time in some popular children's folk rhymes. staunton, sarah. "riddle use and comprehension in irish school-aged children: a developmental study." 23.2 (2001): 7-100.* an examination of riddling as an indicator of children's language ac quisition and comprehension. stone, kay. "child as story-maker." 16.2 (1994): 3-11. an observation of a child creating stories and a consideration of the relationship between researcher and subject. stotter, ruth. "trick or treat: coyote in children's picture books." 22.1 (1999): 35-43. a look at the ways in which native american mythic and legendary materials are used and misused in children's picture books. sullivan, c. w. iii. "baloney and peanuts: politics among gradeschoolers." 1.2 (1977): 4. an examination of a children's rhyme that equates jimmy carter with foolishness. _______. "folktales, ballads, and high fantasy: an excerpt from research in progress." 5.1 (1982): 2 & 4. a look at the use of ballads and folktales as sources for works of mod ern fantasy. _______. "knowing what children believe; believing what children know." 19.1 (1996): 19-24. an examination of the separation between child culture and adult cul ture and how this is significant to folklore studies. _______. "learning the structure of traditional narrative." 15.1 111 annotated bibliography sullivan (1992): 17-23. an assertion that in experiencing folklore we learn that structure of traditional narrative that we carry to all other aspects of life. sutton-smith, brian. "the future agenda for child study and the implications for the study of children's folklore." 13.1 (1990): 1722. a consideration of current trends in the academic study of children that might impact the study of children's folklore. _______. "a play biography." 20.1-2 (1997-1998): 5-42. a autobiographical essay by one of the century's leading children's folklorists explaining how he came to that discipline. _______. "tradition from the perspective of children's games." 14.2 (1992): 3-16. a colonial commentary on children's games. tillery, randall k. "folklore and children's worlds: nature, place, and belonging in a romantic key." 17.2 (1995): 3-11. an examination of the traditional perceptions of frontier experience which make up much of the "lore" of summer camp. tucker, elizabeth. '''i hate you, you hate me': children's responses to barney the dinosaur." 22.1 (1999): 25-33. a look at children's parodies of barney the dinosaur's theme song. _______. '''text, lies and videotape': can oral tales survive?" 15.1 (1992): 25-32. an argument that children's creativity remains fecund despite the in undation of video-produced stories. tuleja, tad. "the tooth fairy: perspectives on money and magic." 13.2 (1991): 13-22. an examination of the origin of tooth fairy folklore and the integra tion of this lore into modern culture and traditions. van rheenen, derek. "boys who play hopscotch: the historical di vide of a gendered space." 21.1 (1998): 5-34. a discussion of play and the changing role of gender using hopscotch as the focus of the study. watson, laura. "the nature lore of children: functions and varia tions." 16.1 (1993): 49-60. 112 sullivan annotated bibliography an examination of children's lore involving nature and how these beliefs function to enable children to grasp and accept the world around them. wein, elizabeth. "the discipline of play: is there a future for children's lore in academia?" 21.2 (1999): 5-16. an examination of the status of children's traditional "play" as an aca demic discipline over the past 50 years. _______. "show biz: performance and text in the children's show." 13.2 (1991): 23-28. a discussion of the way children's "shows" evolve from improvisa tional to written and rehearsed performances. _______. '''unaware to her ears': when the storyteller cannot speak." 23.1 (2000): 25-39. a look at the storytelling of a young man whose head injury has lim ited his physical and mental development. 113 cfr_2002-2003_part34 cfr_2002-2003_part35 cfr_2002-2003_part36 pages from cfr_2002-2003_part37 7 fathers and sons: rethinking the bar mitzvah as an american rite of passage simon j. bronner the bar mitzvah draws popular as well as folkloristic attention because it is one of the few publicly recognized american rituals for entering adolescence. popularly categorized as a jewish folk tradition, the bar mitzvah is hardly a private affair; it is recognized, if not participated in, throughout the general population of north america as a result of being featured in popular films, television shows, and novels. some of the notice for the bar mitzvah owes to depictions in the media of material excess. additionally, the bar mitzvah raises a social psychological question of the relatively early coming of age at thirteen years old. the age is perceived as early in a modern american society characterized by an extended childhood and adolescence before adulthood. elaborating on this critical coming-of-age issue, i propose that the folk sources of the bar mitzvah reveal a symbolism that suggests the ceremony acts to resolve father-son conflicts. further, in the american context both non-jews and jews have heightened the ceremony’s importance because the event represents public displays of, or compensations for, uncertain masculine status. problem statement and background: the folk and popular logic of bar mitzvah the bar mitzvah is the coming-of-age ritual that everyone knows, in image if not in practice. if one has never attended the event, he or she probably has been exposed to it in popular television and film. jonathan and judith pearl, discussing media portrayals of jewish themes in the chosen image (1999), claim that “of all the jewish rites of passage depicted on popular tv, none has received more attention than the bar mitzvah” (pearl and pearl 1999, 16). since their book has come out, the bar mitzvah has been dramatized, or spoofed, in popular movies such as glow ropes: the rise and fall of a bar mitzvah emcee (2005), keeping up with the steins (2006), sixty six (2006) knocked up (2007), and two lovers (2008), and television series such as entourage (2005), sex and the city (2000), frasier (2002), the simpsons (2003), unfabulous (2005), and naked brothers band (2008). it has been the butt of many jokes and cartoons among jews and non-jews alike, many of which concern the apparently young age, 13, when the boy is pronounced to be entering manhood or which question the jewish boy’s claim to manliness. in the naked brothers band episode “the bar mitzvah,” for example, wordplay is evident when a parent commands the bar mitzvah boy to join his friends with the yiddish word gey meaning “go,” but the americanized boy understands the word as questioning his masculinity for acting “gay.” related to this humor in a surfeit of comic graphics and mocking photographs is the common theme of discomfort for the boy in the fabled misfitting bar mitzvah suit. the humor depends on the perception that the jewish boy is uncomfortable in, or not ready for, the commanding pose of an adult suit. cfr_2009_r4.indb 7 10/25/09 6:19:14 pm fathers and sons bronner 8 the kind of bar mitzvah commanding popular culture attention is likely of non-pietistic jews, often called liberal or assimilated. in such satirical portrayals, viewers become aware of anxieties, not just for the bar mitzvah boy’s relation to his faith or ethnicity, but also for the modern consumer society of which he is a part. depictions of the bar mitzvah in popular culture focus primarily on the party because of the broader societal interest in modern materialism, or parental indulgence, that it raises, but contextualizing the celebration within traditional practices and symbols for the bar mitzvah boy leading up to, and during, the event sheds light on the inherited, and invented, meanings for the bar mitzvah. to get at these meanings, i will examine more closely the folk cultural aspects of the event to explain its growing appeal since the mid-twentieth century. the folk cultural source of the bar mitzvah appears rooted in synagogue practice. along these lines, jewish parents will probably voice the attitude that the bar mitzvah is the most self-conscious expression of jewishness in one’s life and understand that it signifies entrance into what is known as religious majority: the ability associated with jewish maturity to participate in a minyan (quorum of 10 for prayer), fast, and read from torah. orthodox jews may more clearly recognize the obligations it represents to judaism to put on tallit (prayer shawl) and tefillin (phylacteries), but the bar mitzvah in orthodox communities does not have the conspicuous consumer display that it does among liberal jews. for many jews, it signals a finality rather than a transition to another stage; it is an end rather than a beginning of religious participation. ivan marcus writing on the jewish life cycle observes that the bar mitzvah “can be seen as a finishing rite for many young jewish adolescents. it moves the child from judaism into the larger world possibly without any additional traditional jewish rites until death, if then” (2004, 123). that a traditional ceremony would contribute to discontinuity rather than the continuity expected of rites of passage has not only been a concern of historians and ethnographers. american rabbis since the early twentieth century have complained about the use of the bar mitzvah to conclude synagogue attendance. rabbinical philosopher mordecai kaplan during the 1930s, for example, in his incisive tome judaism as a civilization: toward a reconstruction of american-jewish life (1934) criticized the “spiritual chaos” caused by “so casual a contact with jewish knowledge” in short-lived attendance at a hebrew school before the bar mitzvah (kaplan 1994, 58). although acknowledging that the jewish educational focus on preparing for the bar mitzvah kept youth in jewish schools, he advocated for a reorientation to signal entrance into a new stage of life or developing a life-long commitment to judaism (kaplan 1994, 5859). a later popularly known rabbi, joseph telushkin, renewed the complaint in jewish literacy (1991) by stating, “while the bar mitzvah is intended to mark the beginning of a jewish boy’s adulthood, for non-orthodox jews it frequently signifies the end of his jewish education” (1991, 612). surveys by jewish organizations of their youth members verify that children perceive the bar mitzvah to be a conclusion to education rather than a transition to another stage. barry a. kosmin found, for instance, for the bar/bat mitzvah that less than a quarter of conservative hebrew school students showed a high score on their plans for attending synagogue monthly or more after the bar/bat cfr_2009_r4.indb 8 10/25/09 6:19:14 pm bronner fathers and sons 9 mitzvah (2002, 263). despite the intentions of this minority, actual attendance was even lower, and this disengagement is typically blamed on teens focusing on secular high school studies and extracurricular activities with the support of their parents (leneman 1993, 17-19; sidlofsky 1993, 302). a higher percentage of boys go through a bar mitzvah than girls for the bat mitzvah, and the boys report feeling pressure more intensely to disengage from religious activities in favor of weekend sports and social activities. of the b’nai mitzvah students, girls having gone through bat mitzvah were more likely to volunteer in the jewish community and attributed more importance to being jewish than did the bar mitzvah boys (kosmin 2002, 253). although civic leaders often point to the structure of american hebrew school education for the rise of the bar mitzvah, rabbis and educators alike insist that jewish education is geared toward wider goals and the bar mitzvah ceremony involves an important (and to some the most important) secular component. in light of the disappointing effects of the bar mitzvah on religious maintenance and coming of age transition, the most common alternative explanation is family socialization and community networking it provides (davis 1995, 2003; kennedy 2005; schoenfeld 1993b). kosmin’s statistics lead him to consider the familial bonding of the bar mitzvah in light of the uncertainty of holding a jewish wedding in the life cycle of the boy for the continued appeal of the bar mitzvah, despite criticisms of the bar mitzvah by rabbis for undermining their religious purpose and by civic leaders for being too materialistic and competitive. basing his view on the observation that “for many couples it is the first major family and social event since their own wedding,” kosmin hypothesizes that the bar mitzvah is a developmental milestone for the parents who “must present themselves publicly in relation to their religious tradition to the most significant people in their lives–their family, colleagues, and social network” (2000, 236). there is merit in this argument because of the background of social and economic anxieties for many liberal jews of on the one hand, appearing integrated into the larger society, and on the other, of validating their commitment to jewish identity among members of their religious group. yet a closer look at the ceremony reveals that the ritual portions of the bar mitzvah feature the relationship of the father and son, rather than the whole family. related to the question of the bar mitzvah’s modern appeal is its historical trajectory since the early twentieth century. although popular culture may present the bar mitzvah as an ancient jewish rite, its tradition is of relatively recent origin. many scholarly observers have editorialized that its rise among the people of the book is remarkable considering there is no mention of the ritual in its sacred texts of torah or talmud. the term bar mitzvah, or son of the commandment, appears in the talmud (bm 96a) for a person subject to law, but it does not appear in reference to assuming religious obligations before the fifteenth century (chill 1979, 315). the scholarly consensus is that as a ceremony it dates to local medieval german practices which diffused to eastern europe, but there it did not gain the elevated or standardized status now given it in western europe and america (abrahams 1958, 32; marcus 1996, 119-26; marcus 2004, 82-123; pollack 1971, 59-62). cfr_2009_r4.indb 9 10/25/09 6:19:14 pm fathers and sons bronner 10 the key components of the derashah, or interpretive speech, and examination drew significant notice in eighteenth century italy, and it may be from there that the ritual made some inroads into north african jewry (goldberg 2003, 90-91; ouaknin and ménager 2005, 335-39). yet in the substantial jewish communities of yemen it did not develop at all (ouaknin and ménager 2005, 342-43). it is also noteworthy that in north africa, religious majority could be reached any time the boy was ready, and among indian jews it occurred around five years old (goldberg 2003, 92). the historical explanation of a german-italian influence is often accompanied by speculation on the rise of the bar mitzvah rituals as local imitations of christian confirmation practices, whether out of interests of assimilation or modernization (marcus 2004, 109-13; schauss 1950, 120-21). well into the twentieth century, judaism’s rabbinical annals observed that the bar mitzvah was a fading tradition or one that the rabbis should eradicate because it challenged elite notions of judaism (silverman, morris 1932, 329-31). a leading authority for orthodox jewry in north america, rabbi moshe feinstein (18951986), for example, publicly declared, “if i had the power, i would abolish the bar mitzvah ceremony in this country…it is well known that it has brought no one closer to study or observance” (sherwin 1990, 150). for notable modern jewish historians such as jenna weissman joselit, the triumph of the bar mitzvah over this rabbinical resistance is the example par excellence of a singular american culture within the wider jewish world. it demonstrates the ascendancy in the united states of the creative, upwardly aspiring folk interested in accommodating modernity over the elite hegemony of the ancients in the stodgy synagogue (joselit 1994, 89-118). sociological and psychological inquiries have underscored the way the bar mitzvah involves the family and could be used therapeutically to link generations and create community (davis 1995, 2003; kennedy 2005; schoenfeld 1993b). certainly the bar mitzvah can take on a different character depending on the family dynamic, but the unanswered question remains after examining these findings about the centrality of the father-son relationship despite growing egalitarianism and feminization in judaism. the sociopsychological interpretations positing a social bonding function are not that much different from the folk view that the bar mitzvah is something that each family wants to make its own while still showing fidelity to tradition. logically, the bonding is a consequence rather than a source of the ceremony.1 this folk view has been contrasted, particularly in religious literature, with elite pressures of rabbinical leaders to maintain the bar mitzvah’s synagogue function of encouraging participation in the minyan (kosmin 2002, 239-41; liebman 1973; schoenfeld 1993a). the implication of the functionalist analysis is that the bar mitzvah persists because it provides benefits to participants, but the bar mitzvah has raised conflicts in the jewish community and surveys affirm the tremendous pressures that preparation for the event raises. folklorists and ethnologists for their part have emphasized the expressive ritual components of the bar mitzvah as a jewish version of global pubertal ceremonies. the bar mitzvah is cited most commonly in folkloristic textbooks and reference works as a prominent coming-of-age “rite of passage” evident in western industrialized countries (haskell 1996, 410; mckeeverfurst 1992, 29; smith, robert 1972, 165; spiro 1977). folklorists and ethnologists cfr_2009_r4.indb 10 10/25/09 6:19:15 pm bronner fathers and sons 11 are eager to include this example probably because few public coming-of-age rituals exist in america and europe to compare to the anthropological haul of so-called primitive puberty initiations that draw attention to themselves as exotic, sexually tinged practices of public transition to adulthood (raphael 1988; spiro 1977). the bar mitzvah lacks this sexual undertone, it seems, but it burst on the american scene at a time when industrialized countries were extending childhood and becoming aware of adolescence as a distinct stage of life (russ 1993). this coincidence is apparent in the connection of the bar mitzvah to rites of passage although a correlation cannot be established because of its pre-modern existence. the bar mitzvah conceptualized as a rite of passage shows folk tradition to be socially functional, presumably needed to mark passage from childhood into adulthood. jewish educator jack d. spiro summarizes this view when he states, “the process itself may consume most of childhood, but the initiation rite is a form of ‘cultural compression,’ when all that is learned is compressed in the rituals. the compression itself focuses on the new roles that must be assumed by the initiate as he enters into the realm of manhood” (spiro 1977, 394). for spiro, this process is common among rites of all societies, but what is distinctive in jewish culture is “the high degree of emphasis on learning, the paramountcy of knowledge and understanding” (1977, 399). thus manhood is attained along with jewish identity, he concludes, through the rite of passage, although he has difficulty reconciling the “long, arduous intellectual process” of preparation with the relatively short “transition” phase on the big day. a logical problem with the demarcation line for jewish male passage is the fixed age of thirteen years old. biblical sources, for instance, cite twenty as a legal adult age and do not prescribe rituals for puberty. one can join the minyan without being bar mitzvah and could celebrate bar mitzvah at other ages and localities. jewish folklorist hayyim schauss hypothesizes that thirteen became ritually significant not because of a developmental stage it marked but because “thirteen was a sacred number among the jews in ancient times” (schauss 1950, 113). he speculates that the designation of twenty for maturity was a later development, “when a more advanced legal system was in force among jews” (schauss 1950, 113). if a sacred number was applied, however, it would probably be eighteen after the mystical numerological equivalent of chai (consisting of the hebrew letters of het and yod) for “living” (indeed, at bar mitzvahs today, common cash gifts are denominations of eighteen to signify good luck). and in fact, rabbi stuart rosenberg (1923-1990), spiritual leader of canada’s jews, writing in the influential journal religious education on the “right age for bar mitzvah” advocates for reforming the bar mitzvah tradition by holding it for boys at the age of eighteen (rosenberg 1965). other liberal rabbis in the twentieth century tried to replace the bar mitzvah with a confirmation ceremony at fifteen or sixteen, to keep children in jewish education longer and to align it with an age perceived to be more of a coming-of-age period (as in the popular girls’ celebration of “sweet sixteen”), but the efforts have been largely unsuccessful (joselit 1994, 105-30). looking to ancient sources for the entrenchment of thirteen in the jewish ritual cycle, folklorist theodor gaster was concerned that correlation was difficult because neither a pubertal or sacramental rite appears at thirteen in sacred texts. cfr_2009_r4.indb 11 10/25/09 6:19:15 pm fathers and sons bronner 12 its cultural significance, he offered, was in being the traditional age for marriage in the ancient near east (1980, 68). the mishnah, however, gives the expected age for marriage as eighteen, preceded by stages of study beginning “at five years the age is reached for scripture, at ten for the study of mishna, at thirteen for the fulfilment of the commandments, at fifteen for the study of the talmud, at eighteen for marriage, at twenty for seeking at livelihood....” (pirkei avot 5:25; see hertz 1945, 101-3). in this interpretation, thirteen is the appropriate age for understanding and enacting commandments in an educational life cycle, even though various rabbinical authorities have countered that it is too young (rosenberg 1965). rather than viewing a religious significance to the bar mitzvah because of the sacredness of the number, gaster observed that the bar mitzvah is a custom without meaning; he thought of it in the modern era as an occasion for a party without spiritual or developmental importance. reflecting a common rabbinical attitude of “elite” judaism, gaster in his influential survey of jewish folklife disparaged the bar mitzvah by concluding, “it confers nothing, imparts nothing, creates nothing; it merely celebrates” (gaster 1980, 67). “merely celebrates”? what about bar mitzvah as rite of passage? ivan marcus hypothesizes that “in recent times, as jews sought to mark the life cycle in ritual ways even in lives not otherwise filled with torah observance, the bar mitzvah emerged as a rite of passage from jewish childhood into adolescence and acculturation into the larger secular world, especially in american or israeli life” (2003, 123). the reference to “rite of passage” declares its function of moving from one stage to another thought to be universally containing a structure of separation, transition, and incorporation by french folklorist arnold van gennep in 1908. it should be pointed out that although van gennep as a scholar of religion knew about the bar mitzvah, the event is totally absent from his foundational book rites de passage, and in texts such as gaster’s and the encyclopedia judaica it is labeled a ceremony that is not about transition to adulthood as much as either a celebration of the conclusion of hebrew education or a display of commitment to judaism (gaster 1980, 66-77; kaplan and roth 1972). for psychologist jacob arlow the bar mitzvah also has educational more than developmental significance. he calls it an “ordeal by recitation,” linking it to nineteenth-century educational tests establishing the authority of the patriarchal synagogue (1951, 357). spiro agrees, pointing out, “the boy is on trial, perhaps not the kind of trial involved in walking over hot coals. but it is an intellectual trial, no less traumatizing as he stands before relatives and authorities to demonstrate his skill, ability, and knowledge of torah and jewish law. ‘it is, in essence, an academic degree’” (1977, 397). ivan marcus observes that “there is a culmination in the bar mitzvah as well as a celebration of youth. it often is the end of a jewish child’s formal jewish schooling, his or her graduation” (2004, 122). anthropologist harvey goldberg in his comparative survey of jewish rituals surmises that this association with examination and graduation is grounded in the bar mitzvah’s evolution out of an educational context. in his view, the bar mitzvah displaced the common ritual of entering religious education with one to mark its end. part of the rationale is that the transition of thirteen is one from elementary school to higher education of betha-midrash. cfr_2009_r4.indb 12 10/25/09 6:19:15 pm bronner fathers and sons 13 part of the problem with the bar mitzvah as a rite of passage is how van gennep’s structural order for moving from one stage to another of separation, transition, and incorporation applies to the event. one would expect much transition in a coming-of-age practice, but the bar mitzvah involves an inordinately long preparation time, typically starting as early as three years old. the bar mitzvah is not separated during the event and is not presented as liminal. the bar mitzvah’s central task is to read a torah portion and provide a speech rather than engaging in an initiatory act with male elders. as an incorporation, as sociologist judith davis noted, it struggles to mark a change in status or passage to another stage. adult privileges outside of congregational life are not granted, and for most children, it is something that parents plan for them. it is therefore in practice a milestone rather than an initiation. i contend that meanings exist often outside the awareness of the participants that contributed to its spread in folk judaism since the mid-twentieth century in western europe and america. my evidence comes from participation in a number of ceremonies, symbolic reading of liturgical texts, a survey of former b’nai mitzvah, and a content analysis of derashah, the interpretive bar mitzvah speeches the boys make. using developmental psychology and historical context in the midtwentieth-century crisis of masculinity, i will provide a folkloristic explanation of why the bar mitzvah rose to its present status. i look at it as an invented milestone tradition that has dealt with father-son conflicts as the boy deals with the uncertain status of his masculinity in a wider modern context. identification: preparation, fasting, separation, and recitation let me review the components of the bar mitzvah. most jewish educators and synagogue administrators encourage participation in hebrew school beginning with the aleph grade coinciding with kindergarten age as preparation for bar mitzvah by being able to read and chant biblical hebrew, recite prayers, and participate in congregational life. the bar mitzvah is treated as a culmination of one’s education demonstrated by reading from the torah and a speech. in the days before the bar mitzvah, no special events are planned, although in some communities, the boy may wear tefillin all day, get his hair cut or shaved off, or fast. the ritual fast for the boy usually occurs on the yom kippur before his bar mitzvah, and it is distinguished from the fasting he may do with adults afterward by lasting until chatzot (midday as defined by halakhah or practical jewish law). rather than being prescribed in torah, the transitional fast for the boy before his bar mitzvah on the day of atonement arose apparently as a folk custom in the modern period.2 it may be based on the examples of the father’s obligations to train a jewish child mentioned in the talmud, which include partial fasting on yom kippur after the age of nine years old (shulem and koenigsberg 2007). yet halakhah calls for fasting as a commandment after the bar mitzvah, with special reference to the symbolism of pubic hair growth for maturity: “a boy of thirteen and one day who have brought forth two hairs” is considered adult “with regard to all of the commandments and must complete the fast as an obligation from cfr_2009_r4.indb 13 10/25/09 6:19:15 pm fathers and sons bronner 14 the torah, but if they have not brought forth two hairs then they are regarded as minors and complete the fast as a rabbinical obligation only” (krieger 2006). the significance of the occasion of yom kippur for the fast on special occasions is that it symbolizes a death and rebirth, divesting the individual of his or her previous life (linke 1999, 149). the fast and wearing the white robe traditionally donned on yom kippur and burial at the end of life will be reenacted, for example, on the wedding day along with the same confessional prayers that are said on the holiday and at a death bed. the process therefore ritually confronts mortality, which, according to clinical psychologist stuart linke, “returns us to our core values and enables us to perceive ourselves more deeply” (1999, 149). on its surface, the ritual fast before bar mitzvah appears to be preparation for the obligations that the boy will accrue after reaching the age of religious majority. although fasting on yom kippur marks adult practice, the suffering it brings, even for the outcome of atonement, hardly could be considered a motivator to push on with the home stretch of bar mitzvah preparations, unless it is intentionally uncomfortable to metaphorically focus the bar mitzvah as an “ordeal,” as psychologist jacob arlow points out (1951, 357). if so, then it is a risky metaphor of pain and hunger to impose, if as arlow argues, the period before the bar mitzvah “becomes the occasion for rebellion against the parents. the boy, for various reasons, may refuse to participate in the entire process and figure 1. sephardic bar mitzvah ceremony, brooklyn, new york, 1998. photograph by simon j. bronner. cfr_2009_r4.indb 14 10/25/09 6:19:16 pm bronner fathers and sons 15 may repudiate his parents’ authority as represented by the need to go through the bar mitzvah initiation” (1951, 356). but a symbolic rationale outside of the awareness of the participants may be at work to explain why it is important in the custom (apparently in defiance of halakhic authority) to fast rather than other mitzvot the boy will practice after turning thirteen. one possible connection in religious scholarship is that the sacrifice of fasting is accepted as a purificatory rite and declaration of faith because it is followed by a joyous feast (farrell 1985). on the high holy day of yom kippur, fasting after the new year is followed by an occasion for a social “breaking the fast,” as it is called in north american locales. occurring during the first jewish month of tishrei (from the root for “beginning”), the purificatory fast marks a fresh start in the ritual year. is the comparison being made between the enforced fast before the bar mitzvah, then, and the bar mitzvah in which the immaturity and irresponsibility of childhood are ritually replaced with adult religious obligations, and encouraged by the festive meal? if so, the comparison seems strained between the deprivation of food in fasting and the central recitation and discourse at the bar mitzvah ceremony. both actions do have something in common, however, in their arousal of parental attention, and this clue may lead to an explanation of the tradition. my argument hinges on the symbolism of fasting in many religious contexts as the maternal provision of food pointed out by theorists of ritual (dundes 2002; farrell 1985, 254). anthropologist eileen farrell, for example, suggests that fasting representing birth or infancy in ritual time “evokes the most primitive wish-fulfillment of all, the moment when the hungry infant regains its mother’s breast” (1985, 254). it is symbolically consistent, therefore, that fasting as a reminder of infantile dependence on the mother’s sustenance is accompanied by prohibitions on adult male activities of shaving and “seminal pollution” (trachtenberg 1979, 212). with fasting often occurring during periods of mourning, representing, according to theodor gaster, “the state of suspended animation which ensues at the end of a life lease” (1961, 29), it offers a separation from the mother that allows transition and growth. in other words, a previous state or life is being let go and a new one is being embraced. as with other symbolic practices, oral activity is associated with maternal attributes (such as the jewish folk term mameloshn for “mother tongue” or folk language) that leads to patriarchal reading or codification (such as pirkei avot, literally “chapters of the fathers or patriarchs,” or idiomatically as “ethics of the fathers,” which is a significant tractate of the mishnah composed by male rabbis). at yom kippur and other religious occasions where a connection to god is being made, part of that transition is making a transfer from the physical dependence on the mother to spiritual guidance from the father (see smith, w. robertson 1907, 51-53). worshippers in the traditional jewish liturgy thus speak of god in the central prayer of the amida as “our god and god of our fathers, the god of abraham, the god of isaac and the god of jacob.” even with revision of liturgies to reflect egalitarianism, the principle holds, as articulated by folklorist alan dundes, that “if an infant associates feeling hunger pangs with the coming of an adult parent or parent-surrogate, then the adult who wants a deity to approach must clearly make himself hungry. moreover, the hungrier he is, the more likely it is that the parent-deity will approach” (2002, 9), and that parent as authority will cfr_2009_r4.indb 15 10/25/09 6:19:16 pm fathers and sons bronner 16 likely be patriarchal. many midrashic legends underscore the idea that matriarchal intervention brings the patriarchal god closer. a popular narrated example is of the jewish matriarch rachel, frequently depicted as the compassionate mother weeping for her captured children, who the midrash recounts arising from her grave and imploring god’s clemency for the israelites driven into captivity. rachel points out her self-abnegation and thereupon god promises her the restoration of israel (rothkoff 1972, 1489). she also shows up in modern wartime legends protecting israeli male soldiers from terrorist harm in campaigns outside their borders (wagner 2009). in line with the symbolism of fasting as separation from the mother to invite the father-deity, the spread of the pre-bar-mitzvah fast begins to make sense. a question that is often posed about the bar mitzvah is how it acts as a coming-ofage ritual if the mother associated with childhood is absent from the supposed rite of passage. the answer is that the separation occurs before the ceremony beginning with the ritual fast, and the transition from physical dependence to spiritual awareness continues into the ritualized haircut and acquisition of tefillin. the task of the ceremony on the big day then becomes through reading and discourse to accentuate the role of the father-deity. still remaining to be resolved is the relationship of the familial father who had been an authority over as well as provider for the boy. it appears that the rabbi and cantor can act as spiritual surrogates for the father who allow the boy to separate from familial paternity. still complicating this ritualistic scenario connected to traditional cognitive categories held in judaism is modern awareness of changing gender roles, especially in relation to the boy’s understanding of “becoming a man,” where intellect in the jewish ceremony rather than bodily strength is being used as a ritual measure of masculinity. the ceremony begins with the boy going to the bimah (reader’s stand) to recite standard blessings over the torah that would be heard on any occasion the torah is read. according to spiro’s ethnography of the event, “the boy separates himself from his mother, from his childhood, as he walks to the altar of the synagogue,” where he is “wrapped in his ‘tallit’ and surrounded by the males who will read with him” (1977, 398). traditionally, women do not wear a tallit and do not participate on the bimah. the mother is a spectator while the father takes a prominent position at the platform with his son. unlike preparations for other readings of the torah, the father recites a short prayer, barukh shepetarani meonsho shel zeh, after the son’s conclusion of the second blessing. this blessing is unique to the bar mitzvah; it is not said for the daughter at the bat mitzvah. the translation is “blessed be he, who has now rid (or freed) me from the responsibility or punishment for this one.” rabbinical literature suggests two interpretations from the source of the benediction in the midrash (a compilation of commentaries on the hebrew bible) commenting on the phrase, “and the boys grew up’ (gen. 25:27). one is that the father was punished when his son sinned, for he failed to raise him properly, and the other is that the son was punished for the sins of his father (nulman 1993, 91-92). whichever interpretation one argues, the common thread is that the opening of the ceremony is thematized in relation to a father-son conflict. unlike other blessings, the name of god is cfr_2009_r4.indb 16 10/25/09 6:19:16 pm bronner fathers and sons 17 omitted from the prayer and the hebrew word patoor, meaning to exempt or rid, conveys a negative connotation of vexation (arlow 1951, 357).3 with this connotation, jewish historian cecil roth contends, the father’s prayer declaring his freedom from responsibility for the boy “was considered an integral part of the celebration, hardly less than the boy’s own participation in the service” (roth 1955, 18; emphasis added). the conflict resolution in the ceremony is for father and son to part ways, and at that moment the boy’s teacher steps in to guide the boy in the reading, either the prophetic portion of the week (haftarah) or an entire biblical portion–the sidrah. indeed, the father will often stand off at a distance at that point. afterward the boy presents a speech that interprets a point of jewish law or interprets the weekly torah portion (parshah). the speech is a narrative that typically follows a tripartite structure: (1) a standard opening of “today i am a man,” followed by an expression of gratitude to parents, especially the father, for having raised and educated the boy; (2) reference to biblical sources (a favorite in recorded speeches is the sacrifice of isaac by his father) followed by its application to his own conduct or the society; and (3) a promise of allegiance to the jewish community, often accompanied with acknowledgment of the role of the religious leaders who helped him to become bar mitzvah (glazer 1928; gruberger 1993; katz 1931). at the conclusion of the speech, it is now common among both ashkenazic and sephardic services for children in the audience to throw candies at the boy. after the service, the parents host a seudah mitzvah (festive meal celebrating a commandment), and this has expanded into the bar mitzvah party often held in a rented hall. despite harsh criticisms of the party such as that voiced by rabbi abraham chill, “the contemporary custom of celebrating the bar mitzvah with lavish and ostentatious parties has no basis in jewish tradition and it is in fact contrary to the spirit if not the letter of jewish law and morality,” the secular celebration has grown and featured various themes geared to the boy’s worldly interests (chill 1993, 317). the party has become tightly controlled by party planners, but an expectation among the bar mitzvah boy’s male friends is that some pranking or even hazing will occur to torment the center of attention and provide a test of his toughness. this might include giving the bar mitzvah boy a “wedgie” (lifting his underwear so as to grip his genitals or get stuck between the buttocks) and doctoring his food and drink. the boys may sit with the bar mitzvah on a dais, and frequently they initiate lifting the bar mitzvah on a chair in imitation of a wedding custom for the bride and groom. more sedate and official is the ritual lighting of candles by family members during the party. among the sephardim, the donning of tefillin or phylacteries is featured in bar mitzvah practices, and families may hold a separate celebration before the bar mitzvah called yom tefillin. the tefillin are two cubical leather containers with attached leather straps. one is worn on the head (shel rosh) while the other is on the arm (shel yad); the thongs for shel yad are wrapped seven times around the arm while the straps on shel rosh hang loosely behind the head and shoulders like hair strands. the cases hold parchments with four biblical passages, expressing four basic jewish precepts–the law of tefillin, recognition of god’s kingship, the unity of the creator, and the exodus from egypt (roth 1955, 23). betrothal cfr_2009_r4.indb 17 10/25/09 6:19:16 pm fathers and sons bronner 18 is symbolized in the arm thong which is wound three times around the middle finger while reciting “and i will betroth thee unto me forever; yea, i will betroth thee unto me in righteousness, and in judgment and in lovingkindness, and in mercy. i will even betroth thee unto me in faithfulness; and thou shalt know the lord” (hosea 2, 21-22). in keeping with the laying on of tefillin as a male rite, the exodus story encased in the tefillin (exodus 13:1-10, 11-16) opens with the commandment to consecrate to god “every firstborn male” and relates the promise of a “land flowing with milk and honey” promised to “your forefathers” (exodus 13: 1, 5). indeed, the text signals a transference from a submissive state of slavery under pharaoh in egypt to a liberation with the guidance of moses to the promised land. the bearded rabbi in the ceremony takes on the role of teacher moses guiding his flock to be independent (moses does not enter the land of israel). the ceremony for yom tefillin also brings out patriarchal symbolism between father and rabbi in their ritual placement of the tefillin or phylacteries on the boy before he does it himself. typically, the father puts one of the cases on the boy’s head, representing his education for which he was responsible, and the rabbi works the other case on the child’s arm, representing his action (roth 1955, 22). the boy may give a speech then as well as on the sabbath, and the boy is blessed aloud by the congregation. a ritual practice that appears to reinforce the transition from father to teacher as patriarch is the boy walking around the assembly with his new decorated tefillin bag into which congregants would drop silver coins, which are then presented as a gift to the bar mitzvah boy’s teacher (roth 1955, 22). figure 2. bar mitzvah boy with tefillin accompanied by father and teachers, brooklyn, new york, 2008. photograph by ronnie habbaz, courtesy of ronald and adi cohen. cfr_2009_r4.indb 18 10/25/09 6:19:16 pm bronner fathers and sons 19 the mother is involved usually in making arrangements for the event, and a modern tradition has been for her to weave or present a tallit to the bar mitzvah boy. the significance of the tallit is that after his thirteenth birthday, it can be worn on the sabbath in prayer and thus represents his reaching religious majority. it is customary to have a formal photo portrait taken of the bar mitzvah boy in his tallit as a keepsake to distribute. the mother’s role is what judith davis (1995) calls the traditional balabosta, translated from the yiddish as the woman of the house with the implication that she has a managerial role to compensate for her exclusion from the ceremony. her management has extended to responsibility for the boy’s jewish education, although the bar mitzvah ceremony conveys the frequent fiction that the father has been overseeing the boy’s religious training (see gordon 1959, 58-59). nonetheless, at the bar mitzvah the father takes center stage with his son, until he is moved aside by the supervising rabbi and cantor. annotation: relation of the bar mitzvah to circumcision, haircutting, wedding, and examination in its structure and symbolism, the bar mitzvah can be compared to four separate traditions: bris (yiddish; brit milah in hebrew) or circumcision, upsherin (yiddish) or the ritual first haircut, the jewish wedding, and the final examination or dissertation. the comparison to the bris comes up in the discourse of the bar mitzvah because of its coincidence with the boy’s birthday, which raises images of circumcision. typical is a memoir i collected showing that the bar mitzvah was narrated in relation to the bris: i was constantly reminded that the bar mitzvah was the biggest event in my life after my bris. since the bar mitzvah came around my birthday, my mother brought up her memories of the bris and how much i’ve grown. she’s always sentimental, you know. my father would make a bad joke about it would be just as painful besides telling me that another thing that’s the same is that everyone will want to hold me. i did think it was funny when he said they’re not talking about my pecker when they say, “my how you’ve grown.” more official charting of the jewish boy’s milestones typically involves the bar mitzvah’s relation to ritual circumcision. roth in the mid-twentieth century, for example, declares, “in the traditional jewish scheme, there were three great festive occasions in a boy’s life. there was the eighth day after his birth, when he was introduced into the covenant of abraham. there was the day when he was first initiated to study, being taken to synagogue, blessed by the rabbi, and given honey to lick from a slate on which letters of the hebrew alphabet were written, as a token that the torah should be sweet to his mouth all the days of his life. and there was the day when he was first considered legally bound to fulfill the obligations of jewish law and practice, and could be regarded as a bar mitzvah, a ‘child of precepts’” (1955, 15). with the decline of honey licking to mark the cfr_2009_r4.indb 19 10/25/09 6:19:17 pm fathers and sons bronner 20 start of study among modern liberal jews, more attention has been focused on the continuity in the jewish life cycle from circumcision to bar mitzvah. like the bris, the bar mitzvah is represented as an induction into faith and is prescribed in intervals of time: 8 days for the bris and 13 years for the bar mitzvah. the bris also centrally involves the father-son relationship, for the father gives the child to the mohel (jewish ritual specialist in circumcision) who circumcises the child. several college students who gave me memoirs of their bar mitzvah mentioned that references to the bris were made in pranking by the boy’s friends. connections were made to binding and cutting in the bar mitzvah suit and ritual haircut, often accompanied by checking whether the boy has pubic hair despite the “damage” done by the circumcision. jewish advisers marc-alain ouaknin and françoise-anne ménager connect the haircutting to the importance of manhood to a haircutting ritual (upsherin in yiddish and chalakah in hebrew) that many orthodox communities observe for the three-year old boys (2005, 46-48). an educational connection exists because the child is expected for the first time to go to school, where he will learn to read hebrew. they find similarities between the attention in the haircutting ritual and bar mitzvah (they could extend this comparison to the bris) to the trauma of loss and its provision of healing with cultural identity. both rituals also are replete with reminders of masculinity. the haircut distinguishes the boy from the long hair of the girl. according to ouaknin and ménager, the immersion into books is symbolically consistent with the gendering of cutting rituals: “he goes from the maternal language, which is oral, to the paternal language, which is written. hebrew also links writing to the paternal language in an extraordinary way. the word ‘alphabet’–aleph-bet in hebrew–is pronounced av and means ‘father’” (2005, 48). further underscoring study as intellectual gain to compensate for physical loss is a traditional gift in both rituals of a honey cake or sweets shaped like letters (ouaknin and ménager 2005, 48). in circumcision, haircutting, and bar mitzvah rituals, the boy acquires a new ceremonial garment. in the haircutting the boy gains a small tallit to wear as an undergarment known as tzitzit (based on the commandment in torah to wear fringes at the corners of garments and also meaning “hair”; see ezekiel 8:3). tzitzit or braided fringes are attached to the boy’s tallit and are often used in the service to touch the torah as it is carried around the synagogue. in addition to the larger tallit conspicuously worn over the shoulders at prayer, the tefillin adds long strips of leather on the arm and head. the boy usually receives the gift of tefillin before the tallit; a common time to present the phylacteries is 30 days before the bar mitzvah. this period is related to a monthly cycle in the jewish lunar calendar and is commonly associated with a mourning period of shloshim (from the hebrew for “thirty.”). a mourning period is simulated for the passing of youth, and as in the ritual guidelines after burial, hair of the family mourners cannot be cut until after the mourning period (usually just before the bar mitzvah). “laying tefillin,” as the act is called involves a form of binding because leather cases attached to the leather straps contain torah passages. one that is especially conspicuous is on the forehead with straps hanging down over the shoulders in the manner of hair. rabbis teaching the laying of tefillin cfr_2009_r4.indb 20 10/25/09 6:19:17 pm bronner fathers and sons 21 will comment on the placement on head and arms as committing intellect and body to fulfillment of commandments. but there is also an important connection to the father-son relationship. the four passages from the torah on the tefillin parchments are teachings the father will address to the child and relate to communicative skills: veamarta for you will say, veshinaneta vedibarta for you will repeat and you will speak, velimadeta for you will teach (ouaknin and ménager 2005, 161-62). both tefillin and tzitzit are symbolically cut to show completion by going over the head and removing them after prayer (ouaknin and ménager 2005, 50). a ceremonial connection to the circumcision at the bar mitzvah is the wimpel (from the german wimpel for “flag” or “sash”), a decorated cloth on figure 3. bar mitzvah studio portrait, new york city, 1961. figure 4. judy goldberg holding a wimpel she made for a bris/bar mitzvah, harrisburg, pennsylvania, 2009. photograph by simon j. bronner. cfr_2009_r4.indb 21 10/25/09 6:19:17 pm fathers and sons bronner 22 which the boy is circumcised and later used as a sash to bind the sefer torah.4 it might be part of a custom at the age of three when the boy is toilet trained. the father gets an aliyah (invitation to the altar) and brings his boy with him to the bimah to wrap the wimpel around the torah. thought to be of german origin like the bar mitzvah, the decorated wimpel gains significance because it is was used to swaddle the baby boy at his brit milah and represents the covenant with a patriarchal figure, as the hebrew blessing recited by the father reminds the gathered group: “praised by thou, o lord our god, king of the universe, who has sanctified us by thy commandments, and hast bidden us to make him enter into the covenant of abraham our father.” the group responds, “as he has entered into the covenant, so may he be introduced to the study of torah, to the wedding canopy, and to good deeds.” based on this text, wimpels are inscribed in hebrew with the following message underscoring the patriarchal line: “(name of child, called) son of (name of father) born under a good constellation on (day of week, date, month, year) may he (or may the lord let him) grow to torah, marriage, and good deeds.” an artist may illuminate the text with related depictions of a jewish wedding under the traditional canopy (huppah); masculine animals such as the lion of judah, eagles, and leopards5; and a boy holding up a torah commonly interpreted as a bar mitzvah scene (eis 1979, 32; kirshenblatt-gimblett 1977, 1819). one way that the bar mitzvah is thematized in the father-son relationship is in the transfer of the wimpel. after the circumcision, the wimpel belongs to the father, but after the bar mitzvah, possession transfers to the son. bar mitzvah (exemplifying the commandment at the bris to “grow to torah”) and wedding are connected in the custom of giving the groom an aliyah the week before his wedding to re-enact the call to the bimah at his bar mitzvah. in a sign of readiness for marriage, the groom often donates his wimpel to his synagogue before the wedding. the covering of the huppah is frequently composed of the boy’s bar mitzvah tallit, and the bride will replace it with a larger tallit she has woven or purchased for the groom (marcus 2003. 117). the transfer of the tallit (at a critical part of the ceremony, bride and groom are both covered by the tallit to symbolize their unity) and the circling of the bride around the groom indicates readiness for sexual relations. practices at the bar mitzvah suggest the metaphor of the wedding is used to represent sexual displacement by immersion in books rather than sexual awakening. when the boy is called to the bimah at the barmitzvah he is identified as the “bar mitzvah groom” and the torah is the bride to which he is bound. according to arlow’s description, wedding and bar mitzvah are joined in the recitation, because “throughout his recitation the initiate is observed intently as a young man on trial undergoing a very difficult examination. a sense of compassionate participation grips the audience, especially the boy’s mother” (arlow 1951, 357). the anticipation can be related to anxiety over sexually consummating a marriage; in this case the enactment is displacing the sexuality with potency in touching the torah with a yad, a metal extension in the shape of a finger, and the oral recitation. in the tefillin ceremony described previously, the boy places the shel yad on the arm and wraps straps that extend from it around the middle finger while saying verses referring to betrothal. although thirteen seems young to invoke the metaphor of marriage, ouaknin and ménager find cfr_2009_r4.indb 22 10/25/09 6:19:18 pm bronner fathers and sons 23 evidence for its enactment as compensation for sexually “losing a part of oneself through the body” (2005, 46). they argue that “boys lose sperm (wet dreams and first masturbation)” at ages that “correspond closely to the time that the losses described above are first sustained” (2005, 46). further, the ejaculatory praxis of throwing candies at the bar mitzvah boy resembles the showering of the bride and groom after a wedding. arguably, access to torah is unconsciously equated with access to a woman which the father already possesses. arlow hypothesized that organizing the ordeal as an examination is symbolically important because, in his words, “failing an examination, together with the humiliation which the student experiences, is often unconsciously equated with being castrated,” and from clinical cases, he argued that examiners are identified with the father image of the oedipal phase (arlow 1951, 365). to be sure, the bar mitzvah boy is expected to pass the examination by his male elders, but more than any other theme, memoirs mention performance anxiety about successfully completing the reading and speech under the watchful eye of teacher and father. the chanting for the reading is done by rote, and it is all the more challenging because of the absence of vowel aids to pronunciation. as ouaknin and ménager point out, “this means that to learn it, one has to accept being part of a tradition. one cannot learn this vowel-less text on one’s own, even if one reads and speaks hebrew fluently” (2005, 63). the process of tradition they are referring to involves an oral “handing down” of performative practices from male elder to the boy. in this way, the connotation of identity formation at the bar mitzvah is prominent because more than a text is being chanted; tradition as a sustaining process for the group is being enacted–and honored. a lesson of the boy’s ordeal is that being part of the tradition is difficult and is administered by the synagogue patriarchy rather than the familial one. the following narratives collected from young men who had experienced their bar mitzvah five to eight years before bear out these pervasive themes of performance anxiety and participation in tradition at the bar mitzvah: i was nervous beyond words. the cantor tried to calm me by telling me it was my special day, but that made me only feel worse. i felt that all eyes were on me and i could never be ready in time. i felt that my voice was going to crack at any moment. it’s different from show and tell in school, because it was so formal and when i was reading, i was dwarfed by these older men who i thought were breathing down my neck. i think my mother worried about everyone coming and that the party would go well. it was my father who sweated the synagogue part, and i sweated the more he did, even though he didn’t have to say much. that suit bothered me and my friends teased me about my get-up. older relatives told me they remembered my father’s bar mitzvah that was so wonderful and i felt that i had to live up to that. i think that’s why i pushed to read faster than i should have. i don’t think my sister had as hard a time at her bat mitzvah. there was totally more pressure on me. cfr_2009_r4.indb 23 10/25/09 6:19:18 pm fathers and sons bronner 24 i dropped everything as the time got closer so i could concentrate. i would have loved to have postponed it but that date was set. i was into sports and let that slide for the bar mitzvah. the rabbi told me that i would have the support of family to get me through, but i didn’t know half these people. i felt that i was singing for strangers, which made me nervous. i think it was definitely worth it after everything, but i was a wreck before. the tone of these narratives is borne out by kosmin’s survey, which showed that 51 percent of parents reported that the bar mitzvah dominated the life of the family during the year of preparation, but 97 percent still felt that the bar mitzvah “was worth the time and trouble involved” (2002, 235-236). despite complaints that the bar mitzvah was time consuming and “nerve-racking,” only one percent of the b’nai mitzvah wrote that it “was not worth the time it took” (2002, 235). the bar mitzvah treats learning as a masculine attribute because of command of the torah associated with male leadership and the association of the bearded rabbi with an especially learned man at a time when the boy is concerned with the growth of pubic and facial hair as a sign of masculinity. these images are reinforced by cake-toppers (a cake in the form of a torah is commonly reported), a host of figurines often given as gifts that depict the tallit-covered, hairless boy at the torah or bimah under the tutelage of a bearded religious figure.6 arlow, however, did not believe the bar mitzvah was effective in resolving oedipal conflicts because of the time lag between sexual maturity and heterosexuality sanctioned by modern society. he suggested that as a result of the failure of the ceremony to ritualize puberty the bar mitzvah boy chooses a number of psychological strategies, including channeling sexual and aggressive energies into study, rejecting the father by renewed submission to an exalted father image of god, or cessation of religious adherence to either join or rebel against his biological father (arlow 1951, 364-68). although there is a symbolic replacement of the father in the bar mitzvah, the separation from, and competition for, the mother characteristic of pubertal rituals is not as apparent. what is manifested more than sexual competition is the celebration of the child’s precociousness evident in command of the “ordeal by examination.” instead of independence to another stage, the bar mitzvah presents a paradoxical combination of separation and connection. the reading declares an early autonomy from education even as it joins the individual to a patrilineal tradition. the boy is not integrated into the community as much as he is forced to become self-aware of his own development and aspirations. following the symbolic communication of the circumcision (brit milah is literally the “covenant of the word”) of which he was unaware, and possibly the upsherin at which he begins immersion in the alphabet, the bar mitzvah shows his readiness for the world by a performance that draws attention to itself for what ouaknin and ménager call “creative combinations and recombinations of letters and words” challenging the linear structure of storytelling (2005, 63). the boy becomes conscious of the attainment of skills that will carry him into adulthood. rabbis hope that the ancient source of the texts will remind him to commit to the cfr_2009_r4.indb 24 10/25/09 6:19:18 pm bronner fathers and sons 25 synagogue, but the praxis of his “reading in bursts” (words bursting out into letters or into groups of letters, making other words and coming together into a new order) and exemption of his father allows him to detach (ouaknin and ménager 2005, 62-63). analysis and explanation: historical and social contexts for jewish manly display if the bar mitzvah is not effective as a sacramental or pubertal rite, its value as an ethnic commitment is questionable because of the decline of jewish involvement after the event. if it is not particularly useful for coming of age or revitalizing jewish identity, and parents complain of its exorbitant expense and material excess, then what explains its spreading popularity during the twentieth century? the joselit thesis that it became entrenched as a life cycle celebration in which the family’s economic success could be displayed and ethnic identity unhinged from synagogue life in the post-immigrant generation does not readily apply to a different set of social and historical circumstances for jewish parents with only faint memories of the ghetto experience. and if there are traces of this motivation of status anxiety still apparent in the suburban conspicuous consumption evident in popular-culture portrayals such as keeping up with the steins and entourage, then why did the synagogue component not disappear, particularly since prominent american rabbis held a negative or ambivalent attitude toward the bar mitzvah? the psychosexual connections of circumcision, examination, and wedding are strong in the ceremony, suggesting a developmental explanation, but is the ceremony working to resolve oedipal conflicts, considering that the mother plays a peripheral role by most accounts and the separation that occurs is from the father rather than from the mother as described in other coming-of-age processes? with the rush to find a source in antiquity for the age of thirteen as a jewish ritual age, it appears that being forgotten is its modern symbolism as the first year of adolescence, or the teen years. the twentieth century, especially the years after world war ii, was marked by the rise of teenagers as a separate, often troubled or rebellious age and marketing target. many factors went into the creation of adolescence particularly within north america and western europe, including the end of child labor and the rise of the high school in attendance as well as status within popular culture. wrapped up in the emerging image of the teen in the modern context of compensating for a lack of the provider role is the tough guy image of the adolescent relying on strength, competitiveness, and aggressive heterosexuality in preparation for economic and social independence. this was coupled with the feminized, constricted, suited father of the 1950s vividly spread in iconic images such as the rebellious teen’s father wearing an apron in rebel without a cause (1955) and the domestication of the father-businessman in the man in the gray flannel suit (1956) (see cross 2008, 95; see also cohan 1997; gilbert 2005; gordon 1959, 57-64; osgerby 2001; young and young 2004, 30, 184-86). against this background of changing views of age-based masculinity, the jewish emphasis on learning as the basis of masculine identity caused conflicts with the dominant society, at least if the goal was to integrate into society. the cfr_2009_r4.indb 25 10/25/09 6:19:18 pm fathers and sons bronner 26 jewish body, as sander gilman has pointed out in his study of the european sources for this conflict, was defined as unsuited for military or strenuous work (gilman 1991; see also konner 2009, 144-53). jews were known for brains rather than brawn (gilman 1996). during the 1950s, jews were notably absent from many cultural displays of teen masculine power including music, motors, sports, and dance (kimmel 1996, 277-78). in folk humor, jews were smart but weak, and many jokes about the bar mitzvah boy underscored his inadequacy as a sexualized man (ouaknin and ménager 2005, 55). if that pressure to show manly traits came from outside of the jewish community at a time when the bonds of the community began to unravel, from within the community, egalitarian ideas about the bat mitzvah began to take hold in conservative and reform wings of judaism. the time of maturation for girls was defined a year earlier than the boys, adding insult to injury, even though her ceremony was not thematized with any declaration of “today, i am a woman.” in the background of the jewish boy’s maturation is the growth of the image through popular sources of the overprotective mother who inhibits the jewish boy’s maturity and stays with him through adulthood (antler 2007). one should also not underestimate the psychological impact of jewish circumcision as another internal conflict among jews because of the implication that it diminishes sexual aggressiveness and masculine identity (glick 2005; mark 2003; silverman, eric 2006). looking historically at bar mitzvah announcements, the theme of the bar mitzvah began to change from a subdued family ceremony of joining congregational life to the public celebration of manhood during the 1950s. it first becomes a theme of television sitcoms in the 1960s, usually representing a jewish boy’s anxiety about either going through the “ordeal by examination” or having missed an opportunity to have one (pearl and pearl 1999). many of the parties had as themes the interests of the boy, such as music, sports, and motors rather than religious subjects, and these interests along with displays of economic power were significant for culturally connecting to a normative, if not precocious hypermasculinity. for example, i asked boys who had gone through the bar mitzvah how they arrived at the themes for their post-ceremony parties. as the following narratives attest, it was a decision that they felt strongly they wanted to control. if i left it to my parents, i’m sure they would have rented a boring hall and made it look like their wedding. i wanted a teen party and i wanted it to be cool. i was into cars and skateboards, so i got them to put it in an auto museum, which none of my buddies had done, and the centerpieces were dudes on skateboards. i told them that i would do all the traditional stuff for the synagogue if i could have the party that wouldn’t embarrass me. my parents did ask me for ideas about the party, and i’m glad they did. i was worried that they would want too much of a family affair. the ceremony followed the law, and i wanted the party to be something that would be mine. i wanted to let go and impress my cfr_2009_r4.indb 26 10/25/09 6:19:18 pm bronner fathers and sons 27 friends. it had to be about sports to save face after all the stuff i took about going through bar mitzvah lessons. there weren’t too many jewish signs, although my parents did want the candle lighting for the relatives. but i had a rock band, so the kids could get into it. more than a celebration of the completion of the bar mitzvah, the party allowed the boys to show their connection to normative culture, especially to masculine pursuits of sports, recreation, and music. this was especially important because the boys recognized that for the most part, their mothers made the arrangements for the party. with demonstrations of masculinity and maturity being important at the party, the ceremony is remembered in relation to the father’s role. the components of the synagogue ceremony emphasizing the boy taking the father’s role and the rise in status of the recitation as an “ordeal” were adapted into the declaration, “today, i am a man.” considering the praxis of the bar mitzvah, one might easily construe this declaration as “today, i am the father”–and i am better than he was. competition for ownership of the event is evident in the idea that the successful bar mitzvah reflects on the status of the father, as shown especially in keeping up with the steins, in which the materialism of the party conveys the father’s male provider role coming into conflict with the boy’s identity formation. figure 5. skateboarder centerpiece at bar mitzvah held in auto museum, hershey, pennsylvania, 2006. photograph by simon j. bronner. cfr_2009_r4.indb 27 10/25/09 6:19:19 pm fathers and sons bronner 28 the early age at which the bar mitzvah occurred added to the ceremony’s appeal for announcing the jewish boy’s claim to manliness if not legal maturity. into the twenty-first century under the influence of the women’s movement, questions of the proper masculine role taken by jewish boys increased. reports in books such as jew-jitsu: the hebrew hands of fury by rabbi daniel eliezer and paul kupperberg (2008) along with satirical movies such as the hebrew hammer (2004) expressed a confusion about whether the answer to these questions would be to embrace knowledge as a source of social power or a sign of diminished masculinity. i contend that the bar mitzvah gained importance therefore in what increasingly became seen as the most important phase of modern life and for a group that felt the most conflict in its definition of masculinity. despite theodor gaster’s avowal that the bar mitzvah imparts nothing, i find that its symbolism of circumcision, examination, and wedding is joined to modern meanings of masculine maturity. it is imperfect as a ritual of religious commitment, to be sure, but it has persisted and even spread in the modern context, not because of its signal of religious majority or adult obligations, but its negotiation of adolescence for an ethnic group uncertain in american popular culture of its masculine identity and patriarchal continuity. implication: feminization and the ritual burden of the bar mitzvah having made this argument for linking the rise of the bar mitzvah to a crisis of masculinity for assimilating jews within north america, i see signs today that it is likely to enter a new phase as an invented tradition. some of the connections to masculinity, for instance, are undermined as the synagogue goes through what has been heralded as feminization, including female rabbis and cantors leading the bar mitzvah (goldstein 1991; marder 1996; seidman 1997). mothers are taking more of a role, and for my memoir writers concerned for their masculine image, that caused more, rather than less, distress. one compensation that several writers mentioned was taking more control of the party, infusing it with masculine themes and holding it at auto museums, ski slopes, or sports stadiums. or the party exuded a sense of coolness in representation of a modern fashion and electronics rather than the process of tradition evoking continuity with jewish identity. one bar mitzvah adviser touched a nerve by showing parents how to highlight their son’s hip individuality in step with high style rather than collective tradition associated with sameness by offering mitzvah chic, subtitled, “how to host a meaningful, fun, drop-dead gorgeous bar or bat mitzvah” (greenberg 2006). some families view holding a bar mitzvah in israel as a sign of religious devotion, but rather than departing from tradition, it fits into the trope of announcing masculine attributes at a young age because of the image of israelis as tough jews. a common post-ceremony activity, for example, is to go to masada, the historic site where a small number of rebellious jews held off legions of the roman empire. many of the boys show their vigor by climbing up a steep path to the plateau 1,300 feet high. in addition to this bar mitzvah trip, others show a variety of creative ways to engage the boy with a strenuous and memorable experience. as the boys seek to declare their own identity, the fathers cfr_2009_r4.indb 28 10/25/09 6:19:19 pm bronner fathers and sons 29 are frequently involved as the son’s pal engaged equally in sports and music, rather than speaking as the authoritarian voice of the elders or sages (see cross 2008). if the above argument holds up, then as the popular perception of jewish masculinity changes to the point where it joins normative muscular manliness, then the bar mitzvah will carry less of a ritual burden to show the development of the boy’s mettle as well as his mind (see brod 1988, 2004; bronner 2005, 34-36). the bar mitzvah is the tradition everyone thinks they know from popular culture as a sign of excess of mass culture generally, although assigned to jews, but its folk cultural practice reveals an uneasy father-son relationship in a society that creates conflicts for the boy between brains and brawn as he declares at the age of thirteen, “today, i am a man.” notes 1. for the logical problem of social functionalism analyzing consequences rather than causes, see oring 1976; bronner 1986, 74-88; bronner 2006. 2. evidence for the yom kippur fast before the bar mitzvah as a folk custom is found in discussion groups such as imamother: connecting jewish mothers (www. imamother.com). the question of whether to allow children to fast frequently comes up. among orthodox members, there is reference made to “the three fasts” (out of seven jewish fast days) which are ritually done by the bar-mitzvah-to-be: yom kippur (day of atonement, usually occurring in september or october), tisha b’av (usually held in july or august remembering the tragedies of the jewish people), and ta’anit bechorim (the fast of the firstborn commemorating the saving of the firstborn in egypt from plague, observed the day before passover in march or april). on september 10, 2008, for instance, “1st” from israel posted this query, “i am looking for the reason/source behind the custom of the fasting the 3 fasts before bar or bat mitzvah. do only people from certain backgrounds do this, where does this custom come from? is there a basis for it? i always learned that children under bar/bat mitzvah age should not fast the whole day. once they are at the age of chinuch, they can be encouraged to fast for a few hours in the morning (and at night 9 av and yom kippur). and then that when they do eat, it should only be what is necessary, not indulging on junk food and continuous snack.” i recorded seven replies, none of which proposed any textual sources, and rabbis who were cited in the thread were mixed on whether to follow the custom. shalhevet from israel wrote on the same day, “our rov says not to do it,” whereas chossidmom replied on october 2, 2008, that “my son who will be bar mitzvah a couple of weeks after succos should fast this yom kippur, according to the rav,” even though he “says it’s a bunch of baloney...he said there is absolutely no source for this.” the other replies referred to doing it although they did not know the rationale: “we did–but i have no idea why” (greenfire, september 10, 2008); “my father holds by it. he told me the reason but of course i forgot” (flowerpower, september 10, 2008); “i never heard of 3 fasts before, but one i did. my parents always said to fast one fast before also only if you can” (cuteson, september 10, 2008); “i did, as a kid! i grew up in a modern orthodox community, and my whole circle of firends were really machmir on that one. (then again, we made fasting cfr_2009_r4.indb 29 10/25/09 6:19:19 pm fathers and sons bronner 30 into a competition–‘how long did you fast?’ ‘what did you break your fast on,’ etc…) (shininglight, october 2, 2008). 3. the rhetorical use of patoor in regard to release from manly obligation is still apparent in modern hebrew where it refers to an exemption from military duty. 4. ruth eis (1979) states that although the sashes are referred to as “torah binders” in english, “the correct name is wimpel (f.), an old german word for cloth or veil, related to the middle high german bewimpfen, to cover, to conceal. typically, they are made from the cloth which covers the new-born male during the circumcision ceremony (11). 5. ellen frankel and betsy platkin teutsch in the encyclopedia of jewish symbols (1992) trace the frequent presence of lions, leopards, eagles, and deer in ceremonial jewish objects to the mishnah (pirke avot 5:23) which commands, “be as strong as a leopard, as light as an eagle, as swift as a deer, as brave as a lion to do the will of your father in heaven” (40). 6. see, for example, the cake toppers at the website magic mud (www. magicmud.com/judaic a shots.htm) accessed december 28, 2008. it offers personalized bar mitzvah cake toppers and figurines at the bimah. another site shows a figurine with the bearded rabbi overlooking the bar mitzvah boy, entitled “bar mitzvah–father and son figurine” promoted by liorel art from israel: stores. ebay.com/art_from_israel_figureines-sculptures_woqqfsubz2100394. works cited abrahams, israel. 1958. jewish life in the middle ages. new york: meridian books. antler, joyce. 2007. you never call! you never write! a history of the jewish mother. new york: oxford university press. arlow, jacob. 1951. a psychoanalytic study of a religious initiation rite: bar mitzvah. in the psychoanalytic study of the child, volume vi, ed. ruth eissler, anna freud, heinz hartmann, and ernst kris, 353-74. new york : international universities press. bronner, simon j. 1986. american folklore studies: an intellectual history. lawrence: university press of kansas. ______. 2006. folk logic: interpretation and explanation in folkloristics. western folklore 65: 401-34. chill, abraham. 1979. the minhagim: the customs and ceremonies of judaism, their origins and rationale. new york: sepher-hermon press. cross, gary. 2008. men to boys: the making of modern immaturity. new york: columbia university press. cohan, steven. 1997. masked men: masculinity and the movies in the fifties. bloomington: indiana university press. davis, judith. 1995. the bar mitzvah balabusta: the mother’s role in the family’s rite of passage. in active voices: women in jewish culture, ed. maurie sacks, 125-41. urbana: university of illinois press. ______. 2002. the psychoanalytic study of religious custom and belief: ritual fasting, self-mutilation, and the deus otiosus. in bloody mary in the mirror: cfr_2009_r4.indb 30 10/25/09 6:19:19 pm fathers and sons bronner 34 wagner, matthew. 2009. soldiers turn to secret weapon: jewish spirituality. jerusalem post. 14 january. http://www.jpost.com/servlet/satellite?cid=12318 66577142&pagename=jpost%2fjparticle%2fshowfull (accessed february 9, 2009). young, william k., with nancy k. young. 2004. the 1950s. westport, ct: greenwood. cfr_2009_r4.indb 34 10/25/09 6:19:20 pm bronner fathers and sons 31 essays in psychoanalytic folkloristics, by alan dundes, 3-15. jackson: university press of mississippi. eis, ruth. 1979. torah binders of the judah l. magnes museum. berkeley: judah l. magnes memorial museum. eliezer, rabbi daniel, and paul kupperberg. 2008. jew-jitsu: the hebrew hands of fury. new york: citadel press. farrell, eileen. 1985. the poetics of renunciation: form and content in ritual fasting. journal of psychoanalytic anthropology 8: 249-64. frankel, ellen, and betsy platkin teutsch. 1992. the encyclopedia of jewish symbols. northvale, nj: jason aronson. gaster, theodor h. 1961. 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jacob. 1931. attaining jewish manhood: bar-mitzvah addresses. new york: bloch. cfr_2009_r4.indb 31 10/25/09 6:19:20 pm fathers and sons bronner 32 kennedy, ellen j. narotzky. 2005. bar mitzvah and bat mitzvah: rites of affirmation and integration. in rituals and patterns in children’s lives, ed. kathy merlock jackson, 58-78. madison, wisconsin: popular press. kimmel, michael. 1996. manhood in america: a cultural history. new york: free press. kirshenblatt-gimblett, barbara. 1977. fabric of jewish life: textiles from the jewish museum collection. new york: jewish museum. konner, melvin. 2009. the jewish body. new york: schocken. kosmin, barry a. 2002. coming of age in the conservative synagogue: the bar/ bat mitzvah class of 5755. in jews in the center: conservative synagogues and their members, ed. jack wertheimer, 232-68. new brunswick, nj: rutgers university press. krieger, suri levow. 2006. bar and bat mitzvah: history and practice. the academy for jewish religion. 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mckeever-furst, jill leslie. 1992. art and rites of passage. in rites of passage in america: traditions of the life cycle, ed. pamela b. nelson, 24-43. philadelphia: balch institute for ethnic studies. nulman, macy. 1993. the encyclopedia of jewish prayer: ashkenazic and sephardic rites. northvale, nj: jason aronson. oring, elliott. 1976. three functions of folklore: traditional functionalism as explanation in folkloristics. journal of american folklore 89: 67-80 osgerby, bill. 2001. playboys in paradise: masculinity, youth and leisure-style in modern america. oxford, england: berg. ouaknin, marc-alain, and françoise-anne ménager. 2005. bar mitzvah: a guide to spiritual growth. new york: assouline. pearl, jonathan, and judith pearl. 1999. the chosen image: television’s portrayal of jewish themes and characters. jefferson, nc: mcfarland. pollack, herman. 1971. jewish folkways in germanic lands (1648-1806): studies in aspects of daily life. cambridge: m.i.t. press. cfr_2009_r4.indb 32 10/25/09 6:19:20 pm bronner fathers and sons 33 raphael, ray. 1988. the men from the boys: rites of passage in male america. lincoln: university of nebraska press. rosenberg, stuart e. 1965. the right age for bar mitzvah. religious education 60: 298-300. roth, cecil. 1955. bar mitzvah: its history and its associations. in bar mitzvah illustrated, ed. abraham i. katsh, 15-22. new york: shengold. rothkoff, aaron. 1972. “[rachel] in the aggadah.” in encyclopedia judaica, ed. cecil roth and geoffrey wigoder, 13: 1487-488. jerusalem: keter. schauss, hayyim. 1950. the lifetime of a jew: throughout the ages of jewish history. new york: union of american hebrew congregations. schoenfeld, stuart. 1993a. folk judaism, elite judaism, and the role of bar mitzvah in the development of the synagogue and jewish school in america. in bar/bat mitzvah education: a sourcebook, ed. helen leneman, 78-89. springfield, n.j.: a.r.e. publishing. ______. 1993b. the significance of the social aspects of bar/bat mitzvah. in bar/bat mitzvah education: a sourcebook, ed. helen leneman, 325-38. springfield, n.j.: a.r.e. publishing. seidman, naomi. 1997. theorizing jewish patriarchy in extremis. in judaism since gender, ed. miriam peskowitz and laura levitt, 40-48. new york: routledge. sherwin, rabbi byron l. 1990. in partnership with god: contemporary jewish law and ethics. syracuse: syracuse university press. shulem, baruch, and david koenigsberg. 2007. the differences between jewish education (chinuch) and education that is jewish. shema yisrael torah network. http://www.shemayisrael.co.il/orgs/torahpsychology/chinuch.htm (accessed december 29, 2008). sidlofsky, paul. 1993. life after bar/bat mitzvah: the ‘chai’ program. in bar/bat mitzvah education: a sourcebook, ed. helen leneman, 302-6. springfield, nj: a.r.e. publishing. silverman, eric kline. 2006. from abraham to america: a history of jewish circumcision. lanham, maryland: rowman and littlefield. silverman, morris. 1932. report of survey on ritual. proceedings of the rabbinical assembly of america, 322-43. smith, robert jerome. 1972. festivals and celebrations. in folklore and folklife: an introduction, ed. richard m. dorson, 159-72. chicago: university of chicago press. smith, w. robertson. 1907. lectures on the religion of the semites: first series, the fundamental institutions. london: adam and charles black spiro, jack d. 1977. the educational significance of the bar mitzvah initiation. religious education 72: 383-99. telushkin, joseph. 1991. jewish literacy: the most important things to know about the jewish religion, its people and its history. new york: william morrow. trachtenberg, joshua. [1939] 1979. jewish magic and superstition: a study in folk religion. new york: atheneum. van gennep, arnold. 1960. the rites of passage. trans. monika b. vizedom and gabrielle l. caffee. chicago: university of chicago press. cfr_2009_r4.indb 33 10/25/09 6:19:20 pm cfr_2008-2009_part2 cfr_2008-2009_part3 cfr_2008-2009_part4 cfr_2008-2009_part5 cfr_2008-2009_part6 cfr_2008-2009_part7 cfr_2008-2009_part8 cfr_2008-2009_part9 pages from cfr_2008-2009_part11 cfr_2008-2009_part10 7 nascent folklore: communication and aesthetics in infancy katharine r m schramm whereas just as cultural relativity implies that each human group fashions its own forms of human adaptation and expression and that each has its wonder and beauty (as well as disasters), so with childhood there is an aesthetic for each age, which may be celebrated (or cursed) by adults, rather than simply glossed as an inevitably inferior step on the way to the ‘wonders’ of adults’ civilization, reason, and morality (sutton-smith and mcmahon 1999, 299), newborn infants, though weak and inexperienced, are sentient and intending agents (trevarthen, et al. 1999, 143). the question of when folklore begins is one which is simultaneously philosophical, biological, and psychological. it hinges by implication on what, indeed, constitutes folklore. if we assume that folklore is artistic, communicative, culturally grounded, and socially actuated, something must come before the more recognizable forms of tradition, performance, and identity — a nascent folklore. not only is there interesting material in the prelinguistic, pre-genre, pre-self arena of infant behavior that recommends itself to our attention as folklorists of children, but we as folklorists can recognize it and comment upon it, using the tools at our disposal. we can engage with proto-cultural agents through an interdisciplinary approach that does not relinquish our qualitative methods for quantitative ones. in what follows, i will discuss the subfield of children’s folklore as a gateway into discussing the broad issues inherent to folkloristics. once having established a few basic criteria and their quantitative-field counterparts, i will press forward into an interdisciplinary exploration that takes on infant interaction in an ethnographic context, merging the developmental and folk psychological approaches. in approaching the concept of nascent folklore, it may be useful to consider it as a subset of children’s folklore. children’s folklore is our window through which we study expressive forms shared by children, among children, a protean world which often functions counter-intuitively to adult sensibilities (sutton-smith 1999, 6). its study has come a long way from the thorough collection of text and variant and a preoccupation with “survivals” to incorporate theory that takes into account what william wells newell noted well over a century ago — that children’s folklore is both innovative and dynamic, as well as traditional and conservative. children’s folkloristics is concerned not only with the contexts where childlore occurs, but also the negotiation of social roles and activity surrounding expressive forms (goodwin 1985), and how children learn, adapt, and create within childconstructed frameworks of performative competence (brady 1980, 163). scholars are also cognizant of the fact that lore is not transmitted so much as it is activated, opening up the possibility of alteration and permutation (mcdowell 1999, 61). unlike folklorists who work with adults, folklorists of children are much more cfr_2011_r.indb 7 10/31/11 8:57:35 am nascent folklore schramm 8 likely to be aware of developmental considerations influencing what they observe, as those often are telling characteristics in setting childlore apart in both form and function (fine 1980, 172). an example of these developmental considerations is mcgonnagill’s 1993 study of preschoolers at play. the children she observed did not have a high degree of communicative or social sophistication, but she found that the game-playing behavior she observed still functioned as a way for them to process and cope with their social environment, despite relying entirely upon a fluid approach to their play, up to and including the actual goal of the game. mcgonnagill called this behavior “protolore,” because there were substantial differences when compared with approaches to folklore that stressed lore performed within the more clearly defined boundaries of aesthetic communication marked by particular conventions and style. she compared folklore and protolore to riddles and preriddles, enacted by young children whose grasp of the genre was not quite sophisticated or solidified enough to be considered mastered (mcgonnagill 1993, 41). however, children’s folklore or protolore has rarely gone into areas that prelinguistic children occupy, namely toddlers before 18 months of age. talkers are more interesting: their experimentation with developing language skills gives researchers a ready verbal transcript, and the ease with which cognition and cultural competence can be evaluated via the increasing complexity and situational use of linguistic forms is undeniable. infant behavior, on the other hand, has been dubiously regarded, save the responses and actions directed from adult caregivers to infants.1 what occurs in infancy is complex and lays the groundwork for later development. i would not expect folklorists anywhere to deny this, just as they would not deny that childlore in its various age-appropriate incarnations contains its own complexity and significance whose mastery dovetails into the adultrecognized world of expressive competence. yet the study of children’s folklore ought not be concerned primarily with where child culture is going, through the ramifications of performative competence in the child contributing to adult social competencies, but with that which is in the moment, and how it has its own value which is insubordinate to adult norms. it short, it recognizes the inherent value and function of child expressive forms at each age. folklorists tend to gravitate to the expert performers, willing performers who have mastered their craft, and who are recognized by their community. these may include the most authoritative jump-rope ringleader on the playground, the snarkiest teenage dirty-joke teller, or the gaggle of kids who are unafraid to harass a fieldworker while the tape is running (goodwin 1985, bartlett 1971, and mcdowell 1979, respectively). however, infants do not regularly exist in a community of peers, because they are incapable of being left to their own devices for long. the context one might imagine as hosting an “infant peer community” might be a daycare setting, or some arranged opportunity when infants are given the opportunity to interact with one another. yet even here, our adult or even older-child conceptions of “peer group” seem inadequate. at times, infants do not even seem to be responding directly to one another when they’re observed. or are they? without our easily usable default (admittedly problematized) terms like culture, group, and language, infant behavior seems to be a very amorphous cfr_2011_r.indb 8 10/31/11 8:57:35 am schramm nascent folklore 9 phase. in part, this impression is correct because the forms we enjoy studying do not yet exist — what is performative competence for something that is not yet performance? however, from another perspective, there is a basic insecurity in the way that we approach our informants — namely, that lacking the ability to refer to language use as a means to validate our conclusions, we doubt our assessments as too adult-centric, or as wishfully inserting the reading of intention instead of confirming it. these are perfectly agreeable and acceptable cautions, and well worth acknowledging: a teleological angle makes for circular arguments, and “just so” stories instead of theory. another part of this insecurity comes from our hesitance to acknowledge infants as actors in their own right, as agents, even if they seem to possess an alien form of individuality against our developed sense of self. yet we are creatures that can and do live as a part of a physical world wherein body language is read alongside or without spoken language (cicourel 1973, 40-41).2 ascribing intentionality and agency to non-speaking individuals is part of all human interpretive communication, yet recognizing infant activity itself as part of the range of interpretable human experience clearly requires some sort of approach. however, what do terms like competence, group, artistic, or communication mean in the context of infant interaction? to get at the undergirding elements of folklore requires some conception of what folklore itself is. as oring notes, a definition of folklore per se is problematic, as it may be “partial, idiosyncratic, or inconsistent” (oring 1986, 17). however, examining how various scholars have approached the problematic definition of folklore yields certain basic commonalities. the first is that folklore occurs between and among people. it is discursive, interactive, and is a form of communication. this group may be large or small, down to a basic binary pair (dundes 1965). the concept of “group” is fraught with ambiguity, and exists on multiple levels and imaginaries. however, it can be conceptualized due to shared experience and “bodily patterning” — existing in a physical, felt sense of community (noyes 2003). this sense of community (alternatively, communitas as articulated by victor turner) hinges on the ability to empathize with fellow community members (kapchan 2003). empathy works to direct communication between members of the group, aiding mutual comprehension and sense of identity (noyes 2003). in seeking out the nascent forms of these requirements for folkloric interaction, we will be identifying where and if the infant shares the ability to sense others’ motives, if the infant can recognize other humans through shared experience, and if the infant can communicate interactively with other humans. another basic aspect of folklore lies in its attention to the creative and the artistic. folklore is at some level expressive, and aesthetic expression in turn draws in the notion of the repeated, re-creation, tradition, and again, the community (ben-amos 1971, glassie 2003, oring 1986). creative, artistic, expressive — all of these terms are immensely problematic, and must be judged in terms of the culture from which they originate. yet as pocius points out, regardless of what art might be, its expressive potential hinges on the emotional and affective. “art” comes to be considered as a kind of skillful behavior, accomplished between people to varying levels of emotionally-affective efficacy (pocius 2003, 51). in short, the cfr_2011_r.indb 9 10/31/11 8:57:35 am nascent folklore schramm 10 connection between human communication, human skill, and human emotional response is inseparable: we will be looking for where infants show the capacity to respond and express with emotionally responsive and affective behavior. the final basic block in artistic communicative actions is that its performance is intentional. the “interpretive frame” within which communication is produced and read must be at its heart a reading and evaluation of intention to make sense of others’ actions (hufford 2003). the will to create makes the creation possible (glassie 2003). to see if this aspect of folklore is present in a nascent form, we will be looking to see whether infants are capable of reading intention and demonstrating intentional behavior. however, to seek out what makes the communal, the aesthetic, and the intentional feasible during this stage of human development benefits from an interdisciplinary stance, through developmental psychology, language socialization, and evolutionary biology. developmental psychology takes as a starting point the idea of normative stages through which all humans pass on their way to adulthood. it is concerned not only with the development of infant cognition, but also what may be considered healthy development in terms of interaction and socialization through measurable tests of competence (sameroff and cavanaugh 1979, 386).3 mediating between developmental psychology and more qualitative research is the study of language socialization, which asserts that all human behavior is learned interactionally, and that by gradual mastery of interactive forms, children become increasingly competent members of their social and cultural contexts (ochs 1986, 2). children socialize adults, just as adults socialize children, and once children are capable enough to work tacitly (if not reflexively) with interactional routines, they also socialize one another (corsaro 1992).4 however, if infants are born with these socializing abilities, it may also imply a biological, evolutionary imperative inherent in infant interaction with adults. the evolutionary approach has become very trendy within the past decade. in its most fascinating moments, it makes a case for artistic activity as not merely part of what “matters” for our mental wellbeing, but that at a basic level it is a trait selected for over millennia for human survival (dissanayake 2000, 2001).5 the three fields work well in tandem for the same reasons that ethnographers learn about a culture in order to interpret it. developmental psychology points out what we can reasonably expect from our infant interlocutors, as well as gives us signs to look for during our ethnographic exploration. language socialization provides us with a successful model to follow in terms of merging lab analysis with cultural manifestation. the evolutionary approach allows us the possibility that specific observations at the nascent level may indeed be generalizable across cultures. why “nascent folklore”? if developmental psychologists, language sociologists, and evolutionary biologists are doing so much good work on infant behavior already, why should folklorists take it as their interest? as cited in the introductory quote to this article, felicia mcmahon and brian sutton-smith make clear that for folklorists of children, each age has potential. i read this as a challenge — shortly after the child exits cfr_2011_r.indb 10 10/31/11 8:57:36 am schramm nascent folklore 11 the womb, she is literally severed from the mother to become her own separate physical entity that must rely on communication to survive in a cultural context that will shape her and be shaped by her. i noted above that infant behavior does not always conform to our assumptions about how interaction is supposed to work. for cultural relativism to function for infant behavior, we have to simultaneously acknowledge infants as cultural agents, and as agents that may not yet have internalized cultural practice. this idea is particularly problematic when we consider the most loaded assumption of agency — that the agent be intentionally setting out to act upon her environment. this is the heart of nascent folklore — the abilities, skills, and biologically adaptive mental machinery that infants possess as the smallest, most protocultural, and most underrepresented of human agents. the mastery of foundational communicative abilities is imperative for the development of later expressive forms, yet as an early form of communicative action embedded in shared human experience, these abilities can be shown to be themselves a form of folklore. to explore what these foundational abilities mean in the context of ethnographic infant observation, i was fortunate to enjoy the cooperation of mothers and staff in visually recording infant interaction at several parent-baby playtimes during the spring of 2007. the playtime took place in a comfortable, living-room-like environment in the building of the hosting organization, which provides valuable natural-birth and breastfeeding resources, as well as preand post-natal counseling and other health-related activities particularly geared towards new and expecting mothers. during the same time period, i also took video footage of my then-baby daughter in our home. in the first situation, infants were able to interact with one another as well as with their mothers, though i stayed off to the side. while the mothers occasionally conversed with me, i spent no time deliberately interacting with the infants. in the second, staying out of direct interaction with my daughter was impossible, even with her father trying to engage her, due to her curiosity with the video camera. in what follows, i will engage with the three major, interwoven areas common to approaches to folklore — the communal, the aesthetic, and the intentional — and argue that the infant abilities of interactive imitation, innovation, and intention are where these later orientations find their first expression. interactive imitation the first area of nascent folklore is that of interactive imitation. imitation in infancy takes place within an explicitly social framework in which develop forms of social cognition, group identity, and aesthetic capacity. for present purposes, imitation is, most simply, the reproduction (or attempted reproduction) of some act. at its most easily detectable, imitation can resemble identical stimulus and response, but its complexity can encompass simultaneous movement, affect, sound, timing, and even intention (trevarthen et al. 1999, 140-142) neonate imitation between adult and infant has received substantial experimental attention. minutes after birth, a newborn can imitate simple movement, such as tongue protrusion, and by six weeks of age, infants can cfr_2011_r.indb 11 10/31/11 8:57:36 am nascent folklore schramm 12 repeat imitated actions over a day’s delay, indicating some memory of the action (meltzoff and moore 2001, 176). furthermore, they can actively influence the flow, type, and manner of communication with caregivers by their own positive and negative reactions (dissanayake 2001, 85-86). by eight weeks of age, infants’ sense of timing is good enough to know whether or not a play partner is responding contingently (dissanayake 2001, 86). by three months of age, an infant can repeat behavior in order to elicit more of the same behavior from her partner, and by seven months, the infant repeats behavior to bring about a desirable result from an adult (bretherton, et al. 1981, 334–5). the ability to imitate and the awareness of being imitated give infants an identity by analogy which serves as a psychological basis for social cognition, not its eventual outcome: because human acts are seen in others and performed by the self, the infant can represent the other as ‘like me’: i can act like the other and reciprocally the other acts like me. persons are special entities, the only entities in the world with whom i can share behavioral states. the cross-modal knowledge of what it feels like to perform observed acts provides a privileged access to people not afforded by things. this sets the child down the pathway of ascribing psychological properties to people. (meltzoff and brooks 2001, 174, emphasis in original) in other words, imitation may not only be the sincerest form of flattery, but the most direct avenue into forming conceptual as well as lived community. imitation goes hand in hand with what appears to be innate human empathy (field 2007, 94; eisenberg 1992, 8-10). imitation provides a process by which motives are interactively engaged, being simultaneously read and responded to, and innate abilities develop into intentional ones (trevarthen et al 1999,142). beyond the establishing of community and social cognition, infants’ intersubjective reading of motivation and early development of the intricacies of timing and signal may be responsible for the development of pretense, as they discover that the framework can be manipulated between the contingent response and the non-contingent response. with the skill in intersubjective comparison and contrast grows an increasing awareness of and competence in directing the metacommunicative signaling of play.6 where to find interactive imitation to draw out the shared, the aesthetic, and the communicative as one might hope to find in a folkloristic analysis, i am looking for consistencies, repetition and attempted repetition, what is collectively done, and how knowledge (if any) is transmitted, as well as looking out for metacommunicative markers of both play and social engagement (meckley 1994, 5). this includes but is not limited to established signs of social interest from developmental literature, such as sustained gaze, smiling, outcry, eye contact, directed movement, as well as lack of interest denoted by averted gaze. cfr_2011_r.indb 12 10/31/11 8:57:36 am schramm nascent folklore 13 the description that follows is excerpted from my video footage of the local parent-baby playtime described above, and lasts approximately fifty seconds. the excerpt features two infants of eight months and four months placed face-down, roughly two feet apart and facing one another on separate blankets. both were at varying levels apparent strength and balance in maintaining a position in which they could push up with their arms on the floor to look around. their mothers sat to their infants’ sides within arm’s reach, frequently speaking on the infants’ behalf, interrupting their own casual conversation. however, in looking solely at the movements of the infants and their nonverbal interaction, the two baby girls showed immediate interest in one another through sustained gaze and eye contact, breaking it only from time to time to look at a toy or a caregiver. these breaks in attention given to other things such as toys, blankets, or mothers lasted from one to three seconds. however, their shared attentive gazes lasted between fifteen and twenty-seven seconds, making the asides comparatively miniscule. neither infant could creep or crawl effectively yet, so they stayed where they had been placed. in the first ten seconds of the clip, the younger infant, who demonstrated generally a much less physically stable ability to push up and balance herself, arched her back and kicked her legs in the air. the older infant watching her immediately arched her own back and vigorously wiggled her arms and legs in the air. after the older infant repeated this movement several times, the younger observer noticed and followed suit. the timing of the wiggling was entirely dependent on whether or not they were visually engaged with their partner. when the older infant, more capable of turning her head and pushing herself up, looked away, she missed her play partner’s break into wiggling, and did not wiggle in response until she turned and actually saw what the younger was doing. of particular note was that the infants did not wiggle simultaneously while they were closely watching one another, only in alternation. when the younger infant averted her gaze, she stopped participating in the activity. it was only a matter of seconds after the clip ended before she began to cry and her mother removed her from the situation. the interactive cues that marked the two infants’ social interest in one another included sustained and averted gaze, outcry, isolated arm and leg movement, and the fully-engaged body wiggle. the communal co-wiggling activity was, like the preschool protolore observed by mcgonnagill, spontaneous and structured in part by the context in which the mothers had placed the babies, but was not directed by the adults. despite their occasional interference (such as stroking their infants’ heads, smiling encouragingly, speaking to the infants or the other mother as if to explain their baby’s action), the mothers were never as interesting to the infants as the infants were to one another. however, unlike protolore, the imitative wiggling cannot be read as including some intent, not even a flexible one. it exists on a genre-less level of action and reaction. the mutually enjoyable patterning of wiggle play between the infants proved possible because of the highly developed sense of timing and signal that the infants already possessed. with extended observation, tracking cultural cues for timing could be achieved for even this young age. it is possible to suggest cfr_2011_r.indb 13 10/31/11 8:57:36 am nascent folklore schramm 14 that instead of disjointed flailing of arms and legs, the younger infant began to move in ways that lifted all four limbs up off the ground in closer imitative form to the other infant, closely attending to how it was done and then repeating the action. beyond the idea of skill acquisition, the exploration of “turn-taking procedures” may be, as shieffelin and ochs suggest, a way into understanding larger communal social relationships (1986, 171). if we take nascent folklore in tandem with language socialization, we can argue that infants at this age not only communicate in terms of social cohesion and interaction, but that they actively teach one another by imitative skill acquisition within a peer group. innovation innovation is the second major area of nascent folklore. it is closely linked with imitation, but beyond the establishment of community and social cognition, the intersubjective reading of motivation and infants’ early awareness of the intricacies of timing and signal rapidly transform into experimentation. from the early ability to compare and contrast grows an increasing awareness of the metacommunicative signaling of play. these markers can be found in “exaggeration and stereotypy, (e.g., prolongation, patterning, and repetition),” and the dynamic variation of their use serves to establish that intentions can vary dramatically from expectation and not be taken seriously, which is the point at which pretense can function (dissanayake 2001, 94-95). by nine months of age, an infant’s sense of timing is not only good enough to imitate when she wishes, but also to try different tactics in imitative interaction to see if the imitator is watching or not, which often becomes a game to see if the other is following (meltzoff and brooks 2001, 179). the infant also begins to attempt different means of accomplishing the same goal (meltzoff and brooks 2001, 182). however, deciding when and where infant inventiveness occurs may hinge on uncovering the point at which habitual action and delayed imitation can be distinguished from “innovation,” as well as coming to terms with what innovation may mean for infancy. the field observation in the previous section dealt with infant interaction in a face-to-face context, but it must also be noted that much of infant and toddler play is done in apparent solitude, with little or no direct interaction at all. however, this co-presence still functions as a basis for imitation and learning. tullia musatti explains that among infants and toddlers, it has been experimentally verified that even during apparently non-related play, children’s activities are related consistently to what other children have done previously during the same time, with varying degrees of relationship between them. in studies where the range of age went from twelve to eighteen months and eight to twenty-seven months, imitation occurred that did not necessitate direct communication; infants and toddlers aligned themselves to what occurred around them. “having a child’s own activity and that of the partner simultaneously displayed makes it easier for the child to assess the activities’ similarities and differences” (musatti 1993, 245). in other words, they are able to distinguish cfr_2011_r.indb 14 10/31/11 8:57:36 am schramm nascent folklore 15 between their own activities and those of others, and to incorporate and imitate that which is new. the question then is whether any innovation is truly new, or if infants simply learn by watching others and trying out new activities the first time for themselves. while i do not want to dismiss the infant at solo play, the autotelic, self-sustaining enjoyment of his experimentation feeds upon itself. much like studying dialogue with oneself, solo play bears the hallmarks of communicative activity while not explicitly being so. innovation rises out of interaction with others, even when it is in parallel and indirect. in summary, dynamic variation existing between the infant and the other, whether another infant or an adult, gives rise to the co-interpretative, intersubjective existence of imaginative play, all by the age of nine months. the ability to engage and recognize engagement by the other is fundamental to recognize what is play and what is not, in order to establish the subtle framing of experience and interaction. where to find innovation for the purposes of identifying nascent folklore, we turn our focus to what is communicatively effected during the flow of an interactive scene, setting aside for the time being the more difficult-to-identify innovation at work within individual experimentation. signs to look for in identifying innovation are similar to imitation. sustained gaze can denote interest, and shared actions and patterns mark the interactive element. however, to discover innovation, we seek those actions which break the pattern, and in a play context, are used for the purpose of contributing to a sustained and mutual enjoyment of an activity. to know whether an action is truly innovative, a fresh invention of game play that the child has never witnessed before, is simply not in the scope of these field observations. however, introduction of a fresh movement, a different cry, or a different use of a toy that is done for the purpose of prolonging the enjoyment of play demonstrates the innovative ability of the infant to string together prior witnessed behaviors into a fluid whole, not unlike verbal formulas and innovative variations within a riddle sequence that require skill, intelligence, and creativity to fashion together.7 by way of illustration, let me sketch a play scene based on my own observation of infants at play. two infants are playing with toys which rattle. one lifts his toy into the air and shakes it vigorously, eliciting the sound. the enjoyment of doing the action appears to be reason enough to continue shaking the rattle periodically. meanwhile, the second infant begins to pay attention and lifts her rattling toy, imitating her play partner’s movement. now there are two infants rattling toys in similar ways. at this point, the second infant, whose toy is not of the rattle-specific variety, but has a number of other bells and whistles attached, begins to bang it on the carpet, and it makes a most pleasing cacophony of noise. infant one continues shaking his rattle midair for a moment more, then begins enthusiastically pounding it on the floor, smiling, eyes wide. cfr_2011_r.indb 15 10/31/11 8:57:36 am nascent folklore schramm 16 we do not know whether the second infant had experienced floor-pounding with the toy prior to this situation. however, the break in the rattle pattern was directed by the infants’ choices, and, most importantly, contributed to the continuation of the play activity. perhaps after a time, rattling midair would have ceased to be enjoyable. perhaps changing the activity to pounding allowed the infants’ enjoyment of the activity to endure ten or even twenty seconds longer than the rattle game might have lasted on its own––a significant space of time for their attention spans. the possibility for this early creative process hinged on the intersubjective space between the two infants where variation could be incorporated and improved upon. this example suggests an approach much like trial and error in the ways that human beings mutually construct culture. behavior is imitated, and when improvements are attempted, the response of the community (or party) for whom the communicative behavior is initiated determines whether those changes in turn are repeated. this early pattern in infant rattle play becomes writ large, with all of the same messy and subjective misfires of communication building upon and responding to one another, smoothing into established patterns over time. the attempting of new or previously demonstrated behavior for one’s own ends (often in the same process of trial and error) is also foundational in regard to creativity. creativity and innovation as terminology possess culturally-laden value; and the idea of innovation as “newness” and therefore “good” certainly creates problems. however, if we recognize the interactive quality of innovation — namely, that it is dependent upon others to validate it, repeat it, or encourage further repetition — we can see that together, imitation and innovation in interactive symbiosis provide rudimentary guidelines for judging activities that evoke pleasure, such as play (miller 1973, 91). in other words, they form the foundational properties of aesthetics. as noted earlier, distinguishing the difference between previously imitated behavior, a failed imitation, and a completely original innovation is beyond the scope of my observation. however, i would question to what extent such distinction truly matters. the communicative function of the innovation is located in the context where it occurs, and its effect is of greater interest than its originality. however, as noted above, imitated behavior and innovative behavior do differ somewhat in the matter of intention, for it is in the exploration of intention that we can create a picture of the infant as agent. intention the final area in which to see the nascent stage of folklore is intention. imitation and innovation in the context of interaction are intimately tied to the simultaneous and mutual reading of intention and motivation by infants. intention, motivation, belief, and desire are all terms considered to fall into the realm of “folk psychology,” namely, the interpretive system(s) that humans utilize to make sense of others’ actions through the attribution of mental states (malle and knobe 2001, 45-46).8 despite its relative lack of empirical provability, intention has been the focus of much attention in recent years, and considerable effort has been made to cfr_2011_r.indb 16 10/31/11 8:57:36 am schramm nascent folklore 17 analyze the various aspects of intention as well as to do empirical study of how the concept is put to use (see malle and knobe 2001, ames et al. 2001). what is particularly relevant for this analysis is that intention and the reading thereof is a social, survival-oriented trait, culturally nuanced and intimately connected with communication. infants appear to learn intentionality within the same interactive and imitative framework that dissanayake credits with laying the foundation for later aesthetic imagination. meltzoff notes that infants are taught the idea of actions being linked with intention by virtue of their own experience in trying to fulfill their own goals and watching others do the same: infants have goals and act intentionally. they have experienced their own failed plans and unfulfilled intentions … when an infant sees another act in this same way, the infant’s self-experience could suggest that there is a goal, plan, or intention beyond the surface behavior. thus infants would come to read the adult’s failed attempts [at doing a task], and the behavioral envelope in which they occur, as a pattern of ‘strivings’ rather than ends in themselves. (meltzoff 2007, 131) however, this broad analysis gives us little assurance. by three months of age, it has been shown, infants repeat behavior in order to bring about a repeated response in a caregiver, and infants from seven months repeat behavior in order to make an adult laugh (bretherton et al. 1985, 334-5). elsewhere, it has been argued that infants begin to infer absent goals from between nine to thirteen months of age (meltzoff and brooks 2001, 181). however, to what extent can such activities be considered intentional? knowing that infants are intentional agents and recognizing infant intention may be separate matters. ascribing intentionality may itself be a component in whether an action achieves its goal, since reading a situation as goal-oriented implies the existence of intention. relevant as well is the idea of self, and to what extent the infant agent conceives of the self, as we approach intention’s sister concept, agency. the awareness of how one acts upon the world, in tandem with how much one may exert one’s own action upon it, vary substantially within the first year of life. in order to interpret underlying intentions, there must be a shared “framework of meaning,” as well as some medium through which communication can be achieved (bretherton et al. 1981, 340). as discussed in the previous sections, this framework of meaning is constructed through the minutiae of action and reaction, imitation and innovation, and infants can direct and influence its flow. i read this as arguing that infants do not need to possess a “theory of mind,” that is, the ability to recognize intentionality in others, in order to express desire in a goaldirected way. desire is another folk psychological concept. as malle and knobe point out among adults discerning between desire and intention, desire is often defined as an internal state, while intention is the action that springs from desire. in determining intention, social perceivers suppose strength of a person’s desire to cfr_2011_r.indb 17 10/31/11 8:57:36 am nascent folklore schramm 18 do something. if that desire is acted upon, then it is read as intention, but only if there is an equally perceived presence of commitment (malle and knobe 2001, 60). this raises a teleological spectre. do varying assumptions of present desire and committed action risk adults reading too much intention into infant behavior than actually is present? i think that we as ethnographers must be willing to spend the time necessary to interpret infant behavior in long-term ethnographic context, to recognize individuated cries and gestures, as well as culturally-relevant recognizing of infant intention — what is recognized will be responded to. in studies of vocal imitative behavior between infants and parents, developmental psychologists kokkinaki and kugiumutzakis found that with infants between two and six months of age, imitation with parents gave rise to “two specific kinds of emotion: interest and pleasure.” they go on to write that, “given that emotions are regarded as motives in human intentional communication, this later finding provides evidence that infants and parents also share the ability to read each others’ motives and intentions” (kokkinaki and kugiumutzakis 2000, 185). while this developmental work does not prove anything about perfect strangers being able to read the intentions of infants whom they do not know, it does suggest that drawing in expert observers, namely parents, could provide an angle for making more accurate conclusions about infants’ intentions during a given interaction. like any human interaction, reading motivation is an interpretive process. when looking to establish and interpret infant intention, many of the same criteria that are useful in recognizing imitation and innovation also apply. however, this time the approach must also incorporate more obvious emotional signs of response — pleasure, excitement, and interest — that work to direct action. beyond merely signaling and recognizing intent with sustained gaze, or looking for consistencies and repetitions and breaks in that repetition for new permutations on an old theme, the indication that the collective play activity has a clearly defined emotional component is key in attributing intention, as well as are metacommunicative markers of play, such as exaggeration and stereotypy. where to find intention i hope to illustrate this concept of intention by comparing the following two scenes, where i have entered as an “expert observer” of my own child. both scenes demonstrate attempts at a game variant of peek-a-boo played with my daughter of thirteen months at our home. the first scene is directed by me, stationed to one side of a video recorder. the second is the same game played with her father while i filled the role of observer and camera person. both video clips do not last more than thirty seconds each in recorded form. in the first recording, our daughter turns from standing at a door and walks roughly fifteen feet away from the camera, through a living area scattered with toys, and down a hallway. i ask her where she is going (in high-pitched play tones) even as she disappears out of sight around a doorway. then come the cfr_2011_r.indb 18 10/31/11 8:57:36 am schramm nascent folklore 19 cue words of our game, which we have played numerous times before: “where’s [name]?” the sing-song chant is repeated at a higher pitch. as the repetition of the cue comes to a close, the child runs out from the doorway with a huge smile on her face, looking for my face. i exclaim with exaggerated excitement, round eyes, and large smile, “ohh, there she is!” my daughter responds by squealing in delight and prancing on her tiptoes. she drops eye contact with me, and continues to create the squealing noise for her own apparent pleasure. she averts her gaze to inspect the basket momentarily before she looks up and turns back for the doorway. in the second clip, the toddler is standing behind her father, seated in the middle of the living room floor. he begins the game cue. “where’s [name]? where did [name] go?” he turns around quickly with a wide, open-mouthed smile and exaggeratedly wide eyes. “there she is!” however, our daughter has instead turned to a nearby toy behind her father, and does not respond to his cue. as her father turns to make eye contact with her, she looks up from the toy, and then to where i am seated with the video camera (about ten feet away) and then back to her father (about a foot away), before she returns her gaze to the camera, with a slight smile. the father tries again, turning away from her and repeating the game cue again. however, the direction of my daughter’s gaze does not stay more than a moment on her father, and with an increasingly large smile, the indirect steps that had taken her to the toy become more direct, and she makes an unsteady beeline in the direction of the camera. as she passes her father by, he laughs, “ohh, [name]’s not paying any attention to daddy; [name] wants the video camera!” the clip ends as the child, grinning into the lens, gets her wish, grabbing for the camera and wrenching it to one side. the desire of our daughter to play the game with us was just as important as our willingness to play it with her. through metacommunicative exaggeration, we parents in both clips demonstrated our intent to play, and our daughter picked up on it. in variation one, she used the doorframe to hide behind. in the second variation, her father expected her to hide behind his back and appear to one side (based on their previous game play). however, whether due to the distraction of the camera, or the lack of ability to see his face as he signaled the game to her through exaggerated expression and repeated, patterned behavior, her direct engagement with him and with the game were fleeting, despite his numerous attempts at re-establishing the flow of interaction between them. in the first clip, pleasure could be interpreted and shared by both participants, and recognized in the form of squealing, exaggerated expressions, and body language, such as excitable prancing. the appearance of the toddler was marked by the child’s pleasure. perhaps this came from filling the hanging, uncertain expectation of the situation and gratifying it, but it engendered a return of clear, affective signals that reinforced and heightened the her own emotional response. pleasure was also demonstrated for pleasure’s sake, such as the continued squealing that was disengaged from seeking a response. when we re-engaged through eye contact, she immediately turned back and walked directly for the doorway, a clear gestural sign that she wanted to repeat the action and have the game continue. cfr_2011_r.indb 19 10/31/11 8:57:36 am nascent folklore schramm 20 in the second clip, the child’s own gauging of the likelihood of chasing the camera seemed to grow steadily, first in the uncertainty of her glances between camera, father, and toy, and then in the widening smile she manifested in advancing in the direction she wished to go. it might also be noted, however, that she was never dissuaded from heading toward the video camera. both parents reinforced their own amusement to the child through smiles and laughter as the incongruencies between the situation they were trying to effect and the child’s actions became more and more pronounced, first through her utterly ignoring her father in favor of the nearby toy, and then as she toddled purposefully for the camera. both of these clips make apparent the ability of the parents and the toddler to establish a pattern and a play frame for the game. the parents achieved this through a repeated call with a specific vocal tone and exaggerated facial expressions. the child accomplished this through the repetition of actions that will trigger the calling cue, and enabled her to share in the expression of delight and surprise. the delight and surprise that generated the fun of the game hinged on the toddler’s ability to distinguish between that which was expected, and that which was not expected. by failing to appear immediately in the first game, the toddler experimented with the concept of expectation, of the absent being present, and her own control in eliciting a reaction. she was in control of the flow of the response (though if she had disappeared into the bathroom for too long, i would have assumed that she was no longer participating, and would have broken the play frame to deny her agency in exploring that particular location). in the second situation, parental attempts at creating a recognizable play frame can be seen to exist somewhat shakily, and then fall apart. in the uncertain glances between father and mother and camera, it was apparent that not only did the parents recognize what their daughter wanted, but that the toddler was not entirely at ease with pursuing her goal until the signals were clear — the parents had been attempting to make eye contact and repeat a cue call, but once their laughter and smiling at her replaced their (feeble) attempts to maintain the play situation, her steps became faster and more direct, and her smile widened and grew to a cry of pleasure upon reaching her destination. the promise of nascent folklore the areas of interactive imitation, innovation, and intention have much to offer folklorists who wish to understand this stage of human aesthetic potential. the seeds of identity and community sprout in shared communicative and intentional behavior, the mutual recognition and empathy inherent in imitation, and the developing theory of mind that comes out of the developing child recognizing others as “like me,” perhaps the most early experience of turnerian communitas. the most basic experience of imitation and innovation is relived in tradition, paralleling the conception of folklore’s ability to be both conservative and dynamic (toelken 1979, 39-40). this “communal creation and recreation” (ben-amos 1971, 7) is negotiated through a social community and its inherent system of response and evaluation, and the building fluency of triggering response in others and in cfr_2011_r.indb 20 10/31/11 8:57:36 am schramm nascent folklore 21 turn reading their intention provides for the existence of framing and the reading of contextual clues (hufford 1995, 532). the ability to read the differences in performance and intention can be argued as the foundation of genre. there are some unsettling implications that we can draw out of the areas of infant ability that i have discussed above. one harks back to outdated assumptions about “primitive” man and cultural group-think. another could be perceived as a flattening of cultural variation and change under biological reductionism. however, despite the implied conclusion that all infants everywhere share these foundational abilities as part of their biologically evolved equipment for survival, there is no cause to diminish the role of human agency. by recognizing foundational abilities which incorporate the desires and the intentions of the individual actor, there exists room for the growth of the master performer as well as creative expression. between cultural and social frameworks, i would expect to find imitation, innovation, and intention appearing in varying forms, with peer and adult responses to proxemics, timing, and variations of intentional action being read and responded to very differently. the forms that these infant desires and intentions grow into will be diverse — what creativity looks like, and indeed what constitutes mastery or performance, will vary by culture and folk group. the folklorists of infancy are few and far between, which suggests challenges in negotiating developmental literature, dealing with the lack of a clearly defined group identity, and transcribing multimodal, nonverbal communication. however, perhaps we set aside ethnographic methodology and interdisciplinary experimentation too soon. as adult humans we possess years of practice past that early developmental milestone of nine months to begin grasping that others have goals and that other humans are “like me,” while simultaneously acknowledging that expectations can and do differ from what actually occurs. already highly experienced readers of intention and action, as ethnographers we hone this skill to make our interpretations as accurate and culturally sensitive as possible; as folklorists, we engage the expressive, emotionally moving, communicative aspects of human behavior — regardless of the phase of human development at which it occurs. infants experience emotionally meaningful shared communication––between one another and others. they possess their own means for evaluating contingency and demonstrating their engagement and preference; they interact creatively and imitatively. with expressive communication which is wordless yet vocal, active and intentional, infants can be recognized as significant bearers of protoculture — their own nascent folklore. notes many thanks go to john mcdowell for his continual support and encouragement, and infinitely helpful commentary during the revisionary process, as well as to the dependable friends/sharp-eyed editors of thesis group. thanks also to harper, without whom it never would have occurred to me to consider people her age inspirational. cfr_2011_r.indb 21 10/31/11 8:57:36 am nascent folklore schramm 22 notes 1. a notable anthropological exception to this that i have found is alma gottlieb’s “do infants have religion?: the spiritual lives of beng babies,” in american anthropologist 100 (1998: 122-135). she spent over 700 hours with infants in order to counterbalance a potentially “adulto-centric” perspective. 2. see noyes’ discussion of physical experience (and academic discomfort in addressing it) fire in the plaça: catalan festival politics after franco (philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press, 2003). see also sklar 1994. 3. it would be incorrect to assert that all developmental psychology is clinically “cold” or unconcerned with cultural nuance, though critically speaking, quite a lot of literature suggests western-centric universals in forming normative bases for comparison with other cultures that has in turn been picked up by the social sciences (see burman 2008, hirschfield 2002 for extended discussions). 4. while this assertion would not be hotly disputed in many psychological circles, these two fields of developmental psychology and language socialization differ in many ways. language socialization is positioned between the quantitative lab analysis common to most psychological studies and qualitative ethnographic research, incorporating both statistical and interpretive elements, with an end focus on what can be learned about cultural values encoded in the medium of language forms and how they are taught and internalized by children (shieffelin and ochs 1986, 168). 5. in its most extreme forms, the evolutionary approach risks falling into biological reductionism, taking for granted that there are a set of universals that exist a priori to culture manifesting in its various forms. however, for early infant behavior, where cultural forms are in fact in a nascent and largely unformed state, biology may offer insights — especially when we take as a possibility that certain human behaviors may be evolved just as physical characteristics are, rejecting the idea that evolution is the equivalent of biological determinism (see bandura 2001 for an extended discussion). for an excellent critique of this evolutionary position, which in many studies contains at its core the reverse-engineering of culture, see robert c. richardson’s evolutionary psychology as maladapted psychology (cambridge: mit press, 2007). 6. by exploring this area, i do not mean to conflate protolore and nascent folklore with play, despite some of their obvious similarities. for example, piagetian sensorimotor-period “practice play,” is certainly marked by an intrinsic enjoyment of the act of doing itself, its agents not yet having reached the developmental capacity for symbols or rule-based games, yet it is often done in solitude (miller 1973, 90). while i do not believe that the ability to derive pleasure from solitary play is unimportant or unrelated to an intersubjective social framework, it does not receive focus here. 7. see mcdowell 1979 for an extended discussion of the creativity and variation within riddling sessions. 8. a term generally considered pejorative by the psychological literature, i wonder if we cannot bring some respectability to the idea of “folk psychology” by recognizing it as the way in which humans perceive others, a cultural system which is taught and believed. cfr_2011_r.indb 22 10/31/11 8:57:36 am schramm nascent folklore 23 works cited ames, daniel r., eric d. knowles, michael w. morris, charles w. kalish, andrea d. rosati, and alison 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infancy: a developmental perspective. in handbook of infant development, ed. joy d. osofsky, 344-392. new york: john wiley & sons. shieffelin, bambi b. and elinor ochs. 1986. language socialization. annual review of anthropology 15, 163-191. sklar, deidre. 1994. can bodylore be brought to its senses? the journal of american folklore 107: 9-22. sutton-smith, brian. 1970. psychology of childlore: the triviality barrier. western folklore 29(1): 1-8. ______1999. introduction: what is children’s folklore? children’s folklore: a source book, eds. brian sutton-smith, jay mechling, thomas w. johnson, and felicia r. mcmahon, 3-9. logan: utah state university press. sutton-smith, brian, and felicia r. mcmahon. 1999. the past in the present: theoretical directions for children’s folklore. in children’s folklore: a source book, eds. brian sutton-smith, jay mechling, thomas w. johnson, and felicia r. mcmahon, 293-308. logan: utah state university press. sutton-smith, brian, jay mechling, thomas w. johnson, and felicia r. mcmahon, eds. 1999. children’s folklore: a source book. logan: utah state university press. toelken, barre. 1979. the dynamics of folklore. boston: houghton mifflin. trevarthen, colwyn, theano kokkinaki, and geraldo a. fiamenghi jr. 1999. what infants’ imitations communicate: with mothers, with fathers and with peers. in imitation in infancy, eds. jacqueline nadel and george butterworth. cambridge: cambridge university press. cfr_2011_r.indb 25 10/31/11 8:57:37 am cfr_2011_part2 cfr_2011_part3 cfr_2011_part4 cfr_2011_part5 9 the shoebox museum: the aesthetics and organizational concepts of children kristiana willsey guests at the smithsonian, the louvre, or the met go to see pieces that have been declared important and valuable repositories of meaning, beauty and culture by trustworthy authorities. elegantly presented as final, finished objects for cultural consumption, exhibits in glass cases and behind velvet ropes are validated by hushed, reverent, paying audiences. traditional museums simultaneously recognize importance and create it, through the frame of the museum itself. however, the notion that a particular space can confer significance upon objects, marking and raising them from their quotidian context, is not unique to adults or to fully accredited cultural authorities. if the museum is reserved for fixed, established, mature “high cultural” objects, how then does that often invisible, incompletely cultured class of individuals, children, recognize/create objects that are beautiful and meaningful to them? this paper considers children as intuitive curators, whose ready grasp of collection and containment as processes of sacralization both upsets and reinscribes the values of traditional museums: authority, publicity, permanence and presentation. the children’s museum (meaning not museums designed by adults for children, but children’s own eclectic assemblages of treasures kept in shoe boxes, dresser drawers, under a loose floorboard, etc.) is here considered alongside of other (adult) critiques and parodies of traditional museums, specifically dave wilson’s museum of jurassic technology and rosamond casey’s museum of ambient disorders.1 this is not because i believe that children’s assemblages are selfconscious, calculated and incisive attacks on the stultifying artificiality of traditional museums. rather, i want to suggest that the artistic and philosophical projects of adults, which take up questions of permanence, authority, publicity and presentation, are inheritors of and modeled on the assemblages of children. this paper thus develops a novel conceptual framework for approaching children’s assemblages, with particular reference to one child’s museum: the “treasure chest” of nearly-five-year-old ben harding.2 drawing on ongoing research, my analysis is intended to be preliminary and suggestive, not argumentative or exhaustive. most significantly, this is an argument for considering children’s material “folk” culture on an equal plane with the artistic, expressive “high” culture of adult intellectuals. the word “assemblage” is used advisedly, to differentiate the specific and thematic collections children might have of rocks, dolls, baseball cards and so forth from my focus here, which is on those jumbled hodge-podges of rubber bands, vending machine prizes, feathers, pictures, costume jewelry, interesting pebbles, empty perfume bottles, matchbox cars, mysterious bits of machinery, and other unlikely treasures. the personally significant and the visually or tactilely appealing share quarters, not merely coincidentally but productively: “accumulation and layering promote a kind of benevolent contagion; the significance of one image is lent to another … intensification [of meaning] springs cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 9 11/6/08 11:46:01 am the shoebox museum willsey 10 from a process of condensing and miniaturizing” (turner 1999, 100). kay turner offers an adult parallel to the fragmentary and flexible shoebox museum with her research on the aesthetics of women’s home altars: places in the home set apart as sacred and containing “photos, candles, incense, ritual tools, potions, medicine bundles, shells, crystals, coins, momentos, knick-knacks, gifts, offerings, decorative effects, and even seemingly anomalous items, such as a jar of buttons or a door knob. some of these things may remain fixed for a lifetime, while others may change. the aesthetic of relationship is a dynamic one: expanding, sometimes contracting, then again being replenished over time” (95). children’s assemblages are similarly fluid and subject to revision; the success of the shoebox museum relies upon its accessibility and its mutability, unlike the glassed-off, carded-andcatalogued permanence of traditional museums. alternative museums like dave wilson’s museum of jurassic technology and rosamond casey’s museum of ambient disorders criticize the stifling and unnecessary “noise,” in goffman’s sense, of the museum space: the gilt frames and velvet ropes intended to honor and elevate the art and artifacts are too prone to become themselves the object of reverence. the emphasis on presentation mediates and circumscribes what wilson, casey, and others see as the natural role of art: a genuine and reciprocal conversation between guests and exhibit. american artist robert smithson said famously, “museums are tombs” (1996, 58). best known for “earthworks” sculptures like his 1970 “spiral jetty,” pieces designed to engage and interact with natural forces rather than resisting them, smithson’s criticism of the artificial abstraction of museums and galleries and the illusion of permanence is taken up as parody by alternative museums and conceptual art. dave wilson’s museum of jurassic technology is a dimly lit, labyrinthine set of rooms with an air of genteel neglect, tucked away in a suburb of los angeles. the exhibits include a series of intricate dioramas depicting the american lifestyle of the mobile home, microscopic mosaics of flowers and birds composed from the scales on a butterfly’s wing, a thick sheet of lead containing a species of bat which uses figure 1. “hanging basket.” courtesy of the museum of jurassic technology. figure 2. “rotten luck.” courtesy of the museum of jurassic technology. cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 10 11/6/08 11:46:02 am willsey the shoebox museum 11 sonar to move through solid objects, a collection of antique celluloid dice, and various other beautiful and bizarre images of dubious authenticity (figs. 1-2). as lawrence weschler exposes in his pulitzer-prize finalist for nonfiction, mr. wilson’s cabinet of wonders, the museum is a tongue-in-cheek piece of conceptual art, a destabilization of authoritative truth. wilson asks his guests to consider who has the authority to create meaning/significance, what devices (literally) frame it for audience consumption, and whether museum spaces recognize intrinsic value, create it, or both. in a similar critical project, rosamond casey’s gallery of sculptures, collectively titled the museum of ambient disorders, questions the values of authority, permanence, publicity and presentation in order to strip away superfluities and argue for a more personal, unencumbered, egalitarian engagement with art. the exhibit “white noise,” a series of stoppered bottles supposedly containing sounds stored up by an old man in the process of losing his hearing, devotes equal measures of humor and sincerity to the question of how meaning might be captured and preserved (fig. 3). casey subtly satirizes the noble aim of traditional museums, which imagine not only that certain objects (which the curators will know on sight) act as receptacles of culture, beauty, or significance, but that the museum can protect them from the rude passage of time or ugly, inevitable change of episteme. casey also pointedly takes on the issue of perspective and asks us to reevaluate who has the authority to distinguish between the worthy and the trivial. putting an old man’s reminiscences in a museum exhibit extends to them a weight they would hardly have independently. the personal is practically trivial by default; museums deal in the momentous, the universal, and the substantial. or do they? is the mona lisa in the louvre because it’s famous, or is the mona lisa famous because it’s in the louvre? casey delights in these tangled relationships of significance and authority. ben’s museum (fig. 4) offers a neat entry point into these intellectual adult projects; his “treasure chest” is both an implicit challenge to the aims of traditional museums and an affirmation of them. ben’s museum is unquestionably personal/trivial; his treasures have only individual and idiosyncratic meaning, nothing (apparently) worthy of glass cases figure 3. “white noise.” courtesy of rosamond casey and the virginia quarterly review. cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 11 11/6/08 11:46:02 am the shoebox museum willsey 12 figure 4. ben harding’s museum. photograph by kristiana willsey. cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 12 11/6/08 11:46:02 am willsey the shoebox museum 13 or admission fees. they are physically trivial: small, often broken, frequently cheap and mass-produced. presentation of artifacts in ben’s museum is nothing more polished or final than a jumble; the box is an open space within which any object can relate to any other. turner’s description of the home altar is equally applicable to children’s assemblages: “power flows through the “thingliness” of the altar [or shoebox], its material reality … images and objects that have no immediate affinity are nonetheless yoked together to forge new, interrelated meanings” (1999, 98). connections and relationships are not tidily bound in programs or catalogues, but are literally up for grabs. further, they are curated/validated by a child, someone with no cultural authority to declare meaning. but it remains that ben’s “treasure chest” is a space recognized and marked for the collection and containment of valuable and significant objects. it is in fact the ideal answer to dave wilson’s question of who has the right to determine significance or rosamond casey’s concern with the personal/trivial. moreover, ben’s jumbled and evocative assemblage is reminiscent of the sculptures of surrealist artist joseph cornell, and an interesting dialogue emerges when we permit ourselves to consider the two on equal footing. there is in ben an air of the traditional curator, “discovering” objects worthy of collection and containment. k: how do you know to put something in your pirate chest if you get something? b: (long pause, seven seconds) i know. put in my — i just think of doing that. my question was essentially the critic juan suarez’ query to cornell’s sculptures: “what makes certain objects laden with surrealist potential?” (2007, 148). the museum space suggests itself for a privileged few; the beauty and value of certain objects is — as the classic curator’s task — recognized and exalted, albeit within the limited presentation sphere available to ben. his explanation invokes the curator’s sense of inherent existing value, visible to the sensitive eye of the collector. ben, likewise, asserts, “everything that is treasurous, goes in my box.” however, the corollary is of course that everything that enters the box becomes treasure. the objects are decontextualized and “framed”; meaning is created through placement and association. an intrinsic quality of traditional museums is the impression of permanence and fixity of context, not just generally within the bound, framed world of art or history but within the specific museum or gallery: while exhibits travel, the mona lisa is practically synonymous with the louvre. authoritative adult museums fix significance and tie it to a particular place or time; generally agreedupon interpretations of a famous painting or excavated artifact are written down in programs or memorized for tours. children’s assemblages, conversely, recognize objects as naturally and readily recontextualizable. the apparent disorder is purposeful and creative; as lucy lippard points out, “fragmentation need not connote explosion, disintegration. it is also a component of networks, stratification, the interweaving of many dissimilar threads, and de-emphasis on cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 13 11/6/08 11:46:03 am the shoebox museum willsey 14 imposed meaning in favor of multiple interpretations” (qtd. in turner 1999, 100). for instance, although a string of beads or an artificial rose retain the associations with a friend’s party or a relative’s wedding where ben received them, these associations aren’t solidified or resistant to gathering new kinds of meaning. while showing me his treasures, ben incorporates them easily into his games. a highbouncer from a vending machine becomes enormous, an out-of-scale weapon in his lego-world: b: (sound of rubber ball bouncing) “ahhh! bombs dropping on the ship!” later, ben finds a purple latex snake, about an inch long, which (his mother explained in elided dialogue) came as part of a pirate game. b: oh here’s my snake! [ … ] k: so this is kind of a pirate thing too? b: nuh-uh. snakes are not pirates. k: (laughter) no, snakes are clearly not pirates, ben. what kind of a thing is this? b: (playing with legos) propeller — i am a propeller. it’s a propeller — snake. k: it’s a propeller snake? b: yeah, propeller snakes live in propellers. they live, and they never get chopped up. the simultaneity of the lego game-world and the toy snake creates a new and exciting scenario for ben; what begins as an experimental linguistic juxtaposition (“i am a propeller. it’s a propeller — snake”) suggests a cogent and appealing little narrative. and in fact, ben did offer an answer (of sorts) to my question. the snake is an available “kind of thing,” an object with unlimited potentially intriguing contexts. this fluidity of significance that ben takes for granted strikes at a central notion of traditional museums: that meaning can be extracted, distilled, and preserved in the hermetic vault of a circumscribed authoritative space. rather they are valued for “their capacity to derail automacized perception and trigger unpredictable trains of association” (suarez 2007, 147). analyzing the work of surrealist artists, suarez explicitly connects their treatment of objects to that of children: as walter benjamin was fond of pointing out, childhood vision has not yet been reduced by purposive rationality and is therefore more alert to the enigmatic quality of objects and to the webs of association in which they exist. it multiplies and transforms the object world instead of freezing it into routine: ‘[the child’s drawers] must become arsenal and zoo; crime museum and crypt. to ‘tidy up’ would be to demolish an edifice full of prickly chestnuts that are spiky clubs, tin foil that is hoarded silver, bricks that are coffins, cacti that are totem cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 14 11/6/08 11:46:03 am willsey the shoebox museum 15 poles, and copper pennies that are shields.’ to see as a child is to see as a surrealist, fully attentive to the complexity of matter.” (2007, 166) and, it would appear, to see as a surrealist is to see as a child — suarez goes on to describe joseph cornell’s “intense fascination with children” in his art (2007, 167), and biographical data offers further interesting angles. cornell lived with his parents for most of his adult life, and had a “professed distaste for shocking subject matter and overt sexual references” (suarez 2007, 142). in other words, there was something childlike about him, or at least enamored of the victorian image of the child. suarez moreover frames artistic and ideological developments within a model of human maturation: “hence to see like a child is, in a way, to see with the untutored eye of the new visual technologies at the time. cornell’s, and the surrealist’s, early years were a period when the emergent mass media had not yet [ … ] streamlined their grammar and style” (2007, 167). suarez invokes a unilinear view of culture similar to that of alice bertha gomme and other proponents of cultural evolution. surrealism is described as the infancy of modernity, and children are asked to stand in for a previous historical period. in this case, though, their vision is romanticized and the adult artist is imagined as channeling or inheriting the child’s (productive, positive) understanding of objects. underlying these surrealist sculptures, in suarez’ analysis, is a belief in the ‘naturalness’ of the surrealist perspective; it is self-consciously aligned with an idea of children as unconscious artists. we don’t need to deal with how deliberate or sophisticated children’s awareness of their assemblages actually is, because successful surrealist art is imagined as returning to that “innocent” appreciation of the objects: “rather than create, it recontextualizes and therefore reinterprets the given” (suarez 2007, 147). this conception of the artist as unconscious, rather than creative, suggests the familiar folkloristic notion of the “passive bearer,” evidence of how seamlessly the usually disassociated disciplines of folklore and fine art can converse. even the museum shell itself, the box that recognizes and creates the objects within it as significant and valuable, is subject to revision/recontextualization. initially ben’s “treasure chest” was a christmas gift containing only pirate-themed goodies: doubloons, fake beads, an activity book and so forth. however, with a child’s sensitivity to the richness of language, ben knew that “treasure” refers to both material and immaterial wealth: what was given to him as a place for gold, he transforms into a vessel for another kind of riches: memories, associations, family ties. concerning this openness to recontextualization, it is significant that ben’s museum, unlike most museums designed for adults, is entirely hands-on. his artifacts are sensuously diverse, appreciated for the rich and varied stimuli they provide. the objects’ value is described in physical and tactile terms: k: what do you like about this, this marble? b: marble? i like to roll it down. cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 15 11/6/08 11:46:03 am the shoebox museum willsey 16 likewise the aerosol bottle of lavender-scented liquid, which is both viscerally and olfactorily appealing, has a place in the museum. the coins were dumped out and sifted through for the music of metal ringing against metal. thus the availability of the objects to be made significant in novel ways requires that their presentation be informal (no glass cases) and personal, involving the fullness of sensory awareness particular to children. a brief note on methodology: because i had never met ben and i wanted him (and his mother) to be comfortable with what i was doing, i chose to interview ben in his mother’s presence. i don’t know in what way this altered the answers he gave me and i will need to do further research with other children to get a more informed sense of how private these assemblages really are. one complication that immediately emerged, though, was that i was a friend of his mother’s, manifestly an adult, and therefore was given self-consciously adultoriented answers. i don’t think it was coincidental, for instance, that ben spoke first about the money in his treasure chest, the piggy-bank component of the collection, as that which he knew adults valued and which i, an adult, would be most impressed by: k: where’d you get the marble? b: i don’t remember. but this is all my money that i keep in here, i got lots and lots. and i got this [a flattened souvenir penny] from the children’s museum, um, (sing-song intonation) it’s right heeere, it’s a mummy, and this is all my money, that i really like and, (coins falling, indecipherable) this is my money so my mommy can buy stuff for me. my attempts to turn the discussion towards the more unusual and personal objects were, more often than not, unsuccessful, but ben was eager to show off his “lots and lots” of money, emphasizing his role as an important and productive member of the household. the money was being elevated for my/adult benefit and recognition, not necessarily according to ben’s own understanding. not all the things ben called money were what adults consider legal tender; they also included foreign coins, toy money, or likely-looking pieces of metal. in fact ben explicitly referred to a flattened, stamped souvenir penny (something which has been transformed from currency into a toy) as “money.” similarly his phonetic approximations of “money” and experimentation with different articles (“it’s a mummy”) underscore that, for ben, this was a semi-foreign cultural category. knowing that i was there with my audio recorder to talk to him about important things, ben wanted to represent himself as capable and mature, helping his mother to take care of him (an endearing posturing i imagine his mother encouraged). i am not suggesting that the money was not special to ben, but rather that he represented it in a way particularly keyed to an adult audience. it’s also likely that part of his appreciation for it comes from his sense that this is an adult thing — adulthood seeming as foreign and exotic as his coin from barbados, as distant and improbable a role as a pirate whose gold doubloons have a place alongside the currency of other grown-ups. cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 16 11/6/08 11:46:03 am willsey the shoebox museum 17 a struggle to translate his sense of relationship into mine manifests itself elsewhere in the interview, when i ask ben to explain more about why he organized his treasures the way he did: b: it’s a flower. k: why is it with your pirate treasure? b: i put things in that is not apposed to go in there. k: why aren’t they supposed to go in there? b: because i got them some other place and i don’t want them to go in there. so i (indecipherable) legos especially don’t go in pirate boxes. (explosing noises) fuse bomb! digging in the fuse! (flying noises) and this is apposed to go. k: so why does the rose go with the pirate stuff? b: because, i wanted it to go, it didn’t you know it didn’t go with pirate stuff. newly conceiving of his treasures from my (adult) perspective, ben sees that his groupings are not “appropriate;” ben is aware of his sense of relatedness as deviant or dispreferred: he “put[s] things in that is not apposed to go in there.” when i pressed him, he gave an explanation of one kind of adult/appropriate category: “i got them in some other place.” things from the same place are like objects; shared context creates meaning. his diverse assemblage of objects from multiple contexts is difficult for him to explain, as he switches between aesthetics; he “wanted it to go,” but i know, “it didn’t go with the pirate stuff.” he is aware of, but resistant to, adult concepts of organization; instead “the accumulation of things, and their ability to resonate against each other, completely overcomes the subject’s ability to set them in order” (suarez 2007, 145). though ben’s museum is unconcerned with formal presentation or public display and requires only the authoritative curatorship of ben himself, there is one crucial level at which his museum is no different than any elegantly presented, culturally validated, and permanently contextualized museum space. underlying ben’s museum, as it does more polished and authoritative venues, is the troubling sense of inevitable change, transition, and loss. suarez’s description of cornell’s art — “the endless symbolic resonances and flights of association in which he indulges are attempts to bind the primary alterity of the material world” — could equally be applied to the assemblage of the not-quite-five-year-old ben (2007, 145). ben repeatedly gives rationales for his treasures in terms of protection and preservation, saying “then i um, put it in there, just to be safe. so it could be safe.” he explains that he keeps things in the box “because i don’t want it to get lost, all my toys from there get lost. so i wanna keep those in there so they won’t get lost.” and he becomes actively outraged when his mother proposed mixing his organizational schemas, specifically because it would pose a threat to the fragile order he has managed to sort out for himself: m: would you ever put your lego in the pirate chest — b: noooo! cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 17 11/6/08 11:46:04 am the shoebox museum willsey 18 m: no? b: (quietly) lost. m: it would get lost — b: no, don’t dare, dare, w, dare. don’t even think about that! this sense of his treasures as threatened is not only literal, but also symbolic. these are not only tactilely pleasing objects but, more significantly, narrative objects, vessels for memory and association. turner discusses the dual roles of women’s altars as both aesthetically appealing and personally resonant: “if the first authentic goal of an altar is to represent relationship, then the primary artistic move is to set potent images in relation to one another” (1999, 96). by “representing relationship,” the objects in ben’s museum also represent the threat of losing the people with whom they are connected. it emerged in our conversation that ben’s objects were disproportionately gifts from family: k: do these things go together? do these pictures [one of a ship his mother sailed on, the other of a smoke column from his firefighter father] go together? b: no. my dad gave me that one, and my mom gave me that one. m: do you remember who gave it to you? b: (fiercely) unclemichael! he’s my uncle definitely. m: do you remember where you got those orange beads? b: from nanny. k: why do you like it [the picture from his father]? b: because it reminds me of my dad, he lives in california! (clenched teeth, impatient) k: why did you put it in here with your treasure? b: i didn’t even know it was in there. so i didn’t, know that it was in there. (fiercely) this relationship between gift and giver is articulated by robert armstrong in his analysis of what he calls “works of affecting presence,” specifically museum exhibits and other objects of cultural worship: “such things are not, at base, symbols of something else … they are whatever they are. … [they] own certain characteristics that cause them to be treated more like persons than like things” (1981, 5). in other words, human contact humanizes things. my mother’s sweater is my mother, and when i eat from my grandmother’s china she is serving me. the exhibits in ben’s museum likewise “exist in a state of tension between these two poles: being subject and being object” (armstrong 1981, 6). they are simultaneously physical things under his control and intermediaries for independent humans whose actions he cannot predict or protect. this crosses into very personal territory, and several interesting things emerged from these exchanges. in the first place, there’s a kind of sympathetic ritual involved in the objects’ capture and containment. to keep the objects safe is to keep the people safe, or at least one’s own memories and understanding of them. it also becomes clear from ben’s tone of voice and metalinguistic gestures that cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 18 11/6/08 11:46:04 am willsey the shoebox museum 19 these aren’t things he is comfortable talking about. in fact the reason that some of these explanations were given to his mother, rather than me (and only grudgingly at that) is because she had the authority to push when ben was evasive. in the case of the picture from his father, ben denies the significance. though i want to respect the statements of my informant, his discomfort, repetition, and general unwillingness to speak about personal and emotional associations make it hard to believe the picture isn’t a valued part of his treasure chest. these are obviously things that are not only personal, but also sensitive. there is something simultaneously valuable and upsetting about these reminders of uncertain (and in his father’s case, geographically distant) relationships. as suarez says, “this is why objects combine anxiety and fascination; why, even though they evoke danger, they are also obsessively revisited” (2007, 149). the treasures both offer a kind of security and remind their collector that security is impossible. ben’s wariness regarding the personal narratives invested in his treasures adds another dimension to our consideration of his assemblage as a museum. “museum” is a term typically reserved for public display; significance is validated by the collective appreciation of an audience. this is part of the definition of “museum” rosamond casey’s museum of ambient disorders takes apart, specifically with the exhibit “bob’s flashback,” which sets apart a childhood memory within an internet forward (fig. 5). the exhibit combines all the elements of triviality that typically would label it as unfit for museum-consumption: it is transient, gone the second the window closes. besides this it is clearly not processed for a presentation; casey returns to the issue of permanence and preservation by pressing this casual fragment of a conversation — typos, awkward grammar and spelling intact — between blocks of glass, like insects in honey. but above all it is personal, of no real significance to anyone other than bob. it is this hard line between the personal and the significant that casey seems particularly interested in; while bob’s revelation is unique to him, the genuineness of his emotion and the thrill of recollection is universally accessible. casey asserts that the personal is not antithetical to a museum exhibit; rather it is a prerequisite to that connection which is the appropriate work of museums. just as “white noise” privileges the personal by reminding us that meaning and history are individually created, bob’s conversation figure 5. “bob’s flashback.” courtesy of rosamond casey and the virginia quarterly review. cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 19 11/6/08 11:46:04 am the shoebox museum willsey 20 is museum-worthy not in spite of its personal/trivial nature, but because of it. similarly, the privacy of ben’s assemblage is a mark of its sincerity. its very personalness is what elevates it from the everyday; if it were not personally important, it would not be in his box of treasures, a bounded space outside of the ordinary. k: do you like talking about your box? b: (pause) no. i don’t know. k: how come? b: because it’s too — treasured-ous! (shooting noises) m: are you saying it’s because it’s treasure — and it’s special? (to me: i know sometimes he doesn’t like to talk about things that are special to him.) b: yes i do. i do[‘nt.] k: [you] like to talk to things that are special to you [ben?] b: [no.] though i can’t really know whether ben’s problematic explanation is a function of emotional discomfort, mere boredom, frustration at my inability to understand or his inability to express it effectively, this is clearly a difficult subject for him. ben’s reticence regarding the personal significance of his objects in fact resonates with joseph cornell’s surrealist structures: a body of work that is as meticulously crafted as it is mystifyingly opaque, they consistently bypass that on the other side of art, the personal and the symbolic, cornell merely gives us things — bits of obtrusively unreadable matter in odd combination. his constructions infuse quotidian things with cultural density and human circumstance and therefore lift them from their immediate materiality; yet at the same time, they simultaneously reassert them as matter — blunt remains that symbol and sense can never exhaust (suarez 143). though ben’s museum is perhaps not “meticulously crafted,” and probably not intentionally mystifyingly, it’s worth considering that suarez’s critical analyses are only possible because cornell was not much more forthcoming about the intention of his art than ben is about the motivations for his collection. there’s a surprising and appealing symmetry between ben harding’s treasure chest and cornell’s surrealist sculptures — the latter suggests an inheritance of and refinement on the intuitive curatorship of children. moreover, as many questions and complications as ben’s assemblage raises for the typical museum, it also demonstrates a canny grasp of how to establish and defend the significance of things adults would not recognize by adopting a very ‘adult’ method: put it all together in a safe, closed, box. as candice gouchard says in turner, “the process of acquiring objects that begin to have meaning both in and of themselves and in relation to events or people or places or ideas … begins cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 20 11/6/08 11:46:04 am willsey the shoebox museum 21 to have a power of its own that exceeds the power of the individual object … accumulation describes the process of empowerment both for the individual and for the space that [the] altar [or shoebox] … occupies” (1999, 100, my emphasis). it is not only the objects in a museum that assemblage throws into conversation; the curator and the museum space are wrapped up in the process as well. if putting an ordinary object in a frame lends it significance, then it also creates significance for the framer — something children, among the least powerful members of society, are quick to appreciate. underlying ben’s treasure chest is an alignment with that most integral conceit of museum work — that to possess anything is to possess importance, that collection itself is an act of empowerment. notes 1. discussions of rosamond casey draw on an unpublished 2006 paper. 2. names of participants have been changed. works cited armstrong, robert plant. 1981. the powers of presence: consciousness, myth, and affecting presence. philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press. casey, rosamond. 2006. a museum of ambient disorders. virginia quarterly review 82: 202-227. smithson, robert. 1996. some void thoughts on museums. in robert smithson: the collected writings, ed. jack flam, 58. berkeley: university of california press. suarez, juan a. 2007. pop modernism: noise and the reinvention of the everyday. illinois: urbana and chicago. turner, kay. 1999. beautiful necessity: the art and meaning of women’s altars. new york: thames and hudson. weschler, lawrence. 1995. mr. wilson’s cabinet of wonder. new york: vintage. cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 21 11/6/08 11:46:05 am cfr_2007-2008_part2 cfr_2007-2008_part3 cfr_2007-2008_part4 pages from cfr_2007-2008_part5 99 book review children’s games in the new media age: childlore, media and the playground. edited by andrew burn and chris richards. (surrey and burlington: ashgate publishing, 2014. xiii+pp.224, acknowledgments, introduction, notes, bibliography, contributors, list of figures and tables, index.) winner of the 2016 opie award from the american folklore society’s children’s folklore section, this fine volume brings the collection of children’s games smartly into the 21st century. how fitting that the work itself is dedicated to iona opie, as it showcases and builds upon her legacy. three topics vie for our attention, all reflected in the subtitle. one wonders if the title and subtitle were fighting off camera for the volume’s heading. perhaps this is due to the ambivalence over the word “playground” in our time. the editors, both professors in the department of culture, communication and media at the institute of education, university of london, have collected a set of essays that merit individual attention. burn’s introduction addresses “children’s playground games in the new media age,” yet another version of the book’s title. pointing to the work of iona and peter opie over 50 years ago, the chapter readdresses one of the ideas that the opies themselves debunked, that they had started the collection of children’s folklore “fifty years too late” (p. 1) happily, the intent of the book is to show that children’s folklore—that irreverent mix of playful genres belonging to children’s peer culture—is still alive and well. we read of the history of “children’s games, songs, and rhymes” with particular attention to change and children’s agency and are introduced to five projects that frame the book. the british library digital archive, the first of these projects, includes the opie collection of children’s games and songs, new material collected in the united kingdom, and the australian collection of ethnomusicologist kathryn marsh. the project exceeded their initial plan and hosts games from australia, the uk, america and scandinavia. the second project involved ethnographic studies in two primary schools, one in sheffield and one on london’s edge, from 2009-2011. methods included surveys, panel interviews of children, and video footage taken by adults and children alike. the third project involved website development: “playtimes: a century of children’s playground games and rhymes,” an industrious addition intended to display to the public both the opie material and the ethnographic work collected in these two schools. additional collaboration with the bodleian libraries at the university of oxford, repository of the opie archive, and the pitt rivers museum, university of oxford, adds the wonderful game photos by father damian webb. most impressive was the involvement of children in the website development, as “researchers, designers, and curators.” the fourth project associated with the book is an innovative application of “the game catcher prototype,” an adaptation of motion sensitive video game book review 100 controllers of nintendo wii and microsoft kinect. the intention was to use the video game system to both record hand games as well as revitalize clapping. this project models the lack of separation in children’s culture between “traditional” games and technology. it would be worth watching such applications longitudinally to see how they hold up over time. the final project frames game collection through the development of a documentary film: ipi-dipi-dation, my generation. a catchy title, it references the counting out rhyme ip dip, and ties in to the notion of historical study. filmmaker grethe mitchell thoughtfully pays attention to camera angle and children’s commentary, not just game content. it should be noted that the film is tantalizingly difficult to find, almost impossible. it is hoped that the authors will find a way to make it more accessible. language of social critique appears throughout, from bourdieu’s “embodied history” to raymond williams’ notion of “residual culture” to henry jenkins’ emphasis on “cultural production and circulation.” readers familiar with the anthropology of levi-strauss and caillois will find the term “ludic bricolage” interesting. burns invites us to think of the chapters as puzzle pieces, and what follows is a brief discussion of each piece. chapter 2 “the opie recordings: what’s left to be heard” by laura jopson, andrew burn, and jonathan robinson invites us to listen to the archive, now fully cataloged and available online. there appears to be much in the opie archive that had never been published, a gold mine of games for the game researcher or childlore scholar. chapter 3 by folklorist julia c. bishop examines online/offline transmission and how “the whole hand-clap thing passes on.” this particular chapter is one i will return to with my own classes, as she charts transmission face-to-face, through media culture, and through youtube. movement variations are analyzed in a study of variation of one particular game, and there are rich quotes directly from children. chapter 4 by chris richards offers a mix of memoir and social commentary on “rough play, play fighting and surveillance: school playgrounds as sites of dissonance, controversy and fun.” he writes of “childhood at risk, children as a threat,” and briefly addresses gender differences in terms of playground conflict. in chapter 5, education professor jackie marsh examines “the relationship between online and offline play: friendship and exclusion.” here the chapter mixes fine-grained ethnographic quotes with internet use surveys. of particular interest is the innovative contrast between the social webs of one group and their friendship patterns online and offline. in chapter 6, librarian rebekah willet looks at the process of remixing and the study of “media-referenced play in the playground.” the chapter wisely points to how “children produce meaning from the variety of texts with which they engage in their remix culture” (p. 149). “children’s remix culture” might have been a fourth contender for book title. filmmaker grethe mitchell’s chapter on “the game catcher: a computer game and research tool for embodied movement” is perhaps the most innovative project in childlore collection to date. an adaptation of motion sensitive video game controllers of nintendo wii and microsoft kinect, it translates children’s hand games onto the screen for archival purposes and analysis, not to mention the book review 101 pleasure of seeing one’s motions on screen. whether the application is affordable enough, portable enough, and easy enough for widespread use remains to be seen. it certainly suggests new ways of thinking about game research, borrowing the tools of media captured choreography and dance notation. john potter’s chapter, focusing on website development and heterotopia, raises the ethical implications of having children as “co-curators.” part of the challenge rests with the essentially private, yet public, display of children’s folklore, and yet when posted, it becomes an exposed performance. the book raises more questions than it has space to answer. i appreciate the ways in which it finds consistency and innovation in children’s folklore, and how it suggests that the answer to the rigidity of school curricula can be found outside. anna beresin the university of the arts pages from cfr_2017_part23 cfr_2017_part24 ideas for inquiry: "exhibiting children" simon j. bronner think about it—while scholars of children's folklore typically report the identification, collection, organization, and interpretation of children's traditions, they also must be aware of the variety of ways that this material is adapted, displayed, even misrepresented, in museums, publications, festivals, web sites, community centers, and classrooms. what are the images of tradition projected of children and childhood in various media? the children's folklore section of the american folklore society sponsored a special forum to take up this provocative theme of "exhibiting children" at the 2002 annual meeting in rochester, new york. conference attendees had the opportunity before the forum to visit the margaret strong museum (including the national toy hall of fame), renowned for its children's material culture collections (see http://www.strongmuseum.org). the opening ceremony of the conference was held in the museum. recognizing discussions of the visual representation and cultural construction of childhood in various disciplines, children's folklore section leaders c. w. sullivan iii and joann conrad working with robert baron of the new york state council on the arts organized the forum as a way to bring this issue to a wider audience of folklorists and museum professionals. i introduced the concept of the forum this way: children rarely have control of their own representation, and yet the exhibition of childhood is usually a key to the understanding of the inheritance of culture from one generation to the next. considering the public debate revolving around the decline of traditional values passed along to children, the hegemonic structures of consumer cultures dictating children's lives, the vulnerability, and danger, of children, and the proliferation of alternative children's subcultures in america, the forum addresses what impact the exhibition of children in media, education, and museums has had on the representations of children's culture, especially folk culture. it necessarily takes up the difference between material and visual ex ideas for inquiry: "exhibiting children" bronner hibitions presented by children and adults. these central questions lead with oral and social genres while popular culture has exhibited the material and visual realm. against the backdrop of exhibitions and collections of childhood by the strong museum, the panel suggests new intellectual directions that can place folklore at the center of scholarly discourse on children, family, and youth as the key to cultural analysis. one such intellectual direction begins at the museum, gallery, and cultural agency interpreting children's artifacts for the public. jon paul dyson, historian at the margaret strong museum, explained the background of margaret strong's collecting and the museum's work in building a cultural interpretation of the collections (see http://www.strongmuseum.org /collection/index.htm). the emphasis has been on the historical development of children's culture, and dyson offered insights into the implications of comparing contemporary practice with victorian children's culture. while the victorian sensibility was on accumulation of artifacts, contemporary practice calls for themes that suggest the meaning of children's lives. the themes presented to exhibit children are: house and home, ideas and images, clothing and accessories, play and work, sight and sound. the museum explains the collection this way: these artifacts embody, illustrate, illuminate, preserve, and enable understanding of the attitudes, beliefs, values, customs, tastes, and traditions that americans have held individually and collectively over the last two centuries and have passed, or are passing, to subsequent generations. these personal, everyday objects help americans to understand who they are and who they believe they are and why. c.w. sullivan iii, professor of english at east carolina university and editor of the children's folklore review, discussed what he and some others perceive as the passing of spontaneous play. children's traditional play, especially the songs and games that folklorists have collected since w.w. newell's games and songs of american children, published in 1884, has long been a central concern of children's folklorists. the songs and games that have, in the not-so-recent past, been collected from children at recess, before and after school, in the neighborhood in the afternoon or evening may soon no longer be available as recess disappears from the elementary school schedule, children are signed up for after-school sports, arts, or academic pro 102 bronner ideas for inquiry: "exhibiting children" grams, and homework for even first graders becomes the primary activity of the evening. in short, children are losing (or having taken away from them) the opportunity to exhibit themselves in game and song. as that happens, is there any way a museum can exhibit games and songs in any way other than photographs and written texts? peter tokofsky, associate professor at ucla, addressed the dissonance between exhibition of and experience of celebrations from the perspective of children. whereas museums tend to display the sacred or special objects associated with these occasions, he pointed out, his observations participating in a "family traditions: linking individuals to cultures" project in los angeles, funded by the national endowment for the humanities, marked objects for memory, which are ultimately not suitable for most museum displays. it might be the foods, spontaneous games, or other ephemera, which serve as the highlights of celebratory occasions for children. jeannie thomas, associate professor of english and folklore at utah state university (see http://english.usu.edu/americanstudies/thomas.html) discussed the ways that children perform and exhibit barbie dolls, the world's most popular doll. thomas's interest in the effects of barbie on popular culture was stimulated by narratives elicited from students in a children's folklore course. one student recalled collecting barbie heads and baking them in the oven. another posed barbie and ken dolls in idealistic "theodore (beaver) cleaver" tableaus when dysfunctional family interaction became too disturbing or painful. for all the controversy and problems surrounding barbie, she maintains her popularity. thomas said she believes barbie encourages creative play, which has helped mattel become a part of contemporary folk culture. the variety of barbies on the market enforces the connection she has with folklore and culture. "i was struck at how mattel commodifies folklore and sells it. there are barbies for holidays, fairy tales, even international barbies. folklore studies places and culture, and mattel markets that in a really superficial way," said thomas (see http://www.hardnewscafe.usu.edu/archive/july2000/0720_barbie. html). the lively response from the audience signaled many of the perspectives opened up by the theme of "exhibiting children." a number of participants remarked on the representation of children's folklore in classroom materials available for basic education. other participants picked up on the tension between commercial culture in the marketing of toys and folk culture in the performances of children with toys. this led to a lively debate over the hegemonic effect that commercial culture has over the folk practices of children. the past-orientation of 103 ideas for inquiry: "exhibiting children" bronner museums also received scrutiny, and discussion ensued on incorporating ethnographic documentation of contemporary culture, or children's views of their own culture, in museums and cultural exhibitions. the session brought out the ways that children's folklore scholarship is an act of representation and construction. in so doing, participants realized the ethical implications of the adaptation of scholarship in various media. 104 cfr_2002-2003_part33 pages from cfr_2002-2003_part34 7 games and their rhetorics: an idiosyncratic appreciation of the contributions of brian sutton-smith garry chick brian sutton-smith left a legacy of more than 40 books and 300 articles published, along with numerous conference presentations, television appearances and projects, and speaking engagements around the world over a 60-plus year career. while not all of these directly engaged play, this corpus surely makes suttonsmith history’s most prolific scholar and advocate of play. the majority of his research on play was directed at children and psychological in nature but he was deeply eclectic and bridged a variety of other disciplines including anthropology, sociology, folklore, history, philosophy, biology, ethology, and neurology, among others. in addition to several of the essays in this special issue, his work has been reviewed and summarized by others (see meckley 2015) and by himself (suttonsmith 1995; 2008). i edited two issues of the journal play & culture, plus part of a third in 1991, as a festschrift for sutton-smith while anthony pellegrini edited another in 1995. sutton-smith further cemented his legacy with the publication of his classic book the ambiguity of play (1997). in this book, he convincingly showed that how we have thought about and conducted research on play has been based in a series of underlying cultural and ideological values and that understanding them may lead to a more unified discussion of the phenomenon. to review his career and contributions to play research alone, without even considering what he did for other fields such as children’s folklore, is a daunting task and one that i am unprepared to execute. while brian was my friend, we were never collaborators. he did, however, co-author several very influential articles with my ph.d. advisor, john m. roberts, during the 1960s. our association since the mid-1970s rests, in large part, on that conduit. so, as a friend, but outside observer, and an anthropologist with interests in expressive culture, broadly considered, but adult play and leisure, more particularly, my review of brian’s contributions to play theory over his long career will be personal and idiosyncratic rather than comprehensive. in particular, i will focus on sutton-smith’s early contributions to the study of games and suggest how they may have influenced his thinking on play, specifically in terms of play research that he regarded as reflecting the rhetoric of progress, the rhetoric of fate, and the rhetoric of power. in the ambiguity of play, as well as several earlier publications (sutton-smith 1993a; 1993b; 1995), sutton-smith (1997) detailed seven of what he termed rhetorics, or narratives designed to persuade, about how play has been, or should be, conceptualized. these include the rhetoric of play as progress, the rhetoric of play as fate, the rhetoric of play as power, the rhetoric of play as identity, the rhetoric of play as the imaginary, the rhetoric of play as the self, and the rhetoric of play as frivolity. briefly, the rhetoric of play as progress is based on the notion that play is adaptive, for both animals and children, and is a context for their socialization and enculturation for the latter. the rhetoric of fate, which suttoncfr_2015_r.indb 7 11/22/15 10:41 am games and their rhetorics chick 8 smith regarded as the oldest of the group, has generally been applied to games of chance based on the belief that the human condition is controlled by external forces—the gods, luck, and so on—and possibly influenced only by magical or religious manipulation. the rhetoric of power is most often implicated in athletics, sports, and physical contests and is a representation of conflict. the rhetoric of identity usually applied to festivals and celebrations of community. the rhetoric of the imaginary idealizes the imagination and celebrates the creativity that so often occurs in play. the rhetoric of the self generally refers to solitary and risky activities, such as individual hobbies or bungee jumping, but also to the intrinsic and aesthetic experiences of the players. finally, the rhetoric of frivolity has a reflexive character, “applied to the activities of the idle or the foolish” (suttonsmith 1997:11), but also acts as playful dissent against the orderly world imposed by society. sutton-smith (1997) termed each of these a rhetoric “because its ideological values are something that the holders like to persuade others to believe in and to live by” (11). he noted “by seeing how the play descriptions and play theories can be tied in with such broad patterns of ideological value, one has greater hope of coming to understand the general character of play theory, which is the ultimate objective here” (12). but, in the long process of arriving at this ultimate objective, sutton-smith began with the ethnographic study of children’s games. the study of games games appear to be a universal component in the content of cultures, both past and present (brown 1991; murdock 1945) and their study has occupied a small, but relatively consistent, niche in anthropological research for more than 150 years. lewis henry morgan, for example, in league of the iroquois (1851) claimed that the iroquois had six principal games that could be described as either athletic or as games of chance. in the first cross-cultural comparative study of games, sir edward burnett tylor (1879) attempted to show that apparent similarities between patolli, as played by the aztecs, and pachisi, as played in india, provided evidence that the civilization of india had influenced the culture in mesoamerica. tylor’s thesis was soon dismissed and the cross-cultural comparative study of games was dormant in anthropology for the next 80 years. nevertheless, numerous ethnographic descriptions of games, both among children and adults, continued to be produced. these include stuart culin’s studies of games in brooklyn, new york (1891), in korea, china, and japan (1895), in hawaii (1899), and his canonical treatises on native american games (1902; 1907). other studies include firth’s (1930) ethnography of a dart match in tikopia, raum’s (1953) description of hoop-and-pole games in africa, and cooper’s (1949) survey of games among native south americans. in the functionalist tradition, stumpf and cozens (1947; 1949) claimed that games and sports served as training for war among the maori of new zealand and the natives of fiji. similarly, dunlap (1951) suggested that samoan games and sports interrelated with aspects of social organization that included not only warfare but also education, economics, and religion. sutton-smith made important contributions to game ethnography with cfr_2015_r.indb 8 11/22/15 10:41 am chick games and their rhetorics 9 several studies of the games of new zealand children in the early 1950s (suttonsmith 1951; 1953a; 1953b) culminating in a book, the games of new zealand children in 1959. the cross-cultural comparative study of games although ethnographic studies of games continued to be produced, cross-cultural comparative research on games languished. then, in their classic 1959 article, “games in culture,” roberts, arth, and bush launched not only the modern era of cross-cultural comparative research on games but also of expressive culture (to include play, sport, art, music, and other leisure pursuits), more generally. additionally, they provided both a definition of games and a system for their classification that have since become standards in anthropology and have been used in other fields, as well. roberts et al. (1959) defined a game as “a recreational activity characterized by: (1) organized play, (2) competition, (3) two or more sides, (4) criteria for determining the winner, and (5) agreed upon rules” (597). they regarded certain other recreational activities, found around the globe but lacking competition, such as “noncompetitive swimming, top-spinning, and stringfigure making” as “amusements” (597). roberts et al. (1959) classified games in terms of what leads to winning and losing, that is, physical skill, strategy, or chance. therefore, games of physical skill as herein defined must involve the use of physical skill, but may or may not involve strategy or chance; examples are marathon races, prize fights, hockey, and the hoop and pole games. in games of strategy, physical skill must be absent and a strategy must be used; chance may or may not be involved. chess, go, poker, and the ashanti game of wari are examples. finally, games of chance are so defined that chance must be present and both physical skill and strategy must be absent; examples are high card wins, dice games, and the moccasin games. (597–98) roberts et al.’s (1959) final and most important claim was that games are expressive models of other, important real-world activities. these include things such as hunting, warfare, social interaction, and divination: it is also evident that most games are models of various cultural activities. many games of physical skill simulate combat or hunting, as in boxing and competitive trap shooting. games of strategy may simulate chase, hunt, or war activities, as in backgammon fox and geese, or chess. the relationship between games of chance and divining (ultimately a religious activity) is well known. in instances where a game does not simulate a current cultural activity, it will be found that the games ancestral to it were more clearly models. (1959:599) cfr_2015_r.indb 9 11/22/15 10:41 am games and their rhetorics chick 10 moreover, roberts et al. (1959) regarded the types of games existing in various cultures to be products of, or at least related to, child socialization practices and to form valuable contexts for learning, particularly about things that may be dangerous in real life, such as hunting big game and warfare. in his first anthropological article on games, “the meeting of maori and european cultures and its effects upon the unorganized games of maori children,” sutton-smith (1951a) showed that the maori game huripapa, a form of knucklebones (a game that resembles jacks), predated european contact despite a claim that it had been introduced to the maori by early whalers. additionally, he briefly described numerous types of games then still played in maori schools. given his abiding interest in games, after arriving in the u.s. permanently in 1956 and having published (with clinical psychologist benjamin g. rosenberg) “sixty years of historical change in the game preferences of american children” in 1961, he was drawn to the work of roberts, then a professor of anthropology at cornell university. he first collaborated with roberts on a cross-cultural comparative project based primarily on the idea that games are expressive models of realworld activities (roberts and sutton-smith 1962). in particular, they viewed games as “exercises in mastery, with games of strategy, chance, and physical skill being related, respectively, to the mastery of the social system, the supernatural, and the nexus of the self with the environment” (168). roberts and sutton-smith (1962) utilized ratings for child training for 111 societies compiled by bacon, barry, and child (1955). bacon et al. (1955) rated boys and girls separately for child training in “responsibility, obedience, selfreliance, achievement, nurturance, and independence” (168). the ratings provided information on rewards for showing the behavior as well as the amount of anxiety displayed for not showing the behavior, the frequency of the various behaviors, and the degree of conflict over them. of the 111 societies, data on games and game play were available in the cross-cultural survey and human relations area files based at yale university. twenty-seven societies contained “moderately complete descriptions of games, and 29 societies provided descriptions which were usable though incomplete” (roberts and sutton-smith 1962:168). game play was not distinguished on the basis of age or sex since the ethnographies often failed to provide such information. hence, the separate child training ratings for boys and girls presented a problem. roberts and sutton-smith solved this by combining the ratings for boys and girls as bacon et al. (1955) indicated that females tended to receive mostly positive ratings (i.e., rewards) while males received both (i.e., rewards and punishments). roberts and sutton-smith (1962) addressed only four types of games: (1) games of physical skill, (2) games of physical skill with strategy, (3) games of strategy, and (4) games of chance. they found no instances of games that involved all three outcome determinants, that is, games of physical skill with both strategy and chance. games of physical skill with chance or strategy with chance were too infrequent to consider separately so they combined the former with games of physical skill and the latter with games of strategy. roberts et al. (1959) had determined that presence of games of strategy was associated with cultural complexity when measured by the degree of political cfr_2015_r.indb 10 11/22/15 10:41 am chick games and their rhetorics 11 integration and social stratification in societies. because complex social systems presumably required obedience to authority, roberts and sutton-smith (1962) were not surprised to find that the presence of games of strategy was associated with childhood training in obedience. in particular, societies that had games of strategy were more likely to reward children for being obedient, to punish them for disobedience, to have high frequency of obedient behaviors, and to instill conflict over obedience. the presence of games of chance was found to be associated with rewards for responsibility, the frequency of responsibility, and anxiety over achievement. finally, the number of games of physical skill had significant relationships with rewards for achievement and frequency of achievement. games of physical skill with strategy also were associated with punishment for not achieving. in sum, roberts and sutton-smith (1962) concluded that the relationships they found “show fairly specifically that strategy is associated with obedience and not with responsibility or achievement, chance with responsibility and not with obedience, and physical skill with achievement and not with obedience and responsibility” (174). based on these results, roberts and sutton-smith (1962) then conducted what they termed a “subsystem validation” to examine differences between american girls and boys. since “girls are given more consistent obedience and responsibility training” while boys received higher training in achievement, girls should then be more interested and involved in playing games of strategy and of chance while boys should prefer games of physical skill. they tested these conjectures using data on the game preferences of 1,900 third, fourth, fifth, and sixth grade midwestern children gathered earlier by sutton-smith and rosenberg (1961). the cross-cultural findings indicated that, since girls received more training in responsibility and obedience while boys received more training in achievement, the former should prefer games of strategy and chance while the latter should be biased in favor of games of physical skill. specifically, they found that boys and girls shared preferences for 18 games of strategy although girls preferred five not liked by boys. girls preferred five games of chance not liked by boys while boys preferred one game not liked by boys. girls liked five games of physical skill not liked by boys while boys liked 20 not preferred by girls. although not all of their premises were supported in a statistically significant sense, all were generally in the directions predicted. in a later study (sutton-smith, roberts, and kozelka 1963), they found support for the same predications among adults. based on their findings with regard to games, which they regarded as expressive cultural models, roberts and sutton-smith (1962) proposed a general theory of involvement in cultural models that they termed the “conflictenculturation” hypothesis (184). they indicated the theory implies (1) that there is an over-all process of cultural patterning whereby society induces conflict in children through its child-training processes; (2) that society sees through appropriate arrays and varieties of ludic models to provide an assuagement of these conflicts by an adequate representation of their emotional and cognitive polarities in ludic structure; and (3) that through these cfr_2015_r.indb 11 11/22/15 10:41 am games and their rhetorics chick 12 models society tries to provide a form of buffered learning through which the child can make enculturative step-by-step progress toward adult behavior. (183–84) games, and presumably other expressive cultural models, are therefore microcosms of social structures wherein winning and losing are represented. individuals seek these models because, in them, they can find codifications of the cognitive and emotional aspects of conflicts inculcated during their childhoods that are not available to them in real world cultural participation due to their lack of maturity. so, for example, in games of strategy such as chess or go, individuals can practice deceiving and outwitting powerful opponents while also commanding forces while still being commanded by others in the real world. according to roberts and sutton-smith (1962) between the ages of seven and twelve years the child learns, in simple direct form, how to take a chance, how to show skill, and how to deceive. increasingly, in complex games, he learns the reversibility of these styles—when to rely on one type of success gambit rather than another, how to combine them, etc. what he learns from the games are the cognitive operations involved in competitive success. these cannot be learned by young children in full-scale cultural participation. the can be learned only through models, whether games or models of other types. (183) in a 1963 publication, roberts and sutton-smith, along with adam kendon, focused on models of strategy not only in games but also in folktales (roberts, sutton-smith, and kendon 1963). in this study, sutton-smith combined his interests in folktales with roberts’ interest in games by examining folktales “that resemble games in that they display definite outcomes with winners and losers” (186). they asserted that “folk tales and games are quite different media of expression, but they are similar in that they model or represent behaviors occurring in other settings, both real and imaginary” (185). their general hypothesis was that strategy in folktales will occur in cultural settings that also include games of strategy. in line with their previous research, they hypothesized, specifically, that strategic outcomes in folktales, when they occur, should be accompanied by games of strategy, high obedience training, and high levels of political complexity (a proxy for cultural complexity, more generally). to test their hypothesis, roberts et al. (1963) used a sample of folktales assembled by child, storn, and veroff (1958). twenty-seven of the societies in the sample had previously been scored in terms of the presence of game types. twelve folktales from each society, purportedly representative of the types of tales found in each, were judged by three raters whether they had an outcome, that is, an apparent contest between two sides, or not. only those folktales agreed on by at least two of the raters were chosen for the study. then, the three judges (based on definitions established by the first judge) rated the tales in the sample in terms of the relative extent to which the outcome for each involved physical skill, strategy, and chance although the cfr_2015_r.indb 12 11/22/15 10:41 am chick games and their rhetorics 13 primary interest in the study was strategy. roberts et al. (1963) found, in support of their hypothesis, that “(a) the strategic mode of competition is modeled in both games and folktales in a number of cultures; (b) where the strategic mode of completion is modeled in one medium (i.e., games) it is likely to be modeled in the other (i.e., folktales); and (c) the strategic mode of completion as modeled in games and in folktales is associated with both obedience training and cultural complexity” (195–96). based on these and their earlier findings, roberts et al. (1963) speculated, in terms of cultural evolution, that the probable order of the appearance of the cultural inventories of child-training procedures and models is as follows: (a) nurturance and self reliance with no games; (b) independence, responsibility, and achievement with games of physical skill and games of chance; and (c) obedience with games of strategy. (198) in a 1964 study, sutton-smith and roberts showed that 8 to 12 year old children were able to attribute playing style-like characteristics to others. they created a categorization of players wherein those who “act (a) like players in games of chance and try to succeed by relying on luck, i.e., are fortunists; (b) like players in games of physical skill who try to succeed by applying physical power, i.e., are potents; or (c) like players in games of strategy who try to succeed by making wise decisions, i.e., are strategists” (15). children who either lacked followers or gave up in the face of difficulties were regarded as failures. in addition to the children’s sociometric ratings of others, teachers rated the children in terms of their success in the classroom and on the playground. sutton-smith and roberts (1964) found that 76% of the children named as classroom successes were in the top quarter of the distribution of strategists as perceived by other children. fifty per cent indicated by teachers as successful on the playground were in the top quarter attributed as being potents. fifty-nine strategists, but only four potents were regarded as classroom successes by teachers while 34 potents, but only 17 strategists, were classified as playground successes. teachers classified 65% of the children regarded by their peers as either fortunists or failures as failures either in the classroom or on the playground. sutton-smith and roberts (1964) extended their study by further examining the children who were in the top quarters of the distributions in each of the categories. as some children were in the top quarters of more than one category, sutton-smith and roberts created the additional categories of potent-strategists, potent-fortunists, and fortunist-failures. they reported: our results show that boys make distinctions among children who succeed by strategy, children who succeed by power, and children who succeed by using a combination of these two types. boys do not, however, appear to distinguish clearly between children who succeed by good fortune and those who simply fail. to succeed by luck is apparently tantamount to failure. cfr_2015_r.indb 13 11/22/15 10:41 am games and their rhetorics chick 14 girls, on the other hand, distinguish between children who succeed by fortune and those who simply fail. the largest difference between the two groups is to be found in the girls’ game preferences in which the fortunist—failures are not unlike the success groups in their responses, whereas the pure failure group is atypical and immature. the distinction made by girls between potent-strategists, strategists, and potent seems not to be a distinction in type as it is with boys so much as a distinction in degree. potent-strategists have most of the desirable characteristics, strategists somewhat less, and potents even less; but all three groups are superior to fortunists and failures. (31) sutton-smith and roberts (1964) concluded that children can consistently place each other into categories based on games and that boys, in particular, play games that are analogous to their success styles. girls tend not distinguish among success styles but do so among failure groups. roberts, hoffmann, and sutton-smith (1965) then examined playing styles in the context of a simple game of pure strategy, tic-tac-toe. in a field experimental study, they had each sixth grader in a class play every other twice resulting in a total of 313 wins/losses wins and 910 draws. arithmetic ability related to winning play styles while intelligence seemed to be linked to safe play styles (i.e., drawing). in a follow up study, sutton-smith and roberts (1967) gave tictac-toe problems (developed earlier by hoffmann) to girls and boys participating in the achievement development project at the fels research institute in yellow springs, ohio.1 they found numerous associations between problem solutions and children’s play styles. what they termed the “winning girl” was positively associated with the instigation of verbal and physical aggression, associative play, dominance of other girls, concern with mastery of motor skills, and negatively associated with socioeconomic status, the amount of time spent alone on tasks, task persistence, and gender-appropriate play choices. the “drawing girl” was positively associated with socioeconomic status, need achievement, and genderappropriate play but negatively associated with the instigation of physical aggression and concern with mastery of motor skills. the “drawing boy” was positively associated with need achievement and approval seeking from adults. in addition to their work on games of strategy and folktales involving strategy, roberts and sutton-smith looked at the cross-cultural correlates of games of chance more extensively in a 1966 publication, “cross-cultural correlates of games of chance.” in this study, they used results from a pre-publication version of textor’s (1967) a cross-cultural summary, a huge compendium of computer generated comparisons of cross-cultural codes for about 500 variables for 400 societies selected by the editors of the journal ethnology. for sampling purposes, the ethnographic universe was divided into six geographic regions. these included africa, the circum-mediterranean, east eurasia, the insular pacific, north america, and south america. while the sample was technically non-random, comparisons were accompanied by two measures of association (chi-square and phi) and included when the chi-square was significant at the 0.10 level. cfr_2015_r.indb 14 11/22/15 10:41 am chick games and their rhetorics 15 a cross-cultural summary (textor 1967) included 10 comparisons involving games, four of which dealt with games of chance. roberts and sutton-smith (1966) based their article on those four comparisons. their most important finding was that games of chance appear to be most common in cultural contexts involving uncertainty. that is, games of chance occur where “a life situation where favorable and unfavorable outcomes may occur in an uncertain way, not easily controlled by either physical skill or strategy, particularly in the areas of environmental setting, food production, social and political interaction, marriage, war, and religion” (roberts and sutton-smith 1966:143). sutton-smith’s fertile collaboration with roberts culminated in a brief chapter in a book edited by lueschen in 1970 titled “the cross-cultural and psychological study of games” and a chapter in the handbook of cross-cultural psychology, edited by triandis and heron, in 1981 titled “play, games, and sports.” suttonsmith’s and roberts’ research in the 1960s, particularly their cross-cultural studies, pointed to several conclusions. first, they established an evolutionary sequence of game development beginning with, (1) no games, (2) games of physical skill, (3) games of chance, and, (4) games of strategy. roberts et al. (1959) and roberts and sutton-smith (1962) reported, with some surprise, that some cultures (e.g., the yir yiront, the cuna) genuinely appear not to have games. they concluded that there are three possibilities: (1) some societies have never had games, (2) some societies have lost their games through deculturation and, (3) the ethnographic reports may be in error. whatever the reason for the no-game reports, later cross-cultural comparative research (e.g., chick 1998; roberts and barry 1976) has supported the sequence beginning with games of physical skill. second, their studies indicated that games are vehicles for socialization and cultural learning. socialization for achievement is associated with the presence of games of physical skill and is most often directed at males. socialization for responsibility is associated with the presence of games of chance and is most often directed at females. socialization for obedience is associated with the presence of games of strategy and is most often directed at females. and part of this socialization is directed at conflict engendered by child rearing practices and its assuagement. different types of games were also found in varied cultural complexes. societies heavily invested in food collection had games of physical skill since the games themselves served, at least in part, as models of hunting (and war, which could be looked on as a form of hunting) but offered greater safety than learning about hunting dangerous big game, for example. games of chance occur in situations where uncertainty is commonly addressed by appeals to religious or divinatory practices. and, finally, games of strategy occur in relatively complex societies with distinct social strata, higher levels of political integration, and relatively complex technology. third, games could be viewed as models of power. that, is boys (although not girls) were able to consistently categorize others as strategists, who lead through ideas, or potents, who lead through physical prowess. sutton-smith and rosenberg (1970) reported that some of the power tactics used by siblings could be regarded as primarily strategic while others primarily involved physical ability. they argued that if the distinctions between strategic and physical approaches to cfr_2015_r.indb 15 11/22/15 10:41 am games and their rhetorics chick 16 problem solving are present in general social behavior, they are also likely to exist in informal play. in a 1968 paper, sutton-smith suggested that there are “loose parallels” (50) between games of strategy and some daydreams, such as those that feature conceptual problem solving and abstract speculation. to some extent, this suggestion follows from the finding by roberts and sutton-smith (1963) that folktales that have outcomes, in terms of winners and losers, can be examined in terms of their content involving physical skill, chance, and, especially, strategy on the part of protagonists. among western children, “females prefer magical assistance (cinderella, sleeping beauty); males prefer personal prowess (jack and the beanstalk)” (sutton-smith 1971:85). based on this line of research, suttonsmith and roberts expanded the argument that games are expressive models through which children, by participating in them, learn the power tactics of other individuals and their cultures more broadly. while they coauthored summary chapters on games, sport, and play in 1970 and 1981, sutton-smith and roberts produced no empirical collaborations after their 1967 study of tic-tac-toe. for his part, roberts continued working on games, as well as other expressive phenomena, through the 1970s and 1980s with numerous other coauthors, including me. his work was heavily influenced by the theorizing about child socialization and games developed in his early collaboration with sutton-smith. in particular, he sought other contexts to test the conflict-enculturation hypothesis that they had developed, especially in expressive activities among adults. sutton-smith, while he did not drop his interest in games, spent more of his research efforts on children’s less organized activities (free play, folk games, jokes, rhymes, make-believe, folktales, teasing) and, importantly, more vigorously approached topics aligned with the philosophy of science, that is, how values cultural relativity undergirds how we have theorized play over the years. games as ambiguous agents of socialization sutton-smith’s collaboration with roberts provided one source of empirical support for sutton-smith’s enduring interest in both how children are socialized for play and the power of play to socialize. whether that socialization was for good or bad remained a question and an aspect of play’s ambiguity. this was an interest and concern for both sutton-smith and roberts. in his book, child psychology, sutton-smith wrote “in games, children learn all those necessary arts of trickery, deception, harassment, divination, and foul play that their teachers won’t teach them, but that are most important in successful human interrelationship in marriage, business, and war” (sutton-smith 1973:356–57). similarly, roberts and barry (1976) related combinations of game types to cultural complexity and to 13 traits inculcated during child training. in the cross-cultural data, they found evidence that, in societies where all three game types are present, obedience was emphasized over self-reliance or honesty. in contemporary american sports, for example, coaches have all but completely usurped decision-making. hence, there is little need for players to be self-reliant. however, coaches value obedience and self-restraint. and, as for honesty, coaches teach how to shade the rules without getting caught. at both the university of illinois and penn state university, i have cfr_2015_r.indb 16 11/22/15 10:41 am chick games and their rhetorics 17 had offensive and defensive linemen from the football teams in class. when asked how often offensive linemen are guilty of “holding,” defensive linemen respond “on every play” while offensive linemen answer, “never.” obviously, there is a difference in perspective but also in training. offensive linemen are coached in how to hold and not get caught. roberts and barry (1976) concluded, “if games build character, that character may be less than ideal” (59). as sutton-smith so often emphasized, ambiguities exist not only in how we study play but in play itself. summary: games and the rhetorics of play i chose to emphasize sutton-smith’s early studies of games in this essay, in part, because it is this area of his research with which i have the greatest familiarity. but i also selected it because i feel that these studies illuminated for him the notion that the nature of research on play, including his and roberts’ studies of games, had long been deeply affected by what he came to term “rhetorics.” finally, new methods, briefly described below, and updated data render the roberts and sutton-smith cross-cultural studies of games and child socialization open to replication, something commonly done in the “hard” sciences but neglected in the psychological and social sciences (schmidt 2009) or, when actually attempted, which results in a very high percentage of failure (bohannon 2015). games are relatively easy to define and, therefore, identify. for the most part in his work, sutton-smith adopted the definition provided by roberts et al. (1959), one that rather precisely denotes what is, and what is not, a game. in addition, and again for the most part, he adopted roberts et al.’s (1959) classification of games based on the primary outcome determinant, that is, physical skill, strategy, or chance. and while he expanded the definition a bit when referring to gamelike activities of young children, he maintained interest in activities involving skill, strategy, and chance. he observed that the way in which not only others, but also he and roberts themselves, had examined the three categories of games reflected distinct rhetorics. that is, he and roberts looked at games of physical skill—what we would commonly refer to as sports—in terms of the rhetoric of power wherein children learn not only the preferred power tactics of their culture as well as how to identify them in others. indeed, at one point, he and roberts contemplated writing a book, tentatively titled, games as models of power. unfortunately, their collaboration ended before the book was written although sutton-smith contributed a chapter by that name to a festschrift for roberts published in 1989. in “games as models of power,” sutton-smith (1989) interpreted their research together as showing: 1. games are in some way functionally related to culture. they are not trivial or unessential or random. 2. more complex cultures have more complex games and more types of games, and the various associations are merely an index of cfr_2015_r.indb 17 11/22/15 10:41 am games and their rhetorics chick 18 general complexity—cultures with no competitive games are very simple; cultures with all types are the most complex. 3. there are meaningful structural relationships between each type of game and its patterns of association. thus, chance is linked with responsibility, divination, nomadic habits, and economic uncertainty; physical skill is linked with the tropics and hunting; central-person games are linked with independence training and marriage; and strategy games are linked with class stratification and warfare. 4. the way to explain the linkages with child-training and variables and with cultural variables is in terms of the conflict-enculturation hypothesis, which says that conflict engendered by child-training procedures (one is both rewarded and punished for interest in certain behaviors), leads to a readiness to be aroused by symbolic systems (games), which configure the conflict (that is, transfer it) to culturally useful behavior. 5. the way to prove this pattern of hypotheses is to show that the same patterns hold within our own culture across variations in personalities as were found across variations in tribes in the original studies (subsystem replication). studies of adult preferences for games and of children’s play appear to provide support for the original patterns of relationships. see, in particular, the studies of tick tack toe in the folkgames of children (sutton-smith 1972). 6. the way the enculturation aspect of this thesis works is through games acting as models of cultural power relationships, including those involving strategy, chance, force, or arbitrary status (4–5). sutton-smith went on to critique these studies and their conclusions based on post-1970 research and theorizing. more important, however, is that he recognized that the studies themselves were grounded in the then-extant view that play is an ideal activity for children rather than one that is to be maligned and avoided as in previous times and other cultures (see sutton-smith and kelly-byrne 1984). thus, with respect to games, “when roberts and i called them models of power, we were becoming victims of our own and other males’ macho rhetoric […]” (suttonsmith 1989, 13). further, with respect to games, he claimed that in their own strange ways, they embody tenderness in their affairs as well as toughness. they make players love each other, or love their coaches, or love their supporters, as much as they make them hate each other. what shall we call them: the games as models of toughness and tenderness? perhaps games as models of power and pusillanimity? (13) cfr_2015_r.indb 18 11/22/15 10:41 am chick games and their rhetorics 19 in his later writings, sutton-smith included his studies of games of strategy coauthored with roberts under “play as rational power” (sutton-smith 1997:82). in tic-tac-toe, chess, or go, for example, each player assesses and anticipates the moves of the other with the winners doing so better than the losers. in a semi real-world context, military exercises, or “war games,” are at least as much about strategy as physical force. however, while sutton-smith (1997) allowed that research on play, including games, could involve more than one of the seven rhetorics, he did not delve deeply into the ways in which games of strategy relate to progress except as indicated in the quote above regarding children’s exposure to trickery, deception, and foul play. but learning about the unsavory aspects of life must be a form of progress lest one be constantly duped by others throughout life. moreover, as roberts and i showed in a 1986 study of the play of pool in western pennsylvania barrooms, even in a game that would be classified as one of physical skill in the roberts et al. (1959) scheme, the importance of strategy increases as expertise increases (chick and roberts 1986). similarly, roberts often claimed that players who treated poker as a game of chance were doomed when facing others who regarded it as a game of strategy. so, the nature of games themselves changes for players as their expertise increases. learning about strategy and how to use it certainly seems to be adaptive even if it may not fit our everyday notion of progress being something positive and good. finally, the studies of games of chance by roberts and sutton-smith (1962; 1966) fall squarely within the rhetoric of fate although, interestingly, he cites neither in his chapter on the rhetoric of fate in the ambiguity of play. this is a curious omission, particularly since he and roberts derived the notion of player styles that include both fortunist and failure in these papers. to a significant extent this may be because sutton-smith distanced himself from his cross-cultural studies of games in the 1960s with roberts. in part, he understood that “the correlational nature of these power findings makes the meaning of the empirical relationships discovered quite uncertain” (sutton-smith 1997:82–83). moreover, he recognized that “the widespread and easy diffusion of all kinds of games in modern life strongly suggest that additional principles may be required to understand the ways in which games as models come into being” (1997:82). this latter observation is well known to cross-cultural researchers, particularly experts such as roberts, as “galton’s problem.” in 1889, edward tylor presented a paper to the royal anthropological institute of great britain and ireland wherein he correlated data on forms of marriage and descent for 350 societies from the ethnographic literature. he interpreted the correlations as indicators of an evolutionary sequence. the statistician, sir francis galton, who was in the audience, disagreed by pointing out that the correlations could be due to diffusion among societies or common descent rather than independent development. while this might reasonably be thought of as a problem for tylor, it has come to be known as galton’s problem (stocking 1968:175). there are other difficulties with cross-cultural comparative research. the validity of the initial ethnographic descriptions must always be a concern as should both the validity and reliability of the codes developed from them. missing data, which is very common in such research, is also a major problem. fortunately, cfr_2015_r.indb 19 11/22/15 10:41 am games and their rhetorics chick 20 galton’s problem and the problem of missing data have recently been addressed, if perhaps not absolutely solved, in a series of publications by dow and eff (2009) and others by incorporating autocorrelation routines in multiple regression analysis to address the former and multiple imputation of missing data for the latter. while these techniques have not yet been used in an effort to replicate the studies by roberts and sutton-smith from the 1960s, doing so seems like a worthy task. updated ratings for both child training variables and games are coded for the standard cross-cultural sample (sccs) (murdock and white 1969) and the doweff software for conducting regression analyses of sccs data is readily available. cross-cultural comparative research has the great advantage of being inexpensive to do. many universities around the world have access to the electronic human relations area files (ehraf), the cross-cultural database whose precursor roberts and sutton-smith used in several of their studies and which has an excellent interface for keyword and other kinds of searches that greatly aid coding. this makes cross-cultural studies excellent vehicles for the initial testing of hypotheses. and, as indicated earlier in this essay, their cross-cultural studies led roberts and sutton-smith to attempt to reproduce their findings in subsystem replications. i believe that sutton-smith’s great and enduring contribution is not that he once-and-for-all defined play or that he determined its origin, what it is good for, and so on. instead, he is the theorist most responsible for showing that how we think about play, and therefore the kinds of data we collect and the sorts of theories we produce, is heavily influenced by our presuppositions, values, and culture. he summarized this well in the following quote: the point of view taken in this work, however, is that all of the rhetorics, whether modern or ancient, are based on or are simulacra of play forms, and all should be taken into account in any truly empirical examination of the character and functioning of play. (sutton-smith 1997:53) but, what of the series of studies that sutton-smith produced in collaboration with roberts in the 1960s? should they be disregarded, in terms of their empirical results, and simply be included as examples of the rhetorics from which they emerged? i, for one, think, as sutton-smith taught us, that understanding the theoretical context that gives birth to particular projects is of critical importance. as sutton-smith (1997) noted, this is similar to kuhn’s (1970) observation that science is not as objective or cumulative as commonly believed. indeed, one could think of sutton-smith’s “rhetorics” as quite similar to kuhn’s “paradigms.” but i also think that the roberts and sutton-smith studies of the 1960s can have a place in current thinking about play. their field experimental studies of tic-tac-toe can still stand on their own and other research suggests that the trichotomization of power styles into potent, strategist, fortunist, along with combined forms, has predictive validity in terms of behavior in winning/losing at tennis (widmeyer and loy 1989), soccer (roberts and luxbacher 1982) and in automobile driving patterns (roberts, thompson, and sutton-smith 1966). their cross-cultural studies cfr_2015_r.indb 20 11/22/15 10:41 am chick games and their rhetorics 21 relating game types to child socialization variables could now be done with much greater confidence in the results. more recent cross-cultural research lends support to the physical skill-chance-strategy evolutionary sequence of game development (chick 1998). revisiting these studies seems warranted particularly when guided by knowledge and understanding of the rhetorics described by sutton-smith. conclusion: brian sutton-smith and the character of play the english word “play” has multiple meanings and is also commonly used as different forms of speech. these include as a noun (e.g., going to a play by shakespeare, children’s play, a play on words), a verb (the children play hide-andseek, the setting sunlight played over the surface of the lake), an adjective (a play house), and various derivatives of these (e.g., gerunds, participles). sutton-smith’s early goal was to make some sort of sense of all of this. what is play? what is its origin? how did it evolve? what is it good for? i believe that he addressed these questions relatively directly in his early work on games but paused in his quest later in his career in order to look instead at how play has been theorized over the years. in his magnum opus, the ambiguity of play, sutton-smith (1997) sought “to understand the general character of play theory” (12), as noted above, rather than the character of play itself, largely because of the ambiguity of play as well as the ambiguities in play theories. both missions have merit but sutton-smith was surely correct in demonstrating that, without knowing where we have been, it is difficult to know where we are going. his work has lit the path. it now seems reasonable to retrace some of his early steps along it. in 1992, i delivered my presidential address to the association for the study of play (tasp), a group that sutton-smith, along with roberts and others, helped to establish in 1974. my title was “play as science and the science of play” and, in the presentation, i stated scientists play with ideas, or at least they ought to, and children learn though play, though they do not always learn what we want them to. … in my career to date i have had the opportunity to work with a number of bright and creative individuals and they all seem to share a player’s outlook on the world. among my colleagues, john m. roberts and brian sutton-smith are the two most outstanding scholars with whom i have had the good fortune to work and to play. each, a consummate player in his own way, brought or, in brian’s case, continues to bring that worldview to their research. while my sample of two is small (even by interpretive standards), i judge that scientists must be players and, in their own way, children at play are scientists. (chick 1993:99) sutton-smith was one of the fortunate individuals who manage to retain a childlike curiosity as well as a playful personality well into old age. because of this, he was able, based on his youth in new zealand, his research as an adult, and his playful disposition, to examine the phenomenon of play as both an insider and cfr_2015_r.indb 21 11/22/15 10:41 am games and their rhetorics chick 22 an external observer, or from emic and etic perspectives. it is difficult to imagine how a play theorist, researcher, and advocate could find himself in a better circumstance. notes 1. the fels research institute was founded in 1929 with support from the fels fund of philadelphia. it housed a complex project known as the fels longitudinal study which was devoted to research on the physical and psychological growth and maturation of children. psychological data were no longer collected after 1974 and, in 1977, the study became a part of wright state university’s school of medicine (wright state university 2015). works cited bacon, margaret k., herbert barry iii, and irvin l. child. 1955. cross-cultural ratings of certain socialization practices. unpublished manuscript. bohannon, john. 2015. “many psychological papers fail replication test.” science 349 (6251):910–11. brown, donald e. 1991. human universals. philadelphia, pa: temple university press. chick, garry. 1993. “play as science and the science of play.” play theory & research 1:89–101. ________. 1998. “games in culture revisited: a replication and extension of roberts, arth, and bush (1959).” cross-cultural research 32:185–206. ________, ed. 1991. “play & culture: studies in honor of brian sutton-smith.” play & culture 4 (2, 3, and 4). chick, garry, and john m. roberts. 1986. “strategy and competence: changing determinants of game outcomes.” in the many faces of play, edited by kendall blanchard, 255–64. champaign, il: human kinetics publishers, inc. child, irvin l., storn, thomas, and veroff, joseph. 1958. “achievement themes in folk tales related to socialization practice.” in motives in fantasy, action, and society, edited by john w. atkinson, 479–92. princeton, nj: van nostrand. cooper, john m. 1949. “a cross-cultural survey of south american indian tribes: games and gambling.” bureau of american ethnology bulletin 143:503–24. culin, stuart. 1891. “street games of boys in brooklyn, ny.” journal of american folklore 4 (14):221–37. ________. 1895. korean games: with notes on the corresponding games of china and japan. philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press. ________. 1899. “hawaiian games.” american anthropologist 1:201–47. ________. 1903. “american indian games.” american anthropologist 5:58–64. ________. 1975 [1907]. games of the north american indians. vol. 24. north chelmsford, ma: courier corporation. cfr_2015_r.indb 22 11/22/15 10:41 am chick games and their rhetorics 23 dow, malcolm m., and e. anthon eff. 2009. “cultural trait transmission and missing data as sources of bias in cross-cultural research: explanations of polygyny re-examined.” cross-cultural research 43:134–51. dunlap, helen l. 1951. “games, sports, and other vigorous recreational activities and their function in samoan culture.” research quarterly 22:298–311. firth, raymond. 1930. “a dart match in tikopia: a study in the sociology of primitive sport.” oceania 1:64–96. heron, alastair, and harry c. triandis, eds. 1981. handbook of cross-cultural psychology, vol. 4: developmental psychology. boston, ma: allyn and bacon. kuhn, thomas s. 1970. the structure of scientific revolutions. chicago, il: university of chicago press. lueschen, gunther, ed. 1970. the cross-cultural analysis of sport and games. champaign, il: stipes publishing company. meckley, alice m. 2015. “a student’s guide for understanding play through the theories of brian sutton-smith.” in the handbook of the study of play, vol. 2, edited by james e. johnson, scott g. eberle, thomas s. hendricks, and david kuschner, 393–405. lanham, md: rowman and littlefield. morgan, lewis h. 1851. league of the iroquois. secaucus, nj: citadel press. murdock, george p. 1945. “the common denominator of culture.” in the science of man in the world crisis, edited by ralph linton, 123–42. new york: columbia university press. pellegrini, anthony d., ed. 1995. the future of play theory: a multidisciplinary inquiry into the contributions of brian sutton-smith. albany, ny: suny press. raum, otto f. 1953. “the rolling target (hoop-and-pole) game in africa.” african studies 12:104–21. roberts, john m., malcolm j. arth, and robert r. bush. 1959. “games in culture.” american anthropologist 61:597–605. roberts, john m., and herbert barry iii. 1976. “inculcated traits and game-type combinations: a cross-cultural view.” in the humanistic and mental health aspects of sport, exercise, and recreation, edited by timothy t. craig, 5–11. chicago, il: american medical association. roberts, john m., hans hoffmann, and brian sutton-smith. 1965. “pattern and competence: a consideration of tick tack toe.” el palacio 72 (2):27–41. roberts, john m., and joseph a. luxbacher. 1982. “offensive and defensive perspectives in soccer.” in the paradoxes of play, edited by j. w. loy, 225– 38. west point, ny: leisure press. roberts, john m., and brian sutton-smith. 1962. “child training and game involvement.” ethnology 1:166–85. ________. 1966. “cross-cultural correlates of games of chance.” behavior science notes 1:131–44. roberts, john m., brian sutton-smith, and adam kendon. 1963. “strategy in games and folk tales.” journal of social psychology 61:185–99. roberts, john m., wayne thompson, and brian sutton-smith. 1966. “expressive self-testing in driving.” human organization 25:54–63. cfr_2015_r.indb 23 11/22/15 10:41 am games and their rhetorics chick 24 schmidt, stefan. 2009. “shall we really do it again? the powerful concept of replication is neglected in the social sciences.” review of general psychology 13:90–100. stocking jr., george w. 1968. “edward burnett tylor.” in international encyclopedia of the social sciences, edited by david l. sills and robert k. merton, 170–77. new york: macmillan. stumpf, florence, and fredrick w. cozens. 1947. “some aspects of the role of games, sports, and recreational activities in the culture of modern primitive peoples: the new zealand maori.” research quarterly 18:198–218. ________. 1949. “some aspects of the role of games, sports, and recreational activities in the culture of modern primitive peoples: the fijians.” research quarterly 20:2–20. sutton-smith, brian. 1951a. “the meeting of maori and european cultures and its effects upon the unorganized games of maori children.” journal of the polynesian society 60 (2/3):93–107. ________. 1951b. “new zealand variants of the game—’buck buck’.” folklore 62:329–33. ________. 1953a. “traditional games of new zealand children.” folklore 64:411– 23. ________. 1953b. “marbles are in: some observations on the ‘seasonal’ nature of children’s games in new zealand.” western folklore 12 (3):186–93. ________. 1959. the games of new zealand children. berkeley: university of california press. ________. 1968. “games—play—daydreams.” quest 10 (1):47–58. ________. 1971. “the expressive profile.” journal of american folklore 84:80–92. ________. 1973. child psychology. new york: appleton-century croft. ________. 1989. “games as models of power.” in the content of culture: constants and variants: studies in honor of john m. roberts, edited by ralph bolton, 3–18. new haven, ct: human relations area files. ________. 1993a. “suggested rhetorics in adult play theories.” journal of play theory & research 1:102–16. ________. 1993b. “play rhetorics and toy rhetorics.” journal of play theory & research 1:239–50. ________. 1995. “conclusion: the persuasive rhetorics of play.” in the future of play theory: a multidisciplinary inquiry into the contributions of brian sutton-smith, edited by anthony d. pellegrini, 275–95. albany, ny: suny press. ________. 1997. the ambiguity of play. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. ________. 2008. “play theory: a personal journal and new thoughts.” american journal of play 1:80–123. sutton-smith, brian, and, diana kelly-byrne. 1984. “the idealization of play.” in play in animals and humans, edited by peter k. smith, 305–21. london: basil blackwell. sutton-smith, brian, john m. roberts, and robert m. kozelka. 1963. “game involvement in adults.” journal of social psychology 60:15–30. cfr_2015_r.indb 24 11/22/15 10:41 am chick games and their rhetorics 25 sutton-smith, brian, and john m. roberts. 1964. “rubrics of competitive behavior.” journal of genetic psychology 105:13–37. ________. 1967. “studies of an elementary game of strategy.” genetic psychology monographs 75:3–42. ________. 1970. “the cross-cultural and psychological study of games.” in the cross-cultural analysis of sport and games, edited by gunther lueschen, 100–8. champaign, il: stipes publishing company. ________. 1981. “play, games, and sports.” in handbook of cross-cultural psychology, vol. 4: developmental psychology, edited by alastair heron and harry c. triandis, 425–71. boston: allyn and bacon, inc. sutton-smith, brian, and benjamin g rosenberg. 1970. the sibling. oxford, u.k.: holt, rinehart, and winston. ________. 1961. “sixty years of historical change in the game preferences of american children.” journal of american folklore 74 (291):17–46. textor, robert b. 1967. a cross-cultural summary. new haven, ct: human relations area files. tylor, edward b. 1879. “on the game of patolli in ancient mexico, and its probably asiatic origin.” journal of the anthropological institute of great britain and ireland 8:116–31. widmeyer, w. neil, and john w. loy. 1989. “dynamic duos: an analysis of the relationship between group composition and group performance in women’s doubles tennis teams.” in the content of culture: constants and variants: studies in honor of john m. roberts, edited by ralph bolton, 77–99. new haven, ct: human relations area files. wright state university, boonshoft school of medicine 2015. “fels longitudinal study history.” https://medicine.wright.edu/lifespan-health-research-center/ fels-longitudinal-study/history. accessed 6 september 2015. cfr_2015_r.indb 25 11/22/15 10:41 am cfr_2015_part2_part2 cfr_2015_part3 cfr_2015_part4 cfr_2015_part5 cfr_2015_part6 pages from cfr_2015_part7 53 boise ikastola: boise basque language immersion preschool jacqueline thursby defining the boise basques it is said that the first basques to reach the western hemisphere were early cod fishermen. following them was the fleet of christopher columbus, whose ships had been built in northern spain by basques, and there were basque sailors in his fleet. some remained in south america and their descendants still flourish there, mostly in argentina and uruguay. at the time of the california gold rush, many of the basques who ran cattle and sheep in the pampas region of south america migrated to the united states. they were not made to feel welcome in the gold rush camps, because they were looked on as sojourners rather than american citizens. in order to survive, they slowly took over what had traditionally been the work of the native americans: namely, the sheep herding industry. during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, many basques, young men and women, migrated to the united states from the basque country in northern spain and the basque region in southern france. economic need forced vast southern european migration at that time because of little hope for the future. by the turn of the century, large sheep companies had been created in the american west, located mostly in the states of california, nevada, wyoming, oregon, and idaho. the companies were often owned or tended by reliable and competitive basque sheepherders. invitations were extended to brothers, uncles, nephews, and friends to join and work with the herders in the american west. a network of one hundred twenty-one basque hotels sprung up throughout the west, and young women were invited to come from the old country to work in the hotels. those gathering places were sometimes called “marriage mills,” because many of the young basques met their life-partners there. boise was one of the early settling places for the basque people. there were hotels where the language was spoken, familiar foods were served, and familiar music, games, and dances were practiced. the language is a major marker in the basque tradition. it cannot be definitively traced to any other language. there is an old joke told again and again to explain why the basques are so good. it seems the devil decided to corrupt the pure people of the basque region. try as he might, he could not learn the difficult language. he learned “yes bi” and “ no es,” but that was all. consequently, because he couldn’t tempt the basques in their own language, he left and they remained very, very good people – even to this day. right here on grove street, there is an old basque hotel that has been lovingly restored and donated to the basque community of boise. maintaining cultural identity there are many people in the united states of basque heritage, and the basques are recorded as a group separate from the spanish or french in the united states boise ikastola thursby 54 census. because of the unique language, cultural mores, and rich traditions of the old country, the american basques work hard to blend and syncretize their basque heritage and their american national identity, and that often begins with the young children. the national american basque association, called nabo, has chapters in many states throughout the country, including new york and florida, and nabo provides club interaction, language training, and other activities for adults. for children, the basque museum and cultural center sponsors summer euskara immersion camps, and nabo supports other opportunities for basque language training, dance and music lessons, arts and crafts, and a variety of other basque cultural experiences from festivals to study abroad programs (through the university of nevada at reno and boise state university) to trips and tours of the old country. history, purpose, and goals of the basque ikastola founded in 1998, boiseko ikastola is a preschool for children to learn to understand and speak basque. housed at st. paul’s catholic church on the boise state university campus, it introduces young children to basque and not only aids in their comprehension of the basque language, but also helps with developing other language skills. twenty-five years ago the basque government was one of the first to recognize the need to establish a curriculum especially designed for preschool aged children. the program, called the urtxintxa project, has been replicated by other european countries. the ikastola uses this same curriculum and has proven very successful for children continuing on at both private and public kindergartens. there are two full-time instructors with early childhood development degrees. language and literacy children learn the basque language through thematic units and interaction with teachers, peers, music and print. other opportunities for conversation include dramatic play, story time, circle time and puppet shows. the ikastola’s print-rich literacy environment includes some of the following: books in basque and english, books made by individual children, magazines and newspapers appropriate for young children, calendars, bulletin boards, alphabet charts, labels on materials, supplies, equipment, lists of all kinds, children’s names displayed, child dictation or writing and drawings displayed. when the children want to write, copy or draw, the “tools” are always available. science open-ended questions by the teacher help the children learn how to question, how to be thinkers. hands-on activities include using simple machines, sensory table play, plant and animal life, and cooking activities. thursby boise ikastola 55 math the children learn to print and work with numbers. they compare, sort, classify, and organize objects. the concepts of time and seasons are introduced, and the children learn the days of the week and months of the year. clocks and calendars are used to teach time. social studies learning about the “world around us” is the focus of this curriculum area. field trips and studies of occupations are included. art exploratory, sensory art activities help the child experience a variety of media. paints, chalk, pencils, crayons, markers, glue and play dough (made by the children) are available in a “free choice” area for the children to use as they wish. large and small motor skills movement activities including dance, running, balancing, and sports are just part of the large motor program. from using scissors to completing small puzzles, children are continually offered opportunities to develop their smaller muscles. field trips students enjoy a variety of field trips that add to the rich learning experience. common trips are to the basque museum and cultural center, fronton, edwards greenhouses, the pumpkin patch, zoo, and the boise public library. dramatic play dramatic play is one of the most valuable forms of play for children. the preschool gives children many opportunities to play and the toys and tools with which to learn. play provides opportunities for exploration, manipulation, and experimentation that are vital for a child to construct knowledge. through immediate feedback of peers, children refine their learning and restructure concepts. guidelines because it is a non-profit center, a portion of the annual budget is generated through fund raising activities and events. boiseko ikastola requires a parent participation activity from each student’s family. this parent participation activity program is designed to keep students safer, and to keep parents involved in their boise ikastola thursby 56 children’s learning environment. under the auspices of the urtzintza project, the following guidelines (condensed here for time purposes) are to be followed: confidence, physical abilities, social and communicative skills. autonomy and shared social development. reinforce human values and self-respect. basque country. thus, the contents of the lessons are directed to develop among the children knowledge of the basque language, culture, customs, and sentiment all over the eight territories of the country in and out of europe. the project includes the study of traditional songs, poetry, art, literature, theatre, mythology, and rural sports as a way to widen their love and respect for the basque language and culture. the program heightens the respect, use and knowledge of the basque language. for developing within the students the respect, admiration, and care for the rest of the nations, cultures, languages, and peoples all over the world. purpose and linguistic performance for many adult basque americans or american basques, learning the language of the old country is a frustrating dream. the unique language itself is non indo-european, and it is difficult to learn because the vocabulary is not rooted in latin or greek, the common origin languages of the western world. because the basque language is dialectical and can vary significantly from village to village, basque scholars created a consensus language called batua, which is now taught both in the old country and in the united states. there are basque language classes in various american cities including boise, reno, fresno, san francisco, and new york. in the basque country, much of the dominant language is spanish. the primary reason for the rise in early second-language acquisition in the basque country is a result of studies conducted there concerning monolingual and bilingual presence thursby boise ikastola 57 in families in various regions of the country. basque language scholar maria josé ezeizabarrena reported that “research into early language acquisition has lead many researchers to conclude that bilinguals with ‘sufficient “ input behave like monolinguals” (2007, 1). in other words, in homes where basque is the dominant language, children are monolingual before the age of three or four. older children become more and more bilingual as they pass through the educational system. production data of basque vocabulary, verb morphology, case morphology, and spanish-basque mixed utterances have shown that monolingual and balanced bilingual children follow a very similar developmental pattern in linguistic production. the value of second language acquisition in early childhood is particularly significant because it can enhance cross-cultural understanding, and it fosters an active interest in learning one’s own cultural knowledge and maintenance. in the united states, as children progress through the elementary grades, studies suggest that they retain the ability to form certain sounds of the language learned in early childhood even though they may not remember all of the vocabulary. this ability to enunciate the sounds correctly will serve as an aid in their mastering the language in their later years should they return to the study. through shared lore, songs, expressions, games, and belief practices, children in these early second language acquisition programs learn to understand and adapt to new situations. the ikastola enculturates children into their own ancient heritage as well as the language and culture of the united states, their homeland. w. k. mcneil, in his introduction to simon bronner’s 1988 edition of american children’s folklore, referred to the research of william wells newell as saying: “by this means he also demonstrated that games, songs, and rhymes moved across linguistic and geographic barriers just as easily as folktales and legends” (1988, 11). though newell feared that traditional lore was waning, time has proven differently, and many scholars have demonstrated that children’s lore continues over time and space. referring to the playful sound sequences in dr. seuss’s sleep book (1962), such as “up at herk-heimer falls, where the great river rushes and crashes down crags and in great gargling gushes,” a scholar of children’s language and learning, judith wells lindfors, stated, “i believe that it is the unexpected in the language of these books that is most engaging to the child” (1987, 73). the books i observed at the boise ikastola, written in basque, carry the same kind of language play presented in stories familiar to american children. the three pigs, for instance, called hiru txerrikumeak, cleverly tells the old tale and is profusely illustrated with the expected visual images: first a house of straw, then a house of sticks, followed by a house of bricks, and then what appears to be a foiled (but still living) picture of a wolf with a scalded foot. another book tells the story of the peculiar duckling, rather than the ugly duckling. as these changes are pointed out, the different tellings of the tales introduce the children not only to subtle differences in story, but also subtle and sometimes not subtle differences in the expressed culture of varied people. boise ikastola thursby 58 second language acquisition in a stanford doctoral dissertation, l. w. fillmore posed a question and offered a succinct answer: “what is it that second-language learners must learn? after intensively observing during an entire school year five spanish monolingual children (ages five to seven) acquiring english as their second language, one researcher summed up the second-language learner’s task this way. the learner must figure out how the sound system of the new language is organized, how units of meaning are organized into words, by what principles these words are put together to form sentences, how these sentences can be used appropriately in given settings, and in what ways meanings can be conveyed in the new language and culture (1976, 634). using the new language as it is learned, “it is fascinating to watch children of all ages in dramatic play as they assume high-status roles and role play interactions in various status relationships. they play with various language styles, deliberately changing style when they are queen or subject, teacher or pupil, boss or employee, parent or child. such play is an important support for the children’s growing ability to express and to interpret language expressions of role relationships, one of the many reasons that sociodrama should be an ever-present opportunity in every elementary and preschool classroom” (lindfors 1987, 377). children possess an innate curiosity and actively pursue their urge to find out about the world, and school is a good place to do it. in an interesting study about questions asked by pre-school children with the categories being curiosity, procedural, and social-interactional, researchers found that “of the 159 preschoolkindergarten questions analyzed, approximately 45 percent (almost half) were social in nature, approximately 33 percent (one-third) were curiosity questions, and approximately 23 percent (less than one-fourth) were procedural” (lindfors 1987, 288). lindfors continued her discussion with examples of typical pre-school/ kindergarten questions demonstrating the various categories of the questions under consideration. a curiosity question addressed to an adult observer in the classroom was: “is god in cookies?” a procedural question asked of the teacher during an art lesson was, “do i have to write my name up here?” and a socialinteractional question, spoken after an argument between children at an art gable was, “i forgive you, jenny. do you forgive me?” (lindfors 1987, 288-89). questions help children build a rich theory of the world, and in a focused school like the boise ikastola, curiosity, play, and learning are constantly fed. conclusion october 2008 marked ten years since the boiseko ikastola opened its doors in boise, idaho. on may 15, 2008, ikastola families (past and present), teachers and supporters gathered to commemorate this milestone. more than 130 people came to the basque block to enjoy lively music, good food, entertaining games, and precious memories. as in the japanese foreign language in elementary school (fles) programs in the united states, islamic primary schools for teaching arabic in order for the children to study the q’uran, jewish early hebrew training, and thursby boise ikastola 59 even the folkloric and play activities taught to the yupik eskimo children, like carving stories in mud with a knife, basque people are sensitive to the realities of lost cultures and languages. professor dan dewey, an early childhood linguistic scholar at brigham young university, stated that early second language acquisition has many benefits. he listed increased brain development and capacity, even without mastery; greater use of the left and particularly the right brain; a more sensitive cultural awareness; increased ability to pronounce sounds in language; increased vocabulary; and an early knowledge of the subtleties of language (dewey 2008). in the article “narrative practices and the social construction of self in childhood,” the authors state: “although we believe that personal storytelling plays an important role in the social construction of self throughout the life span, we are especially interested in the beginnings of this process. there is evidence that conversational stories of personal experience are available early in life to children from a variety of cultural backgrounds. … the process of self-construction may be especially visible in early childhood, when it first gets under way. bruner (1986) has suggested that stories are one of the first cultural constraints on the nature of selfhood” (miller, potts, fung, hoogstra, mintz 1990, 263). wouldn’t it be fascinating to sit in on a conversation among these budding bilingual children and see for ourselves how they are or are not constructing themselves with a strong american basque identity? works cited bruner, jerome. 1986. actual minds, possible worlds. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. dewey, dan. 2008. personal interview. november. provo, utah. ezeizabarrena, maria josé. 2008. “the linguistic performance of early bilingual speakers of basque compared to monolinguals.” paper presented at the economic and social research council (esrc) centre for research on bilingualism. bangor, north wales, uk, 28 april. fillmore, l. w. 1976. the second time around: cognitive and social strategies in second language acquisition. doctoral dissertation. stanford university, stanford, california. lindfors, judith wells. 1987. children’s language and learning. 2nd edition. englewood cliffs, new jersey: prentice-hall, inc. mcneil, w. k. 1988. introduction. in american children’s folklore, ed. simon j. bronner, 11-23. little rock: august house publishers. miller, peggy j., randolf potts, heide fung, lisa hoogstra, and judy mintz. 1990. “narrative practices and the social construction of self in childhood.” american ethnologist. vol. 17, no. 2 (may) 292-311. seuss, dr. 1962. dr. seuss’s sleep book. new york: random house. cfr_2010_part17 cfr_2010_part18 pages from cfr_2010_part19 31 playing with the sacred: lds children’s games for boredom and entertainment jared s rife on any sunday throughout the united states mormon (or church of jesus christ of latter-day saints, referred to hereafter as lds) children in formal church meetings usually associated with somber devotion play games not out of a spirit of rebellion but with the social sanction, even encouragement, of the church. although game playing in church is not unique to lds culture, mormons associate the games with their distinctive worship settings. often outside of their awareness, but possibly explaining the use of the play frame within the larger context of the church service, the containment of social paradoxes within the games sanctioned by the local group can serve to undermine the sacredness of faith and devotion in lds youth. this paper will analyze the paradoxes of play enacted within the sacred setting of lds sacrament meetings, and use theories of “play framing” developed by gregory bateson and elaborated by erving goffman, jay mechling, and simon bronner to interpret the messages about mormon cultural belief embedded within games performed in church. a primary setting for game playing is during the sacrament meeting, typically the first hour of a three hour block that constitutes the weekly congregational meeting of the lds church. it is a time where members of the church partake of the emblematic blood and body jesus christ. part of the meeting ritual is the sacrament prayer where members will take upon themselves the name of christ, and recommit themselves to keeping his commandments and the covenant they made at baptism.1 during the service, members are introspective, evaluating their lives and over the previous week and preparing for the week to come. because of its sacred nature of personal worship many participants understand that this is the most intimate and personal ritual performed during the sunday meeting. the remainder of the meeting consists of the singing of hymns and listening to talks given by members of the congregation. it is a time when the outside world can be excluded, and the inner commitment and desire of each member can be laid bare and open as a form of worship. the sacrament meeting where the games are played is considered the main service on sunday. church members (both young and old) have the understanding that while the service is occurring, children and youth are to remain quiet and in the immediate area of the pew. this is out of respect for others in the service that are concentrating on the talks and singing the hymns typical of a sacrament service. an observer, however, might be surprised to find that it is common for children to occupy themselves with a variety of games during this reverent observance. these games range from simple tic-tac-toe and thumb wrestling, to a specific form of bingo that uses either common uttered phrases or individuals as squares to be crossed of en route to winning. the simplest form of the question that this paper will try to address is: why play games during such a sacred time? one answer to that question is a simple one. the games are meant to keep kids occupied and the playing with the sacred rife 32 games themselves have grown since the church placed emphasis upon collective family worship in the post-wwii baby boom. in their seminal work, saints of sage and saddle (1959), austin and alta fife noted that children were not encouraged to attend sacrament meetings, because church leaders wanted a more reverent worship service. in the 1960s this attitude began to soften. the toleration of children was altered completely in the early 1980s when the church moved to its current once-a-week three hour block opposed to what the fife’s observed where the various meetings and organizations of the church meet during the week as well as sunday.2 the physical setting and demographic makeup of a typical individual congregation are also relevant. they typical sacrament room is about 50’ wide and about 80’ long. the usual attendance is around 150 individuals ranging in age from new born to late eighties. there are single adults, families with different aged children, and older couples in the congregation. members of the lds church vary in class, race, region and background. it is not uncommon for wards (local units) and stakes (comprised of eight to fourteen wards) across the united states to have these distinctions apparent through simple observation. in one pew you could find a member from puerto rico, mexico, canada or california. in another pew you could have a surgeon, a prison guard, or a stay at home mom. typical lines of separation and distinction such as race, class, or ethnicity do not exclude games from being played by all the children within the ward, stake, or region. because of this, the extrapolation of this analysis can be applied broadly to the church in the united states.3 although as i will also discuss it does have some overlap into the rest of the non-lds culture, but mostly its interpretations pertain to members of the lds church. the physical setting is also relevant. the room where the games are played is called the chapel. the games are played in a padded wooden pew measuring 8´ long, 20˝ wide, and a height of 22˝ at the seat of the pew, and 34´ at the height of the back of the pew.4 all the pews face forward towards a raised platform and pulpit. the layout of the room is important because it reinforces the idea that there should exist community among the members, both old and young and that the focus of the congregation should be unified. the physical layout also suggests that the chapel and the sacrament service that takes place there encourage a formal and encouraged location for silence, individual contemplation, and communication that at times can be at odds with the children’s games. this emphasis further accentuates the questions raised about letting children play games. the collecting of through fieldwork, i tried to step outside my role as a lifelong member of the lds church, and become an ethnographer that was capable of analyzing the symbolic communication within the frameworks of play. i emphasized this outside observer role to examine the common games that so often are taken for granted as just part of the lds culture. methodologically i approached these games from the standpoint of seeing them as part of an ethnographic analysis. by personal observation, interviewing others, and by securing documents from folk archives, i was able to create a large pool of games from which to make comparisons and draw conclusions. after acquiring a large sample of games certain patterns emerged. aside from inventorying rife playing with the sacred 33 and trying to classify my findings, i wanted to situate the games within the broader lds culture. these games were only played during sacrament meeting and not at other times because of different activates that require more focused participation from the children and youth. the classifications assigned to the different categories are ones that i constructed, and make the classifications more universally understood by a non-lds reader. a lds member would not label or even categorize these games in this way aside from calling them “games,” “church games,” or “sacrament games.” the first was that the games themselves could be divided into three categories. the first was “quiet” games, so labeled because they make no noise when played and thus are not distracting to nearby worshipers. these games are intended to be silent in their nature, with the hope among other things is that they will not be a distraction to other members around the child. for the child these quiet games also have a purpose in that they teach and train the child how they should act but also how they can find success in their worship. the second was games for fun.5 in his work on mormon recreation theory, rex a. skidmore claimed that fun and happiness is the attitude that most lds members feel towards their church.6 although broad in its definition this large group of games is intended for the player’s amusement and to separate and insulate them figure 1. mormon children playing quiet games. photograph by jared s. rife. playing with the sacred rife 34 from the service around them. unlike the quiet games, this category can distract others by participants with noise, but are still relatively quiet. these games are also the ones most likely to involve other children, who may also be in on the humor, jokes, and other forms of social capital shared among children. the amusement can come from the player’s personal sense of humor, or at the expense of others. the third and final category of games is that of games for learning. within the lds culture exists a strong emphasis placed on all types of learning.7 the emphasis on acquiring knowledge both temporal and spiritual. also a drive to receive postsecondary education either in the form of technical training or college degree.8 with this strong emphasis, games that require learning, creativity, or other commonly held beliefs about intelligence and knowledge are tolerated as they serve a larger goal of learning as a lifetime pursuit. another level of analysis that can further shed understanding on the games played is a connection of play framing to age. there are three divisions: children, youth, and teenage. the category of children encompasses the ages of 6 months to eight years. lds theology teaches that children are incapable of sin9 until they reach the age of eight, or the age of accountability. once a child turns eight they can be baptized and become full fledged members of the church. the type of games most played by this demographic is quiet games. the second category of age is that of youth and is from age eight to fourteen. after baptism at eight, a child will continue to be considered a child until they graduate from the primary, the organization in the church is responsible for teaching children in the remaining two hours of the sunday worship block. at the age of 12, children leave primary. the boys enter the young men’s program, and the girls enter the young women’s program. this age group will still play quiet games, but there is more of an emphasis placed upon learning and instructional games. after the initial two years of participation in the young men and young women’s programs at the age of fourteen they move into the third and final category of being teenagers. these moves also correspond with the graduation from a junior high school to a senior high school where the child can now consider themselves closer to adulthood. here they have (or so leaders hope) circumnavigated the early years of teenage awkwardness and are progressing toward adulthood. this final stage may end around eighteen or nineteen when the teenager either leaves for college or for males in the lds church leave to serve a mission two year full time mission. although instances where these games continue on into college their frequency decreases. in this final age group is where most of the games that involve humor are located, although there are still games of learning, it is assumed that by this stage most participants have a grasp on basic beliefs. these three categories allow the division of games and their application to be better understood and dissected within the social expectations of lds culture. identification and annotation of evidence although the games display variation, overall the same types of games are played in different parts of the country. using the categories outlined above, the children’s games come in the form of three different types. the first is quiet books. quiet rife playing with the sacred 35 books come in all shapes and sizes, but their purpose is the same: they keep children quiet through tactile interaction. quiet books are usually handmade, often of felt-like cloth, and each page has an activity that spurs the young participant to action. on one page there could be the face of a young girl, with blond hair made from yarn. the directions on the page would tell the reader to braid the young girl’s hair. another page could have a coat with a zipper that can be zipped up and down. the pages also contain buttons, clasps, or other modules that require the use and energy of hands. some pages have lds content. sometimes the page could ask the young reader to interact with jesus, or another scriptural character. one example located had been used for over thirty years by one family that has been passed down from one generation to the next. this quiet book included an oxen drawn pioneer wagon, lehi (a prophet from the book of mormon) holding an artifact and space for the child to place letters on the page, as well as a mormon match game where children would put together two halves of easily recognizable people or items found in the sacrament meeting itself. other times it could be to give service or aid to a fictional charter in need of accomplishing a specific task.10 the second general activity was felt dolls. these can be homemade or commercially produced. the church i observed and others i have visited have high-wear thread count material on pews, and therefore the backs of the pews make excellent felt boards for these types of games. generally these felt dolls are directed towards young girls, but boys often will play with them too. there are several different types of dolls. some are from famous nursery rhymes and folk tales like the three little pigs, or hansel and gretel. other examples are scenes of land animals in the jungle, forest, or underwater. also more traditional dolls that require clothing to be placed upon them. one set contained girls from european countries and the traditional folk dress was provided for their attire. there exist lds versions of felt dolls that will use dressing up of small children in a variety of outfits. another variation found with felt dolls is homemade and commercially produced scriptural scenes, where children are encouraged to pretend play and act out scenes from the lives of prophets, wars, and other sacred moments found in the lds canon. imagination games require the use of toys. perhaps a small car, action figure, or even lds figurines are used. usually the use of the imagination does not allow for group or multiple participant games to occur but there are occasions when two children from different pews will play together using their imagination. they might recreate something from a television show or movie. other times they might recreate a scriptural science from the bible or book of mormon, and sometimes it is merely as simple as two cars chasing each other on an imagined road. usually the stipulation by the parent placed upon this collective play is that it needs to be done out of the line of sight of those around the children. that means it either has to happen in the space under the pews or it is not able to happen at all. this is perhaps the broadest and non-lds centered game because it allows children to play outside lds centered games. their acceptance in sacrament meeting lends credence to the theory about tolerance for the sacred when small children under the age of eight, that are seen as incapable of sinning, are involved. playing with the sacred rife 36 the next category of games is that of youth games. these games are more learning centered, and unlike the children’s games which intend to occupy and keep the participant quiet and isolated, these games involve others. the first one that is very popular and is not particular to lds culture is the dot game. two people play the game and it is played by first making dots, in neat lines and columns on a blank piece of paper. then whichever of the two is gong first has the chance to connect two of the dots with a straight line. it is then the other youth’s turn to connect two dots with a straight line. the players will alternate turns, until all four sides form a box. the player who forms the box then claims the box by placing their initial or initials in the box and is awarded an extra turn. the back-and-forth nature of the game, with its demand for forethought and stratagem, illustrate a competitive spirit not observed by the youth’s younger counterparts. the next group of games played by youth is puzzles. puzzles generally as a genre are not unique to lds culture, but the types of puzzles that the youth are playing are different. these puzzles are usually of scriptural heroes or particular moments of devotion found in the cannon of scripture. there are two types of puzzles. the first is one is more traditional. it requires that the youth print out and cut up a puzzle. the second is more unusual. it is not uncommon for members of a ward to bring iphones, ipads, and nooks and use them during the three hour church block. this use of technology is aided by most ward buildings having wifi, and these buildings have similar passcodes. the lds church has invested a lot of time and energy in making many of their services available via the internet. the church has made accessible scriptures, talks, lesson manuals, directories, and most importantly for this discussion, puzzles that can be played by small children. these puzzles are much like the paper ones that can be printed and cut out, but do not require the effort to craft them. i will discuss more about the value of both of these formats later in the paper. the final game that many youth play is that of hymnal chase. the lds church has a strong emphasis on singing, music, and performance. it most evident in the formation of the mormon tabernacle choir, that formed and has been performing ever since 1847, a month after the first wave of pioneers entered the salt lake valley. in fact songs are viewed as a form of prayer in the doctrine & covenants.11 with a special connection between prayer and adoration, , one might expect the hymnal to also be treated with care. yet games played with the hymnal. the one game played by this age group is called hymnal hunt. this is where using the meter number associated with a hymn would, like a treasure map, would be circled and would lead to the page of another hymn. on this page the meter would be circled and that would lead to another page until the ultimate message was found. for example on page 181, the meter of 76 would be circled. the searcher would then turn to page 76 where the meter of 79 would be circled and so forth. one such message found was a question to the searcher if they wanted to watch tv later that afternoon at five.12 other such messages like “hello,” “how are you?”, and “i’m hungry/starving” have also been recorded. the last category of teenage games contains the most variation, and exhibits the most subversion of sacredness. the first game is that of testimony bingo. rife playing with the sacred 37 the first sunday of each month, sacrament meeting is reserved for the bearing of the congregation’s testimony. a testimony is the public profession of one’s beliefs about various subjects of lds doctrine and lived experiences. although these openly shared testimonies can often diverge from their intended purpose and become a travelogue or the bearer’s gratitude for roommates or many other such declarations not related to the original purpose. because of the consistent performance of the testimonies within the culture, there can also be phrases that are used again and again. with these variations in mind, teenagers will divide a traditional bingo playing board with either the phrases that are often muttered, individuals that consistently bear their testimonies each month or common themes like travelogues onto the spaces to try to get bingo. this game can be played with other siblings or friends that are nearby.13 often times these bingo boards can be derisive especially if a certain individual continually bears their testimony each month in an almost rote-memory fashion.14 the use of parody for hymns and hymnals is also popular with the teenage group. the parodies often involve sexual and scatological humor. one good example is by taking hymn titles and adding the phrase “under the bed” or “in the toilet” or even “in the bathtub.”15 some hymns and phrases work better than others. but often it can be the hymns that are the some of the most often sung and have historical significance that are mocked. one example of the spirit of god like a fire is burning, upon the cross, or even the christmas favorite o little town of bethlehem. all of these songs have humor in adding the phrases like “under the bed” or “in the toilet” or even “in the bathtub.” another game that can be played with hymns is using the mood markings to act out the singing of the song.16 thus trying to sing a song and act out a hymn “resolutely,” “tenderly,” or “vigorously” becomes a performance for those around the singer. this open mocking of the hymn is especially evident to those immediately surrounding the singer, but also to the chorister who is leading the music at the front of the congregation. due to the apparent irreverence and subversive qualities of these games, it could be assumed they would not be tolerated. yet they are often played quietly by participants so as not to draw attention to themselves. another popular game involves two teenagers writing words on friend’s backs, siblings, or a significant other.17 as sacrament can feel boring to participants they will lean forward with their elbows on their knees as they sit in the pew. the friend, sibling, or significant other will write out messages or words one letter at a time as they try to convey a message to the recipient. part of the fun lies in guessing what is written, and the other part can be especially if the two individuals are dating. the lds church strongly encourages youth not to date until the age of sixteen and these games are played by those who are sixteen and older.18 because of this delayed social interaction with the opposite sex, small physical interactions like touching someone’s back and expressing messages of care and affection are significantly potent. another way that messages can often be shared with a friend, sibling or significant other is by using words found in the scriptures to send a message.19 playing with the sacred rife 38 there is a long history of annotation when it comes to quiet games. george draper’s book school, church, and home games (1923) explores the philosophy that work is the highest form of play, and that children express their imaginations through play leads to their exploring and perfecting of their future professions. this book is a collection of games for beginners to intermediate children, of both sexes, and in the settings of school, church and the outdoors.20 jess bancroft’s work, games for the playground, home, school and gymnasium (1922) is an early folklore collection drawing from archival records as well as ethnographic field reports. the intention of the collection is to be used as an aid for parents, teachers, and recreational leaders to have a variety of games that can be played in diverse places of home, camp, and school. in particular a large listing of quiet games that are both educational and fun and provide an early framework for classifying and categorizing quiet games.21 lastly, george ripley’s games for boys (1920) was another early collection of games that can be played in any setting. the purpose of the book was to give wholesome games that invigorated the mind and body, and were not just for the expression of violence pride. because mr. ripley worked professionally for the boy scouts many of the games mirror the core values found within that organization. his categorization provided a framework to base games that i observed, especially the ones for small children whose goal was to have them be enlightening to the mind.22 figure 2. more quiet games. photograph by jared s. rife. rife playing with the sacred 39 analysis and interpretation evaluating the body of these games there arise paradoxes that both affirm and subvert gospel principles of the lds church. on a basic level the church has always had a strong emphasis on “perfecting the saints” or in other words in helping members to reach their potential both in this life and in the life to come. part of that perfection comes through the gaining of knowledge or intelligence. with the expectation that members of the church are taking part in daily scripture study, attending sunday school and other service oriented organizations, being active in politics at both the community, state, and national levels, members of the church view themselves as well reasoned and well informed. this emphasis begins at an early age when the expectation is that children take an active part in church, school, music, sports as well as family activities held each week in the home where gospel lessons are shared. this weekly meeting, called family home evening, and its intention is to bring families closer together. but its structure is through the teaching of a lesson, singing of songs, service and an activity where each assignment is rotated among family members no matter the age. with this strong emphasis on children participating in a full and perfecting life, the added dimension of having a sense of humor provides an interesting contrast. a factor in the use of play is the association of church leaders with humor. joseph smith was known for his willingness to play games, tell stories, and jokes with others. prominent leader j. golden kimball was known for his colorful language will sharing sermons, but his crass language was excused because of its humorous nature.23 the previous and current leaders of the church, gordon b. hinckley, and thomas s. monson respectively were admired for their playful use of jokes. it is also customary when members of the congregation give talks in sacrament meeting to start their discourse with a joke. with such a strong emphasis on humor, the games children play are seen as participating in honored and cherished form of lds expression. in some ways this provides an excuse for some of the more subversive games; in others it allows for games to flourish because “its just something we do for fun.” it should also be noted that all of these games, whether played by small children or teenagers are tolerated only if they are quiet and do not disturb the worshiping of others around them. if any of these games became loud or distracting, the child or teenager would be pressured to leave by parents, guardians, or other adults in close proximity. the usual punishment involves asking the offender to wait outside in a foyer, which every chapel has, and sit on couches until after sacrament service is over. this may not sound like much of a punishment, but it can be a harsh sentence. to accommodate those who cannot be quiet or reverent during sacrament service, church buildings are equipped with in-house speakers that are placed in several rooms throughout the building. this allows for communications from the pulpit to be broadcast to other rooms, a mothers lounge, and the foyer. once an irreverent child or teenager is removed to the foyer they still listen to what is being shared in the chapel but do not have friends or games to interact with. playing with the sacred rife 40 the seeming paradox of the seriousness of cultivating perfection and at the same time indulging in the unruliness of humor feeds into another paradox of lds culture: that of the scriptural stories of the iron rod and the liahona from the book of mormon. the iron rod was viewed in a visionary dream by the prophet lehi. the iron rod, which is interpreted as the scriptures or the word of god, leads to the tree of life, which is interpreted as the love of god or the gospel. the iron rod is firm and immovable and those who grasp it know in what direction they are headed. on the other hand the liahona another example provided by the book of mormon prophet lehi, was a compass-like ball of fascinating design. after lehi had left jersulem to journey to the america’s or as he and his family were told the “promised land” the liahona was given to them to be a guide. the liahona worked according to the faith and diligence lehi and his family displayed towards the keeping to the commandments and statues given them by god. it led them on a circuitous journey through the sinai peninsula, over the oceans and eventually to the promised land. upon arriving in there, lehi and his family were able to flourish and prosper. the story teaches current members of the church that if they lead a god fearing life they can be lead through trials and tribulations. this form of sojourn provides for personal guidance that might differ from one member to the next. this seeming paradox of knowing the answer to life’s difficulties versus seeking and searching for it is also evident in the ways that children play their games. on one hand they are expected to know how to act or learn how to act through play, especially during a sacred service like sacrament meeting. on the other hand children are given the latitude to play games that often mock other members of the church or make light of sacred rituals.24 another interpretation of these games comes from the common phrase of “being in the world, but not of the world.”25 lds members feel a certain hesitation about how their belief system often openly conflicts with their peers outside the church. ideas about marriage, homosexuality, and drug use are some of the more recent ideas that in main lds theology that have conflicted with broader societal views. due to this conflict, members are encouraged to take part in as many “normal” non-lds activities as possible to give non-lds a more personal and human touch on a widely misunderstood religion. thus a high percentage of lds members actively serve, volunteer, and work openly in their respective communities. this is part of the reason that games enter into a sacred space of sacrament but by the use of the church frame the message of “this is play (or profane)” is altered to “this is mormon.” by entering the “world” to take part in it, the reverse is also true. the “world” is able to enter into an individual’s life, and this is manifest in the way that children play games during sacrament. this is also manifest in the strong correlation of children that use their parents (or in some cases their own) electronic devices when playing puzzles and other games that the church provides on their website. by playing these games they literally bringing the world (or in this case the world wide web) into their lives and their sacred spaces.26 the final point of this frame analysis is how church games treat the contexts of sacredness and reverence in an enactment of play. with the slow progression of children’s games that instruct and teach to the eventual teenage games that rife playing with the sacred 41 openly mock and criticize others the question must be asked how this influences the progression of membership in the church. in my opinion these games create a divide, an obstacle that teenagers must face. how do they respond to the paradox of playing games when those around them are trying to have meaningful communion with their deity? they must make a decision about whether to remain observant during the the sacred and reverent parts of the sacrament, and by extension they decide whether the sacred and reverent aspects of their religion are something to be taken seriously or are a game. it is no wonder that at the age of eighteen, internal church statistics show that the teenage years are the critical period when individuals decide to either fall away from the church or continue to be lifelong members.27 the games that these children are playing are a huge part of that decision. conclusion games played by the children, youth, and teenagers of the lds church celebrate the good and the bad of lds culture. individuals are expected to be smart, funny, and interactive with the lds and non-lds community. but this leeway leads, for some, to the eventual dismissal of lds teachings and membership in the church. this paradox of frames reinforcing prized character traits as well as religious knowledge versus the criticism of religious expression during sacrament helps to address the anxiety and uncertainty of the lds faith for concerned youth. at the same time these frames create a space where the paradox can be contested.28 further questioning should be done on other games that are played during three hour blocks, or during other activities that occur during the other days of the weeks. these activities played in sacrament meeting are part of (excuse the pun) the game changer if whether or not membership will be a lifelong activity or only one of their youth. notes 1. see doctrine in doctrine in covenants 20:77, 79, http://www.lds.org/ scriptures/dc-testament/dc/20.75-84?lang=eng for a copy of the prayers that are read as well as the particular wording. 2. fife, austin and alta. saints of safe and saddle. bloomington: indiana university press, 1956, 3. 3. many of these games have been personally observed, as well as recorded all over the united states including massachusetts, pennsylvania, texas, arizona, arkansas, california, oregon, washington, and of course utah. 4. due to the regulations of the lds church, pictures are not allowed in the chapel or during worship services. the pictures included in the report are either taken from the internet or from the personal collection of the collector that were taken in his home. 5. during the academic year, 1935-36, elder john a widtsoe delivered a series of lectures at the university of southern california in a class on mormonism. playing with the sacred rife 42 an excerpt from the published copy reads as follows: “the aim of the church, organized for the human good, is to make men happy. it could not be otherwise, it usefulness to a man is the function of religion. this doctrine has been delivered in sacred literature.” 6. skidmore, rex a. mormon recreation in history and practice: a study of social change. philadelphia: university of pennsylvania, 1941, 89. 7. see doctrine and covenants 88:79, http://www.lds.org/scriptures/dctestament/dc/88.79-80?lang=eng, for the direct command to learn about things both spiritual and temporal. 8. brigham young university, a lds owned and operated university, where nearly 96% of the student population is lds recently noted that it was number one in grads from a high-research doctoral institution (a category that includes byu) who earned phds in the last five years studied. byu was 5th for all 264 doctoral institutions in a general category. although we cannot draw conclusions about the entire lds church through this statistic, the importance of education and the acquiring of knowledge is evident. 9. see moroni 8:8, http://www.lds.org/scriptures/bofm/moro/8.8?lang=eng, which claims that children are incapable of sin until the age of 8. 10. see photos in appendix 1. 11. see doctrine and covenants 25:12, https://www.lds.org/scriptures/dctestament/dc/25.12?lang=eng for this correlation. 12. this item was submitted by an anonymous individual to the william wilson folk archives at brigham young university, september 14, 1980. 13. there are numerous examples of this occurring. four types are recorded by jenna allen holt, david joel becksted, christina m. cuthbert, and jennifer holly slemp all at the wilson folk archives in section 5.1.2.1. 14. there are also several examples found online where the practice of families sharing with other families and the familiarity of the game is clearly understood. for example, “testimony bingo,” http://emp.byui.edu/marrottr/testimonybingo. html and “modern mormon men,” http://www.modernmormonmen.com/2012/03/ testimony-bingo.html. 15. examples collected by lorraine anderson, paul abbot, eric nelson, dell blair, linda hansen, joanna gardner, and david becksted can be found at the wilson folk archives in section 5.1.1.2. 16. this example was relayed by spencer lincoln green, march 16, 2012. 17. this game is widely observed in many meetings by the author, as well as shared by spencer green on march 16, 2012, as well as rachel rife on march 20, 2012. 18. see the pamphlet “for the strength of youth,” https://www.lds.org/youth/ for-the-strength-of-youth/dating?lang=eng for this explanation. 19. this example was relayed by spencer lincoln green, march 16, 2012. 20. draper, george o. 1923. school, church, and home games. new york: association press, vi-vii and 44-54. 21. bancroft, jessie h. 1922. games for the playground, home, school and gymnasium. new york: macmillan, 2-24 and 211-242. rife playing with the sacred 43 22. ripley, george s. 1920. games for boys. new york: henry holt and company, 39-43. 23. see eric a. eliason’s book the j. golden kimball stories, university of illinois press, 2007, 186. 24. terryl l. givens people of paradox : a history of mormon culture. new york: oxford university press, 3-18. 25. see a recent address given by elder l. tom perry of the council of the twelve entitled “in the world,” http://www.lds.org/ensign/1988/05/in-theworld?lang=eng 26. see “games and activities” on lds website http://www.lds.org/friend/ online-activities/activities?lang=eng. 27. see “mormons in the united states 1990-2008: socio-demographic trends and regional differences” rick phillips and ryan t. cragun. also available at http://commons.trincoll.edu/aris/files/2011/12/mormons2008.pdf 28. bronner, simon j. framing folklore: an introduction. western folklore (california folklore soc., long beach) (69:3/4) summer/fall 2010, 275-297. works cited bancroft, jessie h. 1922. games for the playground, home, school and gymnasium. new york:macmillan. bronner, simon j. 1988. american children’s folklore. little rock: august house. _________. 2010. framing folklore: an introduction. western folklore 69 (3-4, summer/fall): 275-297. draper, george o. 1923. school, church, and home games. new york: association press. eliason, eric. 2007. the j. golden kimball stories, university of illinois press. fife, austin and alta. 1956. saints of sage and saddle. bloomington: indiana university press. foster, lawrence. 1981. religion and sexuality: three american communal experiments of the nineteenth century. new york: oxford university press. givens, terryl. 2007. people of paradox : a history of mormon culture. new york: oxford university press. ostling, richard n., and joan k. ostling. 1999. mormon american: the power and the promise. new york: harper collins. ripley, george s. 1920. games for boys. new york: henry holt and company. skidmore, rex a. 1941. mormon recreation in history and practice: a study of social change. philadelphia: university of pennsylvania. wilson, william a. 1991. personal narratives: the family novel. western folklore 50: 127 49. wilson, william a. 2006. “teach me all that i must do”: the practice of mormon religion. in the marrow of human experience: essays on folklore, ed. jill t. rudy, 253-260. logan: utah state university press. wilson, william a. 1989. the study of mormon folklore: an uncertain truth. dialogue: a journal of mormon thought 22: 95-100. playing with the sacred rife 44 appendix a a pioneer picture from a quiet book lehi’s liahona letters from a quiet book mormon match game from a quiet book pages from cfr_2013_part6 cfr_2013_part7 cfr_2013_part8 cfr_2013_part9 45 brian sutton-smith (1924-2015) elizabeth tucker brian sutton-smith was not only a giant in the field of folklore studies and a pioneering scholar whose vision shaped the interdisciplinary study of play, but also an extremely kind, generous person who vividly remembered his own childhood in new zealand through insightful works of fiction and vigorously defended children’s rights. his studies of the dynamics of play, games, storytelling, and other expressive forms have contributed immeasurably to the study of children’s folklore. as a scholar, colleague, and teacher, he has greatly enriched our field. brian received new zealand’s first ph.d. in education in 1954 and traveled to the united states as a fulbright scholar shortly afterwards. his teaching career began at bowling green state university (ohio) and continued at columbia university and the university of pennsylvania. his legendary productivity includes more than fifty books, including the ambiguity of play (1997), and numerous articles. at the strong museum in rochester, patrons can now learn about his work by visiting the brian sutton-smith library and archives of play. i first met brian when he gave a lecture about children’s storytelling, based on stories told by children aged two to ten that his team of students had collected in new york; these narratives became the foundation for his folkstories of children (1981). before presenting his analysis, he read several stories told by two-yearolds. with careful intonation and facial expressions, he read alice’s story: the cat went on the cakies the cat went on the car the cookie was on my nose the cookie went on the fireman’s hat (1981:48). what a fantastically mobile face he had! as he read alice’s story, brian became a convincing facsimile of a two-year-old storyteller: excited, repetitive, and poetic. he took young storytellers very seriously and found parallels between their stories and the stories of adults. in the preface to the folkstories of children he observes, “the caricature of children’s stories, as of adult soap operas, is not unlike the behavior of otherwise sophisticated persons caught in situations of stress and ambiguity” (1981:xi). one of his greatest gifts to children’s folklore studies has been his insistence on perceiving play and other expressive forms as vital human experiences, rather than experiences limited to the young. working closely with his students and colleagues, brian helped folklorists and scholars in other fields learn about children’s culture. in 1977, at the request of sue samuelson, his first teaching assistant, he considered the need for more serious attention to children’s folklore. his solution to that problem was the formation of a children’s folklore society (now the children’s folklore section) within the cfr_2015_r.indb 45 11/22/15 10:41 am brian sutton-smith elizabeth tucker 46 american folklore society. i joined the steering committee for that new society and have participated in the society in a number of ways since then. we owe brian sincere thanks for the children’s folklore society and for children’s folklore review, which has been published for more than thirty years. in 1995, children’s folklore: a source book was published, co-edited by brian and other children’s folklore scholars. this innovative volume discusses interrelated genres and takes a close look at the complexity and transmission of children’s folklore. while writing and revising the book’s chapter on narratives, i enjoyed receiving letters from brian, who was always insightful and positivespirited. one of the book’s most valuable chapters is its last, titled “the past in the present: theoretical directions for children’s folklore.” i have often reread that chapter, which poses a provocative question: “how is it that our adult culture so typically suppresses the power-related aspects of children’s lives so clearly represented in this present document?” (mcmahon and sutton-smith1995:308). this question and others raised by brian’s work deserve careful consideration. when brian retired from the university of pennsylvania, my husband and i were invited to attend his retirement party. on a bone-crackingly cold january day, we drove to philadelphia and arrived just in time for the dinner. it warmed our hearts to find that each plate held a special gift: a toy! mine was a miniature yellow tractor. i wish i still had that tractor, but i gave it to my son, and it disappeared in his tangle of miniature vehicles. i remember the tractor with pleasure and will always remember brian, who was a remarkable scholar, a great teacher, and a true friend. his thoughtfulness, brilliance, and appreciation of play will stay with us as we move toward new forms and meanings of children’s folklore. works cited mcmahon, felicia r., and brian sutton-smith. 1995. “the past in the present: theoretical directions for children’s folklore.” in children’s folklore: a source book edited by brian sutton-smith, jay mechling, thomas w. johnson, and felicia r. mcmahon, 293–308. logan: utah state university press. pellegrini, anthony d. 1995. the future of play theory: a multidisciplinary inquiry into the contributions of brian sutton-smith. albany, ny: suny press. sutton-smith, brian. 1981. the folkstories of children. philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press. ________. 2001. the ambiguity of play. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. sutton-smith, brian, jay mechling, thomas w. johnson, and felicia r. mcmahon, eds. 1995. children’s folklore: a source book. new york: garland publishing, inc. cfr_2015_r.indb 46 11/22/15 10:41 am 27 fathers and their african american daughters: hair pieces creating ties that bind neal lester barbie never told black girls they are beautiful. essex hemphill, “soft targets (for black girls)” (2006) writing about the “mother-daughter dance over hair” in her article “for black girls, hair and self-esteem are interwoven,” karen m. thomas (2006) asserts that hair is both “a mother’s way to pass judgment and a daughter’s way to rebel.” thomas sees hair as “a sign of independence and self-identity [that] announces to the world who we are,” but for little african american girls, the hair “dance” is more complicated, often signaling “a daughter’s entry point into racial differences and america’s standard of beauty” (e3). culturally and racially-specific hair stories represent nuanced intersections between adults’ choices about girls’ hair and young black girls’ ability to make their own informed hair and identity-forming choices in an adult world. kim green’s reflection in “the pain of living the lye” underscores the effect of “good hair” on an african american child’s psyche: “i grew up mad at my hair because it wasn’t like the swinging manes of white children who surrounded me” (1993, 38). to achieve the “good hair” ideal, heated iron combs or lye-based chemicals become the tools of destruction and temporary construction. african american women routinely talk and testify about a loss of innocence by pinpointing the moment their hair journeys toward selfhood began, testimonials revealing an evolution from hair-straightening to eventual acceptance of self and hair. the beginnings of these self-defining moments in young black girlhood are clear and long-lasting, and ultimately shape the public and private images of black womanhood. indeed, the rhetorical ploys that associate straight and relaxed hair care with “good” mothering tugs at the emotional and spiritual bond between african american mothers and their young daughters, evident in this advertisement for a popular children’s relaxer: “mommy gives us pcj pretty-n-silky because she loves us!” (luster products, 1996, 123 emphasis added). another such advertisement by luster products (1991) offers a similar appeal: “for your daughters, playing ‘dressup’ can be wonderful make-believe fun and games. but as their mother, you know that looking out for them also has a serious side. and that includes caring for their hair. that’s why you use pcj relaxer” (65). decidedly mixed signals equate motherdaughter love and nurturing with hair relaxing and blur lines between the assumed carefree make-believe of childhood innocence and play with pleas to mothers that they are doing what is best for their daughters. the final tag of the ad is profoundly ironic, a claim that the product is “an original just like your daughters.” if we take our cues solely from disney and its most recently released 3-d animated flick tangled — yet another spin on the rapunzel narrative featuring its celebrated long, straight, silky haired blonde damsel — we sense that some things about beauty aesthetics seem never to change. even the social and political cfr_2011_r.indb 27 10/31/11 8:57:37 am fathers and their african american daughters lester 28 implications of straight hair for disney’s first african american princess tiana, from the princess and the frog,1 reveals minimal efforts to challenge prevailing ideals about “good” and “bad” hair. on the other hand, perhaps change really is in the air, and in this case, it’s all about little african american girls and their hair. this change may or may not have anything directly to do with the running platform of then-senator barack obama and his subsequent election as the first african american us president. or, perhaps the reality of the first african american first family with its three generations of obama females inhabiting the white house residence at the same time creates a new level of social, cultural, and political awareness about difference, especially racial and ethnic difference. indeed, while public scrutiny of hair has followed past first family females — jacquelyn kennedy, hillary and chelsea clinton, for instance — this current media attention to race and gender as related to hair seems another first.2 a decidedly new attitude about the race and gender politics of little african american girls and hair is being attributed to the early october 2010 sesame street segment that has gone viral on youtube, in which the spunky brown girl puppet sings with gusto and full commitment the catchy, upbeat tune “i love my hair!” this little brown female puppet’s bold embrace of her nappy hair is precisely the companion to neo-soul singer india.arie’s self-affirming “i am not my hair” (2006): “i am not my hair/ i am not this skin/ i am not your expectations, no, no/ i am not my hair/ i am not this skin/ i am a soul that lives within.” this same message about loving one’s hair as an african american girl interfaces with messages of self-acceptance and african american cultural affirmation projected in a bevy of children’s picture books about african american girls and their hair — carolivia herron’s nappy hair (1997), natasha tarpley’s i love my hair (1998), bell hooks’s happy to be nappy (1999), joyce carol thomas’s crowning glory (2002), and dinah johnson’s hair dance (2007), to name a few. together and individually, these children’s books challenge prevailing assumptions about a single beautiful hair ideal: long, flowing, silky, bouncy, capable of being windtossed, manageable, and blond. indeed, “good hair,” according to these alternative children’s book narratives, is hair that we are born with and hair that makes us happy with who we are. reiterates poet/ playwright ntozake shange (1972) addressing black adults about the hair ideal for african americans: “the roots of your hair/ what turns back when we sweat, run,/ make love, dance, get afraid, get/ happy: the tell-tale sign of living/” (n.p.). in addition to planting and nurturing this positive message to african american girls that chemically untouched hair is desirable, acceptable, healthy, manageable, versatile, and a source of pride, socially and politically conscious fathers are stepping in to assist socially and politically conscious mothers already challenging the many forces that negatively impact our brown daughters’ sense of their most positive selves. through this lens of hair, fathers address the sins of glamorizing the straight and silky hair ideal. chris rock identifies the impetus for his comedic documentary good hair (2009) as his five-year-old daughter who, after playing with barbie dolls, presented him with this disturbingly loaded question: “daddy, why don’t i have good hair?” with this question so steeped in cultural folklore and written so indelibly upon the fabric of america’s distinct history of black and white cfr_2011_r.indb 28 10/31/11 8:57:37 am lester fathers and their african american daughters 29 race relations, rock set out to explore why this prevailing notion of “good hair” as straight hair, presumably like white people’s hair — even though all whites don’t necessarily have straight hair — still exists and has reached his and surely other young african american daughters. when asked how rock talks to his little girls about their hair, he responds both seriously and humorously: “like any dad, i just tell my daughters they’re beautiful as much as possible. and i keep chemicals out of their hair until they’re old enough to make that decision. because if you put chemicals in a kid’s hair, she’s addicted. it’s like making the kid a vampire” (fireman, 2009, p. 122). another african american parent acknowledges the profound pain at witnessing his/ her child’s feelings of inadequacy that can only be countered through creative remessaging: “i think that at some point, if you have a little girl, we all deal with the day your child comes home from school and says, ‘i don’t want my hair to look like this; i want it to look like annie’s.’ and annie’s hair is blond and long and not what she has” (sims 2010). paternal nurturing and social and political responsibility are at the heart of sesame street writer joey mazzarino’s response to his adopted ethiopian daughter when “he noticed as she played with her dolls that she wanted long, straight blond hair” (gray 2010). his politically-charged creative response was the twominute, upbeat video meant to remind his daughter that her hair was “nice just as it is” (gray 2010). that the italian american father’s song for his brown daughter addresses years of ambivalent emotions from many african american adult women about their subscribing to a straight hair ideal has been unexpected for mazzarino, as summarized by an npr staff writer (2010) in “‘i love my hair’: a father’s tribute to his daughter”: in writing the song, [mazzarino] wanted to say in song what she says to his daughter: “your hair is great. you can put it in ponytails. you can put it in cornrows. i wish i had hair like you.” that simple message has caused an outpouring of responses from women. mazzarino got a call from an african woman who told him the song brought her to tears. “i was amazed, ‘cause i sort of wrote this little thing for my daughter, and here this adult woman, it touched her.” this message has resonated loudly and clearly with african american women and girls as they navigate the politics of personal decisions; says one african american woman: figure 1. like father, like daughter: hair’s family tapestry. neal a. lester with daughter jasmine z. lester. cfr_2011_r.indb 29 10/31/11 8:57:37 am fathers and their african american daughters lester 30 i embarked on a hair journey to revive my curls after getting bored with the polished, broadcaster’s look. tired of wearing my strands bone-straight and looking like “everyone else,” i stopped using the flat iron for six months, wore my hair in protective hairstyles like braids and twists, and then had a big chop three months ago to remove the straggling straight ends so that my curls could grow back healthy and strong. and while it took over a decade to embrace my natural hair, when i watch this two-minute sesame street video, i can’t help but fight back the tears as it sends a much-needed message to young black girls at a pivotal point in their development that will reaffirm why they should love what they’ve got on top. who knows if i would’ve yielded to the hot comb or “kiddie” relaxer had i been exposed to such a positive image of black hair at an early age. i can only hope that little girls who’ve watched this [video] know that, as the muppet sings, “there’s nothing else that can compare to their hair” (oliver 2010). as an african american scholar who is also a parent, i began researching, teaching, and lecturing on the race and gender politics of head hair when our daughter was born twenty-one years ago. this work started not because our biracial daughter had ever asked questions about her hair, but rather because others were so consistently preoccupied with labeling our first-born’s hair as “good hair” or “nice hair.”3 during our daughter’s childhood years, i was her primary hair groomer because my more flexible job schedule as a university professor allowed that morning ritual. plus, my italian-argentine spouse hadn’t a clue what to do with our daughter’s hair. as our daughter has moved into the young adult world, i have missed those days of bonding through detangler and hair-grooming sessions that united us on what i hope was some spiritual level. that she consciously alternates between flat-ironed straight and curly hair means that some spoken or unspoken lesson about her hair’s healthiness and about selfacceptance must have been absorbed. joey mazzarino shares details of a similar bonding-through-hair grooming-ritual with his young daughter: “my wife is an actress and if she was away i would be in charge of my daughter’s hair. i made sure it looked good … i’m still not great at braids, but i try. i do standard braids. i don’t know what i’m doing. it was hard to get used to but i love doing it with my daughter…. [the song i created] really comes from a place of love for my daughter” (darden, 2010). basking in the glory and creative possibilities of braids, afro puffs, afros, dreadlocks, and plaits, and then with various fun and funny hair adornments, this little unnamed brown girl puppet’s proclamation and dance performance underscore joyce carol thomas’s (2002) message of self-affirmation: “‘what is good hair?’/ i ask my daddy/ and mama answers, ‘why it’s understood,/ sister, if it’s on your head it’s good!’” (n.p.) even willow smith, the tween child star of actor parents will and jada pinkett smith, sends a message of selfaffirmation in her chart-topping single, “whip my hair” (2010), wherein she uses her proportionally too-long braid extensions as a metaphor of resistance to those who demand conformity to another’s unreasonable and arbitrary expectations: cfr_2011_r.indb 30 10/31/11 8:57:37 am lester fathers and their african american daughters 31 “don’t let haters keep me off my grind/ keep my head up i know i’ll be fine … i whip my hair back and forth/ i whip my hair back and forth (just whip it)/ i whip my hair back and forth.”4 since we fathers and mothers are also trying to help our african-american daughters find their voices of self-acceptance, it seems appropriate to leave this final word on the race and gender politics of hair to our newest young cultural warrior as she prances confidently across the sesame street stage and onto our computer screens belting out this challenge and declaration of “i love my hair!” to every brown woman and girl — and by extension every brown man and boy — caught in this maze of american beauty aesthetics: don’t need a trip to the beauty shop, ’cause i love what i got on top. it’s curly and it’s brown and it’s right up there! you know what i love? that’s right, my hair! i really love my hair. i love my hair. i love my hair. there’s nothing else that can compare with my hair. i love my hair, so i must declare: i really, really, really love my hair. wear a clippy or in a bow or let it sit in an afro my hair looks good in a cornrow it does so many things you know, that’s why i let it grow i love my hair, i love my hair i love it and i have to share i love my hair, i love my hair! i want to make the world aware i love my hair. i wear it up. i wear it down. i wear it twisted all around. i wear braids and pigtails too. i love all the things my hair can do. in barrettes or flying free, ever perfect tresses you’ll see my hair is part of me, an awesome part of me i really love my hair! african american women and girls still journey toward a day when their sense of themselves and their assessments of other african american women and girls are not based on futile efforts to achieve a hair ideal rooted in someone else’s limited and limiting constructions and images of beauty. this hugely important and popular vocal and visual cyber performance of “i love my hair!” in a little brown female puppet’s own exuberant voice extends this father’s message of positivity to his daughter far and wide in ways that books alone simply cannot and will not. african american parents can only hope that the combination of this father’s effort and other parents’ will be the change that nurtures, celebrates, and sustains their african american daughters as who will become african american women and mothers. cfr_2011_r.indb 31 10/31/11 8:57:37 am fathers and their african american daughters lester 32 notes 1. see lester 2010. 2. see eleveld 2008, desmond-harris 2009, and jones 2008. 3. see “nappy edges and goldy locks: african american daughters and the politics of hair” and “roots that go beyond big hair and a bad hair day: nappy hair pieces,” in lester 2007, 79-111. 4. the popularity of “i love my hair!” has led to a mash up with the sesame street video and willow smith’s hit “whip my hair”: http://hiphop.popcrunch. com/willow-smith-whip-my-hair-sesame-street-i-love-my-hair-mashup/. works cited arie, india. 2006. i am not my hair. testimony 1, life and relationship [cd]. new york: motown records. b0006141-02. darden, jenee. 2010. sesame street writer pens ‘i love my hair’ song to empower daughter. 19 october. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jenee-darden/ sesame-street-writer-pens_b_767353.html. desmond-harris, jenee. 2009. why michelle obama’s hair matters. time magazine us. 7 september. www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1919147,00. html. eleveld, kerry. 2008. it’s not just about the hair. the advocate (23 september): 30-34. fireman, d. 2009. chris rock made a film about what? gq 79 (10): 122. gray, madison. 2010. sesame street: love your hair, kids! time newsfeed. 20 october. http://newsfeed.time.com/2010/10/20/sesame-streets-i-love-myhair-video-goes-viral/. green, kim. 1993. the pain of living the lye. essence 24(2): 38. hemphill, essex. 2006. soft targets (for black girls). the oxford anthology of african american poetry, ed. arnold rampersad and hilary herbold. new york: oxford university press. herron, carolivia. 1997. nappy hair. new york: dragonfly books. hooks, bell. 1999. happy to be nappy. new york: jump at the sun. hunter, jenny and o’donnell, kevin, prods., and stilson, jeff, dir. 2009. good hair. united states: chris rock productions and hbo films. jackson, ronald and smith, willow. 2010. whip my hair. whip my hair (single) [cd]. new york: roc nation. johnson, dinah. 2007. hair dance! new york: henry holt and co. jones, linda. 2008. michelle obama and the politics of hair. naturallycurly.com. 26 august www.naturallycurly.com/...hair.../michelle-obama-and-the-politicsof-hair. lester, neal a. 2007. once upon a time in a different world: issues and ideas in african american children’s literature. new york: routledge. ______. 2010. disney’s the princess and the frog: the pride, the pressure, and the politics of being a first. the journal of american culture 33(4): 294-308. cfr_2011_r.indb 32 10/31/11 8:57:37 am lester fathers and their african american daughters 33 luster products. 1991. pcj relaxer advertisement. ebony 46(6): 65. luster products. 1996. pcj pretty-n-silky advertisement. essence 27(8): 123. npr staff. 2010. ‘i love my hair’: a father’s tribute to his daughter. npr. 18 october. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyid=130653300. oliver, dana. 2010. sesame street ‘i love my hair’ video: a priceless message for black girls. stylelist. 15 october. http://stylelist.com/2010/10/15/sesamestreet-i-love-my-hair-song/3. sesame street: song: i love my hair. 2010. youtube. 12 october. http://www. youtube.com/watch?v=enpfde5rmw. shange, ntozake. 1972. nappy edges. epigram to nappy edges. new york: methuen. simpson, india arie, shannon sanders, and drew ramsey. 2006. i am not my hair. testimony 1, life and relationship [cd]. detroit: motown. sims, melanie. 2010. curly haired muppet is role model for little girls. abc news. 20 october. http://abcnews.go.com/health/wirestory?id=11928292. tarpley, natasha anastasia, and lewis, e.b. (illustrator). 1998. i love my hair! boston: little, brown. thomas, joyce carol. 2002. crowning glory. new york: joanna cotler books. thomas, karen m. 2006. for black girls, hair and self-esteem are interwoven. arkansas democrat gazette (march 15): e3. cfr_2011_r.indb 33 10/31/11 8:57:37 am page from cfr_2011_part5 cfr_2011_part6 page from cfr_2011_part7 review roundup 2003 gail de vos merle harris this collective descriptive review essay encapsulates all of the remaining titles that i received for reviewing in this journal in 2003. as you will see, two major publishers of storytelling and folklore material have been strong submitters to your review columnist. storyteller merle harris and myself divided up the titles for review and i have arranged them, for the most part, by publisher and series. world folklore series published by libraries unlimited. the world folklore series is aimed at school librarians and teachers, but much of the text is accessible to older students. the series not only contain folktales, but also brief histories as well as information on the role of folklore and storytelling in the various regions and is a wonderful introduction to new stories and a better understanding of distant countries and their peoples. the series could be made more inviting for children by improving the book cover design. with the exception of the cover of when night falls! the series look more like textbooks than the storybooks they truly are. all volumes contain line drawings and colour photographs. thematic indices in all the books would also be appreciated. the following volumes are only a few of the titles from this ongoing series which both of us were quite impressed with the presentation, background information and rhythm of the tales. folktales from greece: a treasury of delights. mitakidou, soula, anthony l. manna, and melpomeni kanatsouli. illustrated by anastasia valavanidou and photography by georgios katsagelos, 2002. 1 56308 908 4 from the mango tree and other folktales from nepal. shrestha, kavita ram and sarah lamstein, 1997. 1 56308 378 7 gadi mirrabooka: australian aboriginal tales from the dreaming. retold by pauline e. mcleod, francis firebrace jones and june e. barker. edited by helen f. mckay, 2001. 1 56308 923 8. jasmine and coconuts: south indian tales. spagnoli, cathy and pa ramasivam samanna. illustrated by paramasivam samanna. 1999. 1 56308 576 3. tales from the heart of the balkans. marshall, bonnie c. edited by vasa d. mihailovich, 2001. 1 56308 870 3. review roundup 2003 the celtic breeze: stories of the otherworld from scotland, ireland and wales. mcneil, heather. illustrated by nancy chien-eriksen. 2001. 1 56308 778 2. when night falls, kric! krac! haitian folktales. louis, liliane ner ette, edited by fred hay, 1999. 1 563089 579 8. folktales from greece: a treasury of delights was the result of meeting with manna, visiting from america, and mitakidou when they were both doing research in the same greek pre-school where the oral tradition was alive and well. the introduction offers a brief historical background of the area, and explanation of the function and classification of greek tales, information on the art of greek storytelling and the selection criteria for the tales in the book. the twenty tales are divided into five sections: supernatural beings, tales of transformation, clever folk, stories with strong morals, and humorous stories. each section begins with an introduction about these tales and comprehensive notes follow each story. this is a strong collection, beautifully translated and containing stories that are suitable for all ages. there are good references and a useful index but pronunciation guides for some of the names would have been helpful. as with the other volumes in this series, from the mango tree and other folktales from nepal starts with a brief introduction to nepal—its history, religion, people and daily life. lamstein points out that it is the first collection of nepalese folktales published in north america. the fifteen folktales, collected and translated by kavita ram shrestha, are stories of royalty, the common people and pour quoi tales of the origins of lakes and caves in nepal. there is a combination of gentleness, humility and humour in these stories which should appeal to adults and children alike. the final story in the collection has been written out in the nepalese script. the end matter includes a glossary of terms and a bibliography. the introduction to gadi mirrabooka states that this is the first collection of stories from the dreamtime of the australian aboriginals told by aboriginal storyteller custodians. the informative introduction explains the importance of these stories to the culture and belief system of the traditional audience as well as the concept of the dreamtime. material in the first sections of the books looks at the physical landscape, the flora, the fauna and the aboriginal people of the land and includes historical and contemporary background information. the thirty-three short tales, the majority of which are pour quoi tales, are told in various localities within the australian continent. back matter includes a glossary, a bibliography and information about the three storytellers and editor of this volume. this volume puts these tales in their proper content and allows the non-aboriginal storyteller/reader a strong glimpse into this ancient culture. 92 gail de vos and merle harris in jasmine and coconuts: south indian tales, spagnoli and samanna write of a region and people they know well. their exploration of this area includes a brief history of the four southern states, as well as an overview of religions, arts, crafts and daily life. the authors also explain the differences in telling styles in south india covering the many facets of storytelling: language, gesture, pronunciation, music and much more. the forty-two tales are divided into seven themes consistent with south indian values, such as "value of simplicity, problem of greed" and "respect for family and elders," and, where necessary, explanatory notes precede the story. the stories are wide ranging from ancient to modern, from folklore to true stories, and all of them have a strong oral rhythm to them. the appendix covers festivals, resources, pen pals and websites, and a glossary. as well there are sources for the stories, bibliographies for both adults and children, an index and thematic index. this book is a real treasure trove a delight for the ears and the eyes. tales from the heart of the balkans is the most diverse of all the collections reviewed. the book covers five independent countries: croatia, slovenia, bosnia and herzegovina, yugoslavia and macedonia. the introduction includes a concise but good history of the region, with an overview of oral literature and its importance, as well as some of the problems associated with translating stories from three official languages and their many dialects. the thirty-three tales are divided into myths and legends, animal tales, fairy tales and tales of everyday life. all the regions are represented in all the stories and the retellings should work well whether they are read aloud or told to the students, or used for independent reading. a glossary and pronunciation guide and a good index round off a book that is a great introduction to a diverse region and its stories. in her search for her celtic roots, author heather mcneil travels to the country of her ancestors. the celtic breeze briefly introduces this region and its people, tales and songs before retelling fifteen traditional tales, many accompanied by related ballads and their musical notation. faery folk of the earth, of the water, and their interaction with ghosts and music are the focus of this collection. each tale is put in context by the author. the back matter includes a brief inventory of items offering protection from the faery folk, a glossary, bibliography and a recommended reading list as well as an index. in liliane louis's introduction to when night falls, kric! krac! haitian folktales she uses stories to give what she calls "an overview of the beautiful and mysterious land." together with hay's introduction, readers learn about haiti's geography and history as well as the importance of voodoo and magic to the haitian people. the twenty eight stories are divided into six sections: that stupid bouki, stepmother can never be real mother, animal stories, kings and princes, 93 review roundup 2003 unpleasant encounters and stories of love and courtship. there is a gentle reminder before the stories begin about the importance of prereading because several stories in this book reflect the harsh realities of life in a culture different from that of our readers. there are, however, stories for everyone from young children to adults in these tales which louis has both heard and told over the years. she also includes some of her favourite recipes. a much needed glossary, good index and coloured photographs round out this collection which will have many calling out "kric" and waiting for the "krac" to get story time going. titles from august house a prolific producer of books of storytelling material and folktales for adults and children, august house offers various series and collections for use in schools, libraries and by storytellers of all ages. the titles that reached your book reviewer's desk revealed a great diversity in the types of materials that they publish. the books of nine lives series bv pleasant despain all nine volumes of this series, written by pleasant despain and illustrated by don bell, are aimed at young tellers. these tales were originally published in "pleasant journeys," a weekly newspaper column in the seattle times between 1977 and 1978 and were reprinted several times in book form before they appeared in this most recent transformation. i have only two volumes in hand (volume 2: tales of nonsense & tomfoolery (2001) and volume 3: tales of wisdom and justice (2001)) but they all have the same format. each slim volume begins with an introduction of the theme, nine or ten tales from diverse cultures, simply written and accompanied with a full-page line drawing, and adequate source notes with a brief commentary for each of the tales. i have used these books very successfully with elementary school students coming to the art of storytelling for the fust time. not only are these tales writing succinctly, the students are not intimidated by the size of the books themselves the other titles in the series are: volume 1: tales of tricksters volume 4: tales of heroes volume 5: tales of holidays volume 6: tales of insects volume 7: tales of enchantment volume 8: tales to frighten and delight volume 9: tales of cats 94 gail de vos and merle harris world tales series by martha hamilton and mitch weiss how and why stories: world tales kids can read and tell. hamilton, martha and mitch weiss. 1999.0 87483 561 5. noodlehead stories: world tales kids can read and tell. hamilton, martha and mitch weiss, 2000. 0 87483 585 2. through the grapevine: world tales kids can read and tell. hamilton, martha and mitch weiss, 2001. 0 87483 624 7 martha hamilton and mitch weiss, also known as beauty and the beast, have been telling stories and teaching storytelling to children and adults for over twenty years. their first book children tell stories: a teaching guide (richard c. owen, 1990) is a classic. their first collection of stories for children to tell is stories in my pocket: tales kids can read and tell (fulcrum, 1996) was a huge hit with students and teachers alike. we have used and recommended these books in workshops for both children and adults. these three collections are aimed at children, full of wonderful suggestions on how they can become storytellers in their own unique way, but they are equally as useful to all beginning storytellers each collection has an introduction to the type of stories in the compilation and a world map showing where the stories come from. the stories are one to two pages, retold simply but effectively with a black and white illustration for each story followed by brief "about the story" which discuss the origin of each story and "tips for telling" which cover gestures, body language and use of voice. following the stories there is a chapter "general tips for telling stories" which covers choosing, learning and telling stories and throughout the authors emphasise that the tips are suggestions only and should be used to help tellers find their voices when telling the stories. back matter includes an activities chapter for children who want to make up their own stories and an appendix of sources where children can find other versions of these stories. there are twenty-five stories in how and why stories which answer many questions such as "why the sun comes up when rooster crows," "where all stories come from" and "how owl got his feathers." in the "activities" section the authors make suggestions for original pourquoi stories, using the library to see if there are. stories unique to regions and also provide a bibliography of scientific explanations for some of the stories. children love stories where they can laugh out loud and noodlehead stories delivers twenty-three hilarious stories. the authors warn against using derogatory terms and point out that the joy in these stories is "laughing at the noodlehead in all of us. a bibliography of literary noodlehead stories is included. through the grape 95 review roundup 2003 vine includes thirty-one tales that have been passed down through the years (or grapevine), from mouth to ear to electronic transmission. other august house offerings czanota. lorna macdonald.medieval tales that kids can read & tell. 2000. 0 87483 589 5. despain, pleasant.sweet land of story: thirty-six american tales to tell, 2000. 0 87483 600 x. macdonald, margaret read. the parent's guide to storytelling: how to make up new stories and retell old favorites. 2nd edition, 2001. 0 87483 618 2. macdonald, margaret read shake-it-up tales! stories to sing, dance, drum and act out.. 2000, 0 87483 570 4. mcbride-smith, barbara. tell it together: foolproof scripts for story theatre. 2001. 0 87483 650 6. each of the fifteen classic legends in medieval tales is simply and briefly told to be accessible for young tellers. the tales are placed in context with a very concise history of the story and precise tips for the telling of the tale. the legendary characters in these tales include william tell, robert bruce, robin hood, joan of arc, the knights of the roundtable, duke lech of poland, beowulf, roland, saladin, alexander the great, eleanor of aquitaine and boudicca. back matter includes information on the role of the medieval storyteller, additional pointers for telling the tales, and a bibliography instead of source notes. the stories themselves are extremely short and are attractive to children beginning their storytelling endeavours. despain's collection of american tales is a treat for those who wish to get a sense of the united states through its regional tales. while some of the tales are folktales, many of them are tales of the folk, gathered by the author from tellers living in the various regions. the collection, divided up by regions, includes ghost tales, hero tales, tall tales, and a few tales from the native people. entertaining and informative source notes conclude the collection. both of margaret read macdonald's volumes follow her wellestablished formula for presenting stories for retelling. the stories are printed in sound bites for ease of reading and learning and include notes on telling the tales and relevant background notes on when to tell and why to tell stories. shake-it-up tales! offers information on playing with stories, using chants, songs, motions and sound effects, as well as stories which encompass a more dramatic flair using multiple tellers and audience participation, besides the twenty tales in this collection, macdonald includes an extensive list of resources and guides for each 96 gail de v as and merle harris of the elements of story she discusses. an added benefit of this collection is the introduction of little known folktales from around the world. story theatre is the focus of tell it together. after a brief discussion about story theatre, mcbride-smith provides tested scripts for seven classic myths, nine folktales and seven literary offerings adapted with permission from the various publishers. the scripts call for five to fifteen cast members and are designed for middle school students although many are appropriate for use with older teens. one of the strengths of this compilation is that the story scripts can be told by one voice, making it a valuable addition to any variety of collected works. folktale collections from other publishers congdon, kristin g. uncle monday and other florida tales. illustrated by kitty kitson petterson. jackson: university press of mississippi, 2001, 1 57806 385 x. dorson, mercedes, and jeanne wilmot. tales from the rain forest. hopewell, nj: the ecco press, 1997,0 88001567 5. hazell, rebecca. the barefoot book of heroic children. illustrated by helen cann. new york, ny: barefoot books, 2000, i 9 0228 323 6. ryan, patrick. shakespeare's storybook: folktales that inspired the bard. illustrated by james mayhew. new york, ny: barefoot books, 2001. 1 84148 307 9 spagnoli, cathy. terrific trickster tales from asia. fort atkinson, wi: alleyside press, 2001, 1 57950 045 5. spencer, ann. song of the sea: myths, tales and folklore. illustrated by mark lang. toronto: tundra books, 2001, 0 88776 487 8. a collection of the diverse cultures that comprise the state of florida, uncle monday presents tales of magic, humor, adventure and creation. the introduction discusses the origin of the stories of and the tradition of storytelling within the state. each story is accompanied by a reflection to that guides the reader to a deeper understanding of the issues, historical context and contemporary relevance of the tale. the fifty tales are arranged according to their overall focus: pour quoi tales; people with special powers; food, friends and family; unusual places, spaces and events; and ghosts and the supernatural. the back matter includes endnotes for the descriptive material, source notes, a glossary and bibliography. an accessible and enjoyable collection. tales from the rain forest begins with a brief introduction to the amazon basin, the amerindian culture, and the flora and fauna of the area. the importance of the oral tradition among the various tribes is also discussed. paintings and etchings from early explorations to the amazon accompany each tale. dorson (who grew up in brazil) and 97 review roundup 2003 wilmot acknowledge that the material available to them was so abundant that they chose to concentrate on myths of origins as being most engaging for young listeners. the book ends with a glossary of amerindian and portuguese words as well as bibliographies. the ten myths and legends explain the origin of humans, rain and thunder, birds, water lilies, fire and other wonders. each story is followed by brief cultural comments. the stories (translated from portuguese) allow the reader a glimpse of a mysterious and rich relationship between humans and their environment, and leave her or him with a desire for more of these stories. rebecca hazell has chosen to write biographies for twelve young people from around the world who exemplify bravery and determination. some of the names and their stories are well known, while others are not so well known. in the introduction, hazell explains what makes a person heroic and how she is presenting their stories in the first person. each biography is written in three parts beginning with a 'you are here" setting in which the place and time and a brief history is given, followed by the child telling the story in the first person, and then a summary of his/her accomplishments. i wanted to like the book but found the format frustrating and false. the "first person" voice did not ring true for me and travelling back and forward in time did not work. the book would have far more impact if the children's stories were in more traditional biography format. in his introduction to shakespeare's storybook, patrick ryan points out that in all probability shakespeare had listened to stories all his life and "read everything he could lay his hands on" and so knew which stories his audiences would enjoy and wrote to please them. ryan presents the seven stories he feels inspired shakespeare to write the taming of the shrew, romeo and juliet, the merchant of venice, as you like it, hamlet, king lear and the winter's tale. an essay in which ryan talks about the themes, characters and sources shakespeare might have used for the play precedes each folktale. he also brings in snippets relating to shakespeare and his family. each essay is accompanied by small illustrations of the characters and a border introducing elements and words from the play. mayhew's full-page watercolour illustrations accompanying each story are dreamy and theatrical. this book is a great introduction to children who have never seen a shakespeare play, and at the same time offers much to those who have already been introduced divided into three major sections, the collection, terrific trickster tales from asia, acquaints the north american reader with asian tricksters. spagnoli first introduces trickster tales and how to get ready to tell them, pointing out that "everyone loves a trickster, except the one being tricked!" her instructions are excellent and should encourage would-be storytellers to relax and enjoy themselves. twenty-five dis 98 gail de vos and merle harris tinctive trickster tales comprise the second section of the book. they have universal appeal and there is a brief explanation of the origin of each tale, telling tips, resources and follow-up activities for each story. part three "more ideas and resources" encourages the reader to explore the world of storytelling beyond the trickster tales. highly recommended. poetry, historical accounts, superstitions, folktales and ballads from around the world and featuring the folk that live beneath or sail upon the waters, song of the sea evokes the watery spirits and adventures of a distant time. the collection seems aimed at a young audience and while it includes a bibliography, it does not include any source notes for the wealth of information contained within its covers. picture book titles: hallworth, grace. sing me a story: song-and-dance tales from the caribbean. illustrated by john clementson. [little folk] little rock: august house, 2002. 0 87483 672 7. macdonald, margaret read. fat cat: a danish folktale retold. illustrated by julie paschkis. [little folk] little rock: august house, 2001. 0 87483 616 6. mora, pat. the race of toad and deer. illustrated by domi. toronto: groundwood books, 2001, 0 88899 434 6. five traditional stories from jamaica, haiti, and trinidad and tobago are playfully retold in sing me a story. musical notation and dancing instructions, where applicable, accompany each tale which jumps right out of the brilliant pages. folk art illustrations create a frame around each tale to produce this small collection of delightful tales. fat cat is a combined retelling of the traditional norwegian tale of the fat cat and a czechoslovakian tale, "kuratko the terrible," that was a long established element in storyteller margaret read macdonald's repertoire. cat and mouse are friends and when the greedy cat not only gulps everyone in sight including his friend and roommate, mouse, something has to be done. mouse to the rescue and cat no longer is a fat hungry cat but a fancy one as well. folk art illustrations dance across the pages of this colourful and rollicking version. great source notes! pat mora has provided an adaptation of the mayan variant of the fable of the "hedgehog and the hare" in which cooperation in the race aids victory in the race of toad and deer. the story was told to the author by a mason and scholar in guatemala. the text is reminiscent of the chatter of the jungle and is highly complemented with the rich col 99 review roundup 2003 ours and shapes of the illustrations by artist domi of oaxaca, mexico. a treat to the ears and eyes. 100 cfr_2003-2004_part30 cfr_2003-2004_part31 cfr_2003-2004_part32 pages from cfr_2003-2004_part33 gender issues in the playground rhymes of new zealand children: 1993-2003 an analysis of the gender issues embedded within the playground rhymes of new zealand children janice ackerley abstract this research investigated the gender issues embedded within the playground rhymes used by new zealand school children over the last ten years. comparisons were also made between these present-day rhymes and those from historical collections. an inductive approach based on grounded theory was used and identified four main classification groupings related to gender: l. 2. gender based stereotypes, power within both peer groupings and in relation to authority figures, taboo issues including sexual knowledge and references to natural bodily functions and parts, life passages, both traditional and modem day. 3. 4. close analysis and interpretation of the rhymes revealed key themes. links were formed between these themes and current social trends and attitudes. the rhymes used by children were shown to contain hidden transcripts that related to culturally constructed gender issues. at the same time this research presents evidence that important traditional elements of these rhymes were still maintained. the findings of this research project give insight into the oftensubversive world of children's playground culture. the duality of children's playground rhymes was confirmed by this study. children's playground rhymes are contemporary as well as traditional, innovative and conservative, improvised and inherited. children preserve the traditions of the past while still managing to adapt their rhymes to reflect concerns of the present. chapter one introduction background this researcher has been involved in many different levels of education over the last 30 years, including preschool, primary school, high 7 gender issues in the playground rhymes school and adult teaching. the interest in children's folklore, and playground rhymes in particular, arose from work as a student, followed by employment as tutor and course director of one of the compulsory papers of the christchurch college of education's national diploma in children's literature (nz). the patterns of language paper contains a section on children's folklore and involves students in the collection of children's playground rhymes. research questions • what evidence is there of gender related issues in playground rhymes used by new zealand children in the period of 1993 2003? • what comparisons, in relation to gender issues, can be made between current rhymes and past collections? rationale the close examination of the folk rhymes of new zealand children gives an insight into their culture, a world not readily accessible to the casual adult observer. the contention that in this highly media and technological focussed age children have lost the art of playing has been disproved by studies of several researchers (factor, 1988; sutton-smith, 1999; bishop & curtis, 2001; kelsey, 2001). after the initial assumption by the opies (1959) "that children no longer cherished their traditional lore" (5) they concluded their study of 5000 united kingdom school children with the finding that the modern schoolchild, when out of sight and on his own, appears to be rich in language, well-versed in custom, a respecter of details of his own code, and a practising authority on traditional self-amusements. (9) recognition of gender issues, such as gender segregation in play and the identification of different play styles have been the focus of research studies, (factor, 1988;. thorne, 1993; sutton-smith, 1999; hughes, 1999). also consideration of gender issues within the rhymes themselves have been examined to some extent (mcmahon & suttonsmith, 1999; grugeon, 2001; arleo, 2001). analysis and interpretation of the rhymes will establish links between the gender issues contained within the rhymes and the wider society in which they exist. these issues are both culturally constructed and are part of the subversive nature of playground rhymes (grugeon, 1993). the links between tradition and modernity that exist will also be examined with referral to folklore collections of the past. 8 janice ackerley children play for fun. in the process of play, particularly rulegoverned play, children learn and practise skills and test themselves physically, socially and intellectually. the traditional games of the schoolground are as important to children's development as formal lessons in the classroom (factor, 1983, 108). children's play traditions often reveal dimensions of creativity, artistry and complexity in their own right, including carnivalesque, subversive and parodic elements as well as normative ones. (bishop and curtis, 2001, 8) to appreciate the value and importance of children's folklore, adults need to surpass what sutton-smith refers to as the "triviality barrier" (1970) in which the non serious is not necessarily deemed as unimportant. the infant appears to babble for the joy of hearing himself. the child plays for the fun of it. the adults return addictively to their games for the enjoyments they find contained within them. we are saying, that is, that childlore deals not only with a definite series of expressive forms that can be traced throughout human development, but that these forms are normally, in some sense, self-motivating structures. which is after all only what generations of humanists have been saying when they have claimed that poetry, drama and other forms of human expression have their own intrinsic vocabulary and system of internal dynamics which must be understood in their own right before it is possible to study how they can be put to the service of this or that functional end. .. it is true, then, that childlore deals with behaviour that has traditionally been regarded as nonserious, but as this behaviour appears to be a systematic part of the human repertoire, to think, therefore, it is unimportant might be a mistake. (sutton-smith, cited in bishop & curtis, 2001, 7) with the recognised move of children's folklore play from the physical to the more symbolic and verbal (mcmahon & sutton-smith, 1999), this researcher believes that it is important to take a more interpretative approach with collections of children's playground rhymes, in terms of looking beyond the surface of the text. this move from the physical to the verbal can be clearly seen when comparing the collections by knapp & knapp (1976) and bronner (1988) with the earlier collections of newell (1883) and gomme (1894). the nineteenth century collections contain relatively little mention of purely verbal play, 9 gender issues in the pla yground rhymes whilst the later collections have over half the examples given related to verbal or symbolic folklore. this researcher believes that it is important to go beyond the collection of playground rhymes and to interrogate the text, in this instance looking for issues related to gender. mcmahon and sutton-smith (1999) recognised and encouraged a trend towards interpretative research and observation of context, both "historical and situational" (306). this researcher will use a similar approach using a combination of historical and present-day collections. chapter two literature review before considering literature related to the gender issues within playground rhymes, it is necessary to define more precisely the terms such as "children's folklore," "playground rhymes" and "gender issues" used in this study, and also to make a distinction between nursery rhymes and playground rhymes. this literature review will then move to examine historical influences and the research related to gender issues within the playground and within the rhymes themselves. defining the key terms . children's folklore according to bishop and curtis (2001), the term folklore was first used by william thoms, writing under the pseudonym of ambrose merton, in 1846. it referred to the lore of the people and included the traditions of childhood. the recognition of childlore resulted in collections and research by the likes of gomme (1894-98), sutton-smith (1959), the opies (1959), turner, (1969) and knapp (1976). the items of childlore collected were regarded as folkloric because they were passed on by word of mouth and involved informal "watching, listening and copying of others." (bishop & curtis, 2001, 5) the traditional formalised play activities of children, including forms of speech play and verbal art, that are engaged in and maintained by children themselves, within the peer group. familiar genres of children's folklore include riddles, games, jokes, taunts, retorts, hand-claps, counting-out rhymes, catches, ring plays and jump-rope rhymes. it is likewise distinguished from, though it may share items and genres and have other continuities with, adult folklore. (bauman, cited in suttonsmith, 1999, 172) 10 janice ackerley folklore can also include such diverse activities as pranks, fortune telling, secret languages, tall stories, tongue twisters and superstitions. (opie, 1959) folklore may be "contemporary as well as traditional, improvised as well as inherited" (factor, 1988, 8), also innovative and conservative, variable and constrained. (zumwalt, 1999) . playground rhymes a vital and vibrant component of children's folklore is the rhymes that children use in the playground. play rhymes are the rhymes which children use for their games-for skipping, hand-clapping, ball-bouncing, chasing games, for deciding who is to be 'he,' or to establish supremacy, to defend themselves, to express their affection or anger, or simply to amuse themselves and one another. (turner et al, 1978, vii) children's traditional culture is an expression of their own beliefs and values, not isolated from contact with the adult world, but specific to themselves. rhymes and other linguistic play are created and reproduced for children's own purposes, not for those of folklorists, the educational system or publishers. . . . children create and pass on their rhymes for their own enjoyment as they play. they are a living, active art, made by children for their own purposes, their content to be taken in at the children's own level, and that is how they are best understood. (boyes, cited in bishop & curtis, 2001, 8) playground rhymes need to be distinguished from nursery rhymes. the opies (i959) noted not only a difference in cadence and subject matter, but also in the mode of transmission. while the nursery rhymes passes from a mother to another adult to the small child on her knee, the school rhyme circulates simply from child to child, usually outside the home, and beyond the influence of the family circle. by its nature a nursery rhyme is a jingle preserved and propagated not by children but by adults, and in this sense it is an "adult" rhyme. it is a rhyme which is adult approved. the school child's verses are not intended for adult ears. (opie, 1959,21) 11 gender issues in the playground rhymes . gender issues ivy (1994) distinguishes sex from gender by considering that sex is biologically determined and consists of the biological and physical characteristics that make us male and female. gender, however, is more wide ranging, and includes psychological and emotional characteristics, as well as personality, attitudes, beliefs and values. gender is culturally constructed as opposed to being biologically determined. thorne (1993) sees gender as a highly visible source of individual and social identity. gender refers to "cultural and social phenomenadivisions of labour, activity and identity which are associated with but not fully determined by biological sex." (thorne, 1986, i) gender is not a unitary, or 'natural' fact, but takes shape in concrete, historically changing social relationships. (thorne et al., cited in ivy, 1994, 7) according to ivy (1994), children learn gender-related behaviours from their social contacts with their peers, parents and other adults, and they model the actions, thoughts and emotions as they see them. reflections of these observations can be seen in the text of some of the rhymes they use in the playground. introduction children's folklore, under examination here, focuses on the rhymes, chants, insults, taunts, rituals, riddles and parodies that are part of the folkloric traditions of children's play. this type of play has been classified as "verbal play" (bishop & curtis, 200 i, 13), as opposed to physical play and imaginative play. much of this verbal play contains hidden transcripts or underlying issues that are perhaps not immediately obvious as children struggle for mastery and autonomy as a subordinate group. according to grugeon (1993) playground rhymes form part of a subversive counter culture that occupies a different domain from the official school culture. it is the purpose of this literature review and following my research to consider what these hidden transcripts involve, in particular those related to gender issues. every subordinate group creates, out of its ordeal, a "hidden transcript" that represents a critique of power spoken behind the back of the dominant. (mcmahon, cited in sutton-smith, 1997, 115) while the age range of the children most involved in verbal play fits into the area known as middle childhood, "the period between early childhood and puberty" (factor, 1988, 5), the rhymes associated with 12 janice ackerley games "belong almost exclusively to the eight to thirteen-year-old group" (turner et al, 1978, 158). however rhymes of the playground, classified by turner (1978) as "for amusement only" (158), cover a greater age range, extending from five to sixteen years. this section includes parodies as well as the more obscene playground rhymes. primary school playgrounds are the focus of much of this activity, as "playgrounds themselves may be the only school setting in which spontaneous peer interactions are condoned." (borman, 1979,251) historical background as the origins of folklore are firmly grounded in tradition it is important to consider features of the past that may have influenced the folk play of children today. folklore provides "a link with the past but also a vibrant force in the present" (sutton-smith, 1999,27). during the middle ages singing games were part of a courtship ritual for intending partners. by the 1800s these same games had developed into fantasies of marriage, "games of unsophisticated girls who could make their choices among other girls largely without the presence of boys at all" (mcmahon & sutton-smith, 1999, 294). apart from these singing games, boys were involved in a greater variety of traditional game pursuits than girls (sutton-smith, 1981). this is an historical reversal, as today it is the girls who are the chief preservers and initiators of folklore (sutton-smith, 1999). lady gomme (1898) identified gender distinctions that divided the play traditions of children into dramatic play, being the property of girls, and competitive play, the property of boys (turner, 1969). sutton-smith relates this to a significant factor "that girls acquire a consciousness of their future roles earlier than do boys, and that many girls' games act out these roles" (sutton-smith, 1959, 53-54). this consciousness was reflected in the language of the rhymes. in the early 1900s girls, given greater freedom in terms of dress, footwear and in the playground, as well as being unchallenged by organised sports, became the chief participants in, and preservers of folklore (turner, 1969; sutton-smith, 1981; grugeon, 1988; carpenter, 2001). the change also included a movement from static singing games to the more physical skipping, hand clapping, handstand and ball bouncing games for girls. these aerobic games were most often accompanied by rhymes. this resurgence of rhymes, from only two or three rhymes in 1900 to over fifty skipping rhymes identified in the 1950s (sutton-smith, 1981) is partly attributed to the fact that many were now being published in children's magazines and annuals. the general trend away from the physical aspects of folklore play to the more verbal is a result of a number of factors. in a move away from the freedom of the 1950s 1960s, restrictions on children's play and free time increased during the 1970s through to current times. 13 gender issues in the playground rhymes these restrictions can be attributed to a number of factors, including safety issues, increased academic emphasis and an increase in the adult direction of organised sports and after school activities. the shift from physical to verbal play may reflect not only the general cultural changes in the world of adult work, from manual to symbolic, but also changes in the actual freedom that children have to carry out their older traditions of play. (mcmahon & sutton-smith, 1999,299) commercial influences, in terms of modern entertainment and recreation, have also impacted and resulted in a shift from physical to verbal play (sutton-smith, 1981). "perhaps current childhood does indeed occupy more verbal crevices and less obvious physical space than used to be the case." (mcmahon & sutton-smith, 1999) these changing trends can be seen when examining folklore collections of the past. the early collectors were more interested in the continuity of traditions than in looking for any variation or change. "they believed that the games and verbal lore of childhood were relics of adult traditions fallen into disrepair-fallen into the nursery, where they were taken up and tenaciously maintained" (factor, 1988, 11). lady gomme (1894) remarked, children do not invent, but they imitate or mimic very largely, and in many of these games we have, there is little doubt, unconscious folk-dramas of events and customs which were at one time being enacted as a part of the serious concerns of life before the eyes of children many generations ago. (gomme cited in factor, 1988, 12) children's playground rhymes today are both creative and conservative and incorporate references to cultural influences into their rhymes. gender issues within the playground today. recent folklore researchers have recognised that, although essentially traditional, many of the folklore rhymes of recent times are based on dualisms that link the past with the present, tradition with modernity. this influence beyond the traditional is reflected in the comment by mcmahon & sutton-smith, "children's folklore appears in many games to have taken on the character of modern mass-media culture, with its cycles of fashion and popularity" (mcmahon & sutton-smith, 1999,294). 14 15 janice ackerley . gender segregation gender differences can be readily observed in any school playground. historical segregation of play areas still has repercussions in the playgrounds of today and impacts on gender issues within the playground. researchers have found that when given a choice of play associates, children still choose same sex groupings (borman, 1979; factor, 1988; thorne, 1993; boyatzis, 1999). studies have shown that this same sex preference increases with age (martin et al, 1999). peer interactions are segregated from as young as three years of age, and increase through to eleven years (maccoby, 1990). other studies have shown that greater sex integration occurs away from the school playground, in home and community environments (thorne, 1993). mixed gender play has also been found to occur more in schools with a wide social intake or in schools with children from more professional homes (kelsey, 2001). integration is more likely to occur with adult intervention or when adults give attention to gender equity (zhumkhawala, 1997; maccoby, 1990; jaffe, 1998). . different play styles there is an extensive body of literature available describing the gender differences in the play styles of boys and girls (factor, 1988; sutton-smith, 1999; hughes, 1999; boyatzis, 1999). these differences are attributed to social, cultural and possibly biological factors. mechling (2000) recognises the "complex dance between biology and culture in children's lives." feminism expounds the view that all gender is a social construction (thorne, 1993), however there are biological differences that can't be dismissed, based on "different bodies" (mechling, 2000, 1). thorne (1993) expressed objections to the different culture model, in that it "implied that girls and boys are always apart" (90), and did not take into account the cross gender interactions that occur both in and out of school. also she noted that this model "embeds the experiences of dominants and marginalises many other groups and individuals" (90). research has produced evidence of these gender-related differences. considering first the social purposes of play, sutton-smith (1997) saw inclusion and exclusion as power tactics that differentiate girls from boys. "the most important thing about play is to be included and not excluded from the group's activities. much of female play is about the play of exclusion" (103). similarly, james (1993), in her studies of play in great britain, noted the importance for both sexes of developing play skills to avoid being seen as an outsider or different. "for boys this means manipulating the important signifiers of masculinity—'toughness' and 'physical prowess'—in the process of play; for gender issues in the playground rhymes girls it means demonstrating through play the nurturing skills of wives, mothers and managers" (198). differences in play styles show boys to be more physical, more active and more involved in rough and tumble play than girls (thorne, 1993; lewis & phillipsen, 1998; butcher, 1999; vissel, 1993). girls "tend to participate in sedentary games or activities and spend much of their time in socialising activities" (butcher, 1999, 249) and from estonian folklorist, anu vissel (1993), "girls like those games that serve to set off and cultivate deftness, lightness and grace of movement" (1). these differences are correspondingly reflected in use of playground space. in the 1980s grugeon's (2001) research observed "girls seem to be marginalised on the edges of the playground as boys monopolised the centre space to play football" (101). she noted that since then schools have made some effort to make playground space more accessible to all. similar observations were made by lindsay & palmer (1981) and thorne (1993). the former found that it was the younger girls especially who stayed close to the safety and security of the school buildings and looked for adult contact. thorne (1993) also noted that the boys had control of ten times more playground space than the girls, and even then they would still invade the limited play area of the girls. another area of difference in play styles relates to the boys' tendency to emphasise competitiveness as opposed to the girls' desire for cooperation (lindsay & palmer, 1981; thorne, 1993; twarek, 1994; lewis & phillipsen, 1998). "while boys use a rhetoric of contests and teams, girls describe their relations using language which stresses cooperation and 'being nice'" (thorne & luria, 1986, 179). gender issues within playground rhymes. . the power perspective power related aspects are at the centre of much of what children's folklore is about. modem folklore researchers have recognised the need to look beneath the superficially placid surface of children's play to understand how important are the power-related aspects of children's folklore and its formation. . . the dominant theme throughout is that of the power children exercise over each other, and the power they seek in their relationships to adults, mythical or real. (mcmahon & sutton-smith, 1999, 299) the power exercised by children in the area of playground rhymes relates to both that of language and relationships. the ownership children have of playground rhymes allows them to manipulate language for their own purposes, free from adult control. the power within the 16 janice ackerley rhymes themselves relates to control over others, whether this be peers, inter-gender relationships, or adults, authority figures in particular because, ". . . as children compose the most powerless subaltern group, we should expect them to have multiple and complex ways of subverting authority." (mcmahon & sutton-smith, 1999,302) teachers, in particular, are often the subjects of such verbal assaults with parodies such as such favourites as: row, row row your boat, gently down the stream, throw your teacher overboard, and listen to her scream! and pokare, kare, ana, i had a squashed banana, i threw it at the teacher, she said come here. . . a gender based issue arising from such rhymes relates to whether the female teacher is a greater target than her male counterpart, and if so why this would be the case. there is also evidence that many of these rhymes are part of a culture of subversive acts of resistance against both adult authority and at times the other gender (factor, 1988; grugeon, 2001). attempts by school authorities to ban or limit these rhymes, as occurred in australia (factor, 1988, 176) and in britain (grugeon, 2001,101), have only served to drive them underground or make children more cautious with their use when near adults. although close interaction between the sexes is not necessarily a feature of playground activity in the middle years, factor (1988) observed that "rhymes and games are shared throughout the school" (136). she also noted that with the changes in social values and attitudes, evidence of power conflicts between the sexes became obvious in the development of some of the rhymes. the 60s rhyme, girls are weak, chuck 'em in the creek. boys are strong, like king kong. produced many variants from the 70s onwards that reflect this sparring and was possibly influenced by the development of girl power, with the intense "girls can do anything" campaign of the time. 17 gender issues in the playground rhymes boys have the muscles, girls have the brains. boys are the stupidest, and we won the games. (140) grugeon (1993) noted in her collection of rhymes from girls that listening to the words of the songs which accompany these games and watching the actions involved, a robust and challenging tone is apparent-parodying and ridiculing. men and boys are mocked. . . in many versions the boyfriend is thrown around until he loses his underpants. boyfriends have 'pickles' on their nose and are in danger of having their willies drastically shortened and balls caught in barbed wire. (23) grugeon recognised that girls use language, in preference to actual physical aggression, as a peaceful means of retaliation to the provocation of boys. . the rude and crude boys and girls are both actively involved in rhymes that challenge and defy adult standards and conventions. these rhymes give children the opportunity to explore taboo subjects and adult themes within the safe environment of the school playground (grugeon, 1988). there are a variety of terms used by researchers of the past to describe this type of rhyme. the opies (1959, 113-116) used the terms "erotic verse" or "the improper." other terms used include "vulgar rhymes" (turner, 1978, 162), "obscene rhymes" (sutton-smith, 1981, 95), "shockers" (knapp & knapp, (1976, 179-189). lowenstein also made reference to "improper rhymes" and defined them as . . . those rhymes created or circulated by children, which are calculated to shock or disgust the listener, to challenge adult refinement and to show, in the case of jokes about sex, that the child concerned is aware of its mysteries and has penetrated the adult veil of secrecy about sexual matters. (lowenstein, 1974,1) lowenstein's "shocking, shocking, shocking" (1974) exposed a number of children's improper rhymes that were current in australia during the 1960s and 1970s. she found that it was the "good" girls who were the real experts in this area, rather than the "bad" boys. her findings disputed the belief that obscene rhymes were commonly circulated among boys and "not very nice girls" or belonged to the "ogre child" or "delinquent" (opie, 1959, 115-116). also disputed was the finding that 18 janice ackerley these rhymes were more likely to be known by working class children than the sheltered middle class girls, who were in fact the source of much of lowenstein's material (6). similarly, factor (2000) commented that, in my experience there are students at the most expensive private girls' schools who have as extensive a repertoire of vulgar and abusive rituals as the toughest, roughest boys in the working class suburbs of our major cities. (xxii) this contrasted directly with the comments from the previous century by bolton (1888). we take pleasure in stating that in all our oral and written communications with children in every walk of life we have not received a single vulgar rhyme, nor one containing foul language. the nearest approach to an oath is the exclamation 'gracious peter.' (bolton, cited in turner et al, 1978, 158) the opies' (1959) claim likewise that, "genuinely erotic verse, however, is unusual" (115) in children's groups. comments such as these are reflections of the collectors' attitudes and their relationship with the children they were involved with, and also possibly reflect the more restrictive attitudes of that particular era. in more recent years researchers have acknowledged the gendered nature of the content of the rhymes themselves. grugeon (2001) expressed a strong interest in the gendered nature of the content of the singing games played by girls in the first four years at school, in the way these games parody adult norms and behaviour, often dealing with taboo subjects through mocking and subversive texts. (99) rhymes such as the prolific "when susie was a baby" allow young girls to explore the possibilities of adult life and the new roles they will soon be encountering in terms of the passage of life from infancy to death and after (factor, 1988; arleo, 2001). these rhymes allow children a "freedom from customary propriety" (factor, 1988, 174) and to explore issues not available in their non-play lives. sexually suggestive verses have been added and adapted across "social, political, linguistic and geographical barriers" (arleo, 2001, 130). when suzy was a teenager, a teenager, a teenager when suzy was a teenager, she used to go like this: 'ooh, aah, i lost my bra in my boyfriend's car, i don't know where my knickers are. 19 gender issues in the playground rhymes ooh, aah, there they are— hanging in my boyfriend's car. (arleo, 131) grugeon (2001) also examined the use of spice girl songs parodied by young girls and accompanied by explicitly sexual and provocative actions, in terms of the process of media texts being adapted to the playground. such rhymes also demonstrate the ease with which popular culture and mass media can be absorbed into children's play (ackerley, 2002). "the existence of vulgar and obscene children's lore is now recognised as a universal phenomenon. . ." (factor, 1988, 160) the usage of these rhymes gives a certain satisfaction, not only in playful exploration of language, but also in the exploration of adult taboos, and the appearance of "knowing" about such adult matters beyond their current experience. these rhymes give the participant an air of maturity that temporarily disguises the ignorance and inexperience. the children appear to know more than they do. the openness of boys is contrasted with the subversiveness of the girls. thome and luria's (1986) observations of playground behaviour show the boys being more prepared to take risks. both girls and boys know dirty words but flaunting of the words and risking punishment for their use is more frequent in boys' than in girls' groups. dirty talk is a stable part of the repertoire of boys' groups. such talk defines their groups as outside the reach of school discipline (180-81) the more subversive and private nature of the girls' behaviour sees them partaking in "giggling sessions" (183) on carefully guarded topics. . sex role stereotypes children's playground rhymes reflect the division between tradition and modernity, stability and change, the conservative and the innovative. the traditions of the past are preserved even though social changes have taken place. virginia caputo (1990) focuses on the traditional in her studies into children's songs in canadian schools. changes in adult culture, with regard to issues of equality between men and women, the re-evaluation of patriarchal attitudes. . . do not seem to be reflected in children's musical culture as much as one might expect. (4) 20 janice ackerley factor (1988), however, had a greater awareness in the variations in the rhymes reflecting changes in attitudes and societal values. she commented that changes in rhymes over time are a result "of children's acute observation and awareness of shifts in social values, their sharp ear for whatever is new and newsworthy." (142) sutton-smith (1972) also recognised this duality. "in seeking to understand children at play. . . we must hold in mind the dual fact that children are innovative as well as conservative" (65). mary and herbert knapp also stress that "while children are remarkably conservative in preserving their traditions for generations, they are also very flexible in adapting their lore to present concerns" (knapp & knapp, 1976, 14). in response to the publicity about the longevity of women the following rhyme was heard in australian playgrounds: boys are weak, chuck 'em in the creek. girls are stronger, they live longer. (factor, 1988, 141) jorgenson (1980) commented that rhymes such as this, and the susie saga often carry with them partially hidden attitudes, values and feelings which are particularly important to female children in this age group of approximately five to twelve years. at this time in their lives, young girls are beginning to consider the possibilities inherent in adult life and the new roles they will soon be encountering, especially ones such as girl friend, wife and mother. (63) issues arising and methodological considerations. as a result of considering a wide range of research related to children's play and folklore, there are two key issues that emerge. first is the trend of moving away from the consideration and collection of what children play, to the investigation of why and how these folklore traditions are kept alive. the comprehensive collections of the past decades (opie, 1959; opie, 1969; turner, 1969; kelsey, 1962-1990), though still of great value, have given way to greater consideration of the conditions under which such play occurs (thorne, 1993; grugeon, 2001; bishop & curtis, 2001). mcmahon & sutton-smith (1999) have recognised and encouraged a trend towards interpretive research and observations of context, both "historical and situational" (306) with a caution on being over zealous 21 gender issues in the playground rhymes in "reading into children's folklore what simply isn't there" (306). related to the consideration of the situational, is the fact that-the research cited in this review occurs largely in the school playground. gender characteristics may be quite different had more observations been carried out in the neighbourhood or home environments. the social context of such research is of vital importance. limitations of earlier research collections have included the problems of the biases of the collectors and their methods (turner, 1969; grugeon, 1988). turner speculated that early collections such as bolton's (1888) collection of counting out rhymes did not include rude rhymes because the children he collected them from did not "want to offend him" (158). the second issue to be aware of is related to the danger of creating a mind set prior to carrying out research. thorne (1993) warns against the different culture mind set when considering gender issues. if observers concentrate their observations on distinct boy-girl groupings, then results will be different to observations with a focus on interaction between the two groups. thorne (1993) advises starting "with a sense of the whole rather than an assumption of gender as separation and difference" (108). similarly verbal folklore should not be considered as entirely distinct from the adult world, as much of this rhetoric results from observations and mimicry of adults. with a recognised increase in verbal play with age, the boundaries between adult and children's humour are less defined, especially when considering the more vulgar rhymes. so much so that "in their mid teens, it is difficult to divide their rude rhymes and jokes from the adult tradition" (lowenstein, 1974, 1). conclusion this literature review has considered the gender implications embedded in children's playground rhymes. there is a strong historical influence, seen in the physical gender divisions in the playgrounds 1990s and earlier. environmental and social changes from the middle of the 20th century have resulted in a move from physical folklore play to more emphasis on the verbal and symbolic. although girls are shown to be the bearers and preservers of the traditional playground rhymes, inter-gender rivalry can be acted out through playground rhymes. both sexes use rhymes as a vehicle to mock the power of those who have authority over them. the parodying of adult norms of behaviour and the exploration of a variety of possibilities in terms of the passages of life also feature gender, along with sexuality and stereotypes, which are also explored through these rhymes. 22 janice ackerley chapter three methodology introduction there are two parts to this research process. 1. the collection and organisation of the data, and 2. the close examination of the raw data for identification of patterns, themes and issues related to the objectives of this research. . over view of general collection methods folklore has traditionally relied on multiple methodologies. among the most prominent of these techniques are reminiscences, interviews and diaries, surveys and questionnaires, observations and experiments. (fine, 1999, 121) this researcher acknowledges that the multi-method approach produces the most complete range of data, but practicalities such as time constraints, resources and expenses must be taken into consideration. notable researchers in the field of the collection of children's folklore have used a variety of methods depending on the focus of their studies. a combination of reminiscences (oral history) and observations were used by the opies (1959, 1969), sutton-smith (1959, 1981), bronner, (1988), knapp & knapp (1976), factor (1983-1988), turner (1969), and lowenstein (1974). reminiscences have the advantage of being relatively easy to collect and can yield historical or comparative data. however, the material collected is verbal rather than behaviour based and, because it is based on recall, may be subject to inaccuracies. observations have the advantage of occurring in a natural context and may involve video or audio recording. this technique was used by goodwin (1985), hughes (1999), marsh (2001) and beresin (1999) and has the advantage of going beyond the text of the rhyme, capturing the verbal nuances, cadence and rhythm. it also places the folklore in a social setting hughes (1999) combined interviews with observations and focussed on the 'how' of play in observing the social interaction in the midst of playground games, four square in particular, with the contention that "the gaming of the game is as important as the game" (72). she commented that with this research technique the researcher does not know beforehand exactly what the outcomes will be and, therefore, must remain open to all possibilities. marsh (2001) and beresin's (1999) research, using audio-visual techniques, allowed the research to go beyond the text and reveal intricacies of the wider social setting. the trend in recent years has been to conduct research that examines the 23 gender issues in the ?la yground rhymes broader context of the games, but with a narrower focus on a particular games' type; for example, beresin (1999) examined jump rope rhymes, hughes (1999) four square, and marsh (2001) hand clapping games. data source and collection the collection method used for this research project is a result of the researcher's involvement with the national diploma in children's literature (n.z.). students of the patterns of language course (c.l. 713), for which the researcher is currently the course director, were required to collect samples of children's playground rhymes on a standardised form (appendix ii) and submit this to their tutor as a course requirement. the transcript of the rhyme, the place and method of collection, the social context, significant oral features and details relating to gender, culture and the age of the children involved, were all recorded on this form. permission was granted from the centre for children's literature, christchurch college of education, to use this collection for research purposes. the rhymes have been collected since 1993 and have been filed by the researcher on a first line or title basis. the collection at the present time numbers just over 4000 individual items. the rhymes used for analysis by this researcher were rhymes that were current in the last ten years. for the purpose of historical comparisons, however, the researcher will consider rhymes that were recalled by respondents from earlier times, as well as rhymes from the collections of sutton-smith (1959; 1972; 1981); turner (1969; 1978); opie (1959,1969,1985); and factor (1983-1988). advantages and disadvantages of collection method the method of collection used for this research resulted in a wide geographical coverage. this coverage extended throughout new zealand from the top of the north island to the bottom of the south island. a wide range of community types were also covered in the collection, ranging from large multi-cultural city schools to small rural communities. this extent of coverage would have been very difficult and time consuming if observational studies had been carried out by the researcher alone. this method employs a combination of techniques including reminiscences, observations and informal interviews with individuals or groups of children in both school and community settings. the collectors of the rhymes include parents, teachers, librarians, recent graduates, teacher trainees and people in general, who have an interest in children's language and books. using this method of collection minimises possible ethical issues, as the rhymes are recorded anonymously as far as the user is concerned, with the collectors' details recorded only for the purposes of follow up or clarification. collectors, however, must 24 janice ackerley be mindful of the child's privacy and the need to be sensitive to any possible discomfort that may be caused. as adults we are intruders in the child's private world and sensitivity relating to issues of compulsion and authoritarianism should be realised. possible limitations of the collection method would be that the data is verbally based rather than context based. there is only limited consideration of the physical and social aspects of the rhymes, with the focus being on the accurate transcribing of the text of the language used. video or oral tape recordings would allow many other features of the rhymes to be examined, but this would not have produced the quantity and wide range of material and would not be possible within the time frame of this study. this is a haphazard, rather than systematic method of collection. the researcher must also accept that there will be a level of inconsistency with having so many individuals collecting the rhymes. a wide variety of methods were used for this purpose, including direct observations in both the playground and home, recollection interviews and some written responses from students. consideration must also be given to the adult intrusiveness factor, children will only tell us what we think they want to hear. this factor was recognised by turner (1969,158). research method the researcher considered that qualitative research design best suited the mode of analysis needed to meet the objectives of this project. the research design involves an inductive process of moving from specific data to a general theory. researchers adopting a qualitative perspective are more concerned to understand individual's perceptions of the world. they seek insight rather than statistical analysis. (bell, 1993, 5-6) this analysis contrasts with quantitative research methods that rely on deductive thinking, or the process of moving from general theory to specific observations. qualitative research is ideal when working with subjects in social and cultural contexts. the grounded theory approach, linked to qualitative methodology, involves the close inspection and analysis of qualitative data. grounded theory is a qualitative research method that uses a systematic set of procedures to develop an inductively derived theory about a phenomenon. (strauss & corbib, cited in neuman, 1997) 25 gender issues in the playground rhymes this is an inductive method that involves continuous interplay between data and analysis. from the close analysis of the data salient categories and themes should emerge. the stages in moving from the raw data to the development of a grounded theory are as follows: 1. 2. collection of raw data organisation of data, filing, creating a computer data base, sorting larger units of data into smaller ones. perusal. getting overall sense of data, jotting down preliminary interpretations. classification. grouping data into themes. looking for patterns. finding meaning in data. synthesis. integrating and summarising data. offering hypothesis or propositions final report 3. 4. 5. 6. (leedy, p, 2001) the collection of the raw data has already been described in 3.1 above. the organisation of data involved the filing of individual rhyme items as they came to hand on a first line or title basis. the data based sorting involved a spread sheet table organised in terms of type of rhyme and gender usage, that is whether the rhyme was used by male, female or mixed groupings. the eight main categories for the types of rhyme that emerged were skipping, clapping, taunts and teases, parodies, counting out, elastics, crude rhymes and amusement rhymes. this enabled the researcher to become familiar with the wide range of data and also to distinguish between those rhymes which were current and those that were based on historical recall. this information was also valuable when looking at the gender usage of individual rhymes and details of this are included in the appendix of this study. the next stage involved the perusal of the raw material for gender related issues within the rhymes and then looking for patterns and classification groupings related to the selected rhymes. at this stage the researcher looked closely at the text of the rhymes, in an effort to identify possible gender based issues embedded within the rhymes themselves and also to consider possible categories or classification groupings that may be forming. the synthesis process involves close examination of the selected rhymes and additional consultation and comparisons with related collection material, both current and historical. once completed the researcher moves on to presenting the final report. folklorist gary fine (1999) has described three different perspectives in analysing folklore. . thematype, being analysis according to a theme or structure. 26 janice ackerley . ecotype, being analysis according to social environment. . ego type, being analysis of performance. any item of folklore can be analysed from any and all perspectives, although most folklore approaches focus on only one. (fine, 1980, cited in sutton-smith, 1999,47) thematype analysis was the perspective taken with this study. in the final report and discussion, where rhymes have been lengthy or complex, only relevant extracts have been cited. full text of the rhymes and details relating to the context and gender details of the users of the rhymes concerned, are given in detail in the appendix section of this research. chapter four results and discussion introduction the focus of this research is to look beyond the surface features of the text of children's playground rhymes and to explore culturally and socially constructed gender issues embedded within the rhymes. when discussing the ambiguity of children's play fagen (1981) commented that the most irritating feature of play is not the perceptual incoherence, as such, but rather that play taunts us with its inaccessibility. we feel that something is behind it all but we do not know, or have forgotten how to see it. (fagen, cited in suttonsmith, 1997,2) close analysis of the rhymes, revealed the categories and themes as outlined in table 1. it should be noted here that the categories are not all inclusive and the boundaries between them not clearly defined. there may be some overlapping in terms of categories and themes. four main categories emerged on close examination of the content of the rhymes. the categories identified by the researcher were . stereotypes—in relation to how children view and form images of gender . power—in relation to those who control the lives of children and how they control others in their peer grouping and associations with aggression and dominance. . taboo—aspects that are forbidden or not spoken about openly. . life passages—traditional passages through life including rites of passage and future roles that children may anticipate. 27 gender issues in the playground rhymes table 1: categories and themes identified within children's playground rhymes. category themes rhyme examples (first line) stereotypes body image is all important; perpetuation of "good" girl, "bad" boy myth; the formation of gen der role identity is part of growing up. girls are sexy: i'm sexy, i'm cute: oh my gosh! i think i broke a nail: i must increase my bust: i'm a barbie girl: ladies and gentlemen: i'm a little dutch girl: i'm a little angel: down in the meadow: mummy had a baby: here comes the bride. power ridicule of, and resistance against, those who hold power; girls do not have to submit to attempts at male dominance; boys/girls are superior to the opposite sex. joy to the world: on top of spa ghetti: glory halleluiah: po kare kare ana: row, row, row your boat: my boyfriend gave me an apple: under the apple tree: girls are weak: boys are strong. taboo natural bodily functions and parts hold a particular fascination; possession of "adult" sexual knowledge is a status symbol within the peer group; children have a desire to shock and defy adult prohibitions; chil dren's recognition and mockery of different sexual preferences. my boyfriend's name: my friend billy: ellie i, ellie i: nicholas pickolas: cinderella dressed in yella: old king cole: hickory, dickory: roses are red: jack and jill: waltzing matilda: ashes to ashes: a man's occu pation: georgie porgie: little jack horner: i love you. life passages different life stages are a reflection of traditional and contemporary social influ ences; courting rituals and choosing a marriage partner by a divination process; distinct features of the new zealand male culture. when susie was a baby: k.i.s.s.i.n.g: ab.c.d: doh, the stuff that buys me beer: god of nations: sex, drugs and rock and roll: roll your dope: weed is a plant: it's raining: fitz, merts. janice ackerley unless stated otherwise all these rhymes are part of the national folklore collection (n.z.). the full text of each rhyme is recorded in appendix 1. stereotypes the gender related stereotypes identified by the researcher relate to conformity to the "perfect" body image, the "good" girl "bad" boy myth and changing gender roles. . body image conformity the conformity to the image of the "ideal," both for males and females, can be recognised within the context of many of the children's rhymes. girls are sexy, made out of pepsi boys are ugly, made out of rugby. (part of the clapping rhyme beginning "my mother, your mother, lived down the street. . . 80,90 marble street. . . see appendix i). boys have got the muscles, teachers got the brains, girls have got the sexy legs, so they win all the games. i'm sexy, i'm cute, i'm popular to boot. great looking, great hair, the boys will love to stare go, go go touros (this was chanted by both boys and girls while waiting in line for a turn on the flying fox in the junior school playground.) this image, however, is also subject to mockery. these rhymes emerge as a reaction to the extreme pressures exerted by media, to conform the ideal female stereotype. they are usually recited by preadolescent girls and are chanted in a highly exaggerated manner, at the same time taking the opportunity to mock the male, rugby fanatic. oh my gosh! i think i broke a nail. it's totally for sure. i'm gonna need a manicure. the sun up there, is shining on my gorgeous hair. hey, you! go home, 29 gender issues in the playground rhymes i'm talking on my telephone. 23,24, i don't know the stupid score! go, go, fight, fight, gee i hope i look all right! direct references and undermining of pressured advertising campaigns are made in the following rhymes i must, i must increase my bust, cos then, cos then, i will attract men, and get a job, a job, working as a blob at jenny craig, jenny craig, so they can all catch my plague, and get fat, get fat! so what do you think of that! alternative version: (the bigger the better, the tighter the, sweater, the boys depend on us.) and in the parody of the barbie song by the pop group aqua. i'm a barbie girl, in a barbie world, life's fantastic, i'm made out of plastic, i've got rubber hair, purple underwear, i take a shower, every half hour. come on barbie, let's go party.... a more recent addition to rhymes relating to body image relates to the pre and early teen routine of removing bodily hair, in particular the 'adult' process of shaving of the legs. the clapping rhyme beginning "ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls ... " contains the following lines: i went to school, it was pretty cool. i shaved my legs and my face went red. i came back home and my mummy said, naughty, naughty, girl for shaving your legs! alternative version i got back home and my daddy said, you're too young to shave your legs. . . an interesting feature of the alternative version cited here, is that the group chanting this rhyme contained boys as well as girls. the re 30 janice ackerley searcher has assumed that was the reason for the following lines being added: i went upstairs to light the fire, my balls got stuck in the electric fire. i went to the doctor, the doctor said, sorry, mister, but your balls are dead! . the "good" girl, "bad" boy image research by zumwalt (1999) recognised the opposing images of the "ideal" little girl and the "real" little girl as presented in children's playground rhymes. the 'good' or 'ideal' little girl is respectful, predictable, co-operative as shown in the initial part of the skipping rhyme: i'm a little dutch girl dressed in blue these are the things that i must do, bow to the king, curtsey to the queen, show my undies to the rugby team. the final line here introducing us to another side of the "good" girl, the subversive, provocative tease. a similar contradiction can be seen in this rhyme: i'm a little angel, i don't swear, bugger, bugger, bull shit, i don't care! in looking closely at the rhymes the researcher noted that it is the girl that is the tease and the boys often appear as somewhat dull, onedimensional characters. boys, boys are no fun here comes susie with a mini skirt on. she can wobble, she can wibble, she can do the splits. if indeed the boy does make the first move towards the girl, it is the girl that is made to feel the ashamed. down in the meadow where the green grass grows, there sat little mary as sweet as a rose. along came a boy and kissed her on the cheek. shame little mary! 31 gender issues in the playground rhymes who's your little boyfriend? a, b, c, d... . gender-role identity gender-role identity develops predominantly during the period of middle childhood and relates to the way children see themselves relative to male and female traits. these roles can be developed and experimented with, within the bounds of their rhymes and chants, as can be seen in this handclapping rhyme: my mummy had a baby, yummy, yummy. my daddy is a dentist, gummy, gummy. my sister is a show off, honey, honey. my brother is a cowboy, bang, bang, boom, boom. fifty bullets in my head! turn around, touch the ground. freeze! as children love to create chaos and overturn the adult world (suttonsmith, 1999,302), the nonsense element creeps in with: my name is andy pandy, sugar and candy mum's gone crazy, dad's had a baby! do me a favour get lost! a long-standing gender-role stereotype can be seen in the traditional wedding song beginning, here comes the bride. turner (1959) has noted the use of this rhyme in 1930, the opies recorded it in 1959. the more recent rhymes have similarities to the historical versions, with the additional comments about the groom and a bawdy ending. here comes the bride, big, fat and wide. slipped on a banana, went for a ride. turner (1930) here comes the bride, fair, fat and wide, she cannot get in the front door, she has to get in the side. opie (1959) 32 janice ackerle here comes the bride, fair, fat and wide. where is the groom? he's in the bathroom. why is he there? he lost his underwear. great waterfall, he's peeing on the wall. here comes the usher, the old toilet flusher. current she went with romeo. here comes the bride, fat, fair and wide. slipped on a banana skin, and went for a ride. where did she go? she went to mexico. what did she wear? purple underwear. with whom did she go? she went with romeo current power it is in the playground, away from adult influence and control, the children find true power. children's folklore can be considered hypothetically as a series of hidden transcripts of the non-powerful segment of the population known as children. (sutton-smith, 2001, 116). i suggest, along these lines, how we might interpret the rumour, gossip, folktales, gestures, jokes and theatre of the powerless as vehicles by which, among other things, they insinuate a critique of power while hiding behind innocuous understandings of their conduct. . . . together these forms of insubordination might suitably be called the infrapolitics of the powerless. (scott, 1990, xiii) much of children's folklore consists of hidden transcripts. a hidden transcript according to james c. scott (1992) "is a critique of power spoken behind the back of the dominant" (xi). in this case the dominant are the adults, parents and teachers, in the child's world. their rhymes serve as expressions of defiance, as a challenge to the controlling forces in their lives. 33 gender issues in the playground rhymes the messages contained within the rhymes related to power come from both ends of a continuum. at one end we have expressions of extreme violence enacted against the dominating power with examples such as waltzing matilda, on top of spaghetti, po karekare ana and joy to the world. at the other end the researcher has found a subtle undermining in the form of teases, "boys are weak, chuck 'em in the creek" directed at the opposite sex. all these rhymes have a form of power at their base. . ridicule of teachers the dominant authority figure in a child's world, at the age when playground rhymes are most prominent, is the schoolteacher. even though changes to a less authoritarian culture within our schools over the last 30 years have taken place, this change has not been reflected in the text of the rhymes chanted by children today about their teachers. the tradition of undermining the teacher and their associated power still exists. this has been commented on by factor "these rhymes endure despite changes in school climate and ethos in the last 30 years" (1988, 159) and caputo (1990). changes in adult culture with regard to issues of equality between men and women, the re-evaluation of patriarchal attitudes, new ideas about methods of teaching have developed over the last twenty years or more, and so on, do not seem to be reflected in children's singing culture as much as one might expect. (caputo, 1990,4) the key gender issue that this researcher has identified within the selection of rhymes that mock the authority of the teacher, is that just over 90% of the references are to female teachers. of the 62 individual rhymes referring to teachers, 56 made reference to female teachers, 2 to male teachers and 4 were neutral. this can be compared with the past collections of turner (1969; 1978), and opie (1959), where 60% of the references were to female teachers. joy to the world, the teacher's dead. we barbequed her head. what happened to her body? we flushed it down the potty. round and round it goes, round and round it goes. on top of spaghetti, 34 janice ackerley all covered in blood (sand) i shot my poor teacher, with a m 16 slug (grey rubber band) i shot her with pleasure, i shot her with pride, i couldn't have missed her, she was 20 foot wide. i went to her funeral, i went to her grave some people threw flowers, i threw a grenade! glory, glory halleluiah, teacher hit me with a ruler, poked her in the chin, with a rotten mandarin. and her teeth came marching ou-ou-out! row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream, throw your teacher overboard and listen to her scream. ahhhh! po kare, kare ana, i had a rotten banana, i threw it at the teacher, she said, "come here!" i said, "no fear! i'll be back next year, with a bottle of beer!" the dominance of references to female teachers may be because they are seen as "easier" targets for such abuse, but may also simply reflect the male/female teacher proportions in our primary schools today. latest figures from the n.z. ministry of education's 2002 teacher survey reveal that only 13.6% of teachers in primary schools are male. the extreme violence contained within these rhymes would also suggest that while they are serving a purpose of mocking authority, they are not to be taken seriously, although situations in some schools where violent acts against teachers are increasing, may demonstrate otherwise. . overcoming male dominance girls have developed ways of overcoming male dominance in their rhymes. rather than expressing overt aggression, the girls in their rhymes discretely undermine the males by a subtle 'turning of the ta 35 gender issues in the playground rhymes bles." this can be seen in the changes in a rhyme developing from a popular singing game of the past, beginning "my boyfriend gave me an apple, my boyfriend gave me a pear." in the earlier versions of this rhyme the girl is depicted as being manipulated by male suitors. ". . . all the boys are waiting, for to take me out. one will give me an apple, one will give me a pear, one will give me fifty cents, to kiss behind the stair. i'd rather wash the dishes, i'd rather scrub the floor, i don't want an apple, i don't want a pear, i don't want fifty cents to kiss behind the stair. (new york, 1926) the 1975 version contains the lines my mother took my necklace, my father took my dime, my sister took my lover-boy, and gave me frankenstein. he made me dust the windows, he made me scrub the floor, he made me sew his smelly socks, so i kicked him out the door. (opie, 1985) there is a hint of the feisty young girl at the end of this rhyme, but this was only the beginning of the young girls turning the tables on the presumptuous males! the rhymes from the researchers current collection have many more aggressive variations on this theme. my boyfriend gave me an apple, my boyfriend gave me a pear. . . version 1 i made him do the washing, i made him do the floor, i made him clean the baby's bum, in 1994! version 2 i took him to the café, 36 janice ackerley to get some bubblegum, but when he wasn't looking, i shoved it up his bum, i took him back home, to tuck him into bed, but when he wasn't looking, i farted on his head! version 3 i gave him back his apple, i gave him back his pear, i gave him back his kiss on the lips, and threw him down the stairs. i threw him over england, i threw him over france, i threw him over the waikato bridge, and he lost his underpants. . inter-gender teasing playground teasing between the sexes takes the form of playful banter rather than that of the more serious malicious taunts. suttonsmith (1999), makes a distinction between teases and taunts. a taunt is " a malicious verbal expressive activity involving a victim," and a tease is "a verbal expressive activity involving a minimal degree of victimisation, with 'fun' rather than hurt as the motivation" (314). rhymes that are slightly provocative and contain teasing elements include; boys, boys are no fun, here comes susie with a mini skirt on, she can wibble, she can wobble, she can do the splits i bet you five bucks you can't do this. (from apple on a stick) under the apple tree, my boyfriend said to me, kiss me, hug me, tell me that you love me. underneath the apple tree, my boyfriend said to me, get lost! another very common form of inter-gender teasing comes as part of one of the most popular clapping rhymes in this researcher's collection. there were a total of 132 individual entries for this rhyme "under 37 gender issues in the playground rhymes the bambushes." of this total, 128 were collected from girls. the rhyme concludes with a rhyming couplet that always follows the same format, but varies in content; boys are spastic, made out of plastic. boys got to mars, to get fast cars. girls are sexy, made out of pepsi. girls go to mars, to get more bras. boys are rotten, made out of cotton. boys go to jupiter, to get more stupider. the taboo rhymes dealing directly or indirectly with taboo subjects are a prime source of amusement for children. defecation, urination, nudity, the private parts, the sex organs, and the sex act, which, in a civilised society, are kept private, have a fearful fascination for children. (opie, 1993, 15) these rhymes are the property of both boys and girls and involve the mocking of adult values and preoccupations. "these rhymes parody adult norms and behaviour, often dealing with taboo subjects through mocking and subversive texts" (grudgeon, 200 i, 99). . bodily functions and parts one of the key themes related to taboo subjects is the fascination children have with natural bodily functions and parts. an analysis of the researcher's rhymes related to farting or passing wind, shows that boys are involved in the telling of 80% of these rhymes, whereas with the more sexually explicit rhymes the balance is more evenly spread. this matches the findings of other researchers (lowenstein, 1974; factor, 2000). the boys are likely to be more open and direct with their telling of the rhymes while the girls may be more subversive (thorne & luria, 1986). 38 janice ackerley while heeding the warning of mcmahon and sutton-smith (1999, 306), not to read too much into the interpretations of these rhymes, this researcher has noted a comment made by grugeon (2001. p100) on the relationship between the notion of 'swallowing a snake' and the suggestion of pregnancy. on investigating this link further the researcher found many more examples within the current collection that appeared to substantiate this link. grugeon's examples were; and my boyfriend's name is tony he comes from macaroni. . . i jumped in a lake and swallowed a snake and came up with a bellyache. (jessica, bedford, 1979) meet my boyfriend fairycake he gave me a cake and a bellyache. (bedford, 1995) further examples located by this researcher not only further extend the pregnancy premise, but also establish a direct link of the penis with a snake. my friend billy, had a ten foot willy. he showed it to the lady next door. she thought it was a snake, and hit it with a rake, and now it's only five foot four! alternative (i shot it with a sniper 'cos 1 thought it was a viper, and now it's only five foot four!) other current versions collected from new zealand playgrounds that make reference to the snake and the subsequent bellyache include ellie i, ellie i, chickalie, chickalie, went to california, jumped in a lake, swallowed a snake, and came out with a bellyache. and my name is nicholas, picholas, 39 gender issues in the playground rhymes don't be ridiculous, why don't you do me a favour, swim in the lake, swallow a snake, and then come back with a bellyache. and from the rhyme beginning, my boyfriend's name is jackie. he comes from taranaki. . . one day when i went walking, i heard my boyfriend talking, to the prettiest girl with the strawberry curl, and this is what he said ,said, said. i l.o. ve. you—love you, i k.i.s.s. you—kiss you. so i jumped in the lake and swallowed a snake, and then came home with a bellyache. perhaps the most commonly chanted rhyme in this section, with a total of 50 individual recordings (47 collected from girls), is this skipping rhyme, cinderella, dressed in yella, went upstairs to kiss her fella, by mistake, she kissed a snake, and ended up with a bellyache. how many doctors will it take? 1,2,3. . . when searching back through earlier collections the researcher could find little mention of a snake in this context. in examining the cinderella rhymes from the australian children's folklore collection, now stored in museum victoria, this researcher noted that of the 110 cinderella rhymes recorded, only three mentioned a snake and none made reference to a bellyache in connection with the snake. this researcher concluded that the linkage established here is a more recent variation of the skipping rhyme. turner recorded this version dated 1962-1973 melbourne; old king cole had a forty-foot pole, he showed it to the lady next door. she thought it was a snake, and hit it with a rake, and now it's only two foot four. dorothy howard, in her 1968 publication, noted the cinderella version, but according to lowenstein (1974), she completely missed the sexual point. although lowenstein also commented that when she 40 janice ackerley asked her son about this same rhyme he remarked "if children want to be rude, they aren't subtle, they make it obvious" (3). this comment further reinforces the gender differences between boys and girls in such matters, with the boys being more open in their usage of obscene rhymes. . possession of 'adult' sexual knowledge as a status symbol a major preoccupation of children is the acquisition of sexual knowledge, with the culture of childhood allowing them to use the rhymes "to explore dangerous adult themes while remaining children" (grugeon, 2001, 113). through these rhymes children can display an assertion of familiarity of a supposedly adult area of experience. the declaration of "knowing" creates a certain status within the peer group. jokes about sex and reproduction are also a sort of status symbol, indicating to the less sophisticated that the teller is part of an in-group, and knows all adult secrets. (lowenstein, 1974, 1) some of the rhymes are very explicit and directly stated, while others contain a "hidden transcript" of meaning that the tellers may not even be aware of. the more directly explicit rhymes are often formed from parodies, and the effect on the listener is often one of shock, as what is heard may be totally unexpected. for some the thrill is simply in the use of taboo words and the accompanying "shock" factor. examples from the researher's collection include hickory dickory dock, the mouse ran up my frock, it bit my tit and made me spit, hickory dickory dock roses are red, violets are corny when i think of you baby, ohh i get horny. jack and jill went to the dairy, jack pulled out his big and hairy. jill said, "wow what a whopper, lay me down and do me proper. three months later doing well, six months later doing swell, nine months later, snap, crackle, pop. 41 gender issues in the playground rhymes out came a baby with a six foot cock. no, that's not all, no, that's not all, poor little bugger has only one ball! waltzing matilda, who bloody killed her? lying in the grass, with a dagger up her arse. along came granny, chopped off her fanny, took her to the movies, chopped off her boobies, took her to bed and chopped off her head, and that was then end of waltzing matilda. when i die, bury me, hang my nuts (tits) from a cherry tree, when they're ripe, take a bite, don't blame me if you fart all night. and the recitation from a 12 year old boy jack and jill, went up the hill, each with a dollar quarter, jill came down with two dollars fifty, dirty hoe!! and the directly stated rhyme of a group of 9-12 year old males ashes to ashes, dust to dust, if it wasn't for the girls, our balls would rust. the overlapping between the categories can be seen here with the following rhymes that are very explicit, but also follow a pattern similar to the life passage scenario, also giving warnings of the consequences of the acts involved. 1+1 = the fun has just begun in the bedroom, 2+2 = he's up to my shoe in the bedroom, 3+3= he's up to my knee in the bedroom 4+4= he's shut the door in the bedroom, 5+5 = he's fucking me alive in the bedroom, 6+6= he's licking my tits in the bedroom, 7+7 = he's this feels like heaven in the bedroom, 8+8= the doctor's at the gate in the bedroom, 9+9= the twins are doing fine in the bedroom, 42 janice ackerle 10+10= let's do it all again in the bedroom! running down the road, knocking on the door, fuck, dam, son of a bitch, couldn't find a whore. finally found a whore, she was tall and thin, fuck, dam, son of a bitch, couldn't get it in. finally got it in, wiggled it around, fuck, dam, son of a bitch, couldn't get it out. finally got it out, it was red and sore, the moral of the story is, never fuck a whore! the childish fascination with the mysteries of the sexual act can be seen in this sequence of rhymes collected from the 1950s to the present time. this researcher compared the confusions of the past, a man's occupation is to stick his doodle-ation (cock-u-lation) into a women's ventilation, to increase the population, of the younger generation, of the world. melbourne, 1973 (lowenstein), newcastle 1951-55 (turner) the bodgie's occupation is to stick his cockulation up a widgie 's ventilation to increase the population of the coming generation. melbourne, 1962 (turner) with the equally complicated perception of the sexual act of current times; sex is when a guy's communication enters a girl's information, to increase the population, for a younger generation, do you get the information? or do you need a demonstration? 43 gender issues in the playground rhymes it's a man's occupation, to stick his copulation, in a woman's ventilation, to improve the population, of the younger generation. i got this information from the board of education, if you want a demonstration, lie down! the comment from the teller of this rhyme to the collector was, that he had no idea what it really meant but that it sounded rude. this further reinforces the idea that appearance of 'knowledge' is more important than the actuality of knowing. when considering issues relating to sexual preferences, there were only three rhymes the researcher found related to gay and lesbian lifestyles. georgie porgie pudding and pie, kissed the girls and made them cry, when the boys came out to play, he kissed them too, 'cos he was gay. he put in his thumb, and pulled out a bum, and said, "what a gay boy am i! little jack horner, sat in the corner, eating his christmas pie, and the barney, purple dinosaur parody, i love you, you love me, homo-sex-ual-ity people think that we're best friends, but really we are lesbians! these rhymes were all related by children over eleven years of age, and did not appear to be widely recorded. this researcher could not find any such references in collections from the past. life passages . the susie saga sutton-smith (1959) recognised that much of children's folklore is the property of girls and also that girls acquire a consciousness of future roles earlier than boys do. they often act out these roles in their 44 janice ackerle' skipping and clapping games. an internationally used example of this is the enduring susie saga. variants of this rhyme have been collected in australia, britain, cyprus, denmark, france, ireland, israel, south africa, spain and the usa and perhaps elsewhere, in at least five languages: english, danish, french, greek and spanish. (arleo, 1999, 115) the susie rhyme traces the life cycle of a female character from birth, childhood, courtship, marriage, death and the hereafter. the progression through different stages involving various rites of passage is counterbalanced by the mocking laughter and exaggerated actions that accompany each of the levels, undercutting the supposed certainty of life's passage. the playground texts can be seen as part of an ongoing process of interpretations of different domains of discourse which have consistently shifting boundaries. (grugeon, 1999, 114) arleo (1999) examined both the international traditions of the rhyme and the poetic, musical and kinetic features. some of the conclusions relevant to this research were the cultural influences on different variants of the text. he noted, for example, that in only one version of the rhyme (australian) was there any mention of susie taking up a career: "when susie was a teacher, a teacher, a teacher, . . " in examining the rhymes from the museum victoria collection this researcher located references to a teacher, as well as a typist and a stripper. the timing of pregnancy was also interesting, in that two english versions had pregnancy preceding marriage, whereas in the american version pregnancy follows marriage. in the spanish version the rhyme begins at the courtship stage and deals with marital conflict and separation. the death and after-life stages are direct reflections of the particular society's cultural and religious beliefs. the american and danish versions conclude with the central character as a ghost; whereas, the english and danish versions explore themes such as heaven, hell and resurrection (arleo, 1999) factor (1988, 175) comments that the susie game shows "freedom from customary propriety," especially seen in the verse when susie was a teenager, a teenager, a teenager, she went 'ohh ahh i lost my bra, left my knickers in my boyfriend's car! one version from the australian children's folklore collection replaces the reference to 'teenager' with 'stripper. ' the opies noted that 45 gender issues in the playground rhymes this game emerged in the late 1960s from an earlier singing game beginning "when i was a lady" (1985, 458), with possible connections back to the nineteenth century (appendix i). the variations in this researcher's collection are as follows when susie was a baby she went wah, wah wah when susie was a toddler she went scribble, scribble, scribble (wobbly walk action) when susie was a schoolgirl she went miss, miss i can't do this (i want to piss) when susie was a teenager she went "ohh ahh i left my bra (knickers) in my boyfriend's car!" when susie was a mother she went "rock, rock around the clock" (1,2,3,4 chuck the baby out the door) when susie was a grandma she went knit, knit i lost my stitch! (smack, smack, smack) when susie was dead she went—silence. (whoooo..) when susie was a skeleton she went rattle, rattle. (crackle, crackle, creak, creak) when susie was a ghost she went whooo, whoooo. features of note here are that there is no mention of a career for susie. the traditional pathways of the past are followed; however, the suggested actions at the different stages take on a much more bawdy tone than the original versions. the suggestion of violence comes in with the mother wanting to "chuck the baby out the door" and the grandmother's smacking actions. these lines do not appear in any of the other versions from other countries that the researcher located. could this be related in anyway to the fact that new zealand does not have a good record when it comes to child abuse? alternatively, the fact that such cases have been more openly discussed than ever before may also be an influencing factor. a less complicated rhyme following a similar sequence, is the common tease when a boy and girl are seen to "like" each other. jack and jill sitting in a tree, k.i.s.s.i.n.g first comes love, then comes marriage, then comes the baby in the baby carriage. with the modern additions of 46 janice ackerley that's not all now they're drinking alcohol or that's not all baby's playing basketball! or that's not all, 1,2,3, jill ends up on the d.p.b. (domestic purposes benefit for single parents in new zealand) from these present-day examples it can be seen that children are very astute observers of adult's social and cultural practices, and will readily incorporate these observations in their folklore. . divination divination has long been used as a method of predicting life's passages. as far back as 1770s a procedure was described of foretelling a boy's destiny by counting buttons on a waist coat and chanting 'sowja, sailor, tinker, tailor, gentleman, apothecary, plow-boy, thief..." opie (1959, 363). similarly young girls determined the character and station of their future husbands by counting necklace beads. in the 1950s the opies quote a young schoolgirl when you have prunes or something with stones in it at dinner, put the stones at the side of your plate and count them. as you are counting you find out what kind of man you are going to marry by saying, "tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief," and whatever name you stop at you will marry. after doing that you find out what you are going to be married in by saying, "silk, satin, muslin and rags." then you know what kind of house you are going to live in by saying, "big house, small house, pigsty and barn." (opie, 1959,363) skipping rhymes of today serve a similar purpose, with the choice of partner, and other decisions depending on the trip of the rope. the formula usually includes a,b,c,d . . . with bystanders supplying the name of the lucky boy. from there the rhyme follows a pattern, a,b,c,d... will you get married? yes/no what will you wear? wedding dress. bikini, nothing. (bra, undies, wedding gear) 47 gender issues in the playground rhymes what will your boyfriend wear? singlet, undies, tie, wedding gear. where will you get married? church, beach, toilet. (house, pig sty, toilet, church) where will you go on your honey moon? nz, austra lia, usa where will you live? house, pig sty, toilet, church. what will your boyfriend wear? singlet, undies, tie, wedding gear what does he do? tinker, tailor,soldier, sailor, rich man, poor man, beggar man thief will you have babies? yes/no how many children will you have? 1,2,3,4... what will you have? single, twins triplets, quads. will you split up? yes/no turner's (1978) collection in cinderella dressed in yella (18) contains a lengthy version of this rhyme with many different options given, including colour of the house, number of bottles and nappies and the age you will be when you die. turner dates this rhyme from the period 1900-1973 in victoria, australia. the version above, from the researcher's collection, shows a blend of tradition and modernity, with historic reference to 'tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor' alongside the more modem day reference to marital separation and domestic discord. . new zealand male culture most of the rhymes discussed in this section so far relate to the life passages for girls and their future roles as wives and mothers. the rhymes that reveal the life passages of boys focus on the macho male culture, especially in new zealand, in terms of the rugby and beer culture and more recently the experimenting with drugs. the following rhyme was collected from a group of twelve years old boys and reflects the beer drinking culture of adolescence. doh. . . the stuff that buys me beer, ray. . . the bloke that buys me beer, me. . . the guy that drinks me beer, fah. . . a long way to get beer, soh. . . i'll have another beer, lah. . . i'll have another beer, te. . . no thanks, i'm drinking beer, that brings us back to doh, ray, me. . . 48 janice ackerley the drug aspect is also incorporated in the following rhymes: po kare kare ana i was smoking marijuana, i gave it to the teacher, she said, "come here!" i said, "no fear! 1'1l be back next year, with a bottle of beer, to rub in your hair. " sex, drugs, rock and roll speed, weed, birth control, life's a bitch, then you die, fuck the world, let's all get high! weed is a plant that grows in the ground, if god didn't want it, it wouldn't be around. so tell all the people, who don't want to get high, to shut the fuck up, and give it a try. roll, roll, roll your dope, scrunch it at the end, spank it up, and have a smoke, then pass it to a friend. the rugby culture and trans-tasman rivalry is also incorporated in rhymes such as it's raining, it's pouring, the all blacks are scoring. god of nations, in the serum, kick the aussies in the bum. if it hurts, serves them right, blow them up with dynamite! both boys and girls use such rhymes to experience possibilities that the future may hold for them, while maintaining the protection and security of childhood. 49 gender issues in the playground rhymes chapter five conclusion this research has investigated the gender issues within the playground rhymes used by new zealand school children between 1993 and 2003. comparisons were made between present day and historical collections of playground rhymes. through the close examination of collected rhymes the researcher found that various categories and themes emerged. such trends could be related to current cultural developments, while maintaining elements of the traditional from the original version of the rhyme. children, as a relatively powerless group in society, use these rhymes to comment on and experiment with the boundaries of their experiences. the rhymes are often subversive and not always immedi ately obvious to the casual observer. this research explored many of the hidden transcripts contained within these rhymes and concluded that children use these as an important element in their play lives, as well as a means of empowerment and experimentation with language. just as gender itself is socially and culturally determined, so are many of the gender issues contained within the playground rhymes examined here. there is an undenied necessity for continued scholarship and research in the area of children's folklore. since the studies of suttonsmith in the fifties and sixties there has been little research in new zealand in children's folklore play. a recent study, looking mainly at dialectal variation in the playground vocabulary of new zealand children, carried out through the victoria university of wellington by laurie and winifred bauer (2002) has resulted in a collection of children's play rhymes. the christchurch college of education's, national diploma of children's literature (1994) has also resulted in the development of a comprehensive collection of children's playground rhymes. this collection was utilised for the purpose of this study. within new zealand the area for folklore studies is wide open with so many avenues unexplored in terms of the how and why, with much of the raw data now available and still in the process of being collected. a study of the effects of multi-culturalism on children's folklore would be one possibility. the publication of a scholarly collection of playground rhymes similar to that published by turner (1969; 1978) is another area of consideration. it is important that archival collections are maintained. as well as providing valuable insights for the adults that study them, playground rhymes also provide children with a link to the past as well as reflecting the vibrant forces of the present. 50 janice ackerley works cited ackerley, janice. 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(1993). gender play: boys and girls in school, buckingham, open university press. turner, ian, (ed) (1969). cinderella dressed in yella, heinemann, aust. turner, ian, factor june, & lowenstein, wendy. (1978). cinderella dressed in yella, heinemann educational aust. (2nd edn.). twarek, linda s. & halley george, s. (i 994).gender differences during recess in elementary schools, elementary and childhood education, june 22. 53 gender issues in the playground rhymes vissel, amu. (1993).the traditional and the recent in modern schoolchildren's games: kinetic games (running and jumping games). estonian folklore archives. http://haldjas.folklore.ee/rl/pubte/ee/bif/bif2/anu.html zhumkhawala, sehba. (1997). dolls, trucks and identity, children's advocate, action alliance for children, nov-dec. zumwalt, rosemary levy. (1999). the complexity of children's folklore, in children's folklore: a source book, brian sutton-smith, utah state uni versity. 54 janice ackerley appendex i: fuji-text of rhymes used in research page no. rhyme text of most commonly recorded version girls boys both total 11 row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream, throw your teacher overboard, and listen to her scream 18 10 16 44 11 po kare kare ana, i had a squashed banana, i threw it at the teacher, alternative she said, "come here!" (it hit her in the eye i said, "no fear, she said, "wah, wah, i'll be back in a year, i lost my bra, with a bottle of beer, and i don't know where to wash my hair my knickers are!'') 11 5 2 18 11, 32 girls are weak. chuck 'em in the creek. boys are strong, like king kong. boys play rugby, to get more ugly, girls take showers, to get more powers. (girls go to the gym to get more slim) boys are spastic, made out of plastic) girls are sexy, made out of pepsi boys are rotten, made out of cotton. 15 0 0 15 13 14, 40 when susie was a baby, a baby, a baby when susie was a baby she went wah,wah wah when susie was a toddler she went scribble, scribble, scribble (wobbly walk action) when susie was a schoolgirl she went miss, miss i can't do this (i want to piss) when susie was a teenager she went "ohh ahh i left my bra (knickers) in my boy friend's car'" when susie was a mother she went "rock. rock around the clock" (1,2,3,4 chuck the baby out the door) when susie was a grandma she went knit, knit i lost my stitch! (smack, smack, smack) when susie was dead she went –silence. (whooooo..) when susie was a skeleton she went rattle, rattle. (crackle, crackle, creak, creak) when susie was a ghost she went whooo, whoooo 13 0 2 15 23 my mother, your mother 33 3 3 39 55 gender issues in the playground rhymes lived down the street, 18,19 marble street, and every time they had a fight, this is what she told me girls go to mars, to get more bras, boys go to rugby, to get more ugly (and other variations). 23 i'm sexy, i'm cute, i'm popular to boot. great looking, great hair, the boys will love to stare go, go go touros 1 0 0 1 24 oh my gosh' i think i broke a nail. it's totally for sure. i'm gonna need a manicure. the sun up there, is shining on my gorgeous hair. hey, you! go home, i'm talking on my telephone. 23,24, i don't know the stupid score! go, go, fight, fight, gee i hope i look all right! 2 0 0 2 24 i must, i must increase my bust, cos then, cos then, i will attract men, and get a job, a job, working as a blob, at jenny craig, jenny craig, so they can all catch my plague, and get fat, get fat! so what do you think of that' 1 0 0 1 24 i'm a barbie girl, in a barbie world, life's fantastic, i'm made out of plastic, i've got rubber hair, purple underwear, i take a shower, every half hour, come on barbie, let's go party, comee on barbie, lets go party, no way, no way! 1 0 0 1 24 25 ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, goota re bub, she bub, she bub, i went upstairs to comb my hair, i went back down and the boogie man was there. i went to school and it was pretty cool. i shaved my legs and my face went red. i carne back home and my mummy said, " naughty, naughty girl for shaving your legs. i went upstairs to light the fire, mv balls got stuck in the electric wire. 4 1 1 6 56 janice ackerley i went to the doctor, the doctor said, "i'm sorry mister, but your balls are dead!" turn around, turn around, touch the ground, freeze! 25 i'm a little dutch girl (girl guide)dressed in blue these are the things that i must do, bow to the king, curtsey to the queen. show my undies to the rugby team. 6 0 2 8 25 i'm a little angel, i don't swear, bugger, bugger, bull shit, i don't care! 2 0 0 2 26 apple on a stick. makes me sick. makes my heart beat two forty six, not because you're dirty, not because you're clean, just because you kissed a boy, behind a magazine, boys, boys are no fun, here comes susie with a mini skirt on, she can wibble, she can wobble, she can do the splits, but i bet you five bucks she can't do this ! 8 0 0 8 26 down in the meadow, where the green grass grows, there sat little mary as sweet as a rose, along came a boy, and kissed her on the cheek. shame little mary! who's your little boyfriend? a.b.c.d...? 1 0 0 1 26 mummy had a baby, yummy, yummy. daddy is a dentist, gummy, gummy. my sister is a show off, honey, honey. my brother is a cowboy, bang, bang, boom, boom. fifty bullets in my head, turn around, turn around, touch the ground freeze! 1 0 0 1 26 my name is andy pandy, sugar and candy mum's gone crazy, dad's had a baby! do me a favour get lost! 1 0 0 1 27 here comes the bride... (many variants of this rhyme) 5 1 5 11 29 joy to the world, the teacher's dead 6 3 3 12 57 gender issues in the playground rhymes we barbequed her head. what happened to her body? we flushed it down the potty. round and round it goes. round and round it goes. 29 on top of spaghetti, all covered in sand, i shot my poor teacher, with a grey rubber band, i shot her with pleasure, i shot her with pride. i couldn't have missed her. she was 40 foot wide. i went to her funeral, i went to her grave, some people threw flowers, i threw a gre nade. her coffin went up, her coffin went down. her coffin went splat, all over the ground. i looked in her coffin, she still wasn't dead, so i got my bazooka, and shot off her head. (her head went flying, up into the sky, then the all blacks kicked it, and scored a great try) 7 7 7 21 29 glory, glory halleluiah teacher hit me with a ruler. poked her in the chin, with a rotten mandarin. and her teeth came marchin" ou-ou-out. 1 0 2 3 31 my boyfriend gave me an apple, my boyfriend gave me a pear. my boyfriend gave me a kiss on the lips. and threw me down the stairs. i gave him back his apple, i gave him back his pear, i gave him back his kiss on the lips. and threw him down the stairs... (many variations to the ending) 25 0 5 30 31 32 underneath the apple tree. my boyfriend said to me "kiss me, hug me, tell me that you love me" underneath the apple tree, my boyfriend said to me, "get lost!" 6 0 2 8 33 billy, had a ten foot willy. he showed it to the lady next door. she thought it was a snake. and hit it with a rake, and now it's only five foot four 0 2 0 2 34 ellie i, ellie i. chickalie. chickalie, 1 0 0 1 58 janice ackerley went to california, jumped in a lake, swallowed a snake, and came out with a bellyache. 34 my name is nicholas, picholas, don't be ridiculous, why don't you do me a favour, swim in the lake, swallow a snake, and then come back with a bellyache 8 1 1 10 34 cinderella, dressed in yella, went upstairs to kiss her fella, made a mistake, and kissed a mistake, then came back with a bellyache. how many doctors did it take? 1,2,3,4...? (on the way her panties busted, how many people were disgusted? 1,2,3,4...?) 47 3 50 34 my boyfriend's name is jackie, he comes from taranaki, with a pimple on his nose, and big long toes, and this is how my story goes, one day when i went walking, 1 heard my boyfriend talking, to the prettiest girl with the strawberry curl, and this is what he said ,said, said. i l..o.v.e. you -love you, i k..i.s.s. you kiss you. so i jumped in the lake and swallowed a snake, and then came home with a belyache. 10 0 2 12 35 hickory, dickory dock… (many variants of this rhyme) 1 7 2 10 36 roses are red... (many variants of this rhyme) 13 16 10 39 36 jack and jill... (many variants of this rhyme) 10 9 7 26 36 waltzing matilda, who bloody killed her? lying in the grass, with a dagger up her arse. along came granny, chopped off her fanny, took her to the movies, chopped off her boo bies, took her to bed and chopped off her head, and that was then end of waltzing matilda. 4 4 8 16 36 ashes to ashes, dust to dust, if it wasn’t for the girls, our balls would rust. 0 2 0 2 36 when 1 die, bury me, hag! my nuts (tits) from a cherry tree, 1 2 0 3 59 gender issues in the playground rhymes when they're ripe, take a bite, don't blame me if you fart all night. 37 1+1 the fun has just begun in the bedroom, 2+2 he's up to my shoe in the bedroom, 3+3 he's up to my knee in the bedroom 4+4 he's shut the door in the bedroom, 5 +5 he's fucking me alive in the bedroom, 6+6 he's licking my tits in the bedroom, 7+7 he's this feels like heaven in the bed room, 8+8 the doctor's at the gate in the bedroom, 9+9 the twins are doing fine in the bedroom, 10+10 let's do it all again in the bedroom 1 0 0 1 37 running down the road, knocking on the door, fuck, dam, son of a bitch, couldn't find a whore. finally found a whore, she was tall and thin, fuck, dam, son of a bitch, couldn't get it in. finally got it in, wiggled it around, fuck, dam, son of a bitch, couldn't get it out. finally got it out, it was red and sore, the moral of the story is, never fuck a whore! 0 1 0 1 38 georgie porgie... (many variants of this rhvme) 6 3 3 12 38 little jack horner... (many variants of this rhvme) 2 1 1 4 38 1 love you, you love me, homo-sex-ual-ity people think that we're best friends, but really we are lesbians. (other variants related to barney the purple dinosaur) 2 1 3 6 41 x and y sitting in a tree, k.i.s.s.i.n.g. first comes love, then comes marriage, then comes the baby in the baby carriage. 28 6 14 48 42 a.b.c.d. (divination) will you get married? yes/no what will you wear? (many variations in responses throughout rest of this rhyme) what will your boyfriend wear? where will you get married? where will you go on your honeymoon? where will you live? what will vour boyfriend wear? 54 0 12 66 60 janice ackerley what does he do? will you have babies? yes/no how many children will you have? 1,2,3,4. what will you have? single, twins triplets, quads. willyvou split up? yes/no 43 doh... the stuff that buys me beer, ray… the bloke that buys me beer, me... the guy that drinks me beer, fah... a long way to get beer, soh... i'll have another beer, lah... i'll have another beer, te?... no thanks, i'm drinking beer, that brings us back to doh, ray, me... 0 1 0 1 43 po kare, kare, ana, i was smoking marijuana.. 0 2 0 2 43 sex, drugs, rock and roll, weed, speed, birth control. life's a bitch and then you die, fuck the world, let's all get high. 0 1 0 1 43 roll, roll, roll your dope, scrunch it at the end, spank it up, and have a smoke, and pass it to a friend. 0 6 1 7 43 weed is a plant, that grows in the ground, if god didn't want it, it wouldn't be around. so tell all the people, who don't want to get high. to shut the fuck up, and give it a try. 0 1 0 1 44 it's raining, it's pouring, the all blacks are scoring. 0 1 0 1 44 god of nations, in the serum, kick the aussies up the bum. if it hurts, serves them right, blow them up with dynamite! 0 2 0 2 44 fitz, mers, cullen, bull, if you support the aussies, you're a bloody fool! 0 1 0 1 356 103 114 573 6] janice ackerley appendix 2 1. when i was a lady when i was a lady, a lady, a lady— when i was a lady, oh! then, oh! then, oh! then, it was hey oh! this way, this way, this way; it was hey oh! this way, oh! then, oh! then, oh! then. when i got married, got married, got married—[etc.] when i got a baby, a baby, a baby—[etc.] when my baby cried, cried, cried—[etc.] when my baby died, died, died—[etc.] when i had a bustle, a bustle, a bustle—[etc.] when my bustle fell, fell, fell—[etc.] acknowledgements i wish to thank the following for their assistance with the completion of this study: sue clancy of charles sturt university whose guidance was invaluable in focussing me on the requirements of this study. john mckenzie, director of the children's literature centre at the christchurch college of education, whose foresight in the establishment of the national diploma in children's literature introduced me to the fascinating world of children's folklore. his permission was also granted, on behalf of the christchurch college of education, to use the vital resource of the new zealand children's folklore collection, so essential to this study. moya mcfadzean, from museum victoria, melbourne, australia, for providing me with rhymes from the australian children's folklore collection. dr. derek syme (ashburton college) and my colleagues at ashburton college and especially to my family for providing the support and encouragement all the way along this journey. 62 cfr_2003-2004_part2 cfr_2003-2004_part3 cfr_2003-2004_part4 cfr_2003-2004_part5 cfr_2003-2004_part6 cfr_2003-2004_part7 cfr_2003-2004_part8 cfr_2003-2004_part9 stereotypes taboo cfr_2003-2004_part10 cfr_2003-2004_part11 cfr_2003-2004_part12 cfr_2003-2004_part13 cfr_2003-2004_part14 cfr_2003-2004_part15 cfr_2003-2004_part16 cfr_2003-2004_part17 cfr_2003-2004_part18 cfr_2003-2004_part19 stereotypes taboo my boyfriend said to me cfr_2003-2004_part20 stereotypes taboo my boyfriend said to me so tell all the people, who don't want to get you're a bloody fool! let's get rhythm irene chagall handclaps, often overlooked and challenging to document, are a striking folklore tradition shared predominantly by young girls between the ages of five and eleven on every populated continent and many islands between. participation in the handclap game reveals a fascinating exhibition of the cooperative nature of girlhood. the activity is child-initiated, tactile, and rhythmic. upon close scrutiny this praxis is seen to be profound in its treatment of serious issues, even though initially it may appear mundane. the poetry is prosaic; the music, not much to note. yet these games supply many meaningful observations of how young girls perceive themselves and others. it is a medium executed in plain sight whereby girls have private interactions that are nearly codified, without the need of any externally imposed structure. this paper discusses four distinct aspects of the genre: (1) enculturation in the formation of childhood social identity; (2) the influence of ethnic factors; (3) the use of audio-visual media in recording the genre; and (4) the constraints in classification ofhandclaps. it is my goal to expand appreciation of this worldly, though some would argue commonplace, activity by producing a documentary video based on fieldwork and research. the widespread appeal of the tradition can be more thoroughly appreciated by viewing the action. peter and iona opie, highly respected children's folklorists in the english-speaking world during the middle and late twentieth century, wrote ''a printed page cannot convey the exuberance of children singing these games'' (singing game vii). the bond between the girls resonates in rhythm beyond any description on paper. handclapping games have been included in the domain of folklore for well over a century. prominent folklorist simon bronner delivers an apt description of the phenomenon: "[t]he tradit ion of hand-clapping games ... involves performance and integration of different expressive behaviors that defies easy typology. such games combine gestures, music, and words creatively arranged in rhyme. socially, they vary according to ethnicity and region, and, significantly, age. typically played between two girls, each using two hands, the hand-clapping games involve speaking four-line verses usually with alternate lines rhyming." (american children s folklore 166) 43 cfr_2005-2006_part13 cfr_2005-2006_part14 cfr_2005-2006_part15 cfr_2005-2006_part16 cfr_2005-2006_part17 cfr_2005-2006_part18 cfr_2005-2006_part19 9 trickster’s economics: conservation and innovation in the game of jinx jeffrey g . howard “it is desirable to combat the persisting popular tendency to disregard the holistic humanity of children as equal, fully human beings — even to the extent of their having meaningful culture” (carpenter 1994, 19). forty years ago, as of the time i am writing this, herbert and martha knapp published an article in the journal of american folklore called “tradition and change in american playground language.” their article dealt with national — rather than regional — distribution of language and terminology types whose long-lasting presence on the playground had separated certain games from more trendy and faddish types of activities practiced by schoolchildren (knapp and knapp 1973, 131). these language types included the truce terms “time out” and “king’s x,” the tag terminology involving “cooties,” and finally — and perhaps the most significant and popular phenomenon — “jinks.” peter and iona opie have also written about jinx as they observed it in english schoolchildren (although they do not refer to it by that name), describing the performance in this manner: if two children accidentally say the same thing at once (it must be accidental), they instantly stop what they are doing and, without uttering a further word to each other or making any sound, glide into a set ritual which varies only according to the part of britain or, for this is an international performance, the part of the world in which they live. (opie and opie 1961, 310) the opies recorded various rituals associated with this game, including phrases such as “touch wood and whistle” and “white rabbits” and actions like linking pinkies and making wishes. in the u.s, many children use the word jinx, a more modernized form of “jinks” (which i will use to refer to the game throughout the remainder of this essay), as the cue for the performance of their own rituals. these rituals have consisted of pinching, poking, punching, counting, and even extorting. sometimes the winner demands silence from the loser; other times, a simple soda pop. in fact, although the game does have quite a few variations, a few of which the knapps recorded, one of the most widespread phrases associated with the game is “jinx, you owe me a coke!” in 2006, the line even made an appearance in a season 2 episode of the american tv sitcom the office when the office secretary, pam, and her co-worker jim say something at the same time, and pam calls, “jinx! you owe me a coke!” unfortunately, since the knapps’ article in 1973, the game has received very little attention, which is odd since the opies in the language and lore of schoolchildren claim that “the rite would bear detailed investigation in the united cfr_2014.indb 9 11/20/14 1:07 pm trickster’s economics howard 10 states,” and the knapps’ exposition of the game, while interesting and informative, was by no means definitive or exhaustive (opie and opie 1961, 19). one of the few references to the jinx game in folklore scholarship since that time occurs in simon j. bronner’s classic work american children’s folklore. bronner records a single instance of the game, but provides no commentary on it (bronner 1988, 172). consequently, while i make no assertions about conducting a “detailed investigation” of the game, i feel the need to break the near-silence of forty years regarding the state of the jinx to respond to the knapps’ uncertainty as to whether “the popularity of the game [was] increasing or decreasing” (knapp and knapp 1973, 138). not only does jinx still continue to be popular among schoolchildren — and even some adults, myself included on occasion — as both a game and a linguistic performance, but it is also changing and evolving in response to social influences. a version of the jinx game that i collected from my niece (to whom i will refer as lydia for the purposes of this project) illustrates brian sutton-smith’s dual concept of innovation and conservation at work in the game (qtd. in zumwalt 1995, 43). lydia’s version of jinx conserves some of the traditional aspects of the game, such as rhyming and demanding compensation, but it also creates content that reflects the innovative trends of the technological society of today and combines those trends with the role of the trickster archetype. jinx, like other games and teasing, is for my niece (and children like her) “a means of more fully experiencing and defining the people in their lives and the world in which they live” (jorgensen 1995, 213), and through the rules of jinx and the spirit of play she breaks down existing hierarchies and sets up new ones in their place. etymology and context the term jinx is a fairly recent one. the oed records the earliest known usage of the term in 1911, although its variations may be far older (oxford english dictionary online, 2013). in fact, the knapps trace “jinks” back to 1670 as “a piece of conjurer’s gibberish,” and it has since appeared in other variations (jinkgo, jingo, jings, etc.) since then (knapp and knapp 1973, 139). a jinx is more than just a spell or conjuration, though; it can also come in the form of a person with contagious ill fortune. barbara rieti reports instances in newfoundland of fisherman with bad luck who were and are known as jinkers, which is close enough to jinx to potentially share an etymological heritage. the following is an account given by one of rieti’s student regarding such bearers of bad-luck: “if you went with a fisherman and he got a water haul, i.e. no fish, … then you were considered a jinker or doone dinker … and it was highly unlikely that they would let you go with them again” (qtd. in rieti 2008, 19). incidentally, the oed also associates jinx with a jonah, another seafaring term taken from the biblical jonah and assigned to people who bring bad luck not only on themselves but also on their mates (oxford english dictionary online, 2013). the jonah-as-jinx concept has been referred to both explicitly and implicitly in various books such as daniel defoe’s robinson crusoe, herman melville’s moby dick, ernest hemingway’s the old man and the sea, and even films such as peter weir’s master and commander (in which the jonah character receives such ill treatment from the crew members cfr_2014.indb 10 11/20/14 1:07 pm howard trickster’s economics 11 that he finally throws himself overboard). regardless, though, of how jinx and its associated ideas of luck, superstition, and powerlessness have been preserved in written language and oral tradition up until the term jinx surfaced in its current form in 1911, it eventually made the jump from conjurers’ spell and sea-farer’s lore to the schoolchild’s playground as a word game. according to the knapps, the jinx game became popular in the 1940s as a replacement (so it seems) for a prior “ceremonial colloquy” known only as “needles and pins” (knapp and knapp 1973, 138). “needles and pins” was a wishing ritual that required two children to accidentally say the same word at the same time (it cannot be on purpose, or the mystique is lost), lock pinkies, and repeat the chant, “needles and pins, / needles and pins, / when a man marries/ his trouble begins” or some derivation (knapp and knapp 1973, 138). the chant appears as a nursery rhyme in the 1916 children’s book the real mother goose, and b.a. botkin recorded the same rhyme in 1947 in his hefty volume a treasury of new england folklore, stories, ballads, and traditions of the yankee people. however, neither version mentions speaking at the same time or making wishes. both the knapps and the opies recorded children in new england, but also in missouri and east texas, who employed the “needles and pins” model and wishing ceremony throughout the early to mid-1900s (opie and opie 1961, 312). the opies also recorded multiple verbal rituals similar to “needles and pins” in england during that same time period. many of these rituals also have to do with wishing as a collaborative endeavor in which both individuals participate. the opies collected one version “at the royal school, bath,” in which “after making the wish, one girl says: ‘i wish, i wish your wish comes true.’ and the other replies: ‘i wish, i wish the same to you.’ in southampton both chant: ‘i wish, i wish this wish to you, / i wish, i wish your dream come true’ (opie and opie 1961, 311). these ceremonial procedures emphasize unity of purpose and the idea that people must work together and look out for each other in order for needs and wants to be realized. luck is only responsible for the opportunity, but they must take advantage of it together. jinx, on the other hand, at least those versions that the knapps collected and many of the versions i have heard work in an almost opposite direction, stressing competition and dominance of one individual over another instead of collaboration and equality. many versions make references to payment and indebtedness, i.e. “you owe me a coke!” while others allow children to perform a type of physical dominance with pinching and poking or discursive superiority by forcing them to be silent. my dad explained that the version he played with his siblings involved both hitting and remuneration: “you yell ‘jinx!’ and you hit them, and then they have to buy you a pop or something” (howard, 2013). the reason for this shift from the cooperative wishing of “needles and pins” to the more antagonistic relationships of “jinx” in the 1940s could be due to a number of social factors. the 1940s, of course, consisted of a rise in international tensions that resulted in the united states entering wwii. the global community, while still maintaining some sense of alliance and cooperation within the competing sides (the axis and the allied forces), became a place of competition and combat. coping mechanisms dealing with this wartime environment might cfr_2014.indb 11 11/20/14 1:07 pm trickster’s economics howard 12 have manifested themselves in the form of rough physical play had not the 1920s and onward begun to curtail and reduce such things with more adult supervision (hughes 1996, 320). thus, by replacing games like “needles and pins” with “jinx” allowed children to express that type of antagonism verbally when they were not allowed to express it physically. whether or not these factors are responsible for the shift, i think it fair to say that the need for collaboration and the need for control and dominance form major roles in a child’s developing personality. the game in either form is certainly reflective of each set of tendencies, and the fact that children are able to express both of these diametrically opposed characteristics is a testament to their inherent complexity. children play with both of these needs in order to achieve power and success, and these versions of jinx demonstrate this weighing of capitalistic and communal roles as children seek to translate these ideologies into the idiom of their own lore. the jinx machine: an analysis one evening in may 2013, i was sitting down to eat a dinner of pizza and salad at a family get-together. at gatherings of this nature, i generally sit with my nieces and nephews because i happen to like the topics of conversation circulating around the kids’ table more so than those selected by the adults’; tales of secondgrade romances, name-calling, and body humor suit me far better than hearing about number of circumcisions my obgyn brother-in-law has done and how easy it was to perform an especially gruesome c-section (the story of which he might choose to relate at the exact moment i am cutting into the pizza). in between mouthfuls of bell peppers and canadian bacon, my niece and nephews shared funny stories about school and church and friends and knockknock jokes, frequently interrupting each other in order to usurp an especially silly punch line (i don’t often understand their humor, but the fact that it doesn’t make any sense at all doesn’t deter me from enjoying it. most of their jokes are made up on the spot, and, to use the rhetorical terminology of my profession, consist primarily of non-sequiturs). at one point, my niece, lydia, and her brother said the same thing at the exact same moment. lydia pointed at her brother and shouted, “jinx!” they giggled at the coincidence, and she continued, “the jinx machine is out of order. please insert another quarter” (lydia, 2013). i quickly overcame my surprise at hearing a version of jinx that i had never heard before (and which does not seem to exist anywhere else in jinx-lore), asked her to repeat it, and i transcribed it into my phone calendar (i would have used something more official to record the event, but i had no pencil and my napkin was covered in marinara and grease). her brother complained that she had stolen the phrase from him, although when i questioned him more closely, he admitted that he, too, had taken that version of jinx from friends at school. while innovative in several ways which i will discuss later, this particular version of jinx conserves some of the elements found in versions collected by the knapps and simon j. bronner, and even in some of the versions that i have heard and used at various times as a child. cfr_2014.indb 12 11/20/14 1:07 pm howard trickster’s economics 13 first and foremost, lydia’s jinx couplet is what jan brunvand would call a “game rhyme” (brunvand 1968, 64). c.w. sullivan iii says, “children’s games … often include rhymes,” but the appearance of rhyme in recorded jinx versions is rare, although in its predecessor “needles and pins” rhyming is standard issue (sullivan 1995, 147). however, in 1971, the knapps did collect a game rhyme version of jinx in smithville, indiana: “pinch, poke, / you owe me a coke” (knapp and knapp 1973, 137). the metric qualities of this rhyme (two stresses, one iamb, and one anapest) are a bit chaotic for a couplet, but it does demonstrate that my niece’s version still (after forty years) conserves the notion of jinx as a game rhyme. lydia’s game rhyme, however, has a more unified rhythmical structure than the knapps’. her two lines consist of a variation of iambic tetrameter (with one extra unstressed syllable), a metric form employed by poets such as emily dickinson, alfred lord tennyson, and percy bysshe shelley, among others. the first line of the rhyme begins with four iambic feet and an extra unstressed syllable at the end (“the jinx machine is out of order”). the final unstressed syllable, however, connects to the stress in “please” in the second line, thus unifying the rhyme as one line glides into the next. further, the couplet is not only an example of poetic completeness, but also of satire. one of the most well-known usages of iambic tetrameter appears in samuel butler’s “sir hudibras,” a seventeenth-century poetic satire written about puritans and roundheads in the late seventeenth century. the iambic tetrameter and couplet form (like those found in my niece’s rhyme) rhythmically convey the sense of mockery and derision. in the same way, the metric quality of this version of jinx (not only a game rhyme but also a “rhyme of derision” or taunt [brunvand 1968, 68]) also asserts the competitive nature of the game; in a sense, the rhyme celebrates the victory of the crowing child and the defeat of the rival, not in words but in music. in addition to its rhyming quality, lydia’s jinx game also conserves the motif of playing the game at dinner. bronner records, ganie and neil had a custom when people said the same thing at the dinner table. one person shouted out “jinx,” and started to count until the other person said “stop.” the person who said “jinx” got to slug the second person who said stop as many times as he counted. (bronner 1988, 172) dinner time is traditionally supposed to be a time of familial unity and cooperation. according to gregory k. fritz, “family dinners allow all members of the family to be involved, to know what is important, enjoyable, difficult or annoying for the others … for parents, regular family meals provide opportunities to inculcate values and model supportive interactions” (fritz 2006, 8). richard wilk echoes that sentiment, referring to the “image of the happy family meal” in the united states as “the warm, encompassing circle of commensality [that] drew everyone together around real food cooked with unique family recipes, teaching children religious values and respect for their elders, and brought order and cfr_2014.indb 13 11/20/14 1:07 pm trickster’s economics howard 14 comfort to a nation founded on family values” (wilk 2010, 428). his assertion in a sense gives dinner time a connotation of spiritual development, sustenance, and, most importantly, ritual. at the table, parents, as the authority figures, have constructed an ordered setting in which children and parents can interact in meaningful ways. even at the kids’ table, when authority figures are physically absent, the values and expectations of the parents should keep the parents figuratively present. ideally, children will behave because they will give into the panoptical gaze of the absent parent and behave as if they are not completely unobserved. the child’s performance of the jinx game, though, disrupts the order that is supposed to prevail at dinner time. the rituals of jinx trump the dinner ritual and essentially provide the child the opportunity to act the part of the trickster, a virtual brer rabbit whose intent is to subvert the sacred ritual of eating and the system imposed by the more powerful parental authority, not out of spite but for the sake of spectacle and performance. george lankford says, trickster is more likely to be discovered through roles and functions than through labels and appearances … inordinately clever, he frequently lures others into humiliation, injury, and even death … he is a menace to society without being its enemy, and he brings disaster to others without malevolence. he is the rule breaker par excellence. (lankford 1996, 716) the trickster archetype fits well with the jinx game (and many other children’s games as well) because of what roger d. abrahams refers to as his “regressive infantilism” and his desire to play (abrahams 1968, 173). while lydia’s and bronner’s jinx games are certainly not intended to bring about injury or death to the other participants, they do “menace” the society of the table by upsetting the rules of good behavior and peer-ness, humiliating competitors, and reducing that person’s position in the eyes of the others. in my niece’s case, the victim of the rhyme game is her brother, who is both older and bigger than she is. her jinxing of him temporarily overturns not only his advantage in age, size, and strength (once again an echo of brer rabbit and his encounter with animals like brer bear and brer fox), but also the constructed superiority of his masculinity. further, jinx not only becomes a mockery of her male rival, but by extension also of the ritual of dinner time and the adults who have instituted it. all of them fall prey to the culprit’s jinxing couplet. the mental superiority of the trickster as manifested in its ability to upset the status quo not only demonstrates of the children’s ability to conserve elements of the game, but within the behavior of the same archetype exists an illustration of childhood innovation and understanding of everyday realities and their complexity. marilyn jorgensen suggests (paraphrasing richard tallman’s article “a generic approach to the practical joke”) that one of the main roles of a trickster involves trying to “get something for nothing” (jorgensen 1995, 214). interestingly, this endeavor to procure amenities at someone else’s expense is also the guiding objective of the jinx performance. in a few cases, such as the one that bronner cfr_2014.indb 14 11/20/14 1:07 pm howard trickster’s economics 15 reports, the winner procures the right to strike the opponent a certain amount of times, while in other cases (and i remember having played it this way) the winner gains control over loser’s speech because the loser has to be silent until the winner says his name three times. most commonly, the trickster cries, “jinx, you owe me a coke!” “pinch, poke you owe me a coke!” or, as the knapps report from an informant in tacoma in 1959, “jinks, cokes, and hamburgers” and thus secures physical sustenance (knapp and knapp 1973, 137). regardless of which version is used, the winner gains something by calling “jinx!” first without investing anything. lydia’s jinx version retains or conserves this “something for nothing” aspect. the phrase “the jinx machine is out of order, / please insert another quarter” indicates this underlying ideology because inserting a quarter into a broken machine indicates logically (though logic frequently matters but little place in a children’s rhyme) that the giver will receive nothing in return. after all, a machine that is “out of order” can’t actually do anything. however, her request (her demand, i should say) for the quarter also demonstrates her creativity in that instead of asking for a type of currency like the coke or other kind of soda that has limited usage (she can only drink it), she asks for money. her demand for cash is clever in that it makes the brother beholden to her and gives her real power in the economic discourse of the world in which she lives. though a coke possesses physical fluidity, she realizes that money is the only true liquid asset. money has far more weight and versatility than a coke does in its purchasing power. a person who has money has the ability to buy a coke, should she feel the need, but she can choose to purchase something besides a coke. she can even choose not to spend it at all. in her own way, she is demanding more freedom at the expense of her brother’s. she is not only trickster, but she is trickster masquerading as the economic “machine.” my niece’s couplet, further, is also interesting in that it asks for an amenity (money) whose system is founded on belief, which is exactly how the game functions. the power of money comes from the trust and belief of consumers; the metal disk we call a quarter has no real power in and of itself, but only insofar as people believe in the value it represents. in the same way, she only has power over her rival because both parties believe in the rules of the game. in a sense, then, her innovative demand suits the game’s ideology better metaphorically than the cokes and pinches of previous jinx versions. in the end, the trickster/my niece triumphs, but her victory is only short-lived, which is to be expected since, as lankford states, “trickster is as much tricked as tricker in countless stories about his dealings with others, often leaving the analyst to ponder who is the trickster” (lankford 1996, 716). in the jinx game, the final part of the performance occurs when the loser refuses to make good on his or her debt. this seems to be a fundamental part of the game’s narrative. the knapps mention that frequently after the winner proclaims victory, “no one takes [the] debt seriously” (knapp and knapp 1973, 137). essentially, this refusal to pay up by the loser becomes the proverbial tar baby; trickster lydia never collects the quarter from her brother and is thus outfoxed in her demand for remuneration. she has, though, throughout the game shown her ability to deal with the complex issues of modern economic systems of exchange, while also retaining some of the cfr_2014.indb 15 11/20/14 1:07 pm trickster’s economics howard 16 original elements of the jinx tradition in unexpectedly profound demonstration of the “dynamics of cultural acquisition” (carpenter 1994, 19). overall, her version of jinx is a veritable playground where the interaction of old and new ideologies can occur. works cited abrahams, roger d. 1968. trickster, the outrageous hero. our living traditions: an introduction to american folklore. edited by tristram potter coffin. new york: basic books, inc. bronner, simon j. 1988. american children’s folklore: a book of rhymes, games, jokes, stories, secret languages, beliefs ad camp legends for parents, grandparents, teachers, counselors, and all adults who were once children. little rock: august house. brunvand, jan harold. 1968. the study of american folklore: an introduction. new york: w.w. norton & company, inc. carpenter, carole h. 1994. developing an appreciation for the cultural significance of childlore. children’s folklore review 17 (1): 19-29. fritz, gregory k., m.d. 2006. the importance of the family dinner. the brown child and adolescent behavior letter 22 (2): 8. howard, david. 2013. jinx. personal interview. hughes, linda a. 1996. games. american folklore: an encyclopedia. edited by jan harold brunvand. new york: garland publishing, inc. jinx, n. oed online. march 2013. oxford university press. http://www.oed.com/ view/entry/101360?rskey=d2g9no&result=1 jorgensen, marilyn. 1995. teases and pranks. children’s folklore: a source book. edited by brian sutton-smith et al. new york: garland publishing, inc. knapp, herbert and martha knapp. 1973. tradition and change in american playground language. the journal of american folklore 86 (340): 131-141. lankford, george. 1996. trickster. american folklore: an encyclopedia. edited by jan harold brunvand. new york: garland publishing, inc. lydia. 2013. jinx. personal interview. opie, iona, and peter opie. 1961. the lore and language of schoolchildren. oxford: clarendon press. rieti, barbara. 2008. making witches: newfoundland traditions of spells and counterspells. montreal: mcgill-queen’s university press. sullivan iii, c.w. 1995. songs, poems, and rhymes. children’s folklore: a source book. new york: garland publishing, inc. wilk, richard. power at the table: food fights and happy meals. cultural studies/ critical methodologies 10 (6): 428-436. zumwalt, rosemar lévy. 1995. the complexity of children’s folklore. children’s folklore: a source book. new york: garland publishing, inc. cfr_2014.indb 16 11/20/14 1:07 pm cfr_2014_part2 pages from cfr_2014_part3 39 “little pitchers have big ears” the intricate world of children and proverbs wolfgang mieder the titular proverb from the 16th century, not particularly current these days, used to be employed by parents to signal each other that their little children (pitchers) were listening in on something that was not meant for their ears (handles on the pitchers). the assumption was that children could not possibly understand this metaphorical message and, judging by some experiments i have conducted with youngsters as well as my university students, it is indeed a proverb whose hidden meaning is difficult to comprehend. but the proverb also implies that the children are good and keen listeners to what adults are saying, and sooner or later they will catch on at decoding the metaphors of proverbs whose imagery is less obscure. this begs the question at what age children become comfortable in processing proverbs in their mind, whether it is worthwhile to teach them some of the most popular proverbs, and what educational tools exist in addition to normal discourse to aid in this developmental process. once children are introduced to metaphorical proverbs that relate to their very existence, their interest in dealing with this type of indirect language is awakened. there is no doubt that children can handle proverbs at an earlier age than has long been thought possible, but much more study needs to be undertaken on how children employ proverbs once they have become part of their natural vocabulary. ever since the swiss psychologist jean piaget published his seminal study on the language and thought of the child (1926) with its influential chapter “some peculiarities of verbal understanding in the child between the ages of nine and eleven” (piaget 1959: 127-161), scholars have struggled with the question at what age children are capable of processing, understanding, and employing metaphorical proverbs. there are those who maintained with piaget that youngsters are incapable of dealing with proverbs until at least twelve years of age (billow 1975, cometa 1976, douglas and peel 1979), but this view began to be questioned by the end of the 1970s by primarily psycholinguists employing various innovative research methods, such as placing proverbs in a pictorial context (honeck, sowry, voegtle 1978) or asking children to choose an appropriate proverb from a list of ten to end a vignette, to pair proverbs of similar meaning, and to paraphrase them rather than confronting them with a multiple choice proverbs test (resnick 1977 and 1982). especially marilyn nippold and her colleagues have advanced such developmentally oriented studies on proverb comprehension by children and adolescents, arguing that it is of paramount importance that proverbs are presented in a contextualized form (nippold 1985 and 1988, nippold et al. 1988 and 1998). such carefully executed investigations of various proverb tasks with statistical analyses have amply shown that children by the age of ten (fourth graders) are certainly ready to comprehend proverbs, that is at least two years earlier in their development than what piaget had postulated. “little pitchers have big ears” mieder 40 the same has been shown to be true for the related proverbial expressions or general idioms (gibbs 1987, lodge and leach 1975, prinz 1983) while psycholinguists have done impressive work in advancing knowledge about how children’s minds process and understand metaphorical proverbs, they have basically ignored the question of when children begin using proverbs once they have become acquainted with them. folklorist catherine hudson, in her short paper on “traditional proverbs as perceived by children from an urban environment” (1972), tried to deal with proverbs in actual use, but she was able to observe only that while her fourth and fifth graders could deal with proverbs cited by adults they “never reached the point where they used proverbs in their conversation” (hudson 1972: 17). but in this regard it is important to point to judith pasamanick’s unfortunately ignored dissertation the proverb moves the mind: abstraction and metaphor in children six-nine (1982) with folklorist barbara kirshenblatt-gimblett being on the thesis committee at yeshiva university in new york city. she took the time to set up discursive situations with 48 children in which she, as the investigator, would discuss a given proverb to the point that they understood its meaning, were able to talk about it, and also put it to use. it took many weeks of serious transcription work and detailed analysis to show by realistic verbal exchanges that these youngsters could manage proverbs. altering the proverb that “talk does not cook rice” for a summary of sorts to “talk does cook rice: proverb abstraction through social interaction” (1983), she used a most fitting metaphor for her seminal work that shows that a narrative approach to proverb understanding and use is better than employing proverbs tests without contexts. it was a special pleasure and privilege for me when judith pasamanick and her husband visited me in vermont. our discussions resulted in the publication of her paper “watched pots do boil: proverb interpretation through contextual illustration” (1985) in proverbium. the recorded transcripts of her discussions with the children of such proverbs as “you can’t have your cake and eat it too,” “talk does not cook rice,” “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush,” “don’t count your chickens before they hatch,” “you can’t unscramble eggs,” “you can’ teach an old dog new tricks,” “the early bird catches the worm,” and others are most revealing of the social and ethical aspects of these discussions among young peers, and they are most certainly unique in the scholarship of children and proverbs. in this regard let me also point out the fascinating scholarship by the finnish folklorist and paremiologist liisa granbom-herranen who has investigated life stories of adults who recall in their narratives what pedagogical roles proverbs played as behavioral models once they had learned them as children (granbom-herranen 2008, 2009, 2011). personal narratives can shed much light on lasting effects of proverbs encountered in youth. regrettably, judith pasamanick did not become a paremiologically oriented folklorist but rather entered the professorial profession in the college of education at columbia university where she invited pack carnes, known for his fable and joke scholarship, and me to teach a folklore summer course – an unforgettably rewarding experience. in any case, a third section of her dissertation deals with “pedagogic applications” (322-351) where she discusses how her socialinteractional mode of proverb elicitation and employment can be used in a mieder “little pitchers have big ears” 41 constructive way in the classroom of an ethnically diverse group of children. without wanting to be prescriptive, she argues that proverbs can facilitate the discussion of ethical values by giving the children the opportunity to analyze their implied wisdom. and it is with gladness and appreciation that i acknowledge here the influence that the pioneering work of my friend had on my own involvement with proverbs and children. she was correct more than thirty years ago, and she will remain so since there is absolutely nothing wrong with teaching children at least the most commonly known proverbs. the question is, of course, how to accomplish this task that ought to include pasamanick’s open-mined discursive approach. as luck would have it, i received a generous grant from the templeton foundation in 1999 to develop teaching strategies for acquainting fourth-grade students with wisdom in the form of proverbs. i teamed up with their teacher, deborah holmes, and we put together a number of teaching units that proved most beneficial to the youngsters who reacted with spirited enthusiasm that perhaps only children of the age between nine and ten are capable of exhibiting in a classroom situation. for the character development and ethics unit, we covered proverbs like “where there is a will, there is a way,” “if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again,” “do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” and “actions speak louder than words.” during the united nations’ unit, we employed proverbs like “the pen is mightier than the sword,” “different strokes for different folks,” “love thy neighbor as thyself,” “united we stand, divided we fall,” and “a house divided cannot stand.” and during the science/math units we dealt with such proverbs as “a stitch in time saves nine,” “two heads are better than one,” “a rolling stone gathers no moss,” and “a miss is as good as a mile.” altogether we covered 150 proverbs during the school year chosen from the established paremiological minimum of 300 anglo-american proverbs (haas 2008, mieder 1992). it was important to us to teach only those proverbs that are definitely current in our modern society, and we made sure that we included modern proverbs like “garbage in, garbage out,” “there is no such things as a free lunch,” and “one picture is worth a thousand words.” one of the criticisms that i would level at some of the psycholinguistic studies is that they at times use proverbs that are not particularly current, to wit “scalded cats fear even cold water,” “a caged bird longs for the clouds,” “the restless sleeper blames the bed,” “the pretty shoe often pinches the foot,” and “a mouse may help a lion” (duthie et al. 2008: 162-163). in any case, i traveled to the elementary school at milton, vermont about every three weeks with my slide projector for a number of school years, telling my university students before going that they better be well prepared for the next lesson if they wanted to come even close to the excitement and eagerness of these wonderful young learners. they loved my slides from art, cartoons, comics, advertisement, headlines, etc., and they had absolutely no problems understanding so-called anti-proverbs, i.e., intentional humorous or satirical manipulations of the proverbs they had learned. there were also exciting projects for the children like writing essays about a proverb, translating the proverbial metaphors into drawings, acting out proverbs, etc. we have described all of this in our book “children and “little pitchers have big ears” mieder 42 proverbs speak the truth”: teaching proverbial wisdom to fourth graders (mieder and holmes 2000). our joint efforts with these incredible youngsters got into the papers, and we also had a half-hour interview with npr that aired numerous times over the years as part of its “humankind” series. but speaking of the book that includes forty proverbial drawings, perhaps the most exciting aspect are the answers of the students to the following questions of a questionnaire handed out at the end of the school year. let me cite some of the questions with but a couple of answers here: what is your favorite proverb? actions speak louder than words. every cloud has a silver lining. (p. 197) describe a situation when a proverb you learned this year helped you make a good decision. don’t judge a book but its cover helped me read a great book. it had an ugly green cover and a boring name but “the lost bear” was a great book. my little sister and i were about to cross a street without looking and i stopped and said look before you leap. (p. 198) which proverb would help you if there was trouble on the playground? two wrongs don’t make a right. do unto others as you would have them do unto you. (p. 204) which proverb would you like to remember for the rest of your life? why? time flies because you have to make life the fullest because it is so short once you think about it. there is no such thing as a free lunch. because we need to learn that if we want something we have to work for it or earn it. (p. 205) did learning and discussing proverbs change your thinking or behavior in any way? yes – no. yes. learning and discussing proverbs changed my behavior in how i thought. i think with more maturity now that i have learned proverbs. yes. it changed my thinking about the way everything works. (p. 207) would you like to continue to learn proverbs? yes – no. yes. because they are very interesting and can help you in life. yes. because proverbs are like morals. the more you know the less you make bad decisions. (p. 208) our book has seventeen such answers to these and other questions, and in my international proverb archives, i have many more from other years of teaching these kids. this is material that the psycholinguistic studies mentioned above— mieder “little pitchers have big ears” 43 except for those by judith pasamanick—do not have and thus do not consider. there is no doubt that much more contextualized field research is necessary to really understand how children at a young age relate to proverbs. the fact that proverbs can be taught and that they might have a positive influence on the character development of youngsters is nothing new. they have long been taught as ready-made bits of wisdom or at least as generalized expressions of experiences and observations as can be seen from early educational collections, school-books from the middle ages, translation exercises in foreign language classes, etc. (mieder 2009, orkin 1978). and let us not forget benjamin franklin’s poor richard’s almanacks (1733-1758) and his infamous essay “the way to wealth” (1758) that ushered in the puritan ethics with its 105 proverbs! can’t you just imagine those children during the past two centuries who sat at the breakfast table and drank their milk out of a cup standing on a plate that both are inscribed with such proverbs as “early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise,” “laziness travels so slowly, that poverty soon overtakes him,” or “he that by the plough would thrive, himself must either hold or drive”? in addition to such proverbial inscriptions these dishes often carried the label “franklin’s maxims” – no wonder that his name became attached to so many proverbs when in fact he only coined very few, to wit “there is sleeping enough in the grave” and “three removes are as bad as a fire” (mieder 2004b: 216-224). these franklin mugs and plates have long since become collector’s items, and my wife has spent up to $300 a piece to assemble a dozen of these rare curiosities for me as very special and much-appreciated presents (mcclinton 1980, riley 1991). we have modern lists of proverbs that serve similar educational purposes, as for example the one in the dictionary of cultural literacy: what every american needs to know (hirsch et al. 1988: 46-57, mieder 1992: 195-197). e.d. hirsch has also published what your fourth grader needs to know with a list of sayings and phrases (hirsch 2005: 57-65) that are explained by way of short statements and concise educational dialogues, as for example: birds of a feather flock together we use this saying [proverb] to mean that similar people, or people who have similar interests, like to be with each other. “those guys always eat lunch together,” jenny said, nodding toward a group of boys in the cafeteria. “yeah,” said june, “they’re on the same baseball team and they love to talk about mitts and bats and home runs.” jenny nodded. “birds of a feather flock together!” (hirsch 2005: 58) but nowhere in these two books does he explain how these texts were chosen. it certainly would have been appropriate to have consulted proverb scholars to help select those texts (old and modern) that are current today. jay mechling has dealt with the issue of oversimplifying the educational and cultural value and significance of proverbs in his eye-opening article on “‘cheaters never prosper’ and other lies adults tell kids: proverbs and the culture wars over character” (2004). as he points out, there are plenty of inappropriate proverbs, and the mere “little pitchers have big ears” mieder 44 memorization of “good” proverbs – even they can be put to negative use due to their polyfunctionality, polysituativity, and polysemanticity (mieder 2004b: 132) – does not make a good child let alone adult. and yet, at least some knowledge and understanding of proverbs is part of cultural literacy and there is no harm in acquainting children with them without making absolute rules out of their all-too-human limitations, as is immediately obvious from such contrasting pairs as “absence makes the heart grow fonder” vs. “out of sight, out of mind” and “look before you leap” vs. “he who hesitates is lost.” a proverb at the right time in the right place is just fine, but the proverbial caveats “nothing in excess” and “everything in moderation” also apply to the use of proverbs. now that educational books have been mentioned, it is time to take a look at richly illustrated small books for children that have been published over the years to serve as enjoyable early introductions to the rich treasure trove of proverbs (mieder et al. 1992). they are clearly intended to teach children proverbs, just as other children’s books acquaint youngsters with fables, fairy tales, legends, myths, etc. as part of cultural literacy. judging by my university students who enroll in my lecture course on “‘big fish eat little fish’: the nature and politics of proverbs” every fall (mieder 2015), i can honestly and without riding my proverbial hobby-horse state that they would well have benefitted from one of these charming books. it is always amazing to me at the beginning of the course that they have plenty of difficulties filling out a questionnaire with fifty common proverbs for which i ask them to complete either the first or the second half. even though i have selected especially common proverbs from the anglo-american paremiological minimum, many students cannot complete the partial queues for such standard proverbs as “a stitch in time saves nine,” “cobbler stick to your last,” “a miss is as good as a mile,” “there is nothing new under the sun,” “you never miss the water until the well runs dry,” and “a burnt child dreads the fire.” but they all know the “fish”-proverb used in the catch-title of my course as becomes clear during the introductory lecture that deals with a diachronic survey of this proverb with references from literature, politics, the mass media, and about fifty slides of illustrations from pieter bruegel all the way to modern cartoons and advertisements (mieder 1987: 178-228, and 2004b: 34-43). at that time i also show them that ever popular children’s book swimmy (1963) by leo lionni that on a few beautifully illustrated pages first shows how a big fish swallows little fish, then how a special little fish starts organizing his peers into the shape of a large fish – i call it the solidarity fish – and how that unified creature chases the big fish away. more than fifty years after its first appearance this book is still on the market in numerous languages, and many of my students remember it from their childhood. in comparison to other children’s books on proverbs that i have collected over the years, this is particularly memorable since it is basically a pictorial story with but little writing that teaches youngsters about just one important proverb about power, greed, rapacity that unfortunately is part of human nature that can, at least at times, be overcome by unified efforts. my interest in children’s books on proverbs – besides my obsession with collecting everything proverbial for my ever expanding international proverb archives – began when, some thirty years ago, i came across the sixteen-page mieder “little pitchers have big ears” 45 booklet old proverbs with new pictures by lizzie lawson published without a date by the merrimack publishing corporation in new york city. realizing that this treasure of beautifully illustrated children depicting the proverbs “little boats keep near shore, big ships may venture more,” “half a loaf is better than no bread,” “there’s many a slip twixt the cup and the lip,” “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush,” “it’s an ill wind that blows no body good,” “you may lead a horse to water but you cannot make him drink,” “the more haste, the less speed,” “birds of a feather flock together,” “never buy a pig in a poke,” “out of the frying pan into the fire,” “too much of a good thing is good for nothing,” “tis a poor heart that never rejoices,” “the greatest strokes make not the sweetest music,” too many cooks spoil the broth,” and “coming events cast their shadows before.” i never succeeded in finding out more about this slender publication, but i have discovered the fabulous book from which these illustrations were taken. it is old proverbs with new pictures (london: cassell, petter, calpin & co.) that on 64 pages contains 35 proverb illustrations by the british children’s book artist lizzie lawson (1867-1920) and little explanatory poems by the unknown british poet clara mateaux that were deleted from the small reprint. here is at least one example, albeit without the illustration: it is no use crying over spilt milk do not fret for fretting ended, never bowl or platter mended, bind that finger, wipe that tear, next, more careful step my dear, and remember what i say, milk, once spilt, is spilt for aye. (p. 22) admittedly, such verses would not come across to today’s children, and the illustrations are also dated for modern youngsters. nevertheless, it is one of the most splendid children’s proverb books that definitely deserves to be reprinted as a unique curiosity with plenty of entertaining value. and paremiologists like myself will, of course, also enjoy the fact that lord john russell’s famous proverb definition “the wit of one, the wisdom of many” (1823) appears – albeit in reverse order – underneath the cover picture of five children. for the past three decades, i have searched for other proverb books intended for children by spending time in the children’s section of bookstores, asking shopkeepers for possible leads, and also trying the internet. while i am excited about the ten additional books that i have been able to purchase during the past decades, it is a regrettably small harvest. proverb collections as such – popular and scholarly – can actually be found in general bookstores, and i would think that “little pitchers have big ears” mieder 46 well-illustrated children’s books on proverbs could conquer their market as well. and it would be desirable that such books would include particularly popular traditional proverbs as well as more modern proverbs like “go big or go home” or “the second mouse gets the cheese” (doyle et al. 2012). in any case, what follows is a short survey of the children’s proverb books that i possess: hughes, shirley (ill.). 1977. make hay while the sun shines. a book of proverbs. chosen by alison m. abel. london: faber and faber. 48 pp.; rpt. london: faber and faber, 1998. 40 pp. the book with its proverbial title includes 33 pen and ink drawings of children acting out standard proverbs like “many hands make light work,” “don’t swap horses in mid-stream,” and “let sleeping dogs lie.” the proverbs are cited at the bottom of the page with very short explanatory comments. i was especially pleased to see the proverb “a stitch in time saves nine” illustrated together with the concise explanation: “if you put something right as soon as it goes wrong, you won’t have so much trouble later” (p.7). this is one of the proverbs that not a single student in my proverb class this past fall knew! little wonder perhaps, since nobody appears to be mending clothes any longer. i personally have fond memories seeing my mother stitch the holes in our socks when we grew up after the second world war. since the proverb obviously need not refer only to mending clothes, it still has plenty of good use in our modern society and could well still be taught and learned. hughes, shirley (ill.). 1980. “over the moon”: a book of sayings. london: faber and faber. 48 pp.; rpt. london: faber and faber, 1998. 40 pp. having had success with her first proverb book, shirley hughes brought out a companion volume depicting 47 proverbial expressions in pen and ink drawings (sometimes two on a page). the proverbial expressions are once again printed at the bottom of the page with a very short explanatory comment beneath. some of the depicted phrases are “up the creek with a paddle,” “a bull in a china shop,” “casting pearls before swine,” and “hitting the nail on the head.” such metaphorical expressions literally call out to be illustrated, and i was especially interested to see that shirley hughes included the proverbial expression “being a dog in the manger” that i have traced back to classical times (mieder 2011). the pen and ink drawing makes its meaning perfectly clear, but the explanatory comment “refusing to give up something you don’t really want to someone who needs it” (p. 6) helps to understand the metaphor. none of my university students knew this expression and not surprisingly so, since fables, where the metaphor comes from, are not covered much in school any longer. and yet, it is such a great image, and i wish we could maintain it since it still fits perfectly to human behavior in the modern age. fraser, betty (ill.). 1990. first things first: an illustrated collection of sayings – useful and familiar for children. new york: harper & row. 32 pp. while the two books by shirley hughes probably would not appeal to youngster these days because of the lack of colorful illustrations, this book by mieder “little pitchers have big ears” 47 betty fraser presents plenty of them with children from various ethnic groups. it includes two dozen well-known proverbs for which it explains in words and pictures what they mean and when to use them. the pictures are full of good humor, and they are entitled by an introductory statement with one or two possible proverbial answers interspersed on the page, as for example: what to say when you are the first the early bird catches the worm. first come, first served. first things first. (p. 14) the accompanying picture shows a bird outside of the kitchen eating a worm and a child sitting at the table as the first family member being served breakfast by the mother. there is also a little dog wanting to eat and thinking to himself “first things first”. this book is clearly meant to teach children proverbs, and my proverb students would be able to explain to the little girl that the proverb “first come, first served” is actually a medieval latin legal proverb that relates to the miller. the customary law was that the farmer who would arrive at the mill first would have his grain ground first. the proverb was translated into the vernacular languages, with geofrrey chaucer still alluding to this practice with “whoso that first to mille comth, first grynt”. but by 1599 the truncated variant “first come, first served” already appeared in england and it has long displaced the longer version (mieder 2004b: 43-52). a child does not need to know this, of course, but this example shows that there is much to learn about proverbs for the inquisitive mind, even at a young age. i am not sure if i would have included “a trouble shared is a trouble halved” that is not really current, but i am glad that there is a two-page spread on the golden rule “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” the twice repeated text and the two series of three pictures each make the meaning of this basic rule of civil and humane behavior perfectly clear to the young readers and viewers. kneen, maggie (ill.). 1992. “too many cooks ...” and other proverbs. new york: green tiger press. 26 pp. this is a beautifully illustrated book with all the characters being animals. it presents twenty-five very well-known proverbs, with some proverbs like “birds of a feather flock together” getting a two-page illustration, while another two-page spread presents a horse and buggy at a stable with five proverbs written next to appropriate place: “if wishes were horses, beggars would ride,” “never look a gift horse in the mouth,” “don’t put the cart before the horse,” “you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink,” and “don’t lock the stable door after the horse has bolted.” the first and last proverb might be a bit difficult for a small child to grasp. for parents who might have difficulties there are two pages at the end of the book with short explanations, to wit for the “stable”-proverb: “it is useless to take precautions after an accident has happened when they should have been taken before.” in any case, this is a charming and entertaining book for very “little pitchers have big ears” mieder 48 young children, but it is, as the others mentioned thus far, unfortunately out of print. hurwitz, johanna. 1994. a word to the wise and other proverbs. illustrations by robert rayevsky. new york: morrow junior books. 32 pp. as stated on the dust cover of this book, its author johanna hurwitz was inspired by an oil painting called the dutch proverbs (1646/4) by david teniers ii that depicts 45 proverbs and proverbial expressions on a large canvas very much in the tradition of pieter bruegel’s famous painting the netherlandish proverbs (1559) with its over 100 proverbial scenes (dundes and stibbe 1981, mieder 2004a): “a picture is worth a thousand words, but sometimes words can inspire a picture. on a trip to england, i saw a large painting at belvoir castle [at grantham]. it depicted many proverbial scenes together on a single canvas. that painting sparked the idea for this book.” as my wife and i did on our pilgrimage to belvoir castle some years ago, hurwitz too must have bought a postcard of the picture at the museum shop that lists the proverbial phrases. in turn she showed it to the children’s book illustrator robert rayevsky who adapted the 17th-century small-town painting to the metropolis of new york city with teniers’ small river becoming the east river. altogether his picture is comprised of twenty proverb scenes, with the actual texts printed around the outside borders. the left side includes proverbs like “don’t cry over spilt milk,” “birds of a feather flock together,” and “too many cooks spoil the broth,” while the right side features such proverbs as “where there’s smoke, there’s fire,” “an apple a day keeps the doctor away,” and “don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.” the proverb picture appears twice on the front and back inside cover pages, clearly entertaining children and adults alike in searching out the proverb scenes and gaining some understanding of their traditional wisdom. the inside of this oversize book (9x11) includes 22 proverbs with some of them like “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush” and “when the cat’s away the mice will play” covering two whole pages. the proverbs are printed at the top or the bottom of the page in relatively small lettering without any explanations. this surely is a book that is intended primarily for viewing pleasure while at the same time introducing children to very well-known proverbs, with the one about “the pen is mightier than the sword” showing benjamin franklin at a lectern with a quill in hand and surrounded by children. this illustration serves as the introduction and is accompanied by a short preface that quite correctly states that franklin is “known of having recorded many proverbs in a series of books called poor richard almanack. benjamin franklin was aware that there was much for us to learn from the simple truths of proverbs” (p. 3). in other words, hurwitz refrains from perpetuating the falsehood that franklin coined dozens of proverbs that one hears and reads to this day, something that is especially the case for the apocryphal attachment of his name to the beautifully illustrated proverb “early to bed, and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise” (pp. 24-25) that actually dates back to a late medieval latin proverb (barbour 1974, mieder 1993: 98-134) mieder “little pitchers have big ears” 49 brennan-nelson, denise. 2003. my momma likes to say. illustrations by jane monroe donovan. chelsea, michigan: sleeping bear press. 32 pp. brennan-nelson, denise. 2004. my teacher likes to say. illustrations by jane monroe donovan. chelsea, michigan: sleeping bear press. 32 pp. brennan-nelson, denise. 2007. my grandma likes to say. illustrations by jane monroe donovan. chelsea, michigan: sleeping bear press. 32 pp. these somewhat oversized (10x10) books are proof of the proverb that all good things come in three! the collaborative work between the author denise brennan-nelson and the illustrator jane monroe resulted in the poetic, prosaic, and pictorial explanation of about a dozen proverbs and proverbial expressions in each book. the children learn that they most likely have heard them from their mother, teacher, or grandmother. on a two-page spread the proverb is written in large letters at the top followed by some verses and in smaller print a few explanatory comments, with the wonderful colorful illustrations bringing it all to life. the first book presents proverbs like “money doesn’t grow on trees” and proverbial expressions like “it’s raining cats and dogs” (the illustration of animals tumbling through the rain is also on the cover), and i was pleased to see a modern proverb included that might serve as an example of the modus operandi of these books: “when life hands you lemons, make lemonade,” my momma likes to say. i’m not sure what she means but i like it anyway. if life gives me lemons i’ll squeeze them good and hard, then add some sugar, stir it up and sell it from our yard. all of this is surrounded by several children preparing lemonade in a front yard to be sold to passersby, but in the upper right corner, in small print, is this additional information: andrew carnegie (1835-1919) first said, “when fate hands us lemons, let us try to make lemonade.” lemons are very sour and yet they are used to make something very sweet and delicious – lemonade! this idiom suggests that we should take a difficult situation and turn it into something good. can you think of a time when you took a bad situation and turned it into something good? [this is followed by eight lines of a lemonade recipe] (24-25) all of this is written in such small print that i doubt that children would enjoy reading it. but perhaps this is meant for the parents to read and discuss with the children. i should also add that none of the books state anywhere what the age“little pitchers have big ears” mieder 50 range of the children is that are being addressed. finally, calling andrew carnegie the originator of the proverb is stretching things a bit. he helped to popularize it, with the earliest reference thus far being from 1910 (doyle, mieder, shapiro 2012: 140). by the third book proverbial expressions and comparisons like “growing like a weed,” “a horse of a different color,” “being no spring chicken,” and “hit the hay” outnumber proverbs like “when the cats away the mice will play” and “where there’s a will there’s a way.” one of my favorites is the verbal and pictorial treatment of the proverbial comparison “like a bull in a china shop” (16-17) that has been shown to have an international distribution from classical times to today in a number of variants including an elephant instead of the bull (trokhimenko 1999). gregorich, barbara. 2006. waltur [sic] buys a pig in a poke and other stories. illustrations by kristin sorra. boston, massachusetts: houghton mifflin. 54 pp. gregorich, barbara. 2007. waltur [sic] paints himself into a corner and other stories. illustrations by kristin sorra. boston, massachusetts: houghton mifflin. 48 pp. these two books are very different from the others in that they teach or exemplify proverbs by stories with many colorful illustrations showing how waltur the bear in company with his bear friends finds out the truth behind them. the first volume treats the three proverbs “don’t buy a pig in a poke,” “don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched,” and “you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.” here are a few of the short prose lines printed as if they were poems of the first story: a pig in a poke the three friends went to the fair. “i will go on rides,” said darwin. “i will play games,” said matilda. “and i will buy a pig,” said waltur. “be careful,” said matilda. “do not buy a pig in a poke.” “what’s a poke?” asked darwin. “a poke is a bag,” matilda answered. “you cannot see through a bag. you should not buy what you cannot see,” she said. matilda went to play games. darwin went to go on rides. waltur went to buy a pet. (6-7) mieder “little pitchers have big ears” 51 and on it goes for more pages as waltur finds his understanding and appreciation of the proverb. the second volume presents stories around “don’t put the cart before the horse”, “don’t paint yourself into a corner,” and “let sleeping dogs lie” of which the first two would normally be considered as proverbial expressions that are rendered into proverbs of sorts by adding the negative imperative “don’t” element to them. but to be sure, the stories and illustrations are educational in an entertaining fashion, and children would surely enjoy having them read to them or reading them on their own while glancing at the pictures. these then are the books that i have been able to collect over the years, leaving examples of similar books in german, russian, and spanish aside for now. of course, there are other ways to teach proverbs to children bringing to mind a large framed colorful poster of a painting by the british artist william belcher with the title as the saying goes (1973) that hangs in my office in our home. it contains 51 proverb scenes with captions for the obvious delight and edification of children. as in the netherlandish proverbs by bruegel, a house is placed into an open landscape with a river running through it, with the various scenes and captions bringing to life such proverbs as “cleanliness is next to godliness,” “too many cooks spoil the broth,” “a rolling stone gathers no moss,” “look before you leap,” “you can’t have your cake and eat it too,” and, befitting an english poster, “an englishman’s home is his castle” which is nowadays usually cited more generally as “a man’s home is his castle.” my wife and i remember fondly how our nephews and niece would stand in front of the picture enjoying the proverbial messages. observing children deal with proverbs can indeed be a lot of fun for adults. as they learn and understand them, it is of developmental interest to hear them utter them correctly in different contexts. but there are also those perennial lists prepared by elementary school teachers where children have been asked to complete truncated proverbs that they often do not yet know. we have all received such humorous lists via the internet, and i have quite a collection of them. two of my favorites are “a rolling stone plays a guitar” and “a bird in the hand is warm” that clearly have some truth to them. and children also come up spontaneously with proverb-like statements that might just have it in them to become new proverbs, to wit such wisdom as “parents have eyes in the backs of their heads,” “you can’t hide mashed potatoes in your hat,” “popping popcorn without a lid isn’t smart,” and “you can’t trust dogs to watch your food” that h. jackson brown has collected in his richly illustrated book wit and wisdom from the peanut butter gang. a collection of wise words from young hearts (1994: 25, 52, 63, 64, see also gash 1999, knox 1925, stark 1992). adults throughout the world have coined plenty of proverbs about children and child-rearing (palacios 1996, reinsberg-düringsfeld 1864), and so why should we not also look more seriously at children’s very own proverbs? it certainly behooves folklorists and others to pay much more attention to children and proverbs not only from the dominant psycholinguistic approach but also by way of rigorous field research to find out when, how, and why children employ proverbs that they have learned in actual verbal communication. teaching them traditional and modern proverbs, “little pitchers have big ears” mieder 52 not so much as moral maxims as was done in former times but rather as culturally relevant generalizations, still makes a lot of sense as they develop into responsible citizens with at least a little bit of help from the insights of the experienced wisdom of proverbial common-sense. works cited primary sources brennan-nelson, denise. 2003. my momma likes to say. illustrations by jane monroe donovan. chelsea, michigan: sleeping bear press. 32 pp. ———. 2004. my teacher likes to say. illustrations by jane monroe donovan. chelsea, michigan: sleeping bear press. 32 pp. ———. 2007. my grandma likes to say. illustrations by jane monroe donovan. chelsea, michigan: sleeping bear press. 32 pp. brown, h. jackson (ed.). 1994. wit and wisdom from the peanut butter gang [i.e., children]. nashville, tennessee: rutledge hill press. 128 pp. with illustrations. fraser, betty (ill.). 1990. first things first: an illustrated collection of sayings – useful and familiar for children. new york: harper & row. 32 pp. gash, amy (ed.). 1999. what the dormouse said. lessons for grown-ups from children’s books. illustrations by pierre le-tan. chapel hill, north carolina: algonquin books. 146 pp. gregorich, barbara. 2006. waltur [sic] buys a pig in a poke and other stories. illustrations by kristin sorra. boston, massachusetts: houghton mifflin. 54 pp. ———. 2007. waltur [sic] paints himself into a corner and other stories. illustrations by kristin sorra. boston, massachusetts: houghton mifflin. 48 pp. hughes, shirley (ill.). 1977. make hay while the sun shines. a book of proverbs. chosen by alison m. abel. london: faber and faber. 48 pp.; rpt. london: faber and faber, 1998. 40 pp. ———. 1980. “over the moon”: a book of sayings. london: faber and faber. 48 pp.; rpt. london: faber and faber, 1998. 40 pp. hurwitz, johanna. 1994. a word to the wise and other proverbs. illustrations by robert rayevsky. new york: morrow junior books. 32 pp. kneen, maggie (ill.). 1992. “too many cooks…” and other proverbs. new york: green tiger press. 26 pp. knox, d.b. 1925. children’s funny sayings. an amusing book for everybody. new york: e.p. dutton. 206 pp. lionni, leo. 1963. swimmy. new york: alfred a. knopf. 32 pp. mateaux, clara. 1881. old proverbs with new pictures. illustrations by lizzie lawson. london: cassell, petter, calpin & co. 64 pp. partial reprint new york: merrimack publishing, ca. 1980. 16 pp. stark, judith. priceless proverbs: from the tongue of the young. 1982. los angeles, california: price, stern, sloan. 76 pp. with illustrations. mieder “little pitchers have big ears” 53 secondary sources barbour, frances m. 1974. a concordance to the sayings in franklin’s “poor richard”. detroit, michigan: gale research company. billow, richard m. 1975. a cognitive development study of metaphor comprehension. developmental psychology 11: 415-423. cometa, michael stephen. 1976. logical operations in semantic development: a piagetian model of metaphor and proverb comprehension. phd diss., state university of new york at albany. douglas, joan delahanty, and bettina peel. 1979. the development of metaphor and proverb translation in children grades 1 through 7. journal of educational research 73: 116119. doyle, charles clay, wolfgang mieder, and fred r. shapiro. 2012. the dictionary of modern proverbs. new haven, connecticut: yale university press. dundes, alan, and claudia a. stibbe. 1981. the art of mixing metaphors. a folkloristic interpretation of the “netherlandish proverbs” by pieter bruegel the elder. helsinki: suomalainen tiedeakatemia. duthie, jill k., marilyn n. nippold, jessie l. billow, and tracy c. mansfield. 2008. mental imagery of concrete proverbs: a developmental study of children, adolescents, and adults. applied psycholinguistics 29: 151-173. gibbs, raymond w. 1987. linguistic factors in children’s understanding of idioms. journal of child language 14: 569-586. granbom-herranen, liisa. 2008. proverbs in pedagogical speech – what do children hear? proceedings of the first interdisciplinary colloquium on proverbs, 5th to 12th november 2007, at tavira, portugal. eds. rui j.b. soares and outi lauhakangas, pp. 341-348. tavira: tipografia tavirense. ———. 2009. proverbs from childhood. proverbium 26: 151-170. ———. 2011. “grandmother gave us the guidelines of life”: proverbs from childhood. proceedings of the fourth interdisciplinary colloquium on proverbs, 7th to 14th november 2010, at tavira, portugal. eds. rui j.b. soares and outi lauhakangas, pp. 106-118.tavira: tipografia tavirense. haas, heather. 2008. proverb familiarity in the united states: cross-regional comparisons of the paremiological minimum. journal of american folklore 212: 319-347. hirsch, e.d. 2005. what your fourth grader needs to know. fundamentals of good fourth-grade education. new york: delta trade paperbacks. hirsch, e.d., joseph kett, and james trefil. 1988. the dictionary of cultural literacy. what every american needs to know. boston: houghton mifflin co. honeck, richard p., brenda m. sowry, and katherine voegtle. 1978. proverbial understanding in a pictorial context. child development 49: 327-331. hudson, catherine. 1972. traditional proverbs as perceived by children from an urban environment. journal of the folklore society of greater washington, d.c. 3: 17-24. lodge, donna nemeth, and edwin a. leach. 1975. children’s acquisition of idioms in the english language. journal 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benjamin franklin and back. in proverbs are never out of season. popular wisdom in the modern age, ed. wolfgang mieder, pp. 98-134. new york: oxford university press. ———. 2004a. “one picture that’s worth more than a thousand words”. pieter bruegel the elder’s netherlandish proverbs – “past and present.” in the netherlandish proverbs. an international symposium on the pieter brueg(h) els, ed. wolfgang mieder, pp. 195-241. burlington: the university of vermont. ———. 2004b. proverbs. a handbook. westport, connecticut: greenwood press; rpt. new york: peter lang, 2012. ———. 2009. international bibliography of paremiology and phraseology. 2 vols. berlin: walter de gruyter. ———. 2011. “the dog in the manger”: the rise and decline in popularity of a proverb and a fable. midwestern folklore 37: 3-44. also in w. mieder, behold the proverbs of a people. proverbial wisdom in culture, literature, and politics. jackson, mississippi: university press of mississippi, 2014. 363414. ———. 2015. 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development of proverb comprehension in adolescents: implications for instruction. journal of children’s communication development 19: 49-55. nippold, marilyn a., stephanie a. martin, and barbara j. erskine. 1988. proverb comprehension in context: a developmental study with children and adolescents. journal of speech and hearing research 31: 19-28. orkin, martin r. 1978. the poor cat’s adage and other shakespearian proverbs in elizabethan grammar-school education. english studies in africa 21: 79-88. palacios, jesús. 1996. proverbs as images of children and childrearing. images of childhood. eds. c. philip hwang, michael e. lamb, and irving e. sigel, pp. 75-98. hillsdale, new jersey: lawrence erlbaum. pasamanick, judith r. 1982. the proverb moves the mind: abstraction and metaphor in children six-nine. phd diss., yeshiva university. ———. 1983. talk ‘does’ cook rice: proverb abstraction through social interaction. international journal of the sociology of language 44: 5-25. ———. 1985. watched pots do boil: proverb interpretation through contextual illustration. proverbium 2: 145-183. piaget, jean. 1959. the language and thought of the child. 3rd ed. new york: the humanities press. prinz, philip m. 1983. the development of idiomatic meaning in children. language and speech 26: 263-272. reinsberg-düringsfeld, otto von. das kind im sprichwort. leipzig: hermann fries, 1864. rpt. with an introduction and bibliography ed. by wolfgang mieder. hildesheim: georg olms, 2011. resnick, david a. 1977. the development of children’s comprehension of proverbs. phd diss., columbia university. ———. 1982. a developmental study of proverb comprehension. journal of psycholinguistic research, 11: 521-538. riley, noël. 1991. benjamin franklin’s maxims. in the history of children’s china. part 1: 1790-1890, ed. noël riley, pp. 207-283. ilminster, england: richard dennis. trokhimenko, olga v. 1999. “wie ein elefant im porzellanladen”. zur weltgeschichte einer redensart. burlington: the university of vermont. cfr_2017_part9 “little pitchers have big ears” the intricate world of children and proverbs wolfgang mieder cfr_2017_part10 cfr_2017_part11 cfr_2017_part12 cfr_2017_part13 redwood grove: youth culture in a group home jesse gelwicks on a shady street in a california central valley college town stands a tan and brown two-story house. out in front of the carport rises a low basketball hoop; beside it lies a square of scruffy grass. scattered around the house are the signs of children: a basketball, a bicycle helmet, some candy wrappers and a well-worn skateboard. two boys aggressively bounce a ball back and forth while two others stand nearby. the ball skids past the legs of one boy, causing a boy in line to shout, "he's smokin' your butt like cheese macaroni," which sends all but one of the boys into shrieks of laughter. the first boy in line replaces the boy who missed the ball and the game continues. unlike similar driveway games going on around the neighborhood, this game is not played in front of a family home. these boys, whose names i have changed to protect their anonymity, live in a group home i will call redwood grove. from fall of 1999 through the spring of 2000, i worked part-time at redwood grove. the following summer i increased my hours to full-time. as a staff member i cooked and served the boys meals, helped them with their homework, read to them, took them to the park, and played with them. i also enforced rules, gave "time-outs," and occasionally restrained them. my role as researcher was secondary to my role as a caretaker; therefore, i could not be a completely neutral observer. most likely i could never escape the relationship of staff to ward. on the other hand, the boys knew i cared for them, and they grew to trust me. i was a part of the staff/ ward hierarchy; however, my familiarity with the boys enabled me to see their everyday lives and behavior, as opposed to the behavior the boys presented to visitors. this ethnography examines the seven boys who lived in the group home over the course of eleven months (during which time one boy left and another filled his slot). the number of participants in the study limits my ability to make major generalizations about children's lives in group homes. on the other hand, the small number of subjects allowed for informal and formal interviews and in-depth observations over the course of a year. my study builds on previous studies and research on children in institutions by psychologists and folklorists (see, for example: polsky, cohen and eilersten, horan, and mechling). in this paper, after a brief introduction to the group home and the rules and structure that govern it, i discuss the way behavior is charted and the way the staff imposes hierarchy. i then show that the boys in the group home constitute a folk group that creates a social hierarchy of its own in opposition to the one created and maintained by the staff. then i gelwicks explore the various ways the boys construct frames and how their framed relationships create and maintain a social hierarchy. following that section, i present two folk performances—storytelling and teasing—that the boys use for maintaining their hierarchy. then i present two examples of the staff's influence on the folk culture. in the second half of the paper i present a photography project in which i gave the boys the assignment of taking photographs of their important material possessions. i detail the process of taking the photographs and then situate the boys' photographs and perceptions of their material culture in the context of the group home culture and hierarchy. this is a case study of male preadolescent and early adolescent folk culture. perhaps because these boys live in a group home and must cope with an unusual, stressful living situation, they employ an intensified version of the ways children use folklore. part of the lesson here is that boys sometimes try to use folklore and it fails. those areas of failure are instructive. by looking at the successes and failures, adults have the opportunity to monitor the feelings and tensions the boys cannot express explicitly. adults can learn about how boys see and react to the world around them and how that affects their male friendship group hierarchies. redwood grove redwood grove is one of two houses run by a small nonprofit organization that operates group homes for children between the ages of eight and thirteen. the six boys at redwood grove were placed there by the california juvenile court because their parents used drugs or because the boys were abusive sexually, physically, or emotionally (the abuse often accompanies the drug use). some of the boys were born with drugs in their systems. f our of them took daily behavior modifying medication. all were first put into foster care, which did not last because of behavior problems. the facility was designed as a level 11 group home. the level of the group home indicates the degree of supervision and structure provided for the children-the levels range from 8 to 15, with the highest being the most heavily structured and supervised. this group home aims to put structure into the boys' lives by regulating their behavior, providing constant supervision, making sure they have regular meals and snacks, and giving them group and individual counseling, all within a safe and supportive environment. while psychologists such as william pollack believe that many boys experience premature separation from their mothers, the boys at redwood 66 redwood grove: youth culture in a group home grove are the extreme cases; their emotional deficits are much greater than normal. the group home staff assists in repairing self-esteem and selfconfidence. they attempt to curb the negative behaviors and self-hate, but because the group home is an institution with paid employees, not surrogate mothers, the boys must learn on their own as well. one way the boys deal with their past and present situations is through their folklore. from the games they play with each other and staff, to social hierarchies they create, to stories they tell about each other and staff, they are learning to cope with the psychological and social stresses in their lives. redwood grove is similar to what erving goffman labels a "total institution," except that the boys are not completely shut off from the wider society. they go to public school, occasionally participate in city sports or recreation programs, and (depending on their behavior) go out in the town to buy toys, visit friends, or play in the park. apart from school, all outside activities are opportunities that they must earn based on their behavior. most of the time the boys are at redwood grove interacting with redwood grove staff and residents. each day is tightly structured, "with one activity leading at a prearranged time into the next, the whole sequence of activities being imposed from above by a system of explicit formal rulings and a body of officials" (goffman 6). the activities, from the type of education to counseling to daily interactions, are designed to meet behavior modification goals set for the boys. weekdays during the school year are the most heavily structured days. from the moment the staff wakes them, the boys follow a tightly scheduled routine posted in the hallway, including school, daily chores, tutoring, meals and bedtimes. they earn free time in the afternoon if they finish their homework. if they have been behaving well, they can play outside. after dinner, they have free time until it is time to take a shower and go to bed. bedtime is determined by their level on the behavior chart. those who are behaving well that week stay up later and, consequently, earn more free time. before coming to redwood grove the boys had little structure or stability in their lives, while at the same time they had limited control over their lives. in some cases they took care of younger siblings. in the group home, they have both structure and stability, but almost no control. "children are an underclass perpetually in the one-down power position" and "nowhere is this more true than in the residential institutions established for children" (mechling 273). staff create and enforce the rules that the wards live by. the boys act out and rebel against the rules and the staff react accordingly. 67 gelwicks points and privileges a central element in molding the boys' behavior is a behavior chart on which the staff keep track of the boys' privileges and the amount of supervision they require. at any time upon entering redwood grove, staff can immediately determine each boy's behavior by consulting the chart in the dining room. the boys' initials are printed in erasable pen next to their step and level, which correspond to certain privileges; the three most important deal with supervision, video game time, and bedtime. the chart was devised as a series of incentives to entice the boys to try to follow the rules. the boys can move up or down the chart each day depending on their behavior. the staff record how they behave on a point sheet. the boys' behavior is constantly scrutinized. almost everything they do, from peer interaction, to following directions, to going to bed on time, has a corresponding point value. if they do their daily chores, they earn three points. if they make their beds, they earn one point. if they have good peer interactions during dinner, they earn four points. when they go to school, they turn in a behavior log to the teacher, who fills out points, grading them on their school work, homework, classroom behavior, and recess behavior. if they talk back to staff or will not follow directions, they cannot earn all their points. the boys are often scattered across the behavior chart, although they more regularly tend to occupy the bottom half. occasionally, one boy will be a level or two above the rest and enjoying privileges and freedom the others are not. at other times, the boys are grouped together closely. the disparity between the boys' levels and privileges creates a hierarchy in the group. this staff-monitored hierarchy competes with another hierarchy, created by the boys, which is based on power rather than good behavior. just because a boy behaves well does not mean that he has much influence over the other boys; in fact, they often resent his superior position. the boys' social hierarchy works counter to the staff-monitored hierarchy, minimizing the privilege of a high position on the behavior chart. the group can exclude a boy high on the behavior chart or induce him to misbehave in hopes that he will be caught and brought down with the rest of the group. while the boys' hierarchy does not directly break the rules, it is part of what mechling describes as the "folk offensive in the political struggle over 'whose institution is this, anyway?"'(mechling 276). the social hierarchy created by the boys structures the group home culture and frames the social interaction between boys. the boys develop the frames in their everyday interactions, such as playing games, arguing, sharing, teasing, excluding and including others. their tacit understanding of frames and the manipulation of frames cannot be underestimated. while 68 redwood grove: youth culture in a group home they may not be able to articulate the behavior, they understand the subtle nuances and body language that send the metamessages such as "this is play" and "this is a competition that looks like play." pogo and creating frames one afternoon jerod, age twelve, and i were outside playing pogo, the boys' version of the classic schoolyard game two-square. although the structure of the game was traditional, the boys' names for certain hits and rule variations identified pogo as their own folkgame. after two games, jerod asked if i wanted to keep score. keeping score was a common device the boys used to transform a simple two-square game into a more complicated and competitive game in which each time one person got the other "out" they won a point. they played either to a set number or until one finally gave up. the boys could only keep score when nobody stood in line; otherwise, the line rotated in with each "out." during the first game, jerod "played on" for my benefit when i made a mistake, and in return i "played on" for his, thus establishing the frame of a friendly game. i tried to continue that frame by "playing on" some of his questionable "scizzards," the boys' name for a fast and low hit that almost skids across the ground. he did the same for me. at the same time we were playing hard, "scizzarding" and "babying," a common name for the smallest hits, all over the court. our play established that, although this was a friendly game frame, it was also competitive. i won a couple of games and got ahead of jerod. as our scores reached the "teens" (near game's end), jerod stayed just two behind me. i tried to tone down my playing a bit, but he would not let me lose enough for him to catch up. we both played hard, but we also made stupid mistakes to let the other win. we played "the twenties" harder, and finally, jerod pulled ahead when i said i would play only three more games. i realized jerod planned out the whole game. jerod had let me win before, but never as cleverly as this. i thought i was playing in a particular frame that we had both established, but really jerod was creating that frame and manipulating it as we played. he was playing this game to keep me playing as long as i would. he manipulated me through the frame, just as a con artist might hustle a sucker; only instead of money, all jerod wanted was one-on-one attention. boys often connect with others through actions such as initiating a game with a boy with whom they want to become friends (pollack 182). jerod sought connection with the other boys and staff through pogo. for a period of eight to nine months the boys played pogo more than any other 69 gelwicks game in the house. jerod often initiated those games, asking another boy or staff to come outside with him after he finished his homework. pogo provided a medium for interaction. jake, age eleven, approached pogo differently than jerod. jake was extremely competitive. jerod, who loved to play pogo, would often try to adapt to whomever he was playing—to play at the same level of competitiveness. one afternoon jake and jerod were playing pogo and jake took more advantage of the rules concerning lines, "do-overs" and interference than did jerod. jake was quick to point out when jerod's hit was out of bounds, and jerod was willing to go along with that. jerod did not mention when a ball should have been called "interference" or "out back boundary" or "liner" or any of the other ways the boys identified when they should "redo" the point. jake manipulated the frame so that he was winning. jerod manipulated the frame so jake continued to play; jerod's desire for connection superseded his desire to win. play involves a negotiation of frames, and games can be personal or impersonal, depending on the frame the players establish. in some cases, the play frame extends beyond the single game and is reflective of the players' relationship. in the example above, the game was situated in the middle of a restructuring of the boys' social hierarchy. jake was vying for the opening position at the top the hierarchy as joshua, age thirteen, was leaving. jerod, who was older than jake, did not make any strong attempts at that position. similar to the way he played pogo, jerod took a less competitive approach to the social hierarchy. through pogo, jerod developed methods of interaction he could use outside of the folkgame. symbolic violence: joshua and thomas the boys maintained and challenged their socially constructed hierarchy every day in the way they interacted with each other. in turn, the hierarchy framed their interactions. as they stayed within the frames created by the hierarchy or reinforced those frames, the hierarchy's structure strengthened. in the following examples, the boys construct and maintain those frames through a series of interactions. one friday, all the boys, except for thomas, age eleven, who was staying at the house due to his poor behavior, were in the van about to go to their weekly counseling group for victims. before the van could pull out of the driveway, thomas ran out to the van to try to join the group. thomas and joshua started exchanging words. joshua, who was sitting in the front seat, lunged through the window with his fists clenched and screamed at thomas that he was going to "kick his ass." joshua knew that 70 redwood grove: youth culture in a group home he could not attack thomas (the car door was in the way), but he could make a dramatic display by lunging out of the open window at thomas yelling and waving his fists. joshua displayed his power and potential for violence in front of the other boys without risking much. he would lose peer interaction points and perhaps drop a level for threatening behavior, but he did not actually make contact with thomas. joshua was playing the role of the "tough guy" without actually having to prove it, a behavior characteristic of what pollack describes as the "mask" of masculinity. joshua's stylized performance of aggression may actually be "an invisible shield, a persona to show the outside world a feigned self confidence and bravado, and to hide the shame he felt at his feelings of vulnerability, powerlessness and isolation."(pollack 5). joshua's display left the other boys to decide whether it was a bluff or he actually was that mean and vicious. joshua framed the boys' relationship with him in terms of his own projected violence, thereby taking the dominant role in their future interactions. this frame would help joshua maintain his position at the top of the social hierarchy, rewarding him for his masculine image. thomas and francisco the week following joshua's display of aggression, another incident of symbolic violence took place. on the way to group, thomas, who was having yet another horrible day, provoked francisco, age 10, into exchanging rapid insults. before the van had left the home block, the name-calling had escalated to the point where thomas was lunging at francisco, who was sitting in the seat in front of him. i was sitting next to thomas, so i easily held him back, just as the car door had held back joshua. the previous week's events made an impression on thomas. he tried to recreate the dangerous and powerful image that joshua had created without actual physical violence, just as joshua had done. thomas followed the same pattern by choosing a target lower on the social hierarchy than he and by choosing a time when he would be held back from actually making contact. the stylized symbolic violence by joshua and thomas sent a message to the other boys about potential actual violence, as well as a message about the structure of the social hierarchy. joshua demonstrated symbolic violence as an effective means of displaying power. when thomas copied joshua's behavior he did not move up the social hierarchy as much as reinforce people's existing positions within the social hierarchy. he solidi 71 gelwicks fied his position over francisco as well as reinforcing joshua's behavior and position. maintaining the hierarchy: thomas and the old cereal one of the various ways of maintaining position in the social hierarchy at redwood grove was teasing. the teasing was structured around the boys' fears, which were translated into negative attributes that induced shame, the fundamental control mechanism boys use to create and maintain their group culture (pollack 33). insults about being gay, feminine, weak, contaminated, dirty, different, or without friends, were rooted in the boys' fears about sexuality, masculinity, safety, inclusion, protection, love, and the shame of being identified as having any negative or unmasculine characteristics. a reoccurring theme in their teasing was centered on the boys' fear of dirt and of being contaminated by their food. this particular fear of contamination manifested itself in two ways at the group home. first, the boys were uncertain of the purity of their food. they rarely saw it prepared, and they were not given a choice about what they would like to eat. they were also uncertain about what it would do to them. they had only a vague understanding of the cause and effect of eating spoiled food. second, the boys used that uncertainty to control. they exercised control by not eating foods they felt were spoiled. the control exercised by one boy upon another, exemplified in their teasing, is a form of social exclusion. the next few examples trace a particular tease from its possible conception and show how that tease was modified over time and became absorbed into the boys' folklore. one morning, when thomas was on the highest level and also the last to the breakfast table, he poured himself some cereal that was past its expiration date, which he did not notice. the other boys had already seen the date and avoided the cereal. they waited until thomas had taken a bite and then chimed in together about how he had eaten old rotten cereal. they went on and on. "moldy cereal! how could you eat that?" thomas left the table crying and would not eat breakfast. for the rest of the day, the boys continued to tease thomas, their teasing ranging from overt to more cryptic forms in which the boys would merely mention a single word that referred to the morning's events. they inserted the words "cereal," "mold," and "rotten" at the end of sentences, or they just casually said the word alone. the boys manipulated and advanced the tease so that it was only apparent to those in the group. a staff 72 redwood grove: youth culture in a group home person arriving for the afternoon shift might not pick up anything until thomas reacted to the teasing. only through close observation of the boys' behavior could a staff member recognize the teasing. the tease ostracized thomas from the group and in doing so united the group against him. while the group as a whole, all six boys, may not have grown stronger, the group of five did. despite any previous conflicts, they connected by ostracizing one. they could all agree that he was not worthy of being part of the group because the old cereal contaminated him. they were also united by level. thomas was higher on the behavior chart than everyone else. he was at the top of the adult-regulated hierarchy. the group reminded him that he was not better than the rest. while he might be at the top the hierarchy on the behavior chart, he was, at least for that situation, at the bottom of the folk social hierarchy. as teases, such as the thomas cereal tease, lasted beyond the incident and beyond the day of the incident, they entered the group folklore. like a story that everyone in the group knew, the cereal tease became a tease that everyone knew, remembered, and reacted to. as long as they used some version of the tease, it stayed alive. because everyone knew it and because it had already been encoded on the first day, it was easy to maintain. when the boys teased thomas about the old cereal, they did not need to recite the whole tale, just enough for thomas to know what they were teasing him about. thomas and the napkin a perfect example of how this encoded tease was carried on happened when the boys were eating dinner a few weeks after the initial event. joshua and bobby, age 10, were both on the lowest level of privileges and seated on the perimeter of the room, while francisco, jerod and thomas were eating at the table. thomas asked for the salt. joshua and bobby chimed in asking for some too. a staff member gave the salt to thomas and asked him to pass it on to them when he was finished. he walked over and handed it to bobby. instead of just taking it from thomas, bobby held a napkin so as not to touch the saltshaker. jerod and joshua erupted into laughter, and thomas ran crying out of the room. the effects of the napkin tease were the same as the initial event: thomas left the room crying. but the actual teasing was limited to a simple action rather than a barrage of remarks. the tease was just as powerful even though it was simplified. thomas later explained what happened. the teasing had begun earlier in the week when joshua started acting as if thomas were contaminated, and he would not touch objects thomas had touched. bobby only partici 73 gelwicks pated in the teasing for the first time at that meal. at some point the boys had made a big deal about thomas and his contamination, so much so that they only had to act out part of it—the napkin grab and the laughter—to send thomas into tears. the napkin incident was not completely a direct result of the cereal incident. once the cereal incident became encoded and became part of their folklore and folk culture, the boys mixed that event with other similar events. the events previous to the cereal incident laid the foundation for the cereal tease to be as powerful as it was. the cereal may not have been the beginning of the tease, but the spoiled cereal theme became part of an ongoing and developing folklore about contamination and thomas. joshua and storytelling around the same time, a story emerged that joshua told. it may have been told before or may have been created on the spot for the particular situation. its validity is uncertain. joshua recalled how thomas had been forced to dig in the trash by an older boy when thomas had first moved in. joshua described thomas's action with disgust and contempt. as he told it, the other boys began to remember the incident and some tried to add details, but joshua kept control of the story, repeating or dismissing what they added. even bobby, who had not been there, thought he remembered the event. joshua told the story to illustrate thomas's contamination. the story was characteristic of other folklore that had grown out of past events at redwood grove. joshua told the most stories or, rather, the most successful stories. he was the oldest and had been at redwood grove the longest. he was also at the top of the group hierarchy. his perspective could not be disputed. often the stories were exclusive. they were a roll call of who was there, unifying and empowering those included, a reward for their time spent at redwood grove. thus, when bobby remembered the event, he was ridiculed because he was not there and therefore not part of the group that could remind thomas, though he could still laugh at thomas's behavior. the stories would often go back to a time when a few of the boys were not there yet, such as the time one of the old residents threw a bike on the roof or when all the residents were on the highest level on the behavior chart at one point the previous summer. the bike incident would be recalled to make comparisons to current behavior, to show that although francisco punched and hit staff, his behavior was not nearly as bad as the behavior of previous boys. the "high-point-in-behavior" story would 74 redwood grove: youth culture in a group home be recalled when they were dealing with difficult times on the behavior chart during school. and, of course, there were stories used to tease. the stories served joshua well, reminding the other boys that he was on top in size, age, and time served, and that those could not be challenged. when joshua left, storytelling, for the most part, died. jake tried to revive it to help maintain his position at the top of the group hierarchy. while jake was the strongest, he was not the oldest, and he had only come a month before thomas, so his exclusive stories were limited. he never developed his storytelling skills, so he resorted to other methods. creating new ways to tease while the boys were dealing with each other and their social organization, they also had to deal with the staff, who were constantly observing and intervening. the boys' teasing and storytelling had to work around the staff. teasing in general was not condoned and usually punished, but impossible to stop. when the staff picked up on teasing, the teasers were given appropriate punishments, often separation for a short period of time. staff would also try to squelch continual teases such as the cereal tease and negative storytelling, both of which were virtually outlawed by increasing the penalties for whoever repeated them. limited by his lack of storytelling ability and outlawed forms of teasing, jake created a new form of teasing. one day at the table during afternoon snack, jake began quizzing the other boys in spelling or mathematics. he aggressively questioned thomas, and brought thomas down, as he stumbled over the answers. the other boys were questioned as well. as they struggled to come up with answers, jake positioned himself at the top of the hierarchy. at the time, jerod and francisco were both at the bottom of the behavior chart and were not allowed to interact with the group, which was fortunate for jake, since they were two of the smarter boys and jerod was a grade ahead of jake. the second time jake tried quizzing the boys, jerod was able to participate and jake's questioning was less effective because jerod knew the answers. the new approach stood out in contrast to other forms of teasing because it positioned one boy more or less opposed to the rest of the boys. a less powerful boy could have the group turn on him, ostracizing him from them. as it was, jake manipulated the situation to put others down and build himself up by comparison. although he was neither the oldest nor (probably) the smartest, he was able to make himself seem the smartest by not allowing himself to be questioned. as long as he controlled the questions, he always had the right answer. 75 gelwicks unequal power relationships: "steve" folklore the fears the boys dealt with ranged from abstract—such as abandonment—to the immediate fears about particular people and places. the way the boys dealt with unequal power relationships was similar to the way they dealt with fear; they incorporated it into their folk culture. the following example illustrates how the boys of redwood grove integrated a power conflict with a staff member into their joking and teasing. one staff member, steve, had a very confrontational manner. he constantly displayed his power over the boys by the way he told them to do their chores and pick up their things, bossing them around rather than asking. he made extra rules, like not letting boys on the lowest behavior levels change the television channel. steve induced fear in the boys, not by hurting them, but by wielding his authority punitively. if they came in conflict with him, they received harsh consequences, often the extreme consequence for the behavior. steve got results, but at the expense of shoving the boys' powerlessness in their faces. the boys dealt with steve by incorporating him into their vernacular folklore. the boys talked about steve when he was not around. his name was used most commonly as an insult, aimed at each other as well as a staff member. for instance, one boy would tell the other that he was "as fat as steve" when they commented on how much they were eating, which was a comical insult most often heard around the table at meals. an awkward movement, like hitting a ball poorly, was mocked by saying the person hit the ball so badly, he hit it "like steve." the boys diminished steve's power by making him the object of their jokes and insults. steve was a negative figure that the boys could agree on. when he was on his shift, they might obey his orders, but when he was not around, he was mocked. while the boys complained when other strict staff came on shift, the other staff were not ridiculed the way steve was. ridiculing steve, the boys felt powerful. like all children in institutions, the boys at redwood grove were able to find power in seemingly powerless situations. they found satisfaction in distorting the adult authority. where there was little power available to them, they invented new forms, such as when jake asked a few of the boys seemingly legitimate questions in math and spelling, knowing they wouldn't be able to answer them. he might have been attempting to recreate the power relationship he felt between the teacher and student. storytelling and teasing are time-honored ways children establish a social hierarchy outside adult control. the power of them is heightened in a group home setting where the boys spend almost all their time together and have so few other possibilities for participating in alternative social hierarchies. 76 redwood grove: youth culture in a group home behind the boys' hurtful teasing, i believe, is their anxiety about the behavior-chart hierarchy. the behavior chart draws attention to the boys' positions in relation to one another, creating a competitive atmosphere that promotes social ranking. they react to the behavior-chart hierarchy established by the adults, and in an attempt to undermine it, they create a new social organization in its image. rather than the boy at the top being rewarded by his peers for his good behavior, the rest of the group punishes him. he is also encouraged to play the role of the victim, for if he stands up for himself, responding with anger or aggression towards the teasing, he risks dropping on the behavior chart. adults can intervene and impose control based on behavior charts and points, but the social hierarchy framed by the boys is also a very powerful force in shaping the children's experiences. material culture in a group home along with the social frames that regulate the boys' experience is the material setting that is the background for their interactions. from the house they live in to the coveted gameboy games in their toy chests, their material environment effects their social culture and hierarchies. when i first entered the group home, i began to make a list of what seemed to be the important items in the boys lives: the round red rubber ball, video games, bicycles with shocks, pokémon paraphernalia, batteries, and other items that could be borrowed or traded. the most easily identifiable items of importance were those in highest demand. the importance of personal items of comfort and pleasure, such as teddy bears and worn action figures, were harder to judge since they were largely ignored by all the boys except the owner. as i became aware of their material culture at redwood grove, i sought to answer the question posed by jon wagner in a recent edition of the journal visual sociology, namely, "what aspects of their own material and social circumstances do kids notice and why?" for a researcher to answer that question, he or she must feel confident in having a child's perspective. to feel confident i had the perspective of the boys in the group home, i relied on three methods of obtaining information: observation, interviews, and photography. the boys' photography allowed me to see through their eyes, and the interviews gave the boys an opportunity to explain what they saw. the object of my project was to have the boys record the toys, memorabilia, gifts, and mementos that were important using their own camera. rather than observe what toys were played with the most, what objects 77 gelwicks were the most treasured and valued, i placed the decisions into the hands of the children. i built upon the questions raised and approaches taken by photographers jim hubbard, lauren greenfield (see levin), marjorie faulstich orellana, wendy ewald, and the young photographers they worked with. these professional photographers sought to empower youth by giving them control of the camera to capture their world on film and speak to people through their photographs. osofu washington, a young photographer who worked with greenfield on picture la, said "if people can understand our landmarks, they can see things from our point of view" (levin 4). the premise of my photography project was based on washington's words. by following the steps of seeing the photograph and understanding the photograph, then hopefully it is possible to see things from the child's perspective. the boys at redwood grove faced specific restrictions, which set the parameters of the photography project. they faced behavior-level restrictions, such as limitations on where they could go, what items were available to them, and when they could take the photographs. items left with their parents were unobtainable, as well as items confiscated by staff. the boys on the lowest behavior level had most of their toys confiscated. some of the boys could not leave the house or the yard. they were also limited to thirty-six photographs. the boys may have also decided not to take some pictures because they would be sharing these photographs with other people. they may have selected their photographs to suit what they thought their audience might want to see. they may have been ashamed to identify belongings that they felt were not masculine enough, even though those items were important to them, similar to the way the boys in pollack's study felt ashamed of expressing emotions and feelings they felt were feminine. i explained the project to the boys in short information sessions right before giving them the disposable cameras. they were told to focus on "stuff," not people, but they could include people as they saw fit. i asked them to take photographs of the things that they felt were important to them. they were given no extra supervision when they used the cameras and possibly even a little more freedom by the staff. when they completed their roll of film, they returned the cameras to me, and i took the film in to be developed. before i brought the photographs back to the boys, i went through them and made a list of the photographs. once i had gone over their pictures a couple of times and made myself familiar with them, i went back to redwood grove and interviewed the boys as we looked over their pictures. the interviews were taped and then transcribed. after the interviews, the boys were given their photographs in a flipbook to keep. i 78 redwood grove: youth culture in a group home followed up on the project by checking to see how they manipulated their booklets. taking the photographs on the day the boys received the cameras, they came into the office in twos. jake and bobby came first. they listened to the directions and expectations, and then i asked a couple of different times and in a couple of different ways if they understood. i could see their ears turned off as their minds started racing with ideas of what they would photograph. when they saw the cameras, they became restless and fidgety, their eyes darting about excitedly; their complete attention was on the yellow cardboard camera in my hand. they immediately wanted to touch the cameras, fool with them, and begin taking pictures. their reaction was similar to the reaction hubbard (shooting back) received when he worked with children at a shelter. they also wanted to know if they would get to keep the cameras and were disappointed when they heard the cameras were disposable. as i explained how to use the flash, they were bouncing in their seats, anxious to leave the office and take pictures. finally, i opened the door and they ran out clicking and winding through the hallway. nicholas, age 8, and thomas came in next. nicholas, who had already seen jake and bobby run out with cameras, was anxious to get his. thomas came into the office immediately exclaiming that he had not done anything wrong. obviously, sitting in the office with a staff member created a certain frame for the situation, possibly augmenting the boys' anxiousness to leave and take pictures. nicholas and thomas were just as excited as bobby and jake. the boys did not want to listen to any directions. the power they would have with the camera seemed intoxicating. unfortunately, jerod and francisco were not on high enough levels to receive cameras; both were at the bottom of the behavior chart. it took jerod two days to move up to a high enough level to receive a camera. unlike the other boys, jerod was much calmer and did not bounce around, and he asked questions. jerod's approach may be reflective of his age and maturity or the diminished excitement of the group now that most had completed their roll of film. it took francisco two weeks before he raised himself from the bottom level and could participate in the project. unlike jerod, francisco wore his excitement on his face; his eyes and his grin widened when he saw the camera. the first four boys finished within the day, three within the first one to two hours, one within the first half-hour. when francisco finally received 79 gelwicks his camera, he finished it within the day, probably within a couple of hours judging from the photographs he took. when i picked up jerod's roll, five days after i initially gave it to him, he still had a couple of pictures left, which he promptly took. the younger boys finished their rolls of film more quickly than the older boys. nicholas, the youngest, finished his first. jerod, the oldest, finished last. what led the boys to take their photographs so quickly? jake's roll in particular captured a stream of consciousness perspective, as if the viewer of his photographs was looking through his eyes for five minutes. the boys' excitement and desire surrounding the taking of photographs took on an almost libidinal quality—the instant gratification of taking a photograph, each one exciting and satisfying in its own right. rather than seeming in competition with one another, the boys seemed to feed off each other's energy. after taking a photograph of the toys on his dresser, nicholas raced outside to the bike rack, on the way snapping a photograph of francisco posing holding a pokemon. the desire to snap off as many pictures as possible may also be linked to the uncertainty the boys felt about how long they would have the cameras. if they dropped to the bottom of the behavior chart, the cameras, along with their other toys, could be taken away. if they shot quickly, there would be nothing left for staff to confiscate. unlike the other boys, jerod may have savored the experience, or he simply was not caught up in the excitement and forgot about the last few pictures. during the interviews, which i did individually, a couple of the boys behaved differently than usual two of them used sweet baby voices and attitudes while answering the questions. they all demonstrated their best behavior, although bobby became a little silly during parts of his interview. their behavior may reflect their enjoyment of one-on-one attention from a staff member as well as feeling safe from ridicule from others when they were explaining their photographs. in addition, they knew an unknown outside audience would see and hear the results of the project, and they wanted to display their best behavior. analyzing and interviewing not surprisingly, none of the boys followed the directions completely. rather than a collection of photographs of toys and other items the boys' treasured, their photographs ranged from a dead rat to another boy's "special friends" (adults from the community who act as personal mentors), from pictures of other boys to pictures' of their toys, from the staff at 80 redwood grove: youth culture in a group home redwood grove to redwood grove itself. surprisingly, the photographs that proved the most descriptive about the boys' material culture, their social culture, and their experience at redwood grove were the photographs that fell outside the originally stated guidelines. nicholas took twelve pictures of other people's stuff, their toys, their rooms, and their posters. while some of the pictures included those boys who owned the stuff, making it unclear as to the focus of the picture, the pictures were still of items that did not belong to nicholas. it is possible that nicholas was merely taking photographs of his environment—the other boys and their stuff are major parts of that environment—but the interview revealed possibly another motivation. when asked why jake's red version pokémon gameboy game was important to him, nicholas answered, "because it is very important to me and i'll probably get it. . . for my birthday," which was untrue. nicholas's statement translates to "i want it." besides the red pokémon game's being a highly valued item in the house, jake first took nicholas under his wing when nicholas moved in, letting him play his pokémon games and gameboys whenever nicholas wanted. for nicholas, the game may have had a double importance; it is fun to play, everyone likes playing it, and it also symbolizes his friendship or at least connection with jake, the most powerful boy in the house. nicholas similarly describes a photograph of thomas's radio. "i took a picture of that because i want that." he nodded when asked if he wanted francisco and nathaniel's bikes. this theme continued as he talked about and explained the rest of his photographs. real insight came when he was explaining a photograph he took of some of bobby's toys on bobby's dresser. while listing the items in the photograph, he ended the list by saying "i want deodorant" and when asked, "you don't get deodorant?" he responded by blurting "yes, i will!" while obviously nicholas misunderstood the question, his outburst reveals his desire for deodorant goes beyond material desire. the deodorant represents more than just another boy's object. nicholas is the youngest in the house. he is smallest, the last to arrive, and at the bottom of the social hierarchy. the deodorant represents growing up and becoming bigger like jake and jerod, who are entering puberty. deodorant represents one of the signs that he is bigger, older, and more powerful. boys towards the top of the hierarchy wear deodorant. the boys took over forty percent of their photographs of people. those pictures fall into three categories: those of themselves, those of other boys in the house, and those of adults such as staff and special friends. the two boys who took the most pictures of other boys in the house were nicholas and thomas. eighteen out of twenty-four of thomas's photographs were 81 gelwicks photographs of people, and eleven of those eighteen included other boys. nine of nicholas's photographs were of people, and six of those were of the other boys. the rest of the boys only took one picture with other boys in it. jake represents the other end of the spectrum; he took only one photograph of other boys out of eleven that were of people. the two boys lowest on the hierarchy took the most pictures of the boys, and the highest on the hierarchy took the least. jake may not have felt like he had to "suck up" or even show that he liked the other boys because he was at the top. he may not have even thought to take pictures of them, although that is unlikely since they all were clamoring to be photographed. it did not matter if they liked him. he was the strongest and the toughest. nicholas and thomas, on the other hand, were not particularly tough or strong, and both were struggling to move up the social hierarchy. nicholas and thomas may have been trying to build connections with jake and the other boys by demonstrating their friendship. they may also have admired the other boys and wanted the power they had. thomas devoted two of his photographs to jake and jake's special friends, and then just jake's special friends alone. while jake may be important to thomas, jake's special friends are not. they do not spend much time around redwood grove playing with the other boys; instead, they take jake out somewhere, to their house or the movies. unless thomas enjoyed jake's absence, the special friends had no relationship to thomas. in the interview, thomas could not articulate why he took the photograph beyond saying "jake's special friends are important because they're someone. . . [and] every living thing is important." thomas did not even have a reason why they are special to him. why would thomas take the photographs? thomas has his own special friends. in fact, he has the most special friends of any of the boys in the house. jake and his special friends may be thomas's picture of the relationship between a boy and his special friends, a type of relationship that thomas valued. jake's special friends represent thomas's special friends. he could have waited until later that week to take a picture of his special friends, but decided not to wait. on the other hand, thomas's photographs may be similar to nicholas's photograph of jake's gameboy game; thomas may have been trying to please jake. none of the boys took photographs of traditional folk toys or toys of their own creation besides bobby's photograph of his rock collection and francisco's photograph of a feather. either they did not value the folk toys they played with, or they thought the toys were inappropriate. as simon bronner notes in his article recalling his own favorite folk toy, the gropper, "for several years, gropper held an honored place among my other toys-cars, teddy bears, blocks, and soldiers-but at some point i 82 redwood grove: youth culture in a group home became self-conscious and a bit embarrassed about my fantasy and discarded gropper, bag and baggage" (251). the boys may simply have been ashamed of their folk toys, too ashamed to show anyone. bronner explains, "yet often such creativity eludes the watchful eye of the parent, no less the curator or ethnographer. the child commonly keeps the creation private" (251). the boys may also have been taking photographs of items that they thought the ethnographer would want to see. the boys play with their own creations, often alterations of massproduced toys, such as action figures without an arm or a head. bronner explains the importance of that type of folk toy—"such experiences emphasized their control, their personalizing of things around them" (264). the boys also reused broken toys as if they were brand new-transformational toys, as bronner would call them. they are also observed playing with creations of the imagination, such as in the sandbox or turning a stump into an action figure's hideout. these acts of autonomy may not be shared easily. children's folk culture may be too private. the boys have very little autonomy in the group home setting and may seek to create separate environments in their own imagination, environments that may be shared with another boy or kept completely to themselves. although the group home at times seems to be overflowing with people, there are times when the boys are expected to play by themselves, especially if they are acting out and their toys have been confiscated and their socializing limited. if any boys were ashamed of the things that were important to them, they might not have taken a photograph of it to avoid ridicule. pollack identifies a rigid "boy code" that leads boys of all ages to hold back emotions and behaviors for fear of acting feminine (21). while the boys own stuffed animals and other toys that could reveal tenderness, thoughtfulness and creativity, they might not feel comfortable sharing that side because they feel that those items and emotions make them appear weak. they are afraid of others' ridicule. thomas had a pile of teddy bears on his bed most of the time, but they were only included in a larger picture of his room. those teddy bears might not have been masculine enough to be the focus of a picture. they might be very important to him, but he could not reveal that importance to the other boys. one photographic subject most of the boys were not afraid to take a picture of was themselves. everyone except jerod took a picture or had a picture taken of him. jake, bobby, thomas, and francisco had multiple pictures of themselves. hubbard provides insight into children's photographs of themselves. "on more than one occasion we have found that these kids carry the photographs of themselves every day to show others. though they didn't take the pictures, the photographs are important none 83 gelwicks theless. they proclaim: 'here i am, i am real, i am of value' to the rest of the world"(shooting back from the reservation xiii). although the children hubbard writes of are native american, it is not a stretch to apply their feelings to the group-home boys. in many ways the two groups are very similar. all the boys at redwood grove come from environments and life circumstances that destroy children's self esteem. when they enter the group home, staff try to continually remind them of their worth, to build them up from their negative self-images. the boys have pictures of their families or members of their families to remind them. those photographs are treasured because in some cases those are the only connections they have. people in photographs are important, and the pictures the boys took of themselves are their way of reaffirming their importance. one continual theme throughout the interviews with the boys was how, practical the object was. for example, jerod described his photographs of the house, "the house, so we have a place to live in," and the washing machine, "the washing machine is important 'cause otherwise we couldn't wash our clothes and they would be stinky." francisco also focused on the practicality of things, such as the bus; "i took a picture of the bus because it is kind of important. so if we didn't have a car we could go on the bus" and one of the staff's cars, "i took a picture of andre's car cause, well, so we can move around quickly and so we don't have to walk or ride the bus and without the bus we would have to walk." this method of describing objects reflects the lack of importance of the object outside of its practical role. the practical descriptions continued when the boys talked about their pokémon toys and cards. jerod, as well as the other boys, were very involved with the collecting of pokémon cards. jerod took five pictures of his cards, but none of them was of a specific card. when asked why he liked them he answered, "cause i like to trade' em." he identified their importance as social. they provided entertainment in trading and prestige in having particular cards, but the particular card did not matter. his attitude was similar to francisco's description of a photograph of jerod's pokémon toys. francisco's description parallels jerod's perspective on pokémon; "these two are charzards and blastoids in jerod's room 'cause i really like pokémon." when i asked "are those toys important to you?" he answered, "the pokémon, not the toys. i don't really care about them." to francisco the symbol of pokémon was important. pokémon affected the power relations within the house as well as at school, as having cards and games provided prestige to the owner. 84 redwood grove: youth culture in a group home after the interviews the photography project was not finished when i gave the boys their flipbooks with their pictures inside. bobby, who had the least amount of pictures turn out, filled his book with other photographs that he had. at first he was a little bashful when i asked him to show his book, possibly since he thought i might be offended that he had removed all of the pictures i had developed for him. he explained who everyone in the pictures was and included a short anecdote with a couple of them. all the photographs bobby added were of his family. a week later bobby had removed almost all of the photographs he had taken and replaced them with all the photographs he already owned. though he did not need the space, he may have been ashamed of his photography skills since he was unhappy with the way his photographs turned out, many of them dark and blurry. of course it also could have been that the photographs he just took were not as important as those of his family. nicholas also added to his flipbook, placing his polaroid of himself on santa's knee at the back of his book. when jake, the last boy interviewed, finished with the interview, he asked in as sweet a voice as i had ever heard him use if he could add pictures to his album. the photographs of the important material culture and the books i gave them were becoming material culture. the boys did not demonstrate an overwhelming desire for material possessions. the important material items in their lives were physical links between themselves and others, symbolic of the connection they shared. material items were also described in practical terms—cupboards holding the snacks or pokémon to be traded. the boys' lack of consuming commodity goods reflects their relationship to material culture. outside the occasional pack of pokémon cards, the boys bought very little. they did not have much disposable income, and they had very few opportunities to spend the little they had. also, the uncertainty that surrounded their lives included uncertainty about how long they would possess a toy. the toys they had when they lived at home were gone. the toys they had at the group home were regularly confiscated, creating an uncertainty that may have decreased the desire for material possessions. conclusion this is a case study of the folk culture of preadolescent and early adolescent boys living in a total institution. although these boys live in an 85 gelwicks unusual setting, they use the same-but more intensified versions of strategies boys employ in resolving their social and psychological tensions. their folklore develops around common childhood experiences, such as when they created the game pogo, and also around their need to deal with specific group home situations, such as when they used steve's name as an insult in response to his inappropriate use of power. the folklore sometimes creates the solution, as when the boys use a game frame to establish contact with a staff person or another boy, and the folklore is sometimes the problem, as in teasing. a game frame enables jerod to establish meaningful relationships when his primary relationships have been damaged or destroyed, and the experience of connecting and creating those connections is empowering. teasing as folklore goes beyond playfulness and allows the boys to subvert the intent of the behavior-chart hierarchy established by the staff. the amount of energy and creativity that goes into teasing reveals the importance of this form of expression to the boys. the boys' photographs of their material culture reveal a continual focus on each other and each other's possessions. certainly, the other boys and their toys are a significant part of the material setting of the group home for each boy, but the items the boys value are also symbolic. they can be symbols of friendship or connection to a more powerful boy. in other instances, the important material items themselves symbolize age and power, as with the deodorant. studies of children's folklore such as this one can be instructive to adults working in children's institutions, revealing unintended consequences and the success (or failure) of strategies for modifying and shaping behavior. attempting to see the world through children's eyes enables adults to examine the role of friendship groups, teasing, and playing beyond whether the behavior is obedient or disruptive. having an awareness of the anxieties children experience, such as in response to the adult imposed behavior chart hierarchy, may lead adults to reevaluate and redesign the structure of children's institutions. note i would especially like to thank the boys of the redwood grove for their participation, energy, and hope, and professor jay mechling for his continued guidance and support. works cited bronner, simon j. "material folk culture of children." in children s folklore: a 86 redwood grove: youth culture in a group home source book. ed. brian sutton-smith, et al. logan: utah state up, 1999. 251-71. cohen, david, and john eilersten. "folklore and folklife in a juvenile correc tions institution." western folklore 44 (1985): 1-22. ewald, wendy. portraits and dreams: photographs and stories by children of the appalachians. london: writers and readers publishing, 1985. goffman, erving. asylums: essays on the social situation of mental patients and other inmates. new york: anchor press, 1959. horan, robert. "the semiotics of play fighting at a residential treatment cen ter." adolescent psychiatry 15 (1988): 367-81. hubbard, jim. shooting back: a photographic view of life by homeless chil dren. san francisco: chronicle books, 1999. ______. shooting back from the reservation: a photographic view of life by native american youth. new york: new press, 1999. levin, jeffery, ed. picture la: landmarks of a new generation. los angeles, ca: the getty conservation institute, 1994. mechling, jay. "children's folklore in residential institutions: summer camps, boarding schools, hospitals, and custodial facilities." in children’s folklore: a source book. ed. brian sutton-smith et al. logan: utah state university press, 1999. 273-91. orellana, marjorie faulstich. "space and place in an urban landscape: learning from children's views of their social worlds." visual sociology 14 (1999): 73-89. pollack, william. real boys: rescuing our sons from the myths of boyhood. new york: random house, 1988. polsky, howard w. cottage six: the social system of delinquent boys in resi dential treatment. new york: russell sage foundation, 1962. wagner, jon. "editor's introduction." visual sociology 14 (1999): 3-5. 87 cfr_2002_part20 cfr_2002_part21 cfr_2002_part22 cfr_2002_part23 cfr_2002_part24 cfr_2002_part25 cfr_2002_part26 cfr_2002_part27 45 playing for change: the performative functions of children’s piano play brant w ellsworth in an iconic scene from the 1988 film, big, actors tom hanks and robert loggia leap from key to key on an enlarged foot-operated electronic keyboard as they perform in duet two piano pieces: “chopsticks” and “heart and soul.” for hanks, playing the role of a 12-year-old boy magically transformed into a 30-yearold adult after wishing “to be big,” the performance represents an outward manifestation of the inner-turmoil brought on by pre-pubescent sizeand ageanxiety. as a child suddenly trapped within an adult’s body, this form of play, i call “piano play,” also represents a brief moment of liberation wherein for the first time in the film, hanks appears comfortable negotiating the complexities of the incompatible worlds that he is trapped in, and yet, torn between: the world of childhood, characterized by carefree innocence and play; and the world of adulthood, characterized by work and responsibility. this scene is effective at conveying hanks’ inner-turmoil because similar impromptu concerts are performed daily, flash-mob style, by children at pianos around the world and are recognized, around the world, as children songs. search results on the popular video website, youtube.com, include pages of shaky home videos of children teaching, performing, or improvising versions of “chopsticks,” “heart and soul,” or “the knuckle song.” such results are consistent with my personal experience and observations made as a student of the piano, as an instructor in south korea, as a father, and as a boy scout leader. for example, in 2003 i was teaching english at a south korean hagwon (academy) when two boys snuck out of class and into an adjacent, unoccupied piano classroom. when discovered, the boys gave me a mischievous smile and only came back to class after playing a variation of “chopsticks.” more recently, while monitoring the chaos of a recently concluded cub scout den meeting, i watched as young scouts ran around in unorganized play. a scout made his way over to a piano, sat down, and began hammering an “f’ with his left hand and a “g” with his right hand. the repeating notes reverberating throughout the meeting room were the same notes i heard in the south korea hagwon and that i watched tom hanks play on big. as the boy finished his version of “chopsticks,” he barely had time to stand up before being pushed aside by another boy who sat down and played, in classic oneupmanship, the same song, although this time faster and much, much louder. the universality of this type musical performance brought to my mind many questions. is this folklore? is this a musical performance, a form of play, or both? why do children, especially children without formal piano training, learn and perform these songs on the piano? if these children are musically illiterate, a characterization that suggests the songs are not learned through music primers, how then are these songs transmitted from child to child, group to group? who do these “pianists” intend to be the audience—in the case of the observed cub scouts, the other scouts or the adults in the room? finally, what are the performative playing for change ellsworth 46 functions of “piano play” and how do children use “piano play” to negotiate their social standing among friends, family, and society? before continuing, i should clarify what i mean by the term “piano play” and how this term is different from the more common phrase, “playing the piano.” by “piano play”, i do not mean the physical act of using fingers to depress notes on the piano. instead, “piano play” is the act of engaging in play through the piano. while for some children “playing the piano” is a requirement set by authority figures, a chore, or a mandatory form of work, “piano play” is voluntary, improvised, and fun. i am not the first to wonder about the meaning children ascribe to their play. over the course of many decades, folklorists have demonstrated how children use “play” as a mode of education, as a method of negotiating social groups, and as a form of entertainment. while children may use “piano play” for those same reasons, certain aspects of “piano play” appear to be unique and warrant additional query. for example, if there are rules that govern who (those who have learned or are learning) and how the piano is to be played (think about the mother chiding her son to stop pounding piano keys, “that is not a toy!”), than is “piano play” a form of musical protest wherein children skirt parental authority through engaging in prohibited activities? the piano is not a toy, but yet, in my observations, it is being used as one. hanks’ character in big is clearly using “piano play” as a means of coping with inner-turmoil and as an outlet for self-expression, but is there anything significant about his choice of songs? does the use and performance of common piano duets like “chopsticks” and “heart and soul” represent an additional layer in his complex ventilation of anxiety? identification and annotation in order to answer these questions, i observed and interviewed a group of children at play on april 7, 2012 at an informal church function at the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints in harrisburg, pennsylvania.1 while many of the adults sat in the gym eating and socializing, some of the children ran around the church in small groups playing games. some of these children entered the primary room, a familiar room wherein they gather for sunday school during church. in addition to being a room of spiritual learning and edification, the primary room is also a designated space for play as evident by the boxes of toys stacked neatly in the corner. like many rooms in the church, the primary room is equipped with a full-size, upright piano. sitting down, i asked if any of the children could play the piano. one boy, totten christensen2, age 9, said that he had taken piano lessons for two years but that he was not very good. the other chidlren, brady nelson (age 9), triplets adam, tyler, and nathan bryner (age 8), gracie oaks (age 10), and mattie lewis (age 10) all said they could not. when i pressed them to clarify if they could play any song on the piano, each said they knew some songs but did not take formal lessons or know how to read piano music. i asked if they would play a song for me and they agreed. brady nelson was the first to sit down at the piano. after opening the keyboard, adjusting the seat, and looking at his friends nervously, he began to play a song he called “bubblegum.” i had never heard the song title before but as soon as he ellsworth playing for change 47 began playing, i recognized a familiar tune that i had called, in my childhood, “the knuckle song.” brady made his right hand into a fist and rolled his knuckles from left to right over the trio of black keys (f#, g#, and a#) in one sweeping motion. keeping his hand in a fist, he hammered down twice on the next black key (c#). he repeated this series again, before reversing the direction and playing the trio of black keys from right to left and then hammering twice on the lower black key (b#). the direction was reversed yet again before brady concluded the song with a quick series of staccato notes played with his index finger. as soon as brady finished, nathan bryner slid onto the piano bench and told brady that he played the song “wrong.” nathan demonstrated the “correct” method by likewise making a fist and rolling it along the black keys but then using his elbows instead of his fist to pound the c# and b#. aside from the method of playing, the song was identical to the one brady played. i asked nathan what he called the song and neither he nor his brothers could recall a title. they said they learned the song from their cousin, caleb, age 10, while visiting caleb’s family in utah. other variations i found on youtube include a boy playing the song while lying upside down on the bench with his head beneath the keys, a child piano prodigy who began his performance by rolling his fists across the keys, playing homage to the familiar and simple, only to diverge into a complex, improvised variation of the “knuckle song” as the audience cheered wildly, and a young boy playing the song as a duet with his grandfather. i asked my informants if they had ever heard of the song “heart and soul” and looked down at a group of blank faces. when i hummed a few bars, eyes lit up. “oh, i know that song,” said gracie oaks. “that song is easy!” sliding onto the piano bench, gracie sat towards the lower half of the piano and encouraged mattie lewis to join her. bashfully, mattie whined about not wanting to play the top hands. reluctantly gracie conceded and scooted over on the bench to make room for mattie who sat to gracie’s left. after flexing fingers and cracking knuckles, mattie began playing the familiar call and answer of the song. with her left hand she played c – a – f – g while her right hand completing the cord, one note at a time (c – e – g, a – c – e, f – a – c, g – b – d). as mattie started the sequence a third time, gracie began playing a harmony in tempo with her right hand. like the popular children’s song, “this is the song that never ends,” where the ending of one stanza is the beginning of another, “heart and soul” is written in an infinite-loop motif. the song continues indefinitely, stanza after stanza, until one of the children quits. the repetitive nature of the song aids in mastery and encourages variation as a means to ward off boredom. mattie was the first to experiment in her playing. instead of playing the c-, a-, f-, and g-chords one note at a time, she began playing the chords at once in a syncopated, rocking rhythm. mattie then experimented with other notes, rhythms, and patterns. meanwhile, gracie played a jazzy harmony in the upper-octaves. the melody was very lyrical and, unlike the rhythms mattie was playing, gracie’s harmony had a set beginning and ending. she played the same learned song over and over again. when mattie varied her playing, gracie stopped and watched, trying to pick up the new rhythm. when she felt she had it, she began playing again slightly altering her rhythm to match mattie’s. the girls continued, gradually increasing playing for change ellsworth 48 in tempo and volume, until the notes began to blur and the harmony became unrecognizable. suddenly, the music stopped and the giggles began. when the laughter quieted down, gracie began mimicking a professional pianist by sitting upright and pretending to play a series of arpeggios with her left-hand while quickly playing nonsense notes with her right. the charade received high-praise from her young audience who laughed with glee at the spoton impersonation. having won the approval of her peers, gracie scooted off the piano bench to make room for totten, the one child who had taken piano lessons. not to be outdone, totten began to play “cherokee dance,” the song he had learned and memorized for a piano recital. the song was more complicated than those previously played; totten maintained a steady drum-like beat with his left hand while the right hand played an unfamiliar, tribal-esque song. although clearly an accomplished pianist, the more difficult yet unfamiliar tune did not elicit for totten the same cheers or laughs as did gracie’s tomfoolery. with a determined smile, totten opened up a nearby hymnal and began playing a fast-paced church hymn. while the song was certainly familiar to the children, again totten’s talents overshadowed the performance. he slid off the bench, clearly the best pianist of the bunch. what totten demonstrates is the difference between “piano play” and “playing the piano.” while his friends appeared to be having fun on piano, totten could not separate himself from his learning and as a result, his playing the piano exhibited a different function than the others. instead of “piano play,” totten seemed to focus on aspects of performance and ability. adam and tyler bryner were the last two to take a place at the ivories. both boys stuck out the index fingers of their hands and began playing the song “chopsticks.” the children erupted in muted exclamation as they recognized the song and confirmed to me, each slightly louder than the other, their own ability to play it. adam and tyler played the song by repeatedly hammering f and g notes six times in succession, followed by the eand gnotes six times, the dand b notes six times, and concluded by striking cnotes in harmony. the song repeats this pattern once more before resolving into a melody composed of thirds. once the boys concluded their song, i asked questions about their method of learning and when these songs are performed. gracie and mattie both admitted they learned to play at a friend’s home. gracie’s friend had a piano in the house and, while playing together a few years earlier, the friend taught her. the triplets, adam, tyler, and nathan, all admitted learning “the knuckle song” from their cousin in utah. they learned “chopsticks” from their mother. i asked if one of the boys could teach me to play “chopsticks” and i was quickly instructed to form imaginary chopsticks with my index fingers and told to play “these white notes like this.” at this point, nathan demonstrated the “correct” way of playing the song. following his lead, i copied the song phrase by phrase until nathan told me i had mastered it. i actually had learned to play this and other songs through my interactions with friends when i was a child. this is also the case with some other adults i interviewed. the transmission is often through a combination of oral explanation and physical demonstration. ellsworth playing for change 49 i next asked the children why they played the piano. mattie said, “because it’s fun!” “well, what’s so fun about it?” i responded. “it’s just fun to play. i like to listen to music and make music with my friends. it’s just fun to work together and see who messes up first.” mattie’s answer suggests that the piano is a place for children to engage in “piano play.” totten disagreed about the piano being “fun.” each morning before school, totten explained he must play the piano for thirtyminutes, practicing his scales and learning the assigned songs for the week—tasks that totten considers boring. playing the piano was a chore, a required task he was forced to complete. while other children saw the piano as something they got to play, for totten, the piano was something he had to play. i asked totten why he started taking piano lessons. he explained how everyone in his family “was forced” to play an instrument and he selected the piano. his choice in wording suggested this was something he did against his will. i asked if he was happy he knew how to play the piano. “yeah, i guess so. i really like playing for my friends and with my family. sometimes our whole family plays together as a big band. i think that’s cool.” for totten, the piano is not a place for “play” as his encounters with it are not with friends but alone and forced. analysis and interpretation/explanation folklorists have been chided in the past for failing to offer meaningful explanations for the folklore that define the nature and character of child life. for decades, collections of children folklore sat unexamined and unexplained, providing few hints to what the collected items meant for the children who use them (see sutton-smith 1990, 17 and dundes 1998, 119). however, scholarship in recent years, including works by simon bronner, libby tucker, and brian suttonsmith, have demonstrated how fruitful the study of children’s folklore, specifically children’s folklore of play, may be by demonstrating how play helps children develop a sense of personal and communal identity and mediate their standing in a complicated vertical and horizontal social order. in the following paragraphs, i explore folkloric aspects of “piano play” and suggest a few possible functions unique to “piano play” that may provide a framework for understanding its meaning. in a chapter examining the historiography of children’s folklore, john h. mcdowell defines children’s folklore as encompassing many verbal and nonverbal activities that incorporate “playful or artistic motives with some standing in community tradition” (mcdowell 1983, 314). for mcdowell, the distinction between the two motives, playful and artistic, is important. he stresses these motives are not “coterminous” and children’s folklore is one or the other. such a binary definition is troublesome when examining “piano play” as it appears to blend the playful and artistic motives of children’s folklore, creating perhaps a hyphenated third motive: playful-artistic. mcdowell defines the playful motive as producing a sense of make-believe through the “allocation of a special play space, or by a reversal of real-life contingencies, or by some other factor.” the artistic motive differs in that it is geared towards the “collective preoccupations” of the child and is intended for public consumption (mcdowell 1983, 314). playing for change ellsworth 50 given these definitions, “piano play” uniquely provides children with both the environment (piano space) and tools (piano) to enter into a secondary reality (that of a talented pianist) while simultaneously encouraging expression intended for the consumption of horizontal and vertical social groups. in so doing, piano play opens up avenues of understanding of how children compete and collaborate with each other and use these functions as a way to mediate the anxiety associated with performance. in his foundational observations on folklore, bascom suggests folklore has four basic functions: to entertain, to educate, to stabilize society, and to serve as a release for anxieties (bascom 1954, 343 – 346). in my experience and through my observations, i propose that, depending on the scenario, “piano play” fulfills each of these functions for the child participant. by situating “piano play” side-byside with other forms of “musical play,” such as hand-clapping rhymes, jump-rope rhymes, and play-ground chants/songs documented in simon bronner’s american children’s folklore, we can see how “piano play” is an outlet for entertainment, self-expression, and cooperative play. for some of the children i interviewed, entertainment was the primary purpose for “piano play”—“it’s fun!” in her study of children at “musical play,” patricia shehan campbell points out that on the playground and in the classroom, musical play unites children in purpose and solidifies social groups. by demonstrating knowledge of the music through chants, rhythms, songs, or other means, children form common playgroups and create bonds of solidarity (campbell 2010, 25 – 30). this solidarity was evident, for example, in the “hear t and soul” duet performed by gracie and mattie. as they began playing, the two adapted their performance to fit the tempo, style, and rhythm of the other. in this impromptu collaboration, each performer took turns experimenting and improvising on a musical instrument neither really knew how to play. as one would attempt to embellish their part, the other would diminish the volume of their part. it was as if there was one mind controlling four hands. however, as the song continued, gracie and mattie began showing signs of disengagement—the song itself was no longer challenging and the girls had exhausted their repertoire of variation. with no clearly delineated ending, the girls seemed resigned to playing indefinitely or until someone quit. at this point in the song, the performance turned into a competition of endurance to determine who could outplay and outlast the other. when it became apparent that neither would quit, a nonverbal agreement was made and the performance suddenly became a competition of skill. traditional rules that governed the performance of the piano piece, such as the suggested tempo, rhythm, and sound dynamics, were ignored. in fact, not only were these rules ignored, but also success in the competition hinged upon the participant doing the opposite of what the rules suggested. in this makeshift game, the faster, the louder, and the more non-traditional the piano play, the better. having an extensive knowledge of proper piano playing technique or a repertoire of songs was not as important as being able to subvert rules, parody expectations, and ultimately have fun. as a result of these improvised rules, the tempo and volume of gracie and mattie’s version of “heart and soul” gradually increased until gracie could not keep up and was forced to ellsworth playing for change 51 quit. what had begun as a cooperative performance ended as a competitive game with a clearly defined winner and loser. after winning, mattie turned to me and provided insight into her perspective, “i like to listen to music and make music with my friends. it’s just fun to work together and see who messes up first.” in other words, mattie celebrated the opportunity to make music with her friend because it provided a shared experience for social bonding while allowing for social stratification and the development of hierarchies. another aspect of gracie and mattie’s performance that was shared by other performers was their reliance on variation. on multiple occasions, the children attempted to surprise their audience through the unanticipated or unorthodox variation of a familiar form or method. for example, instead of playing a note with their finger, some children opted instead to use their fist or elbow. other variations include using one’s head, forearm, or bottom. this type of variation calls attention to the performance and to the performer. an analysis of children musical variations conducted by bronner in american children’s folklore provides insight into possible motives. children often alter the lyrics of common songs to include obscene, macabre, or violent language and scenes. for example, the song “jingle bells,” whose lyrics once celebrated the joy of a winter sleigh ride, is altered by children to describe the odors of superheroes and the egg-laying-abilities of their sidekicks. likewise, children alter the lyrics to “joy to the world” to celebrate school burning and teacher killing/disembodiment. as children become aware of social norms, these changes in lyrics allow them to dramatize and experiment with the limits of these taboos (bronner 1988, 81). the changes in these lyrics are intended to elicit reaction from the audience—to make them cringe in disgust or cover their ears. these reactions place the performer in a position of power over the audience. as controller of the medium, the child determines whether to continue or to stop. variation is also a way of displaying creativity or feigning mastery. for example, when brady sat at the piano to play “bubblegum” or “the knuckle song,” the audience expected him to play in a manner they had grown accustomed to over time and experience—they expected him to play the piano “normally.” by using his fists instead of his fingers, brady surprised the audience with his variation of form. brady was performing a song in a unique way, drawing additional attention to the song, his playing style, and ultimately to himself. “bubblegum” is not a difficult song to play, but by altering the form, brady made the song appear more difficult. in so doing, he intended for his audience to perceive him as having more skill than he actually possessed. skill is associated with time and practice. for someone to possess “skill,” it is requisite that they must practice for an extended period of time. skill, therefore, becomes equated with age. if someone possesses skill, they must also be old. by feigning to possess more talent than he actually has, brady is suggesting he is older than he really is. for children, “piano play” is a way to pretend to be something they are not, typically older, wiser, stronger, essentially, more adult-like. gracie demonstrated this aptly after finishing her rendition of “heart and soul.” in her demeanor, posture, and performance, gracie the 10-year-old was transformed through the piano into “gracie the great,” an accomplished pianist performing on stage at playing for change ellsworth 52 carnegie hall. the purpose of “piano pretend play” falls in line with other forms of pretending games played by children. for example, in their collection of children’s folklore, children’s games in street and playground, peter and iona opie document a long history of children “pretending games” going back to ancient rome that similarly show children attempting to take “shortcuts” to seem older or more adult-like than they really are. the opies’ study includes games where children pretend to be mothers and fathers, schoolteachers, criminals, war heroes, and celebrities (opie, 1969 330 – 344). likewise, in her children’s folklore: a handbook, elizabeth tucker writes that she observed children in new york during the 1990s pretending to be firefighters, police, teachers, doctors, native americans, and film and television stars (tucker 2008, 32). piano variation is likewise an allowed means of experimentation within the boundaries set by societal norms. often, the children will establish the right way to play first and then increased variation comes later to highlight specific skills. as nathan told brady after brady finished playing “the knuckle song” with his fist, “that’s the wrong way to play it” and then demonstrated the elbow as a variant. in each child’s mind is the notion that foundationally there is a right and a wrong way to play a song. the complexity grows as we assume the child also knows that the audience knows there is a right and wrong way to play a song. the wrong way and the proper way to play are often the same and the right way is often in opposition to the proper way. by altering the piano performance in song, posture, clothing, and form the child is subverting expectations thereby experimenting with the boundaries of what is socially tolerated and socially unacceptable. the children found through the reactions of the audience that some variation, like playing with fists instead of fingers, to not only be tolerated but celebrated. returning to bascom’s original four functions of folklore, how does “piano play” function to provide a release for anxieties? the answer is somewhat paradoxical for performing on the piano, whether for family, friends, or at a concert recital, usually does not alleviate or release anxiety, but, in fact, causes anxiety. imagine the young child walking to the isolated piano on a lit stage, performing a challenging piece from memorization in front of an audience when the risk of error and public humiliation is high. although the setting of this piano performance in a concert hall and the “piano play” that takes place in the living room may be different, performance anxiety is likely to exist in both settings as there exists elements of risk and vulnerability. however, in “piano play,” the fun, the opportunity for attention, and the opportunity for one-upmanship overpowers shyness and the risk of ridicule. variation in piano play allows children to sidestep the need to appear competent in order to be successful. instead, variation makes room for physical comedy, farce, and irony. it allows for and encourages imagination, freedom of expression, and collaboration. working together to create or compete, children find these positives work to reduce anxiety. mormon folklore although the children i interviewed are all members of the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints (mormon), i do not feel that their piano play experiences ellsworth playing for change 53 are unique only to children of this specific subgroup. mormon children are first and foremost children and by tracing repetition and variation of piano play among other children, my analysis suggests a universal performative function. i distance my subjects from their religious affiliation in order to argue for broader implications, but i should note that in so doing i do not mean to devalue the importance of their religious identity. these children as mormons are members of a recognized ethnic and religious subculture, and, as such, piano play does play an important role in the construction of their identity different from their peers. an examination of piano play within a mormon religious folklore context allows us to pull back additional layers of functionality. mormon folklorist bert wilson wrote of the importance of reflexive studies in religious folklore. he recognized great value in looking, “not just at a body of abstracted beliefs but at actual behaviors, at the process of believing, at how religious people, latter-day saints and others, enact their convictions in daily life” (2006). in this paper, wilson explored the practice of giving service among mormons, suggesting that such experiences hold greater significance in mormon religious living than do other more popular supernatural legends like the “three nephites.” i add to this list the central importance of music among mormons. from their earliest existence, mormons have been a musical people. only days after the first official conference of the church in june 1830, joseph smith, the church’s founder, recorded a revelation that directed his wife, emma, “to make a selection of sacred hymns, as it shall be given thee, which is pleasing unto me, to be had in my church” (doctrine & covenants 25:11). years later, brigham young continued this musical traditional by directed the church to dance. such fondness for music and dance led some to call the mormons, “the dancing puritans.” since their origins in 1852, the mormon tabernacle choir has become an american institution. mormon music historian michael hicks writes, motab has been “the object of presidential commendations, the focus of a reader’s digest record anthology— endorsed by billy graham—the topic of a widely distributed commemorative volume, and the even the subject of a u.s. postal stamp” (hicks, 166). more recently, the popular success of mormon singers like donnie and marie osmond, david archuleta, gladys knight, the neon trees, and brandon flowers, frontman for the killers, has cemented this musical stereotype into american popular consciousness. even in an episode of south park, mormons as a musical people is featured prominently. this stereotype is stressed in the television show south park. in the episode, “all about the mormons,” a mormon family moves into town and introduces themselves to the neighbors. the father immediately encourages his five children to play a song. each child, including an infant, picks up an instrument and begins singing and playing. the crawling infant selected the piano. without a paid lay ministry, mormons from the congregation are asked to voluntarily give of their time and talents in order for the church to function. among these “callings” are many that focus on the musical abilities of the member. these calling include a choir director, chorister, organist, and the pianist for one of the many auxiliary groups. with a worldwide membership of over 12 million and nearly 29,000 congregations, the need for musical talent is high. for this reason, many mormon parents require their children to study a musical instrument—piano playing for change ellsworth 54 being the most common. as a child, my mother expected me and each of my three siblings to learn to play the piano, specifically hymns. she explained that by learning the piano, i could provide a great service to people around the world as a missionary. this is the case for many mormon men and women who serve missions to remote countries around the world, countries where members do not have the same opportunity for learning musical instruments. mormons are also frequently taught the importance of discovering and developing talents. these lessons begin at a young age. for example, as a primary teacher, the church provided me a manual from which i could develop my lessons for the five-years-old. chapter 26 of this lesson manual is called, “the parable of the talents,” and uses teachings from the new testament to encourage these fiveyear-olds to find and use their talents. the manual suggests that i, as the teacher, ask, “what do you think jesus was trying to teach us by telling the parable of the talents?” i am then to, “help the children understand that the lord has given us talents, abilities, and opportunities (such as belonging to his church). he expects us to use all these things to make our lives better and to serve others” (primary 7: new testament, 1997). by developing their talents, mormon children are taught that they can serve god. conclusion widely disseminated through oral tradition among children, this paper examines the performative functions of “piano play” and three specific children piano pieces, “chopsticks,” “heart and soul,” and “the knuckle song” and argues that, during a liminal period, “piano play” provides children with a play-frame and space to negotiate age-anxiety. my analysis describes and expounds on the many ways i have documented that this negotiation occurs. childhood is a challenging period of life and many children do not have access to the tools that are needed to help them deal with these challenges. left to their own devices, many unconsciously turn to the world of verbal and non-verbal folklore for help in coping with challenges and anxieties. as the boundaries of childhood become more constricted and contested, as evidenced by the popularity of socially constructed age-groups like “teenagers” and “tweeners,” we will continue to see children seek shelter in the safety of shared folklore. notes 1. although the children i interviewed are all members of the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints, i do not feel that the experiences i document within this paper are unique to children of this subgroup. to the contrary, i believe continued ethnographic study will show these performances are generally common for most children. 2. the names of the children have been changed to protect their privacy and identity. ellsworth playing for change 55 works cited bascom, william. 1954. four functions of folklore. journal of american folklore 67: 333 – 349. bauman, richard. 1992. folklore, cultural performances, and popular entertainments: a communications-centered handbook. new york: oxford university press. bronner, simon j. 1988. american children’s folklore. little rock, ar: august house inc. campbell, patricia shehan, 2010. songs in their heads: music and its meaning in children’s lives. new york: oxford university press. the doctrine and covenants of the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints: containing revelations given to joseph smith, the prophet, with some additions by his successors in the presidency of the church. 1981. salt lake city: the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints. dundes, alan. 1998. bloody mary in the mirror: a ritual reflection of prepubescent anxiety. western folklore 57: 119 – 135. givens, terryl l. 2007. people of paradox: a history of mormon culture. new york: oxford university press. hicks, michael. 2003. mormonism and music: a history. urbana, il: university of illinois press. kapchan, deborah a. 1995. performance. journal of american folklore 108: 479 – 508. marsh, kathryn. 2008. the musical playground: global tradition and change in children’s songs and games. new york: oxford university press. mcdowell, john h. 1983. children’s folklore. handbook of american folklore, ed. richard m. dorson. bloomington, in: indiana university press. 314 – 322. opie, iona and peter opie. 1969. children’s games in street and playground: chasing, catching, seeking, hunting, racing, dueling, exerting, daring, guessing, acting, pretending. london: oxford university press. tucker, elizabeth. 2008. children’s folklore: a handbook. westport, ct: greenwood press. turner, victor. 1969. the ritual process: structure and anti-structure. ithaca, ny: cornell university press. ____________. 1987. betwixt and between: the liminal period in rites of passage. in betwixt and between: patterns of masculine and feminine initiation, ed. louise carus mahdi, steven foster, and meredith little. peru, il: open court publishing. 3 – 22. sutton-smith, brian. 1990. the future agenda for child study and the implications for the study of children’s folklore. children’s folklore review 17 – 22. van gennep, arnold. 1961. the rites of passage. chicago: university of chicago press. wilson, william a. 2006 “teach me all that i must do”: the practice of mormon religion. the marrow of human experience: essays on folklore, ed. jill terry rudy and diane call. logan, ut: utah state up. 253 260. pages from cfr_2013_part9 cfr_2013_part10 cfr_2013_part11 25 a reassessment of children’s folklore classification dana hercbergs in his magnum opus, the ambiguity of play (1997), psychologist and children’s folklore scholar brian sutton-smith traces the concept of play from older to more contemporary associations and argues that underlying every prominent definition of play is a rhetoric, a kuhnian paradigm informing the research questions and objectives of studies about play. sutton-smith defines a rhetoric as “a persuasive discourse, or an implicit narrative, wittingly or unwittingly adopted by members of a particular affiliation to persuade others of the veracity and worthwhileness of their beliefs” (8). for instance, among the oldest rhetorics identified by the author is the concept of play as fate, associated with games of chance that, by virtue of uncertain outcomes, mimic the belief that humans are controlled by destiny and other forces (9). on the other hand, play’s association with progress has dominated theories of animal and child development for about two hundred years, impacting the way educators see “playful imitation as a form of children’s socialization and moral, social and cognitive growth” (9). other notions of play identified by sutton-smith include frivolity, power and identity. i mention these examples to illustrate the contribution of such a foray into the history of ideas, namely, to prompt us to consider our own disciplinary assumptions and boundaries. aided by sutton-smith’s work, and after reviewing some of the key studies on children’s games and lore in the last one hundred years,1 in the present essay i identify a ‘rhetoric of play’ that applies both to the academic study of children’s games and to their popular perception: that is, the nostalgic lament of the transition from outdoor, group and physical games to indoor, solitary and digitally mediated games. this dichotomy is not only implicated in determining what qualifies as suitable material for the folkloristic study of children’s play; it also echoes adult concerns that children have less opportunity for ‘free’ outdoor recreation than they themselves had.2 children’s play is increasingly associated with solitary indoor entertainment rather than with street play among peers (sutton-smith 1986, 170), a point that both academics and general observers find disturbing. valentine’s public space and the culture of childhood (2004) confirms that parents in the united kingdom lament their children’s lack of access to the outdoor play of their own youth, while at the same time giving reasons to be concerned about child safety, traffic and stranger dangers being two factors that limit outdoor play. these concerns appear in scholarship at least as early as the 1980s in studies of children’s play spaces, both in adult-controlled play programs and in more child-derived play areas in urban and rural environments (moore 1986, dargan and zeitlin 1990, olwig and gulløv 2003, hörschelmann and schäfer 2005, kraftl, horton and tucker 2007). paralleling these studies, a nostalgic baby-boomer generation is spawning a revival of its own childhood culture in publications on popular pastimes of the 1950s and 1960s (for example, dankner and tartakover 1996). books include the cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 25 11/6/08 11:46:05 am a reassessment of children’s folklore classification hercbergs 26 “unlikely bestseller” (williams 2007, 9) the dangerous book for boys, written by irish brothers conn and hal iggulden (2006), and websites like “nostalgia online,” an israeli forum with an accompanying book of games and other amusements.3 in the israeli case, which has been the focus of my own research, there are even manuals and revivals of traditional games by television campaigns and game manufacturers (zuk 2007). these projects and others are geared variably towards adults and children, their resurgence encouraging interaction and reconnection across the generation gap. one might call it a folk revival worthy of study in itself. similarly, when we survey recent academic publications on children’s folklore, we continue to see an emphasis on the familiar genres.4 a noteworthy example is the edited volume children’s folklore: a source book (sutton-smith et al. 1995), with case studies dealing with outdoor games (beresin 75-92), “songs, poems, and riddles” (sullivan 145-60), “tales and legends” (tucker 193-212), and “teases and pranks” (jorgensen 213-24). more recent examples are play today in the primary school playground (bishop and curtis 2001) and at play in belfast: children’s folklore and identities in northern ireland (lanclos 2003), both focusing on school playground games and lore. what seems clear from this brief survey is the academic and popular convergence in valuing, dare i say idealizing the familiar, “classic” forms of play. but the work of folklorists should not stop here. if scholars have tended to privilege outdoor recreation, youth cultures and oral traditions (mcnamee 1998, mechling 2000), they can no longer ignore, for instance, the impact that computer and video games have on young people and their implications for learning in a digitally mediated society, especially as these indoor games are much more dominant and popular than before in game history. on the other hand, the burgeoning literature on computer and video games, which tends to focus on “the negative effects of playing [them]” and their potential for learning and achievement in the workplace” (yee 2006a, 3, yee 2006b, suellentrop 2007, 63), could stand to benefit from ethnographic assessments in the vein of gary alan fine’s work on role playing games of the dungeons and dragons variety (1983). such role playing games are the precursors to mmorpg’s, or massively multi-user online role playing games, suggesting that such activities are not so different from one another. i am not suggesting that qualitative studies have not been done in other fields; on the contrary, studies of digital games address a variety of subjects including gender preferences (hayes 2007), character formation (hayes 2007, yee 2006a), perceptions of the fluidity of identity (turkle 1995), and virtual community affiliation (yee 2006a). journals dedicated to the subject, like game studies (since 2001)5 and games and culture (since 2006), and a number of conferences (see raessens 2006, 52) provide platforms for these discussions. what i do envision, however, is a fruitful give-and-take whereby folklorists can adapt their schemas of what qualifies as children’s folklore to address these forms of play. folklorists, who are, after all, adept at identifying the parameters of new and changing generic forms of human expression (for example, tucker 2002-3), can contribute to a more nuanced understanding of what is going on in these framed activities. for instance, through ethnographic research folklorists can evaluate the extent cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 26 11/6/08 11:46:06 am hercbergs a reassessment of children’s folklore classification 27 to which children and teens who from a young age engage in mass-mediated digital gaming experience it as hyper-reality or a simulation of reality (baudrillard 1983, 38 in rodaway 1995, 246). indeed, folklorists’ specialization in identifying the devices that key alternate frames of discourse and behavior as separate from ordinary reality equips us amply for exploring these terrains. by rethinking and expanding our concept of what qualifies as children’s folklore, we can contribute new perspectives on play, peer interaction, and identity issues while staying abreast of these developments. to move us towards a more inclusive schema of children’s activities, i propose looking critically at a defining feature of our field: genres. much of folklore scholarship has been defined by genres (harris 1995, 509), and to a great extent they have defined the subfield of children’s folklore. in this essay i will revisit roger abrahams’ genre classification in “the complex relations of simple forms” (1976), in light of three authors’ works on children’s folklore — works that have bent the genre frame and argued going beyond it. next, rather than propose yet another model for classifying children’s folklore genres, i will show that our existing models could accommodate current research and suggest questions for future studies. this is not so much a prescriptive statement as it is a formulation of an observed trend that ought to aid our thinking about the direction the field is going. abrahams’ classification of folklore genres abrahams explains the usefulness of generic classification in “the complex relations of simple forms” (1976) thus: “we point to the genres because by naming certain patterns of expression we are able to talk about the traditional forms and the conventional contents of artistic representation, as well as the patterns of expectation which both the artist and audience carry into the aesthetic transaction” (193). abrahams devised a continuum for depicting the relations among the various genres of folklore according to performer-audience interaction that each genre involves (199). on one end of the continuum are placed the most spontaneous conversational utterances such as superstitions and proverbs, which express traditional knowledge applied to solve a specific conflict. the relationship between ‘performer’ and ‘audience’ in the conversational genres is direct; for instance, a proverb teller is the performer of the folk item, while the recipient of its embedded wisdom is cast in the role of the audience. the middle of the continuum involves slightly more removed interactions: it contains genres of ‘play’ ranging from riddling and joking to spectator sports and debates and concludes with festivals and rituals, folk drama where traditional role playing involves a high degree of formality and where the resolution of the conflict is predetermined (208). towards the second half of the continuum, where involvement is “primarily through vicarious identification,” are the fictive genres such as fables, epics, ballads and other familiar narrative forms. finally, the scheme ends with the most planned and ‘static’ forms that “present us with a fait accompli, an embodied resolution” (209). the static end of the continuum includes folk painting, folk sculpture, and folk design. cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 27 11/6/08 11:46:06 am a reassessment of children’s folklore classification hercbergs 28 while this model accounts for performer-audience interaction only, through which it elucidates the relationships among the genres in an accessible and convincing way, its shortcoming as far as play is concerned is that it does not account for interaction, identification or engrossment in the static genres themselves, some of which are placed outside of the realm of folklore — what abrahams calls “a product of technology” (213) — nor does it make room for considering the figurative and dynamic play world to which that they may give rise.6 and yet, folklorists have demonstrated the imaginative capacity of children when playing with mass-produced toys. for instance, in toys as culture (1986) sutton-smith tests the belief that manufactured toys inhibit children’s imagination as opposed to natural toys or “open-ended toys” which some parents in the study advocate. he concludes that “there is no evidence that the modern child either is or is not more creative with his current ‘plastic’ play things than were his predecessors with bits of wood or stones” (11). rather, he argues that toys are an agency for the imagination, and that the older children get, the more playful imagination dominates the toys, transforming them to make them suitable for their plans. in other words, the child controls the toys rather than the other way around (204). similarly, beresin challenges us to consider whether a mass-produced action figure does not also constitute a folk toy (1997, 799). instead of dismissing it as outside the realm of folklore, beresin emphasizes that “it is only the unused toy … divorced from both a performance context and ludic tradition — that may not become an actual folk toy” (799). indeed, toys can be used to act out a new set of conflicts as well as resolutions, both in group and in solitary activities, for not only do children engage in individual play earlier in their life than they do in social play, but there are circumstances where children are perfectly capable of amusing themselves in the absence of playmates. jeannie b. thomas reveals in a chapter on playing with dolls how one boy cast his barbie, ken, and a handful of g.i. joe dolls in television show scenarios. she writes, “by using television’s cleaver family as a model, he created and manipulated a positive family through his dolls.” in thomas’s interpretation, “his play extended his concerns about family and became a way of addressing family issues and comforting himself about them” (2003, 135). further, in this boy’s play barbie was transformed to godzilla and a cowboy, and the g.i. joes into fashion critics (135). another significant aspect of toys relates to the relationship that players develop with them. sutton-smith argues that children can come to identify with toys to an extent that they shape their sense of self for a long time, and as they endure such ‘life companions’ may have a “prognostic destiny in the subsequent life of the child” (1986, 216); this observation is in line with kirshenblatt-gimblett’s work “objects of memory” (1989) on the function and meaning that material culture holds for individual life review. play with toys as a solitary rather than group activity is missing in abrahams’ discussion and should also be taken into account. the above statements about toys as static objects that are nevertheless incorporated into the interactive play world of children, not only in the moment of playing but over the course of the life span, or part of it, support the inclusion of toys, including mass produced ones, by virtue of the dynamic play world they cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 28 11/6/08 11:46:06 am hercbergs a reassessment of children’s folklore classification 29 spawn, in the children’s folklore repertoire. this is especially relevant considering that at times toys are marketed in relation — and in complement to — television programs or other games, thus tying the products together in “dominating imaginative schemas” (sutton-smith 1986, 204) whence players draw inspiration and access models of behavior for the play world they (re)constitute with these toys. as televised narratives become prominent in children’s play schemes, sutton-smith ventures that “[players] will not be over-determined by the particular commercial, but the range of what they will think about is increasingly influenced, even confined by what they see on television” (190). in the author’s example, cowboy films frame play with hats and sticks but other objects seen as fitting the schema will be incorporated if available; for instance, water pistols may be used as weapons in a re-enacted battle game. a related anecdote i have heard comes from a player of the computer game sim city who, upon venturing out to the “real world,” felt an urge to direct people to perform different tasks, as he would do in the game. this point is made explicit in gary alan fine’s book shared fantasy, which demonstrates that role playing games (of the board game variety) can serve as a keying device for leaping to an alternative world where players identify with their character to an extent even they sometimes find disturbing. fine shows that the engrossment of players in the games corresponds with the attachment they develop to their characters. he writes: games are quintessential examples for frame analysis because of their capacity for inducing engrossment … the significance of gaming resides in the shared nature of the engrossment … and in the supportive recognition that others are equally engrossed (1983, 182). as “shared fantasy,” gaming enables role-play and immersion in a manner that abrahams attributes to play genres like festival and folk drama, but fine’s statement is equally attributable to the experience of video gaming. identity, roleplay and engrossment are aspects of play that consume game manufacturers and social science researchers alike. thus, as both children and adults identify with and make creative use of ‘static genres’ (for example, handelman 1990, turkle 1995), and players of a wider age range now constitute an entirely new leisure subculture of gamers (mayra 2006), these genres present valuable avenues of folkloristic research. further, questions about gaming behavior must now take account of the shift from age-based peer groups to multi-generational gaming communities, a reality which troubles the conception of children’s folklore as a body of traditions “performed by children without the influence of adult supervision or formal instruction” (grider 1997, 123) and of childhood as a state delimited by biological age. reassessment given that “a great deal of children’s play is now associated with toys [and other mediated games] and with their relatively solitary play condition, than with street cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 29 11/6/08 11:46:06 am a reassessment of children’s folklore classification hercbergs 30 play among their peers” (sutton-smith 1986, 170), it is only fitting that folklorists should apply their expertise to the study of play behavior and group dynamics to non-traditional genres. i propose that if we extended abrahams’ genre continuum to include toys, manufactured games, role-playing, video and computer games, we would dissolve the dichotomy between outdoor peer-group play and isolated playing and replace it with a dynamic relation among familiar and emergent forms. for as video gaming consoles might isolate children from one another physically, they bear the potential to expand their virtual community by connecting players online. indeed, the digital game industry’s aim of “total immersion” 7 might place some traditional games and computer games on the same experiential plane with comparable physical and cognitive engagement. as one article reports, a 10 yearold boy who learned to play marbles at a workshop compared it to “being inside a video game” (williams 2007, 9), a reversal that echoes baudrillard’s formulation of the hyper-real as a system of signs with the loss of original referents (1983, 2-5 in rodaway 1995, 246-7. see also turkle 1995 on the mediation of reality in malls, television and muds).8 the increasingly porous boundaries between ‘real’ and ‘virtual’ worlds extend also to the perception of self — frans mayra writes about the “identity-forming potentials” that digital games carry as a leisure form in late industrial societies: the fascinations of an unexplored world, unsolved puzzles, or unlocked but nevertheless attainable skill level can be very compelling indeed. they do not only show us something new, but they grant us something new in ourselves — a new venue or potential for selfrealization. when flying a griffin high over the lands in world of warcraft, i in a sense become something new, a subject transformed and redefined by its capacity to engage in this kind of fantastic action (2006, 104-105). taking these phenomena into consideration — attachment to toys and fantasy role play characters and the meaning they hold for players’ identities — expands folklorists’ treatment of games and play forms not traditionally considered under the rubric of children’s folklore. presumably on account of these transformations, bishop and curtis incorporate the role of imagination in their own “classification of play traditions” according to whether genres possess high verbal, physical, or imaginative content (2001, 14). although ‘games with playthings,’ ‘making things’ and ‘collecting things’ are placed at the “high physical content” end of the chart, the authors acknowledge that there is room for moving genres around. for instance, rhymes may be used independently or to supplement ball-bouncing games, thus moving the game from ‘high verbal content’ to ‘games with playthings’ under the category of ‘high physical content.’ (15). in addition, they include a “high imaginative content” category that includes role enactment and acting games, thus enabling us to insert manufactured games like dungeons and dragons here. like abrahams, bishop and curtis are aware that some categories may cross over and even change (15). cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 30 11/6/08 11:46:07 am hercbergs a reassessment of children’s folklore classification 31 expanding the above schema of traditional children’s play activities by drawing a line connecting toys to role-playing and video games, we are posing a relation between these forms and various levels of immersion and identification. if we included toys and digital games in the genre continuum, we would be in a better position to explore the relationships between existing and emergent forms of play from the point of view of physical and cognitive immersion. we may find a surprising reversal in children’s play via what i call globalized gaming: as children become more physically isolated in their play, their virtual community is geographically expanded by games that connect players online. as we seek to assess children’s deprivation from outdoor recreation and its consequences, we might begin by asking how children experience their reality by using immersion to connect physical and cognitive games involving static objects such as dolls or toys to genres with elements that are similar to ‘acting,’ to fantasy role-playing games and to digital virtual reality games, where “total immersion” occurs. perhaps focusing on the role of empathy in these activities can complement the ongoing biological research on mirror neurons’ connection to empathy. as the boundaries between virtual and real, work and play blur (yee 2006b), and these forms of mediation may be present to a degree that is unsettling to folklorists, we might ask what genres of traditional artistic expression grow out of the digital world and what communities grow out of it.9 the meanings generated by new configurations of community, through references to gaming experiences and the creation of new verbal expressions, are among the phenomena to which folklorists are attuned. i suggest the following questions to generate future research: how might we reconsider the significance of bateson’s frame analysis for digital gaming? what might research from a bodylore perspective (young 1994) discover about players’ internalization and mimicry of their avatars’ movements and reactions to emotionally powerful situations in the game world? if there is a scientific basis for research on the “mirror neurons,” which claims that they work the same way whether you act or see someone else acting, what is the difference between playing with a favorite doll or watching a personally crafted avatar perform an action? and how might role playing function in each case to resolve conflict, both in the game world and in person-to-person situations? finally, as 25% of users of mmorpgs (massively multi-user online graphical environments) are teenagers (yee 2006a, 16), what distinguishes their performance from those of adults in terms of acquired skills, their preferences for making online friends, and their experience of the world? these questions about children’s play touch on the most fascinating issues in social science research today. abrahams presented a framework for thinking about role-distance and the variability of involvement in folklore genres. at this stage of the game, folklorists’ forays into these play forms should yield fruitful insights into the competences that young people are developing through their play and the way these culturally-mediated forms of learning interact with the brain’s capacity to master a set of skills that were untapped two generations ago. our growing expertise in these activities will aid our critical assessment of the changes taking place in children’s play, learning, peer interaction and identity formation. cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 31 11/6/08 11:46:07 am a reassessment of children’s folklore classification hercbergs 32 notes 1. see schwartzman’s transformations (1978) for a thorough look at anthropological play scholarship until that period. 2. i refer to a commonly-articulated perception i have encountered in my research among palestinian and israeli residents of jerusalem as well as in casual conversations elsewhere, rather than identifying a complete historical transition in this or other milieus. jerusalemites consulted about the popular pastimes of children and teens since the 1940s expressed the cliché that for youth today the computer has replaced the pastimes of their parents and grandparents. concurrently, however, the children and teens consulted in this research continue to exhibit traditional knowledge, for instance of certain games, lore and plants, even as they engage in more mediated digital activities such as cell phone, video and computer games. 3. http://www.nostal.co.il/ 4. see mcdowell 1983. 5. the “first academic, peer-reviewed (online) journal dedicated to computer game research” (raessens 2006, 52) 6. approaching the far left end of the spectrum, where audience involvement with the performer becomes increasingly vicarious, the genre or product of the performance displaces the performer and itself becomes the object of interaction. 7. see levy and croal 2006. 8. we may interpret this as demonstrating the prominence of digitally-mediated “dominating imaginative schemas” in the lives of an increasing number of children. 9. i would like to thank john mcdowell for articulating these issues. works cited abrahams, roger d. 1976. the complex relations of simple forms. folklore genres, ed dan ben-amos, 193-214. austin: university of texas press. beresin, anna richman. 1997. folk toy. an encyclopedia of beliefs, customs, tales, music, and art, ed. thomas a. green. santa barbara, ca: abc-clio. bishop, julia c. and mavis curtis. 2001. play today in the primary school playground. buckingham: open university press. dankner, amnon and david tartakover. 1996. efoh hayinu u-mah asinu: otsar shenot ha-hamishim veha-shishim [where we were and what we did: a treasury of the 1950s and 60s]. jerusalem: keter. fine, gary alan. 1983. shared fantasy: role-playing games as social worlds. chicago: university of chicago press. grider, sylvia. 1997. children’s folklore. in folklore: an encyclopedia of beliefs, customs, tales, music, and art, ed. thomas a. green, 123-29. santa barbara,ca: abc-clio. handelman, don. 1990. the donkey game. models and mirrors: towards an anthropology of public events, 86-101. cambridge: cambridge university press. cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 32 11/6/08 11:46:07 am hercbergs a reassessment of children’s folklore classification 33 harris, trudier. 1995. genre. journal of american folklore 108(430): 509-527. hayes, elisabeth. 2007. gendered identities at play: case studies of two women playing morrowind. games and culture 2(1): 23-48. hörschelmann, kahtrin and n. schäfer. 2005. performing the global through the local — globalisation and individualization in the spatial practices of young east germans. children’s geographies 3(2): 219-42. hufford, mary. 1995. context. journal of american folklore 108( 430): 528-549. iggulden, conn and hal. 2006. the dangerous book for boys. london: harper collins. kirshenblatt-gimblett, barbara. 1989. objects of memory: material culture as life review. in folk groups and folklore genres, ed, elliott oring, 329-38. logan: utah state university press. kraftl, peter, john horton, faith tucker, eds. 2007. children, young people and built environments. built environment 33 (4). levy, steven and n’gai croal. 2006. playstation strikes back. newsweek. 20 november. http://www.newsweek.com/id/44611?+id=relatedcl (accessed april 10, 2007). mayra, frans. 2006. a moment in the life of a generation (why game studies now?). games and culture 1(1): 103-106. mcdowell, john h. 1983. children’s folklore in handbook of american folklore, ed. richard m. dorson, 314-22. bloomington: indiana university press. mcnamee, sarah. 1998. youth, gender and video games: power and control in the home. in cool places: geographies of youth culture, ed. tracey skelton and gill valentine, 195-206. london: routledge, 1998. mechling, jay. 2002. children’s folklore, children’s brains. new directions in folklore 4(2). http://www.temple.edu/isllc/newfolk/children.html (accessed may 15, 2007). moore, robin. 1986. childhood’s domain: play and place in child development. london and dover, n.h.: croom helm. nostalgia online. http://www.nostal.co.il (accessed may 15, 2007). olwig, karen fog and eva gulløv, eds. 2003. children’s places: cross-cultural perspectives. london: routledge. raessens, joost. 2006. playful identities, or the ludification of culture. games and culture 1(1): 52-57. rodaway, paul. 1995. exploring the subject in hyper-reality. in mapping the subject: geographies of cultural transformation, ed. steve pile and nigel thrift, 241-66. london: routledge. schwartzman, helen. 1978. transformations: the anthropology of children’s play. new york: plenum press. skelton, tracey and gill valentine, eds. 1998. cool places: geographies of youthcultures. london and new york: routledge. suellentrop, chris. 2007. playing with our heads. why video games are making our kids smarter — and more obedient. utne (jan-feb): 58-63. sutton-smith, brian. 1986. toys as culture. new york: gardner press. ______. 1997. the ambiguity of play. cambridge: harvard university press. cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 33 11/6/08 11:46:07 am a reassessment of children’s folklore classification hercbergs 34 sutton-smith, brian, jay mechling, thomas w. johnson, and felicia r. mcmahon, eds. 1995. children’s folklore: a source book. new york: garland. thomas, jeannie banks. 2003. naked barbies, warrior joes, and other forms of visible gender. urbana: university of illinois press. tucker, elizabeth. 2002-2003. “mean girls”: the reclassification of children’s and adolescents’ folklore. children’s folklore review 25 (1-2): 7-22. turkle, sherry. 1995. life on the screen: identity in the age of the internet. new york: simon and schuster. valentine, gill. 2004. public space and the culture of childhood. aldershot, england: ashgate. yee, n. 2006a. the demographics, motivations and derived experiences of users of massively-multiuser online graphical environments. presence: teleoperators and virtual environments 15: 309-329. yee, n. 2006b. the labor of fun: how video games blur the boundaries of work and play. games and culture 1(1): 68-71. young, katharine. 1994. an introduction to bodylore. journal of american folklore 107 (423): 3-8. zuk, nirit. ahat shtayim shalosh dag maluach (one two three salty fish). horim ve yeladim (parents and children) 2007: 68-74 (hebrew). cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 34 11/6/08 11:46:08 am cfr_2007-2008_part5 cfr_2007-2008_part6 cfr_2007-2008_part7 from fairies to famine: how cultural identity is constructed through irish and irish american children's literature karen hill mcnamara wee, magical fairies and cheeky, green leprechauns searching for enormous pots of gold jumped off the pages of my childhood books and into my consciousness of what defines "irishness." the stereotypical stories routinely reflected light-hearted, slightly daft irish characters who were carefree and often getting into mischief. contemporary irish and irish american narratives have moved beyond my childhood "shamrockery" reading to richer and more developed texts. this essay considers how cultural identity is conveyed in these works. children are extremely impressionable, and what they read impacts the way they view the world. children's literature is a powerful vehicle for delivering cultural awareness and national identity. the plots and themes act as a "cultural barometer," measuring trends in society. children's literature provides a sense of nationality and helps define the character of the people it portrays. much has been researched on the role of narrative in the development of a reader's historical understanding, and authorities are clear about its value in children's social and intellectual development. a short history of irish children's literature irish themes have been featured in scores of juvenile works both inside and outside of ireland. indeed, it is quite possible that more "irish" children's stories have been written by american than irish authors. one reason may be demographics, as the ancestral homeland of nearly onefifth of all americans is ireland, and according to 1990 census figures, there are eight times as many people of irish ancestry living in america as there are residents in ireland today. another consideration is market size, as the united states publishes over 5000 children's stories annually, compared with fewer than 200 in ireland. curiously, despite ireland's prolific and long literary history, children's literature in ireland is a relatively recent phenomenon. prior to the 1980s, "with a population small in number and with a weak economy, there was simply no market for children's books in ireland," observed children's literature scholar emer sullivan (6). irish author tony hickey provided a personal example of how limited the production of children's stories in ireland was during this time. during our interview from fairies to famine in dublin, hickey lamented: "when my book, matchless mice, came out in 1980, i was amazed to discover that it was the only children's book published in the republic that year!" the majority of irish children's writers had regularly turned to the united states or england to be published, and these books had to fulfill "foreign expectations" with regard to plot, theme, and characterization. "overseas publishers tend to want only their notions of irishness, the land of the leprechauns" (sullivan 6). hence, irish children's stories were trapped in oldfashioned stereotypes, which some bemoan as "stage irish." today, there is what many call a "flowering" of irish children's literature. irish children's author siobhan parkinson explained this new phenomenon in horn book magazine: the success in recent years of irish children's publishing is due partly to the efforts of the publishers and writers them selves, partly to the arts council and other government sup port (royalties for creative artists are tax-tree), and largely to the growth in both the irish economy and the irish sense of self-esteem, particularly in cultural issues. (i75) one of the most popular literary genres published for children in ireland is historical fiction. celia keenan analyzed this recent trend in her article, "reflecting a new confidence: irish historical fiction for children. " the historical novel has a particular importance in colonial and post-colonial cultures when people need to explain who they are and why their plight is so painful. but the enormous growth of historical fiction for children in ireland would seem to me to reflect a new confidence in irish society, emanating from widespread popular belief that if we understand the past we might behave better in the future. (369) fictional novels set in the past tend to focus on the human side of history and give young readers a sense of how life was lived. a watershed in modem irish history is the great irish famine of the midnineteenth century. literature for children presenting this calamitous time illustrates how stories impact the way children view their cultural identity and heritage. is the great irish famine a significant event? in 1845, there were more than eight million people in ireland, the vast majority of native irish subsisting almost entirely on potatoes. this 78 karen hill mcnamara dependence on the potato had devastating consequences when a catastrophic blight destroyed much of the potato harvests of 1845, 1846, 1848 and 1849. over this period, an estimated one to one and a half million people died of starvation and disease, and another two million were forced to emigrate to new worlds, mainly to the united states, britain, canada and australia. irish famine historian and scholar christine kinealy described the great famine as "one of the most lethal famines in modem history, accounting for a loss of 25 percent of the population in ireland over a period of six years" (2). in fact, one hundred and fifty-eight years have passed since the start of the great famine, and yet ireland's population has never recovered. ireland remains the only country in europe today with a population smaller than it was in 1845. while historians, economists, sociologists, educators, journalists and politicians have debated the varied and controversial causes for the irish famine, all agree that it is a defining event in irish history. the consequences of the great famine changed more than the course of irish history; the resulting irish diaspora affected the shape of world history, especially that of america. there are nearly one hundred million people around the globe who claim some irish ancestry and over fifty-two million of these are americans, many of who are in the united states today as a result of the famine ("irish identity"). the impact of the great famine is critical to understanding modem irish and american history. history and literature despite the significance of the great famine, it has inspired relatively little fictional writing, especially in the domain of juvenile literature. the absence of children's novels in ireland that sought to educate young people about the great famine and its ramifications is ironic, for ireland is a nation passionate about history with a world-renowned literary reputation. recently, many scholars have been addressing this "silence" that seems to have surrounded the famine. the pathos of suffering and the psychological legacy of diaspora associated with the catastrophe appear to have had long-term consequences on the psyches of irish and irish emigrants. the children's novelists i interviewed spoke vehemently about the silence and the famine's effect on irish culture. shame and survival guilt are at the core of this issue. feelings of deep shame that are associated with being perceived as passive victims, or feelings of guilt that are associated with being perceived as ruthless survivors, have contributed to the sounds of silence. i believe 79 from fairies to famine that this mentality influenced children's authors and publishers, resulting in a paucity of books available on the topic for children. since the commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the irish famine in the mid-1990s, the topic has received a dramatic increase in media, literary, and scholarly attention. school systems, reacting to this new public awareness, have started addressing the great famine, and today it is taught in every school district in ireland and is included in many american school curriculums as well. this change has also been reflected in children's literature, as authors from around the world have finally begun producing quality children's literature that depicts this historic and traumatic event. children's writers have imaginatively represented the irish famine, bringing the event to life in a way that traditional textbooks cannot. young people, rarely represented in history books, are the main protagonists in juvenile fiction. famine novels help young readers understand the greatest crisis in irish history by personifying it through fictional characters that they can connect and identify with, thus making the history of the famine feel real to them. christine kinealy acknowledged that "the impetus to remember the famine was often strongest outside of ireland," and the chronology of the publication dates of children's famine books is a perfect exam ple of this (2). the very first children's famine story, the search of mary katherine mulloy, was written by an american author in 1974. it is interesting to note that the first eight books were all published in the united states. the next nationality to explore the subject was, remarkably, the british, with michael morpurgo's twist of gold (1983). the irish themselves did not address the great famine in children's literature until 1990, 140 years after the catastrophe, when marita conlon-mckenna wrote under the hawthorn tree. the book surprised irish publishers by becoming the most commercially successful irish novel for children, winning countless international awards and resulting in two sequels. today, it is on the national curriculum and read by every irish primary student. this groundbreaking narrative marked the beginning of the irish exploring the subject for its young people. historical novels portraying the great famine to children and adolescents tend to follow predictable plot patterns. generally, there is a reliance on two traditional conventions. the first is the quest, which is to survive the famine, and the second is the initiation into adulthood, demonstrated by emigrating from ireland. while some novels present the famine from a slightly non-traditional angle and may insert unique twists and turns into the narrative, overall there is a remarkable consistency in the way the catastrophe is portrayed. 80 karen hill mcnamara basic plot formula "as they drew near the lane they noticed a strange smell, a smell of something rank and putrid" (lally 12). the typical story opens up with the stench of the rotting potatoes in the field of a small farm, the desperate attempts to salvage any unspoiled potatoes, and the ultimate resignation that blight has occurred. the reader vicariously witnesses the vast hunger the young girl and her family experience as they seek to survive. most tales contain the historically accurate portrayal of the cruelty meted out to the peasants by the merciless and predatory landlords. eviction scenes show the suffering and deprivation of thousands who were callously evicted from their homes by english soldiers. inevitability, each story includes the tumbling of a poor widow's cottage. with their homes demolished, leaving the main character and her family destitute, the quest for food and work begins. there are depictions of wretched laborers working for a pittance and the contemptuous export of corn and cattle from ireland while the poor starve. workhouses feature in these accounts, usually as places to be dreaded and feared. but sometimes the family is reduced to entering them, resulting in disease and disastrous consequences. death is omnipresent. these are not cheery tales, as they deal with cruelty and hardship, and are heart wrenching at times. the young hero often loses her parents and a baby sister to famine fever. yet, despite how desperate the situation may appear during the plot, the key to survival is usually found in the predictable escape from ireland. there is the journey to the docks, usually on foot, where the protagonist has a series of encounters with the starving along the road. the initiation into adulthood is now unfolding. eventually the young woman reaches the docks and makes the horrendous passage to north america in a "coffin ship." graphic descriptions of the crowded, stench-filled pit of steerage where she comes face to face with illness and death are common. in fact, the plots are somewhat repetitive with the central character always befriending another family, an older passenger always dying of fever and being cast overboard, and the typical storm at sea. sometimes the story concludes with the arrival into america and the passage into adulthood is completed. these narratives offer the irish immigrant a fresh start, and the story is able to conclude on a happy or at least hopeful note. sequels, all set in america, follow five of these novels. when emigration happens early in the story line, the plot formula continues to be predictable. the protagonist typically battles discrimination, struggles with prejudice, and encounters signs that say, "no irish need apply." eventually these tenacious young women find work as domestic servants in new york or are employed by the textile mills 81 from fairies to famine in massachusetts. generally these books also end happily. often the central character raises the passage money for the rest of her family to come over and has fallen in love in her new homeland. emigration, commonly employed by novelists because the famine resulted in massive migration, also provides these despairing tales with an optimistic and promising ending. of course, not all of the famine novels end happily. the children never locate their missing parents in under the hawthorn tree (1990), mary dies of cholera in the epilogue in so far from home (1997), and in across the sea from galway (1975), the ship crashes along the coast and nearly everyone onboard perishes. yet, most children's books prescribe a happy ending, or at least conclude with a message of hope. heroic characters these are survival stories. the resourcefulness and inner courage necessitated in escaping starvation and fever under horrendous circumstances lie at the center of these novels. while the body of adult famine literature is often told as one of passive victimization or as one of resistance, children's famine literature centers on the will to survive incredible hardships. the main characters are consistently courageous, spirited, quick-witted, and independent. determined to create new and better worlds for themselves, these young heroes learn to endure and to seize every chance for survival. it is my argument that the traits and qualities of these protagonists represent "irishness" to readers. take, for example, american susan campbell bartoletti's black potatoes, which was awarded the coveted robert f. sibert award for the most distinguished informational book for children published in 2001. this 160-page text examines the events of the famine and the experiences of ordinary people living in that time. i met and interviewed bartoletti, and she told me how she intentionally avoided highlighting the victimization and instead focused on heroism. she went on to say, "what are the heroic acts? if we look at searching in fields for turnip tops and edible weeds, that is a heroic act. yes, you are a victim, but you are also a hero because you are struggling to survive and help your family survive." this attitude is a familiar one, and several of the authors i interviewed have noted the desire to present heroism. when i spoke with marita conlon-mckenna in dublin, she expressed a view similar to bartoletti's, noting that the central theme in under the hawthorn tree (1990) is that these children have made up their minds to survive. "they're not going to be beaten; they're not going to lie down and die," mckenna told me. a passage from the novel illustrates this theme: 82 karen hill mcnamara michael and eily decided that they must get peggy and themselves strong enough again for the rest of the journey. it was their only chance. the next few days were spent hunting for food. they had to keep the fire going also. they had finished the blood. michael went searching at night and had been lucky enough to catch a rat and a hedgehog. they had lost their squeamishness by now and knew that all that mattered was their survival. nettles were plentiful, and every ripened berry was also picked. (133) novels about the great famine allow readers to vicariously experience the devastating effects that famine, poverty, and homelessness can have on people, and provide an understanding of human resilience. children, who are beginning to form their own values and principles, can learn from the bravery and hope of the protagonists who persevered against the odds. i believe these stories allow young readers today to relate to these irish protagonists as heroes, thus counteracting potential guilt and shame that may have plagued the generations before them. why didn't the irish just fish? consider this personal memory relating to this guilt and shame theme that i am trying to convey. i have vague recollections of my social studies teacher remarking how it was ludicrous the irish never fished the seas, implying that they were responsible for starving. this sentiment is not unique, and some of my american contemporaries had similar recollections that the irish were too lazy, too stupid to save themselves. "it is difficult at first to understand why the irish people, thousands of whom lived near the coast, did not fish," cecil woodham smith acknowledged in the groundbreaking text, the great hunger: ireland 1845-1849 (1962), the first mainstream factual account on the irish famine (298). certainly it is unflattering for a nation to perceive itself as passive victims. contemporary irish children's literature has changed this misconception. imbedded in numerous narratives are the various reasons explaining why ireland, an island surrounded by water, failed to take advantage of its maritime wealth. novels such as under the hawthorn tree (1990) and twist of gold (1983) educate children by portraying their characters taking risks by fishing illegally. american author, eileen carbonneau, informs her readers about the laws in ireland during the 1840s in her young adult romance novel, rachel lemoyne (1998). 83 from fairies to famine rachel observes the manor home as a "place of crystal chandeliers, oil paintings, majestic trees, and a trout-filled river in which the poor might be killed for fishing" (65). the disparity between the english landlords and the irish peasants are clearly shown. the hungry wind (1997), by irish author soinbhe lally, also reveals the hardships endured during the great famine: each day the women and girls went to the rocks to gather seaweed and shellfish. at one end of the strand there were stretches of muddy sand, encrusted with acres of mussels, but they were not allowed to pick those. for fear that hunger would tempt them the landlords agent, mister hamilton, sent his men to warn tenants, that the mussel beds were not included in their shore rights. (14) consider the most popular children's irish famine novel in north america, nory ryan's song (2000). written by american patricia reilly giff, a descendant of famine immigrants, this ala notable book has been widely distributed in the united states and has sold numerous copies. giff, winner of two newbery honor awards, has recently written a sequel, maggie's door (2003). in giff's first famine story, twelveyear-old nory and her family live along the west coast of ireland, and her neighbors fish for a living. disaster hits when their landlord, lord cunningham, confiscates their currach: the currach was gone too, gone to pay for the mallons' rent from last year. gone, not even for cunningham to use. "what would he want with the sea, and the cold, and the aching hard work?" liam had said. "what would he want with the danger?" devlin (the landlord's agent) had locked it up with chains on the pier in the harbor. it would be there, with the tar on the canvas drying and cracking, until great holes appeared and the currach wasted away. it wouldn't be the first time. there were others there, waiting for the owners to pay the rent they owed and get them back, but that never happened. (69) a passage from the fantasy novel, knockabeg: a famine tale (2001), written by irish american mary e. lyons, echoes this theme as well. "the shillings go to lord armitage shank for his bloody rent! many families have even sold their hide canoes and fishing nets to pay the fee" (5). 84 karen hill mcnamara these examples certainly do not correlate laziness with irishness. instead, the books educate young readers by illustrating the varied and complex circumstances surrounding the fishing problem, such as fishermen being forced to sell their gear to buy food for their families and fishing rights belonging to the english landlords. shame, that may have been associated with passive victimization, has now been replaced by an accurate historical understanding of this issue. children's literature of the irish famine, non-existent during my childhood, sheds a new light on complicated issues and educates children by weaving historical information throughout the narrative. "he took the soup" many may recall the phrase, "he took the soup," or the insulting term, "souper." these expressions are still heard today and were coined during the irish famine when anti-catholic zealots would provide free soup to the destitute villagers if they first agreed to renounce their religion. so strong was the catholic faith in ireland during this time that some irish starved to death rather than convert to protestantism. those that did turn apostate and partake in the soup were called soupers, a disdainful stigma that often marked their families for generations. "souperism," the nickname for this proselytization aspect of evangelical protestant missions, it is more frequent in famine folklore than in historical research. while souperism did occur, it was uncommon. however, it created tremendous tension where it did exist, resulting in long lasting and bitter memories that have been passed down from generation to generation. though not a universal motif in the children's irish famine narratives, souperism is mentioned in several works. interestingly, the reaction by the main characters is usually one of ambivalence, and vague attention is given to the religious pressure. for example, in under the hawthorn tree (1990), eily, michael, and peggy sleep outside a soup kitchen in order to be the first in line the next day. "during the night an old man shook them and told them to be on their way, as the heathens would try to convert them in the morning and if they took another mug of soup they may as well take the queen's shilling. the children were puzzled, but simply ignored him" (81-82). the children were offered stew the following day and were not asked to renounce their faith. certainly no guilt or shame is associated with the old man's remark, and the story moves forward without additional comment. souperism is also mentioned in passing in canadian james heneghan's the grave (2000), a time-slip novel for young adolescents. 85 from fairies to famine the teenage protagonist, tom mullen, is also confused when he is labeled as a souper. we joined a lineup for soup and had to take it inside and listen to a sermon from a bad-tempered minister named nangle who went on and on about popery and sin and other stuff i didn't understand. as we came out, a bunch of old biddies were standing in the street yelling at us, calling us soupers. i was too tired to ask hannah what the fuss was about. (103) tom appears too famished and fatigued to be concerned about derogatory comments from onlookers, and no conversion of faith in exchange for food occurs in the novel. in mary-anne's famine (1994), written by irish author colette mccormack, the soup kitchens are accepted, and the local priest even encourages his parishioners to partake in the charity. mary-anne records in her journal: the soup kitchens are near us and we must make use of them. father o'rourke tells us never to mind that the people who give out the soup are not of our religion, to live is the important thing. some people turn from being catholics so they will get more soup and other help. we drink the soup but it is not very good. (16-17) in red bird of ireland (1983), by american sondra gordon langford, aderyn hears about the evangelical protestants second hand, and the story line is sympathetic to the famine victims who succumb to souperism: "we saw something else by the wharf, father domhnaill," said seamas. "there was a little house from which some well-dressed people were offering soup to the poor who stood around. there were many poor and hungry, but on one would eat. a man told me that, in order to get that soup, you have to blaspheme the blessed virgin and the holy catholic church. can that be true?" "i'm afraid so," said uncle domhnaill. "i've been told, by priest and others, that there is food being given out, all over ireland, to those who will abjure their catholic faith. some poor souls are so hungry that they do turn from their faith in order to get some food. those who do so are well 86 karen hill mcnamara cared for, afterward. i don't judge a starving person who does what he feels he must in order to stay alive, or keep his family alive. i pray for him. god in heaven will be his judge, not i." (147-148) collectively, there is a lack of any serious religious tension in children's literature of the famine, and it is interesting to note that souperism is not referenced again during the narratives. these passages show compassion to the starving people who took the soup. the characters are not ostracized or made to feel blameworthy in any way. although the practice of souperism was not widespread, where it did occur it still remains an emotive part of the oral culture of the famine, and guilt and anger are still in the mindset of some irish and irish americans today. children's literature, however, appears to playa pivotal role in dissipating this souperism friction. perhaps a more confident irish identity results from this new understanding and awareness. the protagonists, with whom the young readers identify, are heroes, surviving by any means they can, whether it is accepting soup from people of a different religion, fishing illegally on the landlord's land, or emigrating from their homeland. conclusions historical fiction presenting the great famine provides a nexus between the past and the present, educating children about this consequential historical event, while revealing the unspoken significance the irish famine has in their current lives. it is important for children to remember that the horrific extremes of famine and poverty during the 1840s are still prevalent in many parts of the world, and refugees come to ireland and america to escape these conditions. it is vital that irish and irish americans make the connection that their ancestors shared the plight of these people today. quality historical fiction can provide young readers with a sense of continuity in time and history and an awareness of their roots that encourage appreciation for where they came from and where they are going. as a young american child in the 1960s, my exposure to literary irish characters was limited to the stupid housewife, mrs. callahan, in richard and phyllis atwater's classic book, mr. popper's penguins, or the portly policeman, michael, and his boss, clancy, in make way for ducklings, robert mccloskey's caldecott award winning book (savage 37). my understanding of irishness was limited to lucky charms cereal, "kiss me i'm irish" buttons, and wearing green on st. patrick's day. these outdated clichés are being replaced with modem and more 87 from fairies to famine accurate definitions of irish culture through children's literature of the great famine. carefree peasants catching leprechauns are now superseded by courageous children combating illness, starvation, eviction and emigration. consider twelve year old eily, the eldest of the o'driscoll children in under the hawthorn tree. this character grows in strength and courage as she assumes the responsibility for her younger siblings after her mother has left. eily's bold determination and resourcefulness are clearly shown as she struggles to find food to live another day and keep her siblings alive. she demonstrates maturity and ingenuity as she nurses her sister, peggy, who is stricken with famine fever, and her brother, michael, who is suffering from an infectious wound. in the middle of the novel when hunger and homelessness becomes overwhelming, peggy muses "are we in hell?" and eily responds, "no, just a place destroyed. come on, we'll move through this as quick as we can" (108). eily's indomitable spirit transcends this time of misery as she endeavors to survive. "i wanted to make sure the children were intelligent and resourceful," conlon-mckenna explained during our interview. creating characters that were models for her own children, conlon-mckenna made the o'driscolls different from her own childhood reading. she lamented that very few books in the past portrayed irish children as clever or thinking for themselves. "they were nice kids. kind, but dull. not smart. no bright sparks." as a child, conlon-mckenna emulated laura ingalls and heidi instead of identifying with irish characters. "it's a strange thing, really, but when i read other children's books from other countries i would say, 'i wish i could be her.'" conlon-mckenna's sentiments were echoed by other authors i interviewed. many writers for children purposely depicted confident and positive irish characters in their famine narratives. the protagonists remained strong throughout the story line by enduring emigration from ireland and battling bigotry and intolerance in america. these attributes are rooted in historical fact as hasia diner described in her scholarly text erin's daughters in america (1983). her research revealed that thousands of irish woman were able to utilize ambition, energy, and ability that would otherwise have remained stifled by the effects of the great famine. diner describes these educational and occupational successes and emphasizes that the qualities that enabled many irish to prosper can be found in ireland's cultural traditions. the personality traits that diner articulates are repeated in the central characters of children's fiction of the famine. themes of resiliency, gallantry, love, and loyalty, commonly portrayed in famine novels, are interpreted by youngsters as typically irish. young readers, who often 8 8 karen hill mcnamara identify with the child characters in the story line, relate to the perseverance of these protagonists and believe that they also can successfully learn to handle difficult situations. reading about the great famine in fictional novels gives irish and irish american children a new cultural identity and a deeper meaning regarding their ancestral homeland. in ireland, as in all countries, literature is the mirror in which the events of a nation's history are reflected. whether examining historical fiction, or the many other literary genres, a study of children's literature may be regarded as a study of a country and its people. authors of irish children's stories play an important role in the developing and nurturing of a distinctive irish identity. the absorption of cultural knowledge from early childhood through young adult reading is particularly acute. the characters in irish children's stories have developed from the weak and stereotypical images represented in my childhood reading, to the fresh, appealing, and strong-willed heroes portrayed in contemporary irish stories that my children are reading today. the story lines have matured from traditional folktales to modem and expressive narratives. this encouraging and accelerating change over the last few decades is an indication of how irish and irish american society and cultural identity has also evolved. works cited bartoletti, susan campbell. black potatoes. boston: houghton, 2001. _______. personal interview. 13 june 2002. bolton, carole. the search of mary katherine mulloy. new york: thomas nelson, 1974. charbonneau, eileen. rachel le moyne. new york: tom doherty associates, 1998. conlon-mckenna, marita. personal interview. 21 august 2001. ______. under the hawthorn tree. new york: holiday house, 1990. denenberg, barry. so far from home: the diary of mary driscoll, an irish mill girl (dear america). new york: scholastic, 1997. diner, hasia r. erin's daughters in america. baltimore: johns hopkins up, 1983. fisher, leonard everett. across the sea from galway. new york: four winds, 1975. giff, patricia reilly. nary ryan's song. new yark: delacorte, 2000. heneghan, james. the grave. new york: frances foster books, 2000. hickey, tony. personal interview. 24 august 2001. "irish identity," http://www.hoganstand.com/general/identitv/. internet ac cessed 24 february 2003. keenan, celia. "reflecting a new confidence: irish historical fiction for children" the lion and the unicorn 21.3 (1997): 369-78. 89 from fairies to famine kinealy, christine. a death-dealing famine: the great hunger in ireland. london: pluto press, 1997. lally, soinbhe. the hungry wind. dublin: poolbeg press, 1997. langford, sondra gordon. red bird of ireland. new york: atheneum, 1983. lyons, mary e. knockabeg: a famine tale. boston: houghton, 2001. mccormack, colette. mary-anne 's famine. cork: attic press, 1994. morpurgo, michael. twist of gold. london: kaye and ward, 1983. o'sullivan, emer. "ireland and the world of children's books." children's books in ireland (1998)16: 6-7. parkinson, siobhan. "a view from the other island: children's books in ire land." the horn book magazine, march/april2001: 173-78. savage, john f. "ireland and the irish in american children's literature," children's books in ireland, 18 (spring 1998): 36-37. woodham-smith, cecil. the great hunger: ireland 1845-1849. london: pen guin, 1962. 90 cfr_2003-2004_part25 cfr_2003-2004_part26 cfr_2003-2004_part27 cfr_2003-2004_part28 cfr_2003-2004_part29 35 sidewalk songs, jump-rope rhymes, and clap-hand games of african american children mona lisa saloy back during elementary days when everyone walked to school, the neighbors checked kids’ bad behavior, then reported it to your parents, where you’d really get it again for doing what you had no business doing in the first place. in those days, not everyone owned a television set. those who did had to patiently wait for tv time after the news and those god-awful “variety” shows for grown ups. by then, it was bedtime. left to our own playful imaginations, we creatively filled time with various sidewalk songs, jump-rope rhymes, and clap-hand games. there were no headphones, no sega games, no video arcades, no boom boxes, no cd or mp3 players, no palm pilots, no cell phones. this was before the “mall,” and most shopping was done downtown at back counters during jim crow. in many ways, it was a simpler time when many parents walked their kids to and from the bus stop or school in the neighborhood because few folks on the block owned cars. we lived in black neighborhoods, shopped at neighborhood groceries, and sat in colored-only balconies at the saturday matinee. it was just us kids. we had each other; we had time. we were creative; and mostly, we just had good fun together. while still in graduate school at louisiana state university (lsu) at the end of the 80s, i wondered which of those kids’ games and rhymes continued in black communities some twenty years post-civil rights and integration.1 were these rhymes unique? what were kids doing at the end of the twentieth century? these questions led me to collect kids’ lore in new orleans, from the mid-80s through 1999. while i lost everything (a life-long collection of books, unpublished research and creative works) in katrina flood waters, thanks to archives such as the new orleans jazz & heritage foundation2 and the louisiana state division of folklife, the raw data is recreated here. in the longer study, a complete listing of all games, rhymes, and songs is further classified. my initial purpose in collecting kids’ lore in new orleans was to unearth connections from kids’ play to the blossoming adult. were there similarities in the function of kids’ lore in new orleans to other places to the scholarship in general? did this generation of boys join the girls, how, when, why? for new orleans prekatrina, in what environment did these activities occur? for that decade or more of collecting, here is a sample of the kids’ culture existing prior to the devastation of hurricane katrina. this data set is in sharp contrast to games and rhymes of their parents’ generation (boomers) and even greater gender distance from the current generation post katrina. the purpose here is to provide part of the overall study to portray the kids’ culture as evidenced prior to 2005. in new orleans at the end of the previous century and up to 2005, black children performed the songs and rhymes in a family and extended-family environment. the youth were sometimes left attended by elder brothers and sisters, cousins, or neighbors, who might get them started and urge them to continue, especially in new orleans — a city of families where it is common for cfr_2011_r.indb 35 10/31/11 8:57:37 am sidewalk songs, jump-rope rhymes, and clap-hand games saloy 36 several generations to live in the same neighborhood where they were born,3 on the same street, or within blocks of one another. the result has been a sustained culture evolving over centuries. according to the louisiana endowment for the humanities, prior to katrina, nearly 70% of louisiana residents never left the state. this does not mean all is love and kindness. many families retain that geographical closeness and do not speak because of old grudges. for the sake of the children, a nurturing and extensive children’s society continues. this city of families, though many are at or below poverty level, remained in the same neighborhoods for half of the last century on the average, prior to katrina. the result was a breeding ground for a culture of children, who were supervised by the loving eyes of family, extended family, and neighbors. that culture of kids produced sidewalk songs, jump-rope rhymes, and clap-hand games, which reflected not just rhythm and rhyme, but a developing sense of cultural identity, gender, social mores, and in more recent years, comments on society incorporating popular culture. at that time, the existence of children’s sidewalk culture depended on adults who believe that children should socialize separately. even though they considered their children to be blessings from god, in new orleans pre-katrina, many believed that children should not be a part of adult talk and that children should play with children. neighbors also functioned as extended family, so an element of safety existed because of not-too-distant watchful eyes, especially for younger kids. the result is that many hot louisiana evenings are still spent in this way. this allows black children to talk about “grown things” with their friends and siblings in a way they can get away with, in a song. doing just cursory research, it was clear to me that this kind of urban fun, that is playing sidewalk games, is not exclusive to african american children. for example, such rhymes as “teddy bear” can be found in some form around the world and can be traced to early explorers who brought it with them most likely from england; generally, many scholars suggest that “teddy bear” has been around for some 300 years. “teddy bear” is used as a rhyme, with jumping singlerope games, and also in clap-hand games. this one was collected in detroit in 1989 or 1990.4 teddy bear, teddy bear, turn around teddy bear, teddy bear, touch the ground teddy bear, teddy bear, tie your shoes teddy bear, teddy bear, watch the news teddy bear, teddy bear, climb the stairs teddy bear, teddy bear, go to bed though a tried-and-true centuries-old model of kids’ lore, here in detroit at the end of the last decade, it is updated with the phrase “watch the news.” in african american urban areas, these sidewalk songs, jump-rope rhymes, and clap-hand games serve different functions, foster quite original traditions, and continue strongly; but the way this process developed is unique; how these games evolve gave rise to generations of gifted young folks, and these activities provide a cfr_2011_r.indb 36 10/31/11 8:57:38 am saloy sidewalk songs, jump-rope rhymes, and clap-hand games 37 nurturing environment in a protected neighborhood setting. this research into the songs, games, and rhymes of african american children suggests strongly that it is no accident african americans have contributed to world music, to an original american literary landscape. it is no accident that “rapping” is now a commercial commodity, and the lyrics of rhythm and blues music is legendary. the roots of black music and literature are inseparably linked to urban and rural kids’ games, songs, and play. much in the way that the early blues, work songs, and sorrow songs gave rise to gospel music, jazz, and rhythm and blues, these sidewalk songs, jump-rope rhymes, and clap-hand games replace nursery rhymes very early and become the african american child’s strong connection to the word in performance. as a result, this lore is the core of an oral literature, the beginnings of literacy, and a training ground for verbal repartee and verbal dueling necessary for survival in urban communities. the verbal prowess of african american children played on sidewalks in urban spaces is a direct link to the popular culture, music and story-telling nature of what become commercial raps. this folklore of black children builds confidence and prepares these children to meet and assess the world in which they find themselves. africans brought to american against their wills took with them a great sense of rhythm and song. hand-clap games such as those involving elaborate clapping under raised legs, slapping thighs and chests rhythmically while reciting the rhyme can be traced to working in fields during reconstruction, the rhythms and recitations resembling work songs. note this common example of handbone. it is performed in a call-and-response fashion. leader: handbone, handbone, where you been? respondent: round that corner drinking gin. leader: handbone, handbone, what you know? respondent: i’ll pick this corn and drink some more.5 rhymes with claps such as this one were surely pass-the-time entertainment, like little sally walker, which can be traced to the days of slavery. african american children today should know that their games, rhymes, and songs are from a longstanding tradition of verbal strength maintained throughout the difficult times when education was prohibited for black people. another question arose: are contemporary games, rhymes, and songs, still functioning, and how? my fear was that with so many contemporary distractions and trends, the advent of hundreds of cable tv stations, video games, headphones, and integration, these traditions are sometimes wearing thin. it was to document these traditions that i began this work. what i found is that these sidewalk songs, jumprope rhymes, and clap-hand games, these traditions of oral lore among african american children, continued to function as teaching tools as much a play. african american folklife determines whether we grow up learning from our moms how to quilt or how to sing gospel. folklore is the sum of african american jokes, stories, rhymes, and songs. folklife combines the ways of african americans and influences how blacks pass on what we make and do for generations. folklore is what all people learn outside of school, outside of church, the cfr_2011_r.indb 37 10/31/11 8:57:38 am sidewalk songs, jump-rope rhymes, and clap-hand games saloy 38 traditions we pass on face-to-face, by word-of-mouth, generation-to-generation. sidewalk songs, jump-rope rhymes, and clap-hand games are significant examples of the folklore of african american children: what we do among ourselves for ourselves, but what is passed on to us, mixed with what each age adds to it. verbal artistry among african american children is expressive and creative, although the forms are different. children’s lore in new orleans’ black neighborhoods bears a necessary developmental function. sidewalk songs pass on attitudes and knowledge of self, imitations of adult life and values, with distinct criticisms of adult life and society norms. this is demonstrated in such circle games as “when i was a baby.” there is nothing in the boomer repertoire like this one. in this circle game, an imitation game, “when i was a baby,” which looks so simple and fun on the surface, there is some resemblance to the antiphonal pattern, since one girl jumps into the center of the circle and begins the song, which is then repeated by the girls surrounding the caller. all in the circle sing the response together, adding physical representations of the actions of the particular subject. literally, they recall how a woman develops and lives her life, how she experiences disappointment, and how she handles conflict. when i was a baby, baby, baby when i was a baby, baby, baby i went a wan a wan a wan wan wan (imitating baby sounds) all night long. all night long. (this girl re-joins the circle, and another girl steps into the center of the circle reciting that next part. this swapping of the central leader continues with different girls leading until the game is completed. depending on how many are involved, everyone will get a chance at the circle center; or in the case of just a few girls, the each new stage of a girl’s/woman’s life is lead). when i was a girl, girl, girl when i was a girl, girl, girl i went a umph a umph, umph ump humph (imitating smiley faces while pretending to jump rope; but they actually swing an invisible jump rope) all night long. all night long. when i was a teenager, teenager, teenager when i was a teenager, teenager, teenager i went a hum a hum hum hum hum (imitating a teen on the phone; the girls hold up one hand thumb up and forefinger out to resemble the headset of a phone.) all night long. all night long. cfr_2011_r.indb 38 10/31/11 8:57:38 am saloy sidewalk songs, jump-rope rhymes, and clap-hand games 39 when i got married, married, married when i got married, married, married, i went a kiss, a kiss, kiss, kiss, kiss (imitating a full-blown embrace, sticking out their lips pursed as in kissing; all movements animated and exaggerated throughout). all night long. all night long. when i had a baby, baby, baby when i had a baby, baby, baby i went a rock, a rock, rock, rock, rock (imitating a woman rocking their baby to sleep or comforting the child held tightly in their arms). all night long. all night long. when my husband beat me, beat me, beat me when my husband beat me, beat me, beat me i went a unh, a unh, unh, unh, unh (imitates the anguish of being severely beaten to the ground, afraid, hurt, crying out in pain). all night long. all night long. when i beat my husband, husband, husband when i beat my husband, husband, husband i went a bam, a bam, bam, bam, bam (imitates vigorously fighting back in retaliation with no fear and profound vindication and power; they enact the beating of the husband to the ground, laughing all the way). all night long. all night long. when i lost my baby, baby, baby when i lost my baby, baby, baby i went a sigh, a sigh, cry, cry, cry (imitates great grief, making crying faces all the while, sometimes laughing but fiercely pretending to cry). all night long. all night long. when i died, died, died when i died, died, died i went a humph, a humph, humph, humph, humph (imitates what it is like to be dead, arms folded akimbo, faces stern). all night long. all night long. (this ends the game). cfr_2011_r.indb 39 10/31/11 8:57:38 am sidewalk songs, jump-rope rhymes, and clap-hand games saloy 40 at the time, the core group of girls were aged six through ten. they lived within walking distance and most worshiped together, while a few attended st. raymond catholic school, just a few blocks east. they were not shy about reenacting their play and enjoyed having an adult audience. it was shocking to hear such young girls at play reflecting on the dominant gender themes of the day as well as the taboo topic of marital sex, resulting in birth, domestic violence, and the woman’s power not just to fight back but to successfully retaliate and live out her life. circle games allow everyone to play; no one is left out. sometimes, they are elimination games; in this one case, it is not. “when i was a baby” is an imitation game, something like more common simon says, but it is much more contemporary and light years away from the child-like concerns of my youth. here, the gender roles are clearly defined, yet the “little” girls are not fazed by the content; this is typical of what they witness on tv, in movies, in neighborhoods. at its core, children’s folklore in african american urban areas is not just play but a comment on the world. some rhymes are downright vulgar, with profane shouts and responses, and others are more respectful, editing offensive words cleverly during the game with the kids not skipping a beat. some attitudes are imposed by race, sex, family, and individual ethnic and economic situations. new orleans, with its black majority, imposes a dominant and varied and varied set of adult examples, values, barriers, and opportunities. how did these come to be? as with all folklore, transmission is key. with the oral songs and rhymes of these sidewalk games, black youth learn typically from other children. they learn these songs and rhymes from their parents, often before they can talk. in many ways, this is the earliest literacy of african american kids. once in the children’s repertoire, sidewalk songs take the place of nursery rhymes and reflect pre-adult concerns. children then learn them and pass them on to each other in the street, on the front porch, on the sidewalk, or in the public parks. how do these elements function? children’s folklore, in general, fulfils certain functions: it reflects and criticizes society and transmits values. for most kids, their lore entertains them, teaches them how to manipulate words, helps to develop their group identity, and creates a bond. especially for black kids, these rhymes and songs provide opportunities to practice “handling” authority and inform them of their sexual roles. the sidewalk songs of children’s folklore perform a particularly important role in african american culture. when black youth perform these rhymes and songs, they practice and learn to contribute to their rich african american verbal culture, a continuing historical legacy. by puberty, if not earlier, black children must learn to “hold their own” for protection from the verbal abuse of their peers, sometimes avoiding or allaying physical abuse. it is a common black custom to be able to “rap” oneself out of a street fight or “jive” your parents out of a deserved whipping. therefore, this early verbal play becomes a vital link to what will later become “jiving,” “sounding,” “woofing,” or “selling wolf tickets,” especially “the dozens,” and eventually “rapping,” all of which are common african american verbal-dueling traditions. the dueling, dozens and rapping have been incorrectly attributed only to black male culture. girls may be the instigators of this tradition, and they participate in these early raps frequently with boys. from the start, boys cfr_2011_r.indb 40 10/31/11 8:57:38 am saloy sidewalk songs, jump-rope rhymes, and clap-hand games 41 participate and play with girls to varying degrees depending on their exposure to sisters, girl cousins, and neighbors. therefore, a queen latifa is no accident, and she is not just imitating a male rapping tradition. this is demonstrated in the group of youth that i researched, dubbed the perlita street kids by their parents for the name of the street on which they lived and played at the time. any rules? each youth is expected to contribute. if one doesn’t know a rhyme, he or she is expected to make one up or learn one from someone else. no one wants to be known as not able to “talk stuff.” these unspoken rules have existed for generations. in some cases, the environment creates a healthy competitive spirit, the kind that will produce a “jam” session as in jazz where no one wins but everyone contributes creatively–which is the essence of “jamming” word play, and games creatively, communally. in other cases, kids can be cruel and pressure or taunt the person into producing, or the person will not be in the game, what is called “out” a fate considered worse than death. nevertheless, the resulting product is children’s lore, african american style. topics range from familiar rhymes and songs to adult-style “bragging” strategies. these songs are much more relevant to their day–such as the one expressing their knowledge of the existence of crack cocaine. this example is sung to a sidewalk dance or stomp (a group line dance popular in black communities long before country music line dances). it is a simple rhyme but shows a prophetic awareness of trouble: yo momma, yo daddy, they betta leave that pipe alone yo sista, yo brotha, they betta leave that crack alone yo auntee yo uncle, they betta leave that pipe alone yo family you friends, they betta leave that crack alone (they do an elaborate turn) do wha’cha wanna, do wha’cha wanna do wha’cha wanna, do wha’cha wanna (they do an elaborate turn) yo momma, yo daddy, they betta leave that pipe alone yo sista, yo brotha, they betta leave that crack alone — john, sunni, treshon, natasha, corey, jason, 2 june 1990 in this sidewalk song, the children are aware of the impending fate of “crack” cocaine addicts. crack cocaine is an enemy of the people they love, and it becomes something to avoid firmly. here, they perform a prophetic service to each other, reminding themselves of the boundaries they must face to achieve a long and healthy life. from these brief examples, it is demonstrated that at an early age in new orleans, african american children actively participate in their verbal development cfr_2011_r.indb 41 10/31/11 8:57:38 am sidewalk songs, jump-rope rhymes, and clap-hand games saloy 42 trough the years prior to katrina devastation. the rhymes were not collected in the schoolyard. like my childhood decades prior, these kids lived in neighborhoods within a mile of each other and walked to each other’s homes to play after school. they brag, they duel, they dance, they sing of the world as they understand it. these rhymes, games, and raps serve to define group identity, address adult concerns, and help children learn verbal prowess and entertain one another. these sidewalk songs, jump-rope rhymes, and clap-hand games of african american children were still strong on the streets of new orleans throughout the 1990s and early 21st century in the historic 7th ward neighborhoods, as evidenced in the lore of the perlita street kids.6 notes 1. many thanks to folklorists dr. rosan jordan and dr. frank de caro, who guided and encouraged my early training in folklore; and additional special thanks to dr. joyce marie jackson, also folklorist at lsu, who pushed me to collect, and continued to provide opportunities for me to present this work at the african heritage stage of the new orleans jazz and heritage festival for a series of years. 2. special thanks to archivist rachel lyons and the new orleans jazz and heritage foundation archives for saving my work; i am deeply indebted to you for all you do. 3. many of our names can be dated some 300 years and accessible in the older resting places, st. louis cemeteries no. 1, no. 2, and no. 3. 4. this collecting, for two summers at the end of the 1989 and 1980, was made possible by generous support from the michigan state museum festival of michigan folklife, while i was there to present detroit kids demonstrating double dutch. 5. i heard numerous variations of this hand-clap rhyme throughout my life in louisiana, and also in black communities where ever i lived in the bay area of california and in detroit and even in washington d.c. when i visited for research. 6. once invited, i presented these kids performing their games and rhymes at the louisiana state folklife festival twice in the 90s, and numerous times at the new orleans jazz & heritage festival also in the 90s. presenting our living traditions helps folklorists document contemporary culture. festivals help everyone understand each other better and so promote respect as well as employment in the field for budding and experienced scholars. certainly, it taught the children of perlita street a greater appreciation for their culture, exposed them to other cultures in an educational environment, and perhaps helped them develop a continued interest in folklore and folklife. because the children did “perform” their traditions, the jazz festival paid each child $20.00 for the performance. no child participated without parental permission. cfr_2011_r.indb 42 10/31/11 8:57:38 am saloy sidewalk songs, jump-rope rhymes, and clap-hand games 43 works cited abrahams, roger d. 1964. deep down in the jungle, negro narrative folklore from the streets of philadelphia. hatboro, pennsylvania: folklore associates. ______. 1969. jump-rope rhymes, a dictionary. austin: university of texas press. ______. 1970. positively black. englewood cliffs, new jersey: prentice-hall, inc. ______. 1976.talking black. rowley, massachusetts: newbury house publishers. buckley, bruce. 1966. jump-rope rhymes: suggestions for classification and study. keystone folklore quarterly 2: 99-111. de caro, frank. 1985. a history of folklife research in louisiana. in louisiana folklife, a guide to the state, ed. nicholas r. spitzer. baton rouge: louisiana folklife program, office of cultural development, department of culture, recreation and tourism, 125-29. dorson, richard m. 1982. the state of folkloristics from an american perspective. journal of the folklore institute 19 (2/3, may): 71-105. fielding, alice. 1975. the folklore of children from ages 9-11. louisiana folklore miscellany 3 (5): 33-51. gaster, sanford. 1995. places of childhood, 1915-30. the oral history review 22 (2, winter): 1-31. published by oxford university press on behalf of the oral history association. http://www.jstory.org/stable/3675422 (accessed 25, march 2010). grider, sylvia ann. 1980. a select bibliography of childlore. western folklore 39 (3, july): 248-65. ______. 1980. the study of children’s folklore. western folklore 39 (3, july): 15969. hampton, joan thompson. 1976-80. children’s jump-rope rhymes. louisiana folklore miscellany 4: 73-81. hirschfeld, lawrence a. 2002. why don’t anthropologists like children? american anthropologist, new series 104 (2, june): 611-27. notes. 1971. louisiana folklore miscellany 3 (2): 48-49. soileau, jeanne. 1976-80. jumping rope in east baton rouge parish, louisiana. louisiana folklore miscellany 4: 146-154. ______. 1985. louisiana children’s folklore. louisiana folklife, a guide to state. nicholas r. spitzer, ed. baton rouge: louisiana folklife program, office of cultural development, department of culture, recreation & tourism, 12-34. cfr_2011_r.indb 43 10/31/11 8:57:38 am cfr_2011_part7 cfr_2011_part8 35 children of the holocaust: common games, play, and pastimes in uncommon times priscilla ord several years ago when i was living in farmville, virginia, and teaching at longwood college, now longwood university, i was involved in an adult bible study class, composed of college professors and other, well-educated professionals who lived there. one evening, for some reason, the topic of the holocaust came up. i cannot remember why we strayed off the subject we were studying, how we arrived at that one, or even what was being said about it until one woman said, “i wonder why almost none of the survivors have ever written about how they managed to survive.” others mentioned that, because those who would have survived were getting on in years, one would expect more of what they were calling survival literature to have been written. i was stunned because i had read numerous books on the subject, almost all of them first-hand accounts from the lives of the authors themselves, and then it struck me. i was, at the time, teaching children’s literature, and i worked in a children’s bookstore on the weekends. all of the books, but one, that i had read and, in fact, owned had been, thanks to an eye for marketing, published as children’s books. those who wrote them had been children and had written about the experiences they had had as children when they lived through and ultimately, sometimes by extraordinary means, survived those awful years of the late 1930’s and early 1940’s in various countries in europe. the one notable exception is in the mouth of the wolf (1983) by rose zar, which is well worth reading. at nineteen rose, ruszka guterman, was urged by her father to save herself by hiding “in the mouth of the wolf.” traveling alone with false papers under the name of wanda gajda, she escaped from the piotrkow ghetto, dug ditches for the german army, and worked as a laundress, a cleaning woman, a nurse’s aide, and ultimately, as the war ended, a housekeeper for an ss officer, even traveling with the man’s wife when she returned to germany for the birth of her second child. at our next meeting, i brought several bins of the books that i owned to share with those who were interested. even i had to admit, however, that the books for children and young adults had only been written somewhat recently. why was it that they waited for so long? perhaps doris orgel, whose book the devil in vienna (1978) gave me the idea for this paper, explains it best: i knew i needed to write it. why did i keep putting it off? wonder about that reminded me of friends i had in high school—close friends, all refugees like me. we talked endlessly about any subject, except one: where we’d come from, what happened there, and how we got out (in my case nearly not!). cfr_2009_r4.indb 35 10/25/09 6:19:20 pm children of the holocaust ord 36 the deepest reason for our friendship was the background we shared. yet talking about it was taboo. we were probably scared, even though our lives in europe were behind us. i know i had fears locked up inside—fears all the scarier because they were vague, dating back to vienna and things i’d only dimly understood. most of all, we wanted to be popular, do well, and have fun, like everybody else. we pushed aside what made us different, and told ourselves it didn’t matter. we were americans now. so for many years, i did not write this book. belatedly, after writing other books, and visiting austria twice as a tourist, with my american husband and kids, i pulled my head out of the sand and faced the truth: what happened when the devil came to vienna mattered very much to me. i started doing historical research. then i interviewed my parents and everyone else i knew who had experienced that time in austria. finally, i was ready to write about what living under nazism was like. it happened a long time ago, but it still matters. i hope it makes readers ask themselves: “if someone like hitler came to power here and now, how would i feel? what would i think and do?” (242-43). hearing the words children and holocaust, one’s thoughts are almost immediately and invariably drawn to those children who did not survive, particularly to the plight of anne frank and her family. there were, however, many who did survive, and the autobiographical and biographical stories of their survival, published predominantly as children’s or young adult fiction because the protagonist is a child or young adult, although the content is far from fiction, provide interesting and poignant insights of their lives in the most difficult of times. the details of how these young people managed to escape, not only from occupied cities and countries but also the work details and concentration camps, were provided safe passage on the kindertransports, were hidden, sometimes for years, by sympathetic friends or neighbors, were taken in by religious organizations for “safe keeping,” were able to pass as non-jewish, or endured the camps until liberation are only part of their stories. they were, after all, children, and, as such, when possible, they participated in common games, play, and pastimes. somewhat ironically, when one considers the subject matter, a number of these accounts appear in books whose titles refer to children’s games or practices or, in one case, a children’s song. among these are hide and seek (1991) by ida vos, translated by terese edelstein and inez smith; touch wood: a girlhood in occupied france (1988) by renee roth-hano; tug of war (1989) by joan lingard; cfr_2009_r4.indb 36 10/25/09 6:19:20 pm ord children of the holocaust 37 and dancing on the bridge of avignon (1995), also by ida vos, taken from the french children’s song “sur le pont d’avignon”: sur le pont d’avignon l’on y danse, l’on y danse. sur le pont d’avignon l’on y danse tout en rond. on the bridge of avignon, they are dancing, they are dancing. on the bridge of avignon, they are dancing in a ring. in hide and seek, based on her family’s life, ida vos relates how, as an eightyear-old jewish girl living in holland, she cannot understand why there are restrictions on her all of a sudden. she has to go to a different school and wear a gold star on her sleeve, she cannot sit on certain benches in the park, and when a group of jewish children are taken away, she and her family go into hiding. renee roth-hano, writing in touch wood, tells her story and that of her family, who, living in occupied france, flee their home in alsace and live a precarious existence in paris until renee and her sister escape to the shelter of a catholic school in normandy. one finds that not all of the children who were affected by the events of the holocaust and world war ii were jewish. joan lingard, for example, writes about her husband and his family and follows the ordeal of fourteen-year-old twins astra and hugo petersons, as members of the family flee their native latvia in late 1944 before the advancing russian armies and find themselves homeless refugees in war-torn germany. these stories and others provide amazing insight into how their authors, or the author’s subjects, lived, played, and survived the holocaust. based on his own childhood, uri orlev writes in the island on bird street (1984) of alex who, alone at eleven except for a pet white mouse named snow, struggles to survive in a nearly deserted, bombed-out polish ghetto. waiting for his father to return after his being taken to a work camp, he lives by his wits and hides from the nazis in an abandoned house. “for as long as we’d been living in the ghetto, we children from bird street had gone to number 78 to play hide-andseek and all kinds of ‘secret’ war games” (26). in run, boy, run (2003), another book by orlev, there are at least two examples of children being able to play games by making do with available materials. eight-year-old srulik frydman finds himself on his own when the rest of his family is killed following their escape from the ghetto and takes the polish name jurek staniak. he goes from village to village seeking refuge and sometimes lives with a band of boys in the forest. in one place a woman takes him in who needs someone to lead the cows and the sheep to pasture. there he meets a girl who takes her family’s two cows to pasture and teaches him to play jacks with stones: after they ate, marisza led him to the footpath that ran between the meadow and the wheat field. they sat on the hard earth and she taught him to play jacks with stones. she was awfully good at it. cfr_2009_r4.indb 37 10/25/09 6:19:21 pm children of the holocaust ord 38 “it’s a girl’s game,” she said. “but what do you care?” srulik tried flipping the stones in the air and catching them like marisza. it was hard (58). in another village, taken in by a christian family, srulik plays soccer with some boys in the village. the boys, however, lack an actual ball but had made one from rags: jurek excelled at rag-ball soccer, … there were also spitting and peeing contests. spitting was no problem. in peeing, though, he had to be careful not to let no one see that he was circumcised. fortunately, everyone was looking at where the pee landed. and at running jurek was the champion. no one was faster (79). run, boy, run is the fourth of uri orlev’s books about children in or suffering the effects of the holocaust to win the prestigious mildred l. batchelder award. this award, given each year by the american library association, honors the most outstanding children’s book originally published in a foreign language, translated into english, and published in the united states. his others of equal merit are the island on bird street (1984), the man from the other side (1991), and the lady with the hat (1995), which won the award in 1985, 1992, and 1996, respectively. it is in the devil in vienna (1978) by doris orgel that i found, perhaps, more examples of folk games and folklore than in others of these books. orgel writes of inge dornenwald, who is jewish and is based in part on her sister and partly on herself. inge and her best friend lieselotte, a roman catholic and daughter of an ss officer, play heaven and hell, a game similar to hopscotch, which she occasionally plays with evi, a younger child who lives upstairs. it may be inferred from what she writes that the game is usually played with another. the game is mentioned more than once. anyway, she wanted to play heaven and hell. she always does, she’s at that age. “all right.” i got my coat. i checked to see if lieselotte’s lucky pebble was in the pocket. it was. we went down to the courtyard. the little bit of snow had melted. the ground was dry enough. evi had chalk and drew the boxes. heaven is where you rest. hell is when you miss… lieselotte never used to miss, except when a dog came anywhere near. then her pebble would land in the wrong box, or she’d lose her balance, almost on purpose, so she could pet it (orgel 43-44). cfr_2009_r4.indb 38 10/25/09 6:19:21 pm ord children of the holocaust 39 a bit later in the book: i happened to have a piece of chalk in my pocket. i stooped down, drew a line, just to test if the pavement was dry. and before i knew it, i’d drawn a whole set of heaven and hell boxes. the pebble happened to be still in my pocket, from playing with evi yesterday. quickly i threw it into box one, skipped to there, picket it up; into box two; and so on. i felt a little foolish playing alone. but i’d already decided that if i got through all the boxes without missing, the wonderful something would all the more certainly happen. i was up to box eight, usually a lucky one for me, when i heard footsteps down the stairs, looked around—and missed. … interference, it doesn’t count, i tried to think, but that was stupid. i quit… (60). in attempting to determine the actual, graphic pattern for this particular game, i came across the following, which may link this version of the game to the cult of mithra: in the mithriac mysteries, adepts finally reached an eighth portal, the gate of light, where they stood naked, divested of all material qualities and ready to be reborn in the spiritual world. … it may be that a children’s game something like hopscotch contains a dim memory of this mystery cult, which came to germany and britain along with roman soldiers: in this game (which is still played), one leaps through a ladder-like figure drawn on the ground, and the last station in the eighth square is variously called heaven or hell (schimmel 1993, 143). inge’s uncle herbert on one occasion said, “’teu, teu, teu,’ … and knocked three times on wood—that’s a joking thing one does to keep the devil away” (orgel 1978, 36). this practice is used in much the same way today to keep the opposite of what has been verbally expressed from happening, but according to folklorist stephen roud, it may actually be a transfer from children’s games of tag where one is free or safe if touching wood. there is also a reference to the pastime or game of ball where one throws a ball against a wall and performs various routines, including clapping hands and turning around before catching it again. after lieselotte and her family move to munich, inge goes to her old house in an attempt to learn of her address from the janitor, herr magrutsch, and remembers, “…, he used to yell at us for playing ball against the side of the house …” (orgel 1978, 37). the two girls become “blood sisters,” based on something lieselotte has learned from a book, beneath distant skies, that belongs to her brother heinz: cfr_2009_r4.indb 39 10/25/09 6:19:21 pm children of the holocaust ord 40 “now let’s drink blood brotherhood,” said lieselotte. i’d never heard of that. but i wanted to. she took down a bottle of cooking wine. she poured a little into a glass. “we need a needle.” she went to get one. “now we prick our fingers.” “how do you know?” “i read it in a book heinz has. want to be first?” “no, you.” she stuck the needle in her finger. she didn’t even wince. she squeezed two drops of her blood into the wine. i pricked my finger. i didn’t wince either. i squeezed my blood in. we stirred up the wine with the blood. “now we link arms,” lieslelotte lifted the glass. “now we drink blood brotherhood.” “shouldn’t that be blood sisterhood?” “i don’t know. heinz says there’s no such thing. but you’re right. if we drink blood sisterhood, then there will be such a thing. let’s” (orgel 1978, 28). when lieselotte and her family are preparing to leave vienna for germany, she gives inge heinz’s book, where she reads: then trapper charlie unsheathed his trusty hunting knife and pricked his finger with it; the noble apache, swift eagle, unflinchingly did likewise; whereupon they mingled their blood in a cup of firewater, linked arms, raised the cup to their lips and drank. thus it came to pass that these two, though from worlds apart, became blood brothers. and blood brothers they remained unto their dying days (orgel 1978, 51). liesellotte then signs her letters to inge, “much b. s. l.,” for much blood sister love.” there is also mention of that favorite childhood prank of ringing someone’s doorbell and then running before the homeowner is able to answer. one day cfr_2009_r4.indb 40 10/25/09 6:19:21 pm ord children of the holocaust 41 at the skating rink, seeing someone who looks like heinz, and believing that lieselotte and her family have returned to vienna, inge goes to their old home and rings the bell. when she hears a dog bark that could not have been theirs, she runs before anyone can answer the door: by the time someone opened the door, i was already down on the first floor. “you wait, next time i’ll catch you,” a man’s voice shouted. he thought it was children playing the old game ring a doorbell and run. (orgel 1978, 65) it appears that anyone seeing a bride’s dress, not merely the groom seeing the bride, before the wedding would bring bad luck. mitzi, the dornenwalds’ maid, was planning to marry, and inge, who would soon be leaving with her family for yugoslavia, wanted to see her dress. “are you crazy? don’t you know that’s bad luck?” (orgel 1978, 106) these are but a few of the wealth of childhood memories that one might find in reading the books of and about those who survived the holocaust as children and have somewhat recently written about them or told their stories to others who have written them for them. this paper, which is a portion of a larger work in progress based on the books for children and young adults about these survivors and exactly how they survived, hopes to serve as a record of their activities and, where possible, an analysis of the games, play, and pastimes in which they participated. works cited lingard, joan. 1989. tug of war. new york: dutton. orgel, doris. 1978. the devil in vienna. new york: the dial press. orlev, uri. 1984. the island on bird street. tr. hillel halkin. boston: houghton mifflin company. ______. 1991. the man from the other side. tr. hillel halkin. boston: houghton mifflin company. ______. 1995. the lady with the hat. tr. hillel halkin. boston: houghton mifflin company. ______. 2003. run, boy, run. tr. hillel halkin. boston: houghton mifflin company. roth-hano, renee. 1988. touch wood. new york: four winds press. roud, steve. 2004. a pocket guide to superstitions of the british isles. london: penguin. schimmel, annemarie. 1993. the mystery of numbers. oxford: oxford university press. vos, ida. 1991. hide and seek. boston: tr. terese edelstein and inez smith. boston: houghton mifflin company. cfr_2009_r4.indb 41 10/25/09 6:19:21 pm children of the holocaust ord 42 ______. 1993. anna is still here. tr. terese edelstein and inez smith. boston: houghton mifflin company. ______. 1995. dancing on the bridge of avignon. tr. terese edelstein and inez smith. boston: houghton mifflin company. annotated bibliography lingard, joan. 1989. tug of war. new york: dutton. this book follows the ordeal of fourteen-year-old twins astra and hugo petersons, as they and their family flee their native latvia before the advancing russian armies in late 1944 and find themselves homeless refugees in a war-torn germany. orgel, doris. 1978. the devil in vienna. new york: the dial press. this novel is about two best friends in pre-world war ii austria—one whose father is a nazi ss officer and the other who is jewish—and has surprising truths to tell about individual acts of bravery and love in the face of mass betrayal. orlev, uri. 1984. the island on bird street. tr. hillel halkin. boston: houghton mifflin company. based on the author’s childhood, this is the story of a young jewish boy’s struggle to survive in a bombed-out polish village during the second world war. eleven-year-old alex has to live by his wits as he hides from the nazis, searches for his father, and tries to find a way to safety and freedom. ______. 1995. the lady with the hat. tr. hillel halkin. boston: houghton mifflin company. seventeen-year-old yulek is the only member of his family to survive life in the concentration camps of the holocaust. he moves to palestine, where he meets theresa, a jewish girl saved from the nazis by catholic nuns. meanwhile, an elegant lady in england has seen a photograph of yulek in the paper and recognizes him at once. she is yulek’s aunt--long estranged from her family when she married a christian and moved to britain. as yulek and theresa try to determine their places in the postwar world, the aunt begins her efforts to be reunited with yulek. ______. 1991. the man from the other side. tr. hillel halkin. boston: houghton mifflin company. like many poles, fourteen-year-old marek shares a prejudice against jews, but that does not stop him from helping his stepfather smuggle goods to the jews trapped in the ghetto. stunned to find that his own father was jewish, marek feels compelled to act, helping jozek, a jewish medical student, escape, learning to love jozek as a father. ______. 2003. run, boy, run. tr. hillel halkin. boston: houghton mifflin company. this novel tells the true story of srulik frydman, an eight-year-old jewish orphan living on his own in poland during the time of the holocaust. cfr_2009_r4.indb 42 10/25/09 6:19:21 pm ord children of the holocaust 43 roth-hano, renee. 1988. touch wood. new york: four winds press. in this autobiographical novel set in nazi-occupied france, renee, a young jewish girl, and her family flee their home in alsace and live a precarious existence in paris until renee and her sister escape to the shelter of a catholic school in normandy. vos, ida. 1991. hide and seek. tr. terese edelstein and inez smith. boston: houghton mifflin company. eight-year-old rachel hartog, a jewish girl living in holland, can’t understand why there are restrictions on jews all of a sudden--she must go to a different school, she must wear a gold star on her sleeve, she can’t sit in certain benches in the park--and when a group of jewish children are taken away, she and her family go into hiding. separated from her parents, she has to change her name and move from family to family, constantly in dread of discovery. rachel describes the horror of those years, how she lived in fear, couldn’t speak to anybody, and wondered whether she would ever see her family again ______. 1993. anna is still here. tr. terese edelstein and inez smith. boston: houghton mifflin company. thirteen-year-old anna, a jewish girl, has recently been reunited with her parents after hiding from the nazis for three years. being free is not as easy as anna thought--she’s troubled by nightmares, finds it difficult to speak after being silent for three years, and knows that her parents are hiding what they went through during those terrible years. anna finds she can only open up to mrs. neumann, a fellow survivor who is hoping to be reunited with her daughter, who she believes must still be alive. anna also finds that, although the war is over, the feelings of anti-semitism are still present. ______. 1995. dancing on the bridge of avingnon. tr. terese edelstein and inez smith. boston: houghton mifflin company. relates the experiences of a young jewish girl and her family during the nazi occupation of the netherlands. zar, rose. 1983. in the mouth of the wolf. philadelphia: the jewish publication society of america, 5743. ruszka guterman, at age eighteen, knows that to be a jew in poland in 1942 is a death warrant. her father knows this too, and convinces ruska and her brother benek to flee the ghetto and try to find safe haven in one of the larger cities in poland. luckily, ruszka has learned that to show fear is to give herself away. bold, brash, and defiant, ruszka becomes wanda gajda, working for an ss kommandant, and remains safe in the mouth of the wolf. cfr_2009_r4.indb 43 10/25/09 6:19:21 pm cfr_2008-2009_part11 cfr_2008-2009_part12 cfr_2008-2009_part13 pages from cfr_2008-2009_part14 children’s folklo re review volume 34 2012 published by the children’s folklore section of the american folklore society with support from the dean’s office of harpur college at binghamton university cfr_2012.indb 1 10/19/12 9:25:31 am contents from the editor 5 co-winner of the 2011 william wells newell prize: manipulating play frames: the yo momma joke cycle on youtube steve stanzak 7 zashikiwarashi, the ghost that is saving japan linda kinsey spetter 33 young children’s table talk with peers in early childhood settings robyn m holmes 41 the white lady of devil’s elbow elizabeth tucker 61 book review 67 children’s folklore section: 2011 annual meeting 69 notes and announcements 71 contributors 73 cfr_2012.indb 3 10/19/12 9:25:31 am 5 from the editor elizabeth tucker this thirty-fourth volume of children’s folklore review offers research by children’s folklore scholars in both the united states and japan. i am delighted that our journal is continuing to publish international submissions and want to encourage other international scholars to submit manuscripts for future issues. the first article, “manipulating play frames: the yo momma joke cycle on youtube,” was written by steve stanzak, one of the two co-winners of the william wells newell prize in 2011. stanzak’s innovative article analyzes youtube performances of jokes, in which the way the jokes are told seems to be a more important source of humor than the jokes themselves. besides stanzak’s newell prize-winning essay, this volume of children’s folklore review contains three other essays. linda kinsey spetter’s “zashikiwarashi, the ghost that is saving japan” explores the relationship between traditional stories about ghosts of unborn children and current social problems in japan. it is very interesting to see that this ghost has six different visual representations, one of which is on the cover of this volume of children’s folklore review. robyn m. holmes’s “young children’s table talk with peers in early childhood settings” examines the intricacies of young children’s conversation during lunch, taking into account gender, social class, and other important variables. in contrast to holmes’s study of young children, my own essay “the white lady of devil’s elbow” addresses the behavior of teenagers who play pranks related to a well-established local ghost legend near owego, new york. all back issues of children’s folklore review except the most recent one are now available on the internet on indiana university’s scholar works web site. it is wonderful to know that the research published by our journal is now accessible to anyone who has a computer. i want to thank the dean’s office at harpur college of binghamton university, which generously supports children’s folklore review. i am also very grateful to kathy buchta for her excellent work on layout/design and to sheridan press for its fine printing and mailing service. if you would like to review a book on children’s folklore or a related subject, please contact our book review editor, li cornfeld: licornfeld@gmail.com. submissions and comments are always welcome. please feel free to contact me any time: ltucker@binghamton.edu. thank you very much for your support of our journal. cfr_2012.indb 5 10/19/12 9:25:31 am 7 manipulating play frames: the yo momma joke cycle on youtube steve stanzak despite their prevalence on school playgrounds, the internet, and mass media, modern forms of the dozens have garnered surprisingly little notice from folklorists. this lacuna is particularly unfortunate considering the important role played by folklorists such as roger abrahams in bringing this verbal dueling tradition to the attention of the scholarly community. abrahams’s seminal 1962 study, based on his fieldwork in a philadelphia ghetto, examined the dozens as performed in urban african american communities. when “playing the dozens,” abrahams tells us, participants direct ritual insults at their opponents’ family, most often their mothers. these insults are often highly stylized, contain sexual or obscene themes, and are sometimes rhymed, as in this dozen collected by abrahams: i f----d your mother in a horse and wagon, she said, “‘scuse me, mister, my p---y’s draggin’”1 (1962, 216). other dozens are less stylized and more likely to be recognizable to a modern audience, as in the dozen below, recorded in the 1960s. your mother’s so skinny, about that skinny, she can get in a cheerioat and say, “hula hoop hula hoop!” (labov 1972, 133). although a version of the above dozen is still told among children today, there are still significant disconnects in both content and performance between the dozens that were observed by abrahams and those of contemporary children and adolescents. little ethnographic or analytical work on the dozens tradition has been conducted in the past several decades, despite their continuing presence in the social life of children and adolescents. my goal here is to demonstrate that not only have the dozens survived and done well, but they have also adapted to changing social and technological contexts. this goal will be accomplished by examining one particular subgenre of the dozens that remains exceedingly popular among children and adolescents: the yo momma joke. first, i will identify both the connections and disjunctions between the dozens described by earlier scholars and one iteration of the dozens—the yo momma joke cycle—so that a tentative formal and functional definition of the yo momma joke can be offered. second, i will analyze yo momma jokes on the video social networking website youtube, which has emerged as a key site for their performance. while the content of yo momma jokes is usually traditional, youtube offers innovative new ways for participants not only to manipulate jokes’ performance contexts, but also to create new contexts entirely. many yo momma jokes on youtube are no longer functional ritual insults; instead, they have been embedded into virtual folk dramas cfr_2012.indb 7 10/19/12 9:25:31 am manipulating play frames stanzak 8 in which performers act out hypothetical verbal duels. these mock-duels engage with the yo momma joke’s traditional form and content in ways that interrogate notions of play and seriousness. method the most attention to yo momma jokes comes in the form of published joke collections and amateur websites. however, the jokes in these collections remove the performance elements of their original joking sessions and thus lack the contextual data necessary for this study. my research of yo momma jokes on youtube takes into account those performance contexts absent from these collections. youtube is a website that provides a digital space for internet users to view, share, and comment on videos uploaded by anyone with access to a web connection and a device capable of recording video. most users of youtube only use the website for watching videos, but others create an account with the site in order to post their own videos, comment on existing videos, or “subscribe” to their favorite video producers. for active users, youtube provides an arena for extended interaction with a diverse range of social groups. one of the most persistent problems i encountered while collecting data for this project was the transient nature of the materials. too frequently in the early stages of my research did i return to a video i had recently viewed, only to find it removed by the user. i can only speculate on the reasons why users remove their videos or even delete their accounts entirely, but i suspect that it has to do with how children constantly refashion their identities on the internet. a video that inspired pride or amusement at age eleven might be seen as embarrassing at age thirteen. on the other hand, many of the videos i surveyed for this project have been on youtube for several years. still, after several frustrated experiences with removed videos, i began transcribing those videos i used for my research. as will be seen in several instances below, these transcripts have been useful in cases in which videos have since been removed. for my data collection, i informally surveyed several hundred videos that their creators had identified as containing yo momma jokes.2 this method had some inherent limitations, as i could only find videos that were correctly labeled with this information. patricia lange, who has extensively studied social networks on youtube, describes how video producers on youtube manipulate tags and titles to control access to their videos (2007). in my searches, i was only able to find videos that were publicly identified as containing yo momma jokes. my search still revealed several thousand videos containing the search term “yo momma” or one of its variant spellings. the sample i use here was not arrived at randomly; it was limited by my choice of keywords and biased by the order videos were displayed by the youtube website—i was much more likely to view videos that showed up in the first few pages of my search results than videos buried in the thirtieth page of search results. from these videos i found in my keyword searches, i sought out those that presented actual people performing yo momma jokes. i excluded a number of videos that were commercially produced (either from commercials, television shows, or movies) and videos that were simply yo momma jokes written cfr_2012.indb 8 10/19/12 9:25:31 am stanzak manipulating play frames 9 in text on the screen, often accompanied by background music. also excluded were a number of videos that dubbed yo momma jokes told by professional comedians, usually george carlin, over some other scene.3 the use of internet data raises ethical questions that have been insufficiently addressed by folklorists. in my own research, i have treated youtube videos as broadcasted, published materials. the site itself promotes this view; comparisons to television are contained in both its logo and its name, as well as the site’s slogan “broadcast yourself.” although the internet is by and large a public venue, there is still a range of privacy expectations held by internet users (lange 2007). users have means by which to limit access to their videos, and many seem to have either removed or limited the audience of their videos between the research period and publication. however, all videos examined for this project were available to public viewing at one point and accessible to search engines through creators’ use of appropriate tags and titles. where possible, i have identified participants by first name. when real names are not identifiable, i use the username if it can be safely assumed that the performer is the same person as the video producer; otherwise i use descriptive identifiers. i have included user name and web addresses for all videos still online at the time of publication. arriving at a definition of contemporary yo momma jokes i will attempt to distinguish yo momma jokes from the dozens based on my tentative observations, but an exact classification is difficult. the dozens are a genre of ritual insults that encompasses a wide range of diverse forms, including the form now called the yo momma joke.4 these jokes are marked by a particular structure that has remained relatively stable over time. despite this formal conservatism, contemporary yo momma jokes often differ significantly from those collected in the 1960s and 1970s. thus, arriving at an updated definition of the yo momma joke must entail a reckoning with its history and a disentangling from the larger dozens tradition. one notable discrepancy between the dozens as collected and analyzed by earlier scholars and those yo momma jokes performed by youth today is the identity of their performers. although some scholars acknowledge that the dozens were also performed among white adolescents (ayoub and barnett 1965; labov 1972, 140-41), most analyses of the dozens emphasize their function in the social and psychological lives of urban african american communities. john dollard suggests that the insults act as a pressure valve to relieve some of the psychological anxiety felt by african americans. he theorizes that this anxiety is displaced from the actual target of hostility onto the safer target of the peer group, where it is framed as play and made safe (1939, 20-21). roger abrahams partially rejects this hypothesis and offers two others. the first hypothesis centers on the typical family structure observed by abrahams in south philadelphia in the 1960s, which he classifies as a matriarchy. in this type of family structure, african american boys must struggle to form a masculine identity and in doing so are rejected by the family. abrahams argues that forming this identity requires a violent shift from feminine to masculine values. this transformation is enacted through playing the cfr_2012.indb 9 10/19/12 9:25:31 am manipulating play frames stanzak 10 dozens, which not only attacks the feminine as embodied in the mother but also affirms the participants’ masculinity (abrahams 1962, 213). abrahams also touches upon a social function of the dozens, theorizing that they contribute to the development of verbal skill essential to the successful social life of adult african americans. later scholarship on the dozens emphasizes this social function rather than the psychological model favored by dollard and abrahams. harry lefever proposes that the dozens act as a nonviolent means for social control, in which african american men learn how to control their temper while under verbal assault (1981, 76). lefever argues that performing the dozens among peers hardens african american men to obscene and vulgar insults that might have been directed at them by antagonistic whites. ayoub and barnett, examining instances of verbal insults in a white high school, suggest that playing the dozens is important in establishing one’s identity within a peer group because the insults emphasize that peer group bonds are more important than protecting one’s mother from verbal attack (1965, 341). many of these functions theorized by scholars of the dozens must be reevaluated, as they largely posit race as the primary factor in their telling. yo momma jokes have been common among non-blacks for decades,5 and although race still plays a role in contemporary yo momma jokes on youtube, it is a much diminished one.6 most of the yo momma joking sessions on youtube were performed by white adolescent males, although african american, latino american, and asian american performers were also represented, as well as women, younger children, and young adults. the performance of yo momma jokes today must be disassociated on some level with research done by previous scholars working within completely different contexts, and new functional explanations should be investigated. the function closest to the surface seems to be the entertainment value of the jokes themselves. although the dozens were certainly performed for entertainment, their competitive, dueling function seems to have been foregrounded. performers of contemporary yo momma jokes, however, have reversed this emphasis, instead highlighting the role of yo momma jokes in providing amusement to both participants and audience. yo momma jokes on youtube are often a performative event in which participants collaborate rather than compete.7 in all cases, these performances offer participants an opportunity to showcase not only their verbal skills, but also their ability to create a framework for performance. most videos i observed were not candid recordings of spontaneous yo momma joke sessions, but rather framed as planned performances for a particular viewing audience. several participants emphasized their role in constructing these yo momma joke sessions: mike: “peace up.” sean: “woooord.” sean: “alright. today, we’re going to do some mama jokes.” . . . . . sean: “um, so basically, we’re gonna go now. hope you enjoyed the video and we’ll see you later.” cfr_2012.indb 10 10/19/12 9:25:31 am stanzak manipulating play frames 11 mike: “peace out to all my youtubers, myspacers.” sean: “oh yeah!” mike: “let’s go” sean: “let’s go myspace!” (scpafc 2007) teenage girl: ok people, we’re going to teach you some good your momma jokes.”8 these performances are set apart from ordinary discourse by the very fact of their medium: the participants intentionally chose to record their joking sessions and post them on youtube with titles and tags referencing yo momma jokes. in addition, participants frame these events as joking sessions through announcements of their intentions and their intended audience. in both examples, it is obvious that the joking session is planned rather than spontaneous, even though what happens within the joking session may be less scripted. although entertainment and performance concerns lie at the forefront of contemporary yo momma jokes, scholars have also proposed other functions. a cognitive function is intimated by benjamin bergen and kim binsted, who theorize that such jokes provide children with an introduction to verbal play and assist in the formation of conceptual relations between objects and people (2003). with yo momma jokes, the mind must work to grasp the relationships between the different constituent elements of the joke and in doing so grapple with linguistic devices such as hyperbole, understatement, imagery, and metaphor. in addition, these jokes are formulaic, built on structural models of varying complexity. although linguistically simple to repeat, they are difficult to successfully create.9 a socialization function has also been suggested. as noted above, ayoub and barnett hypothesize that playing the dozens emphasizes peer bonds over familial ones. similarly, yo momma jokes emphasize friendship bonds that are tested and stretched through the creation of a play framework. labov and lefever both claim that the dozens are told largely among members of the same in-group, and my own research on contemporary yo momma jokes reinforces this assertion.10 children may play yo momma jokes because it is a social activity that may be done among friends and even, counter to expectations, among family members. these performances acknowledge the shared social framework of the participants. in addition, children may find this joking form fascinating because of the referential content of the jokes themselves. numerous scholars have pointed out the prevalence of obscenity and subversion in children’s folklore (for an overview of this scholarship, see mcmahon and sutton-smith 1999, 300-08), and yo momma jokes certainly possess both features. the obscenity in these jokes not only challenges adult conceptions of taste but is often attributed to the mother herself, disrupting her stereotypical role as defender against the obscene. simon: “well listen, yo mama’s so fat when she’s on toilet she need a map to find her asshole” (halfcastkid 2008). alex b.: “yo mama’s so manly her balls are bigger than yours!” (bbumps123 2008) cfr_2012.indb 11 10/19/12 9:25:31 am manipulating play frames stanzak 12 obscenity is not the only subversive feature of yo momma jokes. a joke from four-year old aaron shows how yo momma jokes can subvert traditional family power structures: your mama’s so fat that she went and threw the fish tank in the car that she broke the, the like, she broke the shade with the part and said she said, “mom, dad, i broke my shade part” and then she went to the living room and changed again, had to stay home (thecomputernerd01 2007). the mother here is presented as the very embodiment of excess, hardly discernable from the four-year-old child who tells the joke. the mother of the joke has no control over her body, emotions, or environment. she throws a fish tank in the car, which causes her own parents to punish her. by effectively transforming the mother into a child, aaron creates through his joke a world turned upsidedown, one in which he is in control through his verbal skill and his mother is the one who is unrestrained and punished for it. the structure of yo momma jokes in regard to form, yo momma jokes are distinct, stable, and easily identifiable. attempts to define yo momma jokes on the basis of form have been recently undertaken by bergen and binsted, who classify yo momma jokes under the category of “scalar humor.” briefly, scalar humor is defined as a subset of humor that manipulates ambiguous conceptual relations of scale in order to highlight incongruous relationships between objects or ideas (bergen and binsted 2003). bergen and binsted formulate a linguistic blueprint for scalar humor that follows the construction: “x is so y that z.” although yo momma jokes utilize this formula, it is also used by non-humorous expressions, as in this example: “it was so cold in the arctic circle that we found frost on the lettuce” (2003, 6). here, the relationship between the first clause and the second is sensible. the first clause sets up a scenario (“it was so cold in the arctic circle”) that is fulfilled in the second (“that we found frost on the lettuce”). this statement is not funny because the relationship between the two clauses is logical and expected. for this construction to be considered humorous, the implied relationship between the first clause and the second must fail to be fulfilled. this is accomplished by a number of rhetorical devices that manipulate or distort the implied relationship, such as hyperbole, understatement, polysemy, metaphor, or imagery. consider the scalar joke “yo’ mama’s so fat, when she was diagnosed with a flesh eating disease, the doctor gave her 5 years to live” (bergen and binsted 2003, 7). like the previous example of the lettuce, this joke also uses the “x is so y” construction. however, unlike the last example, this one is humorous because the second clause disrupts the logical relationship of scale implied by the first clause: the doctor’s prognosis is nonsensical except in the world of humor, where mothers of extraordinary weight reside. humor results from the “x is so y” construction when there is a “mismatch cfr_2012.indb 12 10/19/12 9:25:31 am stanzak manipulating play frames 13 between the hearer’s expectations about the utterance and its actual realization” (bergen and binsted 2003, 3). although bergen and binsted offer a thorough examination of scalar humor based on linguistic analysis, they do not take performance contexts into account. here, i wish here to make several modifications to their structural framework based on my own observations of yo momma jokes in performance. i propose four key constituent elements that contribute to the structure of yo momma jokes. the first and most characteristic element of these jokes i label the introductory formula. this element contains the formulaic opening that gives the joke cycle its name: “yo momma so,” containing both the subject of the insult as well as the required intensifier “so.” the introductory formula is the primary framing device for the joke; it signals to participants that a framework for play is being constructed and that the discourse within the frame is not to be taken seriously. the following failed start of a yo momma joke told by alejandro11 illustrates several key features of the introductory formula: yo momma’s so fat she— your momma’s so ugly— [alejandro’s mother walks into the room] sorry sorry sorry. this is a momma joke. don’t— run away. if you’re a mom, please run away.12 as can be seen from this example, alejandro constructs a play frame using the introductory formula that gives him license to tell a yo momma joke. however, alejandro has several concerns about the effectiveness of the frame. either he doubts that this licensing given by the frame is adequate enough to allow telling of the joke in front of the actual insult target (a mother), or he is unsure that adults hearing the joke will understand the play framework that he constructs. in either event, alejandro makes the play frame explicit to his audience, emphasizing that that what he’s saying “is a momma joke.” the presence of this overt declaration is perhaps due to alejandro’s young age and his insecurity with the joke form; it is doubtful that older children would have found such distancing maneuvers necessary in this context. although alejandro firmly establishes this framework through the introductory formula and an unambiguous explanation, alejandro still warns all mothers listening to “run away” while he tells his joke. the introductory formula as a framing element is crucial to successful performances. variations upon this formula are possible, but were rarely found in the videos observed. the intensifier “so” is critical to the effectiveness of the joke because it sets up the incongruity between scalar relationships that must be resolved by the audience. therefore, the intensifier must always be present in the opening formula for a yo momma joke to be told successfully. the insult subject, however, is variable. a change in the insult subject to father or grandmother is found in some of the dozens collected by labov, but mothers were by far the most popular cfr_2012.indb 13 10/19/12 9:25:31 am manipulating play frames stanzak 14 target. this was also the trend in my examination of contemporary yo momma jokes on youtube.13 some notable exceptions appeared in my research, particularly in the jokes told by four-year old aaron, who tells yo momma jokes to an older relative behind the camera. aaron struggled with the joke structure, but firmly grasped the introductory element. not only does the introductory formula define the yo momma joke cycle, but it is also formulaic, concise, and rarely variable—in other words simple and memorable enough for young children to learn easily. although aaron comprehended that this element was crucial for the reproduction of this joke type, he had considerably less competence in the other structural parts of the joke. when your momma’s so fat that spider-man was so fat that spider-man comes down his web and he was scared that he was fat and then he said “what happened to me?” and then he was fat on my shirt so he popped out of my shirt (thecomputernerd01 2007). although this joke demonstrates a limited competence of the yo momma joke, it suggests a developing understanding of form. the introductory formula is present, but the statements that follow do not relate to this formula. once aaron has established a play framework with the introductory formula, he changes the insult subject from a mother to spider-man. the point of the introductory formula here is not to logically connect to the rest of the joke, but rather to signal the presence of a play framework. aaron’s joke is much more dynamic than typical yo momma jokes, which are largely conservative and formulaic. lost in this transcription are the environmental cues that aaron draws upon in his own joke creation: aaron is wearing a shirt bearing a depiction of spider-man. although aaron has not yet developed a repertoire of conventional yo momma jokes, he improvises using stimuli immediately present. although he is not successful in his attempts to tell a yo momma joke, his attempts show a beginning understanding of form. the second structural component in the yo momma joke cycle is what i label the modifying element, that term which limits and clarifies the excessiveness of the subject denoted by the “so” intensifier in the introductory formula. the most common modifier in yo momma joke cycle is “fat,” but others are possible, such as “poor,” “ugly,” “black,” “dirty,” “old,” and even “short.” the main function of the modifying element is to define the type of scalar relationship that will be presented in the next section of the joke. in engaging with the joke structure, aaron attempts to change the common modifying element “fat” to “ugly,” but is unsure how to do so effectively. the following example demonstrates a change in the modifying element that is immediately followed by a retreat back to the original “fat.” the insult subject is also modified, as above. cfr_2012.indb 14 10/19/12 9:25:31 am stanzak manipulating play frames 15 your momma’s so fat that she ride a horse and the horse is so ugly, that the horse was so fat. the first line is consistent with the standard introductory formula and modifying element. however, in the second line aaron introduces a horse to the joke that quickly becomes the subject of the joke, which is first called “ugly” and then goes back to the original “fat.” the next two elements operate together in a cause-and-effect relationship that is informed by the modifying element. the causal component introduces a normative and neutral scenario to the joke that has not yet been influenced by the modifying element or intensifier of the introductory formula. as such, the causal component acts as a bridge between the first part of the joke (“yo momma’s so fat”) and its punchline. simon: “your momma’s so fat she need a boomerang to put on her belt” (halfcastkid 2008). the elements of this joke do not quite match the structure i outline here, but can easily be standardized: “your momma’s so fat that when she put on her belt, she needed a boomerang.” the causal component here is the mother putting on a belt, which is presented as a neutral scenario that should be easily possible. however, yo momma jokes are characterized by exaggeration and absurdity. thus, the mother presented here is so excessively fat that she defies normalcy and the plausible scenario presented in the causal component is negated by the introductory formula and modifying element. the last structural element to be considered here is the consequential component: the punch line of the yo momma joke that synthesizes the other joke elements. the consequential component is the result of applying the excessively modified mother subject to the normative scenario depicted in the causal component to produce an image of the mother in which she is unable to operate within the world, effectively reversing the causal component. her inability to function in this world renders the subject foolish, obscene, and even deviant. this example, collected from sean and mike, exemplifies this phenomenon. sean: “your momma’s so poor that when i ring the doorbell she says ding.” mike: “sean.” sean: “i shouldn’t have said that. sorry.” mike: “sean. sean, yesterday i came to your house, and that’s what you did.” sean: “i didn’t do it.” cfr_2012.indb 15 10/19/12 9:25:32 am manipulating play frames stanzak 16 mike: “yeah.” sean: “i can’t afford a doorbell.” mike: “how you gonna make fun of my mom if you do it too?” sean: “you’re horrible.” mike: “get out of here” (scpafc 2007). the scenario set up in the above joke is one in which a doorbell is rung and, due to the presentation of the mother subject as being excessively poor, a situation emerges which lies outside the range of logical possibilities and is seen as ridiculous. this particular joke is a well-known example of the genre and thus not particularly original. however, the participants here carry the humor of the joke beyond the scenario presented by the joke’s structure through verbal maneuvers that position them further within the joking framework. both boys play off each other, deliberately misinterpreting the joke as truth, despite its absurdity, and opening up an arena for verbal play that is at once part of the joke and yet outside it. genre and play frames like the dozens, contemporary yo momma jokes reside where jokes and verbal duels intersect. despite this similarity, contemporary yo momma jokes still inhabit a distinct subgenre separable from the dozens in particular and verbal duels in general. my observations have shown that contemporary yo momma jokes on youtube, unlike the dozens, emphasize the joking framework much more than the dueling framework. although it is not uncommon for yo momma jokes on youtube to take the form of a verbal duel between two participants,14 it is just as common for a video to feature just one person reciting a yo momma joke to the camera,15 or even just to display jokes in the form of written text on the screen. even when a dueling framework between two or more participants is present, this framework is often radically different than those created in traditional verbal duels. often, the duels are staged rather than spontaneous, and the number and identity of participants are manipulated by skillful digital editing. as a form of verbal duels, contemporary yo momma jokes share many features with the dozens. john mcdowell defines verbal duels as “the competitive use of language within the confines of a game structure with rules that are codified and available to participants” (1985, 203). the content of verbal duels is often framed in formulaic patterns with a definite structure and generic content. although some of the yo momma jokes i observed were obviously improvised, especially those told by younger children, most of the jokes were traditional. the same jokes were often heard in different joking sessions, performed by different participants. even the jokes that were apparently improvised aligned themselves to the structural patterns defined above. hence, these joking sessions can then be seen as highly ritualized and engaging with a generic pattern of verbal exchange. a principle crucial to verbal dueling and to the examination of yo momma jokes considered here is what mcdowell terms the “conservation principle.” briefly, the conservation principle recognizes that verbal dueling is a discursive cfr_2012.indb 16 10/19/12 9:25:32 am stanzak manipulating play frames 17 process in which participants pattern their responses based on previous utterances. yo momma joking sessions on youtube often follow this conservation principle, allowing for a constant give-and-take between participants, or, as i also observed, between a single participant interacting with objects in his environment. an example from two adolescent brothers illustrates the conservation principle. brother 1: “your momma’s so fat people jog around her for exercise!” brother 2: “your mom’s so fat that when i jog around her for exercise she went ‘stop it, you’re making me dizzy, yah.’”16 two jokes told by the youngest informant, four-year-old aaron, demonstrate the conservation principle as enacted between the solo participant and his environment. this first joke was told in the beginning of the session: your mama’s so fat that she looked into the mirror and she saw it and the mirror cracked and then it went into the living room, but it slide, it slide into the living room (thecomputernerd01 2007). the following joke was told closer to the end of the session, when his cousin amanda entered the room where he was conducting the joking session. your mama’s so— no amanda, don’t come in. your mama’s so fat that she saw a mirror was blue and orange and pink so amanda was in the mirror. considering these two jokes as a progression within the same joking session, we see that aaron conserved elements of the first joke (the mirror) and incorporated that element into a later joke that also incorporated amanda, who encroached on his play space. although this move is not as dialogic as the first example of the two brothers, it does indicate a move towards the direction of conservation between participant turns that allows for effective dueling. although yo momma jokes share certain features with verbal duels, the form of such duels in the dozens and contemporary yo momma jokes differs in several important respects, particularly in how each constructs frameworks for play that structure the discourse that occurs within it. these frames free the joke teller from responsibility for the content of the joke and signal to the audience that what is to be said is not to be taken seriously, that the performer is “just joking.” this frame is central to most human cognitive and behavioral processes, but manifest in contemporary yo momma jokes in particular ways. erving goffman describes frames as devices that organize and represent experience (1974). frames accomplish this task by arranging discourse into cfr_2012.indb 17 10/19/12 9:25:32 am manipulating play frames stanzak 18 demarcated spaces set off from other discourses through framing devices. play is marked by particular framing behaviors, identified by gregory bateson as “interactive sequence[s] of which the unit actions or signals [are] similar to but not the same as those of combat” (1972, 179).17 play is signaled through metacommunicative messages that indicate to participants aware of such messages that the next actions are not to be interpreted and evaluated as they normally would outside the frame. goffman makes a similar observation: “playfulness and other keying may be involved which sharply reduce personal responsibility; that often what the individual presents is not himself but a story containing a protagonist who may happen also to be himself” (goffman 1974, 541). all communicative acts involve a certain level of framing and are subject to interpretation by the receiver of the message. the dozens and other verbal duel forms are framed in a number of ways that establish and maintain the play frame. labov writes: “since responses to sounds [i.e., dozens] are so automatic and deepseated, we must pre-suppose a well-formed competence on the part of members to distinguish ritual insults from personal insults” (1972, 153). the formulaic character and the high stylization of the dozens serve to remove the insults from the context of normative speech acts and instead place them into the category of ritual speech. in addition to the formal structure of the dozens, their referential content also frames them as play. abrahams recognizes that the rules formulated for playing the dozens seem to say “‘you can insult my family, but don’t exceed the rules because we are dealing with something perilously close to real life’” (1962, 211). labov echoes this sentiment, emphasizing that the situations in which insults move from the ritual to the personal occur when the insults approach too closely to actual life. to create dozens that are safe, therefore, requires a move from the probable to the “bizarre and unlikely” (1972, 157). this strategy also holds true for contemporary yo momma jokes, although performers on youtube often exploit the ambiguous distinction between personal and ritual insults. the participants involved are also an important consideration for understanding the framing of verbal duels. dozens are often told among peer-group members who occupy the same in-group. this performative context allows for metacommunicative actions signaling the play frame to be understood by all participants as well as providing a safe verbal battleground for the dozens to be played. playing the dozens requires participants to make themselves vulnerable to a certain amount of verbal abuse. this voluntary exposure to attack is a risk taken in all gaming activities and involves an assumption that all participants will play by the rules and that ritual insults will not give way to personal insults. however, there are situations in which this play frame breaks down. labov notes that “with strangers it is considerably harder to say what is a safe sound, and there are any number of taboos that can be broken with serious results” (1972, 158). as a result, playing the dozens is most often done between in-group members, and outside of this group this activity is usually intended to provoke a fight. lefever notes a similar occurrence: “fighting is associated more with the dozens when it is played between exclusive out-group members, when it is played in regimented and restrictive settings and when it is played by adults” (1981, 80). in these breakdowns, a failure or an unwillingness to recognize the play frame results cfr_2012.indb 18 10/19/12 9:25:32 am stanzak manipulating play frames 19 in a literal interpretation of the insult. for playing the dozens to be successful, participants must operate within the same metacommunicative framework and be able to recognize the verbal acts that signal the play event. as verbal duels, contemporary yo momma joke performances on youtube look much different than the dozens collected in past decades. although humor and play were certainly part of the dozens, contemporary yo momma jokes emphasize the play and joking aspects to a much greater extent. i have classified yo momma jokes as “jokes,” and they are popularly referred to as such, but this generic distinction presents some inherent problems. as jokes, contemporary yo momma jokes do contain humor at their core and attempt, whether successfully or not, to provoke a laughter response. this attempt may be accomplished in a variety of ways, but yo momma jokes most often accomplish this by word play, absurd imagery, or the reversal of societal norms or expectations. these rhetorical maneuvers have been discussed above, and are most often inherent in the content of the jokes themselves. however, my observation of yo momma jokes on youtube shows that participants are finding dynamic ways to revitalize jokes that are often seen by audiences as boring and clichéd.18 performers on youtube accomplish this through innovative framing techniques, such that the source of humor is less in the joke content itself than in the framework in which the joke is performed. i have identified three techniques utilized by performers of contemporary yo momma jokes on youtube to innovate this traditional joke form: obscuring participant identities, taking seriousness playfully, and taking play seriously. obscuring participant identities framing necessarily requires a different interpretation of events. in play frameworks, relationships that are not central to the play may be temporarily obscured so that the participants may engage in a joking session that would otherwise be unable to occur. often, the relationships that are obscured are familial ones. in the following example taken from two adolescent brothers, their familial relationship is ignored for the sake of the play: brother 1: [interrupting] “your mom’s so fat she goes into a restaurant, looks at the menu—” brother 2: “hey.” brother 1: “—and says ok!” brother 2: “your mom’s so fat, no wait, dude. your mom’s my mom.” brother 1: “oh shit.”19 this exchange closes the joking session and ends the video. the relationship between the brothers has been temporarily suspended so that they can tell yo momma jokes to each other; once reinstated, such jokes can no longer be told effectively. several joking sessions between siblings follow this basic formula, with the main humor of the video deriving from the family relationship that is revealed at the end of the video. cfr_2012.indb 19 10/19/12 9:25:32 am manipulating play frames stanzak 20 one video that uses this technique (perhaps unintentionally) sets up the joking framework in the typical manner: jimmy: “yo mama fight!” alex: “your mom’s so poor i saw her kicking a can down the street and i said ‘hey, whatcha doing?’ she said, ‘moving.’” jimmy: “yo mama’s so fat that she brought a little tiny spoon to the super bowl” (bbumps123 2008). whereas the previous examples relied on the revelation of familial relationships to provide the video’s humor, such a device within the video itself is unnecessary here because the two participants are identical twins.20 the humor here results from the obvious irony of the framework; the act of watching identical twins insult each other’s mother approaches the surreal. the identities of the participants cannot be obscured, only temporarily ignored by the audience. still, the very constructedness of this joking framework is emphasized in several places. one commenter seems to either miss the point or is making an ironic joke of her own: “hello retards u have the same mama so u cant make a joke about ur mama.”21 the relationship between the twins is further identified by the video’s title, “when brothers fight 3” and metacommentary at the end of the video: hope you enjoyed sadly this is our last video with violent stuff because our dad said no more but please comment and we will show our dad thank you and comedy ideas by jimmy and alex m as demonstrated by these examples, jimmy and alex m. do not require a grand revelation at the end of their video to point out the presence of a play frame and the obscuring of participant identities that resulted. these twins are able to both obscure and reveal their identities at the same time through the use of intersecting and contradictory frameworks. another video that plays with the idea of obscured familial relationships presents two siblings acting out a yo momma battle. it begins with the two sitting at a table. the older sister is playing a handheld video game when she is interrupted by her younger brother: brother: “yo momma’s so stupid that she thinks one plus one equals elephant.”22 at this point, music appropriate to verbal dueling begins playing in the background as the sister turns off her game and menacingly stands up from the table: sister: “let’s handle this the mature way.” cfr_2012.indb 20 10/19/12 9:25:32 am stanzak manipulating play frames 21 what follows are typical yo momma jokes told back and forth between the participants in dueling fashion. despite the silly content of their jokes (e.g. “[your momma’s] so ugly she looked in the mirror and thought it was a picture of michael jackson”), the siblings adopt an appearance of seriousness that complements the dramatic music. the trope of taking these jokes seriously appears again and again in these videos, which serves to highlight their very playfulness. for these two participants, the video’s production implies, the yo momma battle has high stakes. the revelation of their obscured familial relationship occurs at the end of their video, after the sister levies an insult that causes her younger brother to cry: sister: “yo momma’s so ugly that the storeowner uses her picture to keep the rats away.” after this insult, the sister approaches her little brother and puts her arms on his shoulders in a manner meant to suggest consolation. however, this action too is pretense: sister: “um, little dude. uh, your mom is still ugly.” at this point, the sister runs away as the camera pans to an older woman, presumably their mother, coming out of a doorway. in a raised voice, she begins: “what the f—.” here, the video conveniently ends, letting the audience’s imagination supply the rest of her outburst. from the video’s editing, it is obvious that the mother’s arrival is part of the performance, but it still serves to break the play framework these siblings have constructed by foregrounding the familial relationship between all the participants. her invective at the end is a reply not only to her children’s fighting, but also to her place at the center of their duel as the target of their jokes. family relationships are not the only ones obscured by contemporary yo momma joke sessions. in several videos observed, the selfhood of the participant(s) is also concealed. through video editing, some participants stage a joking session between themselves. in many, but not all, instances, this fact is obvious. user spectator24 posted a video featuring his favorite yo momma jokes because he was “feelin’ real funny today.” although spectator24 is the only participant in the video, he still decides to frame it as a verbal duel between two participants. he accomplishes this through video editing, cutting back and forth to himself in different poses. one “participant” faces right to his assumed opponent, who faces left. no other attempts are made to disguise the self-identity of the participant(s). his imitation of an actual dual, however, is effective—there is even evidence of the conservation principle: spectator24 (facing right): “yo momma got one toe and one knee and they call her tony, heh heh heh heh heh.” cfr_2012.indb 21 10/19/12 9:25:32 am manipulating play frames stanzak 22 spectator24 (facing left): “dude, that’s not funny, that’s a serious problem. she can’t even wear sandals, you asshole” (spectator24 2007). some videos use more advanced video editing techniques and costuming to disguise the fact that there is only one participant. one particularly skillful example is a video by user azaelive (2009). many of azaelive’s videos feature his alter-ego persona, an outrageously crude woman named monikka who sports long black hair and wears an excessive amount of black lipstick on her lips, under her eyes, and in her eyebrows. azaelive’s yo momma video pits monikka against “the other guy,” both played by azaelive. the jokes they tell are largely traditional, but what is innovative here is how azaelive edits the video so that both participants occupy the shot at the same time. both participants are edited to be sitting next to each other on the same couch, giving the impression of an actual dual in real-time. taking seriousness playfully a number of youtube videos portray yo momma jokes inserted in the course of normal conversation, where a joking framework is not present. instead, the performers pretend that their play is real life. of course, this absence of a play frame is a fiction, as the video itself is a staged performance. these videos often offer an evaluation and commentary of the yo momma joke format, highlighting their simplicity. one video by user lulu615 plays out another instance where seriousness is taken playfully when one girl uses an insult that is too true to life: natalie: “you know, speaking of big-ass mommas, you know how i know yo’ momma’s fat? because she irons her drawers on the driveway.” alex: “well, yo’ momma’s so fat when her beeper goes off people think she’s backin’ it up.” natalie: “you know how i know yo’ momma’s so fat? because people jog around her for exercise.” alex: “well, yo’ momma’s so fat she weighs 800 pounds” [mournful violin music begins in the background] “she got a clogged artery, had a triple bypass surgery, she died.” natalie: [slaps alex across the face] “not cool.”23 the two girls here have created a play framework that allows for the telling of yo momma jokes, but alex’s last joke clearly breaks that framework by using serious events for the content of a joke. of course, as is usually the case in yo momma jokes on youtube, this seriousness is actually part of the joke; natalie’s mother presumably does not suffer from the afflictions alleged by alex. this video indulges in a “what if” scenario that details what might happen “when simple jokes go wrong,” which is the video’s description. by acting out the breakdown of cfr_2012.indb 22 10/19/12 9:25:32 am stanzak manipulating play frames 23 a play framework, alex and natalie’s video draws attention to those features that are integral to its construction. a video titled “so is yo momma!” by user alexdh92 emphasizes the fact that yo momma jokes can be easily inserted into the course of everyday conversation. like azaelive’s video discussed above, this video consists of only one performer who plays two parts. the entirety of the video consists of one character (whom i’ve labeled alex 1) making a statement, followed by a mother insult spoken by another character (alex 2). alex 1: [looking into a mirror] “god, i’m so ugly.” alex 2: “well so is your momma!” alex 1: “this t.v. is so big!” alex 2: “and so yo’ momma’s boobies!” alex 1: “this show is so stupid.” alex 2: “well, so is yo’ momma!” alex 1: [holding up a piece of paper] “i’ve got testicular torsion!” alex 2: “well, so does yo’ momma!” alex 1: [playing a video game] “you’re a s– [bleeping noises] little f– [bleeping noises]!” alex 2: “well, so is yo’ momma!”24 the insults spoken here are highly abbreviated and unsophisticated when compared to standard yo momma jokes. the jokes here are left to the audience to parse and reconstruct. the first joke in the above transcript could be expanded to fit the structure: “yo momma’s so ugly that she’s as ugly as you.”25 this clumsy joke is neither complex nor original, but that is precisely the point of the video. alex’s performance highlights the simplicity of the yo momma joke structure by demonstrating how easily the joke can be constructed in almost any speaking context. even the joke about testicular torsion works on some level despite its impossibility due to both its humorous incongruity as well as its insinuation of masculinity. the video ends by testing the limits of the yo momma joke’s applicability to non-play frameworks. alex 1: [talking on a cell phone] “what, she’s dead?” alex 2: “and so is yo’ momma!” alex 1: “no, no, not now, my mum’s just died in a horrible car crash.” alex 2: “ooo, that’s awkward.” alex 1: “not as awkward as yo’ momma!” this humorous turn reverses the roles played by the two participants throughout the video. here, alex 1 sets up a serious scenario that resists the imposition of a cfr_2012.indb 23 10/19/12 9:25:32 am manipulating play frames stanzak 24 play frame by his double; alex 2 recognizes that he has transgressed the boundary for appropriate play. however, in this instance the situation that establishes this boundary is imaginary, part of a play framework designed by alex 1. alex 2’s response “ooo, that’s awkward” denotes his disengagement from play. it is at this moment that the participants’ roles are reversed; it is now alex 1 who turns seriousness into play. a video by user zksbrothers also exploits the simplicity and wide applicability of yo momma jokes, but employs a more dramatic method of conveying this commentary. the description for this video summarizes the main plot: after watching “yo mamma” jokes for many hours, stephen becomes obsessed, and can’t stop making his own jokes (zksbrothers 2007). the video includes a cast of five older teenage boys and is comprised of a number of scenes in which stephen goes to extreme lengths to interrupt normal, non-play speech and activities, including sleeping, getting dressed, talking on the phone, and fishing. throughout, stephen hides nearby, waiting for the appropriate opportunities to interject. in one scene, stephen runs to a group of three boys in order to tell them, “that’s what your mother said last night.” the last thing said in the video was “see you later,” but stephen was too far away to possibly hear this, implying either that stephen has preternatural hearing or commenting on the applicability of this insult to a wide variety of contexts. in another scene, stephen hides himself on the roof of a house and listens in on a conversation between two of the boys. boy in brown shirt: “sorry i was late coming over here. i, uh, was driving and there was this crazy kid that came out and he was screaming yo mamma jokes and it was really weird.” chris: “yeah, that was probably stephen. he stayed up all night on the internet watching those stupid yo mamma jokes and now he can’t stop.” stephen: “your mother can stop…last night!” [laughs] chris: “where is he? where is he? what now?” stephen: [jumps off the roof] chris: “oh my god! oh my god! are you all right?” stephen: “ah, yeah, i’m fine. but your mom wasn’t!” [laughs] the video contains several other scenes that follow this general pattern. in each, stephen disrupts seriousness with play and irritates his companions. the video ends when the other boys, provoked by stephen’s antics, beat him up (during the beating, stephen shouts, “your mom was this aggressive!”). the jokes in the above two videos are incredibly simplistic, even by yo momma joke standards, but this simplicity is evaluated and manipulated by the videos’ creators. as seen in these examples, serious actions are quite easily cfr_2012.indb 24 10/19/12 9:25:32 am stanzak manipulating play frames 25 appropriated for play activity by these abbreviated yo momma jokes. although these videos rely on these simplified yo momma jokes to drive the action, the creators are actually rejecting them as a legitimate source of humor. the humor in these videos comes not from the jokes themselves but rather from their performance contexts, the stuff that happens around the jokes. by devising the intricate framing techniques used in these videos, the creators add complexity to the traditional joke form and showcase their talents as innovators of play. taking play seriously another technique used to create humor in yo momma jokes on youtube is to deliberately ignore the play framework necessitated by joking. of course, this disregard of frames is feigned by participants; no actual people were offended in the making of these jokes. by pretending to ignore these play frames, participants actually draw attention to them, highlighting the act of performance rather than the jokes’ actual content. this maneuver was used in a large number of the videos studied. one extended example from sean and mike takes the referential content of the jokes themselves as being real events: mike: “man. man, i’ve got to tell you something. your momma’s so fat her senior picture, was taken aerial view. aerial? you know. that that that’s fat.” sean: “that’s where i was, that’s where my senior picture was taken. yeah.” mike: “you’re pretty fat. whew. man, your momma’s so fat, so so so fat she used a sock—. [laughing]. i’m joking, i’m joking. your momma’s so fat, she used a pillowcase as a sock.” sean: “oh shit, i think that’s what i have on. oh yea, that’s what i have. uh oh.” mike: “fatness. whew. [inaudible]. it’s ok, it’s ok. it’s alright, it’s alright. man, your momma’s so fat that the doctor went to cut her leg open and gravy started flowing out, just flowin’ like a volcano.” sean: “that happened to me two weeks ago.” mike: “are you serious?” sean: “yeah.” mike: “you are pretty damn fat.” . . . . . sean: “your momma’s so fat [whispering] that we’re in her right now. shhh, don’t wake, don’t wanna wake up her fatness.” mike: “what, what’s that stuff covering you?” sean: “poop? poopie poopie poopie” (scpafc 2007). cfr_2012.indb 25 10/19/12 9:25:32 am manipulating play frames stanzak 26 these jokes are not original (several commenters even accuse them of reading the jokes off a screen),26 but the metacommentary surrounding the jokes is. these two performers attempt to increase the humor of the jokes’ content by emphasizing their absurdity and insisting on their reality. these jokes move back and forth between play and seriousness. this movement is largely done through the selfidentification of one participant with his mother, who is being insulted by the other. the pretense of ignoring the play framework allows these two boys to gain extra mileage from traditional yo momma jokes by imagining their excessive effects as present in the real world. although other videos show performers ignoring the presence of a play framework, most take a much different course than the one above. one video that utilized this technique is a direct parody of the mtv television show yo momma. this program, which ran in 2006 and 2007, brought together the best verbal duelers from different urban neighborhoods to face off in verbal battles facilitated by celebrity host wilmer valderama. in a cyclical process typical of many folklore genres, the yo momma television show drew from folkloric dueling traditions, but was then re-appropriated by folk culture as in the parody video below. the yo momma battle in this video begins as expected: zero degrees kelvin: “yo. yo momma is like a brick. she’s dirty, she’s flat on both sides, and she always get laid by mexicans. [crowd cheers] lil’ mufasa: “what’d you say about my momma?” (lutopiansociety 2008). at this point, however, lil’ mufasa pulls out a gun and shoots zero degrees kelvin, killing him. lil’ mufasa has misinterpreted the joke as a real insult, but the audience then interprets his action as a legitimate response to the first joke. the crowd responds with the typical noises that follow an insult, and then the performer playing wilmer valderama consults with the judges and returns with a decision: wilmer valderama: “alright, so, i had a tough decision to make. uh, you both were good, but, um, i did feel that one of you stepped up the most and that one of you was dead-on with your jokes. so, now, we decided, and the winner is…zero degrees kelvin.” wilmer then speaks to the dead kelvin and presents him with his thousand-dollar prize. the video begins with an instance of play taken seriously but ends with seriousness taken playfully. not only does the video toy with the differences between play and seriousness, but also with those between life and death; the participants are unable to distinguish between both conceptual categories. cfr_2012.indb 26 10/19/12 9:25:32 am stanzak manipulating play frames 27 the last video i wish to consider is sophisticated in terms of both performance and editing. like the previous video, “gaelen and paul’s first fight” also hinges on a joke that is taken seriously by another participant. it begins with the two performers conversing while playing video games together: paul: “hey, hey. dude. i got a joke. i thought about this earlier today. yo momma is so fat—” gaelen: “what’d you say about my momma?” paul: “come on man, it’s just a joke.” [lightly shoves paul] gaelen: “what? did you just exercise physical contact in my bubble?” paul: “what?” gaelen: “did you just touch me?” paul: [stands up] “what does it matter, mr. sensitive?” gaelen: “i’m packing heat.” paul: “me too, bub.” gaelen: “tomorrow. downtown. high noon.” paul: “no, no, i can’t do it then. i’m going downtown to see a movie with joseph.” gaelen: “wait, why didn’t you invite me?” paul: “i don’t know, you’ve been kind of annoying lately. the whole bean thing.”27 gaelen: “you gave me those! you, you know what? ten minutes, front yard!” [long pause] paul: “man, we’ve got ten minutes to burn”28 the two resume playing video games together, and thirty minutes later (indicated by an on-screen message) they meet outside. in an imitation of a classic westernmovie dueling scene, gaelen and paul stand back-to-back before pacing off in opposite directions. both the background music and close-up shots of each participant’s eyes also bring to mind other western-movie genre conventions. the music suddenly changes to epic choral music as the two draw their guns and shoot. both of them are hit, shown by spurts of blood that are digitally edited into the shot. gaelen comes out on top, however. the scene ends with gaelen standing over paul, his gun pressed against paul’s head. he speaks, “i never liked comments about my momma.” this video is particularly sophisticated in the ways it draws upon western genre conventions to play with the idea of retribution, in this case for a joke taken seriously. however, at the same time that these performers are employing these conventions, they are also subverting them through parody and play. the end of the video reveals the playfulness of this western-style gunfight explicitly, while at the same time imposing an additional play framework upon the entire video. after the end of the last scene, when gaelen is just about to shoot paul, the scene abruptly changes to show the two in a bedroom, looking over pages of paper, presumably a script: cfr_2012.indb 27 10/19/12 9:25:32 am manipulating play frames stanzak 28 paul: “and that’s it! wouldn’t this be the most awesome movie idea you’ve ever read?” gaelen: “this is good stuff!” paul: “hey, hey. your momma’s so fat—“ gaelen: [menacingly, in slow motion] “what?” even in this scene, in which the viewer assumes that the play framework is not operating, is shown to be subsumed in yet another framework, as a yo momma joke is again taken seriously. this entire video contains several nested play frameworks that consistently interact with and interpenetrate each other. the viewer can never be quite sure in what framework the participants are operating at any time and this ambiguity is exploited by the two participants. conclusion although original ethnographic work on the dozens has declined in the last three decades since labov’s treatment, this gap in the scholarly literature is not indicative of a decline in its performance. the dozens have undergone significant changes since abrahams and labov conducted their fieldwork, but there are also telling similarities that demonstrate a continuity of form and content across generations of children and adolescents. a strictly textual study comparing the dozens collected in the 1960s and 70s with those collected today might emphasize such continuity as evidence for the power of tradition. analysis of performance contexts, however, shows that although the jokes remain the same, the message has not. i have identified here one key site where yo momma jokes continue to be told among peers to an audience that evaluates their performance. my survey of contemporary yo momma jokes on youtube shows that this form of the dozens is still vital among youth who have adapted this traditional joke genre to changed social and technological contexts. here, digital video technology has provided contemporary youth with means by which to innovate and reinvent a somewhat stale joke form, and internet sites like youtube have facilitated the communication of these creations with a wider audience. however, this study is far from conclusive. the videos here are only a sampling of those available on youtube, and youtube is only one website where such jokes are shared, reinvented, and performed. i have identified three techniques by which performers innovate yo momma jokes, but further research of a wider sample of jokes would undoubtedly uncover a wider range of maneuvers. ethnographic work on yo momma jokes told offline would go far in identifying ways that internet performance contexts shape the content, structure, and execution of jokes. this study points to the rich and vital possibilities of internet folklore, but much work remains to be done by folklorists in the realm of vernacular culture on the internet. cfr_2012.indb 28 10/19/12 9:25:32 am stanzak manipulating play frames 29 notes 1. this text is censored in the original article. 2. alternately spelled yo momma, yo mama, yo mamma, and yo moma. in video transcriptions, i have used the spelling “yo momma” unless other spellings are specified in the video’s tags or title, in which case i use that spelling. i use the grammatically incorrect “yo momma” rather than “yo’ momma” as an emic classification; no youtube videos surveyed for this project used the contracted form in their tags or titles. 3. one video dubbed a skit by weird al yankovic over the children’s cartoon “naruto” (a video that has since been taken down due to a copyright violation) and another dubbed yo momma jokes from the blue collar comedy tour over a world of warcraft video (krooltee 2008). 4. labov identifies ten different forms the dozens can take, based on form. see labov 1972, 128-42. 5. in 1972, labov briefly discussed dozens performed among white peer groups. notably, he observed that performances of the dozens by white peer groups were largely restricted to a limited set of insult routines. one of these is what labov calls the “you are so x that y type,” which includes yo momma jokes (140-42). 6. one consistent connection to urban black culture that finds its way into yo momma jokes on youtube consists of those videos inspired by the mtv television show yo momma, which ran for three seasons between 2006 and 2007. this show took place in large cities (los angeles, new york, and atlanta), emphasized urban culture, and pitted two people against each other in a verbal battle. the winner received a cash prize and advanced in the competition. the structure and content of these battles differed significantly from their vernacular counterparts, but it is obvious that some youtube videos observed took inspiration from the television show. 7. however, sometimes the pretense of competition is maintained, although it is obvious to viewers that such competition is scripted. this is particularly true of those videos that take inspiration from the yo momma television show, which maintains a strong competitive element. i will touch on such staging later in this paper. 8. this video has since been removed by the user. 9. although bergen and binsted use traditional yo momma jokes that are fully formed and divorced from performance contexts, my own ethnographic work with yo momma jokes on youtube supports their cognitive function. as will soon be seen, young children are capable of grasping the structure of yo momma jokes, but often struggle with providing content that successfully manipulates scalar relationships. 10. indeed, i could find no yo momma joking sessions performed between participants who did not know each other. this is not particularly surprising, as most of the sessions i observed on youtube were videotaped and hence selfselected for participants that knew each other. however, there are many other videos on youtube that are recordings of spontaneous rather than scripted events cfr_2012.indb 29 10/19/12 9:25:32 am manipulating play frames stanzak 30 observed by the recorder, and my survey did not turn up any recording of an impromptu yo momma joking session between strangers. scholarship on the dozens also largely upholds this trend, and i speculate that further ethnographic evidence on yo momma jokes in particular would uphold this claim. one notable exception is in the mass media. the yo momma television show on mtv pits participants from different neighborhoods against each other, but these battles are planned by producers for a mass media market. 11. although i could not identify alejandro’s exact age, he appears to be between five and eight years of age. 12. this video has since been removed by the user. 13. of course, this trend is partly the result of the search terms i used in this study. however, a brief search for phrases such as “yo daddy,” “yo sister,” and “yo brother” returns videos that feature mostly yo momma jokes. jokes with targets other than a mother are comparatively rare, and usually told at the same time as yo momma jokes. 14. as will be seen later, however, sometimes this duel framework is artificially created. for example, several videos constructed a dueling relationship through clever editing, thus pitting the participant against himself. this phenomenon will be explored later in the paper. 15. in some cases, the participant clearly intends for his audience to be the target of these jokes and invites video responses and comments as replies to his verbal attacks. one notable example of this type of video by youtube celebrity shane dawson garnered several hundred video responses and more than 100,000 comments as of september 2012, four years after the original video was posted (shanedawsontv 2008). 16. this video has since been removed by the user. 17. the idea of play as faked combat is especially pertinent to verbal duel forms, as much of the tension inherent in such duels revolves around maintaining this distinction. 18. remarks on the unoriginality of the jokes themselves is one of the more frequent responses to yo momma joke videos on youtube. users often critique the video for using videos taken from somewhere else, although others often respond that yo momma jokes by their nature are unoriginal. 19. this video has since been removed by the user. 20. the conclusion of this joking session ends logically enough with simulated violence when one brother takes offense to a joke, which is another technique employed by performers of contemporary yo momma jokes to increase the humor. 21. comment by user ilovejustin2525, found on the page for the video when brothers fight 3. 22. this video has since been removed by the user. 23. this video has since been removed by the user. 24. this video has since been removed by the user. 25. this kind of reconstructive work is modeled on labov, who also looked at the structure of these abbreviated dozens of the “x is so y” type. for examples of how labov reconstructed these abbreviated dozens, see labov 1972, 154. cfr_2012.indb 30 10/19/12 9:25:33 am stanzak manipulating play frames 31 26. the comment by user astalavista123321 is indicative of the general tone and language of other such comments: “ok that was so gay that gay people laugh at you for being gayi mean,wtf dude,the yo momma’s so fat, she fell in love and broke it and i think there was one more that was actualy funny, ok, but why the hell must you act like that? and the kid on the right side of the screen was fucking retarded..i mean,he kept forcing himself to laugh.and as many others have said,i even found the site were you were reading the jokes from, so bloody come up with one and take credit for it.” 27. this refers to another video by the two posted a month earlier, in which gaelen eats some beans. his ensuing flatulence causes an explosion. the purpose of the video, other than entertainment, was for the pair to experiment with software that creates special effects. this video has since been removed by the user. 28. this video has since been removed by the user. works cited abrahams, roger d. 1962. playing the dozens. the journal of american folklore 75 (297):209–20. ayoub, millicent r., and stephen a. barnett. 1965. ritualized verbal insult in white high school culture. the journal of american folklore 78 (310):337–44. azaelive. 2009. yo mama jokes! battle. youtube; 2 min., 16 sec.; video. http:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=okos-bfekpm. bateson, gregory. 1972. a theory of play and fantasy. in steps to an ecology of mind, 177-93. new york: ballentine. bbumps123. 2008. when brothers fight 3. youtube; 1 min., 47 sec.; video. http:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=-v_tkse8d7i. bergen, benjamin, and kim binsted. 2003. the cognitive linguistics of scalar humor. in language, culture, and mind, ed. m. archard and s. kemmer, 1-13. stanford: csli publications. dollard, john. 1939. the dozens: dialect of insult. the american imago 1 (november):3–25. goffman, erving. 1974. the frame analysis of talk. in frame analysis: an essay on the organization of experience, 496-559. boston: northeastern university press. halfcastkid. 2008. extreme funny yo mama jokes. youtube; 1 min., 30 sec.; video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scjfwwp9f4e. krooltee. 2008. world of warcraft yo mama fight, horde vs alliance. youtube; 2 min., 38 sec.; video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zs98ly2pkiy. labov, william. 1972. rules for ritual insults. in studies in social interaction, ed. d. sudnow, 120–69. new york: the free press. lange, patricia g. 2007. publicly private and privately public: social networking on youtube. journal of computer-mediated communication 13 (1). http://jcmc. indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/lange.html. lefever, harry g. 1981. “playing the dozens”–a mechanism for social-control. phylon 42 (1):73–85. cfr_2012.indb 31 10/19/12 9:25:33 am manipulating play frames stanzak 32 lutopiansociety. 2008. yo momma (final cut). youtube; 3 min., 58 sec.; video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6n2nysi4sym. mcdowell, john h. 1985. verbal dueling. in handbook of discourse analysis, ed. t. a. van dijk, 203-11. london: academic press. mcmahon, felicia r., and brian sutton-smith. 1999. the past in the present: theoretical directions for children’s folklore. in children’s folklore: a source book, ed. b. sutton-smith, j. mechling, t. w. johnson and f. r. mcmahon, 293–308. logan: utah state university press. scpafc. 2007. funny yo mama jokes. youtube; 4 min., 22 sec.; video. http://www. youtube.com/watch?v=rexd1k5aogo. shanedawsontv. 2008. yo momma youtube battle! youtube; 4 min., 59 sec.; video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsukwnteb8k. spectator24. 2007. my top yo momma jokes!!! youtube; 4 min., 28 sec.; video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrn7mpdbubi. thecomputernerd01. 2007. yo mama jokes ((( 4 year old edition ))). youtube; 3 min., 19 sec.; video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syriaka_oxa. zksbrothers. 2007. zks brothers: yo momma! youtube; 8 min., 48 sec.; video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wf8-eapiceq. cfr_2012.indb 32 10/19/12 9:25:33 am 33 zashikiwarashi, the ghost that is saving japan linda kinsey spetter zashikiwarashi is a ghost which is well known in japan but not well known in the western world. richard dorson did briefly mention this ghost in his folk legends of japan (1962), a book that he began with high praise of kunio yanagita, the “father of japanese folklore,” who first wrote about zashikiwarashi in 1910 in his tono monogatari (which translates legends of tono). michiko iwasaka and barre toelken also mentioned the ghost briefly in their book ghosts and the japanese (1994), and they pointed out that the spirit of zashikiwarashi has been associated with the spirit of unborn children, either through abortion or through mabiki, which was an old practice of killing some children right after they were born so there would not be too many mouths to feed. even though zashikiwarashi is not well known outside of japan, for the past few years japanese culture has been inundated with zashikiwarashi stories in numerous manga, anime, tv dramas, novels, movies, stage plays, musicals, computer games, short stories, newspaper articles, magazines, internet websites, folklore books and children’s books. in my opinion, these stories relate to a number of social problems that japan is now experiencing: a low birth rate because young people do not marry until they are almost 30, a high suicide rate, bullying, a phenomenon known as “hikkikomori” (young men and women who withdraw from society to stay in their rooms because of their inability to interact with society), and the economic necessity of families often having to live apart because of their jobs. this is not to even mention the depression and despair of the 2011 tsunami which killed more than 15,000 people and displaced more than 340,000 people in japan. zashikiwarashi literally means “tatami mat child.” tatami mats are the traditional flooring made of woven rice straw in most japanese homes. in the older versions of this tale, zashikiwarashi is a child ghost only seen by children; it brings good luck to the homes it visits and bad luck to the homes it leaves. the oldest, most traditional version of zashikiwarashi is of a little girl, dressed in a kimono, with a topknot on her head (see figure 1). sometimes an extra child in the counting of children is zashikiwarashi. figure 1. the traditional form of zashikiwarashi, a little girl in kimono with a topknot on her head. sketch by kiyomi nakano. cfr_2012.indb 33 10/19/12 9:25:33 am zashikiwarashi, the ghost that is saving japan spetter 34 always, the spirit of zashikiwarashi has been associated with abandoned or aborted or lost children. in recent versions, there seems to be a thematic element emphasizing the desire of the child to be born or taken in. an example of this kind of story can be seen in the 2007 anime film, mononoke: zashikiwarashi, by takashi hashimoto. a pregnant woman is traveling and is caught in a rainstorm. she begs the people at an old hotel to let her stay there, but they refuse because the hotel is full. she keeps begging for the sake of her unborn child, so at last they put her in “that” room which is usually never used because it is full of zashikiwarashi spirits. the hotel had previously been a brothel, and prostitutes had buried their unwanted children below the tatami mats in that room. all night long, the zashikiwarashi spirits haunt and torment the woman, until at last she agrees to give birth to them, removing the talisman from her stomach that had prevented their entry into her body. in an earlier manga comic book story entitled “enai enai baa,” published in 1981 by osamu tezuka, probably the most beloved manga artist ever in japan, a man goes to a resort hotel to study for his exams, but he is constantly tormented by a mischievous zashikiwarashi ghost baby, who wants to play (see figure 2). finally the man gives up trying to study, and plays with the ghost. magically, the man does very well on his exams, and he credits it to the lucky ghost. the ghost gets the man to promise that he will one day marry and allow the ghost’s spirit to enter his baby. the man marries and takes his bride on a honeymoon to the same resort hotel. when the hotel catches on fire, the couple escapes, but the man rushes back into the burning hotel to rescue the tatami mat which houses the zashikiwarashi spirit, even though everyone thinks he is crazy to risk his life for a tatami mat. he takes the smelly tatami mat to his home, and his wife often tries to throw it away, but he rescues it every time, leading the wife to wonder what kind of crazy man she has married. she becomes pregnant, and at the hospital he drags the smelly tatami mat into the hospital room, and as she gives birth to the child, we can see that the spirit of zashikiwarashi has happily entered the child, and the ending is quite happy for everyone. again, in this story we see the desire of children to be born. in a 2006 young people’s novel, yuta and his strange friends (yuta to fushigina nakamatachi), by tetsuro miura, a young boy is being bullied by many of his classmates. he becomes friends with five zashikiwarashi, who teach figure 2. zashikiwarashi portrayed as a baby, as in osamu tezuka’s 1974 manga “enai enai baa.” sketch by kiyomi nakano. cfr_2012.indb 34 10/19/12 9:25:34 am spetter zashikiwarashi, the ghost that is saving japan 35 him self-defense. they like him because his friend is a girl who always carries a baby doll on her back. the zashikiwarashi like her because she seems to like babies. in the young people’s novel, a zashikiwarashi who befriends yuta is a wild-haired boy (see figure 3). however, in the 2008 musical stage play from the same novel, the zashikiwarashi are not in the form of young children but rather look like old men (see figure 4). they are still wearing diapers, and since their diapers have never been changed, their rumps have grown big and they smell bad. because they like the bullied boy, they encourage him and teach him how to defend himself against the bullies. when he fights with the bullies, their fighting magically changes into a dance every time, and the bullies find that dancing is more fun than fighting. the musical stage version of this novel was presented by the famous shiki theatre company all over japan, and i was lucky to see one of the presentations in kitakyushu city. it was fun watching the five zashikiwarashi fly through the air above the audience. in the novel and the stage play, yuta the boy learns that rather than withdrawing from society, he can become a positive force in society. this story seems to address the current japanese problem of “hikkikomori.” hikkikomori is a social phenomenon which is said to be affecting as many as 20 percent of japanese adolescents now; the young people withdraw figure 3. zashikiwarashi as a wildhaired boy, as in the 2006 children’s novel yuta to fushigina nakamatachi (yuta and his strange friends). sketch by kiyomi nakano. figure 4. zashikiwarashi as an old man, as in the 2008 musical stage play of yuta to fushigina nakamatachi (yuta and his strange friends). sketch by kiyomi nakano. cfr_2012.indb 35 10/19/12 9:25:35 am zashikiwarashi, the ghost that is saving japan spetter 36 from society into their rooms and do not emerge, possibly because of some perceived socially devastating experience they have suffered. the story about yuta and his experiences with the zashikiwarashi teaches children to make themselves strong and to value their lives. another film version of a zashikiwarashi story, “natsushojo” by gyo hayasaka, has been shown in private audiences since 1995 but has never been distributed in theaters. i learned about it in a book called atomic bomb cinema by jerome f. shapiro, a hiroshima university professor (shapiro 2002, 258-59, 261-63). in this film, a link between zashikiwarashi and the atomic bombing of hiroshima is made. a man and his wife were caught in the bombing. they were separated, but they both survived. the man saw his high school classmate, a young woman, dying in the burning river. there was nothing he could do to save her. his wife, who was pregnant, lost her baby. later, they moved to an island near hiroshima. when a very young little girl came to their door a few years later looking for a place to find shelter, both the man and woman thought she was a zashikiwarashi. the man thought she was the spirit of his lost classmate whom he felt guilty about for not being able to help. the woman thought the child was the spirit of her lost baby. the man seems not to value his own life and behaves recklessly, while the mother learns to value her life even more and gladly accepts the little girl as her own child. incidentally, after the atomic bombing at hiroshima, the abortion rate in japan was the highest it has ever been. people were worried about the effects of radiation on their unborn children. now, in modern times, the abortion rate is again high. birth control pills are illegal in japan; they can only be prescribed to help a woman regulate her period. so, aside from using condoms and the rhythm method, abortion is the most common form of birth control, and japan’s current birth rate is the lowest or second lowest in the world. recently i have been collecting information about mizuko kuyou, which is a religious ceremony to honor the spirit of an aborted baby. mizuko literally means “water baby” and refers to a child that has been aborted or otherwise died before birth. single motherhood is still a stigma in japan, so abortion often seems the only choice for young girls who become pregnant. after the abortion, girls usually contact a buddhist temple on their own without their families’ knowledge to purchase a small mizuko jizo god in the shape of an infant. these actions are usually pursued not so much because of guilt but because of a fear that the spirit of the dead infant will come back to figure 5. zashikiwarashi in the form of a mizuko statue. mothers often place such statues at temples in memory of their lost children. sketch by kiyomi nakano. cfr_2012.indb 36 10/19/12 9:25:35 am spetter zashikiwarashi, the ghost that is saving japan 37 haunt and cause trouble in the person’s life, so annual visits to the mizuko jizo to deliver presents, and to dress it up in baby clothes, are ways that women who have aborted their children can appease their spirits. you can see many of these when you visit a temple, little statues of babies lined up side by side, usually in red hoods and bibs. in the mononoke anime film which i mentioned earlier, in which the pregnant woman stayed in a room full of zashikiwarashi spirits, the spirits were in the form of small mizuko statues (see figure 5). not to be confused with the playful child ghost zashikiwarashi is another zashiki figure called “zashikionna” (zashiki woman). this creepy female ghost, as portrayed in a graphic 1993 manga novel by mochizuki minetaro, does not bring joy or luck, but rather stalks young men in classic horror fashion (see figure 6). she seems to be a modern blend of an inverted zashikiwarashi and the vengeful japanese demon ghost oiwa. a new movie about the traditional zashikiwarashi came out in april 2012. the movie is entitled “home: itoshi no zashikiwarashi” which translates home: our dear zashikiwarashi. it is based on the 2008 novel, itoshi no zashikiwarashi, by hiroshi ogiwara. in this story, a family with many problems is forced to move to the country because of the father’s job transfer. the father is having troubles with his new supervisor, the boy has asthma, the girl is being bullied at school, the mother is overwhelmed with caring for the huge, old-fashioned house, and the grandmother is showing signs of dementia. but gradually, zashikiwarashi, the ghost of the house, a mysterious little girl in kimono with a topknot on her head, makes herself known first to the boy, then the grandmother, then the girl, and finally the mother. the family’s luck begins to improve in every aspect. in one of the most touching scenes of the movie, the child ghost is seen sleeping on the mother’s back as the mother is cooking. the father is offered a chance to go back to tokyo with a big promotion, and at a family meeting, the group decides they should stay together and so they agree to go as a family group. guess who goes with them? even though the father himself has never seen the ghost, he accepts the ghost, and at a restaurant on figure 6. zashikionna (“zashiki woman”), who seems to be an inverted variant of zashikiwarashi combined with the demon spirit oiwa. this evil ghost stalks young men. sketch by kiyomi nakano. cfr_2012.indb 37 10/19/12 9:25:35 am zashikiwarashi, the ghost that is saving japan spetter 38 their way back to tokyo, he asks for a table for six, and after the family of five has been seated, he pulls out the sixth chair for zashikiwarashi, a fully accepted member of the family. in ordinary japanese life, when a family has children well situated in schools, the father normally would have gone on to his new job alone and commuted to home on weekends, but this film emphasizes the importance of a family living together. one of the elements in this story is that as the grandmother descends into dementia, she begins to think that the zashikiwarashi ghost is the embodiment of her brother who died as a child, just as the hiroshima film characters also saw the ghost as the embodiment of an abandoned friend or lost child in their lives. thus, zashikiwarashi comes to be very personal for people who have lost someone. at the same time, zashikiwarashi spreads joy and happiness everywhere. the people who are willing to accept zashikiwarashi into their lives have good luck. this element is exaggerated in one of the manga cartoon magazines called “jigoku sensei nube (hell teacher nube)” in a story by shou makura, in which a little zashikiwarashi girl (figure 1) just walks down the street and everything she passes suddenly turns to good: a dog that had just died from eating insecticide suddenly springs back to life, a couple with their baby suddenly sees the baby stand for the first time, children who only had mudpies for their party suddenly have a real cake, and a man discovers he has a winning lottery ticket (makura and okano 1996). good luck is certainly something that the people of japan need right now, and it seems that this friendly ghost is being called upon to deal with many of japan’s current social problems. the problems of hikkikomori, the young men and women who withdraw from society, and also the phenomenon of young women who decline to marry and who choose to stay in their parents’ home without beginning new families of their own, are contributing to talk about “japan’s lost generation,” i.e., a generation of babies not being born. the japanese government is actually working on ways to induce women to marry and have babies, as the old-age pension system will eventually collapse without the birth of new babies. one of the results is that companies are being encouraged to build day care centers so that mothers can work and have their children cared for at their place of work. i cannot help but think that the proliferation of zashikiwarashi stories at this time is somehow functioning in a special way to help japan deal with its current social problems. works cited dorson, richard m. 1962. folk legends of japan. tokyo: charles e. tuttle. home: itoshi no zashikiwarashi (愛しの座敷わらし) (home: our dear zashikiwarashi). 2012. screenplay by narito kaneko based on the novel by hiroshi ogiwara. director seiji izumi. toei. film. iwasaka, michiko and barre toelken. 1994. ghosts and the japanese: cultural experience in japanese death legends. logan, utah: utah state university press. cfr_2012.indb 38 10/19/12 9:25:35 am spetter zashikiwarashi, the ghost that is saving japan 39 makura, shou (writer) and tsuyoshi okano (artist). 2007 [1996]. jigoku sensei nube (地獄先生ぬ～べ～) (hell teacher nube) (volume 15: zashiki warashi no kanashiki kako no maki (座敷童子の悲しき過去の巻) (zashiki warashi’s sorrowful past) 128: 119–138. minetaro, mochizuki. 1993. zashikionna (座敷女) (zashiki woman). tokyo: kodansha. manga. miura, tetsuro (writer) and minami midorikawa (artist). 2006. yuta to fushigina nakamatachi. (ユタとふしぎな仲間たち) (yuta and his strange friends.) tokyo: kodansha. illustrated children’s novel. mononoke: zashikiwarashi. (モノノ怪「座敷童子」) 2007. screenplay by ikuko takahashi. director kenji nakamura. animation director takashi hashimoto. mononoke film partners. dvd. originally broadcast as two episodes in a television series about mononoke in 2007 on the fuji network system. ogiwara, hiroshi. 2008. itoshi no zashikiwarashi (愛しの座敷わらし). tokyo: asahi. shapiro, jerome f. 2002. atomic bomb cinema. new york: routledge. tezuka, osamu. 1974. “inai inai baa.” (いないいないばあ) big comic august 25, 1974: 125–160. pub. shogakukan. manga. yanagita, kunio. 1975. the legends of tono, trans. ronald a. morse. tokyo: the japan foundation. (originally published as tono monogatari (遠野物語) by kunio yanagita in 1910.) yuta to fushigina nakamatachi. (ユタと不思議な仲間たち). (yuta and his strange friends). 2008. stage play by shiki theatre company (gekidan shiki). director asari keita. based on the 2006 novel by tetsuro miura. cfr_2012.indb 39 10/19/12 9:25:36 am 41 young children’s table talk with peers in early childhood settings robyn m holmes as mechling (2000) noted, mealtime is both a biological necessity and a social activity. mealtime has been acknowledged as a context and setting in which children can acquire language competencies and skills. during mealtime, young children have the opportunity to interact socially with both adults and peers. for example, cote (2001) compared the mealtime experiences of preschool children in two different classroom settings. she found that the structure of mealtimes was related to children’s language learning opportunities. she compared language use during mealtimes to other times of the day and introduced strategies to help encourage children’s discourse during mealtime events. other studies such as those by snow and beals (2006) have explored mealtime events as they relate to children’s language competencies and skills. the relationship between mealtime and language development has also been investigated cross-culturally. for example, majorano, cigala, and corsano (2009) explored teacher-child and peer to peer speech in italian nursery schools. they found that children were linguistically active during mealtime compared to other times in their routine such as free play. in fact, they found that children produced longer utterances and more complex speech during mealtime. thus the nature and context of this activity helped shaped children’s language skills, development, and competencies. others cross-cultural comparisons on children’s conversations include tulviste et al’s (2010) work on estonian, finnish, and swedish children’s peer discourse. they focused more upon the types of speech children use and how culture guides peer conversations. employing participant observation, stone (1992) analyzed preschoolers’ spontaneous conversation that takes place in the classroom. using categories such as content, structure, and form, he found that children typically utilize three forms of narrative. in the classroom context, the greatest number of narratives were produced during lunchtime and directed toward teachers. he found that preschoolers, similar to adults discuss events that happen outside of the classroom and also use a “show and tell approach” (375). in his sample, children’s narratives focused upon personal experiences, family and friends, and dreams or movies. he concluded that adults and children should share mealtime as the child searches for a responsive partner. many previous studies on children’s conversations have focused upon adult to child rather than child to child speech. as blum-kulka and snow (2004) noted, few studies have systemically explored peer to peer conversation outside of the play context. exceptional studies that have investigated the content of young children’s peer to peer conversations during non-play contexts include works by o’neill et al. (2009) and holmes (2011). o’neill et al. (2009) investigated the content of young children’s speech in peer conversations. they video recorded the conversations of a class of preschool children during snack time, twice a week for cfr_2012.indb 41 10/19/12 9:25:36 am young children’s table talk with peers holmes 42 approximately 500 speech episodes. raw linguistic material was coded for speech initiations, person reference, semantic content, time, and location. they found boys were slightly more verbally active than girls, conversations were primarily dyadic, most topics involved people, jokes were infrequent, food was a topic in only a small percentage of conversations, and children produced more comments than questions. they concluded that preschoolers are working on a theory of mind through their social and linguistic interactions with peers. other studies have focused upon the social nature of children’s speech. for example, hamo and blum-kulka (2007) explored the purpose and function of language in israeli preschoolers’ peer interactions. in their view, discourse is a unique linguistic, social, and cultural phenomenon. in their work, they acknowledged the daily moment by moment social construction of peer culture in addition to the collaborative creation of discourse as it relates to individual development. their focus was twofold; talk as activity and the use of conversation as a medium to help children develop social ability. in a related work, kryatzis and green (1997) used a vygotskian lens to examine the relationship between the social construction of children’s narratives and peer relationships. using subsamples of preschool and middle school children, they suggested that children’s discourse serve as a medium through which children socially construct. there are peer culture, identity, and friend relationships rather than linguistically analyzing children’s speech, another approach to understand children’s language use has addressed preschool children’s understanding of conversational structure. the sociolinguist william corsaro (1986; 1990; 1997) has extensively studied how young children use language and discourse to communicate their social status and understand their position within their peer groups. in the interpretist view, children use language to both collaboratively construct and understand their social worlds. kryatzis (2004) presents a review of this approach and its focus upon how children utilize language to both create and reflect their social worlds and relationships. one issue that surfaces is the concern children, even young children, have with power in their peer groups. in this case, children’s ability to establish and maintain relationships with peers is reflected in their ability to use communication effectively to create and maintain social order. this can be accomplished by teasing, manipulating adult categories, and controlling conversations. this is the essence of peer talk (see also karrebæk 2011; kryatzis, ross and koymen 2010). empirical studies on children’s use of language to reflect their social status include kyratzis, marx, and wade’s (2001) ethnographic work. they examined how preschoolers use language to mark social status and ranking in a friend group and found that children used specific control acts to regulate the behavior of others in the group. powerful girls used mitigated pretend statements, whereas powerful boys employed unmitigated declaratives and direct commands. researchers such as anderson (1990) focused upon children’s use of linguistic markers for power in pretend play. in the neighborhood setting, goodwin (1990, 1993) explored african american children’s strategies for establishing dominance hierarchies and alliances. she continued this line of inquiry (2007) by focusing cfr_2012.indb 42 10/19/12 9:25:36 am holmes young children’s table talk with peers 43 upon language as a medium through which young children mark their power. as wolf (1996) suggested, child to child conversations may provide the context for critical language lessons, since the inequality and power differentials in adult to child speech are not present in peer speech interactions. finally, in her work with preschoolers, holmes (2011) investigated the nature and content of peer conversations in a classroom context during lunchtime. she also explored how the activity of eating at school framed the children’s conversation and play and the role of gender in guiding the conversations and play forms. audio and written recordings of conversation using a time sampling unit of five minutes were employed. simultaneous play and non-verbal behavior were also recorded. she found that children primarily conversed with peers and not with adults. pervasive conversation topics were food, family, and daily events. child to teacher speech frequently involved requests for assistance. girls were more active verbally than boys in almost all instances except in asking the teacher questions. boys played with their food, told jokes and engaged in taboo humor and language play more than the girls did. the present work is aligned with the following viewpoints. first, children are regarded as active agents in their own socialization (schwartzman 2001). second, setting is acknowledged as guiding the behavior that occurs within it. in agreement with mechling (2000), children’s meal times are viewed as social contexts that frame the conversation and behavior that emerges in that setting and playing with food is a normative behavior for children. third, peer conversations serve as a medium in which children create their own culture, manage their relationships, convey social status, and discuss what is culturally relevant to them. in short, children’s peer conversations reflect children’s everyday experiences in their micro and macro social worlds (göncü 1999). this project on children’s mealtime conversations is framed within the sociocultural perspective which emphasizes the social functions of children’s discourse (corsaro 1990; hamo and blum-kulka 2002). this view focuses upon the interconnectedness between culture and behavior as it is reflected in children’s conversational skills. such interactions take place within a social context in which cultural norms and social relationships are constructed. this project focuses upon the role of children’s conversations in providing a medium by which children convey and share commentary on their social world, relationships, status, everyday events, and the adult world. of particular importance are conversation and language. one might expect preschool and kindergarten children’s conversations to vary according to cognitive understanding and language competencies; popular children will control table talk; status will shift situationally; and girls and boys will engage in these acts in different ways. method participants participants included preschool children who attended a private, not for profit learning institution primarily for children 3-5 years of age with additional enrichment programs for older preschoolers. there were 70 children (31 boys, cfr_2012.indb 43 10/19/12 9:25:36 am young children’s table talk with peers holmes 44 39 girls). ages ranged from 38-70 months with a mean age of 48.2 months. children were primarily from middle income families of european american heritages. parental /guardian consent return rate was 78% (70/90). some children attended school every day, some three days a week, and others two days a week. all children were eligible for the lunchtime program. an institutional review board granted approved for this project and the director and caregivers granted additional consent. children were treated according to the american psychological association’s guidelines for ethical treatment of participants (american psychological association, 2002). since the participants were minor children additional resources were consulted (christensen and james 2008; fraser 2004). there were seven kindergarten children (two boys, five girls). the children attended a private, for profit learning center whose mission includes teaching educational as well as life skills while emphasizing all domains of development. children who attended the center may be between 6 weeks and 12 years of age. the participants attended a full day kindergarten program, ranged in age from 5-6 ½ years, and were of diverse ethnic heritages. parental consent return rate was 75%. all children were treated according to the american psychological association’s (2002) guidelines for ethical treatment of human participants (see greene and hogan 2005 for information on conducting research with children). an institutional review board, the cooperating preschool and learning center, and parents/guardians granted approval for this project. design and procedure this project utilized a qualitative design, a naturalistic observation approach, and the technique employed was written and audio recordings of children’s conversations in the natural setting of the classroom during lunchtime. in the preschool, raw material was gathered between spring 2009 and fall 2010. the children were visited three days a week for 25 weeks. lunchtime lasted for approximately one hour per visit. total observation time was approximately 75 hours. the author and her four research assistants were naturalistic observers in the classroom. they neither initiated conversations nor engaged the children in interactions. within several weeks the children acclimated to the researchers’ presence, although sometimes the children invited them into their conversation or asked them for assistance with their lunch. the latter requests included opening a lunch box, pouring a drink, or inserting straws into juice boxes. the kindergarten fieldwork period took place between fall 2007 and spring 2008. the following procedure was maintained in the preschool field site. after the children had selected their seats for lunch, the researchers filled in a seating chart. they then graphically noted the individual children for whom they had permission to record. initially, teachers provided the children’s names for the seating chart to ensure accuracy. even after the researchers learned the children’s names, teachers were consulted when the researchers were uncertain about a child’s identity. after the seating charts were completed, the researchers positioned themselves on different sides of the tables so they could record independently the children’s conversations from different vantage points. each researcher had a notebook and pen with which to record the children’s speech. conversations were also cfr_2012.indb 44 10/19/12 9:25:36 am holmes young children’s table talk with peers 45 audiorecorded to verify the quality and accuracy of the written notes. on some occasions, the volume of the children’s voices during lunchtime was so loud that the researchers had to rely exclusively on written field notes. the researchers selected tables for recording conversations based upon which table had the greatest number of children for whom consent was granted. order of observation and recording proceeded from most to least number of children for whom consent was granted. on some occasions when children were silent at a table, researchers moved on to the next table. in the preschool, table compositions changed with every lunch time in part because attendance was voluntary and different children attended preschool on different days of the week. to begin recording conversations, the researchers synchronized their start time and each began recording the children’s conversations at the designated tables. each table was time sampled for five minutes since lunchtime lasted approximately 30 minutes. when the 5 minute period had elapsed, the researchers moved on to the next table. all of the children’s speech was recorded as well as any accompanying play and non-verbal behavior. children who were seated at the table for whom consent was not granted were simply marked with an x in the field notes. several trial sessions were accomplished prior to the start of the project. the researchers then compared field notes to determine discrepancies and gaps in the recorded material. after ten trials, the researchers were able to achieve 88% compatibility. undecipherable words and phrases were discussed immediately after the recording session in a quiet room of the preschool. the author was the only observer in the kindergarten field site. she adhered to the same procedures as those used in the preschool classroom. coding the author trained the four research assistants to code the children’s speech. first, all the researchers independently transcribed their recorded material. next, these transcriptions were compared across all researchers to verify their accuracy. once the accuracy of the transcriptions was verified, sample text was selected for training the researchers how to content code the material. a sample category was selected and each researcher worked independently coding randomly selected material from the children’s actual conversations. additional categories were added and all coders worked independently on the selected material. first, text was highlighted in different colors each color corresponding to a different category label. then coders exchanged the highlighted material to discuss any discrepancies. next, phrases that could be subsumed into a larger category were extracted. these were also checked for accuracy. when a discrepancy arose it was discussed at that time. after ten trials, no discrepancies arose and the actual coding began. the coding procedure was performed following guidelines that appear in the methodological literature (e.g., bernard 2006; côtê, salmela, and russell 1995) and utilized by the author in an earlier study (holmes 2011). first, verbatim phrases were extracted from the children’s conversations. next, phrases that contained a particular person, idea or thought were grouped together. these phrases were used to form higher order categories. for example, if children spoke about a cfr_2012.indb 45 10/19/12 9:25:36 am young children’s table talk with peers holmes 46 family member, pet, or an event these were incorporated into the cultural domains of family and life events. if children conversed about a food item such as when two children were conversing about their lunch, these events were subsumed into the higher order category, food. next, transcribed text was highlighted using different colors to designate larger cultural domains. color coding larger domains helped the coders compare material and efficiently locate raw material and examples for larger cultural categories. sometimes a child’s conversation might contain criteria for more than one category. for example, john and joe were involved in a conversation that contained multiple topics. they shared stories about their siblings and the food in their lunchboxes. utterances that contained different people, ideas, or thoughts were coded for every response, placed into their respective higher order categories, and counted separately. this coding procedure has been employed in other studies that utilize semi-structured interviewing and open ended questioning (dupuis, bloom, and loughead 2006; holmes 2005; holmes 2011). category frequencies were tallied to yield percentages of behavior. speech responses were used rather than conversational units given the pervasive occurrence of transduction reasoning (piaget 1952). results in this section the nature and content of the children’s conversations with both peers and teachers are presented. all raw material was coded, analyzed, and tallied for descriptive statistics and is presented by sex of child and the conversational partner. in table 1, the content and frequency of the children’s conversations to peers and teachers are presented (see table 1). this group of children, both boys and girls, spent the majority of their lunchtime speaking with peers. the nature of these linguistic acts focused upon food and making general declarative statements. these accounted respectively for 36.0% and 39.4% of all peer conversations. by contrast, children spent only 10.9% of their time engaged in conversation with their teachers. gender differences surfaced with respect to both the nature and the content of the children’s speech to peers and teachers. one major pattern that emerged was that girls were responsible for most of the conversation during lunchtime. second, only a few major cultural domains or higher order categories were uncovered from the children’s conversations. food was a major topic of conversation for these children. however, girls spent more than twice as much time (68.6%) on this topic than boys (31.1%). similarly, girls made approximately twice as many declarative statements (60.1%) than boys (39.9%) and interjected daily events in their conversations. girls accounted for 75% of these instances. in addition, girls (86%) spoke about their families much more at lunchtime than boys did. as a group girls approached and spoke with their teachers more (76.7%) to their teachers than boys did (23.3%). cfr_2012.indb 46 10/19/12 9:25:36 am holmes young children’s table talk with peers 47 there were two categories in which boys and girls participated equally. one was related to speech content; the other was behavior that accompanied speech and eating. for example, boys (41.2%) and girls (58.8%) gave almost equal attention to games and things related to play in their conversations and in this sample both boys (47.6%) and girls (52.4%) played with their food. worthy of mention is the category family and the nature of the children’s conversations. interestingly, pets were the topic of conversation more so than either siblings or parents. in the latter subcategory, only mothers were mentioned in conversation. not one child included his or her father in conversations on the topic of family. examples of child speech to teacher both preschooler and kindergartener speech interactions with their teachers were similar. most were phrased in the form of questions either for assistance or information. for example, one preschooler, michele, asked her teacher, “can you open this [a snack container].” similarly, jeff, a kindergartener, asked his teacher, “is tia coming today?” his classmate, linda, asked her teacher for another helping, “miss lynn, can i have more spaghetti please?” declaratives also appeared in the children’s speech to their teachers but with less frequency than questions. for example, on separate occasions two different preschooler girls announced to their teacher, “kristin has tic tacs!” and “i ate my sandwich.” kindergarten children used more declarative speech to their teachers and asked them fewer questions than preschool children did. one major difference was the length of the utterance. kindergarteners tended to use longer sentences than most preschoolers, often by several words. table 1: frequencies for topical categories during mealtime categories sex of children boys girls total peer discourse talk about food 75 165 240 general declarative statements 105 158 263 talk about daily events 6 18 24 talk about play or games 7 10 17 talk about family 7 43 50 child to teacher discourse talk with the teacher 17 56 73 peer play play with food 10 11 21 cfr_2012.indb 47 10/19/12 9:25:36 am young children’s table talk with peers holmes 48 the topic of food for both preschoolers and kindergarteners, food was a major topic of conversation. children asked questions about food, declared their gustatory likes and dislikes, traded and shared food, and described their food. some interactions were simple rhetorical questions. for example, mira, a preschool girl, asked her tablemate, “i don’t like chicken. do you want it?” other speech interactions were simple declarative statements such as when uma told tess, “i have chocolate juice.” her tablemate, alana declared to her table, “this is not good, i have a bagel. my mom put jelly on my bagel. my sister has a spoon.” sometimes the conversation involved several preschool children at the table who participated. michael: this french fry is big. richard: look at my dorito. jill: this is not a burrito, that’s lemonade. richard: it’s a capri sun and i said dorito. it’s spicy nacho. it’s so spicy. trish: it’s fruit punch. richard: it’s capri sun. trish: no, it’s lemonade. similarly: christina: i don’t want these. hope: so don’t eat them. christina: can i have fruit snacks? hope: those are sour. ellen: what are (points to fruit holly)? adam: i have an ice pack to keep my food cold. do you want this? (to his sister) i don’t want my yogurt. interestingly, kindergarten children frequently stayed on topic when discussing food and rarely included or moved to another topic of conversation. for example, the following conversation illustrates the children’s ability to contribute to a conversation while centering on the topic of food: kevin: drink your milk if you want to get strong. kim: i don’t like the soup. kevin: do you like chicken noodle? kim to the teacher: i like those (pears) julia to amy: can i have your green beans? i like green beans. amy: i don’t like cheese. i don’t like this. is this white cheese or yellow cheese? on some occasions, conversations included more than one topic, such as this one that began with food. the following conversation was between two preschool cfr_2012.indb 48 10/19/12 9:25:36 am holmes young children’s table talk with peers 49 boys, one of whom began his conversation about food using the home context to initiate the dialogue: brian: i don’t have anything in my house to eat. tim: you should have gotten mcdonald’s. brian: i wanted burger king for the spiderman toy. preschooler conversations were typical of this age group and often included more transductive thinking and rapid movement from one topic to the next in a given speech event. for example, the following conversation began with a query about beverages and concluded with the children’s pets. taylor: what flavor is your juice? steven: strawberry. oliver: but they have chocolate in them. i think my mom’s going to take me to the beach. taylor: the other day was hot. steven: yeah, i was burning myself. taylor: i got two star war ships. steven: yeah my dog’s a girl. she’s my sister. oliver: when i first got my dog i was dressing her up in girls’ clothes. one time my dog bit me on my side. when the teacher was a participant in the conversation, her speech helped shaped the conversation. todd to rosie: we have a fish. melissa to teacher and table mates: i have a pet that’s a sandwich to me. teacher to melissa: what’s its name? melissa: wingnut! i have a hamster. teacher: who named it? melissa: me! my mom calls me that, i named the hamster that. that’s why. it’s a guinea pig from a guinea pig pond. you could rent a hippo there. teacher: have you ever done that? melissa: no, mommy won’t let me. hamsters are small and fat. i’m all done. this is my hamster. family family was a major topic of conversation that illustrated the importance of the children’s ever increasing social worlds. family members, events, and pets often were shared with table mates. in many cases, conversations began with either a declarative fact about family or a question about one’s family. the following conversation is illustrative. cfr_2012.indb 49 10/19/12 9:25:36 am young children’s table talk with peers holmes 50 jenn: enrique! enrique: what? jenn: one of my cousins has a real phone. enrique: she’s only 8. maryanne: i have two brothers, one is seventeen and he has a girlfriend, a real phone, and an ipod. michaela: i’m not allowed to have one. younger children’s declaratives regarding family often contained instances of transductive thinking as in the following example: teresa: my aunt cut my hair. i have a cheese bar! i love chocolate chips! i love chocolate chips! they’re so yummy. some children made a public announcement at their table and depending on social status, the child’s utterance might receive a response. for example, when jimmy stated, “my sister’s in the girl scouts,” the table ignored the statement and continued the conversation on the topic already on hand. jimmy had lower social status than the children controlling the conversation at the time. kindergarten children’s conversation regarding family paralleled the preschoolers’ with less of an emphasis on pets, though they also were mentioned. amy to teacher: do you have a mom? jack: my brother’s name is alex. amy to jack: my sister and other sister. she’s 18. jack to amy: how old is your brother? play with food both preschool and kindergarten children played with their food. it served as a focal point of the conversation, to help the children pass time while they were eating, and it helped socially construct playful interactions. much of the play was transformational, and in assimilative fashion children substituted food for real life objects that they resembled either in form or function. for example, michaela manipulated a banana like it was a telephone and shaped the peels like a slide, saying “now i made a slide” while using the table. maria transformed her circular ice pack into a food item: “look at my ring today” as she put her finger through the hole of her ice pack. kindergarten children were also creative with their food play, turning peas into necklaces and mashed potatoes into volcanoes. media influence as is common with children of this generation, these children were heavily invested in cultural experiences the media provided for them. this included movies, dvds, computer games, and television. these experiences became fodder for their conversations. for example, the following conversation was generated from the princess diaries movie at an all girls table: cfr_2012.indb 50 10/19/12 9:25:36 am holmes young children’s table talk with peers 51 michaela: my favorite princess is cinderella! amy: i have all the princess movies! michaela: which is your favorite? i like cinderella. [gather around lunch bag pointing to] “i like that one.” similarly, at her all girls table stephania stated, “i watched hannah montana and at the end jackson was in the tub and the kitties were in the tub. you have twinkle toes. are you three? i’m five.” conversational topics regarding media were often gender specific. for example, the following dialogue occurred at an all boys’ table. girls never discussed these tv and comic characters. david: i like power rangers. noel: is there a red one? david: yes and a blue and red one like spiderman. noel: are spiderman power rangers? jamie: there’s a pink one. kindergarten children also integrated the media in their conversation though their understanding and memory, for the material was more detailed than preschoolers’. for example, the following conversation took place during one lunch and continued for the next few days as a topic. it was based upon the movie “alvin and the chipmunks.” jenn, a child with higher social status, controlled the conversation. jenn: chicky chicky wow wow and dances. [noel sings with her in a duet]. jenn: now was that a boy or a girl who did this? [she is rotating her hips as she sings]. amy adds: alvin and the chipmunks did it like this in the movie. then they threw something at the daddy. julia: then alvin hid it behind his head like this and then he sang chicky wow wow. gender both the preschool and the kindergarten children used more linguistic markers for gender in their conversations and speech. the following is a typical example of preschooler speech that highlights gender as a social category. michaela: we want to play with the boys. amy: yeah, the boys. michaela: we do want to play. kindergarten children illustrated their understanding of gender identity, awareness, and gender as a social construct in the following speech events. jack was the most popular boy in class and regularly controlled both the topic and the tempo of lunchtime conversations. cfr_2012.indb 51 10/19/12 9:25:36 am young children’s table talk with peers holmes 52 jack: you are a girl and i am a boy. i’m on your team and you’re on my team. jenn: i’m going on, the boys team that mean to chase us. jack to table counting the table: there’s five girls and three boys. bobby: raise your hand if you are a girl. amy: raise your hand if you’re a boy. jack to jenn: you need to get someone else on your side. jenn and wendy: no, she’s on my side. i’m on the boy’s side. friends both the preschool and kindergarten children were aware of the importance of friends as playmates. for example, these two preschoolers illustrate their conceptions of friends and their ability to categorize friends by setting. james: the other day i slept over my nana’s house. do you know joseph? nicky: no. james: he’s my friend. i play with him at home. the kindergarten children often discussed play dates at their table. talia to jenn: i’m having a play party and tom is going to invite you? can you come to my house? jack to bobby: i’m still your friend and are you coming to my party? some preschool children drew attention to degrees of friendship when it came time to food sharing. this event was reserved only for one’s best friend. for example, carin to jackie: want a punch (fruit punch)? nicola: he’s my best friend. jackie: you don’t even know him. nicola: yes, i do. he’s in my gym class. daily events the children’s daily, everyday experiences were often the topic of conversation. in many instances, children both commented on and tried to process their everyday experiences. for example, talia, a kindergartener, couldn’t wait to tell her tablemates about her impending visit to the dentist. talia: i have to go to the dentist. he is going to take pictures. he puts a little thing in and then he takes it out. cfr_2012.indb 52 10/19/12 9:25:37 am holmes young children’s table talk with peers 53 amy: if your tooth is wiggling, they take a picture. talia: i need to take pictures. steven to talia: pictures don’t hurt i got a picture right here. my friend used to live across from me. she got a shot in her mouth. talia to amy and jenn: you have to go to the dentist even if you don’t have a cavity. in families with siblings often children recounted for their table mates the arrival and/or birth of their new sibling. for example, jenn to david: “my mom’s tummy came apart when she had the baby and they had to put it back together. next they do that for all moms.” play with language unexpectedly, kindergarten children enjoyed word play more than the preschool children did. preschool children tended to sing nonsense syllables or meaningless words. kindergarten children enjoyed using ordinary words in comical if not borderline taboo ways, hoping to get the attention of adults within earshot. amy: know what, my brother says “butt.” it’s a potty word. my other brother says the word too. i eats butt. mine’s a chicken butt, butt, butt. taboo humor only the kindergarten children seemed to include taboo topics such as bathroom humor, parodies on etiquette, and things that grossed each other and adults out. the children seemed to take pleasure in these topics and did not seem deterred even if their teacher was within listening distance of their conversation. jack, one of the most popular boys in class, often introduced the topic and controlled the flow of the conversation. jack to his table: raise your hand if you eat poop. all raise their hands. jackie: i do like the brains (he talking about the broccoli in the chicken soup) david: brains taste like worms. i ate all of mine. they taste like book racks. jackie: did you hear me? listen, i am making farting sounds. amy to jenn: everybody poops. everybody eats. everybody drinks. everybody pees. cfr_2012.indb 53 10/19/12 9:25:37 am young children’s table talk with peers holmes 54 discussion the preschool and kindergarten children in this project found table talk to be a social and enjoyable activity. mealtime conversation was widespread and began as soon as the children unwrapped their food and prepared for mealtime. although much of the literature has focused upon adult involvement and participation in children’s language development, these children primarily conversed with and preferred peer partners during mealtime, even when their teachers were present in the setting. for example, massey’s (2004) and dickinson et al.’s (2008) work reported that children were more talkative when an adult was present and seated with the children. teachers in this project were always in the classroom and near the children, though they never sat with the children while they ate. interestingly, the children actively engaged their peers in conversation throughout the lunch period and interacted with adults only when they needed assistance of some kind. this was true for both age groups. girls were primarily responsible for child-initiated speech to their teacher and asked their teachers for assistance more than boys. boys asked their teachers questions more so than girls. this contrasts with leman et al.’s (2005) findings where boys dominated their teacher’s attention. this may be due in part to differences in age and contexts. leman et al.’s work was with older children in collaborative learning groups. the present study involved younger children during mealtime. as a group, girls were more heavily invested in lunchtime conversation than boys and this may be partially explained by differential socialization processes in which girls are more likely to concentrate on the social aspects of their world (maccoby 1998, 2007). with respect to conversational topics, food was discussed more than any other topic followed by general declarative statements and family. as mechling (2000) noted, the most discussed topic – food – was framed in part by the setting. children also conversed about topics relevant to them such as their family and friends while including topics that are framed by the setting itself such as food. interestingly, girls were responsible for more than half of conversations revolving around food and this may also be due in part to socialization differences where girls are more attuned to body image and what they eat than boys are (maccoby 1998; 2007). these findings contrast with those o’neill et al. (2009) reported. several possible factors may explain the differences between their study and the present work. first, in o’neill et al’s work, conversations were mainly dyadic, adults were not present in their setting, the setting was a laboratory preschool, and children from eastern european heritages were included in their sample. they also recorded conversations during snack time rather than lunchtime, seating was prescribed, and food was served buffet style. it is possible that the findings in the current study differ from o’neill et al due in part to the differences in the setting, freely selected seating, differing meal time events, and the fact that children brought their lunches from home. family and daily events surfaced in the children’s conversations in part because they were culturally relevant to them and part of their social world (göncü, 1999). cfr_2012.indb 54 10/19/12 9:25:37 am holmes young children’s table talk with peers 55 interestingly, children included their pets in family topics and when individuals were involved, mothers were the focal family member. none of the children mentioned their fathers in any family conversations. as expected, girls discussed these topics more than boys did. interestingly, boys talked to each other more than girls and conversed more about family, play dates, and personal events than girls did. jokes and teasing were rarely observed. this is supported by other empirical findings (holmes 1992; reifel 1986). as mechling (2000) noted, mealtime frames the content of children’s speech and their play behavior. children frequently played with their food and appeared to enjoy doing so (reifel 1986). gender differences also surfaced during play at lunchtime. both boys and girls enjoyed playing with their food, and this supports holmes’ (1992) work where girls engaged in play with food along with the boys. as mechling (2000) noted, children’s play with food often takes place in the presence of peers and facilitates the use of food as a prop in pretend play. holmes (1992; 2011) also found that play during mealtime also centered upon the food. numerous examples in the literature support mechling’s (2000) and bronner’s (1995) utilization of food in this unique way in children’s cultures (holmes 1992; 2011). although there is an existing literature on the influence of gender on children’s conversations (leman 2002; leman, ahmed, and ozarow 2005; leman and lam 2008), surprisingly few, if any studies have explored how gender influences the extent and content of children’s conversations. for example, leman et al. (2005) found that in mixed collaborative groups, boys capture their teacher’s attention more than girls do. in line with maccoby (1998; 2007), differential gender socialization should influence children’s conversations in content, interaction style, and quantity. if one accepts the two cultures approach, girls in the united states generally are socialized to be more cooperative and attuned to social relationships than most boys are. in contrast, boys are socialized to be more competitive and dominant than most girls are (leman et al. 2005). also of interest, findings from this study support those of holmes (1992) in so far as boys were primarily responsible for the taboo humor and jokes and rhymes. it is possible that engaging in such acts helped boys established their social status in the classroom, whereas girls used conversation as the mechanism with which to solidify this social status. boys may have played with food more than girls did; however, girls clearly talked about their food more than boys did. one interesting difference between the preschoolers and kindergarten children was the occurrence of conversations that included taboo humor and bathroom etiquette. although guerra (1989) found preschoolers engaged in verbal swaggering – attempts to leave conversations in children’s control – these preschooler children neither uttered declarative statements nor discussed any off color material during their lunch time. by contrast, kindergarten children seemed to take pleasure in trying to gross each other out or moving into fuzzy boundaries with taboo body humor such as farting. there were some limitations and challenges to this study. first, the sample was homogeneous with respect to ethnicity and socioeconomic status. second, in the preschool lunchtime attendance varied widely. third, children freely chose their own seats, which often produced single-sex tables. finally, there was no attempt cfr_2012.indb 55 10/19/12 9:25:37 am young children’s table talk with peers holmes 56 to control for the children’s familiarity with one another. thus, some conversations may have been influenced by the children’s prior relationships. future research might pursue content and text analyses of young children’s peer conversations. such studies will help expand our knowledge about the cultural transmission of knowledge between children, the role of language in that process, and the role of children’s peer conversations in helping them interpret and rebel against the adult world. other studies might focus upon young children’s talk as power with peers, given the importance of forming and maintaining friendships in children’s lives. finally, the inclusion of different settings and diverse cultures and the nature of same-age and cross-age conversations would also be interesting avenues to pursue. notes 1. the author gratefully acknowledges the cooperation of the director, caregivers, teachers, and, of course, the children. she also extends her thanks to her 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(2011), i found a relationship between a local “vanishing hitchhiker” legend and a murder that took place near owego, new york about 180 years ago. this legend, “the white lady of devil’s elbow,” raises an interesting question. to what extent can speculation about a violent death that happened many years ago influence the development of a local legend that belongs to a migratory legend pattern? this essay will explore the development of “the white lady of devil’s elbow” from the early 1900s to the present, examining legend texts and reports of “white lady” pranks played by teenagers. it will also delve into the white lady’s symbolic meaning, in an effort to explain why she has been important to young people in upstate new york for many years. near owego, new york on route 17c, some people who have driven past a hill called devil’s elbow have claimed to have startling experiences. legends about these experiences describe a young woman wearing a long white dress. narrators who learned her story in the early twentieth century have described her as a young victorian lady carrying calling cards who travels in a horse-drawn carriage. in the 1980s, 1990s, and early twenty-first century, adolescent and young adult narrators have described her as a prom queen or a bride. before vanishing, she asks the driver to stop at the bottom of devil’s elbow hill. when the driver goes to a nearby house to ask about the young woman, he learns that she died in an accident on the hill many years ago. in some versions he sees her in a portrait, wearing a lovely white dress. from the mid-1920s to the present, teenagers have enjoyed playing pranks with white dresses, using flashlights and other special effects to scare passing motorists. in 1932, a steam shovel operator digging up some dirt near devil’s elbow hill discovered the skull of a young woman who seemed to have been murdered with an axe or a long, flat board about a hundred years ago. almost sixty years later, tioga county historian thomas c. mcenteer wrote that this young woman, who was killed near the site of a tavern built in the early 1800s, may have become the central character of “white lady” legends. mcenteer suggests that belief in a “real ghost” has grown from this evidence of a local murder but that clever pranks, such as a teenaged girl standing below devil’s elbow hill wearing a white dress covered in scotch-lite tape, have made the ghost seem less serious and less believable (1990, 750). my own fieldwork with owego area residents during the past two years has resulted in a different conclusion: both legends about the murder and pranks by teenagers have encouraged belief in “white lady” legends. all of the people who have talked with me about the murder have found it to be a significant event closely connected to “white lady” legends. i have learned two versions of the story of the young woman’s murder around 1832. the first version explains that the young woman was killed by a rough, drunken tavern visitor after going out cfr_2012.indb 61 10/19/12 9:25:37 am the white lady of devil’s elbow tucker 62 alone, while the second states that both she and her husband died at the hands of a greedy tavern owner who had stolen their cow (or cows) and did not want to give up his new livestock. the second version is, of course, more prosaic than the first; the murder of a married couple in order to keep a cow or cows seems less mysterious and troubling than the murder of a lone woman near a tavern. as jan harold brunvand has noted, horror legends tend to emphasize the vulnerability of young women and men who go out on their own, especially at night (1981, 11). legends about young women dying after going out alone deliver warnings about staying safe and following guidelines for proper behavior. this legend pattern has been firmly established in american culture. since american legends tend to emphasize dangers for young women, it is not surprising that few of the legend texts i have collected in recent years mention a husband. over time, owego’s “white lady” legends seem to have become more like other “vanishing hitchhiker” legends that are well known across the united states. the legend cycle explicated by brunvand (1981) and others generally features one person (usually a woman but sometimes, in “jesus hitchhiker” versions, a man) hitchhiking alone. the following “white lady” legend, told by my student and owego area resident irene in 2004, includes a husband whose body vanishes: a long time ago, on a dark and stormy night, a newlywed couple was driving over devil’s elbow hill road. it was so foggy that they never saw the headlights of the oncoming truck—the groom’s body flew out of the car on impact. the body was never found. the bride, however, was crushed in the car. she died instantly. sometimes, on a dark and stormy night, if the fog is just thick enough, you will see the bride standing in the road waiting for her groom to join her. just for reference, devil’s elbow is called that for a specific reason. the road goes almost vertically up to a point and down again very steeply. the road isn’t in use any more, but the story is still told and some have even been said to see a white figure standing on the old abandoned road. devil’s elbow hill is located on the way to waverly, new york if you’re taking old 17. perhaps this vanishing husband is a vestige of the murder story that includes both a husband and a wife. only the wife becomes a visible ghost, although the husband presumably dies too: an indication that the young woman’s plight requires more attention than her husband’s does. this “white lady” variant and others focus on young women who die after a wedding or prom. the sudden downshift from joy to tragedy highlights life’s fragility and warns young women to be careful. somewhat similarly, teenagers’ pranks combine joy with tragedy; besides giving kids the chance to have some illicit fun, they highlight deaths and hauntings described in local legends and films. scholars of children’s and adolescents’ folklore have noted the shock value of such pranks and the importance of the link between the legend and the prank or joke. sheldon posen’s “pranks and practical cfr_2012.indb 62 10/19/12 9:25:37 am tucker the white lady of devil’s elbow 63 jokes at children’s summer camps,” for example, describes the dramatic impact of a ghost seeming to appear immediately after its legend is told (1974, 303-9). linda dégh’s “symbiosis of joke and legend: a case of conversational folklore” (1976) shows how easily people can move from horror to humor when discussing local legends. i have studied “scary maze game” pranks, in which a child or adolescent frightens a younger sibling by making him or her play an internet game in which the face of linda blair from the exorcist suddenly pops up on the screen (tucker 2011). such pranks have given their players so much pleasure that they have become the subjects of youtube videos for the entertainment of friends and others: an audience that seems to be virtually limitless. researching “scary maze game” videos and comments online has helped me understand the relationship between fright and delight in young people’s prank playing. a prank that suddenly scares someone belongs to the broad category of ilinx play: the kind of play defined by roger caillois (1961) as vertigo-inducing playful behavior. in contrast to agon (competition), alea (chance), and mimicry (simulation), ilinx subjects the player to dizziness and disorientation. swinging or twirling on a merry-go-round can cause dizziness; so can the sudden appearance of something shocking and/or frightening. ghosts that appear quickly not only shock viewers through the rapidity of their appearance, but also scare them by bringing to mind tragic events delineated in legends. the child or adolescent who plays the prank can enjoy the pleasure of victimization, while the one upon whom the prank is played may enjoy the stimulation of getting scared and can certainly take pride later on in having survived that process. since scary pranks tend to be highly memorable, they reinforce awareness of legends and films to which they are related. i have learned, while talking with students of mine who lived in the owego area during their teenaged years, that “white lady” pranks sharpen young people’s awareness of local legends. in order to play a good prank related to this legend, it is necessary to know the legend’s details well. after the prank takes place, the story of its occurrence—either by its players or by others—refers to aspects of the legend that local residents find to be important, as well as highlighting the audaciousness of the kids who dared to go out on the road to scare drivers passing by. owego teenagers’ “white lady” pranks have ranged from simple displays of a white dress at the base of devil’s elbow hill to elaborate use of flashlights, reflecting tape, pulleys, ropes, and other materials. since flashing lights can cause accidents at night, local police have pursued and, in some cases, apprehended “white lady” prank-players (mcenteer 1990, 750). since police have gone after these pranksters, the stakes of playing such pranks have become very high. according to my students, successful “white lady” prank-players have earned admiration from friends for their bravery, especially around halloween. besides tracing the development of these local legends and pranks, i have wondered why legends about the young female ghost of devil’s elbow have kept the descriptive term “white.” all of her outfits—visiting dress, prom dress, and wedding gown—are white, a color that suggests innocence and joy. godey’s lady’s book, a popular periodical from the nineteenth to the twentieth century, includes lyric poems such as “leura” by anson g. chester, in which a young woman cfr_2012.indb 63 10/19/12 9:25:37 am the white lady of devil’s elbow tucker 64 receives praise for having “a brow pure as snow-flakes/from winter’s white wing” (1850). white wedding dresses have been common in england and the united states since 1840, when queen victoria married prince albert. unlike queen victoria, the white lady is a young woman alone (or at least separated from her husband) on a dangerous country road next to a hill with an evil-sounding name. perhaps she wears white to show that she represents goodness and proper female behavior that will resist the devil’s influence. her story works well as a warning legend for young women, reminding them to preserve their safety, innocence, and happiness. another reason for the white lady’s persistence may be the prominence in the owego area of german immigrants, including some from southern germany. german immigrants have also settled in nearby pennsylvania, which has a “white lady” legend associated with a curve called “devil’s elbow” on wopsononock (wopsy) mountain. the famous german legend of the “white lady,” about a countess who kills her two children after coming to the conclusion that her husband will not let them live, originated from schloss plassenburg in bavaria in the fourteenth century. like other “la llorona” legends, this one emphasizes the horror of a mother killing her own offspring. although scholars have determined that the countess kunigunde of plassenburg never had children, the story of her child-killing has been remarkably durable and is still told by guides at schloss plassenburg today (nickell). in his scholarly study die weisse frau (1984 [1931]), martin wachler mentions that members of the plassenburg court used to dress up as the white lady to scare people away from the castle. young people who heard stories about pranks of this kind may have tried similar pranks of their own. even if they didn’t play pranks, they knew the legends and could tell them to their own children later on. any ghost that insists on staying in one place for hundreds of years accrues multiple layers of meaning. in possessions: the history and uses of haunting in the hudson valley (2003), judith richardson analyzes information about the ghost of a young woman from the village of leeds who has been important to her community for almost 250 years. this young woman, anna dorothea swarts, was the black, german, scottish, spanish, or indian servant or slave of a rich man named william salisbury; she died after her master beat her and had her dragged behind a horse in 1762. although not all the facts of this woman’s terrible death are known, it is clear that her ghost is as firmly attached to the place where she died as the white lady’s ghost is to devil’s elbow hill. richardson notes that “the ghost is both vestige and novelty, positive and negative, powerful and powerless, a possessing force that descends upon the town and through history, and something passive that is possessed” (123). this intriguing set of antitheses reminds us that ghosts are powerful and enigmatic beings who do not give up easily. it may be difficult for us to understand their motivations, but if they stick around for many years, we can feel sure that they have a reason for staying; and that reason probably goes beyond the traditional idea that ghosts like to haunt the locations of their deaths. there are plenty of reasons why the white lady persistently haunts devil’s elbow. representing young women’s hopes for safety, respectability, and joy, she cfr_2012.indb 64 10/19/12 9:25:37 am tucker the white lady of devil’s elbow 65 guards a dangerous curve next to the site of a tavern where a young woman died violently and was buried furtively during the town’s early days. is the white lady herself this young woman? some townspeople, including the county historian, think she is. it is also possible to view her as a spiritual descendant of the white lady of schloss plassenburg, who suffered from a difficult relationship with her husband, killed her own children, and gradually became a frightening figure for members of the court. the thread that connects this fourteenth-century countess to the twenty-first-century bride or prom queen is young women’s suffering, which takes many forms and leaves a lasting legacy. the “la llorona” legend pattern is an especially important part of this history. although the local “white lady” legend that i have studied does not include death of a child or children, its counterpart in pennsylvania does. teenagers’ perception of our local white lady tends to be more upbeat. for high school students who live near owego now, the white lady is both familiar and strange, a famous ghost who makes both kids and adults shiver around halloween. kids with an adventurous spirit may want to play a “white lady” prank or two, because this ghost isn’t just scary; she’s also fun to imitate and encourages escapes from the police. from a kid’s perspective, the white lady is a cool community member who is there to stay. works cited brunvand, jan harold. 1981. the vanishing hitchhiker. new york: norton. caillois, roger. 1961. man, play and games. new york: free press of glencoe. chester, anson g. 1850. leura. godey’s lady’s book. november. http://www. history.rochester.edu/godeys/12-50.htm. dégh, linda. 1976. symbiosis of joke and legend: a case of conversational folklore. in folklore today: a festschrift for richard dorson, ed. linda dégh, henry glassie, and felix j. oinas. bloomington: indiana universitypress, 101–122. mcenteer, thomas. 1990. seasons of change. owego, new york: tioga county legislature. nickell, joe. 2003. legend of the white lady. csi 13:1 (march). http://www.csicop. org/sb/show/legend_of_the_white_lady/ posen, i. sheldon. 1974. pranks and practical jokes at children’s summer camps. southern folklore quarterly 38: 299–309. richardson, judith. 2003. possessions: the history and uses of haunting in the hudson valley. cambridge: harvard university press. tucker, elizabeth. 2012. “lmao—that wasnt (sic) even scary”: legend-related performances on youtube. contemporary legend series 3(l):1–14. wachler, martin. 1984 [1931]. die weisse frau. reprinted kulmbach: freunde der plassenburg. cfr_2012.indb 65 10/19/12 9:25:37 am 67 book reviews recess battles: playing, fighting, and storytelling. by anna r. beresin. foreword by brian sutton-smith. (jackson: university of mississippi, 2010. pp. xii + 168. appendixes, notes, bibliography, index.) simon j bronner a spate of books lately have signaled a dire warning about the threat to free play with the elimination of recess by school administrations and the regimentation of children at camps and after-school programs. folklorists have much to contribute to this discourse in the “war on recess” because of the association of recess play with spontaneous, evolving traditional practices controlled by children rather than administrated by adults or influenced by corporations (in the form of video games and other gadgets directing play). some advocates such as joe l. frost have even referred to a movement to counter the detrimental effects on child development with the redesign of playgrounds and the war on recess with the urgency of a “child-saving movement” (see his a history of children’s play and play environments: toward a contemporary child-saving movement, 2009). to date, much of the folkloristic attention to the issue of the decline of free play seems to have been centered in great britain with the publication of steve roud’s sweeping tome, the lore of the playground (2010), and julia c. bishop and mavis curtis’s editing of nine insightful essays in play today in the primary school playground (2001). to this bookshelf can now be added an incisive ethnography by anna r. beresin of recess at one american urban school between 1991 and 2004. readers might wonder if this focus on one school severely limits the possibility of generalizing about play and the framed activity of recess. beresin is good about contextualizing the distinctive background of the children and their environment, and yet at the same time she draws lessons from what she saw in the schoolyard that could contribute to the discourse on “the war on recess.” she clearly falls on the side of advocates for recess as essential to children’s development and she views detrimental effects to children when recess is removed. she explains the assault on recess as an adult fear of violence and she uses ethnography to show that the “roughness” of time that children have to themselves occurs primarily in the transitions in and out of organization time rather than in the activities of recess. she confirmed this observation with video and showed it to administrators who set new guidelines for moving in and out of recess. this section is probably the most revealing of the book, not only for childhood and play studies, but for the uses of ethnography. beresin also uses a narrow ethnographic lens for a wider vision about play in her drawing out children’s own views on what constitutes play—and for that matter violence—in a brief but provocative section on “keywords of the playground.” she raises, as others have done, the linkage in children’s cognition of cfr_2012.indb 67 10/19/12 9:25:38 am book reviews bronner 68 play and “fun,” and readers might wish for conversation that reveals the rhetoric of play as a mode of self-awareness. also on the wish list is visual material, since recess battles more than other studies of children’s play refers to patterns evident in visual terms. to be sure, she includes illustrations rendered by the children themselves, a reminder of the “native” terms she seeks through ethnography, but perhaps out of concern for children’s privacy, photographic figures are omitted from the book. to beresin’s credit, the photography is instrumental not only as a tool but also as a concept of frame and paradox borrowed from bateson. she sees, perhaps more readily than many folklorists, the power of child-controlled frames in the form of supposedly invented games to resist, and comment on, adult control. there is text, and musical transcription, that add to the understanding of changing expressive forms in twenty-first century childhood environments. beresin is especially concerned with a reading of the many adaptation, and in many instances, apparently unique expressions, that draw on commercial references (“mine costs more, yours costs less, mine footlocker, yours payless”). she considers the reflection of corporate exploitation of inner-city youth in this folkloric “incorporation” on the playground. she also astutely interprets the “old school” rhymes, or rather their adaptation (e.g., “mailman mailman, do your duty, ‘cause here come miss american beauty, she can do the pom pom, she can do the twist, most of all, she can make the boys kiss”) as framed performances of bodily asset and control. this question of children’s culture in conflict when expressed as free play with adult sense of restricting movement, and hence the body, also comes into play in the resources of popular culture, and especially hip-hop music, in the content of rhymes and actions. beyond this one schoolyard, beresin coins the term “gamestory” to designate the narrative intrinsic in activities children associate with the playground. her book is a starting point to decode the frames and patterns elsewhere, that is, if recess survives administrative fiats that beresin shows to derive from serious misunderstandings of what children do when they play. cfr_2012.indb 68 10/19/12 9:25:38 am 69 children’s folklore section: 2011 annual meeting the annual meeting of the children’s folklore section of the american folklore society took place in the indiana memorial union in bloomington, indiana on october 13, 2011. those present included priscilla ord, libby tucker, john mcdowell, spencer green, tom johnson, kate schramm, steve stanzak, irene chagall, julia bishop, ruth stotter, kate mccormick, and eric césar morales. spencer’s arrival at the section meeting was delayed, so libby chaired the first part of the meeting, and spencer chaired the second part. since we did not have minutes of the previous year’s meeting, we briefly discussed what happened then, including the newell prize’s amount going up as of 2010. priscilla presented the treasurer’s report, which showed that the children’s folklore section is doing very well. there has been a slight drop in the number of section members, but otherwise the section is in very good shape financially. libby presented the editor’s report. she expressed appreciation to binghamton university for covering all of the expenses of children’s folklore review and explained that the next issue of the journal would be published in november. she also said how pleased she was that indiana university’s scholar works now publishes all back issues of cfr on the internet. this is a wonderful upgrade of accessibility to the journal for students and scholars of children’s folklore. libby also mentioned that the children’s folklore enewsletter will continue to be published once a year. libby announced that there are two winners of the newell prize for students this year: spencer green, author of “disastrous alternatives: boy scout disaster stories and legends and imagining the natural world,” and steve stanzak, author of “manipulating play frames: the yo momma joke cycle on youtube.” spencer’s article will be published in this fall’s cfr, and steve’s will be published in the following issue, because there was not enough space for both articles in the upcoming issue. many thanks to chip sullivan for selecting these two outstanding winners. kate schramm announced that the winner of the aesop prize is matt dembicki, author of trickster: native american tales, a graphic collection. aesop accolade winners are stephen alcorn and samantha thornhill, authors of odetta: the queen of folk, wafa’ tarnowska, author of the arabian nights, and veronika martenova charles, author of it’s not about the rose!, it’s not about the crumbs!, it’s not about the pumpkin!, it’s not about the hunter!, and it’s not about the apple. kate proposed that catherine baer become the committee’s new chair and that anne-marie craus join the committee; kevin cordi’s membership continues. these suggestions were approved by the section. there was no old business. cfr_2012.indb 69 10/19/12 9:25:38 am cfs: 2011 annual meeting 70 new business: the children’s folklore section is bringing back the opie prize for the best recent scholarly book on children’s folklore, which will, on a one-time basis, have a fiveyear window for books published from 2007 to 2012. chairs of the opie prize committee will be john and julia. warm thanks to both of them for taking on this important task! section members also agreed that it would be fine to have a one-year lag between publication of an issue of cfr and placement of its contents on scholar works. kate schramm will continue to take care of our web page; thanks, kate! she also suggested that the section write a note of thanks to the dean of binghamton university for his support of the journal. kate mccormick suggested that cfr publish a theme issue: perhaps one on internet folklore or playground games. irene made the point that members of the aesop committee should come to afs meetings. tom recommended that someone write an article on the aesop prize for wikipedia, and julia mentioned the significant new international journal of play. all agreed to work on ideas for children’s folklore panels next year at the afs meeting in new orleans. the meeting was adjourned at approximately 1:15 pm. respectfully submitted, libby tucker cfr_2012.indb 70 10/19/12 9:25:38 am 71 notes and announcements newell prize the children’s folklore section of the american folklore society annually offers the william wells newell prize (which includes a cash award) for the best student essay on a topic in children’s folklore. students must submit their own papers, and published papers are eligible. instructors are asked to encourage students with eligible papers to enter the competition. papers must be double-spaced and submitted as a word document. on the first page, include the author’s name, academic address, home address, telephone numbers, and e-mail address. deadline for this coming year’s competition is september 1, 2013. submit papers to dr. c.w. sullivan iii, sullivanc@ecu.edu. book reviews children’s folklore review is seeking book review submissions for its next issue, to be published in october of 2013. this is an excellent opportunity for graduate students interested in building their writing credentials and demonstrating breadth in folklore, literature, and childhood studies. books are selected for review in children’s folklore review according to their relevance to the field of children’s folklore and their year of publication (within the past two years). if you would like to request a book for review, please contact the book review editor, li cornfeld (licornfeld@gmail.com). book reviews should not exceed 750 words. cfr_2012.indb 71 10/19/12 9:25:38 am 73 contributors simon j. bronner is distinguished professor of american studies and folklore and chair of the american studies program at the pennsylvania state university, harrisburg. formerly president of the children’s folklore section of the american folklore society, he serves currently as president of the western states folklore society and the fellows of the american folklore society. he is author or editor of over thirty books, including in the area of the folklore of youth and human development american children’s folklore (awarded the peter and iona opie prize by the children’s folklore section), piled higher and deeper: the folklore of student life, and campus traditions: folklore from the old-time college to the modern mega-university. robyn m. holmes is professor of psychology at monmouth university where her teaching and research interests reflect interdisciplinary and cross-cultural perspectives. she teaches courses in anthropology, child development, children’s folklore, play, and qualitative methods. current research interests include cheating at games, mealtime play, recess, and most recently, play and childhood in the pacific rim. her works include how young children perceive race, fieldwork with children, and numerous chapters and articles on topics such as play, folklore, and sports. linda kinsey spetter has a ph.d. in folklore from indiana university (1998) and is now professor of american literature in the graduate school of baiko gakuin university in shimonoseki, japan, where she has lived for 16 years. steve stanzak (sstanzak@indiana.edu) is a doctoral candidate in folklore and medieval studies at indiana university, bloomington, where he is currently completing his dissertation on medieval narratives concerning death and resurrection. elizabeth tucker, professor of english at binghamton university, is the editor of children’s folklore review. she served twice as president of the children’s folklore section and is currently president of the international society for contemporary legend research. her publications include campus legends: a handbook (2005), haunted halls: ghostlore of american college campuses (2007), children’s folklore: a handbook (2008), and haunted southern tier (2011). cfr_2012.indb 73 10/19/12 9:25:38 am 23 “i saw mrs. saray, sitting on a bombalerry”: ralph ellison collects children’s folklore robert baron along harlem streets, in housing projects and on playgrounds, ralph ellison employed his formidable gifts for observing and rendering speech play as a collector of children’s folklore. his collecting for the federal writer’s project (fwp) in 1939 represented one dimension of a life long engagement with african american folklore. it extended from traditions acquired in his youth in oklahoma city through works of fiction employing multiple folkloric genres and essays discussing the centrality of folklore for the african american experience and its indispensable role for cultural resilience. collecting at a time of heavy african american migration from the south, ellison researched folklore that embodied both a southern heritage of largely rural character and traditions adapted to a new urban environment. as a new yorker who moved permanently to harlem in 1938, ellison experienced first hand the struggles of recent arrivals adjusting to a vastly different social and cultural situation. remarking on these challenges in “harlem is nowhere”, written in 1948, he wrote of how “american negroes are caught in a vast process of change that has swept them from slavery to the condition of industrial man in a space of time so telescoped … that it is literally possible to step from feudalism into the vortex of industrialism simply by moving across the mason-dixon line”. in harlem, the “folk personality” was “caught in a process of chaotic change” (321, 325). writing on “harlem’s america” in the new leader eighteen years later, ellison saw continuity as well as change in harlem’s folklore, where “you see the transformation of the southern idiom into a northern idiom,” in “a place where our folklore is preserved, and transformed” and “the body of negro myth and legend thrives” (1966, 28). the modern and the traditional were also at play in ellison’s own fiction. he was one of the great modernist writers of twentieth century literature and, without contradiction, infused folklore throughout his work. influenced by existentialism and writing surrealistically, counting eliot, dostoyevsky, faulkner, and malraux among his literary “ancestors,” (1995f, 185) ellison all the while incorporated folklore in his work at least as much as any of his peers. writing in 1958, he stated that “i use folklore in my work not because i am a negro, but because writers like eliot and joyce made me conscious of the literary value of my folk inheritance,” and he found early in his career that the “negro american folk tradition became precious as a result of an act of literary discovery” (1995d, 111, 112). a few years after seeing that “in both the waste land and ulysses ancient myth and ritual were used to give form and significance to the material” ellison came to “realize that the myths and rituals which we find functioning in our everyday lives could be used in the same way” (1995g, 216). the “grist for my fictional mill” included “details of old photographs and rhymes and riddles and children’s games, church services and college ceremonies, practical jokes and political activities observed during my prewar days in harlem” (1994, xxvii). “i saw mrs. saray, sitting on a bombalerry” baron 24 for ellison and other major midand latetwentieth century writers, field research for the fwp provided indispensable source material, which was utilized along with experiences remembered from their working class youths in subsequent literary works. in the cultural front, michael denning notes that “the writings of the plebeian writers who worked on the projects – algren, ellison, himes, tomasi, sincliar, conroy — embodied a dialectic between fictional invention, autobiographical reflection, and urban fieldwork” (1996, 228). the fwp represented for ellison and many other writers their first employment as cultural workers. through the wpa arts projects, the numbers of people employed as artists increased vastly, and many of them, like ellison, saw that it was possible to make a living through their creative work. in new deal modernism, michael szalay contends that the wpa arts projects “led to new ways of conceiving literary labor”, creating a “newly professionalized industry of salaried writers (2000, 5), acting as, according to denning, “a way-station for the young plebeian artists and intellectuals of ethnic working-class backgrounds who would go on to careers in the federal bureaucracies, the culture industries, and the universities” (48). making a living for the first time through his cultural work for the fwp, ellison collected personal narratives from compelling harlem characters (published many years later in ann banks’s 1980 anthology, first person america), carried out extensive research about local african american history for a planned publication, “the negro in new york,” (which was never published) and took to the streets to collect children’s folklore in situ. rhymes, games and other forms of children’s folklore were collected as a major focus of the fwp in new york city. in new york city, ellison was among a group of fwp workers supervised by folklorist herbert halpert, who instructed them to “look for children’s rhymes, making specific note of the nationality of the reciter, the place of collection, and any comments made by the children. since the workers were untrained, a questionnaire for each collector’s guidance was prepared” (1946, 5). in all, about 1000 items of children’s folklore were collected, and ellison contributed approximately 100 different items. he observed children at play and noted contexts while recording texts, conducted interviews with adults as well as children, probed their memory culture, and even contributed folklore remembered from his own childhood. consisting mainly of folk rhymes, the children’s folklore collected by ellison included texts retained from southern tradition as well as others transformed and localized to new york city. while many were maintained largely or entirely within african american tradition, with some exhibiting african derivations, others were part of repertoires shared by new yorkers of diverse ethnic backgrounds. in his master’s thesis, “folk rhymes of new york city children”, which included rhymes collected by ellison, halpert singled out african american and puerto rican children as each having “unique” rhymes, while noting that they also perform variants of nearly all the rhymes he collected elsewhere in new york city. however, halpert found that rhymes introduced to harlem by migrants from the south are not disseminated elsewhere in new york city (1946,15). he suggested that a “large part of the stock of rhymes and games … held in common by white baron “i saw mrs. saray, sitting on a bombalerry” 25 and negro children dates from before world war i,” when the “color barrier” was not as strong, and the african american population was smaller (16). whatever their cultural source, the rhymes collected by ellison were distinguished by their innovative and improvisatory qualities, features often noted by him and consonant with the high value placed upon innovation within tradition in african american folk culture. according to halpert’s proposal for a book based upon the entire new york city fwp children’s folklore collection, children’s rhymes and games, more old english rhymes make their appearance” in african american children’s folklore “than in any other group, but there are, on the other hand, considerably more innovation and invention.” they were also distinguished by “a greater variety of subject matter and rhythmic pattern” than the rhymes of other groups in the fwp new york city collection (n.d., n. pag.).1 the ellison children’s folklore collection is housed in the manuscript division of the library of congress. while some of the folk rhymes he collected have been previously published, they lack the information about ellison’s collecting process and the tradition bearers that appear in the collection housed in the library of congress and which i am including in this article.2 in the collection at the library of congress, we see the collector at work as he observed, interviewed and recorded texts of children’s traditions. at times, ellison recorded variants and versions of the same folklore item. he had a keen eye for observing creativity in process through improvisation, and delight in word play suffuses the collection. ellison recognized the musicality of the rhymes, noting “polyphony” on one occasion, and referring to performance as “chanting,” implying that they could be viewed as being somewhere between speech and song. the rhymes contained influences from popular culture, specific local references, topical references, and content reflecting harsh urban realities like problems in paying rent and gun violence. much of ellison’s field research occurred near his home at 25 hamilton terrace. one report, dated october 13, 1939, described field research on “the streets and playground located in the area extending from 125th st to 145th st and between st. nicholas and lenox avenues.” this report contained the most complete accounts of ellison’s field research on children’s play, offering multi-layered descriptions of the collecting situation. he presented multiple dimensions of text, context and performance rarely before provided in collections of children’s folklore. one group of children demonstrated improvisation and individual creativity as they performed a taunt, followed by improvised lines to what ellison called a “jingle,” and a riddle. he describes their performance of folklore as an emergent process, rather than as repetition of a fixed text. we see what hymes has called a “breakthrough into performance” as interviewees move from reporting folklore to spontaneous performance (1981, 79-86): buster brown when you see a guy got on brown pants you say: buster brown went down town with his britches hanging down.” “i saw mrs. saray, sitting on a bombalerry” baron 26 when the above was given other members of the group chimed in with the following. while most of the jingles appear to have a set formula, there were many attempts at improvisation. each voice followed the other in rapid succession, giving an antiphonal effect as varied as the colors named. “yellow, yellow kiss a fellow.” “blue, blue i love you” “black, black sit on a tack” “green, green eat ice cream stick your nose in kerosene” “white, white, you can fight” hey mister, if you shut up in an iron house without any windows and you didn’t have nothing but a baseball bat? in an iron house? yeah, yeah that’s right. come on sister, what’ll you do? well, i guess i don’t know. gee, don’t you know how to play baseball? anybody who can play baseball knows how to get outa there. well how would i get out? three strikes and you out, mister … you see what he means, three strikes an you out!3 thickly describing these performances, ellison anticipated the approach to folklore as emergent performance and situated small group interaction developed in folklore studies three decades later.4 one actually sees folklore as it is created, as “living lore,” the term of fwp national folklore editor benjamin a. botkin, who stressed that folklore is “living speech … responsive to the mood of the moment,” which, rather than disappearing, was still being created, in urban as well as rural areas (1958, 190). as hirsch indicates, botkin’s manual for folklore studies instructed collectors to “submit complete field notes from every interview together with a personal history of the informant” (1988, 58). while ellison regrettably submitted minimal personal information about almost everyone he interviewed, his field notes, at their best, provide highly textured accounts of the collecting baron “i saw mrs. saray, sitting on a bombalerry” 27 of folklore in, and as, performance. in his later fiction writings, he would vividly render the performative and improvisatory qualities of speech in general, and oral folklore in particular. these writings embody a “collaboration … between oral and literary techniques and traditions; between performance and composition” which john f. callahan sees in “frequencies of eloquence: the performance and composition of invisible man” as intrinsic to invisible man (1994, 89). while ellison scholars have long emphasized the influence of improvisation in jazz upon his fiction, his folklore collecting for the fwp demonstrates an emphasis upon improvisation, emergence and performance in folklore which reemerges in subsequent literary works. ellison’s field research involved close observation of children at play as well as interviews with both adults and children to elicit traditions both in active tradition and memory culture. he drew reports and performances of folklore from tradition bearers young and old who recalled folklore from a younger age. his october 13, 1939 report included a series of descriptions of traditions both reconstructed from memory and actively practiced, with some traditions presented in the sequence in which they were performed: helen simons, of 201 w. 139th street, gave the worker the following chants. helen is now eight years old and had some difficulty in remembering some of the chants since “only the little kids play them.” the following verse was sung to the tradition melody of “pop-goes the weasel!” and as far as helen knew is not used in any of the games the children in the neighborhood play. i went up to mary’s house mary had the measles. this is the way the measles go, pop! went the measles. the following rhyme was chanted very fast and like the above was not used in a game: once upon a time, goose drink wine. monkey chewed tobacco on a street car line. street car broke, monkey choke and they all went to heaven on a streamlined boat.5 “when we play ‘blue bird’ in my window we all stand in a circle and one girl skips around behind us and we all sing: blue bird, blue bird in my window … “i saw mrs. saray, sitting on a bombalerry” baron 28 and when she gets to the one she wants to be next she taps him on the shoulder and sings: oh, johnny i’m sorry. or whatever the kid’s name is. then the one what got tapped skips around and you go like that.” london bridges all broke down (sung, to the tradition melody) london bridge is all broke down all broke down, all broke down. london bridge is all broke, my fair lady. london bridge is half built up, half built up, half built up, london bridge is half built up, my fair lady. london bridge is all built up, all built up, all built up. london bridge is all built up, my fair lady. mrs. julia fisher of 2816 eighth avenue sung the following words to a slightly varied melody of “little sallie walker.” mrs. fisher learned this version as a child in key west, florida: little sallie water little sallie water sitting in a saucer, crying and weeping for a young man oh, rise, sallie, rise, wipe your weeping eyes, and turn yourself to the water front and tell them who you love the best.6 versions and variants of “little sally walker” and “little sallie water” have been collected widely in the united states, including two versions collected by zora neale hurston in florida and included in her writings on folklore for the fwp, go gator and muddy the water (1999, 100, 101-102). another “little sallie water” was collected by ellison at the utopia children’s house. he described it as a “singing game” in which “the child chosen as ‘sallie water’ stands in the middle of circle as the others sing the song. she goes through the directions of the verse pantomime.” baron “i saw mrs. saray, sitting on a bombalerry” 29 little sallie water sitting in the saucer rise, sallie rise, wipe your winking eyes turn to the east, my darling, turn to the west, my darling, turn to the very one that you love the best put your hands on your hips, and let your backbone shake my darling shake it to the east, my darling shake it to the west, my darling shake it to the very one that you love the best. a group of young girls demonstrated singing games substantially maintained from southern folklore, embodying the creolization of traditions. one game included a refrain, “sail away, sail away, sail away,” well known in anglo-american folk song. a tap dance, perhaps a new element, was introduced in another game. had moving images and/or sound recordings also been used, african cultural sources for these games might be adduced, since, as bess lomax hawes has noted in notes to the film “pizza pizza daddy-o,” african american singing games “stylistically, especially in terms of musical and kinesic elements … seem equally clearly african, or at least afro-american as british and anglo-american in derivation” (qtd. in sanches and kirshenblatt-gimblett 1976, 69). at times, such as in the following accounts of “buckeye the rabbit,” “lady in the river and “i had a little dog his name was buster,” ellison demonstrates how the singing games of african american girls involve a tight interrelationship between song and movement, which kyra d. gaunt, in the games black girls play, sees as “embodied musical practices” (2006, 2) incorporating “intrinsic” relationships between movement and music (7). “buckeye the rabbit,” in another variant, appears in invisible man as the narrator experiences electroshock treatment after the factory accident. asked “who is buckeye the rabbit?” the narrator responds in a manner both “giddy” (1972 [1952],183) and grounding, a moment which, keith edward byerman notes in fingering the jagged grain: tradition and form in recent black fiction, brings out “cultural history” which “prevents his total loss of identity” (1985, 27). the narrator in invisible man remembers that “i was buckeye the rabbit … or had been, when as children we danced and sang barefoot in the dusty streets” (1972 [1952], 184). in harlem, ellison had observed children dancing as they sang in this children’s singing game played in both the north and the south: buckeye the rabbit i’m riding through kentucky i’m riding through the sea, and all i catch behind me is a buckle on my knee buckeye the rabbit, “i saw mrs. saray, sitting on a bombalerry” baron 30 shake it shake it with a buckle on my knee, i swing to the bottom i swing to the sea and all i catch behind me is a buckle on my knee so buckeye the rabbit shake it shake it so buckeye the rabbit shake it shake it with a buckle on my knee. the worker observed this game played by a group of five girls, four of whom joined hands and formed a circle around the fifth. all five took part in singing the above verses up to the line “buckeye the rabbit” upon which the girl in the center began dancing steps from a tap dance routine. one girl, mary suarez of 259 w. 139th st., sung the following words as she continued to dance after the others had finished one of the songs. “you jump to the front and you jump to the back and you do the snake-hips 1,2,3 a riding to the sea.” the others joined in: “so buckeye the rabbit, shake it shake it etc. upon finishing this, girls took her place in the circle and one of the others took her place, whereupon the same routine began again. the game is flexible and allows for the use of varied dance steps. the worker was informed that this game was learned from other children, while one girl, catherine mason, said she learned it in richmond va. lady in the river (a game song) there’s a lady in the river sail away, sail away, sail away there’s a lady in the river sail away, looking for her lover sail away, sail away, sail away. baron “i saw mrs. saray, sitting on a bombalerry” 31 then she found her lover sail away, sail away, sail away then she found her lover sail away, sail away, sail away. this game was not played for me but the lyrics were sung. helen and fredric lewis vividly described and demonstrated another singing game. ellison noted that it was “spoken rhythmically”: “‘i had a little dog his name was buster’ is a game that had a rhyme to it. you pick some body to get in the circle and when we sing they shake their duster.” helen placed her hands upon her hips and sang, while fred stamped his foot and clapped his hands: i had a little dog, his name was buster. i sent him to the store to shake his duster oh, come on, buster shake your duster.7 when she came to the end of the verse she shook herself and flipped the tail of her dress. helen lewis offered what she claimed was an original, collectively created “taunt”. it expresses the competitiveness and fierce identification that many new york city residents have felt for their own block. in city play, dargan and zeitlin note that streets, like public schools, buildings and playgrounds, are often identified by number in new york city, but can be the subjects of great pride. they describe play about such numbered places, and indicate that while “identified by number seemingly anonymous places in a crowded city are rendered meaningful through play” (1990, 10). this “taunt” contains, like older rhymes of southern provenance collected by ellison, the formulaic refrain, “buckeye the rabbit,” along with newer content. “when the 134th street girls get together we all say this rhyme, we made it up ourselves.” take off your shoes and stockings, and let your feet go bare. for we are the girls from one hundred-thirty-four so don’t you dare come near. so, buckeye, the rabbit, shake, shake buckeye the rabbit shake, shake so don’t you dare come near. “i saw mrs. saray, sitting on a bombalerry” baron 32 ellison documented several folk rhymes on october 13th used for quick repartee between friends or acquaintances. this speech play seems as if it might be primarily used by older children and adults: “you know this one, mister? see you meet a guy you know and he’s doing something good and you say “gee, that’s fine!” and the other guy says, “wine!!” and you say, `sho nough, that’s fine as wine, as a georgia pine two old grandmothers drinking wine.” “here’s another one. you ask me ‘gimme a nickle’” “gimme a nickle.” “go down town and tickle.” “you want a dollar? go on, say ‘yes’” “yes” “go up on the roof and holler!” ellison recorded a number of ball bouncing rhymes found, with variations, in other new york city neighborhoods and ethnic groups. ball bouncing involves hitting a rubber ball or tennis ball with the open palm, with the bouncing in time to the rhyme (halpert 1946, 41). ellison asked the children performing the rhymes about acquisition and observed that the traditions were learned from other children rather than adults – a characteristic of children’s folklore that folklorists have noted wherever it is collected: the following are rhymes chanted by little girls while bouncing their balls and were collected at the corner of 141st street and hamilton terrace, manhattan. none of the children questioned were able to tell where they learned the rhymes. in each instance they replied that they had been taught by “another girl”, or “another kid.” sometimes the writer was told that certain rhymes were the original creations of the child involved, but in no case was i able to obtain a rhyme which had been taught a child by his parents. one two three a nation one, two, three a nation, i received my confirmation in the church of the annunciation one, two, three a nation.8 one, two, three a nation doctor, doctor here’s a patient waiting for an operation, one, two, three a nation.9 baron “i saw mrs. saray, sitting on a bombalerry” 33 one two three o’lerry one, two, three, o’lerry, i saw mrs. saray sitting on a bombalerry just like a chocolate ferry.10 i had a little monkey i had a little monkey, i sent him to the country to buy a loaf of bread. along came a choo choo and knocked my monkey coo coo and now my monkey’s dead with a bullet in his head charlie chaplin charlie chaplin went to france to teach the ladies how to dance this is what he taught them: “heel and toe, clap your hands and over you go.”11 a marginal note by ellison alongside “charlie chaplin” indicates a “contemporary reference.” he collected other rhymes featuring such figures from radio, film and comic strips as charlie mccarthy, the lone ranger, rin tin tin and buster brown. remarking on the use of characters from popular culture, halpert said that “girls blithely incorporate their heroes and heroines from these media (a startling number) into the world of play” (1946, 48). like “charlie chaplin,” another rhyme which appears in ellison’s october 13th report, “gypsy, gypsy lived in a tent” was used as both a jump rope rhyme and counting out rhyme. gipsy gipsy gipsy, gipsy lived in a tent, she couldn’t afford to pay her rent. she borrowed one she borrowed two, she passed it over to y-o-u12 the october 13, 1939 report was unique in its substantial number of detailed accounts of folklore in performance. on other occasions, ellison relied entirely upon interviews, apparently recognizing that it would have been preferable to observe spontaneous performance. a report dated december 15, 1939 noted that because of the “weather and the seasonal character of the games i was unable to see, and hear, these games in the actual play situation.” he reported that these rhymes “were received near the corners of 134th and 135th streets and lenox avenue, around public school 89” and “in all instances the informants were born “i saw mrs. saray, sitting on a bombalerry” baron 34 in new york city, though several said that their parents came from the south.” p.s. 89 itself was the subject of two rhymes. in his book proposal for children’s rhymes and games, halpert indicated that there were few rhymes in the entire new york city fwp collection which referred to schools, with the exception of derogatory ones (like the ones reported by ellison). in this collecting situation, ellison noted the effect of his presence upon the performance: most of the rhymes in this group were collected in the vicinity of public school #89 and in every instance the informant was a boy. the followingrhyme reveals one boy’s attitude toward p.s. #89; the first version before he knew the words were to be taken down, and the second, more respectable version, when he saw the pencil put to paper. remember the eight remember the nine remember that ‘city dump’ 89 remember the eight remember the nine remember that ‘white house’ 89 ellison’s remarks about his impact as a collector upon the content of these rhymes reflects his awareness of the dynamics of subject/object relationships in fieldwork situations. he became at once both the subject and object of his own research when he acted as his own informant. interspersed among the texts collected in harlem are several items of children’s folklore remembered from his oklahoma childhood. ellison, after all, was part of the great migration of african-americans to northern cities, and he retained his own memory culture of southern tradition even while moving in literary circles and beginning his writing career in new york city. ellison remembered a “choosing rhyme” from 1925. other versions of this widespread counting out rhyme have been reported from canada, england, scotland and the united states:13 my mother and your mother were hanging out clothes my mother hit your mother right in the nose o-u-t spells out! a “taunt” was remembered from 1920, when he was about six years old: patty on the brooms tick patty on the sea baron “i saw mrs. saray, sitting on a bombalerry” 35 patty tore his britches and layed it on me another taunt, from 1922, was “used to taunt white children as well as for the choosing of sides”: enny meany minny moe catch a white peck by the toe if he bites you let him go enny meany minny moe! both ellison’s texts and children’s folklore collected from non-african americans in new york city for the fwp include a number of taunts referring to other ethnic groups. coming across the taunts in these collections came as no surprise to me, having grown up in the bronx in the 1950s and 1960s and remembering folklore performed by members of various white ethnic groups referring disparagingly to other groups, most viciously about african americans. taunts, whether with ethnic reference or not, are a widespread genre of children’s folklore. halpert indicates that “the pattern of insulting another group” has long been practiced in the united states, although sometimes they “reflect an attitude that children do not feel with any particular force (1946, 17, 19). they are pervasive among children, and jorgensen, in “teases and pranks,” notes that as “forms of victimization”, represent “behaviors that children are likely to experience at almost any time and in any place.” taunting, especially when it involves “socially unacceptable words or taboos,” is “usually not done in the presence of adult authorities, but otherwise it is a fairly everyday type of occurrence” (1999, 213-14). the large number of taunts collected by ellison testifies to his ability to establish rapport with his research subjects. they included taunts referring to various kinds of other groups. one, about “crackers,” collected on 142nd and eighth avenue from william and eddie freeman, was both pithy and pointed. the freemans reported, “that’s what we used to say when the white boys made us mad”: cracker, cracker ring the bell cracker, cracker go to hell! children who “cannot read well” felt the signifying sting of another taunt: can you read can you write can you smoke your daddy’s pipe? an overweight child was the target of another taunt: fat and skinny had a race fat fell down and broke his face skinny said i won the race “i saw mrs. saray, sitting on a bombalerry” baron 36 fat said that ain’t fair cause i lost my underwear “delaware” rhymed easily with “square” and “fair” (for the 1939 world’s fair) in a taunt used for “strangers”: look at them squares from delaware they musta got left from the world’s fair ellison noted that the following version was recited “when a stranger or out-oftown license on a car driven by negroes, is noticed.” the last two lines were recited by herbert lambert, sung to the tune of shave and a haircut. lambert, who recited other rhymes for ellison, used this tune “to end off every verse he gave.” i’m a square from delaware just in town to see the fair boom da dee ah dee boom, boom! while lambert is named as the tradition bearer, ellison usually did not give the names of the performers. an unusual amount of personal history was provided for william and eddie freeman, who like many other african american new yorkers, before and since, spent time during their childhood visiting relatives in the south: the following rhymes were given the writer by william and eddie freeman, who operate a vegetable cart in the eighth avenue market near143rd street. william was born in charleston, south carolina but was brought to new york when three months old. eddie was born in conn. during 1936 the boys visited relatives in charleston and the “cracker cracker” rhyme was learned there. eddie chose to recite the rhymes and during the recitation was advised by william not to use the word black, but to use the word dark instead. the boys are twelve and thirteen years of age. once upon a time a darkey found a dime, dime turned red, the darkey fell dead i know something you caint tell three dark niggers on a peanut shell one kin sing, one kin dance, one kin sew my old man’s pants. baron “i saw mrs. saray, sitting on a bombalerry” 37 topical references appear in other items collected by ellison. the opies, in the lore and language of schoolchildren, categorize such rhymes as “topical rhymes” since “the era in which it has belongs is immediately apparent,” but caution that a “topical rhyme” may be a version of much older rhymes (1959, 98). halpert found widespread reference to “contemporary events, personalities and institutions” in rhymes collected during the 1930s (1946, 14). joe louis appears in the following rhyme, with a notation in ellison’s hand about the “trucking” dance : joe louis and bob pastor bob pastor was on his knees said, “joe, don’t hit me please, just go on trucking on out the ring.” (use) this rhyme tells the story of the pastor-louis fight, which took place in 1939. the term ‘trucking’ refers to a dance step popular at that time; a version of which was inspired by louis’ peculiar, shuffling footwork. according to halpert, children “quickly became adept exponents of truckin’,” introducing it in a number of songs and games” (1946, 114). he indicated that the “truckin’ “rhymes were not known outside of harlem. halpert viewed them as a kind of emergent folklore, as “for the most part recent compositions either based on older rhyme forms or composed from scratch” (15-16). another rhyme was chanted rhythmically to african american dance steps which “were popular in new york around 1928”: hay, hay, farmer gray, took another load away ellison collected a ball bouncing rhyme about an encounter with a policeman guarding macy’s department store. while this rhyme was found among other ethnic communities in new york city, it might have had special resonance for residents of harlem. during the mid and late 1930s, struggles against discrimination in hiring in department stores were a focus for african american political activism. this rhyme illustrates how children’s folklore (in any culture) provides mechanisms for working through issues, concerns and anxieties through play: i won’t go to macy’s any more, more, more! there’s a big fat policeman at the door, door, door he grabbed me by the collar and made me pay a dollar and i won’t go to macy’s any more, more, more!14 “i saw mrs. saray, sitting on a bombalerry” baron 38 only a few jump rope rhymes appear in the collection. as in ball bouncing rhymes, the rhymes used for jumping rope act to structure movement, as sullivan notes in “songs, poems and rhymes” (153). halpert, in his proposal for children’s rhymes and games, speaks of how specific words may be used to indicate actions. in the first of the two rhymes which follow, the rope jumper is expected to either straddle the rope or miss her turn, allowing the jumper to avoid a “faux pas”. both of these rhymes are found extensively in anglo-american tradition and great britain: i know a lady by the name of miss sat by the fire and gave me a kiss all of a sudden she missed like this!15 johnny on the ocean johnny in the sea johnny broke a windowpane and blamed it on me i told ma and ma told pa and johnny got a beating and ha ha ha16 ellison almost always presented ball bouncing and jump rope rhymes as texts, without describing the form of the activity which the rhymes accompany. an exception was the following ball bouncing rhyme, with ellison’s comments alongside the text: i live in chinka china my name is carol see. i wash and dry the dishes for fifty cents a week. so sister, sister, sister you ought to be ashame to marry, marry, marry a man without a name. so my father is a butcher my mother cuts the meat. i am a little hot dog hat runs across the street. this is one of the longer ball bouncing jingles. the repeated words represent variations in the bouncing, for instance on the words `sister, sister, sister’ the leg is crossed over and the ball bounced over it, after which the bouncer returns to the straight pattern. baron “i saw mrs. saray, sitting on a bombalerry” 39 a rhyme beginning “your old man is a dirty old man” was collected in different versions and variants by halpert in various parts of manhattan. he characterized it as an adaptation of the song “old dan tucker”, well known as a minstrel song in the nineteenth century. for halpert, it demonstrated how some children’s folklore in new york city can contain the “remnants” of older adult folklore (children’s rhymes and games). the version collected by ellison includes a street address in the lower east side, on the other end of manhattan from harlem: my mother and your mother live across the way 315 east broadway every night they have a fight and this is what they say your old man is a dirty old man he washes his face with the frying pan he combs his hair with the leg of a chair your old man is a dirty old man17 ellison ascribes various genres to the folk rhymes he collected. categorization of children’s rhymes, however, is a tricky business. sanches and kirshenblatt-gimblett contend that taxonomies created through categorizations of rhymes cannot be “predictive” since the same rhyme in different play groups can accompany jumping rope, ball bouncing, or taunting another child (1976,67).18 this “gag” collected by ellison was also recited in my own childhood in the northwest bronx, with the addition of a “the” before “ice”: ladies and gentlemen take my advice pull down your pants and sit on ice. a variant called for movement: ladies and gentlemen take my advice pull off your pants and slide on ice.19 a very short verse collected by ellison was labeled a “baseball rhyme.” short verses were found widely among new york city children — halpert speaks in his proposal for children’s rhymes and games of the “distinctly new yorkese rhyme which is short, snappy and to the point.” in and out three strikes and out “i saw mrs. saray, sitting on a bombalerry” baron 40 another rhyme was used as a mnemonic, with ellison noting the use of such rhymes in the south: columbus was a jew fourteen-ninety-two! (use) such rhymes are used to aid the memory; in this instance it is a historical date which is memorized. in the south, superstitions, moral and other observations are given such a statement. a “dare” was also categorized by ellison by its “use”: you can slip and you can slide but i’ll kick you for a buggy ride. (use) dare some rhymes were classified as “pastimes.” the polysemy of the word “bill” was at play in one of these rhymes. as sanches and kirshenblatt-gimblett note, it embodies two kinds of rhetorical patterns found in children’s rhymes, “adnominatio (pun and wordplay) and conversio (repetition of the last word in successive phrases” (1976, 109). variants of this rhyme were recorded by other fwp fieldworkers among italians and puerto ricans in east harlem, and in the bronx and brooklyn among performers whose ethnicities were not indicated. well hello bill where you going bill down town bill what for bill to pay my gas bill how much bill ten dollar bill so long bill some rhymes were uncategorized by ellison. the text of a rhyme which improvised upon a popular song was followed by a note about continuities between african american folk and “commercial” song: margie is a swimming pool all around the house but never in the pool well allright then … the above rhyme is an improvised lyric to a popular song, originating in harlem, the title of which is “well all right then.” this title, which baron “i saw mrs. saray, sitting on a bombalerry” 41 gives the tune its refrain, is nonsensical as far as actual meaning is concerned. and as is typical of such negro songs, the pattern of “well allright then” is very elastic in order to allow for such improvisations; a characteristic which comes out of the folk period of negro music and which has been carried over into the commercial. african american children’s rhymes and singing games have continued to incorporate popular music. kyra gaunt shows that this relationship works both ways in an ongoing circulation between folk and popular traditions, citing many examples of rhythm and blues, blues and hip hop songs appropriating children’s game songs (2006, 2-3, 68-69, 89-110). ellison saw how such use of popular song underscores the fluid, improvisatory character of african american music, characteristic of both a “folk period” when african american music consisted largely of folk music, and his own time, when commercially produced popular music had become a dominant force shaping cultural preferences. in referring to continuity and change in african american music, ellison speaks to transformations in black american culture occurring during the interwar period, when he was working for the fwp. he collected traditions brought by migrants from the south who maintained them in harlem, as both active and passive carriers of tradition. these traditions were often adapted, localized and changed by children in harlem, who also performed traditions maintained as well by other ethnic groups, and practiced emerging folklore newly created in new york. in the craft of ralph ellison, o’meally indicates that ellison perceived southern sources “even when the harlem lore seemed indigenous,” and he would sometimes “recognize a remnant of a saying or rhyme he had heard in the south reduced to a `mumble’ or nonsense phrase in harlem.” o’meally discusses ellison’s contention that these traditions suggested a bridge to the south and to african ancestry, and he cites ellison as stating that their “tradition goes way back to the south, and some of it goes back to africa” (1980, 34). while much of the children’s folklore collected by ellison was distinctively african american in provenance and current practice, some of these traditions were also practiced by whites, including traditions with sources in great britain. in zora neale hurston’s collections of african american children’s folklore in florida, she noted that they included “white games that have been learned by negro children in contact with whites” like “ ‘london bridge is falling down’, … white games that have been modified by negro use, like ‘little sally walker’, and purely negro games like ‘bama,’ ‘rabbit dance,’ and ‘chick-mah-chick” (1999, 105) — a pattern like that of the games ellison collected in harlem. the critical essays and fiction of ellison embody his views of the creative genius and cultural distinctiveness of african american cultures, the importance of southern roots, and the americaness of african americans, all characteristics evident in the children’s rhymes he collected early in his career. the children whose rhymes were collected by ellison experienced both tradition and change, through their folklore as in other aspects of their lives. in his own life at this time, ellison was experiencing personal and professional transformations as a migrant as well as a writer. like other fwp folklore workers, “i saw mrs. saray, sitting on a bombalerry” baron 42 he collected during the day and wrote in the evenings (35-36), working for the first time as a full time cultural worker, now possessing a primary occupational identity as a writer. ellison’s experiences collecting folklore resonated in later works of fiction and short stories. o’meally notes that “the project’s structured examination of language and folklore planted seeds that helped his writing grow beyond the limits of literary realism” (1980, 36). he writes of how the “process of interviewing and transcribing” the narratives “sharpened ellison’s ear for idiosyncrasies of speech and gave him practice in getting particular speech patterns onto paper”(34).” his performative and improvisatory renderings of african american speech and oral traditions of various genres demonstrates, as callahan puts it, a “commitment to an american improvisatory vernacular” (89). rather than serving only illustratively, folklore was deeply infused within ellison’s fiction. ellison viewed the use of folklore in fiction as absorbing “folk tradition into … thematic structures … plots, symbolism and rhetoric” (1995d, 111). as his collecting was informed by both text and context, so was his fiction, as o’meally indicates: many of the rhymes, jokes and peculiarities of speech which enrich ellison’s fiction were drawn from his experience in oklahoma and alabama; many others were drawn from notes he made while researching and interviewing in harlem for the federal writer’s project. beyond simply copying bits of already collected folklore into his fiction, ellison developed a working knowledge of afro-american rhymes, games and stories. moreover, he refined his sense of the folkloric context: the moments and the settings in which persons, particularly afro-americans, were likely to use the stylized speech of folklore. he studied text as well as context. in his fiction … the lore is more than local color; it is ritualistic as well as reflective of a whole lifestyle (1980, 35). folklore also figured multifariously in ellison’s essays and creative non-fiction. drawing from wellsprings of memories from his oklahoma boyhood, formative years as tuskegee student and migrant to new york, and keen observations as a fwp field researcher, he possessed an abundant store of folklore material borne out of firsthand experience. while working for the fwp, ellison was associated with leftist politics and wrote about folklore in publications self-consciously identified with the working class. the writers for these publications, who were of working class origin, asserted, according to michael denning, “pronounced class awareness or consciousness” which framed “working class ideologies” central to a “cultural front” that shaped american culture for generations to come. (8). during this early phase of his literary career, ellison authored essays and reviews about folklore found among african americans and elsewhere in the world which marxist literary scholar barbara foley, in her article “ralph ellison as proletarian journalist” sees as demonstrating “a materialist and internationalist approach” which views “folklore as a site of resistance” ellison definitively rejected communism by the mid-1940s and became increasingly critical of baron “i saw mrs. saray, sitting on a bombalerry” 43 the left. nevertheless, he continued to see folklore as a means of resistance despite a profound ideological shift which has been variously interpreted by ellison scholars. foley contends, for example that his view of folklore remained consonant with the ideology of the popular front , arguing against critics who saw the representation of folklore as resistance in invisible man as representing “a culturalist tendency antipathetic to marxist analytical categories” (1998-99, 543) . as rampersad demonstrates in ralph ellison: a biography, ellison’s immersion in leftist intellectual circles and, eventually, in the new york literati, was accompanied by personal disengagement from participation in african american vernacular culture. nevertheless, even as he became personally more distant from working class culture, he continued to strongly assert the significance of folklore for african american cultural resilience and survival. as a young writer, ellison was profoundly influenced by the cambridge school’s view of the relationship of myth and ritual, especially lord raglan’s archetypal study of the hero. he was also inspired by the applications of mythology and folklore by eliot and joyce, and he came to see that african american folklore could be used in his fiction as well. according to rampersad, this revelation emerged during ellison’s collecting of folklore in harlem for the fwp. “ironically,” rampersad states, “explaining new york street life had taken him back into the arcane world he had entered in exploring the footnotes of t.s. eliot’s the waste land, and especially the indebtedness of eliot to jessie weston and other british scholars in the so-called cambridge school of myth and ritual studies” (2007, 116). the cambridge school’s approach to folklore differed greatly from other twentieth century folklore scholarship, including the approaches of both comparative, text oriented european folklorists and american folklorists engaged in ethnographic studies of living traditions. its conceptualization of the origins of myth in ritual is unverifiable and reductive, positing relationships belied by systematic field research. for ellison, there was apparently no contradiction between his systematic collecting of folklore in a project guided by ethnographic methodologies and the inspiration his studies of myth and ritual brought to the genesis of invisible man as well as his essays about african americans. ellison viewed folklore as central for understanding african american culture, and over the years he increasingly spoke in terms of both its universal significance and cultural specificity. in “richard wright’s blues,” published in 1945, ellison saw the blues as a quintessential african american art form, “an autobiographical chronicle of personal catastrophe expressed lyrically” (129). a 1948 new york star article, “a journalist considers the position of the negro in american history,” contended that “negro americans … evolved, from disparate influences, a folk culture embodying … a conception of human life, a ‘style,’ a musical culture, a somewhat crude psychology, and a very advanced philosophy of human freedom” (qtd. in rampersad 2007, 240). later writings argued against reducing african american folklore to archetypes and seeing it primarily as a vehicle of resistance, as they stressed its transcendent value for african americans in particular and humankind in general. in “change the joke and slip the yoke,” written in 1958, ellison criticized stanley edgar “i saw mrs. saray, sitting on a bombalerry” baron 44 hyman’s view of the archetype of the trickster in invisible man, with ellison asserting his freedom as a novelist to create characters with specific cultural resonances. he stated that “spirituals .. blues, jazz and folk tales” have “much to tell us of the faith, humor and adaptability to reality necessary to live in a world which has taken on much of the insecurity and blues-like absurdity known to those of us who brought it into being” (112). his 1964 review of blues people argued against its sociogenic approach and emphasis upon the blues as a means of political protest. he underscored the universal significance of the blues and its importance as an art form along with its value for african americans as a technique of cultural survival. for ellison, the blues “speak to us simultaneously of the tragic and comic aspects of the human condition and they express a profound sense of life shared by many negro americans precisely because their lives have combined these modes” (286). folklore was integral to ellison’s view of african american culture as a major shaping force in the lives of all americans, and the continuing cultural interactions of blacks and whites throughout american history. stressing the importance of the vernacular in american culture, and black influence on american culture, a news release for ellison’s first course at new york university in 1970 stated that it would be “exploring the relationship between sophisticated and vernacular culture in the united states … one of the abiding phenomena in this country starting from our american and british background.” european cultural traditions had come “into ceaseless contact with the imaginations of negro americans who have been in the unique position of being inside the society and yet outside” (quoted in rampersad 2007, 471). ellison’s collections of children’s folklore for the fwp incorporated traditions distinctive to african americans as well as others shared by new yorkers and other americans from diverse cultural backgrounds. while ellison did not note that many of these traditions were also practiced by non-blacks, their provenances reflected the interactions through culture of blacks and whites as well as the distinctive contribution of african americans to american life, themes which ran through ellison’s writings over the years. in his scathing critique of blues people by amiri baraka (known at the time as leroi jones), ellison contends that “jones has stumbled over that ironic obstacle which lies in the path of anyone who would fashion a theory of american negro culture while ignoring the intricate network of connections which binds negroes to the larger society. to do so is to attempt delicate brain surgery with a switchblade” (1964, 283). mutual influences between african americans and other americans were seen by ellison as continuous and ongoing. in “some questions and some answers,” written in 1958, ellison wrote of a “body of folklore” as among the fundamental expressions of “american negro” culture, but hastened to add that “it must, however, be pointed out that due to the close links which negro americans have with the rest of the nation, these cultural expressions are constantly influencing the larger body of american culture and in turn influencing them” (292). while recognizing the reciprocal cultural influences between african americans and other americans, ellison viewed african american folklore as a hallmark of african american cultural genius, asserting humanity and creativity over centuries of oppression. much of african american folklore, baron “i saw mrs. saray, sitting on a bombalerry” 45 like many of the children’s traditions ellison collected, is distinctively african american in character, created and shaped by blacks in the southern united states and harlem. like folklore, fiction by ellison and other african american writers counters dehumanizing representations of their culture20, following from the imperative ellison states in “twentieth century fiction and the mask of humanity” for “negro writers” to take on the “task of defining negro humanity” (1953, 99), a task which for ellison integrally involved folklore. while ellison’s fwp folklore collections have enduring significance as a foundation for both his fiction and non-fiction, they also have substantial but unrecognized value as folklore collections on their own terms, drawing from multiple cultural sources while demonstrating creativity in the creation of emerging traditions. reading ellison’s field notes and texts of seventy years ago from the standpoint of a folklorist trained in the performance centered approach to folklore study, i am struck by his accounts of performance situations, his sensitivity to performance styles, and the contextual details he provided. contemporary folklorists should also be impressed by his frequent notes about the uses of particular traditions and his remarks about distinctive features of form and the localization of particular traditions. as a writer, ellison was a literary modernist who wrote stylistically advanced fiction deeply infused with folklore, representing african americans maintaining traditions while experiencing modern life. as a folklorist, he was a modern folklorist, observing and reporting context while recording texts, collecting older traditions maintained by southern migrants, folklore localized and transformed in the city and emerging urban traditions. rather than seeing folklore as residual culture, as static relics of a southern past, ellison projects a dynamicist view of the children’s folklore he collected as emergent in performance. folklore, and speech in general, are viewed performatively, marked by improvisation and innovation. folk culture is located within modernity, rather than outside it, through the folklore research he carried out at the outset of his career as well as in subsequent fiction and essays about african-american culture. tradition and modernity are intertwined throughout the body of ellison’s folklore research and literary production, embodying a view of the traditional and the modern in dynamic interaction rather than as disjunctive forces. while ellison’s brief period collecting folklore occurred early in his career, it represented a highly formative episode in his literary career which continued to reverberate on many levels. notes an earlier version of this work was presented at the american folklore society’s annual meeting in milwaukee in 2006. research for this article was carried out while i was a non-resident fellow of the w.e.b. du bois institute for african and african-american research at harvard university. i am grateful to roger d. abrahams, henry louis gates, jr., felicia r. mcmahon and john f. szwed for their encouragement and critical comments about this article. 1. while the manuscript for the proposal for children’s rhymes and games in the manuscript collection of the library of congress does not include the “i saw mrs. saray, sitting on a bombalerry” baron 46 author’s name, halpert refers to it an account of his early career in “coming into folklore more than fifty years ago.” he recounted that he was “fired” from the fwp, “mainly because the book i had proposed, on new york city children’s lore, was thought to be too large a project – one that would take too long to reach publication” (451). the proposed book was never published. 2. nine “children’s street rhymes” in this collection were included in a book of photographs by aaron siskind, harlem: photographs 1932-40, taken for the “harlem document” initiative associated with the photo league, as battle indicates in “harlem: a document” ( 2-6). the book of negro folklore, edited by langston hughes and arna bontemps, has a section “harlem children’s rhymes and gags” in a chapter on playsongs and games, which included four items collected by ellison, each framed by either ellison’s notes or comments by the children reciting the rhymes (433-35). a number of the rhymes collected by ellison also appeared in halpert’s master’s thesis. 3. all of ellison’s transcriptions of children’s rhymes and associated field notes are reprinted here as they appear in the reports held in the manuscript collection of the library of congress, without emendation, except for small changes to regularize spelling. 4. during the 1970s, the academic discipline of folklore turned from an emphasis on textual analysis to a performance-centered approach. viewing folklore as artistic communication in small groups, it focused upon how folklore emerges in face-to-face interaction, and its social and cultural context. in their “introduction” to an issue of western folklore marking the twentieth anniversary of the landmark toward new perspectives in folklore which articulated the new approach to the study of folklore in context and as performance, shuman and briggs write of how “style, content, and context” were “brought under a single theoretical aegis as they were studied in particular, situated acts of communication” (114). 5. abrahams indicates that this rhyme derives “from a formula opening of english tales” (145). versions of this rhyme were collected by johnson on st. helena island (134, 137, 155) as opening formulae for folk tales: once upon a time monkey chaw tobacco an’ spit white lime once upon a time monkey chaw tobacco an’ de cat drink wine once upon a time, a very good time monkey chaw tobacco on de railroad line 6. bessie jones and bess lomax hawes suggest that little sallie’s last name as “water” is found in “perhaps the oldest versions” of this game of british origin which they collected as an african american ring play. they note that the concluding stanza, “shake it to the east/shake it to the west,” is an african baron “i saw mrs. saray, sitting on a bombalerry” 47 american addition to this game (1972, 107). 7. hale and hale indicate that the expression “shake your duster” dates to the second decade of the twentieth century or earlier, when it had an “admonitory” purpose, to “speed up a person’s effort in the business at hand,” and they “suspect it may refer to long coats, or ‘dusters’” which the “first automobilists” wore “when the motor car was young.” (1938, 918). another version collected by ellison had a more plausible rationale for the visit to a store: i had a little dog his name was buster sent him to the store to buy some mustard oh well a come on buster bring that mustard! 8. variants of this rhyme were recited throughout new york city, its suburbs, and in northwestern connecticut. halpert notes variants of this rhyme recited in new york city, with a different third line, as “on the day of decoration” or “on the day of declaration” (folk rhymes 172). in her dissertation, “folk jingles of american children”, dorothy howard indicated that “the day of declaration” variant was found in east orange, new jersey, nangotuck (sic), connecticut and westchester county (1938, 115). 9. halpert notes that this rhyme was also collected at greenwich house, in greenwich village (1946, 172). greenwich house served a largely immigrant population at the time. 10. this rhyme was also reported from throughout new york city. a variant included in “folk rhymes of new york city children” was transcribed (or spelled) differently, as “one, two, three a-lairry,/ i spy mrs. sarey,/ sitting on a bumble lairry,/just like a chocolate fairy” (1946, 171). howard reported a version from “new york state” as “one, two, three a-larry/i spy sister sarrie/sitting on a bumbleberry/ eating chocolate like a fairy” (1938, 116). ethel and oliver hale indicated that “no one has told us what a bumble-airy or bumble-eery is, so we must assume it is a concocted word, created to fit a rhyme scheme” (1938, 126). 11. abrahams provides 39 references from throughout the united states of variants and versions of “charlie chaplin” as a jump rope rhyme (1969, 26-27). in new york city, halpert reports, in “folk rhymes of new york city children” that charlie chaplin as counting out rhyme and jump rope rhyme included a variety of last lines, “and turn yourself around,” “and turn around to the submarine,” “and turn your back to the kaiser,” from greenwich and church house, jones house and greenwich house, respectively. 12. according to halpert, “gypsy, gypsy, lived in a tent” was found throughout new york city (1946, 192). abrahams notes, that it is more frequently found as a counting-out rhyme than as a jump rope rhyme (57) versions of this rhyme are found in england and scotland (abrahams 1969, 57; abrahams and rankin 1980, 87). “i saw mrs. saray, sitting on a bombalerry” baron 48 13. abrahams reports that more common versions than the one ellison remembered begin with the same two lines, but the following lines say; my mother gave your mother a punch in the nose what was the color of the blood? blue [or red] b-l-u-e or r-e-d (152) halpert collected another version, from the west side, as: your mother and my mother were hanging out the clothes your mother gave my mother a sock in the nose. what color was the blood? ‘red’ r-e-d (1946, 125) 14. versions collected by halpert had different third and fourth lines. in one from the west bronx, “i socked him in the nose/and i stepped on his toes,” in another from jones house “i squeezed him like a lemon and sent him up to heaven, and, in a text from brooklyn’s willoughby house, “he’ll pull me by my pants/and make me do a dance .” abrahams reports that as a jump rope rhyme, “i won’t go to macy’s” has been collected in california and nevis (1969, 97). 15. abrahams references sixteen versions of “miss, miss, little miss, miss:/when she misses she misses like this” from the throughout the united states, britain and scotland in jump-rope rhymes: a dictionary, including one from britain which begins, “i know a woman/and her name is miss (1969, 123-24). 16. in jump-rope rhymes: a dictionary, abrahams lists references to versions and variants found in thirty one states and scotland (1969, 102). 17. this rhyme is used both as a counting-out rhyme and a jump rope rhyme. abrahams’s jump-rope rhymes: a dictionary and abrahams’s and rankin’s counting-out rhymes: a dictionary identify, all together, versions and variants from thirteen states (abrahams 135-36, abrahams and rankin 154-55). 18. sanches and kirshenblatt-gimblett reference the research on rope skipping games of the cooperative research project in rope skipping games: language, belief and customs, tri-university project on elementary education, university of nebraska and u.s. office of education. 1968. 19. another variant, which halpert dates to 1918 from east 78th street, was reported as “ladies and gentlemen/take my advice/take off your britches/and slide on the ice” (1946, 93). 20. ellison’s views of the received dehumanizing and distorted representations of blacks in american literature are akin to toni morrison’s notion of the “africanist” presence in american literature discussed in her playing in the dark: whiteness and the literary imagination (1992). baron “i saw mrs. saray, sitting on a bombalerry” 49 works cited abrahams, roger. 1969. jump-rope rhymes: a dictionary. austin: university of texas press. abrahams, roger and lois rankin. 1980. counting-out rhymes: a dictionary. austin: university of texas press. banks, ann, ed. 1980. first person america. new york: knopf. battle, marcia. 1990. harlem: a document. new introduction to aaron siskind, harlem: photographs 1932-1940, 3-6. washington: smithsonian institution press. bauman, richard and américo paredes, eds. 1972. toward new perspectives in folklore. austin: university of texas press. botkin, b[enjamin] a. 1958. we called it living lore. new york folklore quarterly 14(3): 189-201. byerman, keith eldon. 1985. fingering the jagged grain: tradition and form in recent black fiction. athens: university of georgia press. callahan, john f. 1994. frequencies of eloquence: the performance and composition of invisible man. in new essays on invisible man, ed. robert o’meally, 55-94. cambridge and new york: cambridge university press. dargan, amanda and zeitlin, steven. 1990. city play. new brunswick: rutgers university press. denning, michael. 1996. the cultural front: the laboring of american culture in the twentieth century. london; new york: verso. ellison, ralph. 1939-40. harlem children’s folklore. new york city folklorecollections, united states work projects administration (wpa) records, federal writer’s project: folklore project. manuscript collection, library of congress. container a 648. ______. 1966. harlem’s america. new leader. 26 september: 22-35. ______. 1972 [1952]. invisible man. new york: vintage books. ______. 1994. introduction [from the 1981 printing; 1952]. invisible man, xvii – xxxiv. new york: modern library. ______. 1995a [1945]. richard wright’s blues. in the collected essays of ralph ellison, ed. john f. callahan, 128-44. new york: modern library. ______. 1995b [1948]. harlem is nowhere. in the collected essays of ralph ellison, ed. john f. callahan, 320-27. new york: modern library. ______. 1995c [1953]. twentieth century fiction and the black mask of humanity. in the collected essays of ralph ellison, ed. john f. callahan, 81-99. new york: modern library. ______. 1995d [1958]. change the joke and slip the yoke. in the collected essays of ralph ellison, ed. john f. callahan, 100-112. new york: modern library. ______. 1995e [1958]. some questions and some answers. in the collected essays of ralph ellison, ed. john f. callahan, 291-301. new york: modern library. ______. 1995f [1963/64].the world and the jug. in the collected essays of ralph ellison, ed. john f. callahan, 155-58. new york: modern library. “i saw mrs. saray, sitting on a bombalerry” baron 50 ______. 1995g [1964]. the art of fiction: an interview. in the collected essays of ralph ellison, ed. john f. callahan, 210-24. new york: modern library. ______. 1995h [1964]. blues people. in the collected essays of ralph ellison, ed. john f. callahan, 278-87. new york: modern library. foley, barbara. 1998-99. ralph ellison as proletarian journalist.” science & society 62(4): 537-556. gaunt, kyra. 2006. the games black girls play. new york: new york university press. hale, ethel and oliver. 1938. from sidewalk, gutter and stoop: being a chronicle of children’s play and game activity. manuscript, new york public library, special collections. [halpert, herbert]. n.d. children’s rhymes and games. proposed book manuscript. work projects administration (wpa) records, federal writer’s project: folklore project. manuscript collection, box a647. library of congress. halpert, herbert. 1946. folk rhymes of new york city children. master’s thesis, columbia univ. ______. 1992. coming into folklore more than fifty years ago. journal of american folklore 105(418): 442-457. hirsch, jerrold. 1988. cultural pluralism and applied folklore: the new deal precedent. in the conservation of culture: folklorists and the public sector, ed. burt feintuch, 46-67. lexington: university press of kentucky. howard, dorothy g. mills. 1938. folk jingles of american children: a collection and study of rhymes used by children today. ph.d. diss. new york university. hughes, langston and arna bontemps. 1958. book of negro folklore. new york: dodd, mead. hurston, zora neale. 1999. go gator and muddy the water: writings from the federal writer’s project, ed. pamela bordeon. new york: w.w. norton. hymes, dell. 1981. “in vain i tried to tell you”: essays in native american ethnopoetics. philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press. johnson, guy b. 1930. folk culture on st. helena island, south carolina. chapel hill: university of north carolina press. jones, bessie and hawes, bess lomax. 1972. step it down: games, plays, songs and stories from the afro-american heritage. new york: harper and row. jorgensen, marilyn. 1999. teases and pranks. in children’s folklore: a source book, ed. brian sutton-smith, jay mechling, thomas w. johnson, and felicia r. mcmahon, 213-24. new york: garland, 1995. morrison, toni. 1992. playing in the dark: whiteness and the literary imagination. new york: vintage. o’meally, robert g. 1980. the craft of ralph ellison. cambridge: harvard university press. opie, iona and peter. 1959. the lore and language of schoolchildren. oxford: oxford university press. rampersad, arnold. 2007. ralph ellison: a biography. new york: alfred a. knopf. baron “i saw mrs. saray, sitting on a bombalerry” 51 sanches, mary and kirshenblatt-gimblett, barbara.1976. children’s traditional speech play and child language. in speech play, ed. kirshenblatt-gimblett, 65-110. philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press. shuman, amy and charles briggs. 1993. introduction. special issue, theorizing folklore: toward new perspectives on the politics of culture. western folklore 48(2,3,4): 109-34. siskind, aaron.1981. harlem: photographs 1932-1940. washington: smithsonian institution press. 1990. sullivan, c.w. iii. 1999. songs, poems and rhymes. in sutton-smith, et al, 145-160. sutton-smith, brian, jay mechling, thomas w. johnson and felicia r. mcmahon, eds. 1999. children’s folklore: a source book. logan, utah: utah state university press. szalay, michael. 2000. new deal modernism: american literature and the invention of the welfare state. durham: university of north carolina press. cfr_2010_part7 cfr_2010_part8 cfr_2010_part9 cfr_2010_part10 cfr_2010_part11 cfr_2010_part12 cfr_2010_part13 cfr_2010_part14 cfr_2010_part16 cfr_2010_part15 87 book reviews pleasures and perils: girls’ sexuality in a caribbean consumer culture. by debra curtis. [the rutgers series in childhood studies]. (new brunswick, nj.: rutgers university press, 2009. pp. vii-222, 4 black and white photographs, notes, index.) tracy carpenter pleasures and perils is an ethnography of adolescent sexuality, globalization and consumer culture on nevis, a small caribbean island. in this study, curtis highlights the fluidity and complexity of adolescent sexuality as influenced by globalization and localized cultural norms. the notion of commodity erotics in nevis — the conflation of sexual practices and commodity desire — renders a continuum that ranges from the exchange of sex to meet the family’s basic needs, to sex for personal consumption. commodity erotics also measure the sexual value of commodities, like sexy lingerie, designer clothing and jewelry, which produce sexual desirability. curtis’s study of nevis offers a snapshot of globalization by focusing on popular culture influences on conceptions of adolescent sexuality in a society that has undergone rapid socio-economic and technological changes over the past two decades. the first islands in the caribbean to be colonized by europeans, the federation of st. kitts and nevis achieved full independence in 1983. the islands were established as major sugar producers until the industry was dismantled in 2005. the growth of tourism and offshore financing necessitated advancements in infrastructure and increased access to technology and electronic goods, including televisions, cable, video, and the internet. curtis asserts that prior to the emancipation of slaves in 1834, the plantation culture generated a permissive sexual system, which was later challenged by protestant missionaries. according to curtis, ideological tensions between traditional sexual systems and protestant morality have been compounded by the influx of global popular culture and shaped sexual subjectivities. curtis, a cultural anthropologist, conducted fieldwork in a nevisian village over six months in 2003. personal history interviews, focus groups and surveys assessed sexual practices, leisure activities, and consumerism. she observed public health centers and analyzed music videos from black entertainment television (bet), imported movies and television shows, local radio programs, soca, reggae, hip hop music, and sex education materials. curtis also incorporated coming-of-age stories with young nevisian women as a counterpoint to the teenage girls’ reported sexual practices, reproducing their words in the nevisian dialect throughout the text. the author highlights the multidimensionality of sexuality in nevis by drawing attention to conflicting religious, traditional, and global discourses. the majority of nevisians regularly attend church and participate in religious activities, while book reviews 88 teenage girls have unlimited access to television and the internet at home. curtis states that marriage is not a common practice in nevis and that sexual exclusivity is rare. she suggests that living arrangements like single parent homes, commonlaw marriages, and visiting marriages (in which the spouses live in separate households and visit each other) contradict a fundamental christian discourse that espouses sexual virtue, corporeal control and chastity. while older nevisians denounce global influences, the government has imported american sexual education programs to address teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases in a society that does not openly discuss sex and stigmatizes girls’ use of condoms. curtis asserts that various global imports have influenced female codification. teenage girls’ identification with the imported images and lyrics from music videos, fashion magazines and sexual scripts — like materialism and masculinity — expressed in hip hop and caribbean music, translates into female desire for sexual pleasure and commodities in exchange for sex. the consideration of female pleasure contradicts the prevalence of female sexual pain resulting from the widespread threat of sexual crimes that goes unaddressed by law enforcement, legal and medical authorities. this pervasive threat in women’s everyday experiences and the desire for sexual agency may underlie girls’ explicit requests for commodities and cash in exchange for sex or families’ accepting cash settlements rather than prosecuting rapists. according to curtis, women’s traditional use of sex to meet their basic household needs set a precedent for contemporary teenage girls’ exchanging of sex for personal effects, such as car rides, compact discs, jewelry, and lingerie. the interaction between commodities and female pleasure amidst tradition, religion and globalization reveal the complex nature of sexual subjectivity, which is equally determined by social regulation and self-construction, and highlights malleability of subject formation. the examination of sexuality and economics among marginalized women is complicated by issues of representation and the limits of cultural relativism. the ethnography runs the risk of reproducing historical stereotypes of sexual pathology and fetishizing nevisian girls. despite her focus on globalization, the author isolates nevis from a global context, which at times makes the girls’ behavior appear bizarre and pathological. overall, this ethnography of nevis’s explosive economic, technological, and social growth offers a valuable assessment of relationships between globalization and sexual discourse, global scripts and teenage behavior. additionally, it offers a multidimensional perspective on the construction of sexual subjectivity, as it relates to culture, poverty and power that is useful to readers interested in caribbean cultural studies, popular culture, sexuality studies, policy and public health. curtis’s interdisciplinary approach illustrates why considerations of culture and social change are fundamental to effective public policy and public health programs. pages from cfr_2010_part27 pages from cfr_2010_part28 35 naming games and beyond: referencing in children’s verbal play john holmes mcdowell — what’s the difference between an elephant and a loaf of bread? — i don’t know. — remind me not to send you to the grocery store. (traditional interrogative routine) children are, among other things, little thinking machines. childhood is a period of intense mental activity wherein the child’s innate cognitive capacities work upon the raw data of sensory experience, guided by interpretive codes drawn from the ambient culture, to fashion serviceable portraits of reality capturing the possibilities of the moment but always evolving through time. with only a small stretch of the imagination, we can picture young children as madcap scientists, boldly trying out theories, testing hypotheses, and adjusting their notions as to what is going on as new data arrives. it is a conspicuous fact that a considerable portion of this mental work is accomplished in settings of pleasurable social intercourse, frequently through the framework of play, and it is this dimension of the child’s mental development that i want to address in this paper. specifically, i want to highlight a thread of children’s verbal play that pursues the linguistic theme of referencing, that is, the naming, describing, and evoking of objects, and follow this thread progressively from an initial moment, when the interlocutors are adult care-takers or older siblings, to a subsequent moment when the child becomes empowered as the agent of play and the interlocutors are its juvenile playmates. culling material from research i have done with children’s verbal play and verbal art over the years, i will describe and analyze the transformation of “the naming game” and “the animal voices game” of late infancy to “the riddling game” of the primary school years. there is a cluster of significant propositions at stake in this incursion into the mental development of children. one piece is the emergence of agency in the young child. we are accustomed to thinking of children in the first two years of life as being essentially passive recipients of communicative gestures originating from adults, older siblings, and other older children in their environments. a trend in current research throws this assumption into doubt (dissanayake 2001; meltzoff 2007) , and i hope to contribute to the questioning of the young child’s passivity — let’s call it the passivity paradigm — by showing how children as young as 12-16 months assert their agency in acquiring active control over familiar playful routines. two crucial developments can be observed here: first, the child rather quickly becomes the initiator of the sequence, and second, before long, the child learns to subvert the routine’s logic by deliberately supplying “suspect” or “wrong” contributions. a second proposition of interest in this analysis is the centrality of play, and particularly verbal play, in the development of children’s cognition and the child’s cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 35 11/6/08 11:46:08 am naming games and beyond mcdowell 36 realization of self. adults have often exhibited impatience with children at play, and children’s play frequently departs from adult canons of perspicacity. we have numerous accounts of attempts to limit, contain, and sometimes even exterminate the play of children, which seems to always find outlets that circumvent these adult-imposed measures (sutton-smith 1995). the materials at hand for this study underscore the utilitarian dimensions of play, enabling us to see the arenas of children’s play as vital, engaging, and rewarding learning environments. obviously, not all children’s play is verbal, but the materials for this study affirm verbal play as key among the arenas of children’s play, one that absorbs a great deal of the child’s time and energy, and one that is readily accessible to close inspection by those of us who seek to understand the mind of the child. at last, the approach i will elaborate in this paper — we could call it the agency paradigm — proposes a specific understanding of human nature and human society, since the prototype we will isolate in children’s verbal play can be projected well beyond childhood; indeed, it can serve as a template for the continuously evolving human personality. in this vision of things, we are all, throughout our entire lives, interacting with others, often in playful modes, and in the process calibrating our conjectures on the way things work. this process may be more dramatic in childhood, where the learning curve takes us from zero to socially competent in the space of just a handful of years. and it is possible that the child’s processing of reality is qualitatively different from what happens later in life. for instance, close observation of children’s play suggests that children possess a freedom to toy with cultural codes that diminishes as the person approaches and enters adulthood. the child’s delight in “silliness” and a striking capacity for metaphorical thought and expression are two indices suggestive of age-defined difference. but the larger linkage remains, i believe, foregrounding the child’s acquisition of agency and understanding through social play as a universally human enterprise. the naming game visualize this familiar scene: a young child is seated on an adult’s lap, with a picture-book in hand. the child is in the early stages of language acquisition — it has a small vocabulary but cannot piece together much in the way of phrases as of yet. the adult pauses over images on the page to inquire of the child: “what’s this?” the naming game begins with this pointing and questioning. catherine garvey (1984: 62-71) sees in these collaborations a key conceptual maneuver, “the ability to indicate an entity for attention, for either one’s own or another’s benefit,” and she locates it early in the second year of life. in order for the naming game to run smoothly, the child must realize that specific items can be isolated and named; hence, the naming game, in its opening gambit, is an adult-initiated rehearsal of essential cognitive skills. in this basic version, the naming game evinces a patterned set of participant turns. a round of the game begins when the adult points and inquires, “what’s this?” the child might respond with a possible label; if it does and the answer is deemed to be correct, the adult will confirm the child’s response and perhaps cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 36 11/6/08 11:46:08 am mcdowell naming games and beyond 37 repeat it. if the child does not respond, the adult is likely to provide the intended label: “a horse” (for example). garvey (1984, 63) describes a pattern of increasing demand: “the caregiver becomes more exacting as the child learns to respond: at first, any response will be accepted, then any vocalization, then only the correct label.” through this series of approximations, adult and child participate in an activity initiated and controlled by the adult; the child’s role is restricted to that of acquiring and articulating the appropriate responses. the child is an active player but the passivity paradigm accounts adequately for what is happening here — culture is being inculcated from adult to child. but garvey (1984, 63) anticipates the next version of the game: “the child, once he learns the sequence of moves, often exchanges roles and begins to lead the game himself.” before long, and under the right circumstances — a good comfort level, for example — the child is likely to seize the initiative, perhaps pointing at an object pictured and looking at the adult in expectation of an answer, or reproducing the interrogative move, “what’s this?” this reversal of roles installs the child as initiator of a round of play, and shifts the adult into the more limited role of responder. in this vignette, we can perceive the assumption of agency in the very young child, perhaps, as garvey suggests, early in its second year of life. the child has learned not only how to respond appropriately but also how to perform the complementary role in the game. this mastery allows the child to select which objects to isolate and name, and also to bend the adult’s behavior to its will. there has been a shift from responder to instigator, and the child’s options have expanded. we are viewing in sharp profile the acquisition of agency. the animal voices game this game is also familiar to most of us in the united states and probably is played in many other places as well. it consists of a question/response sequence geared to connecting an animal voice, as culturally coded, to the name of the appropriate species. the game can be played in two orders, either by giving the name of the species and inquiring what it “says,” or by giving the voicing of the species and asking for the species label. here is a sample pair: 1 “what does the cow say?” “moo.” 2 “who says (goes) ‘moo’”? “a (the) cow.” this game is typically played with the familiar animals from the barnyard and home — cow, cat, dog, horse, pig, etc. these are also the animals most frequently encountered in picture books for children, thus providing a link to the naming game discussed above. more exotic animals can be introduced to add further interest, and as with any other game, this one can be pushed to its limits and beyond through the inclusion of fanciful options — the otter, the dinosaur, the unicorn. cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 37 11/6/08 11:46:08 am naming games and beyond mcdowell 38 as with the naming game, the animal voices game facilitates pleasing episodes of fruitful collaboration between infants and their adult caregivers. in both games, a pattern of interaction is specified and complementary roles are defined. a further continuity between the two games is the focus upon isolating and identifying significant phenomena in the child’s world. and, in the voicing game’s second order, the child is once again called upon to supply the needed label in response to a stimulus, in this instance not the visual representation of the object but its culturalcoded voicing. the naming game offers the delight of visual images contained in books; the voicing game has no such need of props and offers the special pleasures of imitating animal voices and provisionally, taking on their identities. so how does the child take possession of this second routine? a first stage, obviously, is being able to adequately connect the voice to the animal, and to successfully reproduce the animal’s voice. this latter achievement is often accomplished with some verve, affording the child a space for artistic elaboration. in this stage, the child acquires the knowledge to respond in culturally appropriate ways; we are seeing the transfer of cultural (and verbal) competence from adult to child. but two additional stages lie ahead and these will launch the child into an expanded zone of personal agency. the second stage emerges when the child learns to initiate the animal voices game, shifting the original stipulation of roles as we saw with the naming game. the child initiates a round of animal voices, now selecting which of the orders to employ and selecting as well the sequence of animals to deploy. the child’s range of options has increased, and the choices made in this expanded zone of operation carry a sense of this particular child’s take on the process: the child has acquired space to develop and project a unique sense of self. i propose that a third stage emerges when the child attains sufficient mastery over the game to introduce fanciful choices — like the otter, dinosaur, or unicorn — or to subvert the integrity of the game by supplying, deliberately, the wrong voicing or species label. this third stage features a striking degree of agency — not only has the child seized the initiative in the turn-taking arena and exerted a peremptory control over the game’s sequence, but it now pretends to drive the game to hilarious wreckage by violating the game’s basic constitution, which depends upon a constant and predictable set of linkages between voicings and species labels. in both of these games, the naming game and the animal voices game, what begins as a coordinated interaction steered by adult initiative gradually transforms into a child-initiated routine that follows the stipulated rules of play or, in the perversion of the voicing game, subverts these rules. the child’s scope for asserting agency is at first restricted to mastering its allotted role and performing effectively in that role. but as time elapses and the child becomes more familiar with these games, the scope for asserting agency is greatly expanded to the point where the child becomes the master of the game and its adult interlocutor fills a reduced role as respondent to the child’s prodding. in the next sections, we will observe a similar dynamic and conceptual arena but now in the setting of childto-child discourse, as the child carries these same interests and energies into its juvenile play group, with riddling as the chosen game. cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 38 11/6/08 11:46:09 am mcdowell naming games and beyond 39 naming and describing john lyons (1977, 225) notes that “the distinction between referring to an individual by name and referring to the same individual by means of a descriptive noun-phrase is something that the child only gradually acquires.” we have seen a progression from mere naming to evoking through voice in the transition from the naming game to the animal voices game. but imitation of voices does not require the verbal equipment that producing descriptive noun-phrases does. as the child enters more deeply into the referencing project, referencing through descriptive language becomes a central quest in the process of acquiring language. continuing the theme of this paper, i want to show how involvement in playful activities, and indeed, how a renewed commitment to interrogative routines, enter into the expansion of social, verbal, and cognitive capacities, affording the pre-school, kindergarten, and primary-school child additional vehicles for the realization and expression of self. as adults we take for granted describing an object or event as a strategy of evocation that works in tandem with naming. but this skill, like so many others going into the basics of conversing and socializing, must be learned and practiced in the apprenticeship phase as children observe and begin to reproduce the verbal moves in their social environments. catherine garvey (1984, 69) tells us that young children have difficulty producing adequate descriptions when “it is necessary to use a referring expression that unambiguously selects a referent from among others that differ from it on one or more dimensions of attributes.” evocation through description is no easy task; the ideal description will locate some unique feature of the intended referent, and one that will register with the interlocutor. the skills that go into describing expand upon the skills that go into naming. once a range of objects, events, and persons can be effectively named, a supporting vocabulary of descriptive terms and phrases must be perfected so that precise reference can be accomplished. it is one of the miracles of human language that objects not present and even fanciful objects can be named, referenced, and brought into focus. children master this magic in significant degree through the playful activities discussed in this paper. i want to turn now to the challenges to be met in forging effective descriptions, and explore, in particular, how these challenges are addressed in the interrogative routines known as riddling. we leave behind, for the most part, the realm of adult-child communication, since riddling is mostly practiced, in the contemporary united states at least, in peer-group settings. we shall discover in this batch of material a progression familiar from the two games already considered, from a phase of mastery to a phase of subversion, as children in the primary-school years graduate from descriptive routines to true riddles. riddling games successful describing depends upon the ability to frame what john searle (1969, 86) calls “the unique identifying description,” a verbal proposition or set of cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 39 11/6/08 11:46:09 am naming games and beyond mcdowell 40 propositions that sets the intended referent apart from all other possible referents. john lyons (1977, 180) views this ability in terms of the “referencing expression” that allows the hearer “to pick out the actual referent from the class of potential referents.” in the early stages of riddling, as early as the fourth year of life, children build verbal exchanges ideally suited to testing and confirming appropriate describing strategies. these riddling initiates imitate the riddle technique, with its question-answer sequence, before they have mastered the subtleties of what folklorists know as the block element, that piece of deception at the heart of the true riddle. brian sutton-smith (1972) writes about the pre-riddle, which he defines as a puzzling question with an arbitrary answer, as one way to enter the riddling game before its logic is fully understood. i have written about what i call the descriptive routine (mcdowell 1979), which offers another solution to this problem — in the descriptive routine, the child presents a transparent description in hopes of eliciting the name of the described object. the descriptive routine manifests as a joint exercise in the evocation of absent referents through their identifying descriptions. as younger children seek to enter the riddling arena, and as their slightly older peers seek to sustain a flagging session, riddles of transparent description make their appearance. like sutton-smith’s pre-riddle, descriptive routines allow initiates to secure a space in the performance protocol — their productions pass as tokens of the game — even if these formulations fail to include the special conceptual twist of the genre. but to characterize descriptive routines as flawed tokens of the genre is to miss their positive contributions to the child’s developing mastery over the social and cognitive skills entailed in their construction. i prefer to see them as a legitimate forum of verbal intrigue, slanted toward the straightforward reproduction of cultural knowledge, as was the case with the child’s initial encounters with the naming game and the animal voices game. when children produce descriptive routines, they are engaged in a search for proper descriptive strategies. the proof of success in this endeavor is the capacity to call to mind the name of an object simply by describing it. for children at this stage of development, this outcome is remarkable and rewarding in itself. there are multiple techniques used by children in producing descriptive riddles. i will draw upon field data i gathered in the mid 1970s among mexican american kids in austin, texas, to illustrate some of these options. one is to describe through reference to the object’s salient physical properties. consider the following cluster: what’s red? a rose. what has five sides and lives in the sea? a starfish. what’s square and it gots a point on the top? a house. what gots a lot of colors when it rains? a rainbow. it’s in a circle, gots little sticks, and they got something planted? a tree. cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 40 11/6/08 11:46:09 am mcdowell naming games and beyond 41 as generally is done in riddling, one child enunciates the query and then leaves an interlude for the other child or children to announce the solution. if the respondents are not forthcoming with the solution, the child who began the routines provides it. three features immediately are striking as we contemplate this cluster of descriptive riddles. first, it is clear that these opening queries are spontaneously formulated. one advantage of this style of riddling for the neophyte is this readyto-hand quality of the material — there is no requirement to carefully keep in mind a complicated ploy, as in true riddles. second, these quick formulations seize on the basic perceptual categories such as color, form, extension, and so forth. they foster the perfection of an objective lexicon that can be applied across the spectrum of experience. these routines exhibit a strong empirical orientation to the world. and third, there are degrees of acuity evident in these descriptions both with regards to amount of detail and clarity. the first example can be seen as too broad in its descriptor, since any number of objects possess redness; the next item, describing the starfish, comes much closer to the desired quality of uniqueness in the descriptor. the quest for clear articulation in identifying descriptions is evident in the following exchange, where an older child improves upon the query of a younger peer: — oh, what’s red and white, red and white and doesn’t do nothing, and has a stick down its side, and the red and white thing is against the stick? — i don’t know. — flag. — to a pole, red, white, and blue, stuck on to a big pole. here the younger child inadvertently produces something closer to a true riddle, by concealing the intended referent of his description, a riddling tactic akin to what roger abrahams (1972) refers to as “the scrambled gestalt.” the older child creates a better description by eliminating the excess verbiage, replacing the word “stick” with the more appropriate “pole,” and adding the missing element “blue.” ironic descriptions as in the naming game and the animal voices game, the riddling game opens into a sophisticated twist on basic procedures as children gain mastery over technique; but in riddling, this additional twist is required in order to reproduce satisfactory examples of the genre. the riddle proper, unlike the puzzling pre-riddle or the empirical descriptive routine, pivots on the block element, that kernel of linguistic or conceptual sleight of hand that is deliberately introduced to temporarily separate the query from its solution. the riddle appears to be a venture much like the naming game or the animal voices game, in which an identifying description cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 41 11/6/08 11:46:09 am naming games and beyond mcdowell 42 launches a search for an intended referent. but right off there is something odd about these descriptions. perhaps they contain a contradiction in terms, as in this example: what has eyes but cannot see? this is a problematic description because it appears to challenge its own grounds of plausibility; robert georges and alan dundes (1963) term this strategy “privational.” other riddle queries are not inherently contradictory but instead lead to a state of semantic indeterminacy: what has four wheels and flies? a thousand lights in a dish, what is it? these descriptions do not readily evoke their intended referents. in fact, to solve such riddles the child must set aside the apparent drift of the description in order to locate the intended referent. this technique is present in the most famous riddle in the english language tradition: what’s black and white and red all over? in order to hit on “a newspaper,” the child must resist the sequence of color terms to hear “read” rather than “red.” riddles like these, the true riddles of riddling, offer a furtive act of description in the guise of an obvious one. their identifying descriptions are deliberately skewed to the opaque, to odd semantic nuances and fortuitous homophonic equivalences. they qualify as extensions of the naming game, but the quest here is for illicit rather than sanctioned modes of description. children in their seventh and eighth years of age specialize in these excursions into a shifty world of verbal intrigue. the descriptions in true riddles add word play, metaphor, and anomaly to the child’s bag of tricks. they accomplish the magic of actually describing while appearing not to describe. riddling at this level amounts to a deconstruction of the act of referencing, revealing that naming systems are only approximate and tentative. riddles built on word play, like this one, what has four wheels and flies? a garbage truck point to limitations in the verbal code, its often duplicitous matching of sound and sense and its sometimes ambiguous structures of logic. such riddles exploit these wrinkles in the code to produce descriptions with a curious semantics; they invite awareness of the arbitrary and conventional status of natural languages, of their incompleteness and imperfection, their relativity. cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 42 11/6/08 11:46:09 am mcdowell naming games and beyond 43 riddles based on metaphoric connections assess another sort of code limitation, the poverty of conventional systems of thought in comparison to the wealth of sensory experience. let’s return to one of my favorite children’s riddles: a thousand lights in a dish, what is it? the stars in the night sky. riddles like this one propose innovative arrangements of objects in our fields of experience based on the use of valid but unorthodox criteria. they reveal that conventional forms of classification, acquired with such persistence by the younger child, are in fact skeletal. these riddles momentarily bring into focus alternative visions of the cosmic order — the set of concave objects (dishes, the night panorama) and the set of points of light (stars, lights in a dish). the child correctly concludes that these phantom conceptual regimes are less pragmatic than the conventional ones, but it delights in highlighting their impeccable if impractical logics. finally, riddles based on anomaly contribute their special flair to children’s riddling. how many balls of string would it take to reach the moon? one big one. what do kangaroos have that nobody else has? baby kangaroos. what is taller sitting than standing? a dog. here we have neither word play nor fresh comparison. instead, these riddles find their block element in real-world observations that run counter to our conventional patterns of thought. their message, it seems, is that the world of experience is far more replete than our systems for classifying and codifying it can ever be. conclusion in her afs paper presented in québec city, 2007, katharine schramm looks closely at what she calls “nascent folklore,” which she positions as early manifestations of laurie mcgonnagill’s “protolore,” the first stirrings of conventionalized artistic expression among preschoolers (mcgonnagill 1993). schramm’s infants are in the preverbal stage, for the most part, yet their gurgles and coos, facial expressions, squirms, and wiggles indicate that they are already tuned into communicative networks and anxious to assert themselves as players in these arenas. what i have tried to do here is sketch out lines of continuity between the expressive profiles described by mcgonnagill and schramm and the robust activation of creative energies that we celebrate as children’s folklore (mcdowell 1995). i have no doubt that we can systematically trace this progression in artistic competence, and i offer this paper as an initial stab at marking out a consolidation of agency and expertise in one specific zone of communicative competence. cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 43 11/6/08 11:46:10 am naming games and beyond mcdowell 44 the concern here has been to construct a longitudinal portrait of the young person’s indoctrination into the naming and referencing of things. naming and referencing are undoubtedly crucial pieces in the acquisition of basic cultural competence, so they offer an important arena for observing how children gain mastery over materials and instruments of their culture. we have concerned ourselves with playful activities centered on naming — the naming game, the animal voices game, and riddling games. play, it appears, is a vital forum in the process of learning how to be a person in a society. these playful activities in one phase are places where children can absorb, try out, and perfect the naming and referencing practices of their communities. in another, subsequent phase, the newly-mastered maneuvers can be inspected for subversive potential — the possibility of odd animal voices, or of unconventional modes of description. becoming a person in society entails developing a sense of self, and these naming games provide opportunities for expressing the genius of self, from the toddler phase into early adolescence. one step is seizing control over an interactive routine; another is directing the game to the child’s preferred style and content; a third is using the game to challenge received structures of cultural coding. i hope to have demonstrated in this paper that children’s play with naming and referencing is a wonderful arena to observe the acquisition of culture and the realization of self. i propose, in conclusion, that this play is more than that — that it is, as well, an essential zone of personal engagement and growth. works cited abrahams, roger d. 1968. introductory remarks toward a rhetorical theory of folklore. journal of american folklore 81: 143-58. dissanayake, ellen. 2001. becoming homo aestheticus: sources of aesthetic imagination in mother-infant interactions. substance 30: 85-103. garvey, catherine. 1984. children’s talk. cambridge: harvard university press. georges, robert and alan dundes. 1963. toward a structural definition of the riddle. journal of american folklore 76: 111-18. lyons, john. 1977. semantics, vol. 1. cambridge: cambridge university press. mcdowell, john h. 1979. children’s riddling. bloomington: indiana university press. ______. 1995. the transmission of children’s folklore. in children’s folklore: a source book, ed. brian sutton-smith, jay mechling, thomas w. johnson, and felicia r. mcmahon, 49-62. new york: garland. mcgonnagill, laurie. 1993. preschool protolore. children’s folklore review 16(7): 41-47. meltzoff, andrew. 2007. “like me”: a foundation for social cognition. developmental science 10: 126-34. schramm, katherine. 2007. nascent folklore: infant communication and aesthetics. paper read at the annual meeting of the american folklore society, québec city, canada. cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 44 11/6/08 11:46:10 am mcdowell naming games and beyond 45 searle, john. 1969. speech acts: an essay in the philosophy of language. cambridge: cambridge university press. sutton-smith, brian, jay mechling, thomas w. johnson, and felicia r. mcmahon, eds. 1995. children’s folklore: a source book. new york: garland. ______. 1976. a developmental structural account of riddles. in speech play: research and resources for the study of linguistic creativity, ed. mary sanches and barbara kirshenblatt-gimblett, 11-119. philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press. cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 45 11/6/08 11:46:10 am cfr_2007-2008_part8 cfr_2007-2008_part9 cfr_2007-2008_part10 79 growing little traditions: baltimore’s little miss hon contest david j. puglia baltimore’s honfest festival draws folkloristic attention because it is one of the few urban public festivals to celebrate a folk group not based on any particular ethnic, religious, or occupational affiliation. the little miss hon contest is one popular part of the two-day honfest festival.1 recognized as a “baltimore” tradition, 60,000 festivalgoers attend honfest each year. these range from neighborhood locals to out-of-state revelers. many hail from in between: the baltimore metropolitan area, but not the city proper. some of the notice the festival receives derives from its controversial depictions of longtime, blue-collar, local residents, especially apparent in the two featured stage contests: the adult’s best hon contest and the children’s little miss hon contest. the performed “hon” image is perceived by some as a buffoonish characterization, while others see it as an exaggerated celebration of strong women based in an accurate historical past. additionally, the festival—and particularly the stage contests—raises folkloristic questions of the invention of tradition in urban america as a means of battling an inferiority complex. baltimore, a once great city, lives in the shadows of new york, philadelphia, and washington, d.c. elaborating on this urban issue, the little miss hon contest reveals a devotion to a tradition, a tradition that itself is devoted to the image of a white, blue-collar city. further, in the baltimore context, both supporters and detractors have heightened the symbolic meaning of the “hon” image because of the perceived connection to ideas of local identity, belonging, race, class, gender, and occupation. there is a small body of scholarly research on or related to honfest (gadsby and chidester 2007, rizzo 2008, shackel and gadsby 2008, chidester 2009, chidester and gadsby 2009, rizzo 2010, gadsby 2011, britton and faust 2012, puglia 2015). in addition, it has received much attention in the local media, from the baltimore sun to the blogosphere. the event that receives the most attention is the adult best hon contest. but little attention has been paid to the children’s version, the little miss hon contest, which takes place in advance of the best hon contest and on the same stage. in some ways, the little miss honest contest is the best hon contest’s undercard. the junior event is quicker, breezier, and receives less notice than its older sibling. but it has also become some festivalgoers’ most anticipated honfest event. the best hon contest is a rhetorical attempt to reclaim baltimore as a white, blue-collar city, differentiated by a down-to-earth, quirky, and kitsch aesthetic, in the face of baltimore’s class and racial discord—a fact that became national headline in 2015 following the death of freddie gray and the subsequent baltimore protests (berlinger 2015). but what can the little miss hon contest tell us about the uses of tradition in baltimore? one might assume the little miss hon contest would portray the same message, albeit watered down to suit children’s needs. in fact, the little miss hon contest has a much stronger message than that. it is a continuation of the sociocultural program set forth by the best growing little traditions puglia 80 hon contest, that is, an attempt at growing and cultivating a “little tradition”2 that boldly proclaims white, blue-collar ownership of a majority black, postindustrial city. the little miss hon contest takes place during honfest, which is held one weekend each june. the girls, or their parents, register to participate the day of the contest. some prepare in advance, while others sign up on a whim. this essay focuses on the little miss hon contest, attempting to understand it in relation to the adult version of the tradition, the best hon contest.3 i conduct a brief ethnographic description, followed by a rhetorical and contextual analysis of the little miss hon contest tradition, in the context of my honfest and best hon contest research. the little miss hon contest a girl bearing a number “1” walks onto the stage. she wears cat-eye glasses, a beehive hairdo, and a leopard print dress. she appears tentative, but she receives roaring approval from the large festival crowd, many of whom are dressed the same way. a woman in a similar outfit approaches the girl, microphone in hand. “kaylee, can you say hi, hon?” “hi, hon.” “where are you from?” “bal-ti-more.” “yeah? and what school do you go to?” the girl at first appears stumped. somebody shouts from the crowd that she doesn’t go to school. “oh, are you in school yet? do you go to preschool?” “i go to ballet school!” the crowd roars with laughter. the woman sends the girl to stand on a bench at the back of the stage. and with that, the number “2” is on stage. she also has a beehive hair-do and cat-eye glasses, but in place of a leopard skin dress, she wears a flower patterned house dress. “julie, can you say hi, hon?” “hi, hon” “can you say how you doin’?” “how you doin’?” “can you say welcome to baltimore?” “welcome to baltimore” “and where do you go to school?” “pine grove elementary” “and where is that?” “in maryland” (more laughter) each girl is interviewed on stage for twenty to thirty seconds, twelve in total, all between the ages of four and seven. the host asks the same questions, with only slight variations. the girls give short, direct answers, rarely approaching a baltimore accent, some even leaving out the “hon” altogether (although one peppers everything with hons, to howls of the crowd’s delight). the girls’ puglia growing little traditions 81 unpredictability and their costumes hold the attention of the crowd. when one young girl in a short leopard dress is complimented on her dress, she motions like a price is right model. yet another whispers her answers into the hosts ear rather than the microphone. another contestant, sporting a beehive with a long pink ribbon and dressed in a pink shirt and striped pink skirt is asked on stage “what brings you to hampden today?” “i don’t know,” she replies. each is dressed in an immaculate, exaggerated style, a combination of post-war women’s wear and trash connoisseur john waters films. as the girls line up on the bench in the rear of the stage, they create a kaleidoscope of florescent colors. this is the little miss hon contest, a tradition that is part of baltimore’s ever-growing annual honfest, a celebration of baltimore’s hon tradition. while on the stage of the little miss hon contest, host denise whiting sometimes uses the rhetoric of the beauty pageant, including occasionally telling girls that they look beautiful. bits of the performance are similar to a classic beauty pageant. the girls strut across the stage, do interviews, listen to a concluding serenade, and blow kisses. however, differentiating this contest from other child beauty pageants, many conventions are turned on their head. the blatantly amateur contestants do not so much strut as stumble onto the stage. the interviews are softball questions that last in total no more than twenty to thirty seconds, yet the girls often flub them anyway. and rather than a tuxedoed host concluding the ceremonies with a rendition of “there she is miss america,” a fouryear-old sings “skiddy-mer-rink-a-doo.” perhaps most importantly, the little miss hon contest does not have a winner, whereas child beauty pageants and the best hon contest do. the little miss hon contest holds the experience higher than winning. there is little overt competition in the contest beyond the reactions of the crowd. in fact, at the conclusion, the girls are told that they are all winners.4 upon closer inspection, the lack of competition between contestants makes sense under the guise of promising a future generation of a particular type of baltimorean. it is not the winner but the approval of the crowd and the consensus of the image. the little miss hon contest is growing a tradition. growing little traditions what was the meaning of the little miss hon contest as revealed in ethnographic observation in the opening scene? the practices i documented reveal that honfest is a location, or “play frame”—to cite the folkloristic concept of a subaltern space in which behaviors outside that frame can be reversed and mocked, and inside the frame cultural expressions build solidarity—for baltimoreans to create a current, idealized identity out of a romantic, nostalgic past (bronner 2010). the local folk speech of “hon” transitions into the female “hon” image. for some onlookers, the hon is a folk hero who symbolizes hard-working women, strong communities, and baltimore’s idiosyncrasies. for others, it is either a mischaracterization of baltimore’s working class or an attempt to romanticize baltimore’s white, workingclass past in lieu of its african american present. according to u.s. census data, baltimore underwent a rapid demographic shift in the second half of the twentieth growing little traditions puglia 82 century. baltimore was majority white from its founding through the early 1970s. today, baltimore’s racial demographics stand at approximately two-thirds black to one-third white, and its neighborhoods remain highly stratified.5 how did we get to this strange scene that plays annually in modern baltimore? baltimore has been growing the “hon” tradition for nearly three decades: linguistically, visually, and performatively. for those baltimoreans whose value system is rooted in an industrial economy and a working-class ethos, the collapse of the local industrial economy in the second half of the twentieth century created an existential crisis questioning whom the city and its residents are and what they stand for. the difficult discourse on identity has shifted to more manageable battlegrounds, including the little miss hon contest. in fact, honfest has been at the front of these vernacular wars. baltimoreans have sought to solve baltimore’s problems through the creation of public traditions for many years. proponents of these invented traditions have attempted to bring a cohesive identity to a fragmented, chaotic city. examples abound over the centuries. the baltimore sesquicentennial and its successor, the oriole festival, heeded the zeitgeist of uniting the city and served as the first attempt to do so through the creation of a citywide tradition. beginning in 1880, baltimore endeavored to capture its penchant for public display through festival. on its 150th anniversary, baltimore attempted to bring disparate baltimore groups together as baltimoreans for the baltimore sesquicentennial to celebrate their illustrious past and to prepare for the city’s future. the festival returned the following year as the oriole festival.6 the oriole festival only lasted three years, from 1881-1883, but the acclaimed7 festival and pageant proved that baltimore was capable of more than ethnic and neighborhood celebrations (ammen 1912, 255-258). other citywide festivals succeeded the oriole festival, including the couth and polite flower mart of the early twentieth century and the civic-corporate hybrid baltimore city fair of the late twentieth century. these festivals have sought to create a sense of shared identity, although some residents have contested that vision. honfest’s tradition of staged events are a powerful form of symbolic practice that residents enact in an attempt to define an authentic sense of place and identity and that participants reshape to negotiate a cognitive sense of identity and belonging. little miss hon performs and exaggerates the hon image through a self-perpetuating, self-referential, and evergrowing tradition. geographically, baltimore’s regional identity remains ambiguous. neither northern enough to be northeast nor southern enough to be a southern city, and too far east to be a rustbelt city, baltimore is left with the lukewarm designation of middle atlantic. that is, the middle atlantic is the “remainder” or “left overs” after the stronger regions of new england and the south are identified. folklorist simon j. bronner has noted that the middle atlantic is “the least conspicuous of america’s regions, both to outsiders and to its inhabitants” (bronner 2006, 789). it was not always so. from 1830-1860, baltimore was america’s second largest city. it ceded that honor to philadelphia after the civil war and never regained it. baltimore was also once a city of a million residents (1950s), but the population has declined puglia growing little traditions 83 ever since then. today, baltimore is a midsized and prosaic city, set near the rich and the powerful. baltimore has some legitimate reasons to feel inferior. officially “charm city,” baltimore has received some negative nicknames in the twentieth century, including “harm city,” “the heroin capital of america,” “the city that bleeds,” and “bodymore, murdaland”8 due to the high per capita murder rate in the city, hitting its peak of violence in 1993 with 353 slayings.9 baltimore ranks 33rd among the most deadly places in the united states.10 although the murder rate has dropped substantially since its peak in the 1980s and 1990s (a low of 196 murders in 2011), baltimore is still two to three times the national average in all varieties of violent and property crime. in addition, residents are referred to as (and sometimes refer to themselves by) the humorous folk demonym “baltimorons,” referencing the city’s slack education accolades.11 fifty percent of baltimoreans have a high school diploma or less, and baltimore’s public schools are constantly mired in controversy.12 in response to the negative publicity, energetic and optimistic mayors like william donald schaefer and martin o’malley have attempted to devise new images for the city with nicknames like “america’s comeback city,” “the greatest city in the world,” and the ubiquitous park bench placard “believe.” but it is the non-institutional “hon” image that has been the most powerful rebranding. baltimore is known as a “blue-collar” city.13 but the city’s easy blue-collar designation merits examination, especially with its once blue-collar workers now employed in the service and information economy at a rate of 90%. the aesthetic leaks overtly into the city’s perception of its culture. historian kenneth d. durr argues that baltimore is indeed a blue-collar town, and a prescient one at that. its blue-collar workers seem to be harbingers for working-class sentiment to come elsewhere. durr notes particularly how “baltimore was far ahead of the nation when it came to the era’s defining conflict—one staged by policymakers but waged by working whites and blacks—over the deteriorating institutions and the economic crumbs left over in the deindustrializing city” (durr 2003, 4). the continued deindustrialization of the city and continuing competition for cultural ownership of the city has propelled the hon image, showcased in the little miss honfest, into baltimore’s spotlight. but why is the word “hon,” heard across the united states, so closely associated with baltimore and so dear to many baltimoreans hearts? while “hon” is not unique or distinctive to baltimore, it has been adopted as symbolic of baltimorese—the local vernacular—and the related local, blue-collar aesthetic. the embracing of the term “hon” first became a citywide tradition when a mysterious gentlemen nicknamed “hon man” began plastering the word on the “welcome to baltimore” parkway sign. this word transitioned to the capitalized “hon,” a beehived, cat-eyed woman in garish or frumpy dresses and indulgent make up sporting a strong baltimore accent (and likely to use the word “hon”).14 an essential starting point to unpacking the hon image and the little miss hon contest is a closer look at filmmaker john waters’ most successful movie, hairspray (1988). born near baltimore in 1946, baltimore filmmaker waters embraced baltimore’s quirks in a way few others had. he writes, “i would never growing little traditions puglia 84 want to live anywhere but baltimore. you can look far and wide, but you’ll never discover a stranger city with such extreme style. it’s as if every eccentric in the south decided to move north, ran out of gas in baltimore, and decided to stay” (waters 2005, 76). in 1988, waters released hairspray. set in baltimore in the 1960s, tracy turnblad and other beehived baltimoreans endeavored to integrate a televised dancing show. although never referred to as hons, the big haired women who set the canon for honfest are seen throughout. in fact, in many ways, honfest is an unattributed hairspray fan convention, although because the iconography has gone beyond the movie and into “tradition,” attendees can reference previous honfests rather than hairspray directly. throughout the second half of the 1990s, “hon” continued to transition from the term of address, “hon,” to a type of person, the admirable baltimore “hon.” in 1996, for example, the baltimore sun’s fashion editor, vida roberts offered an elaborate, mostly positive description of how a hon dressed. the subtitle of her article, “treasure those baltimore ladies who call you ‘hon,’ hon. because they’re a vanishing treasure characterized by hearts of gold—and some other traits you can’t miss” is reminiscent of the “eleventh-hour ethnography” of folkloristics’ past (kirshenblatt-gimblett 1998, 300). boiled down to the essentials, roberts article listed the characteristics of a hon (1996). in her estimation, hons are the bighaired, down-to-earth, friendly, maternal, hard-working women of baltimore. roberts’ article was a clear transition toward the hon as a type of woman, although she was not yet at the point where she was ready to capitalize the word “hon.” roberts made an effort to add benign feminist and maternal connotations to the “hon” phenomenon. for example, she argued “big hair alone does not a hon make; a real hon has a generous spirit as big as her beehive. it’s her willingness to scrub, hug, scold and help family and her neighbors that singles her out” (roberts 1996). this connotation of the motherly hon seems to have been created to give the “hon” image a positive connotation, in contrast with the “slutty” hon that some perceived. in addition, one can see the romanticism and nostalgia at play, reminiscing back to the time when neighbors looked out for and assisted one another. this is an embodiment of the nostalgic white, blue-collar image of baltimore’s past. since his upset victory in 2000, baltimore mayor martin o’malley had made it his mission to change the perception of baltimore. but a horrendous murder rate and a national portrayal on the wire (2002-2008) as a center of drugs, crime, violence, and corruption had done little to improve the city’s image. as the official commissioned report would later state, “baltimore is plagued by negative press and harmful characterizations by the media, resulting in an inferiority complex” (donovan 2005). o’malley and the city council brought in branding strategy experts landor associates to change the image of the city and improve nationwide perception. instead of attempting to compete directly with new york, washington, d.c., orlando, or las vegas, the report encouraged baltimore to play up its downhome, authentic characteristics, what it referred to as “the hon factor” (donovan 2005). this factor brings a small town feel to a big city, something not to be found in washington, d.c., or new york. the residents surveyed had puglia growing little traditions 85 spoken positively of baltimoreans as “quirky,” “funky,” “off-kilter,” “hilarious,” “bizarre,” and “a little-off center” (donovan 2005). while this was never adopted as an “official” baltimore brand, the hon fills this need by playing precisely to these characteristics. the “hon” tradition in baltimore seems to follow dundes’ inferiority complex thesis that small countries (or cities in this case) suffering from poor self images are particularly active in using folklore to promote themselves and allow them to actively reflect on and debate their identity (dundes 1985). in baltimore, a city with a well-documented, century-long inferiority complex, “hon” and “the hons,” best captured in the best hon contest and the little miss hon contest, are deployed to distinguish and redeem a location in the midst of the competing east coast cities of washington, d.c., philadelphia, and new york. as a little big city that has fallen on hard times since the 1970s, baltimore is in the midst of a local inferiority complex. enter the baltimore hon. in many ways, baltimore’s hon image is similar to the american folk heroes of yore, reminiscent of richard m. dorson’s “american comic demigods”: hard-working, kind, of the people, down-to-earth, and independent (dorson 1941). while dorson despised the commercially fabricated paul bunyan, dundes pointed out that dorson’s criticism is primarily a matter of origins rather than function. as far as function, dundes saw fakelore filling “a national, psychological need: namely, to assert one’s national identity, especially in a time of crisis, and to instill pride in that identity” (dundes 1985, 13). further, he argued fakelore seemed to be invented “where folklore is deemed lacking or insufficient” and creative people “fill the void” by “creating a national epic or national ‘folk’ hero ex nihlio if necessary” or, more common, “embroider and inflate fragments of folklore into folkloristic fabrications” (dundes 1985, 13). that is, when needed, locals grow their own folk heroes. when asked, the baltimore area convention and visitors association denied that “the hon” was a baltimore tourist draw or even on the average tourist’s radar. the association claimed tourists are primarily interested in strolling through the inner harbor, visiting historic neighborhoods, and feasting on steamed crabs. the spokesperson told the baltimore sun, “if you do a survey with visitors and you ask them, hons wouldn’t rank…hons wouldn’t even be on the radar screen…it’s not something that people think of, and it’s not as if visitors come in the visitors center and say, ‘where’s the hon?’” (sessa 2008). while his comment was meant to downplay the importance of the hon phenomenon in baltimore, it proves honfest to be even more locally important. according to the baltimore’s tourist bureau, honfest is not an important tourist destination. it is a performance by baltimoreans for baltimoreans, even if it is only organized by a select few and only appreciated by some others.15 as part of the land-language-lore complex (abrahams 1993), urban american folk speech is used in an attempt to create a local tradition that connects people to place. in the face of a rapidly changing city, “hon” transitioned from a stigmatized vernacular term associated with the lower class to an esteemed vernacular term tied to local roots and city identity. “hon” and the “hon” image served both as baltimore’s most prominent example of the esteemed vernacular growing little traditions puglia 86 and as a rhetorical battleground where issues of race, class, gender, and belonging clash with conceptions of identity, heritage, and nostalgia over the attempt of civic leaders to construct a citywide local tradition. the little miss hon contest demonstrates a commitment to an annual performance of this tradition. furthemore, “hon” seeks to create a “natural” connection between an imagined group and a recently demarcated political boundary (abrahams 1993). if baltimore represents the epitome of an overindustrialized, and, now, postindustrial landscape, “hon” helps redeem a sacred homeland by referring not to the vacant buildings and shuttered plants, but instead to a nostalgia for an neighborly, folksy, down-to-earth city. while there was some stigma associated with “hon” in the 1990s16 and earlier,17 by the 2000s, “hon” had entered the esteemed vernacular. baltimoreans now use “hon” in speech, on merchandise, and on highway signs to make what linguist barbara johnstone calls “self-conscious regional identity claims” (johnstone, andrus, and danielson 2006, 78; see also johnstone 2009). in response to baltimore’s conflicted, volatile past, this esteemed vernacular tradition has been one growing attempt to connect residents to the local in a transient world. alan dundes encouraged folklorists to collect not just folklore, but the meaning of folklore. these native interpretations are valuable, and i have attempted to elicit honfest’s meaning from the festival’s devotees. however, crossing the “triviality barrier” has proved challenging (sutton-smith 1970). most festivalgoers reiterate that the festival is fun and carefree, that they have a familial connection to baltimore, that they want to celebrate the old way of life, or that they want their children to experience baltimore. these native interpretations call attention to a deeper unspoken meaning that demands analytic interpretation. in such instances, dundes hypothesized that “it is often the taboo activities and ideas which find expression outlets in symbolic form” and “if the folk consciously recognized the symbolic significance of the joke or folksong element, this element might not be able to continue to serve as a safe, socially sanctioned element” (2007, 85). viewed in isolation, the native interpretations appear valid, perhaps even accurate. but when the festival is studied in the context of baltimore’s race relations, perhaps best exemplified by the death of freddie gray and the 2015 protests, a deeper meaning emerges. the little miss hon contest, and honfest in general, is one battle waged in the larger, symbolic campaign for cultural ownership of baltimore. through this annually invoked and embodied ritual, baltimore’s heritage as a white, blue-collar city is reassured for the audience and participants. the battle must be waged symbolically rather than overtly, lest the violent and chaotic baltimore of 2015 become the constant state of the city. conclusion: baltimore’s little tradition in baltimore, the hon image, taken from and symbolizing the larger local, working class dialect known as baltimorese, became a symbolic battlefield for issues of race, class, gender, identity, and belonging. while some residents and commentators dismiss the image as trivial, the attention the issue receives coincides with the symbolic significance that baltimoreans implicitly understood about the image. in the land-language-lore complex, the owner of the local puglia growing little traditions 87 language has the best claim to cultural ownership of the land. the little miss hon contest is not a silly diversion, but a cultural battle over who can lay natural claim to baltimore. its function is an extension of the function of the best hon contest (see puglia forthcoming, “the hons of honfest” chapter). the difficult, unspeakable, symbolic discourse on racial and class identity has shifted to this safer, more manageable, and more respectable battleground. children are paraded as extensions of their parents who have prepared them to play a role. while the little miss hon contestants lack the agency and maturity of best hon contest contestants, more important than their individual motivations is the event, the city, and the zeitgeist that celebrates them. in baltimore, the “hon” image’s understated but understood commentary on local identity, belonging, race, class, gender, and occupation have made the “hon” a powerful symbol. in this essay, i have attempted to show how this seemingly benign, recently invented tradition lends its support to the nostalgic vision of a white, blue-collar city of the past. in addition to the quickly changing demographics, baltimoreans seem to have an inferiority complex, living in the shadow of new york, philadelphia, and washington, d.c. honfest, and especially the little his hon contest and the best hon contest, give folklorists ample opportunities to explore how inferiority complexes are addressed through the invention of tradition in the modern american city. baltimore’s current answer, the “hon,” is denigrated by some as a lampooning of baltimore’s working class past, but celebrated by others as a commemoration of the strong, hard-working, maternal, and uniquely stylish women of baltimore. the “hon” tradition seems to hold importance to little miss hon and best hon contest participants and the honfests tens of thousands of attendees, who come from both baltimore and the baltimore diaspora. the little miss hon contest is an annual celebration of a perceived traditional group, one not based on any particular ethnic, religion, or occupation affiliation, but rather a group formed purely out of the american urban experience. children are presented strategically as part of this growing tradition. while adults provide the framework for the annual contest, it is exclusively children who perform as the little hons. by performing, they confirm the establishment and continuity of the tradition, showing that this is a wide-ranging, multigenerational tradition that encompasses youth and that will carry forth. now firmly planted, the little hon tradition has spread its roots, blossomed, and continued to grow. notes 1. this is reminiscent of what richard m. dorson was searching for in gary, indiana in his classic article “is there a folk in the city?” (1970). dorson yearned to find distinctive american traditions that came directly out of the american experience, rather than immigrant traditions imported from abroad. 2. my title is meant to be a double entendre, referencing both the small children who perform the annual tradition in baltimore and the work of anthropologists such as mckim marriott (1955), robert redfield (1955, 1960), gustave e. von grunebaum (1955), john h. bodley (2000), and knut odner (2000) growing little traditions puglia 88 who distinguished between “great” and “little” traditions. this school of thought referred to the cultural and religious tradition of nations and empires, including its art and literature, as the “great” traditions, and the local and informal traditions of the peasants as “little” traditions. 3. i chose to analyze the 2007 little miss hon contest, as that year was the only time the contest was fully documented. a full recording can be found on youtube uploaded by wbal-tv 11 baltimore titled “lil miss hon contest.” https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=ari0vwxhxqa/ while it would be preferable to have a wide range of little miss hon contests to observe, only one has ever been recorded in full. 4. joel best has written about the everyone-is-a-winner phenomenon extensively in everyone’s a winner: life in our congratulatory culture. 5. as of 2011, the u.s. census reports that baltimore is 63.7% black or african american and 29.6% white alone. http://www.census.gov/quickfacts/table/ pst045215/2404000/. for additional demographic analysis, see yeip (2015). yeip points to the baltimore’s low score on the u.s. census bureau’s “diversity index” as another indicator of baltimore’s stratification. 6. the oriole festival as sometimes alternatively referred to as the festival of the oriole or the oriole celebration. the oriole is the maryland state bird and one of the mascots of baltimore, not because it is native to baltimore, which for the most part it is not, but rather because its orange and black coloring is similar to lord baltimore’s coat of arms. 7. it even received a september 13, 1882 write up in the new york times. the author says the festival was “celebrated to-day with more than usual ceremony and display.” 8. this nickname was popularized by real street graffiti featured in the opening credits of the hbo television series the wire. 9. if it had the same population as new york, new york, baltimore would have recorded nearly 4,000 murders in 1993. (new york reported 1,960 homicides that year). 10. city-data, baltimore, maryland, “baltimore on our top lists” http://www. city-data.com/city/baltimore-maryland.html 11. also see baltimore local ernest smith’s hey hon!: how to talk like a real bawlamoron. 12. for an example of the accolades maryland receives for its public school system, see “maryland schools ranked number one—again,” washington post, january 12, 2012. the level of individual educational attainment can be found on united states census bureau’s table 233 “educational attainment by state.” more marylanders hold advanced degrees than any state but massachusetts. 13. “blue collar” can at times be polite code for “dowdy” or “depressed.” 14. for more on the events that led to honfest and the little miss hon contest, see puglia (forthcoming). 15. folklorist regina bendix refers to a similar phenomenon in interlaken, switzerland. she argues that in interlaken, even if traditions are performed outwardly for tourists, the act of performing gives the interlaken community the opportunity to express their culture in their own words and on their own terms. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ari0vwxhxqa https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ari0vwxhxqa http://www.census.gov/quickfacts/table/pst045215/2404000 http://www.census.gov/quickfacts/table/pst045215/2404000 http://www.city-data.com/city/baltimore-maryland.html http://www.city-data.com/city/baltimore-maryland.html puglia growing little traditions 89 16. there had been complaints about racial, gender, and class connotations and the general association of “hon” with diner-waitress speak. for more about the specific debates, see puglia (forthcoming). 17. informants in the podcast “welcome to baltimore, hon: exploring hon as a linguistic and identity marker in baltimore” by holly-catherine britton and heidi j. faust recall their parents attempting to eliminate their baltimorese as a means of social advancement. works cited abrahams, roger d. 1993. phantoms of romantic 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folklife, volume 3. armonk, ny: m.e. sharpe. ———. 2010. framing folklore: an introduction. western folklore 65: 401-34. chidester, robert c. 2009. class, community, and materiality in a blue-collar baltimore neighborhood: an archaeology of hampden-woodberry. phd diss., university of michigan. chidester, robert c. and david a. gadsby. 2009. one neighborhood, two communities: the public archaeology of class in a gentrifying urban neighborhood. international labor and working-class history 76: 127-146. donovan, doug. 2005. baltimore: the city in search of a slogan. baltimore sun, november 8. http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2005-11-08/ news/0511080037_1_brand-baltimore-area-convention-slogan dorson, richard m. 1941. america’s comic demigods. the american scholar 10(4): 389-401. ———. 1970. is there a folk in the city? journal of american folklore 83(328): 185-216. dundes, alan. 1985. nationalistic inferiority complexes and the fabrication of folklore. journal of folklore research 22: 5-18. 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neighborhood, baltimore, maryland. in archaeology as a tool of civic engagement, eds., barbara j. little and p. a. shackel, pp. 223-242. altamira press. johnstone, barbara, jennifer andrus, and andrew e. danielson. 2006. mobility, indexicality, and the enregisterment of “pittsburghese.” journal of english linguistics 34:77-104. johnstone, barbara. 2009. “pittsburghese shirts: commodification and the enregisterment of an urban dialect. american speech 84(2): 157-175. kirshenblatt-gimblett, barbara. 1998. folklore’s crisis. journal of american folklore 111(441): 281-337. marriott, mckim. 1955. little communities in an indigenous civilization. in village india: studies in the little community, ed. m. marriott, pp. 171-222. chicago: university of chicago press. odner, knut. 2000. tradition and transmission: bantu, indo-european, and circumpolar great traditions. bergen, norway: norse publications. bergen studies in social anthropology, no. 54. puglia, david j. 2015. hon culture wars: revering and reviling the vernacular in baltimore and beyond. phd diss., penn state harrisburg. ———. forthcoming. welcome to baltimore, hon: vernacular wars and local identity. lanham, md: lexington books. redfield, robert. 1955. social organization of tradition. the far eastern quarterly (15)1: 13-21. redfield, robert. 1960. the little community and peasant society and culture. chicago: the university of chicago press. rizzo, mary. 2008. the café hon: working-class white femininity and commodified nostalgia in postindustrial baltimore. in dixie emporium: tourism, foodways, and consumer culture in the american culture, ed. anthony j. stanonis, pp. 264-285. athens and london: the university of george press. ———. 2010. hon-ouring the past: play-publics and gender at baltimore’s honfest. international journal of heritage vol. 16, no. 4-5 july-september 2010: 337-351. roberts, vida. hon heaven culture: treasure those baltimore ladies who call you ‘hon,” hon. because they’re a vanishing treasure characterized by hearts of gold—and some other traits you can’t miss, baltimore sun, june 7, 1996. puglia growing little traditions 91 sessa, sam. 2008. hon-estly, hon, it’s just fun. baltimore sun, june 13. http:// articles.baltimoresun.com/2008-06-13/news/0806120410_1_cafe-honhairspray-john-waters/. shackel, paul a. and david a. gadsby. 2008. “i wish for paradise:” memory and class in hampden, baltimore. in collaboration in archaeological practice: engaging descendant communities, eds., c. colwell-chanthaphonh and t. j. ferguson, pp. 225-242. altamira press. smith, ernest. 1993. hey hon! how to talk like a real bawlamoron. baltimore, md: 38th street press. sutton-smith, brian. 1970. psychology of childlore: the triviality barrier. western folklore 29(1): 1-8. von grunebaum, gustave e. 1955. the problem: unity in diversity. in unity and variety in muslim civilization. chicago: university of chicago press. yeip, randy. 2015. baltimore’s demographic divide. wall street journal, may 1. http://graphics.wsj.com/baltimore-demographics// waters, john. 2005. shock value: a tasteful book about bad taste. philadelphia, pa: running press book publishers. http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2008-06-13/news/0806120410_1_cafe-hon-hairspray-john-waters/ http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2008-06-13/news/0806120410_1_cafe-hon-hairspray-john-waters/ http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2008-06-13/news/0806120410_1_cafe-hon-hairspray-john-waters/ http://graphics.wsj.com/baltimore-demographics// cfr_2017_part19 growing little traditions: baltimore’s little miss hon contest david j. puglia cfr_2017_part20 cfr_2017_part21 pages from cfr_2017_part22 61 cheeky behavior: the meaning and function of ‘fartlore’ in childhood and adolescence trevor j. blank whether it is due to social taboos about bodily functions or sheer ingenuity, flatulence has well over a dozen common terms associated with its occurrence: passing gas, breaking wind, letting one rip (or go), cutting the cheese, busting ass, pooting, tooting, foofing, fluffing, puffing; folk retorts that mask the anxieties caused by flatulence through euphemistic annotations also exist, such as “dropping a bomb,” “making a stinker,” “cooking some eggs,” “baking brownies,” “making an air biscuit,” “stepping on a duck,” “cracking a boom-boom,” or “rolling out some thunder.” 1 regardless of the fact that flatulence is a universal bodily production, the public discussion of its occurrence is a forbidden social taboo; as josepha sherman and t.k.f. weisskopf point out, the aforementioned genteel euphemisms “emphasize its unsuitability as a topic of polite adult conversation” (1995, 55). still, farting (as the passing of flatulence is most commonly referred to in american culture) is a part of our daily lives as well as our folklore — so much so in fact that the term “fartlore” has emerged to refer to the folklore of flatulence.2 fartlore research has appeared sporadically in children’s folklore scholarship, but in nearly every instance the collected materials are a mere footnote in comparison to the other topics reported upon. likewise, most existing collections are descriptive rather than analytical, and they insufficiently explain the meaning and function that flatulence-themed folklore has in the lives of children, adolescents, and adults. this begs the question: beyond their face value, what do the flatulence-themed components of folklore mean when enacted in games, songs, humor, beliefs, or verbal art? more importantly, what purpose do they serve in society and why?3 using an interdisciplinary framework drawn from psychoanalysis, folkloristics, and sociology, this essay seeks to elucidate the means by which children and adolescents attempt to circumvent, challenge, or cope with adult authority in their confrontation of social taboos while establishing their own identities. through a survey of historical and contemporary texts, i interpret the projective functional purpose and meaning of fartlore in the social worlds of pre-adults. in doing so, i contend that the data i have accumulated represents a distinct genre within children’s and adolescent folk culture in which folklore about bodily functions — especially those with scatological themes — is ubiquitous. in addition, my study of fartlore intends to demonstrate that fartlore is a subversive and compensatory genre that is a reflexive manifestation of unspoken societal attitudes and anxieties (see sidoli 1996). ethnographers should consider the value of collecting folklore for the broader interpretation of gendered and life-course experiences (including in national contexts) and especially those areas that dwell outside of mainstream scholarship boundaries in their future research endeavors. when i was a graduate student at indiana university, i wanted to complete my master’s thesis on latrinalia in the twenty-first century. i was quickly shut down boise ikastola thursby 62 after receiving the explanation that my proposed topic was (and i quote), “too unsanitary.”4 clearly, the topics of flatulence and scatology trigger highly emotional responses in the public sphere! in an example outside of my own personal experience, the children’s book walter, the farting dog (kotzwinkle and murray 2001) — which tells a rather innocent story about a loveable, adopted dog that has a chronic flatulence problem — was banned from numerous public school libraries in wisconsin in 2009. some public schools have openly discussed banning children from farting (mills 2008), and a twelve-year old boy was even arrested recently for deliberately “breaking wind” during class.5 why all the fuss? everybody farts. on average, men fart fourteen to fifteen times a day and women do it an average of eight to nine times a day en route to creating over a quart of gas (dawson 2006, 1). stemming from swallowed air, food, and other natural body processes, the accumulation of internal gases eventually passes through the rectum, whereupon the anal sphincter vibrates and creates the distinctive sounds associated with flatulence (alvarez 1942). a combination of gasses are present in flatus (the medical term for gas expelled from the digestive tract), which is composed of approximately 79% nitrogen, 17% oxygen, 4% carbon dioxide, and small traces of hydrogen and methane. of that, less than 1% of the gas in the average fart contains the unpleasant smell associated with its passing; this includes small amounts of ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, indole, skatole, volatile amines, and short-chain fatty acids (rabkin and silverman 1991, 8, 14). before i scare anyone off, i would like to contextualize my rationale for including this information. it is understandable that one may be “grossed out” by the physiological processes behind flatulence. we strive to avoid discussions about flatulence when we fart; if we break wind, we might pray that it does not make a sound or smell that will draw attention to us; we may simply avoid acknowledging that a fart has taken place, or if we do, we might pass the blame onto the family pet6 or to a peer with diffusing remarks or posturing; undeniably, some people will endure great physical discomfort in order to withhold flatulence or acknowledge anal productions in public. as such, it is not surprising to note the lack of social awareness or interest about how we fart, much less (and more curiously) why, when, and where we do it. despite its proclivity for creating anxiety, flatulence is a pervasive part of folklore — beginning with learned behaviors during childhood and reinforced by parents and society throughout the life course — and as such, the subversive and compensatory nature of fartlore serves as an excellent entrypoint into a deeper understanding of the myriad ways that people — especially children and adolescents — navigate and respond to the pressures of not only their bowels, but their social worlds. indeed, one would be hard-pressed to find someone over the age of ten who was unfamiliar with the enduring children’s song, “beans, beans,” which features stanzas such as: beans, beans, they’re good for your heart the more you eat, the more you fart the more you fart, the better it feels beans should be served at every meal! thursby boise ikastola 63 and: beans, beans, the musical [or magical] fruit the more you eat, the more you toot the more you toot, the better it feels so serve some beans at all your meals! even though a significant portion of fartlore plays on the social anxieties stemming from flatulence, it bears noting that “passing gas” was not always a socially taboo subject matter; cultural awareness and engagement with flatulence has been documented for centuries.7 societal attitudes about the public embrace or acknowledgment of flatulence have been undergoing revision since the mid-19th century, when the social classification of highbrow and lowbrow culture became increasingly dichotomous and subjects such as flatulence began to be associated with immaturity or the lower class (see levine 1988). accordingly, the historical accounts about the deliberate engagement of flatulence in customs or narrative forms show a cultural revelry with the subject in past generations and cultures, whereas modern fartlore collections hint at secretive, malicious, or emotionally reactive causes behind the creation of fartlore, especially amongst pre-adults. perhaps the most (in)famous study of scatology was conducted by soldierscientist john g. bourke, who witnessed a ritual urine-drinking ceremony among the zuñi in new mexico in 1881 and subsequently became fascinated with the role of excrement in world cultures. bourke spent over a decade researching and collecting scatological folklore from around the world en route to publishing the exhaustive scatologic rites of all nations in 1891. unsurprisingly, the folklore of flatulence was well-represented in bourke’s treatise, including the proposition that the fart was seen as a divinity to ancient egyptians who saw flatulence as the personification of a natural function (87-88) and the revelation that farts were once used as a means of toll payment in france dating back to 1398 (109-10). my point in sharing these incidents of cultural awareness about flatulence and their influence on the creation of fartlore is to underscore the longstanding tradition of social commentary and interest in the subject and its narrative byproducts. fartlore is more than just a response to the constraints of modern social norms; it is a derivative of tradition that has managed to repeat and vary throughout history. could it be that between the psychological need for the creation of fartlore (to bypass social restrictions in order to gain pleasure) and the contemporary social pressures to control one’s anal productions (through reinforcement, peer group dynamics, and the social construction of normalcy) that folklore helps to negotiate children’s understanding of their body and corporeal presence with the expectations and constraints of society in the early years of their development? and if so, why are males seemingly more likely than females to participate in fartlore? flatulence is a liminal category between excretion and relief and thus serves as a fertile testing ground for establishing cognitive categories of dirtiness and cleanliness in pre-adulthood (especially childhood). by extension, identification of what makes something profane and sacred, aggressive or submissive, is also a boise ikastola thursby 64 component of flatulence’s importance to child and adolescent development of understanding social boundaries. the agent is unclear in the social construction of the flatulence taboo, and as such the sense of liminality serves to test honesty and responsibility; in a sense it serves as a means of moral conditioning through training the child in a more influential way than during other periods of the life course. william bascom’s (1954) classic identification of the “four functions of folklore” — escape, validation, education, and social control (with the goal of stabilizing society) — embodies the functionalist approach to understanding the reasons for folklore’s creation and dissemination; that is, the assumption that folklore has a purpose or “function” in society and can thus be viewed through this lens of interpretation. functionalism has long served as a theoretical framework for the study of children’s folklore (gaignebet 1974; knapp and knapp 1976; opie and opie 1953); however, elliott oring (1976) and others have criticized functionalism as merely interpreting folklore by providing a greater sense of understanding the consequence of social phenomena, instead of truly explaining its causation through empirical evidence and analysis. as an example, the knapps (1976, 21116) use functionalism as an entry point into explaining fartlore, and while their collection shows a body of folklore that is clearly mediated by the performative presence of flatulence, their reportage falls short of uncovering the motivational sources or contexts that influence their informants and does not make any notation of gendering issues with fartlore.8 the functionalist approach has merit as an analytical framework, but — as critics suggest — it requires deeper inquiry into the sources of the tradition that produced the functions, particularly with regard to its role as a cognitive source of categorization. the reluctance to openly embrace flatulence may be due to the fact that malodorous scents attributed to bodily secretions or emissions (such as perspiration and flatulence) have long been associated with persons of wanton moral character or those of lower class status (brill 1932, 40; largey and watson 1972). even today, negative connotations are attributed to things that are perceived to be unclean or foul-smelling (see drobnick 2006).9 a person who acts undesirably may be called a “stinker,” while a clean or pious person might be described as emitting the “odor of sanctity.” in the animal kingdom, skunks are symbols of avoidance not for their temperament, but for their smell; similar social contempt is held for people who do not smell pleasantly or appear unkempt. the hesitation to openly acknowledge our body’s waste is due in part to the social perception that most of our secretions (from saliva to feces) are “dirty” and therefore symbolize what mary douglas (1966) calls “matter out of place” that can threaten contamination and consequently impinge on an individual’s personal safety (see also dundes 1968; jones 1913, 431; jones 2000; praeger 2007, 51). although the elimination of waste and the passing of gas are two naturally occurring bodily functions, individuals often take proactive measures to mask from others their urge to defecate or flatulate. sociologists have labeled this behavioral response as the “fecal habitus,” or the delicate social organization of the ways that people go about ridding themselves of feces and their subsequent methods for creating a perception of distance from their excrement (inglis 2000). central to the concept of fecal habitus is the assumption that anxiety, embarrassment, or thursby boise ikastola 65 shame follows a bowel movement or the passing of flatulence if they occur in situations where other people are present. proximity to one’s anal productions (such as feces or flatulence) suggests ownership and creates a sense of shame or embarrassment, especially if there are visual or olfactory remnants that can be linked to the individual.10 weinberg and williams assert that the “threat to character is especially severe with regard to defecation, as failure to control the disposition of fecal outputs [including flatulence] in an appropriate way can project a self that is incompatible with a person’s identity as a competent, mature adult” (2005, 316). to this point, erving goffman (1967) notes that the embodied signs of embarrassment (blushing, fumbling, stuttering, sweating, etc.), usually occur when identity claims are unfulfilled or when someone does not appropriately present themselves to others in a social situation. still, there is a performative component to fartlore. folklorist michael owen jones points out that “bravado and the allure of the forbidden are not the only reasons to participate in the disgusting. no sooner do children develop a concept of contagion and learn the disgust response than many of them flaunt it, challenging rules of decorum” (2000, 59). thus, children may “break wind” intentionally or unintentionally, playfully or maliciously. if children cannot pass gas on command, they might imitate the sound by making noises under their armpits or with their mouths, or engage in a prank such as placing a whoopee cushion on a peer’s seat. a certain license is given for children to engage in these activities, although they become aware that as they become older, it is less desirable behavior. children and adolescents frequently experiment with social taboos through humor and play frames in an effort to better understand the limits of their own corporeal existence, and also in an effort to define their role within the limits of their social networks (see bronner 1988; sutton-smith et. al. 1999). in any case, it is clear that fartlore allows children and adolescents to make their most tangible connections to reality — their own, physical bodies — symbolically disembodied and ethereal, which serves as a psychological release.11 but how is this applied in children’s folklore? flatulence in child and adolescent folklore: examples and interpretations in order to understand and explain the meaning and function of fartlore, i have identified several pervasive categories of the genre, but they are by no means representative of all the texts or types of fartlore in circulation. i purposely provide only a handful of examples for each heading in order to keep the focus on the meaning and contextual function of selected texts, while attempting to avoid overloading this essay with numerous descriptions that lack proper annotation and context.12 as i have mentioned, a problem with the scant collections of fartlore available is the fact that the authors have often done little more than reprint fartlore texts verbatim without contextual information beyond the geographical location of its collection and perhaps the informants’ age. instead, i wish to reveal a few salient examples of fartlore within each category and utilize an interdisciplinary approach in order to interpret them effectively in this section and the proceeding ones. boise ikastola thursby 66 games games have been one of the most popular genres of children’s folklore observed, yet many child and adolescent games that incorporate flatulence have gone unreported. this may be due to difficulty of collecting such corrosive material in the moment of their occurrence. one such game of fartlore in many groups of children and especially early adolescents today is the game of “doorknob,” which is played immediately after someone farts and like most performative fartlore is almost exclusive to males.13 there is no official sanctioning of the game’s beginning other than the passing of flatulence itself; the farter is supposed to quickly yell “safety” as an invocation of protection from physical retaliation for passing gas. however, if one of their peers cries “doorknob” before “safety” can be called, then the farter will be repeatedly punched in the arm until he is able to touch a door handle. as one boy proudly stated, “the game is best when you’re out camping or somewhere where it’s hard to find one to touch!” weinberg and williams note that “breaches of the fecal habitus can be downplayed through normalization and neutralization … [and some] are celebrated in some instances” and tend to occur among young people in samesex settings (2005, 318). this may also serve to ease the anxiety of repressed anal-erotic desires, which fartlore subconsciously invokes during its performance. on the one hand, the game of “doorknob” seems to thrive on the farter’s ability to acknowledge and subsequently revel in the creation of flatulence, especially if there is a big reaction amongst “defenseless” peers. after someone farts and it is acknowledged through the invocation of a magic word (either “safety” or “doorknob,” depending on the child’s role), a play frame is instantly created and entered amongst members of the group of friends that have the game in their repertoire of tomfoolery. once engaged, the play frame enables the farter to claim reprieve from their peers’ admonishment if he yells the magic word first. doing so allows him to not only diffuse his level of embarrassment after passing gas, but also talk, mock, or joke about his farts with his peers afterward; this exchange usually takes the form of celebration or humor from the farter and jeering or humorous, derisive commentaries from the “victims” about the farter’s inconsiderateness or the potency or supernatural qualities of the fart (like its ability to linger endlessly, or make someone’s nostrils burn). to this point, as mary and herbert knapp explain, “the child who farts is almost always the butt of a jeer; thus he is reminded of a cultural prohibition. at the same time, the formulaic nature of these jeers testifies to the frequency and the ordinariness of the situation, and thereby reduces embarrassment to manageable proportions” (knapp and knapp 1976: 216). significantly, farters risk danger playing “doorknob”; they may fail to recognize that the play frame can be initiated by their peers’ invocation of their magic word, “doorknob,” could result in physical punishment through an aggressive release of energy that symbolizes the peers’ retaliation for the “fart attack” they have endured. from an historical perspective, the modern game of “doorknob” shows evidence of repetition and variation taking place in the passing down of traditional fartlore. in the scatologic rites of all nations, john g. bourke describes the game thursby boise ikastola 67 of “touch wood,” in philadelphia, pennsylvania. in bourke’s description of the game, the non-farters would yell “touch wood” when a classmate farted and then proceed to flee for the nearest tree-box. “those who were slow in doing this,” bourke notes, “were pounded by the more rapid ones” (93). humorous narratives and verbal art humor is also a large part of child and adolescent folklore, yet fartlore is often subsumed in collections of jokes rather than given separate attention. anxiety, coupled with the desire to normalize an embarrassing bodily function, yields a considerable amount of the content from which fartlore is composed. humor may be categorized as being predominantly sexual and aggressive in its intention,14 and according to freud, jokes allow people to “evade restrictions and open sources of pleasure that have become inaccessible” (1905b, 103). in sum, humor allows people to have the freedom to express sentiments and thoughts that may be otherwise considered socially reprehensible. children and teenagers are no different, and although the measurement of their social capital is more flexible and forgiving than their adult counterparts, they are nevertheless aware of social taboos and actively work to either circumvent them or subconsciously face them through symbolic interactions (see opie and opie 1953; lytle 2003). jokes are “a powerful way to test and reaffirm cultural values” (ellis 2001, 8) and act as “an expressive genre through which one is encouraged to defuse, by means of laughter or groans, anxieties about and consequent hostility” toward socially deviant issues (smyth 1986, 254). the performance and dissemination of humorous or playful fartlore not only massages children’s or adolescents’ repressed desire for anal play, but also helps to alleviate their unpronounced frustrations, anxieties, or resentment over the restrictions of social decorum or elements of society that are beyond their comprehension and acts as a challenge to the authority of adults or social expectations. a relevant example of this phenomenon comes in the form of homophobic joking, which is especially prevalent amongst adolescents.15 homophobic joking helps adolescents to reaffirm their masculine prerogatives and reassures both their peers and themselves that they are in fact “normal” and heterosexual. considering the social stigma that accompanies deviance from heterosexual orientations, especially during adolescence, homophobic joking appears to engage tensions about sexual orientation, but also reinforces the learned disgust of the anus and promotes the continued repression of anal desires stemming from psychosexual development. another telling example can be found in a narrative that i collected from a 14-year-old male: these two gay guys just had sex. the first gay guy asks if he can take a shower. the other gay guy says “okay, as long as you promise not to jack off in my shower.” so the first gay guy says “okay.” about ten minutes later, the first gay guy comes out of the shower. the second gay guy then goes into the bathroom to go pee and looks in the shower and sees [semen] everywhere. he gets really mad and goes back into the other room and yells, “i thought i told you not to jack off boise ikastola thursby 68 in my shower!” the first guy looks at him and then laughs. he goes, “i didn’t! i farted!” (collected april 9, 2010). this story is highly sexual in its content and seeks to mock the perceived “grossness” of homosexual intercourse through an intentionally graphic humorous narrative. when performed by the adolescent, the story appears to serve three primary functions: first, to reaffirm the teller’s heterosexuality and disgust for homosexual behavior (thus conforming to the masculine expectations of his peer group); second, to distance the teller from any association or empathy for homosexuals — note that the characters in the story do not even have names, they are simply “the first gay guy” and “the second gay guy” — ; and lastly, to demonstrate the teller’s willful disregard of societal attitudes about how “extreme” a narrative should be and what language is appropriate for friendly storytelling. folk beliefs and proverbs fartlore does not always have to begin with observations or jokes about the act of flatulence itself in contemporary society; as a matter of fact, there appear to be a few folk beliefs and customs that are derived from historical attitudes and lore about flatulence.16 considering that folklore is largely reliant on repetition and variation for continued survival, history provides insight into the influence of oral tradition in the formation of fartlore. for example, there was a medieval belief that a man’s soul is passed through his anus at death in the form of flatulence; an accompanying narrative associated with this belief is a tale about a demon that appears and places a sack over the anus of a man who has just died, then flies away with his soul (bourke 1891, 151). in numerous cultures, people similarly believe that sneezing signifies an attempt by one’s soul to leave the body (orientalia 2008). when someone sneezes in contemporary american society we tend to offer a customary “bless you” or “gesundheit,” either out of imitated kindness, or for some, in order to influence another person’s soul to stay in place. as gershon legman points out, “under every layer of folklore another deeper layer will be found, going as far back and as deep down as anyone can trace” (1964, 442). clearly, the logical similarities between modern sneezing beliefs and medieval ideas about the soul at death suggest a connected lineage.17 among the other child and adolescent folk beliefs about flatulence that i collected was the incorporation of fire, usually including a variation about how one could “light a fart” or how farting near a fireplace would create green smoke. these beliefs reveal a desire to make an uncomfortable or embarrassing occurrence into one that not only seems intentional or controlled, but almost supernatural and therefore permissible. additionally, freud (1932) notes that fire can occasionally serve as a symbol of masculinity; in the context of fartlore, the presence of fire as a performative component or neologistic companion (as with labeling a smelly fart to be akin to “dropping a bomb” or “making an explosion”). proverbs about flatulence suggest an awareness of the social pressure not only to control one’s bodily functions in the way that they divert blame to a potential accuser, as with “whoever smelt it, dealt it,” “he who observed it, served it,” and “the smeller is the ‘feller,” but also to give defensive, proverbial retorts such as, thursby boise ikastola 69 “he who said the rhyme, did the crime,” “the one who said the verse made the atmosphere worse,” or the non-rhyming (but double-entendre) proverb, “a fox smells his own hole first.” children are also quick to offer proverbial scatological folk wisdom associated with flatulence and feces as well, such as: “first comes the poop; then comes the soup” which connotes that stomach gas and pain is a sign of impending diarrhea — it should also be noted that “turtle soup” has previously served as a euphemism for diarrhea in american slang: a fact that contributed to its decline as a popular dish in southern indiana in recent decades (bronner 2008, 20). other proverbs support jones’ (1913) belief that there are important unconscious associations between body functions with similar or interconnected sensory outputs, as observed in “why fart and waste it when you can burp and taste it?” (leary 1977, 60). latrinalia it should be noted that fartlore is not limited to verbal or performative genres, as seen in the pervasiveness of latrinalia.18 undeniably, there is an historical precedent of scatological humor that incorporates flatulence, such as the “here i sit” pattern, observed by alan dundes (1968): “here i sit broken hearted/ tried to shit and only farted” (99) or “here i sit in silent bliss/ listening to the trickling piss/ now and then a fart is heard/ calling to the coming turd” (100). in my own ethnographical collection of latrinalia, i have observed that the many of the old patterns are still present, as seen with: “here i sit among the vapors/ cleaned the weed but forgot the papers,”19 which is reminiscent of “here i sit in stinking vapor/ some sonuvabitch stole the toilet paper” (1968, 99). the obvious difference here is that my new example of latrinalia references the use of marijuana as opposed to a focused lamentation on the fecal situation. dundes argues that “the psychological motivation for writing latrinalia is related to an infantile desire to play with feces and to artistically smear it around” (1968, 104). as i have previously noted, the same can be said of fartlore, which combines the infantile desire to play with feces with the desire for challenging social restraints through symbolic smearing in verbal or physical play frames.20 folk speech and slang the folklore of flatulence has also encouraged the negative associations of the word “fart” to be adopted into compound neologistic terms for certain behaviors,21 including “old fart” to describe an unhip individual that is typically seen as over-the-hill, “fart-knocker” to describe someone who is rude, or a “fartmeister” to describe someone who has mastered the “art of farting.” perhaps the most recognizable impact of fartlore on folk speech comes in the form of folk annotations about the different “types” of farts, like the “crop-duster,” which is a left-behind, lingering fart whose owner immediately leaves the area where he or she farted so as not to be blamed; the “firecracker,” which is a fart composed of several short, but loud expulsions of gas in quick succession that makes a distinctive ratta-tat sound; the “queef,” which is a somewhat mythologized boise ikastola thursby 70 “vaginal fart”22 that is said to emit a sound similar to an anal fart and can only be “made by girls”23; and the ever-popular “silent but deadly” or “sbd” for flatulence that does not make a sound during its passing, but still manages to stink.24 sifting through the gas: distinguishing characteristics and motivations in dissecting these examples of fartlore, one might ask: what are the differences between adolescent and children’s responses to the genre? david hufford notes that “obscene material is of great interest to adolescents and forms a very significant part of their repertoires” (1970, 55). as evidenced by many of the examples i have discussed, such as in the game of “doorknob” or in homophobic joke narratives, a substantial portion of adolescent fartlore is either physically brutish or indirectly sexual in its nature. this suggests that adolescent fartlore aims to confirm the maturation process through a more adult-like repertoire of prose while compensating for the social anxieties and insecurities that often accompany the adolescent experience. one of the first surveys of adolescent folklore as a distinctive genre came from martha dirks, who in her 1963 essay, “teen-age folklore from kansas,” distinguishes four main genres of folklore commonly associated with the age group: humor, slang, customs/beliefs, and verse/song. indeed, the period of adolescence overlaps with the cultural expression of the preceding and succeeding periods of life, and consequently adolescents “unconsciously retain (or consciously mock) elements of the folklore which played such an important role in their childhood years … [but] many cycles of childhood games or customs disappear completely as youngsters move on to new interests” (samuelson 1991, 18; see also meley 1991). much of children’s fartlore is related to playing or navigating the social pressures for maintaining control over their bodily functions and urges. hence, fartlore in childhood often incorporates an awareness of these social pressures by mocking the flatulence taboo through symbolic interaction, and thus reinforces cultural expectations of proper behavior. since many children learn bodily control in the public school setting where toilet practices and their mastery are enforced and socialized as a necessity, they are more reflexively aware of these expectations through perpetual group feedback and encouragement. when this does not take place, as weinberg and williams observe: “attention to a breach of body boundaries … is sought to embarrass the offender and provide amusement to others” (2005, 318-19). in other words, fartlore in childhood helps to underscore the importance of bodily control and reinforce social norms and control expected of their age and gender groups. the celebration or revulsion of flatulence in child and adolescent culture demarcates much more than folk perceptions about anal productions; it symbolizes and reinforces the expectations of gender roles and helps to frame societal definitions of masculinity and femininity. males that emit perfumed scents may be chastised, and as largey and watson acknowledge, “many males of the labor class associate the odor of cologne on a male with effeminacy” (1972, 1023). undoubtedly, the open enjoyment and playful manipulation of flatulence tends to be seen as a predominantly male behavior, and the great majority of thursby boise ikastola 71 performative or interactive fartlore is collected from males (ackerly 2007, 213),25 but what about females? elizabeth tucker (2009) has shown that females are not opposed to partaking in risky or taboo behavior, and other scholars have collected numerous examples of subversive folklore performed and transmitted by females (knapp and knapp 1976; legman 1968; opie and opie 1953; sherman and weisskopf 1995). we of course know that women flatulate too, despite that they are underrepresented in fartlore collections (admittedly including this one), which suggests either a genuine lack of female participation or an overtaking of the genre by males. sociologists weinberg and williams (2005) posit that women are much more likely than men to have heightened concern over controlling evidence of their anal productions given their physical idealization. they offer that for males, bodily grossness may be valued for its opposition to the manners that femininity is thought to imply. the delight taken in physical behaviors like burping can indicate men’s disdain for what they perceive as feminine. some men may adopt this form of embodiment as an expression of their power over women as they deliberately breach the [fecal] habitus. such “strategic embarrassment” is also used to socially control other men who are seen to be straying from masculine ideals (weinberg and williams 2005, 317). in other words, fartlore is mostly performed by males because it helps to reinforce social and cultural expectations of “manly behavior” (see bronner 2005).26 conversely, the expectations of females are elevated and hyper-sexualized, which discourages deviance from behaviors that would indicate otherwise. gershon legman posits that jokes about farting “must also be an evasive form of scatological abuse of women, since a large proportion of these are particularly concerned with the embarrassment of women” (1968, 858). however, fartlore that is not performed — that is, fartlore unrelated to the actual passing of flatulence — does include female participation, as the biting, gender-charged bit of female fartlore “girls pass notes; boys pass gas” suggests.27 still, fartlore tends to be a male-dominated genre, and with bodily humor, “the longer the relationship, the more … [routinized] the experience of other’s bodily functions” becomes in peer groups (weinberg and williams 2005, 329). one’s level of comfort with flatulence or other anal productions is considerably smaller before such routinization takes place amongst his network of friends or playmates. by embracing “gross” bodily functions as a weapon or tool of play, males are able to hold additional power over their peers — especially females — and reaffirm their social status and experiment with genders’ social hierarchies. perhaps, then, a “lingering” question might be: why is fartlore particularly important in childhood and adolescence? after all, adults are more than capable of participating in flatulence humor or games. the folklore of flatulence in childhood and adolescence is special because all adults pass through childhood and adolescence, where they acquire knowledge and experience with the genre. the social world of pre-adulthood encourages peer interaction and the boise ikastola thursby 72 experimentation with group dynamics; however, as people tend to get older, their relationships become more dyadic, familial, or introverted, and consequently the performance of fartlore is not only unexpected in social settings, but truly uncommon. nevertheless, the impact of folklore and knowledge of the taboos impressed upon pre-adults carries into the consciousness of their adult selves, which serves to cyclically reinforce expectations of bodily control in future generations, and continues to control the existing definitions of behavioral ideals and social constructions of maturity. accordingly, studies of fartlore and subversive topics should begin before adulthood in order to fully understand its context. psychoanalytic and folkloristic considerations flatulence is not exclusively regulated by social pressures; there are biological and psychological factors that influence the creation and dissemination of fartlore as well. the psychoanalytical approach to fartlore might suggest that the anxiety over flatulence is due to the deep-rooted psychological shame felt for deriving pleasure from our anal productions during our development.28 by making a sociallyunacceptable desire (such as the wish to play with one’s anus through flatulence) into a symbolically pleasurable act through fartlore, children and adolescents subconsciously satisfy their infantile attraction to their anal productions and help to stabilize their transition into adulthood through play. according to the father of psychoanalysis, sigmund freud (1905a), children pass through several psychosexual stages of development: the oral stage (0-1 years), during which a child’s primary source of pleasure is derived from sensations in and around the mouth; the anal stage (age 1-3), which revolves around the process of toilet training and marks the period where the child begins to negotiate control over their own urges and behaviors, especially those related to the expulsion of waste; and the phallic stage (age 4-6) which marks a period of infatuation with the genitals (see freud 1924). the initial stages of psychosexual development are then followed by a latency period (where sexual urges remain dormant from age 7 until puberty) and the genital stage (from puberty into adulthood), in which the child regains an interest in pleasure derived from the genitals and seeks to facilitate normal relationships with others. freud suggests that the inability for a child to successfully pass through these stages of psychosexual developmental will result in social and psychological turmoil later in life as represented by their anal-repulsive (disorderly and unpredictable) or analretentive (regimented and obsessive) personalities (see also brown 1959; freud 1913; jones 1913, 413-37). the residual impact of the anal stage (or anal-erotic stage) is psychologically central to the production and dissemination of fartlore later in life; as norman o. brown remarks, “some of the most important categories of social behavior (play, gift, property, weapon) originate in the anal stage of infantile sexuality” (1959, 191). during the anal stage, especially during toilet training, children learn that their ability to produce and subsequently maintain control over their bodily waste has symbolic power; withholding their feces can draw the ire of their parents while expulsion of their excrement can result in praise. as a result, children attach thursby boise ikastola 73 symbolic importance to their anal productions and interpret defecation and contact with their feces as being physically or sexually pleasurable; additionally, they see their feces as their own creations and interpret them as gifts (jones 1913, 424; ferenczi 1913, 325).29 it stands to reason that farting may subconsciously connote failure, as stool is solid and considered an accomplishment when “successfully” passed into a designated receptacle, especially during toilet training.30 the psychological process of sublimation occurs toward the end of the anal stage when the child’s pleasurable response and attachment to anal production is transferred to interactions with new symbols that resemble the physical composition of feces, such as mud, clay, or sand; this develops into a desire to play with small, hard objects like marbles, buttons, and stones, and eventually, small coins (jones 1913, 425-27). thus, the transference that occurs during sublimation may appear in the form of an adult’s desire to acquire material possessions such as property or money since they can be symbolically analogous to excrement and help to satisfy the person’s repressed anal-erotic desires (carroll 1987, 491; jones 1913, 427).31 therefore, an adult’s infatuation with money and material objects is a result of the fact that they chose “the love of their parents over the pleasures of [feces, and in] the absence of affection, [an individual will] turn to their sublimated anal desires in hopes of recovering the gratification they traded for parental approval” (praeger 2007, 114; see also ferenczi 1914). freud notes that in “the whole mental domain of the psychology of the neurosis, the sexual still includes the excrementitious, and it is understood in the old, infantile sense,” meaning that the adult’s repressed attraction to anal pleasure still remains even if they are not cognitively aware (1905a, 140). thus, the homophobic narratives that i reported herein project the adolescent’s own subconscious anxieties about the anus as a receptacle of pleasure. by othering homosexuals, the male informant not only is able to save face in his social network (and actually obtain higher status by symbolically acting “more manly” through the performative dismissal of perceivedeffeminate behavior), but also able through rhetorical commentary to tacitly dismiss his own shame for his infantile attraction to anal-eroticism. some psychoanalysts believe that a child’s transition from the oral stage into the anal stage imprints a symbolic correlation between the mouth and anus. this may be observed in the neologism for farting, “to clear one’s throat,” which suggests a peripheral awareness of the functional similarities between the mouth (used for things “going in”) and the anus (used for things “going out”). freudian disciple ernest jones posits that flatulence has important unconscious associations with other occurrences that have similar sensory attributes, such as breath and speech, which (like flatulence) also expel air and have olfactory or auditory markers that must be controlled by the individual; from a sociological standpoint, this is supported by the contention that “moral symbolism relevant to interaction is expressed in terms of olfactory imagery” (largey and watson 1972, 1021). for jones, these “important unconscious associations” explain society’s reverence for good dental hygiene and the desire for pleasantly scented breath: because bad breath attracts ridicule by peers if deemed malodorous in the same way that flatulence might. additionally, these unconscious associations account for the strong emphasis placed on the learning of proper grammar and syntax throughout boise ikastola thursby 74 a child’s tenure at public school, where uncontrolled speech impediments could garner teasing from peers in the same way that gratuitous flatulence would (jones 1913, 435). the merger of unconscious awareness and social pressures about the body leads to the complex hybridization of folk knowledge in its disseminated state, folklore. the awareness of similarities between oral and anal functions as posited by jones — subconscious or not — appears to be responsible for the evolution of the word “cheek” in contemporary slang as a neologism for the buttocks; as the double meaning of this essay’s title suggests, a widespread acceptance of this symbolic correlation exists.32 when used as a noun in conventional english, “cheek” usually refers to a part of the face near the mouth; as a verb, “cheek” can describe the behavior of someone who exhibits impudence. this is not the only case in folklore where the functions of the anus become blurred with the perception of other objects; some folk narratives seem to corroborate jones’ observations about the symbolic associations between functionallyor visuallysimilar objects and the anal region.33 a representative example from folklore can be found in simon j. bronner’s reportage of a humorous narrative in which a fat woman consumes large quantities of grapes, goes to sleep with an upset stomach facing the wrong direction in bed, and subsequently has her flatulence mistaken as bad breath by her husband (1981, 107-08). as the story continues, the husband becomes enraged that his sleeping wife — who he does not know is actually lying upside-down in bed (with her buttocks near his face) and cannot hear him — refuses to oblige his demand for her to face the other direction; the husband threatens to “slap [her] goddamn eyeballs out,” and after several unheeded warnings, he hits her so hard that one of the grapes she ate flies out of her anus and lands on him. he thinks that he has actually knocked out one of his wife’s eyeballs; in a fit of worry he leans forward in the dark and unknowingly kisses her buttocks, shortly thereafter quipping, “whooo, baby, you be in bad shape because your jaws — you must be got the mumps” (108). the tale of grapes that are mistaken for eyeballs and buttocks that are mistaken for lumpy jaws suggests that folklore can assist a storyteller in encoding his awareness or anxieties about parts or functions of the body through symbolic objects or anecdotes, a claim that has also been supported in photocopy-lore traditions (dundes and pagter 1978, 1987). this suggests that there is compatibility between the psychoanalytic and folkloristic approaches to the study of scatological themes (see bronner 2007b; dundes 1987, 3-46). flatulence has made cameos in numerous urban legends, and not just ones about artists who place paint in their rectums and create “fart art” (dawson 1998, 155). elizabeth tucker references the popular college legend about a student’s encounter with laxative-laced campus grub and the gaseous consequences thereafter, and notes that such a tale represents fartlore “at its most extreme: both humbling and hilarious,” and adds that those who hear the legend “can only hope they will continue to be the ones who laugh, not victims of such embarrassing discomfort” (tucker 2005, 104-05). another popular urban legend from photocopylore as well as oral tradition is “the surpriser surprised,” in which a man is blindfolded by his wife on his birthday and must sit alone, waiting alone in thursby boise ikastola 75 anticipation of his birthday surprise, while she answers a phone call in the other room. feeling the beans he had for lunch rumble in his stomach, he decides to let out a few juicy farts in her absence. when she returns, she removes his blindfold to reveal that he is seated at a table of his friends, family, and colleagues. as it turns out, his birthday surprise is in fact a surprise party thrown by his wife … and he has just gassed his guests (dundes and pagter 1978, 98-99; see also jansen 1979).34 folklore serves as a means to project one’s anxieties, attitudes, or beliefs, and one of the most reflexive means of such expression comes from the sharing of narratives. without a doubt, the appearance of flatulence in urban legends suggests at least some level of awareness about the fear of its occurrence in social settings and the potential consequences it would render for one’s reputation. folklorists have often shied away from subjects of controversial scope, but as fartlore shows, there is merit in analyzing the unsavory components of society. fartlore, folkloristics, and the study of the subversive under every rock of subversive folklore lies a meaning that waits to be discovered and a causation that requires explanation. in his classic study of latrinalia, alan dundes remarks that despite the widespread abundance of “shithouse poetry” and its demonstrably traditional structure, “one looks in vain for extended collections of published texts and for any rational discussion of them or the practice of writing them” (1968, 91). such a statement could easily be adapted to discuss the dearth of modern research collections encompassing the intersection of folklore, flatulence, and scatology. michael owen jones points out that the research of folklorists “usually centers on celebration, festive events, and the positive associations … [with] ethnic or regional identity” (2000, 53).35 this narrow-sighted approach has been a longstanding problem within the discipline.36 in truth, folkloristics has a history of taking a reserved approach to the study of contentious subject matters. a key example may be found in the motif-index of folk literature (1932-36 and 1955-58),37 in which stith thompson makes a point to state that the categorization of motifs regarding erotic or scatological humor was unnecessary for the purposes of his index. regarding x700-799, “humor concerning sex,” thompson explains that thousands of obscene motifs in which there is no point except the obscenity itself might logically come at this point, but they are entirely beyond the scope of the present work. they work a literature to themselves, with its own periodicals and collections. in view of the possibility that it might become desirable to classify these motifs and place them within the present index, space has been left … for such motifs (1960, vol. 5, 514). thompson left x700-799 blank purportedly for the sake of good taste and for the preservation of his volume’s academic integrity. in reality, however, thompson knew better than to exclude such a fertile source of folklore, especially given boise ikastola thursby 76 its ubiquity. instead, risqué tales with themes of eroticism or scatology were inconspicuously wedged between broader themes so as not to raise alarm, including such entries as “illicit sexual relations” (t400), “humor of discomfiture” (x0-99), and “clever verbal retorts” (j1250) among them (legman 1964, 455).38 according to gershon legman, thompson’s rejection of “obscene jokes with moral horror at x700, while bringing them back in disguise at dozens of other numbers, makes clear one of the deepest deficiencies of any classification scheme: the inevitable subjectiveness of approach by the indexer” (1964, 455). measuring the appropriateness of a subject is fine, but as dundes notes, just because a topic is judged to be insulting or crude does not suffice as “an intellectually valid reason not to publish a well-researched paper or monograph” (2005, 404). of course, the motif-index is not the first (or last) case of an academic discipline catering to political correctness, but in the case of folkloristics — a supposed champion of interdisciplinarity and a highly reflexive subject area — why is this so? why is it considered professionally risky to talk about feces, flatulence, or anal-eroticism, even if presented in a thoughtful and deliberate manner? to be sure, the study of fartlore may strike some as an intellectually devoid or outrageously tasteless endeavor, despite the fact that there is a small, but extant crop of folklore scholarship that demonstrates the value of examining “unpretty” folklore, including the conceptualization of scatological themes (bronner 1981, 1985, 2007a, 2009, 56-63; dundes 1968, 1984; legman 1964, 1968, 1975; sherman and weisskoff 1995). we must strive to remember that while folklore can be dark or grotesque, our role as ethnographers is not to judge whether or not a subject matter is too risky to observe or report. instead, we must hold ourselves accountable to our profession and to our subjects by collecting and interpreting data from all aspects of folk culture, including the subversive. only then will we be able to draw adequate conclusions on the nuances of human behavior within their proper contexts. acknowledgements this work is dedicated to the late alan dundes, whose brave scholarship on everything from latrinalia and psychoanalysis to the scholastic boundaries of the folklore discipline has inspired me to continue his legacy of studying underexplored, yet ubiquitous cultural practices that merit scrutiny despite their unconventional nature. i also owe a special debt of gratitude to simon j. bronner for his helpful suggestions, thoughtful critiques, and unwavering enthusiasm for the growth and completion of this essay. i am also grateful to elizabeth tucker for her correspondence, advice, and support as well. for a topic that on the surface tends to raises eyebrows (and nostrils), both bronner and tucker were pillars of support and generously donated their time to me in order to improve the overall quality and scope of this research. thanks are also due to my friends and colleagues at the pennsylvania state university, harrisburg american studies program, who provided helpful suggestions on earlier drafts of this essay: jennifer dutch, spencer lincoln green, nancy jones, matthew lavelle, erica leonard, paul miller, and amy milligan. lastly, i must acknowledge and thank thursby boise ikastola 77 the love of my life (and a real gas!), my fiancée, angelina sanfilippo, who was quick to remind me of the numerous reasons why fartlore is a topic that is long overdue for a serious sniff. notes 1. see the new partridge dictionary of slang and unconventional english (dalzell and victor 2006) or http://onlineslangdictionary.com/thesaurus. 2. see knapp and knapp (1976, 211). 3. fartlore relatively functions alongside or in contrast to other taboo subjects as well. for example, another bodily emission that receives little attention in folkloristic scholarship is boogers and their folkloric byproducts — certainly boogers garner a similar response (regarding the fear of contagion) as flatulence. 4. on a personal note, i left indiana university after my master’s degree for the ph.d. program in american studies at the pennsylvania state university, harrisburg. there, i was met with enthusiasm by my advisors and instructors, who not only enjoyed the sometimes-controversial or unorthodox subjects that interested me, but challenged me to fully explore all of their nooks and crannies. indiana university and other folklore programs should take note that encouragement and support is the only way to promote true progress in our humble discipline. it may sound like sour grapes on the surface, but i assure you that the narrowmindedness i argue combatively against throughout this essay has merit, and folklore programs such as iu should heed the call to welcome the expansion of our discipline’s scope rather than suppress a potentially insightful research project in neglected areas of inquiry for the purposes of maintaining the status quo. 5. see “12-year old boy arrested after deliberately ‘breaking wind’ in class.” this blog rules. 12 jan. 2010. http://www.thisblogrules.com/2010/01/12-year-oldboy-arrested-after.html (accessed 18 april 2010). 6. to draw an historical correlation to fartlore, gershon legman (1968) notes that the “blaming of the fart on domestic animals is standard, and evidently ancient,” citing examples as far back as 1654 (859). 7. for example, greek physician hippocrates believed that all diseases could be attributed to built-up gases in the internal organs, stating that “it is best for flatulence to pass without noise and breaking than to be intercepted and accumulated internally” (nibbelink 2008, 83) and greek philosopher and mathematician pythagoras forbade the consumption of beans among his disciples (5). roman emperor claudius (10 b.c.–a.d. 54) considered passing a law that legalized farting at banquets “out of concern for people’s health” (83). flatulence was a familiar motif in medieval christianity and storytelling (allen 1997), and reformer martin luther preached that the devil could not stand the smell of rotten odors and suggested that any mortal man could beat him by baring their rear and farting directly into satan’s nostrils should he appear (dawson 1998, 90) — as jim dawson writes, “the word pumpernickel comes from ‘devil’s fart’ in german. pumpern means ‘to fart’ and nickel is a ‘devil’ or ‘goblin,’” and “the idea … was that dark, heavy pumpernickel bread could ‘produce outbursts of flatulence as powerful as those of the devil himself’” (1998, 91). in many early boise ikastola thursby 78 tales of fartlore, it was believed that the devil produced flammable flatulence. flatulence sporadically appeared in social customs and literature by the middle ages. in 16th century france, farting was used as a “ritualized signal for the advent of spring” through the utterance of the “great fart of dehibernation” (bailey 1996, 51). for an in-depth overview of the history and role of flatulence in the middle ages, see allen (2007). literature often incorporated flatulence or scatological themes. german literature and customs have long incorporated scatological themes (dundes 1984; rollfinke and rollfinke 1986; pilipp 1997), but by no means represent the only nationality that robustly engaged in the dissemination of fartlore. english author and poet geoffrey chaucer made flatulence a lingering part of several of his famed stories, including the canterbury tales (see hasenfratz 1996); irish satirist jonathan swift, author of gulliver’s travels, was criticized by some of his contemporaries for overusing flatulence as a humorous ploy in his works; american author and literary icon mark twain published “1601” in 1880 (anonymously until 1906, mind you), which features a fictional dialogue about flatulence between several historical figures. in 1781, benjamin franklin wrote a letter to the royal academy of brussels in which he challenged their scientists to create a drug that would “render the natural discharges of wind from our bodies not only inoffensive, but agreeable as perfumes” and gushed about the pleasure that would befall society if everyone could freely express their “scentiments” without embarrassment (rabkin and silver 1991, 128-29). the french entertainer joseph pujol, better known as le pétomane, made a career as a professional “flatulist” and toured the world for over twenty years, headlining at the moulin rouge numerous times (allen 2007; bart 1995; nibbelink 2008; rabkin and silverman 1991). 8. nevertheless, it bears noting that the knapps most certainly broke ground in proposing fartlore as a worthwhile category of children’s folklore. 9. for example, one might say that something “stinks like shit” to express a malodorous scent. 10. to this point, a telling statistic is that on a nine item “disgust scale” administered by sociological researchers, the highest ranking item was “you see a bowel movement left unflushed in a public toilet” (rozin et al. 1993, 585). 11. see sklar (1994) and young (1994) for an overview of bodylore and its relationship to the interpretation of the self in society. 12. i realize that this decision may disappoint some readers. for those that this is the case, i recommend legman (1968: 858-65) whose collection contains ample annotation and interpretation. for less-analytical, but more descriptive collections of fartlore, see knapp and knapp (1976, 211-16) or sherman and weisskopf (1995, 55-58). 13. throughout my fieldwork (including the cross-referencing of other scholars’ work), i did not see any reportage on females playing this game, which is why i occasionally use masculine modifiers in my description of this game. no sexism is intended. 14. for an example of sexual and aggressive folklore that occasionally incorporates flatulence within the narrative structure, see bronner (1981, 91-109, thursby boise ikastola 79 114-15n5). for commentary on the historical assumption of humor as being sexual and aggressive, see oring (1987, 277). 15. one joke that i collected followed the common question-answer/ riddle formula to pose a homophobic joke, q: how do you seat four gay guys on one barstool? a: turn it upside down. another example, though less homophobic, is nevertheless “anal-oriented” and includes wordplay, q: what does star trek and toilet paper have in common? a: they both circle around uranus looking for klingons! 16. the opies report the use of “pull my finger” — which is usually the impetus for a prank in which pulling the peer’s finger “releases” a fart — as a component of a joke stanza collected from schoolchildren (1959, 61). this may suggest a correlation. 17. while the sneeze correlation to flatulence is relevant, so too are the connections between the flatulence taboo and more acceptable but nonetheless restricted actions such as belching/ burping, hiccupping, or nose-dripping/ blowing one’s nose in an inappropriate setting. all of these emissions and bodily functions have been folklorized due to their audible and visual components, but are clearly seen as more acceptable — perhaps because they are derived from the mouth instead of the anus. 18. “latrinalia” is more-commonly known as bathroom graffiti today to nonfolklorists. 19. collected march 22, 2010 in new london, pa. also seen on the wall was a limerick: when i get up to wipe my ass, i like to pass a little gas/ it clears my hole and dries the bowl/ and shows i got a lotta class. how cheeky! 20. taking a psychoanalytic approach, simon j. bronner (2009, 56-63) hypothesizes that the internet may serve as a virtual play frame for adolescents to symbolically “smear” one another from a sitting position. 21. urbandictionary.com hosts many of these annotations and operates with a folk-moderated wiki interface. unlike the average dictionary, urbandictionary. com celebrates and even encourages subversive and shocking definitions of folk neologisms. the posted definitions are then allotted a “thumbs up-thumbs down” rating system to allow site visitors to symbolically voice their approval or disapproval of a submitted description for all to see. 22. according to the infantile cloaca theory of psychoanalysis, “the female genitals and anus are conceived as a single opening … and only later is it discovered that this region of the body contains two separate cavities and openings” (legman 1968, 329). this may account for the emergence of the “queef” designation as a “vaginal fart.” girls also refer to “period farts” as an excuse for flatulence during menstruation, again connoting the greater perception of inappropriateness for females to engage or acknowledge flatulence. 23. when i asked a small group of boys in their early adolescence if girls farted, one responded jokingly: “no, but they queef instead,” which demonstrates the gendered othering of the opposite sex by a male informant as a means to distance themselves from their own urges or desires. 24. i also collected a rhyming variation of the “silent but deadly” annotation as “silent but violent.” boise ikastola thursby 80 25. if you want proof that flatulence is promoted as a “manly behavior,” look no further than bobby mercer’s how do you light a fart?: and 150 other essential things every guy should know about science (2009), which submits a feminized presentation of science through the examination of supposedly masculine subjects such as belching, farting, and defecation. these “manly” acts are framed as topics that not only should be of interest to men, but information that they “should know about.” 26. indeed, fartlore is perceived as being manly because it is aggressive, attention-getting, and dirty. 27. for additional reference to women’s interaction with scatological humor relating to flatulence, see legman (1968, 860). 28. certainly, this interpretation of human behavior has its share of detractors; in fact, one might even argue that psychoanalysis has more critics today than it does supporters due to its controversial suppositions. that said, a freudian might argue in response that the vehement resistance to interpretations found in psychoanalysis underscore the individual’s strong desire to ignore their repressed infantile desires out of shame … but i digress! as with any scholarship or theoretical approach, the success of an essay should rest on the ability of the researcher to effectively collect, annotate, and present evidence on their subject, whereupon the strength of their findings should be determined by readers on a case-by-case basis — and only after reading and reflecting upon the interpretations therein. the incorporation of psychoanalysis into the interpretations of folklore and allied fields should be held to the same standard of suspended judgment. after all, when we stop to consider the fact that fartlore comes from “talking out our asses” so to speak, even the skeptics must acknowledge that a psychoanalytic approach offers plausible explanations to the origins of scatological folklore in society. see dundes (1987, 3-46) for an overview of the psychoanalytic approach and correlation to folklore. one of alan dundes’ greatest contributions to folkloristics is, in fact, is his development of the psychoanalytic method for interpreting folklore. for an excellent historical and contextual overview of dundes’ contributions to folkloristics, as well as his psychoanalytic perspectives and argumentation, see bronner (2007b). those interested in scatological folklore will find particular value in the section dubbed by bronner as “theses on feces” (352-81). 29. for more contemporary applications of this concept, see dundes (1968, 101-04); bronner (2009, 56-63). 30. parents will often encourage their child to try and “make a poopie” if they hear them farting. this reinforces the idea that defecating is the positive outcome of properly dealing with bowel pressures. recall the example of latrinalia that ends with “tried to shit, but only farted” — again, even in folklore, an awareness of the perception of failure due to the absence of fecal production is present. 31. as simon bronner pointed out to me during an emailed correspondence, freud is often misunderstood as always equating the symbol of money to excrement; however, this is not accurate. freud did tend to universalize the symbolic response, but anthropological psychoanalysts such as alan dundes (1968, 1984; 1987) and michael carroll (1987) considered cultural factors such thursby boise ikastola 81 as the intensity of toilet training in a certain country as contextual factors in distinguishing the correlation. 32. if readers need further convincing, the new partridge dictionary of slang and unconventional english confirms that “cheek” has been popularly adapted to be used in reference to buttocks (dalzell and victor 2006, 378). see also legman (1968, 814-21) for a discussion of how the buttocks have been incorporated into other neologisms or scatological humor out of concerns for social taboos. 33. see leary (1977) on “bullshitting” as a form of narrative gesturing. 34. similar tales have also surfaced in the collections of brunvand (1981, 2002) and legman (1968, 861). 35. for additional insight on the tendency for folkloristics to avoid conflict, see bronner (1998). 36. again, see my own personal story in note 4 for additional support to this claim. 37. see also frank hoffman’s motif index of anglo-american erotica, which does some include some flatulence-related material, but is predominantly phallocentric. 38. in other motif collections, flatulence and scatological themes are moreopenly identifiable. for example, hoffman (1973) identifies and indexes “humor concerning defecation and breaking wind,” as tale-type x716. simon j. bronner also notes that terrence leslie hansen’s the types of the folktale in cuba, puerto rico, the dominican republic, and spanish south america (berkeley and los angeles: university of california press, 1957) includes tale type 1459, “girlfriend is very beautiful but cannot control flatulence. friend asks her to dance. as soon as she begins to dance, the whistle blows. everybody looks for the fire.” (bronner 1981, 114-15n5). works cited ackerly, janice. 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rozin, paul, jonathan haidt, and clark r. mccauley. 1993. disgust. in, eds., handbook of emotions, ed. michael lewis and jeannette m. haviland, 57594. new york: the guildford press. thursby boise ikastola 85 samuelson, sue. 1995. a review of distinctive adolescent genres. children’s folklore review 17(2): 13-31. sherman, josepha and t.k.f. weisskoff. 1995. greasy grimy gopher’s guts: the subversive folklore of childhood. atlanta, ga: august house publishing. sidoli, mara. 1996. farting as a defence against unspeakable dread. journal of analytical psychology 41: 165-78. sklar, deidre. 1994. can bodylore be brought to its senses? journal of american folklore 107(423): 9-22. smyth, willie. 1986. challenger jokes and the humor of disaster. western folklore 45(4): 243-60. sutton-smith, brian, jay mechling, thomas w. johnson, and felicia r. mcmahon, eds. 1999. children’s folklore: a source book. logan: utah state university press. thompson, stith. 1960 [1932-36; 1955-58]. the motif-index of folk literature. bloomington: indiana university press. tucker, elizabeth. 2007. campus legends: a handbook. westport, ct: greenwood press. _______. 2009. “go to bed, now you’re dead”: suffocation songs and breath control games.” children’s folklore review 31: 45-57. weinberg, martin s. and colin j. williams. 2005. fecal matters: habitus, embodiments, and deviance. social problems 52(3): 315-36. young, katharine. 1994. whose body? an introduction to bodylore, journal of american folklore 107(423): 3-8. cfr_2010_part19 cfr_2010_part20 cfr_2010_part21 cfr_2010_part22 cfr_2010_part23 cfr_2010_part24 cfr_2010_part25 cfr_2010_part26 cfr_2010_part27 the 2000 afs columbine panel intorduction: folklore responds to columbine and adolescence simon j. bronner it may surprise you to know that this issue on adolescent folklore is a first. its special claim is being a thematic set of essays focusing on adolescence as a social category of folkloric production by teenagers and for folkloric response by adults and children. this is not to say that folklorists have not been listening to teenagers since adolescence became known as a prominent life stage in the twentieth century. especially in american colleges, folklorists fill archives with collections by and from adolescents, but they have rarely used these materials for a focused inquiry into the age. at the same time that some of the best known american folklore genres, such as contemporary legends and initiation rituals, derived largely from teenagers, it may be argued that, overall, age as a social category of folkloric production has been slow to be recognized, and adolescence as a vague period between childhood and adulthood has been given even less. to drive the point home, one can note that standard reference works in the field such as the standard dictionary of folklore, mythology, and legend (ed. maria leach, funk and wagnalls, 1949), american folklore: an encyclopedia (ed. jan harold brunvand, garland, 1996), folklore: an encyclopedia of beliefs, customs, tales, music and art (ed. thomas a. green, abc-clio, 1997), a dictionary of english folklore (ed. jacqueline simpson and steve roud, oxford, 2000), and penguin dictionary of american folklore (by harry oster and alan axelrod, penguin, 2000) lack entries for adolescence. this omission is compounded by folkloristic neglect of perspectives from psychological and human development or family and youth studies, with which studies of adolescence abound. indeed, such perspectives, associated with sociological and psychological disciplines, have not been commonly incorporated into culture studies; although, family and youth is one of the pillars of folklore's "social contexts." and why should such perspectives be incorporated into culture studies? the contributors to this issue may answer that inquiry into the ways that cultural expectations of age are formed suggests perspectives on aging. within folklore studies, the field of children's folklore has been a location for observation of the cultural adaptation to aging. if the argument is made that folklore is a force in everyday life, then aging as a process all humans endure should be fundamental to bronner the expression of folklore. further, if the argument is made that folklore persists in the modern world because it serves social and psychological functions for us as individuals and members of groups and society, then age relative to family and community raises many of the questions for which we seek answers of adjustment. in childhood above other ages, folklorists recognize rapid social change leading to cultural production as individuals age and form identities. therefore the folklore in childhood that forms to communicate within a large semiliterate, age-stratified group is a conspicuous cultural marker. folklorists are hardly alone in seeing the social connections that result from separation of children into school grades and affiliation with families. still, they may be drawn to cultural differences by race, ethnicity, and gender precisely because they stand out physically before the ordinariness of age. they may also be lured to the analysis of texts categorized into genres or the context of region before age, because of the artistic composition inherent in folklore. then came the tragedy at columbine high school in 1999 and a cascade of commentaries in the popular press on the troubled and at times menacing teen as a problem of age. looking for explanation, early reports speculated that the tragedy was racially motivated, but interviews with participants revealed that scenario to be unlikely. turning to questions of what was occurring culturally, and emotionally, for the pair of killers at their age, commentators tended to exaggerate the exotic life of the american teen with folkloric overtones-rumors, legends, beliefs, rituals, pranks, cults, and dress. writers separated the innocent child from the menacing teen, since the assumption could often be heard that the troubled youths were "normal," happy children until they entered the dark door of adolescence. in the movie planet of the apes released in 2001, an ape warns a parent thinking of adopting a youthful human pet, "be sure to get rid of it before puberty; one thing you don't want in your house is a human teenager." implicit in such popular texts is a search for an explanation for the violence, rebellion, and alienation that seemed to be in the chemical mix of adolescence and, in the case of school shootings, were thought to have fired affected teens to the point of combustion. the kind of folklore reported in the popular press through the spate of school shootings during the 1990s stressed the adolescent search, assumed to be characteristic of the age, for eerie supernatural realms, bizarre bonding rituals, and sexual adventures. journalists voyeuristically documented shocking signifiers of identity in dress, hair, body-piercing, music, and tattooing, and a subversive development of alternative or countermainstream lifestyles (including formation of 8 folklore responds to columbine and adolescence gangs and even attraction to satanic and diabolical cults). for some, these are signs of a culture in decline, and folklore as a repository for anti-social values. for others, it shows a cultural creativity that comes with recognition of adolescence as an increasingly differentiated social movement at the heart of a vibrant popular culture. to be sure, it was not uncommon for published ethnographies and filmed documentaries to show high school culture to be essentially conservative, with revival of civic rituals of conformity and class loyalty surrounding football games, graduations, and proms. statistics kept on juvenile crime showed a decline in assaults and violence during the 1990s, and yet opinion polls revealed a popular perception that youth violence is spreading and juveniles are increasingly considered dangerous and feared. "teen violence, school violence, and gangs" consistently shows up as a significant problem "facing the united states" in public opinion polls. when a national sample of americans was asked shortly before columbine by the public agenda foundation for the "first thing that comes to your mind" to describe teenagers, the largest percentage, 27 percent, replied "generally negative comments." the next largest group was "disrespectful/rude/lacking manners" at 12 percent followed by "rebellious/uncontrollable/ wild" at 10 percent (roper center, 1999). and one thing for sure, they thought that teens faced more problems than they did (80 percent). a different survey organization asked parents of teenagers shortly after columbine, "what is the most important problem facing people their age," and the leading answer was "social pressures (popularity and 'fitting in'), at 29 percent; "crime and violence" was at 8 percent (roper center, 1999). especially indicative of this view is the answer with folkloristic implications to the question, "if your teen had to choose between fitting in with friends or becoming outstanding in some way, which would your teen choose?" the survey sponsor was surprised by the high number of americans who replied "fitting in" (43 percent), and yet that observation leads to consideration of the intensity of the social groupings in adolescence that often rely on expressions of folklore for a sense of identity. against the background of such social surveys, folklore can be seen being "expressive" for teenagers and "attitudinal" for adults. consider these examples of folklore of (production), and about (response), school shootings. -october 1,1997, pearl, mississippi. at the june 1998 trial for luke woodham, 16, charged with entering his high school with a rifle under his trench coat and killing two students and wounding seven oth 9 bronner ers, he testifies that he was influenced by a group of youths calling itself "the kroth." the youths engaged in violent role-playing games and conjured spells against their enemies. -april 28, 1998, pomona, california. two boys, 14 and 17, are shot to death at an elementary school playground after a fight escalates between two rival "party crews," which stage parties with music and disc jockeys. a 13-year-old boy, whose name is withheld by authorities, is taken into custody and charged as a minor. -april 20, 2000, columbine, colorado. reports on the lifestyles of eric harris and dylan klebold who murdered 12 classmates and a teacher before shooting themselves speculate on the planning of the assault to commemorate adolf hitler's 110th birthday. they are connected to a group called the "trench coat mafia," described by columnist joe conason as "young alienated wannabes." their preoccupation with "industrial" music, the columnist asserts, "suggests the possible influence of a fascistic youth subculture that has inspired horrific violence elsewhere." -november 25,2001, new bedford, massachusetts. police arrest eric mckeehan, 17, and two 15-year-olds whose names were withheld because of their age, for conspiring to commit a columbine-style attack on the high school. the boston globe quoted eric mckeehan's mother, as saying her son was not guilty. ms. st. hilaire, 52, said her son had been in rebellion since the sudden death of his father in september and had started wearing dark clothes and a mohawk hairstyle and piercing various parts of his body. the new york times on november 27 quoted parents of the three boys portraying the group as "harmless teenagers, somewhat troubled perhaps, but not capable of the violence they were accused of plotting." added to the above suggestions of youth forming "esoteric" or subcultural folklife, are examples of "exoteric" adult lore about the shooters circulating on the internet and through faxes: 1999. one of the boys who murdered his classmates in littleton prepared by designing new computer games levels that resembled his school and peopling them with representations of his classmates (declared "false" on the urban legends reference pages at http:// www.snopes2.com) 1999. chain letters are circulating with the text, "this forward is dedicated to all of the students of littleton, colorado. for every person this forward is sent to the city of denver, colorado will give .25 cents to the town of littleton. now this may not seem like much to you, but as soon as this gets around it all starts to add up. please. if you just take the time to send this it will help the victims of the terrible incident that happened today. send this to as many people you can and start building a new hope for the students." (declared a 10 folklore responds to columbine and adolescence hoax, on urban legends and folklore page at http:// urban legends.about. com/librarv /blchain4 .htm) 1999. chain letters are circulating with the text, "as of right now, there are 25 confirmed dead children and faculty and over 30 critically injured in yet another (high) school shooting spree. i'm asking you, as fellow members and friends to please pray and keep in your hearts these poor families of the victims." (declared of questionable origin on urban legends and folklore page at http://urbanlegends.about.com/librarv /blchain2.htm) probably the first folkloristic commentary on columbine was published in the new york folklore society newsletter by steven zeitlin in the fall/winter 1999 issue. zeitlin, co-author of the book city play (rutgers university press, 1990) and giving a voice to sorrow (perigree, 2001), warned against over-reacting to violent fantasies expressed in folklore such as "i met her in the attic with a semiautomatic" by thinking of them as confirmations of the violent intent of youth. he worried that "in the wake of columbine, many teachers and administrators have tried to squelch children's fantasies." he drew attention to the shooters' creation of "adolescent folklore": they proclaimed death to all enemies, dressed in black, formed a club, hosted a web site, devised a suicide pact, even adopted a catchy name, the now infamous "trench coat mafia"—and projected it on to reality." but despite spotlighting the folkloric aspects of a public issue, zeitlin still casts his net widely over "american children's folklore" and treats these teens in a cast of "schoolchildren." bill ellis in his book aliens, ghosts, and cults (university press of mississippi, 2001) also warned of public over-reaction to "rumor-panics," often connecting teenagers to the threat of, or the attraction to, devil worshipers. documenting oral reports in may 1987 in lansford, pennsylvania, that a satanic cult planned shooting students attending a high school prom, ellis focused on the event's multiple meanings for (production) and about (response) adolescents. for some adolescents, making such a prom deadly may have heightened its status as a rite of passage, making their attendance doubly a proof of their adult status. the participants may not have been simply adolescents dabbling in the occult; the lansford death threats, police later discovered, were written by a parent who had grudges against administrators and used the cult stories as an opportunity for revenge. for some school administrators, turning the prom into a show of force may have been a way of assuring edgy parents that they were, after all, in control of their children. . . . finally, 11 bronner for a few participants, the event may have been seen as a hoax proving that adolescent "quasi-satanic" rebellion was justified, since grown-ups are prone to hysterical delusions and really do not understand what [musician] ozzy osbourne is all about. hence the event carries the seeds of future panics, and indeed, as we will see, the same material was recycled in the area in 1996, with similar results. (218) implicit in these interpretations is the treatment of adolescence as a special age because it is a cultural "coming of age." that "coming" could suggest a development as much onslaught as transition. it implies a vulnerability of a young initiate leaving childhood, and the threat of new virile power confronting adulthood. by relativizing the subject of adolescence in other cultures, margaret mead in her classic study coming of age in samoa (1928) tried to show that adolescence need not be as troubled as it was in america. her observations for the cultural expectations of the 1920s still echoes in reports after the school shootings of the 1990s: "adolescence was characterised as the period in which idealism flowered and rebellion against authority waxed strong, a period during which difficulties and conflicts were absolutely inevitable" (1). her relation of her experience in samoa to the united states in the 1920s, however, differed in two respects from the concerns raised during the 1990s. one is that she admired the casual parental atmosphere that she thought led to an easy transition into adulthood. many reports took the shootings of the 1990s to show the failure of permissive parenting. second, she highlighted the experience of girls, not only because she thought that as a woman investigator she could be more intimate with her girl subjects, but also because she considered them more vulnerable as well as under-studied. in light of the reports of the 1990s that shooters were almost all boys, attention shifted to struggles of male identity in formation. boys, once thought more in control of their situation than girls, suddenly appeared at risk, and much of their plight seemed cultural. in a postfeminist world, they could be seen questioning the proper expressions of various masculinities in american society. as a coming of age, adolescence intensely involved folklore because it appeared to be a liminal state in need of ritual clarification. in michael moffatt's coming of age in new jersey (rutgers university press, 1989), he found college students segregated by age particularly affected not only because of their "coming" stage of life, but also because of their transition between the "school life" they viewed as juvenile and the real world of the future. much of the ritual clarification they sought concerned new social affiliations and sexual awaken 12 folklore responds to columbine and adolescence ing. in folklorists reports of legends, rituals, pranks, and jokes as the common expressive genres of "coming of age" implied ritual components to claim new group identity apart from family, a departure from childhood, and an anticipation of the power of adulthood. the kinds of questions asked of teenage folklore become revised when challenged by the events of columbine. instead of concerns for narrative competency and genre definition found in many legend collections from the 1960s to the 1980s, approaches are possible that address perceptions of teenage angst as well as menace. a reinterpretation of cultural collections along some of the theoretical lines found below inform, or misinform, "the restlessness of youth" (mead): 1. disease theory. adolescence is an incurable or unpredictable pathology. hormones rage, and strange bodily outbreaks of body piercing, satanic expression, and hair coloring are symptomatic of a problem outside of the individual's control. in much of the folklore stemming from this disease, there can be demonstrations of strength and bravado, and occasionally violence. there is the observation that the condition may be unrelated to the person's identity before or after adolescence, and indeed, these symptoms are something that individuals "get over." and some adults may consider "quarantining" as a response. although the root cause of the disease is debatable, one common culprit is puberty, which is often assumed to be coming too early, or problems arise for individuals when it comes too late. 2. psychoanalytical/anxiety theory. adolescence is a period fraught with anxiety, and may be the time filled with the most conflict between individual desires and societal taboos. anxieties of repressed sexuality, conflicts of identities (sexual and social), guilt over separation from parents (and occasionally attraction to parents), and issues of peer conformity and adjustment. folklore is particularly used in adolescence as a fictive plane to symbolically confront or resolve various anxieties and adapt to psychological conflicts. indeed, psychoanalytical interpretations have arguably been applied to adolescent legends and rituals more than they have to the traditions of other age groups because of the perception that anxieties especially need expression and resolution during adolescence. although related to the disease theory, anxiety theory posits a psychological rather than pathological response to the age. 3. organizational theory. with the onset of adolescence, individuals gravitate to one another, and in that formation, create subversive, destructive organizations adults may think of as pernicious "gangs," and many teenagers view as identity-marking "cliques." there is the implication that these formations undermine the traditional val 13 bronner ues imparted through family and community. another ramification is that these groups naturally compete for dominance rather than moving toward consensus. alternative explanations for shooters are that they either fall outside these formations and become dangerous because of their alienation, or they come from one of these groups seeking to eliminate others. 4. societal theory. adolescents suffer from lack of parental attention or inability to properly raise children, which results in asocial or amoral behavior. teachers and school administrators as surrogates of society may also be responsible because they do not respond to the needs of teenagers or continue to treat them as children rather than take them seriously as young adults. an explanation for shooters according to this theory is that they seek revenge against parents and teachers because of their treatment. there is also the implication that the new society that adolescents dwell in is a mass society, reinforced by the growing size of consolidated schools. individuals may feel increasingly lost within this mass culture. 5. mental states theory. this concept points to the rebellion of adolescence that results from states of boredom or alienation common to the growing number of teenagers growing up in suburbia. although depictions of "juvenile delinquents" of the 1950s were set in the inner cities, and a number of gang violence scares of the 1990s were also placed in the inner cities, shockwaves of concern could be felt because of the location of teen violence in suburban environments assumed to be healthy. some explanations for trouble in suburbia include a need for "action" in a dulling environment, some form of special middle-class paranoia, increase of recreational drug use, and the unnatural extension of childhood in high school and even through college. this view often comes with a questioning of the effects of affluence and materialism on creating a civil society among teenagers. 6. hegemonic theory. popular culture receives blame for spreading messages of violence and revulsion in this theory. it also may be credited for creating new subcultures revolving around fads and alternative lifestyles. campaigns against violent or sexually explicit song lyrics, videos, magazines, and movies are based on the special reception that teenagers have for the extreme limits of popular culture. teens are seen as dupes of corporate marketing of material settings of malls, shocking fashions, and rousing concerts. they are victims of cultural hegemony spread over adolescence by profit-hungry, amoral capitalists who seem insensitive to the destructive results of their marketing. 7. moralistic theory. a different take on the messages of violence and revulsion encouraged in popular culture which result in formation 14 folklore responds to columbine and adolescence of new adolescent folk cultures comes from a theory of moral decline. in the historical decline of structures of "traditional values," the theory holds, centers of moral education such as families, schools, and churches have lost their grip on teenagers, and there is a growing acceptance of once unacceptable behaviors. instead of a value placed on following authority and the lessons of a previous generation, there is an attraction to defying authority or standing alone often in anti-social ways. some will blame the decline on breakdowns in the loss of community, the breakdown of the traditional family, the rise of selfish individualism, or post-modern cynicism of organized religion. 8. regional/environmental theory. from american studies, there are ideas of some regional or community environments that encourage aggressive forms of adolescence. one can hear references to the violent legacy of the south, for example, or the "hunting heritage" of pennsylvania and the upper midwest, and the "gun culture" of the west. as teen shootings were reported in all corners of the united states, this theory was increasingly challenged, but questioning still occurred about the connection of the regional background of teenagers to their cultural behavior. 9. emergence theory. performance theory suggests that adolescence is a particularly ripe age for emergence of new cultural forms. the desire to differentiate from other teens in school with whom adolescents are segregated, perhaps the need to symbolically express identities or confront suppressed desires and anxieties, the need for attention-often revealed in shocking or creative ways-and to structure experience around novelty and fashion lead to a constant renewal of cultural creativity. in this view, the formation of new cultural groups such as goths and wiccans, often with reference to tradition, is a natural and healthy process, but individuals who turn the emergent performance into sociopathic spectacle show the risk inherent in an open society. then there is the theoretical question of when adolescence begins and ends as a distinct physiological or cultural period. popularly, adolescence is thought of as the teen years, or physiologically as a period between puberty and physical maturity. one cultural marker is the sharp break between a sense of adolescent production, or cultural creativity, and adult response indicated in a survey conducted by american demographics/harris interactive (december 2001, 10). it asked a sample of americans to associate visible tattoos or body piercings with certain characteristics. the survey was driven by the observation that young adults are the most active body artists, and demographic factors of race, gender, and ethnicity are not as much predictors of who is likely to have such work as age. 15 bronner percent of adults who associate the following terms with visible tattoos or body piercing, by age characteristic 18-24 25-29 30-39 40-49 rebellious 63 49 71 68 experimental 57 59 53 50 immature 29 32 45 47 freakish 29 34 37 32 alternative 58 77 42 41 artistic 53 34 29 23 normal 46 19 20 19 stylish 29 25 13 16 fun 34 27 15 10 gay 12 10 16 9 sexy 22 25 12 12 tough 8 10 9 7 one way to read these responses is the large change among age groups as to the issue of whether the behavior is "normal." the response for the group in their late twenties to the one from the late teens to early twenties dropped 27 percent. this response suggests a perception of some customs as normative for adolescents. note, for instance, the rise of the perception of the custom as immature from 29 percent among the group in their late teens to early twenties to 45 percent among the group in the early thirties. the group in its early thirties also felt more strongly than the group in its late twenties that the behavior was "rebellious." in this regard, one wishes that the survey had also asked about the characteristic of "adolescent," to see if there is a correlation between a perception of rebellion and adolescence. one of the traits one has to notice in the above survey is that the youngest group felt much more artistic than the group in the late twenties. one has to question the largest change in viewpoint concerning "alternative" from the group in its late twenties to the group in the early thirties. this response might suggest that the group in the thirties associated the distinction of the body markings with adolescence while a considerable portion of the group in the late twenties considered the markings still an option or choice that could be "sexy," "fun," or "stylish," rather than a sign of a younger age. but the answers to "immature" and "artistic" beg the question of traditions associated with a period we might designate as adolescent. from there we might question how "adoles 16 folklore responds to columbine and adolescence cent" becomes not only a marker of age, but an adjective for kinds of behavior and customs. so we are left again to ask about folklore as an expression of age. i could argue that folklorists have to get over their sense of surprise at adolescent folklore before confronting theoretical questions of age. in folkloristic literature, authors frequently express surprise that recognition to adolescent folklore came so late, and further, they express astonishment that adolescents produce as much material for folklorists as they do. the surprise in the former stems from the admission that many folklorists are teachers of adolescents, and yet have not adequately examined them as a folk group. the shock in the latter probably owes to the perception that adolescents discard the rhymes, songs, and tales abundantly collected among pre-pubescent children. what is not anticipated are the new materials generated in the form of legends, jokes, speech, and rituals. and what is generally not interpreted are the ties of this material to a sense of cultural disconnection. oriented as they are to finding continuities, historical and social, folklorists are challenged by adolescent material to explain the cultural emergence, and frequent social fragmentation, common among teenagers. the late folklorist sue samuelson expressed amazement in her review of adolescent folklore published in 1995 that the first american study to consider adolescent folklore separately from childhood was martha dirks' "teen-age folklore from kansas," appearing in western folklore in 1963. dirks' point was to show that teenagers, often dismissed as tradition-bearers, had a formidable repertory of humor, slang, customs, and songs. her survey sought to find continuities of this material with other traditions, but lacked a developmental approach. even before dirks' survey, groundbreaking studies by brian sutton-smith sought connections between distinctive genres of adolescence and the developmental needs of the age. his "the kissing games of adolescents in ohio," first appearing in the journal midwest folklore (1959), posed the question of the social and psychological function of such games in the post-pubescent sexual development of teenagers during the 1950s. other "adolescent" genres receiving this treatment included drinking games (see monique young's 1981 m.a. thesis at the university of california, berkeley), graffiti (see peter peretti, richard carter, and betty mcclinton, "graffiti and adolescent personality" in adolescence 1977, and susan gelman's "toward a study of postal graffiti: text and context in an adolescent girls' genre" in western folklore 1978), scary and sexual legends (see gary alan fine and bruce noel johnson, "the promiscuous cheerleader: 17 bronner an adolescent male belief legend" in western folklore 1980, and sue samuelson, "the white witch: an analysis of an adolescent legend" in indiana folklore 1979), legend trips (see patricia meley, "adolescent legend trips as teenage cultural response," children’s folklore review 1991), gross jokes (see simon bronner, "what's grosser than gross?" in midwestern journal of language and folklore 1985), ritual insults (see millicent ayoub and stephen a. barnett, " ritualized verbal insult in white high school culture," journal of american folklore 1965), ritual and play (see michael licht, "some automotive play activities of suburban teenagers," new york folklore quarterly 1974), and material culture (see ariane sains, "the latest teen rage? embroidery" children’s folklore review 1990). it is not coincidental that the word "rage" frequently enters into the rhetoric of these works, both to reflect the quick circulation of material among adolescents and the trope of aggression in adolescent folklore. there is a decided emphasis in these previous studies on defining the limits of adolescent genres and documenting characteristics of folkloric performance, but interpretations of social and psychological function can lead to more developmental approaches. kenneth a. thigpen in his extensive survey, "adolescent legends in brown county" (indiana folklore 1971) for example, declares his textual purpose of "a survey of legend content of a segment of a community," but concludes with a developmental observation of the "basic adolescent need for adventurous involvement." what he means by this is a distinctive theme of using legends in adolescence for tests of daring designed to show maturity. he noted a sense of danger, a simultaneous attraction to and revulsion by death, and a building on tensions between teenagers and adults that is inherent in these adventures. although he did not comprehend the full implications of folklore representing subgroups, or friendship cliques, of teenagers, he offered balance to the stereotypical view of the menacing teen. one group he called "middle american" is characterized as "highly individualistic; politically, religiously, and socially conservative; rebellious against authority as it pertains to them individually, but not opposed to the concept of the present system; preferring alcoholic stimulation, particularly beer and liquor, as symbols of maturity and substances of experimentation and titillation" (209). the other he called "counter-culture: communal in social orientation (especially within the peer group); politically apathetic, though leaning toward liberalism; religiously apathetic, though tending to substitute ideas associated with the occult for traditional religious concepts; preferring non-alcoholic drugs (except for wine) such as marijuana, as symbols of maturity and substances for experimentation and titillation" (209). 18 folklore responds to columbine and adolescence in light of columbine, the adolescent social landscape appears more complex and ideas of adolescent imagination more challenging. one needs to account for previously unheard of groups such as "the trench coat mafia," as well as more widely spread labels of goths, raves, skinheads, jocks, and wiccans. the commentary on school shootings was as much a cultural critique of adolescence and its baffling social landscape as it was a political concern for school violence. folklorists as cultural professionals frequently working with teenagers began reviewing their positions. the children's folklore section of the american folklore society opened discussion on the folkloristic response to columbine at its meeting in 1999 and invited participants to share research that would shed light on the traditions of teens in modern society. the hope was to promote more studies that would offer folkloristic views on the publicized problems of teenagers and schools. the gathered panelists in 2000 spoke to a standing-room only crowd, and the heated discussion inspired this publication to continue the initiative for folkloristic inquiry into adolescent traditions-both dangerous and benign. children’s folklore review, as a location for this folklore first, is appropriate because of its inclusion of developmental approaches to age-related folklore in its illustrious publishing run, but the essayists hope that other journals will subsequently take up the theme. the theme intentionally goes beyond columbine and the issue of school violence to the cultural worlds of adolescence today. it has to integrate the folk culture that adolescents construct for themselves and the popular belief that adults express about naturally rebellious or violent youth. the essayists tackle the interconnections of identities that adolescents pursue and the threatened feelings about those identities that popular culture perpetuates. bill ellis, for example, considers the significance of "hitler's birthday" as an occasion for the rumors of school violence that circulated. joann conrad deals with the cultural implications of political reactions to violent youth in california. responding to the public perception of the danger of "goth" identity among school shooters, allen berres separates the esoteric lore of goth identity that adolescents commonly practice and the exoteric beliefs about goths in popular culture. charlie mccormick reminds readers in his essay on "cruising" about precedents for the kind of discourse on the menacing adolescent encountered in school violence discourse. this issue's theme of "folklore that responds to columbine and adolescence" is therefore both in the form of practice traditionalized by adolescents and narrative or belief expressed by 19 bronner adults. as evidence for a developmental study of culture and a reflection on folkloristic purpose, it reveals the coming of age. pennsylvania state university middletown, pennsylvania works cited ellis, bill. aliens, ghosts, and cults. jackson: up of mississippi, 2001. mead, margaret. coming of age in samoa: a psychological study of primi tive youth for western civilization. 1928. new york: american museum of natural history reprint, 1973. public agenda foundation. "kids these days '99: what americans think about the next generation survey." roper center at university of connecticut public opinion online. accession number 0328701. 3 may 1999. thigpen, kenneth a. "adolescent legends in brown county." indiana folk lore 4 (1971): 141-215. whelan, david. "ink me, stud: tattoos and piercings decorate 15 percent of american bodies, but even more still disapprove of them." american demographics (december 200 i), 9-11. zetlin, steve. "bang, bang, you're dead: the play paradox." new york folk lore society newsletter (fall/winter 1999). see http://www.nyfolklore .org/pubs/news/nlfw99/bang.html 20 cfr_2002_part2 cfr_2002_part3 cfr_2002_part4 cfr_2002_part5 cfr_2002_part6 sunday, december 03, 2006 ocr document book reviews cial/kay/swteach.html. here an 1898 edition of "snow white" can be used to compare highlighted portions of the text with more than thirty other variants. the "classroom extensions" exercises include questions for discussion on essay writing: to what extent can the apple in "snow white" be compared with the spindle in "sleeping beauty?" what is the role of the witch in history? in folklore? is this witch different than the witch in "hansel and gretel" and "rapunzel?" the chapter concludes with an extensive bibliography. each of the other stories is presented with the same in detail coverage, referencing media publications and productions. new tales for old is enhanced by an attractive book design which includes convenient headers and footers, easy to read charts, and use of a bold font for story titles and section headings. i heartily recommend this book for lovers of folk tales and/or popular culture. ruth stotter suwyn, barbara j. edited and with an introduction by natalie o. kononenko. the magic egg and other tales from ukraine. [world folklore series.] englewood, co: libraries unlimited. 1997. isbn: 156308-425-2. 222p, b&w and color illustrations, bibliography, index. $29.50 this is a collection of delightful stories, rewritten to appeal to children, suitable for reading aloud or retelling orally. the volume, part of the world folklore series, has been designed with a school and library market in mind. it includes supplemental material such as a glossary and pronunciation guide, introductions that provide historical and cultural context, and bibliographies with suggestions for further reading. the collection is divided into animal tales, how and why stories, moral stories, and legends and fairy tales. the variety of stories is chosen to appeal to a range of age levels and teachers and parents are urged to be selective in deciding which stories to share. a young child enchanted by stories like "the turnip" or "the little round bun" might find stories like "the stranger" (a vampire story) or "the sorceress" frightening, although these are gripping tales that will captivate older readers. the work is the result of collaboration between suwyn, a professional copywriter and poet, and kononenko, 107 book reviews a professor of folklore whose area of expertise is ukrainian and turkish folk performance, resulting in well-told stories with appropriate cultural details. although the bibliography includes source material in english and in ukrainian, more could have been done to indicate specific sources for individual stories. admittedly, the volume is not intended as a scholarly work of folklore, but a brief indication of documentation by tale would have been useful, especially since suwyn indicates in her introduction that some stories are "original composites" or "new conflations of traditional themes" (xxvi). kononenko contributed several of these, which she acquired orally; and written sources may not have been readily available. suwyn comments specifically on her use of named characters, noting that "in traditional ukrainian tales, characters are often unnamed or go by a common name, such as ivan or marusya (the ukrainian equivalents of john or mary). because this book is intended to introduce readers to ukrainian culture, a variety of common ukrainian names have been used for the characters" (xxxiii). although this accomplishes its purpose, some tales seem too specific. in the animal tales, it is easy to see that little fox is a familiar character who appears in several of the stories. this sense of familiarity disappears when other stories are individualized. the story "the doll," which parallels the well-known russian folktale about vasilissa's encounter with baba yaga (baba yaha in ukrainian), here features a girl named paraska. kononenko comments that this name is probably derived from paraskovia piatnytsia, the patron saint of cloth and fiber arts an apt choice since the girl is a noted seamstress and embroiderer but do we assume this name is attached to the story or did suwyn choose it because it seemed appropriate? some traditional names are kept, like the historic character of cossack bandit oleska dovbush who warns, "take only what you need" in the story about his treasure. kononenko establishes links between the tales and pre-christian spiritual beliefs, suggesting that the witch baba yaha was once a goddess figure to explain her dual nature of magic helper and evil witch as derived from the clash between western and pre-christian attitudes toward witches and wise women. unsuccessful struggles of the church to suppress pagan belief appear in the powerful story "the sorceress," which features a priest's daughter. despite her father's conviction that "there is no such thing as a sorceress, or magic, or curses," the daughter, aided by faith and a wise woman, resolutely withstands the evil forces she has inadvertently become involved in. 108 book reviews the introductions suggest that this book is a product of its time, arising out of efforts to reclaim ukrainian culture and heritage as a distinctive tradition following the dissolution of the soviet union. the emphasis on the tales as "a portrait of the country's soul" (xxv) that contribute to a persistent sense of national identity despite centuries of oppression by successive dominating forces reflects the nation's political history but is also indicative of the romantic nationalist attitude that underlies this work. still, the political and historical details provide a useful context for the tales. the stories themselves are wonderful humorous, robust, some simple and some complex. some are ukrainian variants of widely distributed stories -comfortably familiar although perhaps with a surprising twist; others are new to me and i am glad to learn of them. suwyn's charming black-and-white marginal drawings add to the book's visual appeal. the short section of color illustrations are used as an educational supplement to expose readers to the ukrainian folk arts of pysanky (elaborately decorated easter eggs) and rushnyky (ceremonial embroidered cloths). illustrations of folktales by ukrainian artists are also included. suwyn is a good storyteller, despite a few disconcerting slips. in "the frog princess," one of my favorite stories, the frogs are supposed to say "ribbet, ribbet, " -a startling americanism accompanied by a footnote explaining that ukrainian frogs actually say "kvak, kvak." but on the whole, the stories are well told quickly moving narratives, accessible yet culturally specific. relatively little ukrainian folk material is available for the general public, especially children. altogether, this is an appealing collection that will be welcome to schools and libraries. vicky dworkin ph. d. candidate in american studies, student of storytelling, university of hawaii at manoa mabie, hamilton wright. norse stories. new york: hippoerene books, 1999. 250pp. $14.95 hc growing up as a child in scandinavia you were automatically introduced to the heathen religion of your forefathers by virtually daily references to some pagan god or other. if there was a thunderstorm, it was said that thor was out riding in the sky, if the harvest failed 109 children’s folklore review volume 33 2011 e li z a b e t h t u c k e r c h il d r e n ’s f o lk lo r e r e v ie w b in g h a m t o n u n iv e r si t y d e pa r t m e n t o f e n g li sh b in g h a m t o n , n y 1 39 02 -6 00 0 n o n -p ro fi t o rg . u .s . p o st ag e p a id p er m it n o . 4 h an o ve r pa cfr_11covers.indd 1 10/31/11 8:50:24 am children’s folklore review editor: elizabeth tucker book review editor: li cornfeld editorial board: jay mechling, priscilla ord, and simon j. bronner the children’s folklore review (issn: 0739:5558) is published once a year by the children’s folklore section of the american folklore society, with support from the dean’s office of harpur college at binghamton university. subscription orders should be addressed to priscilla ord, 414 high earl’s road, westminster, md 21158. checks should be made payable to “american folklore society/cfs.” current subscription rates are $10.00 for usa addresses and $15.00 for non-usa addresses. back issues are available. children’s folklore review regularly publishes articles on all aspects on children’s traditions: oral, customary, and material culture. in addition cfr will consider articles dealing with the use of folklore in children’s literature, children’s folklore and education, children’s folklore and popular culture, and similar topics. articles are referreed and are indexed by the mla and other major bibliographers. cfr retains copyright for all articles but gives permission for reprinting with no charge. manuscripts submitted for consideration should conform to the author-date format of the chicago manual of style (2003). manuscripts should be submitted as word documents; illustrations should be submitted in “jpeg” or “tif” form with a resolution of 300 dpi or higher. send manuscripts to elizabeth tucker, ltucker@binghamton.edu (department of english, binghamton university, binghamton, ny 13902-6000). books for review should go to book review editor li cornfeld, licornfeld@gmail.com. children’s folklore section officers 2010-2011 president: spencer green past president: elizabeth tucker secretary-treasurer: priscilla ord aesop committee chair: katherine schramm opie committee chair: rosemary vohs cover photo: like father, like daughter: hair’s family tapestry. neal a. lester with daughter jasmine z. lester. cfr_11covers.indd 2 10/31/11 8:50:25 am children’s folklo re review volume 33 2011 published by the children’s folklore section of the american folklore society with support from the dean’s office of harpur college at binghamton university cfr_2011_r.indb 1 10/31/11 8:57:34 am contents from the editor 5 nascent folklore: communication and aesthetics in infancy katharine r. m. schramm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 fathers and their african american daughters: hair pieces creating ties that bind neal a. lester. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 sidewalk songs, jump-rope rhymes, and clap-hand games of african american children mona saloy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 genetic bubble wrap karin phillips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 failing to fly, but free falling: jumping as a form of childhood release pamela weintraub . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 the appropriation of a commercial trademark: the golliwog as a cultural marker robert macgregor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 co-winner of the 2011 william wells newell prize disastrous alternatives: boy scout disaster stories and legends and imagining the natural world spencer lincoln green . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 children’s folklore section: 2010 annual meeting 77 notes and announcements 79 contributors 81 cfr_2011_r.indb 3 10/31/11 8:57:35 am from the editor elizabeth tucker as this thirty-third volume of children’s folklore review goes to press, i feel excited about the high level of achievement that has resulted in its contents. this year we have two winners of the william wells newell prize: spencer green, author of “disastrous alternatives: boy scout disaster stories and legends and imagining the natural world,” and steve stanzak, author of “manipulating play frames: the yo momma joke cycle on youtube.” both of these outstanding essays would have delighted william wells newell, who held children’s creativity and tradition conservation in such high esteem. because of space limitations, this issue just contains green’s essay; stanzak’s will appear in volume 34. besides one of the two newell prize-winning essays, this volume of children’s folklore review contains other extremely interesting essays. katharine r. m. schramm’s “nascent folklore” explores the emerging interdisciplinary field of communication and aesthetics in infant behavior; neal lester’s “fathers and their african american daughters: hair pieces creating ties that bind” explicates the significance of african american girls’ hair; mona lisa saloy’s “sidewalk songs, jump-rope rhymes, and clap-hand games of african american children” examines the wealth of children’s folklore among children in new orleans before hurricane katrina; and robert macgregor’s “the appropriation of a commercial trademark: the golliwog as a cultural marker” traces contested representation of a cultural symbol in the united kingdom. i am proud to add that the two short essays on dangerous games, karin phillips’s “genetic bubble wrap” and pamela weintraub’s “failing to fly but free falling: jumping as a form of childhood release,” were written by two outstanding undergraduate students in my children’s folklore class at binghamton university last spring. this fall we can celebrate the acceptance of all back issues of children’s folklore review by indiana university’s scholar works web site. i want to thank jennifer laherty at scholar works for all of her help in making this possible. now scholars of children’s folklore have access to all of our published material. i want to thank the dean’s office at harpur college of binghamton university, which generously supports children’s folklore review. i am also very grateful to kathy buchta for her fine work on layout/design and to sheridan press for its excellent work. li cornfeld, our new book review editor, is starting to work on reviews for our next issue. if you would like to review a book on children’s folklore or a related subject, please contact her: licornfeld@gmail.com. submissions and comments are always most welcome. please feel free to contact me any time: ltucker@binghamton.edu. thanks very much for your support of our journal. cfr_2011_r.indb 5 10/31/11 8:57:35 am 7 nascent folklore: communication and aesthetics in infancy katharine r m schramm whereas just as cultural relativity implies that each human group fashions its own forms of human adaptation and expression and that each has its wonder and beauty (as well as disasters), so with childhood there is an aesthetic for each age, which may be celebrated (or cursed) by adults, rather than simply glossed as an inevitably inferior step on the way to the ‘wonders’ of adults’ civilization, reason, and morality (sutton-smith and mcmahon 1999, 299), newborn infants, though weak and inexperienced, are sentient and intending agents (trevarthen, et al. 1999, 143). the question of when folklore begins is one which is simultaneously philosophical, biological, and psychological. it hinges by implication on what, indeed, constitutes folklore. if we assume that folklore is artistic, communicative, culturally grounded, and socially actuated, something must come before the more recognizable forms of tradition, performance, and identity — a nascent folklore. not only is there interesting material in the prelinguistic, pre-genre, pre-self arena of infant behavior that recommends itself to our attention as folklorists of children, but we as folklorists can recognize it and comment upon it, using the tools at our disposal. we can engage with proto-cultural agents through an interdisciplinary approach that does not relinquish our qualitative methods for quantitative ones. in what follows, i will discuss the subfield of children’s folklore as a gateway into discussing the broad issues inherent to folkloristics. once having established a few basic criteria and their quantitative-field counterparts, i will press forward into an interdisciplinary exploration that takes on infant interaction in an ethnographic context, merging the developmental and folk psychological approaches. in approaching the concept of nascent folklore, it may be useful to consider it as a subset of children’s folklore. children’s folklore is our window through which we study expressive forms shared by children, among children, a protean world which often functions counter-intuitively to adult sensibilities (sutton-smith 1999, 6). its study has come a long way from the thorough collection of text and variant and a preoccupation with “survivals” to incorporate theory that takes into account what william wells newell noted well over a century ago — that children’s folklore is both innovative and dynamic, as well as traditional and conservative. children’s folkloristics is concerned not only with the contexts where childlore occurs, but also the negotiation of social roles and activity surrounding expressive forms (goodwin 1985), and how children learn, adapt, and create within childconstructed frameworks of performative competence (brady 1980, 163). scholars are also cognizant of the fact that lore is not transmitted so much as it is activated, opening up the possibility of alteration and permutation (mcdowell 1999, 61). unlike folklorists who work with adults, folklorists of children are much more cfr_2011_r.indb 7 10/31/11 8:57:35 am nascent folklore schramm 8 likely to be aware of developmental considerations influencing what they observe, as those often are telling characteristics in setting childlore apart in both form and function (fine 1980, 172). an example of these developmental considerations is mcgonnagill’s 1993 study of preschoolers at play. the children she observed did not have a high degree of communicative or social sophistication, but she found that the game-playing behavior she observed still functioned as a way for them to process and cope with their social environment, despite relying entirely upon a fluid approach to their play, up to and including the actual goal of the game. mcgonnagill called this behavior “protolore,” because there were substantial differences when compared with approaches to folklore that stressed lore performed within the more clearly defined boundaries of aesthetic communication marked by particular conventions and style. she compared folklore and protolore to riddles and preriddles, enacted by young children whose grasp of the genre was not quite sophisticated or solidified enough to be considered mastered (mcgonnagill 1993, 41). however, children’s folklore or protolore has rarely gone into areas that prelinguistic children occupy, namely toddlers before 18 months of age. talkers are more interesting: their experimentation with developing language skills gives researchers a ready verbal transcript, and the ease with which cognition and cultural competence can be evaluated via the increasing complexity and situational use of linguistic forms is undeniable. infant behavior, on the other hand, has been dubiously regarded, save the responses and actions directed from adult caregivers to infants.1 what occurs in infancy is complex and lays the groundwork for later development. i would not expect folklorists anywhere to deny this, just as they would not deny that childlore in its various age-appropriate incarnations contains its own complexity and significance whose mastery dovetails into the adultrecognized world of expressive competence. yet the study of children’s folklore ought not be concerned primarily with where child culture is going, through the ramifications of performative competence in the child contributing to adult social competencies, but with that which is in the moment, and how it has its own value which is insubordinate to adult norms. it short, it recognizes the inherent value and function of child expressive forms at each age. folklorists tend to gravitate to the expert performers, willing performers who have mastered their craft, and who are recognized by their community. these may include the most authoritative jump-rope ringleader on the playground, the snarkiest teenage dirty-joke teller, or the gaggle of kids who are unafraid to harass a fieldworker while the tape is running (goodwin 1985, bartlett 1971, and mcdowell 1979, respectively). however, infants do not regularly exist in a community of peers, because they are incapable of being left to their own devices for long. the context one might imagine as hosting an “infant peer community” might be a daycare setting, or some arranged opportunity when infants are given the opportunity to interact with one another. yet even here, our adult or even older-child conceptions of “peer group” seem inadequate. at times, infants do not even seem to be responding directly to one another when they’re observed. or are they? without our easily usable default (admittedly problematized) terms like culture, group, and language, infant behavior seems to be a very amorphous cfr_2011_r.indb 8 10/31/11 8:57:35 am schramm nascent folklore 9 phase. in part, this impression is correct because the forms we enjoy studying do not yet exist — what is performative competence for something that is not yet performance? however, from another perspective, there is a basic insecurity in the way that we approach our informants — namely, that lacking the ability to refer to language use as a means to validate our conclusions, we doubt our assessments as too adult-centric, or as wishfully inserting the reading of intention instead of confirming it. these are perfectly agreeable and acceptable cautions, and well worth acknowledging: a teleological angle makes for circular arguments, and “just so” stories instead of theory. another part of this insecurity comes from our hesitance to acknowledge infants as actors in their own right, as agents, even if they seem to possess an alien form of individuality against our developed sense of self. yet we are creatures that can and do live as a part of a physical world wherein body language is read alongside or without spoken language (cicourel 1973, 40-41).2 ascribing intentionality and agency to non-speaking individuals is part of all human interpretive communication, yet recognizing infant activity itself as part of the range of interpretable human experience clearly requires some sort of approach. however, what do terms like competence, group, artistic, or communication mean in the context of infant interaction? to get at the undergirding elements of folklore requires some conception of what folklore itself is. as oring notes, a definition of folklore per se is problematic, as it may be “partial, idiosyncratic, or inconsistent” (oring 1986, 17). however, examining how various scholars have approached the problematic definition of folklore yields certain basic commonalities. the first is that folklore occurs between and among people. it is discursive, interactive, and is a form of communication. this group may be large or small, down to a basic binary pair (dundes 1965). the concept of “group” is fraught with ambiguity, and exists on multiple levels and imaginaries. however, it can be conceptualized due to shared experience and “bodily patterning” — existing in a physical, felt sense of community (noyes 2003). this sense of community (alternatively, communitas as articulated by victor turner) hinges on the ability to empathize with fellow community members (kapchan 2003). empathy works to direct communication between members of the group, aiding mutual comprehension and sense of identity (noyes 2003). in seeking out the nascent forms of these requirements for folkloric interaction, we will be identifying where and if the infant shares the ability to sense others’ motives, if the infant can recognize other humans through shared experience, and if the infant can communicate interactively with other humans. another basic aspect of folklore lies in its attention to the creative and the artistic. folklore is at some level expressive, and aesthetic expression in turn draws in the notion of the repeated, re-creation, tradition, and again, the community (ben-amos 1971, glassie 2003, oring 1986). creative, artistic, expressive — all of these terms are immensely problematic, and must be judged in terms of the culture from which they originate. yet as pocius points out, regardless of what art might be, its expressive potential hinges on the emotional and affective. “art” comes to be considered as a kind of skillful behavior, accomplished between people to varying levels of emotionally-affective efficacy (pocius 2003, 51). in short, the cfr_2011_r.indb 9 10/31/11 8:57:35 am nascent folklore schramm 10 connection between human communication, human skill, and human emotional response is inseparable: we will be looking for where infants show the capacity to respond and express with emotionally responsive and affective behavior. the final basic block in artistic communicative actions is that its performance is intentional. the “interpretive frame” within which communication is produced and read must be at its heart a reading and evaluation of intention to make sense of others’ actions (hufford 2003). the will to create makes the creation possible (glassie 2003). to see if this aspect of folklore is present in a nascent form, we will be looking to see whether infants are capable of reading intention and demonstrating intentional behavior. however, to seek out what makes the communal, the aesthetic, and the intentional feasible during this stage of human development benefits from an interdisciplinary stance, through developmental psychology, language socialization, and evolutionary biology. developmental psychology takes as a starting point the idea of normative stages through which all humans pass on their way to adulthood. it is concerned not only with the development of infant cognition, but also what may be considered healthy development in terms of interaction and socialization through measurable tests of competence (sameroff and cavanaugh 1979, 386).3 mediating between developmental psychology and more qualitative research is the study of language socialization, which asserts that all human behavior is learned interactionally, and that by gradual mastery of interactive forms, children become increasingly competent members of their social and cultural contexts (ochs 1986, 2). children socialize adults, just as adults socialize children, and once children are capable enough to work tacitly (if not reflexively) with interactional routines, they also socialize one another (corsaro 1992).4 however, if infants are born with these socializing abilities, it may also imply a biological, evolutionary imperative inherent in infant interaction with adults. the evolutionary approach has become very trendy within the past decade. in its most fascinating moments, it makes a case for artistic activity as not merely part of what “matters” for our mental wellbeing, but that at a basic level it is a trait selected for over millennia for human survival (dissanayake 2000, 2001).5 the three fields work well in tandem for the same reasons that ethnographers learn about a culture in order to interpret it. developmental psychology points out what we can reasonably expect from our infant interlocutors, as well as gives us signs to look for during our ethnographic exploration. language socialization provides us with a successful model to follow in terms of merging lab analysis with cultural manifestation. the evolutionary approach allows us the possibility that specific observations at the nascent level may indeed be generalizable across cultures. why “nascent folklore”? if developmental psychologists, language sociologists, and evolutionary biologists are doing so much good work on infant behavior already, why should folklorists take it as their interest? as cited in the introductory quote to this article, felicia mcmahon and brian sutton-smith make clear that for folklorists of children, each age has potential. i read this as a challenge — shortly after the child exits cfr_2011_r.indb 10 10/31/11 8:57:36 am schramm nascent folklore 11 the womb, she is literally severed from the mother to become her own separate physical entity that must rely on communication to survive in a cultural context that will shape her and be shaped by her. i noted above that infant behavior does not always conform to our assumptions about how interaction is supposed to work. for cultural relativism to function for infant behavior, we have to simultaneously acknowledge infants as cultural agents, and as agents that may not yet have internalized cultural practice. this idea is particularly problematic when we consider the most loaded assumption of agency — that the agent be intentionally setting out to act upon her environment. this is the heart of nascent folklore — the abilities, skills, and biologically adaptive mental machinery that infants possess as the smallest, most protocultural, and most underrepresented of human agents. the mastery of foundational communicative abilities is imperative for the development of later expressive forms, yet as an early form of communicative action embedded in shared human experience, these abilities can be shown to be themselves a form of folklore. to explore what these foundational abilities mean in the context of ethnographic infant observation, i was fortunate to enjoy the cooperation of mothers and staff in visually recording infant interaction at several parent-baby playtimes during the spring of 2007. the playtime took place in a comfortable, living-room-like environment in the building of the hosting organization, which provides valuable natural-birth and breastfeeding resources, as well as preand post-natal counseling and other health-related activities particularly geared towards new and expecting mothers. during the same time period, i also took video footage of my then-baby daughter in our home. in the first situation, infants were able to interact with one another as well as with their mothers, though i stayed off to the side. while the mothers occasionally conversed with me, i spent no time deliberately interacting with the infants. in the second, staying out of direct interaction with my daughter was impossible, even with her father trying to engage her, due to her curiosity with the video camera. in what follows, i will engage with the three major, interwoven areas common to approaches to folklore — the communal, the aesthetic, and the intentional — and argue that the infant abilities of interactive imitation, innovation, and intention are where these later orientations find their first expression. interactive imitation the first area of nascent folklore is that of interactive imitation. imitation in infancy takes place within an explicitly social framework in which develop forms of social cognition, group identity, and aesthetic capacity. for present purposes, imitation is, most simply, the reproduction (or attempted reproduction) of some act. at its most easily detectable, imitation can resemble identical stimulus and response, but its complexity can encompass simultaneous movement, affect, sound, timing, and even intention (trevarthen et al. 1999, 140-142) neonate imitation between adult and infant has received substantial experimental attention. minutes after birth, a newborn can imitate simple movement, such as tongue protrusion, and by six weeks of age, infants can cfr_2011_r.indb 11 10/31/11 8:57:36 am nascent folklore schramm 12 repeat imitated actions over a day’s delay, indicating some memory of the action (meltzoff and moore 2001, 176). furthermore, they can actively influence the flow, type, and manner of communication with caregivers by their own positive and negative reactions (dissanayake 2001, 85-86). by eight weeks of age, infants’ sense of timing is good enough to know whether or not a play partner is responding contingently (dissanayake 2001, 86). by three months of age, an infant can repeat behavior in order to elicit more of the same behavior from her partner, and by seven months, the infant repeats behavior to bring about a desirable result from an adult (bretherton, et al. 1981, 334–5). the ability to imitate and the awareness of being imitated give infants an identity by analogy which serves as a psychological basis for social cognition, not its eventual outcome: because human acts are seen in others and performed by the self, the infant can represent the other as ‘like me’: i can act like the other and reciprocally the other acts like me. persons are special entities, the only entities in the world with whom i can share behavioral states. the cross-modal knowledge of what it feels like to perform observed acts provides a privileged access to people not afforded by things. this sets the child down the pathway of ascribing psychological properties to people. (meltzoff and brooks 2001, 174, emphasis in original) in other words, imitation may not only be the sincerest form of flattery, but the most direct avenue into forming conceptual as well as lived community. imitation goes hand in hand with what appears to be innate human empathy (field 2007, 94; eisenberg 1992, 8-10). imitation provides a process by which motives are interactively engaged, being simultaneously read and responded to, and innate abilities develop into intentional ones (trevarthen et al 1999,142). beyond the establishing of community and social cognition, infants’ intersubjective reading of motivation and early development of the intricacies of timing and signal may be responsible for the development of pretense, as they discover that the framework can be manipulated between the contingent response and the non-contingent response. with the skill in intersubjective comparison and contrast grows an increasing awareness of and competence in directing the metacommunicative signaling of play.6 where to find interactive imitation to draw out the shared, the aesthetic, and the communicative as one might hope to find in a folkloristic analysis, i am looking for consistencies, repetition and attempted repetition, what is collectively done, and how knowledge (if any) is transmitted, as well as looking out for metacommunicative markers of both play and social engagement (meckley 1994, 5). this includes but is not limited to established signs of social interest from developmental literature, such as sustained gaze, smiling, outcry, eye contact, directed movement, as well as lack of interest denoted by averted gaze. cfr_2011_r.indb 12 10/31/11 8:57:36 am schramm nascent folklore 13 the description that follows is excerpted from my video footage of the local parent-baby playtime described above, and lasts approximately fifty seconds. the excerpt features two infants of eight months and four months placed face-down, roughly two feet apart and facing one another on separate blankets. both were at varying levels apparent strength and balance in maintaining a position in which they could push up with their arms on the floor to look around. their mothers sat to their infants’ sides within arm’s reach, frequently speaking on the infants’ behalf, interrupting their own casual conversation. however, in looking solely at the movements of the infants and their nonverbal interaction, the two baby girls showed immediate interest in one another through sustained gaze and eye contact, breaking it only from time to time to look at a toy or a caregiver. these breaks in attention given to other things such as toys, blankets, or mothers lasted from one to three seconds. however, their shared attentive gazes lasted between fifteen and twenty-seven seconds, making the asides comparatively miniscule. neither infant could creep or crawl effectively yet, so they stayed where they had been placed. in the first ten seconds of the clip, the younger infant, who demonstrated generally a much less physically stable ability to push up and balance herself, arched her back and kicked her legs in the air. the older infant watching her immediately arched her own back and vigorously wiggled her arms and legs in the air. after the older infant repeated this movement several times, the younger observer noticed and followed suit. the timing of the wiggling was entirely dependent on whether or not they were visually engaged with their partner. when the older infant, more capable of turning her head and pushing herself up, looked away, she missed her play partner’s break into wiggling, and did not wiggle in response until she turned and actually saw what the younger was doing. of particular note was that the infants did not wiggle simultaneously while they were closely watching one another, only in alternation. when the younger infant averted her gaze, she stopped participating in the activity. it was only a matter of seconds after the clip ended before she began to cry and her mother removed her from the situation. the interactive cues that marked the two infants’ social interest in one another included sustained and averted gaze, outcry, isolated arm and leg movement, and the fully-engaged body wiggle. the communal co-wiggling activity was, like the preschool protolore observed by mcgonnagill, spontaneous and structured in part by the context in which the mothers had placed the babies, but was not directed by the adults. despite their occasional interference (such as stroking their infants’ heads, smiling encouragingly, speaking to the infants or the other mother as if to explain their baby’s action), the mothers were never as interesting to the infants as the infants were to one another. however, unlike protolore, the imitative wiggling cannot be read as including some intent, not even a flexible one. it exists on a genre-less level of action and reaction. the mutually enjoyable patterning of wiggle play between the infants proved possible because of the highly developed sense of timing and signal that the infants already possessed. with extended observation, tracking cultural cues for timing could be achieved for even this young age. it is possible to suggest cfr_2011_r.indb 13 10/31/11 8:57:36 am nascent folklore schramm 14 that instead of disjointed flailing of arms and legs, the younger infant began to move in ways that lifted all four limbs up off the ground in closer imitative form to the other infant, closely attending to how it was done and then repeating the action. beyond the idea of skill acquisition, the exploration of “turn-taking procedures” may be, as shieffelin and ochs suggest, a way into understanding larger communal social relationships (1986, 171). if we take nascent folklore in tandem with language socialization, we can argue that infants at this age not only communicate in terms of social cohesion and interaction, but that they actively teach one another by imitative skill acquisition within a peer group. innovation innovation is the second major area of nascent folklore. it is closely linked with imitation, but beyond the establishment of community and social cognition, the intersubjective reading of motivation and infants’ early awareness of the intricacies of timing and signal rapidly transform into experimentation. from the early ability to compare and contrast grows an increasing awareness of the metacommunicative signaling of play. these markers can be found in “exaggeration and stereotypy, (e.g., prolongation, patterning, and repetition),” and the dynamic variation of their use serves to establish that intentions can vary dramatically from expectation and not be taken seriously, which is the point at which pretense can function (dissanayake 2001, 94-95). by nine months of age, an infant’s sense of timing is not only good enough to imitate when she wishes, but also to try different tactics in imitative interaction to see if the imitator is watching or not, which often becomes a game to see if the other is following (meltzoff and brooks 2001, 179). the infant also begins to attempt different means of accomplishing the same goal (meltzoff and brooks 2001, 182). however, deciding when and where infant inventiveness occurs may hinge on uncovering the point at which habitual action and delayed imitation can be distinguished from “innovation,” as well as coming to terms with what innovation may mean for infancy. the field observation in the previous section dealt with infant interaction in a face-to-face context, but it must also be noted that much of infant and toddler play is done in apparent solitude, with little or no direct interaction at all. however, this co-presence still functions as a basis for imitation and learning. tullia musatti explains that among infants and toddlers, it has been experimentally verified that even during apparently non-related play, children’s activities are related consistently to what other children have done previously during the same time, with varying degrees of relationship between them. in studies where the range of age went from twelve to eighteen months and eight to twenty-seven months, imitation occurred that did not necessitate direct communication; infants and toddlers aligned themselves to what occurred around them. “having a child’s own activity and that of the partner simultaneously displayed makes it easier for the child to assess the activities’ similarities and differences” (musatti 1993, 245). in other words, they are able to distinguish cfr_2011_r.indb 14 10/31/11 8:57:36 am schramm nascent folklore 15 between their own activities and those of others, and to incorporate and imitate that which is new. the question then is whether any innovation is truly new, or if infants simply learn by watching others and trying out new activities the first time for themselves. while i do not want to dismiss the infant at solo play, the autotelic, self-sustaining enjoyment of his experimentation feeds upon itself. much like studying dialogue with oneself, solo play bears the hallmarks of communicative activity while not explicitly being so. innovation rises out of interaction with others, even when it is in parallel and indirect. in summary, dynamic variation existing between the infant and the other, whether another infant or an adult, gives rise to the co-interpretative, intersubjective existence of imaginative play, all by the age of nine months. the ability to engage and recognize engagement by the other is fundamental to recognize what is play and what is not, in order to establish the subtle framing of experience and interaction. where to find innovation for the purposes of identifying nascent folklore, we turn our focus to what is communicatively effected during the flow of an interactive scene, setting aside for the time being the more difficult-to-identify innovation at work within individual experimentation. signs to look for in identifying innovation are similar to imitation. sustained gaze can denote interest, and shared actions and patterns mark the interactive element. however, to discover innovation, we seek those actions which break the pattern, and in a play context, are used for the purpose of contributing to a sustained and mutual enjoyment of an activity. to know whether an action is truly innovative, a fresh invention of game play that the child has never witnessed before, is simply not in the scope of these field observations. however, introduction of a fresh movement, a different cry, or a different use of a toy that is done for the purpose of prolonging the enjoyment of play demonstrates the innovative ability of the infant to string together prior witnessed behaviors into a fluid whole, not unlike verbal formulas and innovative variations within a riddle sequence that require skill, intelligence, and creativity to fashion together.7 by way of illustration, let me sketch a play scene based on my own observation of infants at play. two infants are playing with toys which rattle. one lifts his toy into the air and shakes it vigorously, eliciting the sound. the enjoyment of doing the action appears to be reason enough to continue shaking the rattle periodically. meanwhile, the second infant begins to pay attention and lifts her rattling toy, imitating her play partner’s movement. now there are two infants rattling toys in similar ways. at this point, the second infant, whose toy is not of the rattle-specific variety, but has a number of other bells and whistles attached, begins to bang it on the carpet, and it makes a most pleasing cacophony of noise. infant one continues shaking his rattle midair for a moment more, then begins enthusiastically pounding it on the floor, smiling, eyes wide. cfr_2011_r.indb 15 10/31/11 8:57:36 am nascent folklore schramm 16 we do not know whether the second infant had experienced floor-pounding with the toy prior to this situation. however, the break in the rattle pattern was directed by the infants’ choices, and, most importantly, contributed to the continuation of the play activity. perhaps after a time, rattling midair would have ceased to be enjoyable. perhaps changing the activity to pounding allowed the infants’ enjoyment of the activity to endure ten or even twenty seconds longer than the rattle game might have lasted on its own––a significant space of time for their attention spans. the possibility for this early creative process hinged on the intersubjective space between the two infants where variation could be incorporated and improved upon. this example suggests an approach much like trial and error in the ways that human beings mutually construct culture. behavior is imitated, and when improvements are attempted, the response of the community (or party) for whom the communicative behavior is initiated determines whether those changes in turn are repeated. this early pattern in infant rattle play becomes writ large, with all of the same messy and subjective misfires of communication building upon and responding to one another, smoothing into established patterns over time. the attempting of new or previously demonstrated behavior for one’s own ends (often in the same process of trial and error) is also foundational in regard to creativity. creativity and innovation as terminology possess culturally-laden value; and the idea of innovation as “newness” and therefore “good” certainly creates problems. however, if we recognize the interactive quality of innovation — namely, that it is dependent upon others to validate it, repeat it, or encourage further repetition — we can see that together, imitation and innovation in interactive symbiosis provide rudimentary guidelines for judging activities that evoke pleasure, such as play (miller 1973, 91). in other words, they form the foundational properties of aesthetics. as noted earlier, distinguishing the difference between previously imitated behavior, a failed imitation, and a completely original innovation is beyond the scope of my observation. however, i would question to what extent such distinction truly matters. the communicative function of the innovation is located in the context where it occurs, and its effect is of greater interest than its originality. however, as noted above, imitated behavior and innovative behavior do differ somewhat in the matter of intention, for it is in the exploration of intention that we can create a picture of the infant as agent. intention the final area in which to see the nascent stage of folklore is intention. imitation and innovation in the context of interaction are intimately tied to the simultaneous and mutual reading of intention and motivation by infants. intention, motivation, belief, and desire are all terms considered to fall into the realm of “folk psychology,” namely, the interpretive system(s) that humans utilize to make sense of others’ actions through the attribution of mental states (malle and knobe 2001, 45-46).8 despite its relative lack of empirical provability, intention has been the focus of much attention in recent years, and considerable effort has been made to cfr_2011_r.indb 16 10/31/11 8:57:36 am schramm nascent folklore 17 analyze the various aspects of intention as well as to do empirical study of how the concept is put to use (see malle and knobe 2001, ames et al. 2001). what is particularly relevant for this analysis is that intention and the reading thereof is a social, survival-oriented trait, culturally nuanced and intimately connected with communication. infants appear to learn intentionality within the same interactive and imitative framework that dissanayake credits with laying the foundation for later aesthetic imagination. meltzoff notes that infants are taught the idea of actions being linked with intention by virtue of their own experience in trying to fulfill their own goals and watching others do the same: infants have goals and act intentionally. they have experienced their own failed plans and unfulfilled intentions … when an infant sees another act in this same way, the infant’s self-experience could suggest that there is a goal, plan, or intention beyond the surface behavior. thus infants would come to read the adult’s failed attempts [at doing a task], and the behavioral envelope in which they occur, as a pattern of ‘strivings’ rather than ends in themselves. (meltzoff 2007, 131) however, this broad analysis gives us little assurance. by three months of age, it has been shown, infants repeat behavior in order to bring about a repeated response in a caregiver, and infants from seven months repeat behavior in order to make an adult laugh (bretherton et al. 1985, 334-5). elsewhere, it has been argued that infants begin to infer absent goals from between nine to thirteen months of age (meltzoff and brooks 2001, 181). however, to what extent can such activities be considered intentional? knowing that infants are intentional agents and recognizing infant intention may be separate matters. ascribing intentionality may itself be a component in whether an action achieves its goal, since reading a situation as goal-oriented implies the existence of intention. relevant as well is the idea of self, and to what extent the infant agent conceives of the self, as we approach intention’s sister concept, agency. the awareness of how one acts upon the world, in tandem with how much one may exert one’s own action upon it, vary substantially within the first year of life. in order to interpret underlying intentions, there must be a shared “framework of meaning,” as well as some medium through which communication can be achieved (bretherton et al. 1981, 340). as discussed in the previous sections, this framework of meaning is constructed through the minutiae of action and reaction, imitation and innovation, and infants can direct and influence its flow. i read this as arguing that infants do not need to possess a “theory of mind,” that is, the ability to recognize intentionality in others, in order to express desire in a goaldirected way. desire is another folk psychological concept. as malle and knobe point out among adults discerning between desire and intention, desire is often defined as an internal state, while intention is the action that springs from desire. in determining intention, social perceivers suppose strength of a person’s desire to cfr_2011_r.indb 17 10/31/11 8:57:36 am nascent folklore schramm 18 do something. if that desire is acted upon, then it is read as intention, but only if there is an equally perceived presence of commitment (malle and knobe 2001, 60). this raises a teleological spectre. do varying assumptions of present desire and committed action risk adults reading too much intention into infant behavior than actually is present? i think that we as ethnographers must be willing to spend the time necessary to interpret infant behavior in long-term ethnographic context, to recognize individuated cries and gestures, as well as culturally-relevant recognizing of infant intention — what is recognized will be responded to. in studies of vocal imitative behavior between infants and parents, developmental psychologists kokkinaki and kugiumutzakis found that with infants between two and six months of age, imitation with parents gave rise to “two specific kinds of emotion: interest and pleasure.” they go on to write that, “given that emotions are regarded as motives in human intentional communication, this later finding provides evidence that infants and parents also share the ability to read each others’ motives and intentions” (kokkinaki and kugiumutzakis 2000, 185). while this developmental work does not prove anything about perfect strangers being able to read the intentions of infants whom they do not know, it does suggest that drawing in expert observers, namely parents, could provide an angle for making more accurate conclusions about infants’ intentions during a given interaction. like any human interaction, reading motivation is an interpretive process. when looking to establish and interpret infant intention, many of the same criteria that are useful in recognizing imitation and innovation also apply. however, this time the approach must also incorporate more obvious emotional signs of response — pleasure, excitement, and interest — that work to direct action. beyond merely signaling and recognizing intent with sustained gaze, or looking for consistencies and repetitions and breaks in that repetition for new permutations on an old theme, the indication that the collective play activity has a clearly defined emotional component is key in attributing intention, as well as are metacommunicative markers of play, such as exaggeration and stereotypy. where to find intention i hope to illustrate this concept of intention by comparing the following two scenes, where i have entered as an “expert observer” of my own child. both scenes demonstrate attempts at a game variant of peek-a-boo played with my daughter of thirteen months at our home. the first scene is directed by me, stationed to one side of a video recorder. the second is the same game played with her father while i filled the role of observer and camera person. both video clips do not last more than thirty seconds each in recorded form. in the first recording, our daughter turns from standing at a door and walks roughly fifteen feet away from the camera, through a living area scattered with toys, and down a hallway. i ask her where she is going (in high-pitched play tones) even as she disappears out of sight around a doorway. then come the cfr_2011_r.indb 18 10/31/11 8:57:36 am schramm nascent folklore 19 cue words of our game, which we have played numerous times before: “where’s [name]?” the sing-song chant is repeated at a higher pitch. as the repetition of the cue comes to a close, the child runs out from the doorway with a huge smile on her face, looking for my face. i exclaim with exaggerated excitement, round eyes, and large smile, “ohh, there she is!” my daughter responds by squealing in delight and prancing on her tiptoes. she drops eye contact with me, and continues to create the squealing noise for her own apparent pleasure. she averts her gaze to inspect the basket momentarily before she looks up and turns back for the doorway. in the second clip, the toddler is standing behind her father, seated in the middle of the living room floor. he begins the game cue. “where’s [name]? where did [name] go?” he turns around quickly with a wide, open-mouthed smile and exaggeratedly wide eyes. “there she is!” however, our daughter has instead turned to a nearby toy behind her father, and does not respond to his cue. as her father turns to make eye contact with her, she looks up from the toy, and then to where i am seated with the video camera (about ten feet away) and then back to her father (about a foot away), before she returns her gaze to the camera, with a slight smile. the father tries again, turning away from her and repeating the game cue again. however, the direction of my daughter’s gaze does not stay more than a moment on her father, and with an increasingly large smile, the indirect steps that had taken her to the toy become more direct, and she makes an unsteady beeline in the direction of the camera. as she passes her father by, he laughs, “ohh, [name]’s not paying any attention to daddy; [name] wants the video camera!” the clip ends as the child, grinning into the lens, gets her wish, grabbing for the camera and wrenching it to one side. the desire of our daughter to play the game with us was just as important as our willingness to play it with her. through metacommunicative exaggeration, we parents in both clips demonstrated our intent to play, and our daughter picked up on it. in variation one, she used the doorframe to hide behind. in the second variation, her father expected her to hide behind his back and appear to one side (based on their previous game play). however, whether due to the distraction of the camera, or the lack of ability to see his face as he signaled the game to her through exaggerated expression and repeated, patterned behavior, her direct engagement with him and with the game were fleeting, despite his numerous attempts at re-establishing the flow of interaction between them. in the first clip, pleasure could be interpreted and shared by both participants, and recognized in the form of squealing, exaggerated expressions, and body language, such as excitable prancing. the appearance of the toddler was marked by the child’s pleasure. perhaps this came from filling the hanging, uncertain expectation of the situation and gratifying it, but it engendered a return of clear, affective signals that reinforced and heightened the her own emotional response. pleasure was also demonstrated for pleasure’s sake, such as the continued squealing that was disengaged from seeking a response. when we re-engaged through eye contact, she immediately turned back and walked directly for the doorway, a clear gestural sign that she wanted to repeat the action and have the game continue. cfr_2011_r.indb 19 10/31/11 8:57:36 am nascent folklore schramm 20 in the second clip, the child’s own gauging of the likelihood of chasing the camera seemed to grow steadily, first in the uncertainty of her glances between camera, father, and toy, and then in the widening smile she manifested in advancing in the direction she wished to go. it might also be noted, however, that she was never dissuaded from heading toward the video camera. both parents reinforced their own amusement to the child through smiles and laughter as the incongruencies between the situation they were trying to effect and the child’s actions became more and more pronounced, first through her utterly ignoring her father in favor of the nearby toy, and then as she toddled purposefully for the camera. both of these clips make apparent the ability of the parents and the toddler to establish a pattern and a play frame for the game. the parents achieved this through a repeated call with a specific vocal tone and exaggerated facial expressions. the child accomplished this through the repetition of actions that will trigger the calling cue, and enabled her to share in the expression of delight and surprise. the delight and surprise that generated the fun of the game hinged on the toddler’s ability to distinguish between that which was expected, and that which was not expected. by failing to appear immediately in the first game, the toddler experimented with the concept of expectation, of the absent being present, and her own control in eliciting a reaction. she was in control of the flow of the response (though if she had disappeared into the bathroom for too long, i would have assumed that she was no longer participating, and would have broken the play frame to deny her agency in exploring that particular location). in the second situation, parental attempts at creating a recognizable play frame can be seen to exist somewhat shakily, and then fall apart. in the uncertain glances between father and mother and camera, it was apparent that not only did the parents recognize what their daughter wanted, but that the toddler was not entirely at ease with pursuing her goal until the signals were clear — the parents had been attempting to make eye contact and repeat a cue call, but once their laughter and smiling at her replaced their (feeble) attempts to maintain the play situation, her steps became faster and more direct, and her smile widened and grew to a cry of pleasure upon reaching her destination. the promise of nascent folklore the areas of interactive imitation, innovation, and intention have much to offer folklorists who wish to understand this stage of human aesthetic potential. the seeds of identity and community sprout in shared communicative and intentional behavior, the mutual recognition and empathy inherent in imitation, and the developing theory of mind that comes out of the developing child recognizing others as “like me,” perhaps the most early experience of turnerian communitas. the most basic experience of imitation and innovation is relived in tradition, paralleling the conception of folklore’s ability to be both conservative and dynamic (toelken 1979, 39-40). this “communal creation and recreation” (ben-amos 1971, 7) is negotiated through a social community and its inherent system of response and evaluation, and the building fluency of triggering response in others and in cfr_2011_r.indb 20 10/31/11 8:57:36 am schramm nascent folklore 21 turn reading their intention provides for the existence of framing and the reading of contextual clues (hufford 1995, 532). the ability to read the differences in performance and intention can be argued as the foundation of genre. there are some unsettling implications that we can draw out of the areas of infant ability that i have discussed above. one harks back to outdated assumptions about “primitive” man and cultural group-think. another could be perceived as a flattening of cultural variation and change under biological reductionism. however, despite the implied conclusion that all infants everywhere share these foundational abilities as part of their biologically evolved equipment for survival, there is no cause to diminish the role of human agency. by recognizing foundational abilities which incorporate the desires and the intentions of the individual actor, there exists room for the growth of the master performer as well as creative expression. between cultural and social frameworks, i would expect to find imitation, innovation, and intention appearing in varying forms, with peer and adult responses to proxemics, timing, and variations of intentional action being read and responded to very differently. the forms that these infant desires and intentions grow into will be diverse — what creativity looks like, and indeed what constitutes mastery or performance, will vary by culture and folk group. the folklorists of infancy are few and far between, which suggests challenges in negotiating developmental literature, dealing with the lack of a clearly defined group identity, and transcribing multimodal, nonverbal communication. however, perhaps we set aside ethnographic methodology and interdisciplinary experimentation too soon. as adult humans we possess years of practice past that early developmental milestone of nine months to begin grasping that others have goals and that other humans are “like me,” while simultaneously acknowledging that expectations can and do differ from what actually occurs. already highly experienced readers of intention and action, as ethnographers we hone this skill to make our interpretations as accurate and culturally sensitive as possible; as folklorists, we engage the expressive, emotionally moving, communicative aspects of human behavior — regardless of the phase of human development at which it occurs. infants experience emotionally meaningful shared communication––between one another and others. they possess their own means for evaluating contingency and demonstrating their engagement and preference; they interact creatively and imitatively. with expressive communication which is wordless yet vocal, active and intentional, infants can be recognized as significant bearers of protoculture — their own nascent folklore. notes many thanks go to john mcdowell for his continual support and encouragement, and infinitely helpful commentary during the revisionary process, as well as to the dependable friends/sharp-eyed editors of thesis group. thanks also to harper, without whom it never would have occurred to me to consider people her age inspirational. cfr_2011_r.indb 21 10/31/11 8:57:36 am nascent folklore schramm 22 notes 1. a notable anthropological exception to this that i have found is alma gottlieb’s “do infants have religion?: the spiritual lives of beng babies,” in american anthropologist 100 (1998: 122-135). she spent over 700 hours with infants in order to counterbalance a potentially “adulto-centric” perspective. 2. see noyes’ discussion of physical experience (and academic discomfort in addressing it) fire in the plaça: catalan festival politics after franco (philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press, 2003). see also sklar 1994. 3. it would be incorrect to assert that all developmental psychology is clinically “cold” or unconcerned with cultural nuance, though critically speaking, quite a lot of literature suggests western-centric universals in forming normative bases for comparison with other cultures that has in turn been picked up by the social sciences (see burman 2008, hirschfield 2002 for extended discussions). 4. while this assertion would not be hotly disputed in many psychological circles, these two fields of developmental psychology and language socialization differ in many ways. language socialization is positioned between the quantitative lab analysis common to most psychological studies and qualitative ethnographic research, incorporating both statistical and interpretive elements, with an end focus on what can be learned about cultural values encoded in the medium of language forms and how they are taught and internalized by children (shieffelin and ochs 1986, 168). 5. in its most extreme forms, the evolutionary approach risks falling into biological reductionism, taking for granted that there are a set of universals that exist a priori to culture manifesting in its various forms. however, for early infant behavior, where cultural forms are in fact in a nascent and largely unformed state, biology may offer insights — especially when we take as a possibility that certain human behaviors may be evolved just as physical characteristics are, rejecting the idea that evolution is the equivalent of biological determinism (see bandura 2001 for an extended discussion). for an excellent critique of this evolutionary position, which in many studies contains at its core the reverse-engineering of culture, see robert c. richardson’s evolutionary psychology as maladapted psychology (cambridge: mit press, 2007). 6. by exploring this area, i do not mean to conflate protolore and nascent folklore with play, despite some of their obvious similarities. for example, piagetian sensorimotor-period “practice play,” is certainly marked by an intrinsic enjoyment of the act of doing itself, its agents not yet having reached the developmental capacity for symbols or rule-based games, yet it is often done in solitude (miller 1973, 90). while i do not believe that the ability to derive pleasure from solitary play is unimportant or unrelated to an intersubjective social framework, it does not receive focus here. 7. see mcdowell 1979 for an extended discussion of the creativity and variation within riddling sessions. 8. a term generally considered pejorative by the psychological literature, i wonder if we cannot bring some respectability to the idea of “folk psychology” by recognizing it as the way in which humans perceive others, a cultural system which is taught and believed. cfr_2011_r.indb 22 10/31/11 8:57:36 am schramm nascent folklore 23 works cited ames, daniel r., eric d. knowles, michael w. morris, charles w. kalish, andrea d. rosati, and alison 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infancy: a developmental perspective. in handbook of infant development, ed. joy d. osofsky, 344-392. new york: john wiley & sons. shieffelin, bambi b. and elinor ochs. 1986. language socialization. annual review of anthropology 15, 163-191. sklar, deidre. 1994. can bodylore be brought to its senses? the journal of american folklore 107: 9-22. sutton-smith, brian. 1970. psychology of childlore: the triviality barrier. western folklore 29(1): 1-8. ______1999. introduction: what is children’s folklore? children’s folklore: a source book, eds. brian sutton-smith, jay mechling, thomas w. johnson, and felicia r. mcmahon, 3-9. logan: utah state university press. sutton-smith, brian, and felicia r. mcmahon. 1999. the past in the present: theoretical directions for children’s folklore. in children’s folklore: a source book, eds. brian sutton-smith, jay mechling, thomas w. johnson, and felicia r. mcmahon, 293-308. logan: utah state university press. sutton-smith, brian, jay mechling, thomas w. johnson, and felicia r. mcmahon, eds. 1999. children’s folklore: a source book. logan: utah state university press. toelken, barre. 1979. the dynamics of folklore. boston: houghton mifflin. trevarthen, colwyn, theano kokkinaki, and geraldo a. fiamenghi jr. 1999. what infants’ imitations communicate: with mothers, with fathers and with peers. in imitation in infancy, eds. jacqueline nadel and george butterworth. cambridge: cambridge university press. cfr_2011_r.indb 25 10/31/11 8:57:37 am 27 fathers and their african american daughters: hair pieces creating ties that bind neal lester barbie never told black girls they are beautiful. essex hemphill, “soft targets (for black girls)” (2006) writing about the “mother-daughter dance over hair” in her article “for black girls, hair and self-esteem are interwoven,” karen m. thomas (2006) asserts that hair is both “a mother’s way to pass judgment and a daughter’s way to rebel.” thomas sees hair as “a sign of independence and self-identity [that] announces to the world who we are,” but for little african american girls, the hair “dance” is more complicated, often signaling “a daughter’s entry point into racial differences and america’s standard of beauty” (e3). culturally and racially-specific hair stories represent nuanced intersections between adults’ choices about girls’ hair and young black girls’ ability to make their own informed hair and identity-forming choices in an adult world. kim green’s reflection in “the pain of living the lye” underscores the effect of “good hair” on an african american child’s psyche: “i grew up mad at my hair because it wasn’t like the swinging manes of white children who surrounded me” (1993, 38). to achieve the “good hair” ideal, heated iron combs or lye-based chemicals become the tools of destruction and temporary construction. african american women routinely talk and testify about a loss of innocence by pinpointing the moment their hair journeys toward selfhood began, testimonials revealing an evolution from hair-straightening to eventual acceptance of self and hair. the beginnings of these self-defining moments in young black girlhood are clear and long-lasting, and ultimately shape the public and private images of black womanhood. indeed, the rhetorical ploys that associate straight and relaxed hair care with “good” mothering tugs at the emotional and spiritual bond between african american mothers and their young daughters, evident in this advertisement for a popular children’s relaxer: “mommy gives us pcj pretty-n-silky because she loves us!” (luster products, 1996, 123 emphasis added). another such advertisement by luster products (1991) offers a similar appeal: “for your daughters, playing ‘dressup’ can be wonderful make-believe fun and games. but as their mother, you know that looking out for them also has a serious side. and that includes caring for their hair. that’s why you use pcj relaxer” (65). decidedly mixed signals equate motherdaughter love and nurturing with hair relaxing and blur lines between the assumed carefree make-believe of childhood innocence and play with pleas to mothers that they are doing what is best for their daughters. the final tag of the ad is profoundly ironic, a claim that the product is “an original just like your daughters.” if we take our cues solely from disney and its most recently released 3-d animated flick tangled — yet another spin on the rapunzel narrative featuring its celebrated long, straight, silky haired blonde damsel — we sense that some things about beauty aesthetics seem never to change. even the social and political cfr_2011_r.indb 27 10/31/11 8:57:37 am fathers and their african american daughters lester 28 implications of straight hair for disney’s first african american princess tiana, from the princess and the frog,1 reveals minimal efforts to challenge prevailing ideals about “good” and “bad” hair. on the other hand, perhaps change really is in the air, and in this case, it’s all about little african american girls and their hair. this change may or may not have anything directly to do with the running platform of then-senator barack obama and his subsequent election as the first african american us president. or, perhaps the reality of the first african american first family with its three generations of obama females inhabiting the white house residence at the same time creates a new level of social, cultural, and political awareness about difference, especially racial and ethnic difference. indeed, while public scrutiny of hair has followed past first family females — jacquelyn kennedy, hillary and chelsea clinton, for instance — this current media attention to race and gender as related to hair seems another first.2 a decidedly new attitude about the race and gender politics of little african american girls and hair is being attributed to the early october 2010 sesame street segment that has gone viral on youtube, in which the spunky brown girl puppet sings with gusto and full commitment the catchy, upbeat tune “i love my hair!” this little brown female puppet’s bold embrace of her nappy hair is precisely the companion to neo-soul singer india.arie’s self-affirming “i am not my hair” (2006): “i am not my hair/ i am not this skin/ i am not your expectations, no, no/ i am not my hair/ i am not this skin/ i am a soul that lives within.” this same message about loving one’s hair as an african american girl interfaces with messages of self-acceptance and african american cultural affirmation projected in a bevy of children’s picture books about african american girls and their hair — carolivia herron’s nappy hair (1997), natasha tarpley’s i love my hair (1998), bell hooks’s happy to be nappy (1999), joyce carol thomas’s crowning glory (2002), and dinah johnson’s hair dance (2007), to name a few. together and individually, these children’s books challenge prevailing assumptions about a single beautiful hair ideal: long, flowing, silky, bouncy, capable of being windtossed, manageable, and blond. indeed, “good hair,” according to these alternative children’s book narratives, is hair that we are born with and hair that makes us happy with who we are. reiterates poet/ playwright ntozake shange (1972) addressing black adults about the hair ideal for african americans: “the roots of your hair/ what turns back when we sweat, run,/ make love, dance, get afraid, get/ happy: the tell-tale sign of living/” (n.p.). in addition to planting and nurturing this positive message to african american girls that chemically untouched hair is desirable, acceptable, healthy, manageable, versatile, and a source of pride, socially and politically conscious fathers are stepping in to assist socially and politically conscious mothers already challenging the many forces that negatively impact our brown daughters’ sense of their most positive selves. through this lens of hair, fathers address the sins of glamorizing the straight and silky hair ideal. chris rock identifies the impetus for his comedic documentary good hair (2009) as his five-year-old daughter who, after playing with barbie dolls, presented him with this disturbingly loaded question: “daddy, why don’t i have good hair?” with this question so steeped in cultural folklore and written so indelibly upon the fabric of america’s distinct history of black and white cfr_2011_r.indb 28 10/31/11 8:57:37 am lester fathers and their african american daughters 29 race relations, rock set out to explore why this prevailing notion of “good hair” as straight hair, presumably like white people’s hair — even though all whites don’t necessarily have straight hair — still exists and has reached his and surely other young african american daughters. when asked how rock talks to his little girls about their hair, he responds both seriously and humorously: “like any dad, i just tell my daughters they’re beautiful as much as possible. and i keep chemicals out of their hair until they’re old enough to make that decision. because if you put chemicals in a kid’s hair, she’s addicted. it’s like making the kid a vampire” (fireman, 2009, p. 122). another african american parent acknowledges the profound pain at witnessing his/ her child’s feelings of inadequacy that can only be countered through creative remessaging: “i think that at some point, if you have a little girl, we all deal with the day your child comes home from school and says, ‘i don’t want my hair to look like this; i want it to look like annie’s.’ and annie’s hair is blond and long and not what she has” (sims 2010). paternal nurturing and social and political responsibility are at the heart of sesame street writer joey mazzarino’s response to his adopted ethiopian daughter when “he noticed as she played with her dolls that she wanted long, straight blond hair” (gray 2010). his politically-charged creative response was the twominute, upbeat video meant to remind his daughter that her hair was “nice just as it is” (gray 2010). that the italian american father’s song for his brown daughter addresses years of ambivalent emotions from many african american adult women about their subscribing to a straight hair ideal has been unexpected for mazzarino, as summarized by an npr staff writer (2010) in “‘i love my hair’: a father’s tribute to his daughter”: in writing the song, [mazzarino] wanted to say in song what she says to his daughter: “your hair is great. you can put it in ponytails. you can put it in cornrows. i wish i had hair like you.” that simple message has caused an outpouring of responses from women. mazzarino got a call from an african woman who told him the song brought her to tears. “i was amazed, ‘cause i sort of wrote this little thing for my daughter, and here this adult woman, it touched her.” this message has resonated loudly and clearly with african american women and girls as they navigate the politics of personal decisions; says one african american woman: figure 1. like father, like daughter: hair’s family tapestry. neal a. lester with daughter jasmine z. lester. cfr_2011_r.indb 29 10/31/11 8:57:37 am fathers and their african american daughters lester 30 i embarked on a hair journey to revive my curls after getting bored with the polished, broadcaster’s look. tired of wearing my strands bone-straight and looking like “everyone else,” i stopped using the flat iron for six months, wore my hair in protective hairstyles like braids and twists, and then had a big chop three months ago to remove the straggling straight ends so that my curls could grow back healthy and strong. and while it took over a decade to embrace my natural hair, when i watch this two-minute sesame street video, i can’t help but fight back the tears as it sends a much-needed message to young black girls at a pivotal point in their development that will reaffirm why they should love what they’ve got on top. who knows if i would’ve yielded to the hot comb or “kiddie” relaxer had i been exposed to such a positive image of black hair at an early age. i can only hope that little girls who’ve watched this [video] know that, as the muppet sings, “there’s nothing else that can compare to their hair” (oliver 2010). as an african american scholar who is also a parent, i began researching, teaching, and lecturing on the race and gender politics of head hair when our daughter was born twenty-one years ago. this work started not because our biracial daughter had ever asked questions about her hair, but rather because others were so consistently preoccupied with labeling our first-born’s hair as “good hair” or “nice hair.”3 during our daughter’s childhood years, i was her primary hair groomer because my more flexible job schedule as a university professor allowed that morning ritual. plus, my italian-argentine spouse hadn’t a clue what to do with our daughter’s hair. as our daughter has moved into the young adult world, i have missed those days of bonding through detangler and hair-grooming sessions that united us on what i hope was some spiritual level. that she consciously alternates between flat-ironed straight and curly hair means that some spoken or unspoken lesson about her hair’s healthiness and about selfacceptance must have been absorbed. joey mazzarino shares details of a similar bonding-through-hair grooming-ritual with his young daughter: “my wife is an actress and if she was away i would be in charge of my daughter’s hair. i made sure it looked good … i’m still not great at braids, but i try. i do standard braids. i don’t know what i’m doing. it was hard to get used to but i love doing it with my daughter…. [the song i created] really comes from a place of love for my daughter” (darden, 2010). basking in the glory and creative possibilities of braids, afro puffs, afros, dreadlocks, and plaits, and then with various fun and funny hair adornments, this little unnamed brown girl puppet’s proclamation and dance performance underscore joyce carol thomas’s (2002) message of self-affirmation: “‘what is good hair?’/ i ask my daddy/ and mama answers, ‘why it’s understood,/ sister, if it’s on your head it’s good!’” (n.p.) even willow smith, the tween child star of actor parents will and jada pinkett smith, sends a message of selfaffirmation in her chart-topping single, “whip my hair” (2010), wherein she uses her proportionally too-long braid extensions as a metaphor of resistance to those who demand conformity to another’s unreasonable and arbitrary expectations: cfr_2011_r.indb 30 10/31/11 8:57:37 am lester fathers and their african american daughters 31 “don’t let haters keep me off my grind/ keep my head up i know i’ll be fine … i whip my hair back and forth/ i whip my hair back and forth (just whip it)/ i whip my hair back and forth.”4 since we fathers and mothers are also trying to help our african-american daughters find their voices of self-acceptance, it seems appropriate to leave this final word on the race and gender politics of hair to our newest young cultural warrior as she prances confidently across the sesame street stage and onto our computer screens belting out this challenge and declaration of “i love my hair!” to every brown woman and girl — and by extension every brown man and boy — caught in this maze of american beauty aesthetics: don’t need a trip to the beauty shop, ’cause i love what i got on top. it’s curly and it’s brown and it’s right up there! you know what i love? that’s right, my hair! i really love my hair. i love my hair. i love my hair. there’s nothing else that can compare with my hair. i love my hair, so i must declare: i really, really, really love my hair. wear a clippy or in a bow or let it sit in an afro my hair looks good in a cornrow it does so many things you know, that’s why i let it grow i love my hair, i love my hair i love it and i have to share i love my hair, i love my hair! i want to make the world aware i love my hair. i wear it up. i wear it down. i wear it twisted all around. i wear braids and pigtails too. i love all the things my hair can do. in barrettes or flying free, ever perfect tresses you’ll see my hair is part of me, an awesome part of me i really love my hair! african american women and girls still journey toward a day when their sense of themselves and their assessments of other african american women and girls are not based on futile efforts to achieve a hair ideal rooted in someone else’s limited and limiting constructions and images of beauty. this hugely important and popular vocal and visual cyber performance of “i love my hair!” in a little brown female puppet’s own exuberant voice extends this father’s message of positivity to his daughter far and wide in ways that books alone simply cannot and will not. african american parents can only hope that the combination of this father’s effort and other parents’ will be the change that nurtures, celebrates, and sustains their african american daughters as who will become african american women and mothers. cfr_2011_r.indb 31 10/31/11 8:57:37 am fathers and their african american daughters lester 32 notes 1. see lester 2010. 2. see eleveld 2008, desmond-harris 2009, and jones 2008. 3. see “nappy edges and goldy locks: african american daughters and the politics of hair” and “roots that go beyond big hair and a bad hair day: nappy hair pieces,” in lester 2007, 79-111. 4. the popularity of “i love my hair!” has led to a mash up with the sesame street video and willow smith’s hit “whip my hair”: http://hiphop.popcrunch. com/willow-smith-whip-my-hair-sesame-street-i-love-my-hair-mashup/. works cited arie, india. 2006. i am not my hair. testimony 1, life and relationship [cd]. new york: motown records. b0006141-02. darden, jenee. 2010. sesame street writer pens ‘i love my hair’ song to empower daughter. 19 october. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jenee-darden/ sesame-street-writer-pens_b_767353.html. desmond-harris, jenee. 2009. why michelle obama’s hair matters. time magazine us. 7 september. www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1919147,00. html. eleveld, kerry. 2008. it’s not just about the hair. the advocate (23 september): 30-34. fireman, d. 2009. chris rock made a film about what? gq 79 (10): 122. gray, madison. 2010. sesame street: love your hair, kids! time newsfeed. 20 october. http://newsfeed.time.com/2010/10/20/sesame-streets-i-love-myhair-video-goes-viral/. green, kim. 1993. the pain of living the lye. essence 24(2): 38. hemphill, essex. 2006. soft targets (for black girls). the oxford anthology of african american poetry, ed. arnold rampersad and hilary herbold. new york: oxford university press. herron, carolivia. 1997. nappy hair. new york: dragonfly books. hooks, bell. 1999. happy to be nappy. new york: jump at the sun. hunter, jenny and o’donnell, kevin, prods., and stilson, jeff, dir. 2009. good hair. united states: chris rock productions and hbo films. jackson, ronald and smith, willow. 2010. whip my hair. whip my hair (single) [cd]. new york: roc nation. johnson, dinah. 2007. hair dance! new york: henry holt and co. jones, linda. 2008. michelle obama and the politics of hair. naturallycurly.com. 26 august www.naturallycurly.com/...hair.../michelle-obama-and-the-politicsof-hair. lester, neal a. 2007. once upon a time in a different world: issues and ideas in african american children’s literature. new york: routledge. ______. 2010. disney’s the princess and the frog: the pride, the pressure, and the politics of being a first. the journal of american culture 33(4): 294-308. cfr_2011_r.indb 32 10/31/11 8:57:37 am lester fathers and their african american daughters 33 luster products. 1991. pcj relaxer advertisement. ebony 46(6): 65. luster products. 1996. pcj pretty-n-silky advertisement. essence 27(8): 123. npr staff. 2010. ‘i love my hair’: a father’s tribute to his daughter. npr. 18 october. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyid=130653300. oliver, dana. 2010. sesame street ‘i love my hair’ video: a priceless message for black girls. stylelist. 15 october. http://stylelist.com/2010/10/15/sesamestreet-i-love-my-hair-song/3. sesame street: song: i love my hair. 2010. youtube. 12 october. http://www. youtube.com/watch?v=enpfde5rmw. shange, ntozake. 1972. nappy edges. epigram to nappy edges. new york: methuen. simpson, india arie, shannon sanders, and drew ramsey. 2006. i am not my hair. testimony 1, life and relationship [cd]. detroit: motown. sims, melanie. 2010. curly haired muppet is role model for little girls. abc news. 20 october. http://abcnews.go.com/health/wirestory?id=11928292. tarpley, natasha anastasia, and lewis, e.b. (illustrator). 1998. i love my hair! boston: little, brown. thomas, joyce carol. 2002. crowning glory. new york: joanna cotler books. thomas, karen m. 2006. for black girls, hair and self-esteem are interwoven. arkansas democrat gazette (march 15): e3. cfr_2011_r.indb 33 10/31/11 8:57:37 am 35 sidewalk songs, jump-rope rhymes, and clap-hand games of african american children mona lisa saloy back during elementary days when everyone walked to school, the neighbors checked kids’ bad behavior, then reported it to your parents, where you’d really get it again for doing what you had no business doing in the first place. in those days, not everyone owned a television set. those who did had to patiently wait for tv time after the news and those god-awful “variety” shows for grown ups. by then, it was bedtime. left to our own playful imaginations, we creatively filled time with various sidewalk songs, jump-rope rhymes, and clap-hand games. there were no headphones, no sega games, no video arcades, no boom boxes, no cd or mp3 players, no palm pilots, no cell phones. this was before the “mall,” and most shopping was done downtown at back counters during jim crow. in many ways, it was a simpler time when many parents walked their kids to and from the bus stop or school in the neighborhood because few folks on the block owned cars. we lived in black neighborhoods, shopped at neighborhood groceries, and sat in colored-only balconies at the saturday matinee. it was just us kids. we had each other; we had time. we were creative; and mostly, we just had good fun together. while still in graduate school at louisiana state university (lsu) at the end of the 80s, i wondered which of those kids’ games and rhymes continued in black communities some twenty years post-civil rights and integration.1 were these rhymes unique? what were kids doing at the end of the twentieth century? these questions led me to collect kids’ lore in new orleans, from the mid-80s through 1999. while i lost everything (a life-long collection of books, unpublished research and creative works) in katrina flood waters, thanks to archives such as the new orleans jazz & heritage foundation2 and the louisiana state division of folklife, the raw data is recreated here. in the longer study, a complete listing of all games, rhymes, and songs is further classified. my initial purpose in collecting kids’ lore in new orleans was to unearth connections from kids’ play to the blossoming adult. were there similarities in the function of kids’ lore in new orleans to other places to the scholarship in general? did this generation of boys join the girls, how, when, why? for new orleans prekatrina, in what environment did these activities occur? for that decade or more of collecting, here is a sample of the kids’ culture existing prior to the devastation of hurricane katrina. this data set is in sharp contrast to games and rhymes of their parents’ generation (boomers) and even greater gender distance from the current generation post katrina. the purpose here is to provide part of the overall study to portray the kids’ culture as evidenced prior to 2005. in new orleans at the end of the previous century and up to 2005, black children performed the songs and rhymes in a family and extended-family environment. the youth were sometimes left attended by elder brothers and sisters, cousins, or neighbors, who might get them started and urge them to continue, especially in new orleans — a city of families where it is common for cfr_2011_r.indb 35 10/31/11 8:57:37 am sidewalk songs, jump-rope rhymes, and clap-hand games saloy 36 several generations to live in the same neighborhood where they were born,3 on the same street, or within blocks of one another. the result has been a sustained culture evolving over centuries. according to the louisiana endowment for the humanities, prior to katrina, nearly 70% of louisiana residents never left the state. this does not mean all is love and kindness. many families retain that geographical closeness and do not speak because of old grudges. for the sake of the children, a nurturing and extensive children’s society continues. this city of families, though many are at or below poverty level, remained in the same neighborhoods for half of the last century on the average, prior to katrina. the result was a breeding ground for a culture of children, who were supervised by the loving eyes of family, extended family, and neighbors. that culture of kids produced sidewalk songs, jump-rope rhymes, and clap-hand games, which reflected not just rhythm and rhyme, but a developing sense of cultural identity, gender, social mores, and in more recent years, comments on society incorporating popular culture. at that time, the existence of children’s sidewalk culture depended on adults who believe that children should socialize separately. even though they considered their children to be blessings from god, in new orleans pre-katrina, many believed that children should not be a part of adult talk and that children should play with children. neighbors also functioned as extended family, so an element of safety existed because of not-too-distant watchful eyes, especially for younger kids. the result is that many hot louisiana evenings are still spent in this way. this allows black children to talk about “grown things” with their friends and siblings in a way they can get away with, in a song. doing just cursory research, it was clear to me that this kind of urban fun, that is playing sidewalk games, is not exclusive to african american children. for example, such rhymes as “teddy bear” can be found in some form around the world and can be traced to early explorers who brought it with them most likely from england; generally, many scholars suggest that “teddy bear” has been around for some 300 years. “teddy bear” is used as a rhyme, with jumping singlerope games, and also in clap-hand games. this one was collected in detroit in 1989 or 1990.4 teddy bear, teddy bear, turn around teddy bear, teddy bear, touch the ground teddy bear, teddy bear, tie your shoes teddy bear, teddy bear, watch the news teddy bear, teddy bear, climb the stairs teddy bear, teddy bear, go to bed though a tried-and-true centuries-old model of kids’ lore, here in detroit at the end of the last decade, it is updated with the phrase “watch the news.” in african american urban areas, these sidewalk songs, jump-rope rhymes, and clap-hand games serve different functions, foster quite original traditions, and continue strongly; but the way this process developed is unique; how these games evolve gave rise to generations of gifted young folks, and these activities provide a cfr_2011_r.indb 36 10/31/11 8:57:38 am saloy sidewalk songs, jump-rope rhymes, and clap-hand games 37 nurturing environment in a protected neighborhood setting. this research into the songs, games, and rhymes of african american children suggests strongly that it is no accident african americans have contributed to world music, to an original american literary landscape. it is no accident that “rapping” is now a commercial commodity, and the lyrics of rhythm and blues music is legendary. the roots of black music and literature are inseparably linked to urban and rural kids’ games, songs, and play. much in the way that the early blues, work songs, and sorrow songs gave rise to gospel music, jazz, and rhythm and blues, these sidewalk songs, jump-rope rhymes, and clap-hand games replace nursery rhymes very early and become the african american child’s strong connection to the word in performance. as a result, this lore is the core of an oral literature, the beginnings of literacy, and a training ground for verbal repartee and verbal dueling necessary for survival in urban communities. the verbal prowess of african american children played on sidewalks in urban spaces is a direct link to the popular culture, music and story-telling nature of what become commercial raps. this folklore of black children builds confidence and prepares these children to meet and assess the world in which they find themselves. africans brought to american against their wills took with them a great sense of rhythm and song. hand-clap games such as those involving elaborate clapping under raised legs, slapping thighs and chests rhythmically while reciting the rhyme can be traced to working in fields during reconstruction, the rhythms and recitations resembling work songs. note this common example of handbone. it is performed in a call-and-response fashion. leader: handbone, handbone, where you been? respondent: round that corner drinking gin. leader: handbone, handbone, what you know? respondent: i’ll pick this corn and drink some more.5 rhymes with claps such as this one were surely pass-the-time entertainment, like little sally walker, which can be traced to the days of slavery. african american children today should know that their games, rhymes, and songs are from a longstanding tradition of verbal strength maintained throughout the difficult times when education was prohibited for black people. another question arose: are contemporary games, rhymes, and songs, still functioning, and how? my fear was that with so many contemporary distractions and trends, the advent of hundreds of cable tv stations, video games, headphones, and integration, these traditions are sometimes wearing thin. it was to document these traditions that i began this work. what i found is that these sidewalk songs, jumprope rhymes, and clap-hand games, these traditions of oral lore among african american children, continued to function as teaching tools as much a play. african american folklife determines whether we grow up learning from our moms how to quilt or how to sing gospel. folklore is the sum of african american jokes, stories, rhymes, and songs. folklife combines the ways of african americans and influences how blacks pass on what we make and do for generations. folklore is what all people learn outside of school, outside of church, the cfr_2011_r.indb 37 10/31/11 8:57:38 am sidewalk songs, jump-rope rhymes, and clap-hand games saloy 38 traditions we pass on face-to-face, by word-of-mouth, generation-to-generation. sidewalk songs, jump-rope rhymes, and clap-hand games are significant examples of the folklore of african american children: what we do among ourselves for ourselves, but what is passed on to us, mixed with what each age adds to it. verbal artistry among african american children is expressive and creative, although the forms are different. children’s lore in new orleans’ black neighborhoods bears a necessary developmental function. sidewalk songs pass on attitudes and knowledge of self, imitations of adult life and values, with distinct criticisms of adult life and society norms. this is demonstrated in such circle games as “when i was a baby.” there is nothing in the boomer repertoire like this one. in this circle game, an imitation game, “when i was a baby,” which looks so simple and fun on the surface, there is some resemblance to the antiphonal pattern, since one girl jumps into the center of the circle and begins the song, which is then repeated by the girls surrounding the caller. all in the circle sing the response together, adding physical representations of the actions of the particular subject. literally, they recall how a woman develops and lives her life, how she experiences disappointment, and how she handles conflict. when i was a baby, baby, baby when i was a baby, baby, baby i went a wan a wan a wan wan wan (imitating baby sounds) all night long. all night long. (this girl re-joins the circle, and another girl steps into the center of the circle reciting that next part. this swapping of the central leader continues with different girls leading until the game is completed. depending on how many are involved, everyone will get a chance at the circle center; or in the case of just a few girls, the each new stage of a girl’s/woman’s life is lead). when i was a girl, girl, girl when i was a girl, girl, girl i went a umph a umph, umph ump humph (imitating smiley faces while pretending to jump rope; but they actually swing an invisible jump rope) all night long. all night long. when i was a teenager, teenager, teenager when i was a teenager, teenager, teenager i went a hum a hum hum hum hum (imitating a teen on the phone; the girls hold up one hand thumb up and forefinger out to resemble the headset of a phone.) all night long. all night long. cfr_2011_r.indb 38 10/31/11 8:57:38 am saloy sidewalk songs, jump-rope rhymes, and clap-hand games 39 when i got married, married, married when i got married, married, married, i went a kiss, a kiss, kiss, kiss, kiss (imitating a full-blown embrace, sticking out their lips pursed as in kissing; all movements animated and exaggerated throughout). all night long. all night long. when i had a baby, baby, baby when i had a baby, baby, baby i went a rock, a rock, rock, rock, rock (imitating a woman rocking their baby to sleep or comforting the child held tightly in their arms). all night long. all night long. when my husband beat me, beat me, beat me when my husband beat me, beat me, beat me i went a unh, a unh, unh, unh, unh (imitates the anguish of being severely beaten to the ground, afraid, hurt, crying out in pain). all night long. all night long. when i beat my husband, husband, husband when i beat my husband, husband, husband i went a bam, a bam, bam, bam, bam (imitates vigorously fighting back in retaliation with no fear and profound vindication and power; they enact the beating of the husband to the ground, laughing all the way). all night long. all night long. when i lost my baby, baby, baby when i lost my baby, baby, baby i went a sigh, a sigh, cry, cry, cry (imitates great grief, making crying faces all the while, sometimes laughing but fiercely pretending to cry). all night long. all night long. when i died, died, died when i died, died, died i went a humph, a humph, humph, humph, humph (imitates what it is like to be dead, arms folded akimbo, faces stern). all night long. all night long. (this ends the game). cfr_2011_r.indb 39 10/31/11 8:57:38 am sidewalk songs, jump-rope rhymes, and clap-hand games saloy 40 at the time, the core group of girls were aged six through ten. they lived within walking distance and most worshiped together, while a few attended st. raymond catholic school, just a few blocks east. they were not shy about reenacting their play and enjoyed having an adult audience. it was shocking to hear such young girls at play reflecting on the dominant gender themes of the day as well as the taboo topic of marital sex, resulting in birth, domestic violence, and the woman’s power not just to fight back but to successfully retaliate and live out her life. circle games allow everyone to play; no one is left out. sometimes, they are elimination games; in this one case, it is not. “when i was a baby” is an imitation game, something like more common simon says, but it is much more contemporary and light years away from the child-like concerns of my youth. here, the gender roles are clearly defined, yet the “little” girls are not fazed by the content; this is typical of what they witness on tv, in movies, in neighborhoods. at its core, children’s folklore in african american urban areas is not just play but a comment on the world. some rhymes are downright vulgar, with profane shouts and responses, and others are more respectful, editing offensive words cleverly during the game with the kids not skipping a beat. some attitudes are imposed by race, sex, family, and individual ethnic and economic situations. new orleans, with its black majority, imposes a dominant and varied and varied set of adult examples, values, barriers, and opportunities. how did these come to be? as with all folklore, transmission is key. with the oral songs and rhymes of these sidewalk games, black youth learn typically from other children. they learn these songs and rhymes from their parents, often before they can talk. in many ways, this is the earliest literacy of african american kids. once in the children’s repertoire, sidewalk songs take the place of nursery rhymes and reflect pre-adult concerns. children then learn them and pass them on to each other in the street, on the front porch, on the sidewalk, or in the public parks. how do these elements function? children’s folklore, in general, fulfils certain functions: it reflects and criticizes society and transmits values. for most kids, their lore entertains them, teaches them how to manipulate words, helps to develop their group identity, and creates a bond. especially for black kids, these rhymes and songs provide opportunities to practice “handling” authority and inform them of their sexual roles. the sidewalk songs of children’s folklore perform a particularly important role in african american culture. when black youth perform these rhymes and songs, they practice and learn to contribute to their rich african american verbal culture, a continuing historical legacy. by puberty, if not earlier, black children must learn to “hold their own” for protection from the verbal abuse of their peers, sometimes avoiding or allaying physical abuse. it is a common black custom to be able to “rap” oneself out of a street fight or “jive” your parents out of a deserved whipping. therefore, this early verbal play becomes a vital link to what will later become “jiving,” “sounding,” “woofing,” or “selling wolf tickets,” especially “the dozens,” and eventually “rapping,” all of which are common african american verbal-dueling traditions. the dueling, dozens and rapping have been incorrectly attributed only to black male culture. girls may be the instigators of this tradition, and they participate in these early raps frequently with boys. from the start, boys cfr_2011_r.indb 40 10/31/11 8:57:38 am saloy sidewalk songs, jump-rope rhymes, and clap-hand games 41 participate and play with girls to varying degrees depending on their exposure to sisters, girl cousins, and neighbors. therefore, a queen latifa is no accident, and she is not just imitating a male rapping tradition. this is demonstrated in the group of youth that i researched, dubbed the perlita street kids by their parents for the name of the street on which they lived and played at the time. any rules? each youth is expected to contribute. if one doesn’t know a rhyme, he or she is expected to make one up or learn one from someone else. no one wants to be known as not able to “talk stuff.” these unspoken rules have existed for generations. in some cases, the environment creates a healthy competitive spirit, the kind that will produce a “jam” session as in jazz where no one wins but everyone contributes creatively–which is the essence of “jamming” word play, and games creatively, communally. in other cases, kids can be cruel and pressure or taunt the person into producing, or the person will not be in the game, what is called “out” a fate considered worse than death. nevertheless, the resulting product is children’s lore, african american style. topics range from familiar rhymes and songs to adult-style “bragging” strategies. these songs are much more relevant to their day–such as the one expressing their knowledge of the existence of crack cocaine. this example is sung to a sidewalk dance or stomp (a group line dance popular in black communities long before country music line dances). it is a simple rhyme but shows a prophetic awareness of trouble: yo momma, yo daddy, they betta leave that pipe alone yo sista, yo brotha, they betta leave that crack alone yo auntee yo uncle, they betta leave that pipe alone yo family you friends, they betta leave that crack alone (they do an elaborate turn) do wha’cha wanna, do wha’cha wanna do wha’cha wanna, do wha’cha wanna (they do an elaborate turn) yo momma, yo daddy, they betta leave that pipe alone yo sista, yo brotha, they betta leave that crack alone — john, sunni, treshon, natasha, corey, jason, 2 june 1990 in this sidewalk song, the children are aware of the impending fate of “crack” cocaine addicts. crack cocaine is an enemy of the people they love, and it becomes something to avoid firmly. here, they perform a prophetic service to each other, reminding themselves of the boundaries they must face to achieve a long and healthy life. from these brief examples, it is demonstrated that at an early age in new orleans, african american children actively participate in their verbal development cfr_2011_r.indb 41 10/31/11 8:57:38 am sidewalk songs, jump-rope rhymes, and clap-hand games saloy 42 trough the years prior to katrina devastation. the rhymes were not collected in the schoolyard. like my childhood decades prior, these kids lived in neighborhoods within a mile of each other and walked to each other’s homes to play after school. they brag, they duel, they dance, they sing of the world as they understand it. these rhymes, games, and raps serve to define group identity, address adult concerns, and help children learn verbal prowess and entertain one another. these sidewalk songs, jump-rope rhymes, and clap-hand games of african american children were still strong on the streets of new orleans throughout the 1990s and early 21st century in the historic 7th ward neighborhoods, as evidenced in the lore of the perlita street kids.6 notes 1. many thanks to folklorists dr. rosan jordan and dr. frank de caro, who guided and encouraged my early training in folklore; and additional special thanks to dr. joyce marie jackson, also folklorist at lsu, who pushed me to collect, and continued to provide opportunities for me to present this work at the african heritage stage of the new orleans jazz and heritage festival for a series of years. 2. special thanks to archivist rachel lyons and the new orleans jazz and heritage foundation archives for saving my work; i am deeply indebted to you for all you do. 3. many of our names can be dated some 300 years and accessible in the older resting places, st. louis cemeteries no. 1, no. 2, and no. 3. 4. this collecting, for two summers at the end of the 1989 and 1980, was made possible by generous support from the michigan state museum festival of michigan folklife, while i was there to present detroit kids demonstrating double dutch. 5. i heard numerous variations of this hand-clap rhyme throughout my life in louisiana, and also in black communities where ever i lived in the bay area of california and in detroit and even in washington d.c. when i visited for research. 6. once invited, i presented these kids performing their games and rhymes at the louisiana state folklife festival twice in the 90s, and numerous times at the new orleans jazz & heritage festival also in the 90s. presenting our living traditions helps folklorists document contemporary culture. festivals help everyone understand each other better and so promote respect as well as employment in the field for budding and experienced scholars. certainly, it taught the children of perlita street a greater appreciation for their culture, exposed them to other cultures in an educational environment, and perhaps helped them develop a continued interest in folklore and folklife. because the children did “perform” their traditions, the jazz festival paid each child $20.00 for the performance. no child participated without parental permission. cfr_2011_r.indb 42 10/31/11 8:57:38 am saloy sidewalk songs, jump-rope rhymes, and clap-hand games 43 works cited abrahams, roger d. 1964. deep down in the jungle, negro narrative folklore from the streets of philadelphia. hatboro, pennsylvania: folklore associates. ______. 1969. jump-rope rhymes, a dictionary. austin: university of texas press. ______. 1970. positively black. englewood cliffs, new jersey: prentice-hall, inc. ______. 1976.talking black. rowley, massachusetts: newbury house publishers. buckley, bruce. 1966. jump-rope rhymes: suggestions for classification and study. keystone folklore quarterly 2: 99-111. de caro, frank. 1985. a history of folklife research in louisiana. in louisiana folklife, a guide to the state, ed. nicholas r. spitzer. baton rouge: louisiana folklife program, office of cultural development, department of culture, recreation and tourism, 125-29. dorson, richard m. 1982. the state of folkloristics from an american perspective. journal of the folklore institute 19 (2/3, may): 71-105. fielding, alice. 1975. the folklore of children from ages 9-11. louisiana folklore miscellany 3 (5): 33-51. gaster, sanford. 1995. places of childhood, 1915-30. the oral history review 22 (2, winter): 1-31. published by oxford university press on behalf of the oral history association. http://www.jstory.org/stable/3675422 (accessed 25, march 2010). grider, sylvia ann. 1980. a select bibliography of childlore. western folklore 39 (3, july): 248-65. ______. 1980. the study of children’s folklore. western folklore 39 (3, july): 15969. hampton, joan thompson. 1976-80. children’s jump-rope rhymes. louisiana folklore miscellany 4: 73-81. hirschfeld, lawrence a. 2002. why don’t anthropologists like children? american anthropologist, new series 104 (2, june): 611-27. notes. 1971. louisiana folklore miscellany 3 (2): 48-49. soileau, jeanne. 1976-80. jumping rope in east baton rouge parish, louisiana. louisiana folklore miscellany 4: 146-154. ______. 1985. louisiana children’s folklore. louisiana folklife, a guide to state. nicholas r. spitzer, ed. baton rouge: louisiana folklife program, office of cultural development, department of culture, recreation & tourism, 12-34. cfr_2011_r.indb 43 10/31/11 8:57:38 am 45 genetic bubble wrap karin phillips when considering my own childhood, it becomes apparent that i simply was not a risk taker. in fact, the most dangerous game i ever participated in was sled riding in my neighborhood. the hill was steep and there was a building to be avoided at the bottom but there isn’t any way i can squeeze it under the heading of dangerous games. luckily, i married an adrenaline-driven daredevil. his childhood stories quite literally make my jaw drop and his antics over the last couple of summers of high school unmistakably flash “dangerous game” in brilliant neon. the summer following tenth grade, my husband scott and some of his friends from school would ride their bikes near where they lived. “it started in chenango bridge,” he explained. the boys would take turns jumping into the chenango river from a rope swing hanging from a tree limb on shore. “it was exciting,” he said. “we didn’t even think about getting hurt. it was just fun and a good way to cool off.” this relatively mild level of risk-taking carried them through that summer and into the next. toward the middle of the summer following eleventh grade, the same boys heard about a rope swing into “boland’s pond” from some older kids. this location was a little further down the river. boland’s was a topsoil company and the land around their business was a stone quarry. they would excavate the soil, essentially creating gravel pits. one of the largest pits was filled with water that seeped from the river. at the edge of this pit was a tall tree, conveniently outfitted with a rope swing. the boys would take a running start and jump into the standing water from the bank. “it was about a ten to twelve foot drop before you hit the water,” according to scott. the boys were undaunted. “this was even more exciting. the jump was better with more distance from the bank. it was great!” he enthused. it’s significant to note that these summer rituals were deeply rooted in the childhood underground, as none of the boys’ parents had any awareness of this activity. it’s also interesting that part of the appeal of these activities was defying the murky legends of injury or even death surrounding them. “you’d hear that so and so had broken his leg or even his neck,” scott said. as the boys got older, the level of danger in this particular game was amplified. by the end of the summer before their senior year, scott and his friends moved their sport to the bridge between boland’s pond and chenango valley high school. they would climb out on the steel beams under the bridge and drop approximately 25 feet into the river below. they would “preventatively” scan the river for potential dangers like logs or other debris. they made sure the surface looked clear, ignoring the potential threats below. this overconfidence and oblivion regarding real hazards is addressed in children’s folklore: a handbook, “dangerous games let children prove their courage and skill. insulated by the assurance of youth, players may not hesitate to jump into a game that looks risky” (tucker 2008, 36). scott and his friends quite literally jumped into their dangerous cfr_2011_r.indb 45 10/31/11 8:57:38 am genetic bubble wrap phillips 46 game without a lot of consideration for the possible consequences. “i felt a little risk, sure, but what i really felt was freedom. i didn’t feel scared,” scott shared. the pinnacle of the boys’ jumping adventures and, ironically, the coup de grâce took place the summer after their graduation from high school. at this point the boys were no longer confined to the area reachable by bikes. they had motorcycles and cars to facilitate broadening the range of their fun. they spent the summer exploring various gorges in ithaca, new york. one favored location had a rope swing that hung from a tree on a large cliff. “i felt a little trepidation,” scott said. “i never went first. i had to swim downstream and climb all the way back up. it took quite a bit of time.” one hot day that summer a lot of kids were gathered at this location. “it was a party spot,” scott explained. they heard some kids talking about the “devil’s punchbowl.” they followed some people there. “we followed these railroad tracks, walking along the top of a ravine. as we got closer i could hear a lot of activity. there were about twenty people in a little gathering spot. beyond that spot was a narrow path to the edge of a sheer cliff. it looked like a punchbowl,” scott remembered. scott also remembered the awe he felt at the height of the overhang some of the kids were jumping off of. “it was at least two telephone poles high,” he said. he and his friends received instructions from the “veteran” jumpers. scott watched two of his friends jump ahead of him. “i was very reluctant,” he admitted. “still, all eyes were on me and i felt that peer pressure. it was intense. i followed the directions i was given, pointed my toes, crossed my arms and jumped. the water was unbelievably cold. the impact jammed my knees up and almost into my face. my tailbone hurt so bad that i had trouble moving my legs to swim back. i swam with my arms.” the myriad ways in which this story could have ended tragically didn’t hit my husband until he was safely out of the water and experiencing a painful motorcycle ride home. “we really pushed it to the limit that day,” he acknowledged. “i knew how stupid it was. when it sunk in, i felt duped by my friends. i felt like i had cheated death. i learned to trust myself more.” when i hear the details of this dangerous game i wince. as the mother of three boys possessing their father’s thrill-seeking dna, i shudder at the thought of the games they have yet to invent or participate in. i can only hope that my prudent dna will temper their play, at least a little. work cited tucker, elizabeth. 2008. children’s folklore: a handbook. westport: greenwood press. cfr_2011_r.indb 46 10/31/11 8:57:38 am 47 failing to fly, but free falling: jumping as a form of childhood release pamela weintraub throughout my childhood, i was usually the responsible one. indeed, i was that kid — the child who thought about what would happen if we got caught playing ding dong ditch, pointed out how terrible it would be if we got lost in the local nature preserve after night had fallen, explained why we should not go to that keg party at the beach, and so on. part of this was a serious fear of getting in trouble, but another aspect was the fact that i was never allowed to go anywhere or do anything by my extremely overprotective mother, so if i managed to discourage my peers from going to places i wasn’t permitted (out in the neighborhood alone, the preserve, the beach, the mall, what have you), i would be preventing my own inevitable exclusion from such fun. however, despite my mother’s best attempts to keep me safe from the world (i could write an entire paper on that alone), i still found ways to push the boundaries of dangerous play — my jumping games. although prevented from engaging in certain activities at home, while on the schoolyard i was able to experiment with the laws of physics on a regular basis. while it was most definitely not intended, the way in which my elementary school’s playground was built easily facilitated a number of delightfully risky activities. perhaps suffering from what peter and iona opie termed “misplaced audacity,” where children take risks with common objects such as “knives, swings, and roller-towels” (tucker 2008, 36), my friends and i utilized a number of playground structures in our pursuit of thrills. the first of these was a metal, dome-shaped, web-like construction named “the spider hut.” when we were little, our favorite thing to do was climb to the top of the “hut” (which was rather large, in retrospect), and drop our bodies through one of the spaces between the bars, dangling by our hands for as long as we could, and then letting go, falling six or seven feet to the ground below. this was a calmer form of jumping, because really, it was more of a carefully orchestrated drop and carried less risk than the variations we later engaged in. however, it was still quite high up and our parents would have had heart attacks if they had known about it. when we grew older and moved to the “upper grades” section of the playground (since there were designated spaces for k-3 and 4-5), we upped the danger factor significantly. one favorite activity was to climb the acrobatic bars (which were two vertical metal bars with a single horizontal one held between them, and there were several of these structures at varying heights) and to jump, feet first, to the ground. these jumps ranged from three to probably ten or twelve feet in height, and there was concrete below (not a smart move on the school’s part). the higher you were willing to jump from, the braver you were considered to be. that said, it was perfectly acceptable if a person was only willing to jump from so high. however, if people climbed to a higher point, made a big deal about it, and then seemed like they were going to “chicken out” they often found themselves pushed. it was far worse to be pushed because not only cfr_2011_r.indb 47 10/31/11 8:57:38 am failing to fly, but free falling weintraub 48 was it embarrassing (since one lost quite a bit of credibility afterwards), but it was also significantly more dangerous, since there was less time to prepare the jump properly. with respect to my experience, heights didn’t faze me, and the greater challenge was being able to climb the higher structures since i was so short. however, my taller friends were quite helpful in getting me up there, and when it came to jumping off, i was fearless. occasionally i would get a scrape or bruise, and there were one or two of my classmates who got more seriously hurt (more than one sprained or broke a wrist), but that never really deterred us, since accidents usually happened with those who tried to jump from a certain height without experience or had not jumped properly. however, despite the fact we plummeted a full story on a regular basis, this was not the most dangerous variation of “jumping” that we engaged in. that was saved for fifth grade. every recess during our final year of elementary school, there would be a mad rush on the part of the girls (for whatever reason, this variation failed to catch on with the boys) to grab one of the swings at the far end of the playground, away from the eyes of the teacher monitors. the closer swings, well within their view, were not suitable for what we had in mind---swing bouncing. swing bouncing was, and still is, an obsession at forest lake elementary, and strangely enough, a tradition my year started, though i am told it is popular at other schools as well. the idea is to swing in a normal fashion, but at the same time try to swing as high as possible. then, once maximum elevation is achieved, the swinger “bounces” off the seat and flies through the air, eventually landing several feet away. while dangerous in its own right due to the acceleration from the swinging, swing bouncing was particularly dangerous for us because of the five-foot-high metal fence that was set up several feet from the swings, running the length of the area, to protect passers-by from being kicked. although it was a well thought out protective measure in theory, all it actually did was create a challenge for us bouncers. the key was to place your jump short (landing a couple feet before the fence), or long (clearing the fence). however, it was extremely difficult to clear the fence, and only a few of us (mostly the smaller, lighter ones) pulled it off. but the pursuit of this goal was quite fun. yes, people hit the fence on a regular basis, but with the exception of one large dent made by a friend of mine (which is still there ten years later and apparently revered as a warning sign), most people bounced right off of it. the real danger was if one landed on the fence, which never happened while i was there. however, someone from my brother’s grade did break a leg on it four years later, so apparently it was possible. there also have been many attempts on the part of my old school to eradicate swing bouncing, but i still see it on the playground when i pass by during the summer. when i think about why jumping and swing bouncing appealed to me so greatly, i always go back to the feeling that it created. the sensation of flying through the air, hurtling towards the ground, anticipating the impact — it was all exhilarating. there was something about being utterly free while falling that gave me a rush. i think there was the fact that when i jumped, i was completely in charge of myself. my life, my body, literally depended on my ability to land properly. being raised in an environment where i was never in control of anything cfr_2011_r.indb 48 10/31/11 8:57:38 am weintraub failing to fly, but free falling 49 and cooped up beyond all reason (to this day, i cannot walk around my incredibly white bread, suburban neighborhood alone … at least as far as my parents know), there was something wonderful about flat-out defying every single rule of safety and toying with gravity. as mentioned in children’s folklore: a handbook, “dangerous games let children prove their courage and skill” (tucker, 36), and i think that for me, jumping was my way of proving to myself that even if my parents did not believe so, i could handle myself in the outside world. work cited tucker, elizabeth. 2008. children’s folklore: a handbook. westport: greenwood press. cfr_2011_r.indb 49 10/31/11 8:57:38 am 51 the appropriation of a commercial trademark: the golliwog as a cultural marker robert macgregor peebles is an ancient small rural town in the border region of southern scotland. it was granted a royal burgh charter in 1140 by king david i of scotland. a major claim to fame is that it is the home of and a key breeding center for the worldfamous border collie. infamy surrounded the town in june 1991, when what should have been a joyous annual children’s parade turned into a national incident over a small number of children who were “blackened” up in a minstrel/samboesque mode of dress. critics of the costumes and “blacken-faced” young people saw them as golliwogs, a highly criticized doll-like figure from enid blyton’s “noddy series” of children’s books. others saw them as a golliwog, the international trade character, of a major british jam manufacturer, james robertson and sons. numerous dimensions that surrounded this incident and many other related points of view will be critically analyzed. the golliwog, a brief history historically, in britain, florence k. upton (1873-1922) used a golliwog figure in a series of children’s books. soon after the publication of the first book in 1895 it became a commercially used symbol to sell a large array of products, such as toys, games, dolls, postcards, novelties, dishes, packaging, and, in the 1920s, food products. from the late 1920s until 2001, the golly was used by robertson’s, the jam manufacturer (nicholson 1981; hartlap 1984, fisher 1975). throughout the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, controversy has ranged from the local grassroots to public debates, discussions of the golliwog in the house of commons, letters to her majesty the queen, and many other avenues of discourse. all of these discussions have basically focused on whether or not the golliwog was a cherished doll, a cultural icon, an integral toy/doll that many british children had played with and loved; or was it a racist image, a play object that could instill racist values in children and psychologically harm minority, non-white british children? january of 1987 marked a watershed point in this ongoing heated debate. british book publisher macdonald purnell decided to delete the golliwogs from enid blyton’s “noddy series.” the director of children’s publishing at macdonald purnell said: we have produced a completely new noddy library and the decision was taken to revise the text, the illustrations and characters. a decision was taken to take the golliwogs out. a lot of people feel uncomfortable about gollies either because they are felt to be racist or because they always seem to be villains (bates 1987, 2). cfr_2011_r.indb 51 10/31/11 8:57:38 am the appropriation of a commercial trademark macgregor 52 the new noddy books of 1987 were welcomed by the commission for racial equality (c.r.e.). a spokesperson said, “we had a number of complaints from people who felt that the depiction of the noddy characters was insensitive.” writers and critics of children’s literature dixon (1978) and mullan (1987) discussed at length the serious, damaging implications that these grotesque, malevolent characters may perhaps have conveyed to young minds. dixon believed that the golliwog was a part of most children’s fictional nursery. he suggested focusing upon two considerations. firstly, the golliwog was a standardized racial caricature, the sambo, the minstrel, a creation of whites. secondly, the names of the characters were widely used as racial epithets. seemingly, this grotesque doll, dixon believed, was meant to confirm the connection and association of fear with black faces in particular. these naughty, mean, evil and menacing roles allowed blyton to portray blackness a la golliwogs a sufficient cause for their dislike by young readers. her “the three golliwogs,” published in the early 1940s, had three golliwogs called golly, wollie, and nigger who were disliked by angelae, their mistress, because of “the blackness of their faces.” the names, as stated previously, did not change until 1973, and the “three golliwogs” book was sold into the early 1990s. as early as 1964 some libraries phased out the blyton books. mullan reinforced the outlook that it was extremely important not to perpetuate racism by drawing misleading stereotypes of cultures and races in literature, especially those focused on children, where the images tended to work on a symbolic and unconscious level. as elaine moss (1986) has argued, the 1970s were years in which “britain was coming to terms with its post-imperial role as a multicultural nation” and this had its effect on the content of the content of children’s books. the editors of children’s books for a multi-cultural society (1985) argued that unless: we want our children to develop an inward-looking, insular perspective, educating them for the future must imply educating them to live and play a positive role in a society where cultural diversity is recognised and respect (mullan 1987, 124). wilkinson (1984, 1987) discussed the psycho-cultural analysis and impact of black dolls and role stereotypes. she believed the vivid symbolic artifact called the golliwog was a most grotesque example of frightening images. ironically, she stated, psychologists continued to criticize children’s play with golliwogs “on the grounds that the black face, the pop eyes and the red mouth are the unconscious source of many childish nightmares” (wilkinson 1987, 21). forster (1989) condemned blyton’s the little black doll (1937, 1964) because of its character ‘sambo’ and oliver tinkle’s the golliwog (1982). forster stated the golliwog had rapidly established itself among the characters of the english nursery, but by way of its longstanding use as a commercial trademark, it had entered the repertory of contemporary racist abuse (73) ; more on this point later. opposition to macdonald purnell’s decision was immediate. critics of the changes saw it as a process of degollification, a bowdlerisation of the 1940s cfr_2011_r.indb 52 10/31/11 8:57:38 am macgregor the appropriation of a commercial trademark 53 classic. newspaper columnists called opponents of the golliwog ‘barmy’, ‘the loony left’, left-wingers, labour councillors, left-wing councils dividing the right from the left with political labels such as those forementioned. newspapers that carried articles on the macdonald purnell decision would include the news of the world, the daily mail, the daily star, the guardian, the sun, the daily mirror, and the daily telegraph; see works cited for more complete details. as previously stated, many other forms of protest against the golliwog gained national momentum in the 1980s. although protestations against the trademark had begun approximately 30 years previous to the blyton affair, historically, robertson’s golliwog appears to have been used by the firm since about 1910. it was in 1928, however, that the lapel badge began to be used as a three-token redemption item. children and mothers were encouraged to buy a jar of jam, cutting from the label a small stamp-like token, collect three, mail them to the company, and receive an enamel badge of the golliwog. to date, well over twenty million badges of the golliwog have been distributed. the golliwog also appeared on cups, towels, pens, pencils, writing pads, erasers, cutlery, ties, and other items, all purchasable from robertsons (see examples). one major campaigner against the perceived racist promotional items was the national council against racism in children’s books; other institutions would include the commission for racial equality, the greater london council, the camden council for community relation, searchlight magazine, dragon’s teeth, the north lewisham project, the george jackson media collective, the merseyside labour council, and many, many individuals from various walks of life. all protesting discourses intersected on the complex, multidimensional, widely circulated stereotype. the ‘grotesque’ golliwogs, whether portrayed in books, commercial trademarks, or numerous and varied commercial items, all had a wide, simple grin, large, bulbous, round eyes, a shock of fuzzy/wool-like hair, and thick lips. the clothes are always in bright, basic colours: usually red blue, green and yellow. the trousers frequently have blue and white stripes; the brightly colored jacket is short, and the golliwog usually wears a bow tie. this image clearly indicated the historical associations, the southern sambo, the minstrels of ‘burnt cork’, vaudeville, theatrical fame and infamy. one must also remember that until the 1973 pan edition, when golliwogs’ names change, the three blyton characters were called ‘nigger’, ‘wollie’, and ‘golly’. these racial and racist epithets were changed to ‘wiggie’, ‘waggie’, and ‘wollie’. examination of racial labels and their conventional meanings, as in blyton’s golliwog trio, reveals some insights into britain’s racial outlook towards such names; that is, they were acceptable. macgregor (1993) highlighted examples where the word ‘golly’ and golliwog epithets were used in numerous social settings. salman rushdie, in hamilton’s new yorker article (1996), recalled the school life of the well-known author in england. in 1961, at the age of 13, rushdie was sent to rugby public school in england, his time there was one of taunts and anti-indian jokes. he described catching a studymate crayoning “wogs go home” on a wall. the slogan, he thought, was clearly aimed at him. he said, “i went insane … i banged him as hard as i could against the wall he was writing on “ (94). rushdie has called this a determining moment in his school career; indeed, cfr_2011_r.indb 53 10/31/11 8:57:39 am the appropriation of a commercial trademark macgregor 54 his whole attitude toward life in england. it was the moment when he learned how to strike back. later, in an end-of-term satirical revenue during his final year, he heard himself lampooned: “what is this shape ‘midst the nebulous fog?’ merely the resident bradley house wog” (95). rushdie, in his book of essays, imaginary homelands (1991), openly discussed racism in britain; he believed that the english language historically coined many terms of racial abuse such as ‘nigger’ and ‘wog’ and posed the question, “can there be another language with so wide-ranging a vocabulary of racist denigration”(130). he went on to say, “yes, the golliwog, too; at football grounds, black players are taunted with the cry, “get back on your jam jar’” (146). this last example was widely used as one of many racist slogans that football hooligans hurled at black soccer players in the 1980s. describing in some detail numerous examples of racial labeling and role stereotypes from various written sources, we now turn our attention to the 1991 golly parade at the peebles beltane festival. the golliwog controversy: beltane festival on february 15, 1991, the peebleshire news reported that the wearing of golliwogs costumes had been banned from the 1991 beltane festival parade in peebles. it was found that the costume contravened the spirit of the regional guidelines on multicultural education. the costumes owned by the beltane committee and stored at the town’s kingsland primary school were not to be used in the children’s parade. in 1990, a mrs. margaret macintosh, a retired schoolteacher living in edinburgh expressed her concern about the costumes she was shocked when she saw ten children riding on the back of a truck dressed as golliwogs and in blackface. she thought that the costumes and blackface were racist and she offered fifty pounds to help replace the gowns. the festival committee met with the local school board and the “no” golliwog decision was reached, reluctantly. it is worthwhile to note that the regional guidelines on multi-cultural education were established in 1986 by a special working group under the title “multi-cultural education in primary schools.” it was up to the head teachers to figure 1. marchers in the beltane parade in peebles, 1991. cfr_2011_r.indb 54 10/31/11 8:57:39 am macgregor the appropriation of a commercial trademark 55 decide on the implementation of the guidelines and until mrs. macintosh’s protest no one locally had thought about or given their opinions on the beltane costumes. the document stated: “everyone involved in education must instill in children a respect for themselves and other human beings regardless of race, color, or creed.” it was not clear why it took five years for the guidelines to be applied to the beltane costumes and why other stereotypical costumes — arabs, chinese — were also not affected and eliminated. once the banning decision was made public, there arose much local protest against that outcome. the first major player to enter the fray was the former principal and teacher of history at peebles high school. ted smith “begged” the committee to reconsider its decision. part of the text of his letters follows: two of the highlights of the beltane festival are the children’s procession and the parade of floats containing numerous characters, some of which represent real-life people but not all. the rest may be mythical creatures, animals, or even toys such as soldiers and golliwogs. the latter simply depict dolls or inanimate objects which like teddy bears are usually to be seen on a child’s pillow. to pretend that they are racially offensive is so ludicrous that one is inclined to retort ‘you cannot be serious’ (keddie 1991, 1). mr. turnbull, the chairperson, of the annual general meeting for the festival, went on to read a second letter that had been sent to a national newspaper. scott kerr believed that mrs. macintosh’s offer of fifty pounds was offensively patronizing. he believed that she evidently failed to understand that education was about establishing children’s community identity and had nothing to do with indoctrinating socialist shibboleths. this is an interesting last comment, particularly since it invokes the word ‘socialist,’ which has somewhat specific politically ideological overtones. this reference to socialism and the political left reappeared in numerous ways throughout the golliwog debate. during the week of march 15, 1991, the beltane festival committee announced that it had reached a compromise with the head teachers of the three local primary schools. the members felt that under the education guidelines covering multicultural education in schools the following changes would be made: as far as the beltane committee is concerned these costumes were never intended to be seen as any form of racial jibe, but were meant to represent a golliwog doll, as they have done for many years. however, we agree that perhaps the term ‘golliwog’ was now outdated and could, in some eyes, cause offence. the golliwog costumes will be used within new characters to be created, called rag dolls. they will be placed in the beltane programme under ‘toyland.’ it is hoped that this clarification of the much loved character will end this controversy (golliwogs 1991, 1, 2). cfr_2011_r.indb 55 10/31/11 8:57:39 am the appropriation of a commercial trademark macgregor 56 the statement did not specify if the new characters would be “blacked up,” but one committee member believed that the black make-up would cover the entire face and not leave white rings around the eyes and the mouth, as had been the case with the previous golliwogs. he believed that the woolly wigs would continue to be used. the golliwog compromise did not succeed and one week later, it was announced by lan thorburn that although there had been initial agreement, the staff of kingsland primary school, who had to handle the costumes, refused to accept the compromise. on march 22, the school staff gave mr. thorburn the following statement: although it was felt after a meeting between beltane committee office-bearers and the head teachers of peebles primary schools that a compromise could be reached as to how the golliwog’s costumes may be used in future years, this has proved not to be the case. the staff of kingsland feel that to use the costumes with accompanying blackface and hair is unacceptable. it is with regret, therefore, that we have decided that the costumes be returned to the beltane committee (it’s goodbye gollies 1991, 1). head teacher of kingsland mrs. marlene galashan, who had agreed to the compromise solution of renaming the dolls, said that her staff believed that the costumes were still “golliwogs with another name” and felt unable to administer them (golliwogs renamed 1991). reaction to the banning of the golliwogs was quick and, at times, demeaning. ex-provost alex walker told the peebleshire news: i can contain myself no longer. as far as i can see there are a few jackaroos who are posing a threat to our way of life and creating problems where none existed. howard purdie, the local self-styled bard of traquair, had the following satirical article published in the local newspaper. he called mrs. macintosh a mrs. mary maclntrouble who, at 91, objected to the peebles police wearing black uniforms: “your policemen, i see a black-and-white minstrel. that is a racial stereotype and should not be tolerated.” when she was asked what sort of uniform would fit the situation in peebles: “oh, i envisage something really colourful,” trilled the excitable lady who used to teach mixamotosis at the golliwog’s primary school. “something like funny-worded t” shirts, tartan boxer shorts and american baseball caps.” “after all, our friendly bobbies should keep up with fashionable trends” (1991). cfr_2011_r.indb 56 10/31/11 8:57:39 am macgregor the appropriation of a commercial trademark 57 in the satire, mrs. maclntrouble sent the fifty pounds to the desk sergeant for new-style uniforms. the bard asked the policeman, al jolson, aged 113, if he was concerned about the lady in question. “mammy!” sang the policeman, frantically waving his white-gloved hands. “i’d walk a million miles for one of your smiles, mammy!” eyes bulging enormously, our friendly bobby tap-danced on the pavement outside the police station, causing acute embarrassment to a person from edinburgh (keddie 1991). by may 31, the controversy had reached a national audience and more and more attention was focused on the parade and the town. sides in the issue were chosen, and it was rumored that the national front would be at the festival to defend the pro-golliwog side and that anti-racists groups would give their support to the ban the golliwog position. the situation was getting out of hand. there was also a proposed mass “black-up” by peebleans protesting mrs. macintosh’s ‘outside interference’ in seeking to have the golliwogs banned. a mr. white, a local businessman, put up a prize of fifty pounds for the ‘best beltane golly.’ mr. edge, a local hotel owner, announced that he would change the name of his hotel, the green tree, to the golliwog’s rest, for june 21 and 22. doug mann, the peebles singer-songwriter, saw his protest song “i wanna be a golly in the beltane parade” become a local cu!t hit and eventually sell almost 2,000 copies (mann 1991). a well-known black dancer and television personality, clive donaldson, would support the pro-golliwog group. ironically, his stage name is wiggi, which is one of the golliwogs in the enid blyton series the three golliwogs. he read some of the newspaper reports, and he was not offended at all by the golliwog costumes. two weeks before the six days of festivities, some of the local officials started to worry about the “untold damage” to the event and to the future well-being of the event. an editorial of june 7, 1991, tried in an objective manner to clearly outline the two positions in the golliwog controversy. the writer went on to say that in fact the picture of the pros and cons of the golliwog were more complicated than they seemed and the nuances might be lost in some of the stories that were published in the tabloid press. a golliwog parade might be portrayed as some kind of ku klux klan rally in a red-neck backwater of scotland. throughout the newspaper articles, there appeared to be a growing acceptance that there would be a golly protest parade. seeing this protest as an inevitability, the local authorities pleaded with the would-be marchers to take to the street on friday night and not to interfere with the saturday’s red letter day parade for the local children. throughout the major protest time frame, the peebleshire news started a “golliwog forum” to allow people to voice their opinions with letters to the newspaper. from february 22 to june 28, 1991, 37 letters were printed in the paper. from february 22 to june 28, 1991, 37 letters were printed in the paper. there were twenty-eight letters for keeping the golliwog costumes, eight against keeping the costumes, and one neutral reply; approximately seventy-five percent cfr_2011_r.indb 57 10/31/11 8:57:39 am the appropriation of a commercial trademark macgregor 58 of the respondents wanted to keep the golliwog costumes and the woolly hair and the blacked face. trying to discover just how long the golliwog imagery had been part of the children’s parade was difficult. some of the age estimates say that the golliwogs had been in the festivities since 1901 (ninety years), one said seventy years or sixty years. whatever date was the real one was not that important; what was more germane was that the tradition of the golliwog was old and firmly fixed and accepted by the majority of the respondents. initially, mrs. macintosh was the lone dissident, with some slowly growing support. the major theme that repeatedly appeared in the golliwog support letters was basically that the costume and the blackface were traditional images that were part and parcel of britain’s heritage. the image was simply that of a harmless doll and only that, with no possible racist connotations. numerous people also strongly indicated that mrs. macintosh was a limousine liberal from edinburgh, a sociologist, and not a true native peeblean (a gutterbluid). in fact, mrs. macintosh was born in peebles and had worked in the community before moving to edinburgh. this idea of an outsider causing trouble in a local community was echoed time and time again, as my on-site interviews and correspondence will show. as a stoorie foot (someone who had left the community), mrs. macintosh defended her opinions and her six-month campaign to get rid of the golliwogs in the following manner: 1. she firmly believed that this was not the most important issue but it is an issue. she believed that to many people the golliwog was an offensive image. 2. the abusive term ‘wog’ which black people have to endure daily comes from this innocent source. 3. britain in general was becoming more racist and there were many ways of combating it. this protest was her way. she believed that schools should be promoting positive images of all ethnic and racial groups. she believed that golliwogs were unhelpful and were an impediment to good teaching. 4. her offer of a cash donation for the cost of the replacement costumes was neither generous nor patronizing. she felt if change occurred because of her action she should contribute to that change (macintosh 1991, 7). for the persons who saw the costumes as unacceptable, their basic point was that the united kingdom was becoming a multi-racial society where greater tolerance and humanity to others were a necessity. peebles was seen as a town that was parochial, insular and unsympathetic to the needs and feelings of ethnic minorities. cfr_2011_r.indb 58 10/31/11 8:57:39 am macgregor the appropriation of a commercial trademark 59 what i have tried to convey in the previous pages about the golliwog is that the image and name, in many different forums, have been controversial for many years. considering the length of the controversy and the widely debated, widely reported nature of the various incidents, it is difficult to believe that some people of peebles were not aware of the incidents; more and more the image of the golliwog was being seen as racist by a substantial segment of the population in britain. within the town itself, a number of local “poets” and a well known folk singer had their works published and recorded which in themselves are revealing, the three verses of george lewis clearly showed his sentiment and the frequent tie-in to the robertson’s jam product: “the birth of a rag doll” sin-how nice to learn my golliwog wasn’t just a jolly wog, but sad his smiling black friendly face, not longer will my table grace. the golden shreds, and orange jelly too, hot buttered toast, and tea to brew, there’s something missing, this i know, i don’t want my golliwog to go. but nothing now can bring him back, you see his face was much too black for two-bob-bits afraid to see, he’s just another chap, like thee and me (1991). part of the wording in “the birth of a rag doll” clearly echoed the long held outlook by the traditionalists that the golliwog image is nothing more than a doll, a cultural artifact, of folkloric and commercial britain; note the references to jams. perhaps the artistic endeavor with the greatest longevity was doug mann’s recording of “i wanna be a golly in the beltane parade” (golly song released 1991, 2). the words suggest the importance of rules, the interference by outside forces, yet acknowledge the golly problem did exist. doug eventually became so identified with the song that he was called “the golly man.” all the sales, the attention, and the controversy apparently delighted the artist. these words were recorded from the tape of the song sent to the author by the writer doug mann: i wanna be a golly in the beltane parade i’d just one ambition when i was but a boy, just one ambition tae fill my heart with job, no to enter a profession or tae tak a trade but just to be a golly in the beltane parade. chorus: in the beltane parade, in the beltane parade, i wanna be a golly in the beltane parade. cfr_2011_r.indb 59 10/31/11 8:57:39 am the appropriation of a commercial trademark macgregor 60 a wifie up in edinburgh frustrated aw’ my plans, declaring golly’s racial and said they should be banned, she read it in some guidelines and guidelines must be right, and who would are tae argue when it’s doon in black and white tae dress as an egyptian i hear wid be just fine, a geisha or a gaucho frae distant argentine, a songie hielan laddie or ev’n an injun brave, so what’s so wrong with gollies in the beltane parade? peebles golly problem is important there’s nae doubt, ye’d think from a’ bickering, sae bitter is the rage, small wonder they’re a symbol on a jar o’marmalade. the parade and the gollies’ protest the first evidence of a “golly” protest took place on wednesday, when two gollies waded across the river tweed. some say there were fifty; some counted seventysix, and other observers say over one hundred golliwog protesters marched in the parade. the actual figure was not all that important, but the fact did remain that despite the national media attention given to the event a sizeable section of the community dressed as gollies and blackened their faces, all to protest the withdrawal of the ten children’s golly costumes. some of the titles and images that i researched include the following: kingsland escapees (primary school “home” of the costumes), gollie busters (ghost busters film), golly for us, i am no golly, robertsons, oily and his golliwog, persil washes gollies whiter, jollie gollies, rev. i. m. golly, a funeral cortege, a golly detector van, and mrs. maclntrouble. for some of the actual costumes that were used in the parade, see figure 1. rumors had circulated throughout the town on friday that contingents of the national front and the anti-racist league would be making an appearance, but they did not prevail. nevertheless the media was out in force, and a bbc television crew did record the parade. their interviewer and spokesperson was the black actor craig charles. charles told the viewers of the eventual program “them and us” that he found the golliwog costumes “a hideous caricature of black people and offensive.” after interviewing the owner of the green tree hotel who had changed its name to the golly rest for two days, he turned to the still running camera and said: “i think the people of peebles need a good kick up the backside.” some other media personnel believed that the golly protesters showed “a good humored gesture of defiance.” mrs. galashan, of kingsland primary school, closed off the school’s involvement by saying: as an educational establishment we are concerned with the academic and social education of our pupils in preparing them for life in the modern world. we must not be seen to promote anything that might be taken as racially offensive. cfr_2011_r.indb 60 10/31/11 8:57:39 am macgregor the appropriation of a commercial trademark 61 sadly, however, the staff of kingsland primary believed they had been let down by the border’s area school administration. mrs. galashan took a swipe at the educationalists by saying: we have not actually had any official backing from any official body even among professionals, the whole of the region. i don’t know what that says, but i find it rather sad (it’s goodbye gollies 1991, 1). as one writer from the region wrote: “if golliwog costumes in a children’s parade are an anachronism they are not alone. why it happened this year, and not during the jam jar row of the ‘70s, is still a mystery.” cultural markers and the appropriation of names and images said (1993) believed that self-definition is one of the activities practiced by all cultures. it has a rhetoric, a set of occasions, such as festival, and a local and regional acceptance and familiarity all its own. peebles had its beltane festival and parade for close to one hundred years. this festival and parade were part of the local cultural traditions. in 1991 an ‘outsider’ threatened the longevity and continuation of a black-face’ tradition. the ‘insiders,’ the locals, took to the walls and defended this cultural icon atavistically. according to said, people were mobilized, throwing their outlooks and discourses back to an earlier imperial, colonialistic time (1993, 37). he also believed that culture comes to be associated, often aggressively, with a nation that differentiates ‘us’ from ‘them.’ rehin (1975, 1981) discussed the long history of the harlequin character, jim crow, to blackface minstrels in victorian london and its seaside resorts. hern (1967) discussed blackfaced minstrelsy in england’s seaside resorts and theatres. pickering (1986) was interested in how minstrelsy symbolically worked out questions about the status of white victorians posed within a framework of social and biological and class orders and distinctions. he went on to say that minstrelsy in britain was responsible for crystallizing and establishing certain stereotypes of blacks and black ‘racial’ characteristics in britain. in helping to shape a symbolic lexicon that people carried away in their minds after leaving minstrel shows, the presentations contributed to the development of racial prejudice. later, when scapegoating took place towards blacks and other visible minorities, they had a ready-made lexicon of derogatory ideas, images, and names at hand: ‘sambo’, ‘wog’, ‘golliwog’, and ‘nigger’. as of november 2000, this lexicon, this ideological legacy in britain had still to be overcome (pickering 87). lively (1999) briefly mentioned the successful television show in britain ‘the black and white minstrel show,’ which, in the 1960s, attracted an audience of over twenty million viewers on approximately fifty percent of britain at that time. it ran until 1978. even today, a continuing debate appears in the media concerning ai jolson impersonators who appear in british benevolent venues and local halls (kuttner et al. 1987). cfr_2011_r.indb 61 10/31/11 8:57:39 am the appropriation of a commercial trademark macgregor 62 britain has a long tradition of differentiating blacks as ‘them’ from its white population as ‘us,’ the insiders; this ideological outlook almost always is discussed with some degree of xenophobia. culture and its racial markers provide a source of identity. the numerous arguments that have been presented in this paper against changing the cultural icon known as the golliwog were linked to the ‘loony left’ a liberal discourse and philosophy associated with hybridity and multiculturalism. culture conceived in this way can become a protective boundary, an enclosure supported in some instances by manufactured commercial constructions such as the golliwog stereotype. ziff and rao (1997) have defined cultural appropriation as ‘the taking’ from a culture that is not one’s own of intellectual property or cultural expressions. expressions include artifacts, history and knowledge (1). cultural appropriation is a multidimensional phenomenon. in the case of the golliwog, the ‘black-faced’ minstrel-like figure, where and when and how did the act of cultural blackening one’s face begin? lively and rehlins both discussed the very origins of the practice of’ ‘blacking up.’ in the context of english morris dancing, lively traces its origins to africa and especially morocco. the french harlequin, or italian arlecchino, may have had its origins in the late middle ages. rehlins discussed the early english example of 1377, when the lord mayor of london visited king richard ii at kensington. then and there mummers disguised as african princes, for example, danced and entertained the audience. in 1510, at the court of henry vii, foreign ambassadors were entertained by henry in a ‘blackface’ disguise, dressed as a turk accompanied by twelve torchbearers “like moreskoes, their faces blacke” (rehlins 1975, 686). the humorous negro made his appearance on the english stage in the latter half of the eighteenth century. throughout most of the nineteenth century negro minstrelsy was popular as vaudeville, theatrical entertainment. the idea, the process of taking, appears to have a long, long tradition: maybe first african, then european, with other appropriations of the jim crow representational format from america. the doll-like images, the representations of a minstrel-like, samboesque figure, however were already widely seen and accepted by large sections of the british public. the stereotype of the dandified, brightly clothed persona of the black comic figure had already been somewhat fixed with british theatrical and other venues of popular culture, parades, dances, children’s puppet shows, jokes, cartoons, and vernacular expressions, for example. what seems to have happened is a chronological serialization of cultural appropriation taking place over many centuries. the pro-golliwog protesters in 1991 were a fleeting continuation of this adaptational process. they basically converted a ‘black-faced’ brightly costumed child into a somewhat parallel, similar image, the robertson’s golliwog. much of the discourse and protestations for and against the golliwog clearly used the commercial trademark as the anchor, the cornerstone for all discussions. in 1991 the golliwog, as a cultural icon, was part of the symbolically constructed social order of britain. however, as we have previously discussed in this work, there has been a growing demand from 1950 to the present, for a recognition and re-allocation, of social status by visible minorities in british society. the historically collective identity was fragmenting, due mainly by the cfr_2011_r.indb 62 10/31/11 8:57:39 am macgregor the appropriation of a commercial trademark 63 large influx of non-whites, and images such as the golliwog were oriented and constructed with the view of a white britain. with the growing awareness of their own collective identity and power, black britons and their supporters began to express their displeasure with numerous institutions (publishing houses and football teams and manufacturers, for example) and demanded change. there was a victory in 1991. the beltane festival stopped the ‘black-faced’ dolls. robertson’s and sons, in 2000, continued to use the golliwog trade character. the pressure for change in the symbolic cultural capital in britain is changing, but resistance to change also presently continues into the new millennium. works cited akass, john. 1987. i can’t bear it. daily express (5 january): 9. barmy 87! the sun (2 january): 17. bates, stephen. 1987. golliwogs lose their place in noddy’s tales. daily telegraph (2 january): 17. bell, colin. 1987. al jolson lookalike is blacked. daily express (28 march): 25. black and white set? 1986. the standard. (23 october): 14. blyton, enid. 1951. here comes noddy again. london: sampson low, marston and co., ltd. breton, raymond. 1984. the production and allocation of symbolic resources: an analysis of the linguistic and ethnocultural fields in canada. the canadian review of sociology and anthropology 21 (2): 123-44. camden ccr campaign. 1980. dragon’s teeth 2 (september): 6. clark, beverly lyon. 1992. american children’s literature; background and bibliography. american studies international 30:1 (april): 4-40. cockrill, pauline. 1997. teddy bears and soft toys. buckinghamshire, england: shire publications ltd. deleting golliwogs. 1987. the daily telegraph (2 january): 16. dixon, bob. 1978. catching them young 1. london: pluto press. dixon, bob. 1980. money for jam. dragon’s teeth 2:3 (september): 15. ezard, john. 1987. outlook not all black for golly. the guardian (2 january): 3. fisher, marjery. 1975. who’s who in children’s books: a treasury of the familiar characters of childhood. new york: holt, rinehart, and winston. forster, imogen. 1985. i love my golly but ... dragon’s teeth 21 (spring). ______. 1989. nature’s outcast child: black people in children’s books. race and class 31 (1): 59-77. fraser, pamela. 1991. boycott. peebleshire news (12 july): 6. golliwogs renamed. 1991. peebleshire news (22 march): 1, 2. golly gets the sack. 1987. the sun (1 january): 9. golly song released. 1991. peebleshire news (10 may): 2. golly what a silly row. 1987. daily star (5 january): 18. good golly! 1987. daily mirror (12 january): 4. hamilton, ian. 1996. the first life of salman rushdie. the new yorker (25 december): 90-97, 100-102, 104-108, 110-113. cfr_2011_r.indb 63 10/31/11 8:57:39 am the appropriation of a commercial trademark macgregor 64 hartlap, diane. 1984. florence upton and the golliwogg doll. the black memorabilia collector’s monthly newsletter. mt. arlington, new jersey: jacquie greenwood, 1-5. hern, anthony. 1967. the seaside holiday. london: cresset press. it’s goodbye gollies. 1991. peebleshire news (29 march): 1. keddie, andrew. 1991. gollywogs miss out on beltane parade. peebleshire news (15 february): 1. ______. 1991. golly cash arrives. peebleshire news (22 february): 1, 6. kuttner, julia. 1987. jolson blacked out as irene sees red. the standard (27 march): 3. lewis, george. 1991. the birth of a rag doll. peebleshire news (29 march): 6. lively, adam. 1999. masks. london: vintage. macgregor, robert m. 1993. the beltane festival golliwog controversy: moral entrepreneurs and symbolic restructuring of social order in british society. paper presented at the conference “studying human lived experience: symbolic interaction and ethnographic research,” 1993, university of waterloo, waterloo, ontario, may 14-22. macintosh, margaret m. 1991. defending my beliefs on golliwogs. peebleshire news (8 march); 7. mann, doug. 1991. golliwog. peebleshire news (26 april): 6. mullan, bob. 1987. the enid blyton story. london: boxtree ltd. newman , david. 1987. noddy blacks golly! daily star (1 january): 7. newton, neil jessup. 1997. memory and misrepresentation; representing crazy horse in tribal court. borrowed power, ed. bruce ziff and pratima v. rao. new brunswick. new jersey: rutgers university press, 195-224. nicholson, susan. 1981. the golliwog. collectibles. spinning wheel (january/ february): 12-14. pickering, michael. 1986. white skin, black masks: ‘nigger’ minstrelsy in victorian england. music hall: performance and style, ed. j.s. bratton. milton keynes, england: open university press, 70-91. purdie, howard. 1991. racism in peebles, the latest. peebleshire news (12 april): 16. rehin, george f. 1975. harlequin jim crow: continuity and convergenie in blackface clowning. journal of popular culture 9: 682-701. ______. 1981. blackface street minstrels in victorian london and its resorts: popular culture and its racial connotations as revealed in polite opinion. journal of popular culture 15 (1): 19-38. said, edward w. 1993. culture and imperialism. new york: vintage books. the naughty gnomes oust those robber golliwogs in the alternative noddy. 1987. the daily mail (1 january): 3. the press, the jam jar, and the gollywog. 1984. searchlight (september): 16, 17. trew, winston. 1985. campaign report. dragon’s teeth 21 (spring): 5. waterhouse, keith. 1987. golly gumdrops. daily mail (5 january): 5. welcome to toytown: no golliwogs! 1987. daily mail (2 january): 15. wilkinson, doris y. 1987. the doll exhibit”: a psycho-cultural analysis of black female role stereotypes. journal of popular culture 21 (2): 19-29. cfr_2011_r.indb 64 10/31/11 8:57:40 am macgregor the appropriation of a commercial trademark 65 ______. 1988. the toy menagerie: early images of blacks in toys, games and dolls. images of blacks in american culture, ed. jessie carney smith. new york, greenwood press, 273-287. wyatt, woodrow. 1987. golly! what a load of noddy nonsense. news of the world (4 january): 8. young, sydney.1987. toyiand kicks out noddy’s gollies. daily mirror (2 january): 3. ziff, bruce and pratima v. rao. 1997. introduction to cultural appropriation: a framework for analysis. borrowed power, ed. bruce ziff and pratima v. rao. new brunswick, new jersey: rutgers university press, 1-27. cfr_2011_r.indb 65 10/31/11 8:57:40 am 67 disastrous alternatives: boy scout disaster stories and legends and imagining the natural world spencer lincoln green introduction hiking the narrows in zion national park as an adolescent, i remember well the stories we shared of the flash flood that killed an entire scout troop earlier that year or the year before. it was recent. the troop had been hiking up the narrows just like we were, on a clear day, just like this was. although they had taken all necessary precautions, the clear sky above them hid the fact that farther upstream a storm was adding large quantities of water into the canyon. out of nowhere the flash flood came and killed the entire troop. although we may have wondered why we hadn’t heard about it at the time, or why we were allowed to hike the same area, we did not challenge the veracity of the tale since someone had read, or had heard from someone who had read, the news article or seen it on tv. this was news, not legend we were sharing. the similarities between the ill-fated troop and ours gave it an ominous reality. just like us, the scout troop had come from northern utah and just like us, they had walked past these narrow sandstone canyons with the detritus of past flash floods as living proof that the stories were true. on another trip, a scout cuts a green branch to roast a hot dog. another scout warns him that green branches have poisons that can seep into the hot dog when it gets hot. the scout abandons his green branch to find one less likely to kill him. scouting legends such as these do more than exert social control on scouts liable to damage local trees or get themselves into danger in the outdoors; they express deeply felt fears and values in how humans relate to the outdoors: the scene and subject of many of these fearsome tales. jay mechling suggests that campfire legends and lore, with their thematic obsessions with death and disaster, meet the psychic needs of those who share them. beyond the obsession with death and injury we see here, mechling notes a preoccupation with sexuality and resistance to authority (1980, 43). these are the taboos against which children’s folklore often pokes and prods, looking for a way to handle these serious issues about which they are aware, but unable to talk openly for fear of censure. mechling describes these camps as an “exaggerated male group experience” for pubescent boys seeking to differentiate themselves “from the other gender” (1980, 45, 47). while i did not observe nor recall explicit needs to differentiate from the other gender in the present legends, there is an intense masculinity at work, and young boys seeking to differentiate themselves from their urban lives and the authority figures who dominate it become their own authority figures in a frontier or wilderness setting which hearkens to past modes of manliness. the scout troop i was part of included fifteen to twenty boys, ages twelve to seventeen, all latter-day saints, all members of the same ward, and all from an upper middle-class neighborhood of provo, utah, a college town of about 100,000 cfr_2011_r.indb 67 10/31/11 8:57:40 am disastrous alternatives green 68 people. our troop was fairly informal. while we did have different patrols, they were rarely, if ever, recognized or used in camp activities; we rarely brought our uniforms on campouts and were organized loosely in terms of camp duties. we hiked and associated with our usual friends rather than having to confine our activities to those in our patrols. the older boys sometimes gave orders to the younger boys that were usually followed. we shared tents, scattered around our site in the national park’s campground, with our friends and siblings. we were boys camping with three to four adult supervisors who also came from our lds ward. scouts at camp are betwixt and between in many ways. as adolescents, they are between childhood and adulthood, the worlds of sheltered life and direct confrontation with the world. with limited oversight at camp, they are between the stricter parental oversight they know at home and the freedom of being with their peers. they are also between the city and the wilderness, where they imaginatively play out various possible consequences and dangers of life in their wilderness setting. bill ellis notes that camping, in the united states, “involves playacting, by its very nature. adults and adolescents, mainly from the city and the suburbs, voluntarily give up modern comfort to live for a while in an imaginative recreation of the ‘frontier’ world” (1981, 486). the world they are going out to experience is fueled by nostalgia and full of the drama, heroes, and excitement of the old west. and just as the homesteaders and pioneers encountered a land that did not conform to their myths and ideals, modern campers do not find a land that conforms to the dreams of nostalgia that often propel them there. more than a place to experience nature and prove one’s manhood, the scout camp can be a place of tedium and struggling to participate in domestic chores that are more tedious and difficult than they were at home. rather than trading the comforts of home for the excitement of the wilderness, they find they have traded the comforts of home for greater difficulty in accomplishing similar menial tasks. cooking is more time consuming; cleaning requires multiple trips down to the river; only making your bed is easier, and the absence of expectations to wash mitigates the increased difficulty of many necessary tasks. the role of these disaster narratives, the poison lurking in branches, or the death that can descend without notice on a clear day are ways of infusing the quotidian experience of camp life with the intensity of the frontier drama. these stories bridge the gap between lived experience and the world of the legend by transforming the natural surroundings of the scout camp into the world of the legend. how is this done? victor turner speaks of liminal monsters that are not intended to terrorize initiates but to startle them “into thinking about objects, persons, relationships, and features of their environment they have hitherto taken for granted” (1967, 105). often the legends told between scouts at a camp involve fearful figures who inhabit the geographical area like bigfoot, the wendigo, or more local figures like jack haggerty of northern california (see gyemant 1965). the zion narrows legend does not involve a fearful figure so much as the fearful presence of nature. hiking up the narrows, river debris and drying tree stumps seen high up the canyon walls act as reminders that a flash flood would rise far above the scout’s ability to escape and come with such power that we would be overwhelmed. cfr_2011_r.indb 68 10/31/11 8:57:40 am green disastrous alternatives 69 seen in this way, stories of death and injury in the outdoors can foster a ritualistic experience with nature that prompts a reevaluation of the teller’s relationship with the land. in this case, the legends and stories transform the land into the setting of the legend, which the scouts are then able to inhabit with its attendant masculinity and independence. it not only allows adolescents to change their relationship with the land, but also their relationship with reality. are these stories legends, though? there are documented accounts of people experiencing some versions of the story that was told in my scout troop in the summer of 1994. while the story we heard and shared involved the deaths of an entire scout troop in the zion narrows, where we were hiking, there is an account of a group of three leaders and five explorer scouts descending nearby kolob canyon when, due to high water levels, the canyon became dangerous and two of the leaders died. the remaining leader and all five boys were rescued after four days in the canyon (see burrows 2002, canyoneering 2005, and hanscom 1996). this was certainly a real event that was well documented and debated. the debates surrounding the tragedy center on the dangers: who was responsible for those dangers, the leaders or the park rangers, and how to avoid them for one’s own group. but those sorts of debates do not make a legend according to linda dégh who, in legend and belief, writes that a legend “entertains debate about belief … informs, explains, instructs, warns, or exemplifies through the telling of an extraordinary, unexplainable experience that a known person has encountered” (2001, 97-98). the original story does not entertain debate about belief, although it is often used to explain, instruct and warn. one informant, inspired by some beautiful pictures, planned a hike in the zion narrows in the summer of 2003 with a roommate. another roommate’s girlfriend, hearing their plans, told him to be careful because “my cousin went to hike the narrows with his boy scout troop and got caught in a flash flood. a wall of water came and he died” (ellsworth 2009). similar to the stories we shared on our scout trip, my informant was told that “a storm up in the nether regions caused a flash flood that came down and killed him.” certainly the message of the story was one of warning. another informant heard about a scout troop camping in a dry creek bed “somewhere in southern utah” when a flash flood during the night — “which often happens in those areas” — wiped most if not the entire troop away (rife 2011). this version lacks many of the specifics of the other accounts but maintains some of the story’s most basic elements: the desert of southern utah, boy scouts, death, water, and unseen danger. while news accounts of disasters in zion are not numerous, an article in the salt lake tribune sought to identify the major disasters that have occurred there since 1927. the two leaders dying in kolob canyon is mentioned as well as two hikers dying in the narrows in 1998 in a flash flood (havnes 2009). the article adds that most people die falling from cliffs rather than drowning. however, in the world of our scout camp, it was not the precipitous cliffs our stories led us to fear, but the canyon and the unpredictable water. it seems it is the unlikely fear that is most compelling. looking over the side of a cliff, the outcome of inching towards it is obviously death. but in our scout disaster narratives, it is the unlikely danger cfr_2011_r.indb 69 10/31/11 8:57:40 am disastrous alternatives green 70 of being drowned in a desert, the rare surge of massive amounts of water where there is so little, that inspires fear and the excitement of danger. zion national park’s website contains a page outlining safety information. steep cliffs come in at the top of the list, followed by water (as in drinking and staying hydrated), driving, heat exhaustion, heat stroke, hypothermia, and firearms (your safety). the main warnings that have anything to do with the narrows come from hypothermia or the temperature of the water, rather than the amount encountered. on hot days walking up the knee-deep waters, the temperature doesn’t seem to be a major concern, nor does the amount of water, so why do these fearsome tales center on them? why these many discrepancies in the accounts versus the stories we told ourselves? there were many differences between the stories we told and the event we were supposedly recounting. we told stories of an entire boy scout troop from salt lake city being wiped out by a flash flood in the narrows, the canyon we were then hiking. the facts of the story had been altered in transmission. the original troop was not boy scouts but explorer scouts, older and more experienced. we imagined the disaster hitting the scouts when it was the leaders who died in the real event. and while the two troops did indeed come from the same area, northern utah, the explorer scouts were hiking in nearby kolob canyon, not the narrows. while geographically near each other, they are vastly different canyons. kolob canyon, the site of the disaster, is a narrow slot canyon requiring a wet or dry suit, rock climbing gear for one hundred fifty-foot rappels, and a permit that indicates the water flow expected based on the release of a dam above the canyon. the narrows, on the other hand, while sounding like a narrow canyon, is wide enough for two to six lanes of car traffic through most of its length and requires very little equipment beyond what any hiker might need. the narrows do not require a permit, though they do post general conditions for the causal hikers who come to hike part or all of the canyon. looking closely at what changed, we can piece together how this local story went from a news story to a local legend told and modified to apply to those telling the story. returning to dégh’s definition of a legend, we see that some of the changes involved making the story come more from a “known person.” what we lacked in actual knowledge of these people was made up for by making the characters as similar to ourselves as we could. thus the explorer scouts were made into younger boy scouts, the tragedy fell on those we identified more closely with, the scouts, rather than the leaders, and, what needed no modification, they were a troop coming from northern utah to southern utah, and the differences of the specific canyons were erased by trading the one we were hiking for the one where the tragedy actually occurred. were the events extraordinary? extraordinarily regrettable, certainly. the increased drama involved in the eradication of an entire troop was certainly an extraordinary aspect of the event as we knew it. the story did entertain debate about belief, in that the apparent veracity of the tale was part of what gave the tale so much force in our young minds. as robert gyemant writes, “as it is with most legends, there is historical detail enough to imply historical truth” (1965, 106). the accuracies and cfr_2011_r.indb 70 10/31/11 8:57:40 am green disastrous alternatives 71 inaccuracies indicate that folkloric processes were at work in digesting the facts of the event into the details of the legend. on the same trip to zion’s, as with many scout troops, we hiked not only the narrows, but angel’s landing, where more people die and where the danger is more apparent. so why hadn’t we heard or why didn’t we share any stories about that hike? we certainly enjoyed it through the heat and the arduous hike and the amazing panorama of the three canyons meeting in the valley around us. at times on the trail, cliffs drop away on either side. it is a site of actual excitement and danger that does not inspire stories like the seemingly placid and safer narrows. why that discrepancy? part of it may be in the combination of thrill and safety in the narrows. with less immanent danger, we are left to enjoy the thrill of danger at a safe remove through story and imagination rather than through bodily risk. the thought of danger is, in this case, far more enjoyable than actual danger. water holds a mystery of danger that heights and heat, which kill more people in the park yearly than does excess of water, do not. part of the reason is found in the material conditions of the west. scouts growing up in or familiar with the west know the importance of water and their reliance on it. droughts, water rationing, and children’s folklore in the west emphasize the importance of water. “one two, three, water hog!” and “save some for the whales!” are good examples of children’s folklore emphasizing the importance of water. as lds youths, the scouts were familiar with scenes of water-based destruction. biblical stories including the flood, the destruction of the egyptians in the red sea, jonah and the fish, and even christ calming the sea of galilee as he walked on the water show that water can be a source of punishment and an unruly element. although water is used in one of the holiest ordinances in mormonism, baptism, and symbolizes a new birth, it also symbolizes death and is a frequent scene of hardships. the book of mormon tells of the dangers for lehi and his family as they crossed the ocean to the promised land. later the jaredites also experience difficulty as they cross the ocean. further, when christ visits the americas, he punishes the wickedness by sinking many cities in the ocean (see 3 nephi 8 and 9). in the doctrine and covenants, a more modern book of scripture, there are many pronouncements about the dangers of water. in a revelation given after some dangers experienced by early church elders as they canoed down the missouri and after one saw “in a daylight vision … the destroyer riding in power upon the face of the waters,” warning about the dangers of water abound: “behold, there are many dangers upon the waters, and more especially hereafter” (d&c 61:4), “for i, the lord, have decreed in mine anger many destructions upon the waters; yea, and especially upon these waters” (meaning the missouri) (d&c 61:5), “behold, i, the lord, in the beginning blessed the waters; but in the last days … i cursed the waters” (d&c 61:14), “wherefore, the days will come that no flesh shall be safe upon the waters” (d&c 61:15), and others. while water as an evil force is certainly not a pervasive doctrine and receives such specific focus in only one chapter of scripture, combined with the stories, they may account for a tendency to vilifying water. combine that with the west’s reliance on the peskily absent element, and water becomes a dangerous element in need of such legends to explain, warn, and instruct us to be wary. cfr_2011_r.indb 71 10/31/11 8:57:40 am disastrous alternatives green 72 legends of disasters in the wilderness often act as explanation, instruction, or warning. when brant ellsworth heard from his roommate’s girlfriend about her cousin who had died in the narrows in a flash flood, she told it, and he heard it, as a cautionary tale. the warning included the knowledge that the danger might be unseen, “you won’t see it overhead. but ten miles upstream there could be a massive downpour which will cause the flash flood,” and summarized by his roommate’s words “yeah, people die down there” (ellsworth 2011). here, dégh’s interpretation of the function of the legend fits perfectly with its function in the urban world, but to read the meaning of the legend as it was told in the setting where it occurred, we look at elliot oring’s definition of the legend. oring writes that legends are about “the creation of a story which requires the audience to examine their world view — their sense of the normal, the boundaries of the natural, their conceptions of fate, destiny, and coincidence” (1986, 126). beyond requiring the audience to examine their worldview, these stories allowed our troop to re-imagine the boundaries of the natural world and place ourselves in the most dangerous, exciting version of that natural as exemplified in the legend. rather than live in the hot, weary, sometimes menial and tedious world of camping, it allowed us to immerse ourselves in a world of dangerous possibilities where we could play with the possibilities of death and disaster. part of what makes that playing possible is the immediacy of the natural details of the legend. while there are many definitions of what makes a legend, the “message” is only part of what makes this legend so persistent and vivid. the immediacy of the physical facts of the legend, and how that immediacy imbues the geographic area with a heightened sense of excitement, is what lends the legend such force and narrative power. while tales of entire scout troops being washed away in desert floods are amazing enough, walking the very banks of the calm river while noting the stumps and debris of the flood forty feet above you on a cliff wall, a vivid reminder of the tale’s reality, emphasizes the potential threat and actual excitement. in the vanishing hitchhiker jan brunvand discusses the function of legends. they can be entertaining, validate cultural ideals or institutions, explain the unusual or supernatural happenings of the world or they can “show that the prosaic contemporary scene is capable of producing shocking or amazing occurrences which may have actually happened to friends or to nearacquaintances but which are nevertheless explainable in some reasonably logical terms” (1981, 12). the legends and legend telling can infuse a boring situation with more excitement because of the possibility that something amazing will happen. in one space, many places mary hufford makes the observation that “through stories people deepen their relationship to the places surrounding them” (1986, 8). these particular stories deepen that relationship by infusing it with the drama, excitement, and mythos of the frontier where life was hard, but real men were made. this kind of play with danger is distinct from legend trips and what bill ellis terms “mock ordeals,” in that the legends and stories are evoked by the place rather than the other way around, as in legend trips. further, the ordeal is real only in that there is a heightened sense of potential danger while experiencing cfr_2011_r.indb 72 10/31/11 8:57:40 am green disastrous alternatives 73 the more mundane discomforts of camping life. and here is where playing with masculinities and adulthood enters into the stories and their appeal. the adult world, as well as the natural world, is largely unknown and as such can be a source of anxiety and fear for adolescents. imagining the dramatic danger transforms the discomforts of camping life into more exciting, manly adventures; gives them a handle on perceived, real, but unrealized fears; and serves as an outlet for the fears and anxieties of wilderness, manhood, and adulthood. conclusion legends lie on a spectrum between the real and the imaginary. these scouting stories and legends, like many others, are drawn from real stories and become legends only in their telling and retelling as fact surrenders to a good, gripping story. in moving each way, towards the more imaginative and towards the more real, an interesting picture of why we create, share, and perpetuate stories of disaster emerges. if we move first towards the more fictive side, susan sontag, in the imagination of disaster, contends that the strength of science fiction films is “their immediate representation of the extraordinary” (1976, 119). in what she calls “sensuous elaboration,” these films allow viewers to participate in the fantasy of their own death, or the destruction of the world itself. sontag privileges the spectacle over the words or story, but in the case of disaster narratives in and of the wilderness, they combine to create a vivid, participatory narrative the boys can enter and come to the edge of death and destruction, take a look around, and return unharmed and victorious. similar to the monsters in science fiction, nature as liminal monster seeks not only to kill them, but to obliterate them, just as it has the other scout groups in the stories (127). sontag concludes that the imagery of disaster in science fiction is above all the emblem of an inadequate response … which shows “the inadequacy of most people’s response to the unassimilable terrors that infect their consciousness” (130). sontag’s hyperbole aside, the terrors being dealt with in science fiction are the same ones being escaped in the wilderness: an urban world dictated by forces more powerful than the boys such as parents, mothers, or school or work schedules. moving towards the more factive, we might look at the anticipatory response to hurricane irene this summer. the wind of irene held many comparisons with hurricane katrina, which was similar in size and force to irene. cbs news warned that “irene could bring katrina-style flooding to coast” (condon 2011). while other predictions were more accurate, like the loss of power to much of the affected areas, the comparison of katrina to irene seemed to ignore some vital facts — such as the levees in new orleans which caused most of the deaths and damage and their absence anywhere in irene’s path — and focus on mother nature as monster and force of immanent destruction. she “slammed” into the coast, “marched” up the coast. similar to how scout legends can imbue an area with potential danger, many news accounts wrote of the potential dangers of the real storm, the “potentially affected population” and “potential damage” (ranii 2011). anticipation of the actual event, while very different from the imaginary cfr_2011_r.indb 73 10/31/11 8:57:40 am disastrous alternatives green 74 anticipation experienced by scouts hiking in the zion narrows, shared with the scout’s anticipation an entrance into the realm of fantasy. just as legends combine truth and fiction, so too do our views of the future, even the immediate future, partake of imagination. while the scouts were able to use this imagination to imbue the present with greater excitement, intensifying that potential danger even a bit can turn it into the great fear and panic in anticipation of irene. sacvan bercovitch, in the american jeremiad, explains how this might happen. the particularly american form of the jeremiad, he explains, rhetorically fused the sacred, supernatural world of god’s will with the secular, natural world of man’s actions (1978, 9). the legend, for many and these disaster legends in particular, seems to elevate the commonplace and everyday into a world of the supernatural. there is something proleptic in this exercise when we compare the legends with its cousins on the extremes of the fictive/factive spectrum. in all of them, science fiction, fact-based scouting legends, and anticipation of natural disasters, we are again fusing those supernatural and everyday worlds in mixtures to excite, appall, or amaze ourselves or others. as such, legends, like news and science fiction, are a way we invent and interpret the world. as invention and interpretation they can be productive or destructive: ways to increase excitement, ways for urbanites to respond to the crushing demands of modernity, and added fuel for widespread panics. seen this way, the legend is not merely a way to negotiate the possible and the actual, but is a persistent and pervasive human negotiation between our imagined world and our lived experience. works cited bercovitch, sacvan. 1978. the american jeremiad. madison: university of wisconsin press. the book of mormon. 1989. the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints: salt lake city. brunvand, jan harold. 1981. the vanishing hitchhiker. new york: w. w. norton and company. burrows, shane. 2002. kolob canyon disaster: zion national park. climb utah. http://climb-utah.com/zion/kolob1.htm. canyoneering usa. 2005. kolob creek canyoneering route. tom’s utah canyoneering guide. http://canyoneeringusa.com/utah/zion/kolob.htm. condon, stephanie. 2011. hurricane irene could bring katrina-style flooding to the coast, fema warns. cbsnews.com, 26 august. dégh, linda. 2001. legend and belief: dialectics of a folklore genre. bloomington: indiana university press. the doctrine and covenants. 1989. the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints: salt lake city. ellis, bill. 1981. the camp mock-ordeal theater as life. journal of american folklore. oct-dec, 486-505. ellsworth, brant. 2011. personal interview. 25 august. gyemant, robert e. 1965. “jack haggerty” and a california legend. western folklore. apr, 105-108. cfr_2011_r.indb 74 10/31/11 8:57:40 am green disastrous alternatives 75 hanscom, greg. 1996. feds set ‘terrible precedent” with kolob canyon settlement. high country news. paonia, co. 5 august. http://www.hcn.org/ issues/87/2695. havnes, mark. 2009. disasters are a part of zion national park’s history. the salt lake tribune. utah, 5 june http://www.sltrib.com/outdoors/ci_12513410. hufford, mary. 1986. one space, many places. american folklife center: washington dc. mechling, jay. 1980. the magic of the boy scout campfire. journal of american folklore. jan-mar, 35-56. oring, elliot. 1986. folk narratives. folk groups and folklore genres: an introduction. ed. elliot oring. logan: utah state university press. ranii, david. 2011. hurricane irene slams north carolina coast, targets northeast. miami herald, 27 august. rife, jared. 2011. personal interview. 26 august. sontag, susan. 1976. the imagination of disaster. science fiction: a collection of critical essays, ed. mark rose, 116-31. englewood cliffs, nj: prentice-hall. turner, victor. 1967. the forest of symbols. ithaca: cornell university press, 1967. your safety. zion national park. 2011. national park service us department of the interior, 7 july http://www.nps.gov/zion/planyourvisit/your-safety.htm. cfr_2011_r.indb 75 10/31/11 8:57:40 am 77 children’s folklore section: 2010 annual meeting the children’s folklore section met on 14 october, 2010 in nashville, tennessee with secretary-treasurer priscilla ord acting for president libby tucker, who could not be present and chip sullivan acting for priscilla. the minutes from the 2009 meeting were approved. priscilla explained (1) libby’s desire to step down from the presidency (which had nothing to do with her not being at the meeting) and explained the duties of that office, (2) the need to add a person to the aesop committee and decide who will chair that committee this year, and (3) the request from journal of american folklore for a history of the section. there was a printed president’s report and children’s folklore review report from libby. priscilla gave the treasurer’s report. subsequent discussion of the treasurer’s report involved the fact that the section is well in the black and there are currently only minor expenses for cfr and for the various awards. old business: discussion of epublication of cfr resulted in a decision for at least a one-year lag between print publication and epublication of upcoming issues. aesop prize winner and accolades were announced. the newell prize was given to trevor blank for “cheeky behavior: the meaning and function of fartlore in childhood and adolescence.” trevor is a student of simon bronner’s. other prizes were discussed. new business: kevin cordi was elected to the aesop committee and kate schramm was appointed chair of that committee. spencer green, penn state harrisburg, was elected president by acclamation. priscilla and/or spencer were asked to find out more details about the section history jaf has requested. simon bronner did a history of the section some time ago for cfr, and chip sullivan did a history of cfr sometime before he passed the journal on to libby tucker; both of those histories were published in cfr and could be consulted for the jaf piece. the membership voted to increase the newell prize effective for the 2010 prize. respectfully submitted, chip sullivan secretary pro tempore cfr_2011_r.indb 77 10/31/11 8:57:40 am 79 notes and announcements newell prize the children’s folklore section of the american folklore society annually offers the william wells newell prize (which includes a cash award) for the best student essay on a topic in children’s folklore. students must submit their own papers, and published papers are eligible. instructors are asked to encourage students with eligible papers to enter the competition. papers must be typed, double-spaced, and on white paper or a word document. on the first page, include the author’s name, academic address, home address, telephone numbers, and e-mail address. deadline for this coming year’s competition is september 1, 2012. submit papers or write for more information to dr. c.w. sullivan iii, english department, east carolina university, greenville, nc, 27858-4353; electronic submissions should go to sullivanc@ecu.edu. book reviews children’s folklore review is seeking book review submissions for its next issue, to be published in october of 2012. this is an excellent opportunity for graduate students interested in building their writing credentials and demonstrating breadth in folklore, literature, and childhood studies. books are selected for review in children’s folklore review according to their relevance to the field of children’s folklore and their year of publication (within the past two years). if you would like to request a book for review, please contact the book review editor, li cornfeld (licornfeld@gmail.com). book reviews should not exceed 750 words. cfr_2011_r.indb 79 10/31/11 8:57:40 am 81 contributors spencer lincoln green, co-winner of this year’s william wells newell prize, is finishing his phd studies in penn state harrisburg’s american studies program. he completed his b.a. and m.a. at brigham young university in english with minors in editing and folklore. he researches folklore and the environment. his thesis used personal hiking stories of british ramblers to examine changing attitudes towards landscape in the uk. his dissertation looks at how technology influences american’s ideas about wilderness and how those ideas are expressed in folk and popular culture in the digital and physical worlds. neal a. lester is professor of english and dean of humanities at arizona state university. with specialties in african american literary and cultural studies, dr. lester is an award-winning teacher and the author or co-editor of four books. he has written or lectured extensively on such topics as the “n-word,” black/ white interracial intimacies in popular music, little black sambo as a non-trickster, the race and gender politics of african americans and hair, african american children’s literature, black masculinities in hip hop music, disney’s first african american princess, and personal ads as african american autobiography and biography. his writings have covered such authors as toni morrison, alice walker, zora neale hurston, ntozake shange, ernest gaines, bell hooks, carolivia herron, sapphire, and richard wright. dr. lester chairs the board of directors of the arizona humanities council. robert macgregor is professor emeritus at the williams school of business administration, bishop’s university, sherbrooke, quebec. the major focus of his research interests includes cultural analysis of national, racial, and ethnic identities visually represented in many forms of communication conduits. folkloric texts are also critical to his research especially concerning african americans. the author has received three certificates of excellence from various academic groups. publications of his have been published in the journal of eastern township studies, contemporary legends, the canadian journal of administrative science, proceedings of the academy of marketing science, proceedings of the administrative sciences of canada, proceedings of world marketing congress, journal of professional marketing services, atlantis, the journal of popular culture. numerous essays have been published in books. karin phillips is a senior at binghamton university majoring in english. her children’s folklore field research begins at home, observing husband scott and sons devon, dylan and aidan. she’s an aspiring graduate student and full-time dangerous games monitor. mona lisa saloy, author and folklorist, is currently professor of english at dillard university. most recently, dr. saloy’s essay “new orleans black indians cfr_2011_r.indb 81 10/31/11 8:57:40 am contributors 82 at mardi gras” appears in new orleans: what can’t be lost! (lafayette: university of louisiana, 2010). saloy’s article on zora neale hurston collecting lore along river road will appear in the next issue of louisiana miscellany, the journal of the louisiana state folklore society. dr. saloy presented research on kids’ lore at the 70th conference of the society for applied anthropology in merida, mexico (march, 2010); she has collected kids’ lore since the late 80s in louisiana, michigan, california, and washington state, where she taught folklore after hurricane katrina. katharine r. m. schramm is a doctoral candidate of the indiana university department of folklore & ethnomusicology, and a two-year member of the aesop prize committee of the children’s folklore section. while her m.a. research centered around proto-folkloric expression and ritualization in infancy, her doctoral research will center on community ritual and its visiting deity figures in southern okinawa, japan. she is the chair of this year’s aesop prize committee. pamela weintraub is a student at binghamton university. cfr_2011_r.indb 82 10/31/11 8:57:40 am cfr_11covers_prt cfr_2011_r_prt 47 “children have their own world of being”: an ethnography of children’s activities on the day of saraswati puja semontee mitra apart from diwali1 and durga puja,2 few hindu religious festivals are organized and celebrated publicly in the united states. saraswati puja is one such festival. saraswati puja, also known as vasant panchami, is a hindu festival celebrated in early february to mark the onset of spring. on this day, hindus, especially bengalis,3 worship the goddess saraswati, the vedic goddess of knowledge and wisdom, music, arts, and science. she is also the companion of lord brahma who, with her knowledge and wisdom, created the universe. bengalis consider participation in this puja4 compulsory for students, scholars, and creative artists. therefore, indian american bengali parents force their children to participate in this festival, whereas they might be lax on other religious occasions. as a participant-observer of this recent indian festival in central pennsylvania, united states, i found that the cultural scene—the collective, communal celebration of saraswati puja—was not as simple as children of foreign-born parents following a transplanted tradition and gaining ethnic identity. on the contrary, i noticed that indian american bengali children typically indulged in activities such as games that are not traditionally part of the religious observance in india. their interactions, both in and out of the social frame of a religious ritual, especially saraswati puja, reveal that in america the festive day has taken on the function of a children’s day of freedom from parental rules and ethnic regulations. thus, the day of freedom raises the following critical questions: why have these children’s agency and cultural practices emerged? how has it affected the performance of this festival in central pennsylvania? this article analyzes the ways in which indian american bengali children separate their activities from the religious festival while defining the festival as an adult observation, and use the given space and religious-cultural setting to create their own world of fun and freedom. in addition, i analyze the various kinds of games and activities chosen by different age groups. these groups of bengali children not only indulge in traditional games like singing games or chasing or tagging games, but also use technology to play games, for example different kinds of video games including strategy games. these children also participate in what i call “adventure tripping,” an act which involves no age or gender division unlike other games and activities. these trips originate with a mystery and a prolonged discussion about it, thereby encouraging every child to know the unknown, see the unseen, and enjoy the thrill of participation through a process that shares a structure and function very similar to legend tripping. i examine how all these games and activities reflect the changing meaning of religious festivals for second generation indian american bengali children and also their social and psychological developments through these games. cfr_2015_r.indb 47 11/22/15 10:41 am “children have their own world of being” semontee mitra 48 saraswati puja setting: the socio-religious-cultural frame saraswati puja is an indoor ritual that only recently has been organized by bengali organizations in the united states. sampriti, the bengali community of central pennsylvania, began organizing observances of the festival in 2012. other organizations in metropolitan areas, including philadelphia, new york city, baltimore, have sponsored public celebrations only since the late twentieth century or early twenty-first century. from the viewpoint of central pennsylvania organizers, saraswati puja serves two purposes: an occasion for socialization and handing down bengali traditions to second-generation indian americans. in 2013, the year i participated and observed the festival, it was organized in the community hall of west enola fire company. the hall was divided into five parts: the stage (for cultural program), puja area (where the goddess was placed and also the space used for the sit-and-draw event), an audience zone, dining area, and storage area (to store extra tables and chairs). the storage area was separated from the rest of the space with a temporary partition wall. there was also a large kitchen where the members of the association, including men and women, cooked lunch and dinner. the children who took part in the dance program used another separate space beside the stage as a dressing room. though the area was divided, the children occupied the entire space, except the kitchen. they were strictly forbidden, however, to get close to the deity or enter the storage area. thirty children attended the puja along with their parents. most of them came in early with their parents in indian ethnic dress: frocks, salwar kameez,5 and kurta pajamas.6 age group girls boys total 4 years 3 0 3 5-7 years 5 2 7 8-12 years 6 6 12 13-14 years 4 2 6 15-17 years 2 0 2 total 20 10 30 once inside the building, they were on their own because their parents were busy with the ritual. as fostering tradition is one of the main objectives behind organizing this puja, a cultural program was planned for the children, where they were the performers. they enthusiastically performed indian dances and songs wearing traditional attire. a “sit-and-draw” event was also organized for children under the age of fourteen. they were given a sketch of goddess saraswati that they had to fill in with colors. they shared the colors among themselves which gave rise to small clusters of children within the larger group of children. their paintings were later exhibited on one of the walls of the hall, which became a topic of conversation among the children between the ages of six and nine. the cfr_2015_r.indb 48 11/22/15 10:41 am semontee mitra “children have their own world of being” 49 sit-and-draw event was followed by a cultural program. it started with a short speech on the goddess saraswati by dr. jeffrey long, professor of hinduism at elizabethtown college (pennsylvania), and member of sampriti. during his speech, dr. long mentioned that on the day of saraswati puja, all academic and creative materials, including books, notebooks, laptops, pens and pencils, and musical instruments, should be left with the goddess for her blessings on those materials. he also explained that to excel the rest of the year, students should not study on the day of the puja. children took the “no-study day” as the essence of this religious ritual. children in india, especially in west bengal, also look forward to this day of saraswati puja as a “no-study day.” on this day, many children visit their schools and colleges in ethnic dresses (girls wear saree or salwar kameez and boys wear kurta pajama), as many schools and colleges (only in west bengal) organize and host this puja. children feel free from all restrictions as they dress up like adults, go to schools with their friends, have elaborate lunch provided by the schools, then visit friends’ houses or meet other friends and spend the whole day together. many children, who have the puja at home, spend most of their time helping other female members in ritualistic arrangements. while talking to bengali children in india, i learned that they fast (until the morning ritual is over), pray, and help their mothers to organize the puja at home because they feel that if they can prove their devotion to the goddess on this day, they can achieve success in the next academic year by putting in some hard work on their part. apart from the religious fervor, indian bengali children also associate this day with freedom, but their freedom is quite different from that of indian american bengali children. indian bengali children have the freedom of space as they go to school and visit friends.7 they usually do not indulge in any kind of games on that day, while indian american bengali children are accompanied by their parents and surrounded by adults all the time. however, indian american bengali children find out ways and indulge in activities that are not supervised by adults. given the license to organize themselves without parental supervision, indian american bengali children engaged in various games and activities either individually or in groups. due to the variation of children’s ages, their games and activities also varied. they formed their own groups based on their ages. though they were in a religious ritualistic environment, their engagement with the ritual was limited to what their parents asked them to do. by their actions, they understood the festival to be a children’s day of freedom that served as a stark contrast to their everyday lives as well as other occasions. the use of games and activities within the frame of religious festival raises the question of how the meaning of play within the religious festive frames changes. indeed, the establishment of the children’s frame within the adult controlled frame of religious festival has caused tensions at the border of children’s frame because adults, who surround these children, expect them to be a part of the festival so that they can hand down indian tradition to them. but, as mentioned earlier, these children consider this day to be the day of their freedom. therefore, in the context of saraswati puja, participating children are primarily redefining the meaning of not only the religious event, but also the space through their activities.8 cfr_2015_r.indb 49 11/22/15 10:41 am “children have their own world of being” semontee mitra 50 as a guide to ethnographic observation, i gave attention to the play frame formed by different groups of children. the idea of the play frame used as a strategy of boundary-maintenance in cultural situations in which tension exists between groups in hierarchical relation to one another points to folklore, such as the performance of games, as key evidence of addressing such tension in symbolic forms. according to folklorist simon j. bronner: the act of framing captures a narrative as well as action that have a bearing on the perception of the event from the perspective of the participants and assorted viewers. consequently, frames refer to the ways insiders and outsiders comprehend activity as a deep cognitive structure in addition to viewing, and strategizing, what occurs behaviorally. (2010:275) in my observation, children framed activities that designated social boundaries by age, and in their games separated themselves from their parents. although these children were involved in the religious rituals, they, through play frames, variously projected their interests as well as complexities in the scene as children with little or no experience of the homeland. children’s activities right after finishing their dinner, the children went for a short trip into the storage area (behind the dining area separated by a temporary partition wall), which was strictly forbidden. another children’s activity, which was common, was playing video games on portable devices. children formed groups based on their ages to chat and play together all day long. girls, up to the age of four (a group of three), were playing “ring around the rosie” until lunch. five to seven year olds formed a different group. this group had both boys and girls. they played a variety of games. chasing and/or tagging games were the most favored. they were the most active group as they always engaged in some kind of running game. children who were between eight and thirteen years old formed two groups, one of boys and the other of girls. boys were either engaged in playing video games, spinning tops, fighting, or simply chatting throughout the day. the group of girls (ages eight to ten) was playing tag games, video games, chatting with one another, or most importantly was trying to eavesdrop on the conversation of their older sisters (ages twelve to thirteen). boys and girls above thirteen years sat together and talked about various matters (school, news, fashion). some of the boys (between twelve and fourteen) played with spinning tops. boys between eight and twelve years also joined them. the two adolescent girls were seen mostly sitting and chatting. a question raised by this observation is the continuity of the games played by children with indian and american traditions. beginning with william wells newell in the nineteenth century (1884), scholars believed that traditional games were on the verge of being extinct. in the twentieth century folklorists posited that in contrast to a view of children as passive vessels of static traditions, they actively adapted traditions and changed them and that is evident in my observations cfr_2015_r.indb 50 11/22/15 10:41 am semontee mitra “children have their own world of being” 51 as children performed various games without a clear distinction to their ethnic sources (bronner 1988:12). there are a variety of reasons for these changes. first, i noticed an interchange between girls’ and boys’ games. for instance, games like tag and spin tops have gained more favor with the girls and the boys with time (sutton-smith and rosenberg 1961:21). second, many games reflect trends in the larger surrounding american society. for example, violent and/or strategic video games were considered standard fare. third, expanding technology has brought a major change in the tradition of games. the advent of television and the increasing preference for suburban living have influenced the children to separate from each other, and appear to have “conspired toward considerable desuetude in traditional children’s games” (sutton-smith 1961:37). keeping these in mind, i will discuss all the games and activities that indian american bengali children participated in on the day of saraswati puja. singing game children, especially girls, who were four years old, played “ring around the rosie” all day long. the last line “we all fall down” was the most exciting part for them as they were trying new gestures for falling down every time. for example, sometimes they jumped before falling down, and sometimes they just sat down; after falling down on the floor, they stayed on the floor for a few minutes (sometimes rolling and sometimes simply lying) and then started playing the game afresh. but, every time, the falling down was accompanied by smiles and giggles. folklorist leah rachel clara yoffie (1947) observed that children at the end of the nineteenth century played more traditional games than at the time she collected lore in the 1920s, which follows newell’s devolutionary view. but this does not hold true in my study. all the four-year-old children were engaged in playing the traditional singing game of “ring around the rosie.”9 the game never disappeared, although the stigmatization of tradition as american society modernizes might contribute to a perception of its displacement (bronner 2011:27– 36). however, on the day of saraswati puja, this game was played in a highly collaborative manner and with mutual support and fussing about the rhyme, body movement, and falling down. simon j. bronner mentions that “rhymes can appear especially playful and colorful” and through the innocent enactment of children many “real-life issues are raised in rhyme” which the children are completely ignorant of (1988:51). this is so true for this singing game: ring around the rosie, pocket full of posies, ashes! ashes! we all fall down this rhyme, according to some scholars like peter and iona opie, refers to the great plague that happened in england in 1665 or with the black death in england that happened earlier in 1347-1350 (opie 1985:221–22). a rosy rash was cfr_2015_r.indb 51 11/22/15 10:41 am “children have their own world of being” semontee mitra 52 said to be a symptom of the plague and posies were the herbs that were carried for protection. the final “all fall down,” interpreted as death, actually happened as a result of the plague (opie 1985:365). but the four year olds playing this were completely ignorant of this gruesome and somewhat dated popular interpretation.10 more relevant for their purposes was the use of the rhyme as a recognizable american tradition to socially engage one another. the rhyme and the rhythm made them giggle and encouraged them to have different body movements. bronner contends that the actions of standing and falling down became a creative performance, a celebration of youth identity for them (2011:199). chasing and tagging games children belonging to the most active age group, five and seven years old, formed a separate clique of their own. this group had both boys and girls. they played a variety of games. before lunch, they were all engaged in chasing or tagging game. after lunch and the sit-and-draw event, they were engaged in looking at what others have painted. all their games included some physical activity, for example, a chasing game, or tagging game. it is significant to note here that the chase was led by the boys and followed by the girls. no girl was ever followed by any boy at any point of time of the game. this is a reflection of the patriarchal society that permeates contemporary american life. even in indian society, men are considered superior to women. a male member is usually the head of the family and is expected to earn the bread for the family; women are considered unequal and in need of care and protection by the male members. women usually obey and follow their fathers and husbands when making major decisions. perhaps witnessing this at home, these children have understood this to be the way of the world and that girls should follow boys, especially when they are playing a game that includes following somebody. girls between eight and twelve also played tagging games (freeze tag), but they did not include the children younger to them in their game. they considered themselves to be grown-ups, so they did not even care to include “babies” (a term used by an informant to describe any younger children) in their group or games. in his book american children’s folklore, simon j. bronner claims that by indulging in “the non-singing variety of game that involves running and chasing,” children develop their thought processes as well as their bodies (1988:175). brian sutton-smith and b.g. rosenberg have similarly observed the crucial role that chasing games have played throughout in their study of sixty years of games. arguing that the physical activity of running and chasing, “the theme of pursuit and capture,” is one of the basic motifs of the american culture (1961:25).11 therefore, it is evident that tag has historically been more popular among girls, but more recently has found equal favor among both boys and girls. chasing and tagging games are quite popular among children because they can involve a large number of kids and can be played anywhere. these games are popular because in lieu of such games, children get the opportunity to explore new territories and interact with one another, especially boys with girls and vice versa (see bronner 1988). the “it” figure in the game cfr_2015_r.indb 52 11/22/15 10:41 am semontee mitra “children have their own world of being” 53 is significant because “it” is the one with authority. the children run away from “it” but they also invite the authority figure to chase them in order to bring them back to base or within their boundaries, which reflects parental guidance and control (see schwartzman 1976). but the question that arises here is whether the “it” authority scale is more indian in which there is a strong parent and expected obedience by the child or american in which there is a weak parent emphasizing independence by the child. i claim it is both for these children. living in america, indian american bengali parents appreciate the importance of independence and value it, allowing their children to do things the way the children want to do. at the same time, because these parents grew up in indian society, they cannot give away the authoritarian part of parenthood. many of these children go to sunday schools at the temple to take classes on indian languages, classical dance, and music. these children also have to live up to their parents’ expectations when it comes to studies and choosing a career, which underscores my participants’ frequent display of independence and authority displayed throughout their games. spin top, video games, and the fight boys thirteen years and above, indulged in playing with spinning tops. boys between eight and twelve years also joined them. some of the girls of various age groups also joined them, but as viewers. the girls did not participate in the games. spin top was played and enjoyed more as a competition and not as any other game.12 video games, on the other hand, were played by almost everybody, regardless of age or gender. not all of the children brought their gaming consoles, so they took turns at holding the electronic devices. it is significant to note here that although the boys were sharing the gaming devices, the girls had individual devices for themselves and so no sharing was required. a fight broke out all of a sudden between two boys (ages thirteen and nine) who were brothers. the reason behind the fight was not known initially, but later on an eight year old girl informed me that the fight and the eventual crying were strategies to attract the attention of the parents and get the device back by manipulating the authority of the elders. education and technology scholar royal van horn notes that video games have won a major share of the children’s toy market and have become a major pastime for boys between eight and eighteen years of age (1999:173). other researchers, including simon gottschalk (1995), claim that prolonged exposure to video games, especially violent video games, can result in aggressive behavior increasing feeling of anger or hostility, and a decrease in pro-social behavior. along the same line, the non-electronic activities that i observed resulted in more socialization and less aggressive behaviors. although some scholars argue that video games are the major pastime activity of the boys, i claim that it occupies the girls as well and have been integrated into traditional play, considering the fact that video games played on electronic devices are distinguished from other folk activities by their proprietary individualistic characteristic. the games played by boys and girls may vary, but they are cfr_2015_r.indb 53 11/22/15 10:41 am “children have their own world of being” semontee mitra 54 equally prevalent between both genders. the fight that broke out between the two brothers might be more than just a way for the younger brother to get the device from the older brother. i contend that such a behavior is a reflection of the aggression that happens due to prolonged exposure to violent/strategic video games (see anderson and bushman 2001). on the other hand, i noticed that the parents used time on the devices as “bribes” to their children. i witnessed parents making a deal with their children on the day of saraswati puja; for example, a mother told her son, “if you finish up your lunch quickly you will get to play video games, but you have to finish everything on your plate before that.” this indicates that video games have gained relevance in society which is more than just a pastime or a distraction; it has become coinage in a token economy for children and has become distinct from other forms of play that have more of a reference to social and traditional usage. chatting and gossiping teenagers between thirteen and seventeen years of age were mostly engaged in chatting and gossiping. they were mostly talking about fashion, style, career paths they would like to take, teachers, rumors, and television shows. children between eight and thirteen formed two separate groups: a boys’ group and girls’ group. while the activities of the boys’ group were the same, the girls’ group had a further division. the girls between eight and ten were not included in any of the discussions of the girls between eleven and thirteen. the former group (subgroup) was not even allowed to be near or around the latter group of girls. but it was completely opposite with the boys. boys talked and chatted either with other boys irrespective of age, or with girls of their own age or older. however, girls between eight and twelve were very interested in the discussions of their elder sisters who were young teenagers. as they were not allowed to be a part of the latter’s group, these young girls always tried to sit as close to their sisters as possible only to eavesdrop on their conversation. one of the major topics of discussion among the girls between eight and twelve was speculation about what their elder sisters were saying in their absence. then one of them would comment, “i know they talk about nail art” or fashion or music videos. this not only reflects the curiosity that these young girls have, but also the impact of mass media on younger generation. their world is no longer limited to dolls and fairy tales; they are more eager to grow up and do adult activities. the discussions about career path and objectives reflect that these young adolescents are highly encouraged by their parents for higher degrees and are thus, goal oriented. it also reflects their family’s economic status and the peaceful and happy relationship that they share with their parents (see schwartzman 1976). healthy relationships between parents and children promote the ability to make desirable choices and a greater ability to sustain those choices and achieve desired goals. cfr_2015_r.indb 54 11/22/15 10:41 am semontee mitra “children have their own world of being” 55 adolescent activities one of the two young adolescent girls, whose parents are separated, spent her entire time either helping her mother or talking to her friend, another girl, in the puja. both the girls took care of the children during their lunch and dinnertime. it was their responsibility, as all adults were busy with puja, to see what the children needed and they also helped young kids to finish up their food properly. psychologists sandra l. hofferth and john f. sandberg argue that children living with a single parent tend to take household responsibility earlier than is done by children living with both parents (2001:297). they further argue that such children exhibit lesser degree of participation in any religious or secular activities. but my participants were very involved in religious as well as secular activities, in the sense that they were always eager to help their mother. adventure trip after finishing their dinner, the boys between eleven and fourteen decided to make a trip to the forbidden area of the hall, the storage unit. both adolescent girls followed them. girls between eleven and thirteen followed the adolescents and their sisters (eight to ten years old), always curious about their elder sisters, also followed them. when everybody went inside, the younger children also wanted to peep in to see what was going on inside. thus all the children became a part of this adventure tripping. the children remained unnoticed even after their entry into the storage unit until there was a loud thud sound. being a storage room, it had piles of tables and chairs, and somebody did something inside and a few chairs fell down to the ground. with this crash, their “trip” came to an end. while the younger kids were frightened, the older kids were embarrassed and tried to put the blame on the little children as it attracted the attention of their parents and adults came running to them to check if anybody was hurt. this mystery-shrouded adventure trip shares structural and functional aspects with legend trips that are well defined by folklore scholars elizabeth bird (2004), bill ellis (1989), and patricia m. meley (1991). structurally, a legend trip is divided into three parts: the introduction where children/adolescents discuss about the place they are about to visit; the second part consists of the actual visit and discovering things unknown and unseen; the final part involves telling and retelling of the experiences at the site. for the children, i observed, the storage unit was a part of their discussion since morning due to three major reasons: first, it was a forbidden zone; second, they did not know what was inside it; third, they wanted to find for themselves what was inside it and why it was forbidden. the children successfully made the trip and later on, they discussed their experiences. thus, like all other legend trips, this adventure trip also shares the tripartite structural pattern of legend tripping. referring to the functional aspects of legend tripping, bill ellis states that adolescent “legend trips” is in part a “ritual of rebellion” in which they escape the authoritarian world (1983:64). patricia meley (1991) claims that the function of cfr_2015_r.indb 55 11/22/15 10:41 am “children have their own world of being” semontee mitra 56 legend tripping is “primarily recreation” (6), noting that such trips have a “social aspect” associated with them in which children do things together (11), and that “a ‘typical’ trip almost always includes a mixed-sex group of adolescents” (17). i identified all these characteristics closely associated with the adventure trip that the children under my observation made to the storage unit. the boys between eleven and fourteen actually initiated the trip, thereby portraying traits of “rebellion” against authority. though it was an act of rebellion, meley notes that through ritualization of the rebellion the children make their challenge to the adult authority manageable and comprehensible and so is not considered as a delinquent activity (1991:21); this stands true for my participant children as well. this trip also acted as an escape from boredom for the children as they spent their entire day within that demarcated indoor space and wanted to do something exciting that would rid them of their boredom. interpretation of the activities based on the discussions so far and limited by lack of comparative ethnographic material on indian children’s activities in an american society, i have some general interpretation of the children’s activities i witnessed on the day of saraswati puja. the adult-enforced context of religious ritual limited children’s activities, but children, nonetheless, controlled the space within the hall by engaging in activities of their choosing. they could not play outdoors as they were not allowed to by their parents. but this does not mean that they did not play outdoor games. the entire space became their territory and through their various activities throughout the day they exercised their freedom and blurred the space boundary. as the group of thirty children was a mixed group with children belonging to various ages and gender, i observed the following. the children formed several small groups based on their age and gender. the girls had separate groups based on their ages and inter-mixing of those groups was very limited. the younger girls were always either eager to emulate the activities of older girls or eavesdrop on their conversation. they also indulged in cooperative games like “ring around the rosie” or simply sat and chatted. unlike girls, the boys’ activities were not restricted to any specific age and they always tended to play in a larger group. the games that the boys played (spin top and video games) encouraged competition, so the more the number of competitors, the intense the competition grew. the boys’ games (especially video games) continued for a longer period of time, despite the fight, as compared to the girls. however, only chasing or tagging game involved both boys and girls. there are several reasons behind such divisions and distinctions of the games played by the boys and the girls. the games the boys played continued longer because they could resolve their differences quickly and resume the game without having any ill feeling. for example, the two brothers, who fought for one video game, were playing together sharing the device once their mother resolved the fight. thus boys quarrel all the time, but not at the cost of terminating the game. on the other hand, the girls could not continue with one game (tagging for example) for long because either they easily got bored or could not resolve the cfr_2015_r.indb 56 11/22/15 10:41 am semontee mitra “children have their own world of being” 57 disputes that arose while playing. as the girls’ games did not give rise to disputes, they “gain[ed] little experience in the judicial process” (lever 1976:483). even when problems arose, they put very little effort to resolve quarrels or problems, and their games broke up abruptly. the games and activities of the boys and the girls can also be interpreted in terms of social and psychological development. boys’ reflected their organizational skills necessary to coordinate the activities in a group of large number and diverse people. furthermore, their experience in controlled competitive situations tended to improve their interpersonal skills and their ability to handle competition and competitors. girls, on the other hand, who either played in small groups or tried to emulate their sisters or adults in general (when discussing about fashion trends and beauty tips or helping their mothers or taking care of other kids), tended to develop social and emotional skills. they reflected more socially constructed feminine traits of nurturance, spontaneity, and cooperation. restricting themselves age-wise and sharing secrets bound them together and made them emotionally dependent. therefore, any breech or quarrel disrupted such bonds and they stopped playing altogether. conclusion no matter where the children are or with whom they associate, they establish a boundary around themselves with play that can be called, as anthropologist gregory bateson (1999 [1972]) originally suggested, a “play frame.” the children separated their play from the religious festival and defined the festival as an adult observation, even though the festival allowed the play frame to form. the point of tension occurred when an altercation occurred and the adults had to intervene. it could have undermined the continuation of the frame but after its resolution, the frames resumed. in effect, the children redefined the meaning of space and religious ritual by their activities. the engagement with tradition by the children, even if different from the way the adults perceived it, allowed the children to sustain their separateness and freedom from regulation, even if temporarily. they redefined the space by blurring the boundary between indoor activities and outdoor activities. though they were restricted indoors, their activities were not just indoors. they played outdoor games indoors. they also controlled the entire space by the end of the day through their adventure tripping. moreover, redefinition was not only restricted to space; the children gave a new meaning to the religious ritual itself. i claim this because the children i observed were in a tricky situation. they were surrounded by adults throughout the day who expected them to be a part of the religious festival so that indian culture and tradition are handed down to them. but they used the religious framework in a different way to exercise their own will. taking advantage of their busy parents (due to the religious ritual and social gathering), they used this day as the day of social freedom from ethnic filial piety. or in other words, the children converted the meaning of the ritual to one challenging hierarchy. to a casual observer, this claim might seem paradoxical because the children appeared to be dressed more in line with bengali tradition, but their “framing” activity served to communicate cfr_2015_r.indb 57 11/22/15 10:41 am “children have their own world of being” semontee mitra 58 a different role to one another. my interview with them revealed that they did not get such an opportunity in other social gatherings mostly because they did not get so much of time together (as the social gatherings are restricted to one afternoon or evening unlike this one which was an all-day event). another paradox is that this freedom is in a context of being more spatially restricted than in other religious festivals. children in other religious and social gatherings are given a separate space where they can indulge in their activities. finally, the children not only did change the meaning of the ritual, but also reflected various behavioral traits passed on from one generation to another. it is perfectly clear how their games and activities portray their psychological development, their relationship with their parents and the society in general. the increasing popularity of this festival indicates more complexities as it portrays a celebration of americanism for second generation indian american, while first generation adults get to reflect upon their homeland roots. notes 1. diwali is a hindu religious festival celebrated during autumn every year. it is popularly known as the “festival of lights” because it signifies the victory of light of darkness. 2. durga puja is a bengali religious festival that celebrates the worship of goddess durga. it is a five days’ festival celebrated with great pomp and show. this festival signifies the victory of good over evil. 3. bengalis are an ethnic group of the bengal region (now divided between west bengal, india and bangladesh). it is said that they have evolved from a mixture of aryan race and austro-asiatic people. their native language is bengali and they are concentrated mostly in the states of west bengal and tripura of india and bangladesh. 4. any religious ritual performed by hindus is called a “puja.” 5. salwaar kameez is a traditional outfit worn by women all over india in different styles. it originated in south and central asia. salwaars are loose trousers with narrow ankles. kameez is a knee-length top with varying neck patterns. 6. kurta pajama is a traditional outfit worn by indian men. much like salwaar kameez, kurta pajamas are also worn in different styles. kurta is a loose kneelength shirt-like outfit worn by men. pajama is a loose trouser. 7. recently, this festival has taken the shape of valentine’s day in west bengal as teenagers go out on dates all dressed up. 8. to study the whole cultural scene (saraswati puja celebration) i adopted certain methods. as a non-participant observant, i witnessed the children in all their activities and noted down the games they were playing. i tried to be as close to them as possible, but the moment they realized that an adult is around them, they changed the subject of discussion. this is truer for the teenage girls. boys did not feel much bothered whenever i was around. the younger children had no time to sit and talk, so i observed their play. during my observation, i asked children about their activities that day. the younger children avoided answering, but children between eight and ten eagerly responded. being unable to listen to cfr_2015_r.indb 58 11/22/15 10:41 am semontee mitra “children have their own world of being” 59 the conversation of the teenage girls, one of my informants provided information on her elder sister’s conversation with her friends. i separately interviewed the adolescent girls. the purpose of my interview, in general, was (1) to find out what role saraswati puja played in their lives (2) the difference from other holidays when they also get a chance to play and spend time with friends and (3) their rationale for choosing particular activities. 9. sutton-smith and rosenberg (1961) have provided the rank of this game: “54th (1896), 41st (1898), 25th (1921), 89th (1959)” (24). 10. many folklorists have reasonably argued that the nursery rhyme “ring around the rosie” was not created because of the “black plague” that hit western europe in 1347 and had killed nearly one third of its population by 1350. though the rhyme has elements referring to the plague, yet the plague was not the reason for its creation. there are several other versions collected by charlotte sophia burne (1883), william wells newell (1884), and alice gomme (1898), which do not indicate any connection with the plague. additionally, this rhyme was first published in 1881 by kate greenaway (illustrator) in mother goose or the old nursery rhymes; folklorists in favor of this argument disagree with the fact that children recited this rhyme continuously for over five centuries, yet no one felt the importance of mentioning it between 1347 and 1881. 11. they further claim that with few exceptions girls show higher ranking in these games between 1856 and 1959: girls ranked tag game 3rd in 1896, 1st in 1921, and 3rd in 1959; for boys tag was 7th in 1896, 4th in 1921, and 2nd in 1959 (sutton-smith and rosenberg 1961:25). 12. in “sixty years of historical change” sutton-smith and rosenberg (1961) mention that with time spin top has lost popularity among the boys; it ranked 12th in 1896, 10th in 1898, 15th in 1921, and 133rd in 1959 (27). they further state that girls have developed keen interest in such games and perhaps this is the reason for the decreasing interest of the boys in spin tops (21). works cited anderson, craig a., and brad j. bushman. 2001. “effects of violent video games on aggressive behavior, aggressive cognition, aggressive affect, physiological arousal, and prosocial behavior: a meta-analytic review of the scientific literature.” psychological science 12 (5):353–59. bateson, gregory. 1999 [1972]. steps to an ecology of mind: collected essays in anthropology, psychiatry, evolution, and epistemology. chicago, il: university of chicago press. ________. 2006. “a theory of play and fantasy.” in the game design reader: a rules of play anthology, edited by katie salen and eric zimmerman, 314–28. cambridge, ma: mit press. bronner, simon j. 1988. american children’s folklore. little rock, ar: august house. ________. 2008-2009. “fathers and sons: rethinking the bar mitzvah as an american rite of passage.” children’s folklore review 31:7–34. cfr_2015_r.indb 59 11/22/15 10:41 am “children have their own world of being” semontee mitra 60 ________. 2010. “framing folklore: an introduction.” western folklore 69 (3/4):275–97. ________. 2011. explaining traditions: folk behavior in modern culture. lexington: university press of kentucky. brunvand, jan harold. 2012. encyclopedia of urban legends, updated and expanded edition. thousand oaks, ca: abc-clio. burne, charlotte s., ed. 1883. shropshire folklore: a sheaf of gleanings. london: trubner & co. foster, josephine c. 1930. “play activities of children in the first six grades.” child development 1 (3):248–54. gomme, alice b. 1898. a dictionary of british folk-lore: the traditional games of england, scotland, and ireland (vol. 1). london: david nutt. gottschalk, simon. 1995. “videology: video-games as postmodern sites/sights of ideological reproduction.” symbolic interaction 18 (1):1–18. greenaway, kate. 1881. mother goose or the old nursery rhymes. london and new york: frederick warne and co. griffiths, mark. 2005. “video games and health.” bmj: british medical journal 331:122–23. hofferth, sandra l. and john f. sandberg. 2001. “how american children spend their time.” journal of marriage and family 63 (2):295–308. horn, royal v. 1999. “violence and video games.” technology 43:173–74. lever, janet. 1976. “sex differences in the games children play.” social problems 23 (4):478–87. meley, patricia m. 1991. “adolescent legend trips as teenage cultural response: a study of lore in context.” children’s folklore review 14 (1):5–24. newell, william w. 1884. games and songs of american children. new york: harper & brothers publishers. opie, iona and peter opie. 1951. the oxford dictionary of nursery rhymes. oxford, uk: oxford university press. ________. 1985. the singing game. oxford, uk: oxford university press. schwartzman, helen b. 1976. “the anthropological study of children’s play.” annual review of anthropology 5:289–328. stutley, margaret. 2006. hindu deities: a mythological dictionary with illustrations. new delhi, india: munshiram manoharlal publishers pvt. ltd. sutton-smith, brian and b. g. rosenberg. 1961. “sixty years of historical change in the game preferences of american children.” journal of american folklore 74 (291):17–46. sutton-smith, brian. 1989. “children’s folk games as customs.” western folklore 48 (1):33–42. yoffie, leah rachel clara. 1947. “three generations of children’s singing games in st. louis.” journal of american folklore 60 (235):1–51. cfr_2015_r.indb 60 11/22/15 10:41 am cfr_2015_part12_part2 cfr_2015_part13 cfr_2015_part14 cfr_2015_part15 children’s folklo re review volume 37 2015 published by the children’s folklore section of the american folklore society cfr_2015_r.indb 1 11/22/15 10:41 am contents from the editor 5 games and their rhetorics: an idiosyncratic appreciation of the contributions of brian sutton-smith garry chick 7 sutton-smith’s five easy pieces jay mechling 27 inventing the discipline while you break it all down: an essay in memory of brian sutton-smith anna beresin 41 brian sutton-smith (1924-2015) elizabeth tucker 45 winner of the 2014 william wells newell prize: “children have their own world of being”: an ethnography of children’s activities on the day of saraswati puja semontee mitra 47 children’s folklore section: 2014 annual meeting 61 notes and announcements 65 contributors 67 cfr_2015_r.indb 3 11/22/15 10:41 am 5 from the editor trevor j blank this thirty-seventh volume of children’s folklore review is a special issue commemorating the life and work of the late, great brian sutton-smith, a prolific scholar of play, children’s folklore, and developmental psychology whose immeasurable impact continues to resonate in the research and theoretical orientations of countless individuals and interdisciplinary fields of inquiry invested in the study of expression and creativity in childhood and adolescence. it is a true honor to pay our respects to his brilliant career and legacy as a friend, academic, and human being. i can recall my own first encounter with the gifted mind of brian sutton-smith. as a graduate student at indiana university in 2006 i stumbled upon his seminal work, the ambiguity of play (1997). there, i found a powerful observation (on page 198 of my 2009 copy of the book): “the opposite of play... is not work... it is depression.” it was such a crisp and succinct truth to ingest, especially at that time in my life where the rigors of graduate school felt so formidable and all consuming. it is a truth that i often come back to whenever i find myself a bit overextended or occasionally overwhelmed—in other words, times where such postulations serve as a gratifying dose of reality amid an otherwise foggy brain. but even out of context, the statement holds up. there is an elusively magical quality to it, much like brian sutton-smith’s inspiring body of scholarship itself, which has and will continue to delight and inform students of children’s folklore for generations to come. unfortunately, i never had the opportunity to meet or collaborate with brian sutton-smith, but the first four contributors to this special issue, garry chick, jay mechling, anne beresin, and elizabeth tucker, most certainly have, and each of their essays weave between their personal and professional admiration and memories of working with brian sutton-smith alongside critical insights into his contributions to the study of children’s folklore (among many other disciplines and areas of specialization) and his lasting legacy for those who have had the honor and pleasure of learning from and with him. i am pleased to note that this special issue also features the 2014 william wells newell prize winning essay, “‘children have their own world of being’: an ethnography of children’s activities on the day of saraswati puja,” by semontee mitra, which stands as an immersive venture into the world of child’s play during a culturally significant gathering. her essay is a most fitting addition to complement this special issue’s celebration of brian sutton-smith. all back issues of children’s folklore review since 1990, except for the most recent volume, are now available online through our digital repository, hosted by iuscholarworks. to view the repository, please visit https://scholarworks.iu.edu/ dspace/handle/2022/13438 (or via the shortcut http://tiny.cc/cfrarchive); browse “by issue date” to scroll through all issues chronologically. i should note that we are currently exploring the possibility of fully or partially transitioning cfr into a cfr_2015_r.indb 5 11/22/15 10:41 am from the editor 6 digital publication beginning in 2016, and i encourage subscribers to keep an eye on the afs children’s folklore section website (http://www.afsnet.org/?children) and facebook page (http://tiny.cc/childrensfolklore), as well as the afs review newsletter for any pertinent updates. regardless of what direction things go, we do intend to maintain a print presence in some capacity, and we will be absolutely sure to keep all subscribers informed in the months ahead of any changes. one thing that definitely won’t change is our commitment to publishing the finest folkloristic scholarship pertaining to the intricate components of childhood and adolescence. i welcome correspondence should anyone wish to discuss the journal and/or contributing to it, especially individuals who are currently working on research that may fit well within the scope of children’s folklore review. please feel free to contact me at blanktj@potsdam.edu. finally, i would like to thank elizabeth (libby) tucker for all of her time and assistance in helping me transition into my new role as editor of children’s folklore review. no matter how small of a question i’ve had, libby has always enthusiastically replied with helpful feedback and positive words of encouragement. i am also grateful to mandy brennan, one of my students at suny potsdam, who compiled an exhaustive bibliography of brian sutton-smith’s publications during the early preparation stages of this special issue. additionally, i would like to express my gratitude to kathy buchta for her continually fantastic work in shaping the journal’s layout and design, and sheridan press for its great printing and mailing services that make it possible to bring this journal into the hands of readers across the globe. and special thanks are also due to emily sutton-smith and the entire extended sutton-smith family for their time and generosity in corresponding throughout the production of this special issue. it is my sincerest hope that you find reading this special issue to feel much more like play than work. for starters, please be sure to check out the incredibly important, mind-blowing factoid at the bottom of this very page for a quick primer on the dynamic nature of play (and to get into the spirit of this special issue)! made you look. cfr_2015_r.indb 6 11/22/15 10:41 am 7 games and their rhetorics: an idiosyncratic appreciation of the contributions of brian sutton-smith garry chick brian sutton-smith left a legacy of more than 40 books and 300 articles published, along with numerous conference presentations, television appearances and projects, and speaking engagements around the world over a 60-plus year career. while not all of these directly engaged play, this corpus surely makes suttonsmith history’s most prolific scholar and advocate of play. the majority of his research on play was directed at children and psychological in nature but he was deeply eclectic and bridged a variety of other disciplines including anthropology, sociology, folklore, history, philosophy, biology, ethology, and neurology, among others. in addition to several of the essays in this special issue, his work has been reviewed and summarized by others (see meckley 2015) and by himself (suttonsmith 1995; 2008). i edited two issues of the journal play & culture, plus part of a third in 1991, as a festschrift for sutton-smith while anthony pellegrini edited another in 1995. sutton-smith further cemented his legacy with the publication of his classic book the ambiguity of play (1997). in this book, he convincingly showed that how we have thought about and conducted research on play has been based in a series of underlying cultural and ideological values and that understanding them may lead to a more unified discussion of the phenomenon. to review his career and contributions to play research alone, without even considering what he did for other fields such as children’s folklore, is a daunting task and one that i am unprepared to execute. while brian was my friend, we were never collaborators. he did, however, co-author several very influential articles with my ph.d. advisor, john m. roberts, during the 1960s. our association since the mid-1970s rests, in large part, on that conduit. so, as a friend, but outside observer, and an anthropologist with interests in expressive culture, broadly considered, but adult play and leisure, more particularly, my review of brian’s contributions to play theory over his long career will be personal and idiosyncratic rather than comprehensive. in particular, i will focus on sutton-smith’s early contributions to the study of games and suggest how they may have influenced his thinking on play, specifically in terms of play research that he regarded as reflecting the rhetoric of progress, the rhetoric of fate, and the rhetoric of power. in the ambiguity of play, as well as several earlier publications (sutton-smith 1993a; 1993b; 1995), sutton-smith (1997) detailed seven of what he termed rhetorics, or narratives designed to persuade, about how play has been, or should be, conceptualized. these include the rhetoric of play as progress, the rhetoric of play as fate, the rhetoric of play as power, the rhetoric of play as identity, the rhetoric of play as the imaginary, the rhetoric of play as the self, and the rhetoric of play as frivolity. briefly, the rhetoric of play as progress is based on the notion that play is adaptive, for both animals and children, and is a context for their socialization and enculturation for the latter. the rhetoric of fate, which suttoncfr_2015_r.indb 7 11/22/15 10:41 am games and their rhetorics chick 8 smith regarded as the oldest of the group, has generally been applied to games of chance based on the belief that the human condition is controlled by external forces—the gods, luck, and so on—and possibly influenced only by magical or religious manipulation. the rhetoric of power is most often implicated in athletics, sports, and physical contests and is a representation of conflict. the rhetoric of identity usually applied to festivals and celebrations of community. the rhetoric of the imaginary idealizes the imagination and celebrates the creativity that so often occurs in play. the rhetoric of the self generally refers to solitary and risky activities, such as individual hobbies or bungee jumping, but also to the intrinsic and aesthetic experiences of the players. finally, the rhetoric of frivolity has a reflexive character, “applied to the activities of the idle or the foolish” (suttonsmith 1997:11), but also acts as playful dissent against the orderly world imposed by society. sutton-smith (1997) termed each of these a rhetoric “because its ideological values are something that the holders like to persuade others to believe in and to live by” (11). he noted “by seeing how the play descriptions and play theories can be tied in with such broad patterns of ideological value, one has greater hope of coming to understand the general character of play theory, which is the ultimate objective here” (12). but, in the long process of arriving at this ultimate objective, sutton-smith began with the ethnographic study of children’s games. the study of games games appear to be a universal component in the content of cultures, both past and present (brown 1991; murdock 1945) and their study has occupied a small, but relatively consistent, niche in anthropological research for more than 150 years. lewis henry morgan, for example, in league of the iroquois (1851) claimed that the iroquois had six principal games that could be described as either athletic or as games of chance. in the first cross-cultural comparative study of games, sir edward burnett tylor (1879) attempted to show that apparent similarities between patolli, as played by the aztecs, and pachisi, as played in india, provided evidence that the civilization of india had influenced the culture in mesoamerica. tylor’s thesis was soon dismissed and the cross-cultural comparative study of games was dormant in anthropology for the next 80 years. nevertheless, numerous ethnographic descriptions of games, both among children and adults, continued to be produced. these include stuart culin’s studies of games in brooklyn, new york (1891), in korea, china, and japan (1895), in hawaii (1899), and his canonical treatises on native american games (1902; 1907). other studies include firth’s (1930) ethnography of a dart match in tikopia, raum’s (1953) description of hoop-and-pole games in africa, and cooper’s (1949) survey of games among native south americans. in the functionalist tradition, stumpf and cozens (1947; 1949) claimed that games and sports served as training for war among the maori of new zealand and the natives of fiji. similarly, dunlap (1951) suggested that samoan games and sports interrelated with aspects of social organization that included not only warfare but also education, economics, and religion. sutton-smith made important contributions to game ethnography with cfr_2015_r.indb 8 11/22/15 10:41 am chick games and their rhetorics 9 several studies of the games of new zealand children in the early 1950s (suttonsmith 1951; 1953a; 1953b) culminating in a book, the games of new zealand children in 1959. the cross-cultural comparative study of games although ethnographic studies of games continued to be produced, cross-cultural comparative research on games languished. then, in their classic 1959 article, “games in culture,” roberts, arth, and bush launched not only the modern era of cross-cultural comparative research on games but also of expressive culture (to include play, sport, art, music, and other leisure pursuits), more generally. additionally, they provided both a definition of games and a system for their classification that have since become standards in anthropology and have been used in other fields, as well. roberts et al. (1959) defined a game as “a recreational activity characterized by: (1) organized play, (2) competition, (3) two or more sides, (4) criteria for determining the winner, and (5) agreed upon rules” (597). they regarded certain other recreational activities, found around the globe but lacking competition, such as “noncompetitive swimming, top-spinning, and stringfigure making” as “amusements” (597). roberts et al. (1959) classified games in terms of what leads to winning and losing, that is, physical skill, strategy, or chance. therefore, games of physical skill as herein defined must involve the use of physical skill, but may or may not involve strategy or chance; examples are marathon races, prize fights, hockey, and the hoop and pole games. in games of strategy, physical skill must be absent and a strategy must be used; chance may or may not be involved. chess, go, poker, and the ashanti game of wari are examples. finally, games of chance are so defined that chance must be present and both physical skill and strategy must be absent; examples are high card wins, dice games, and the moccasin games. (597–98) roberts et al.’s (1959) final and most important claim was that games are expressive models of other, important real-world activities. these include things such as hunting, warfare, social interaction, and divination: it is also evident that most games are models of various cultural activities. many games of physical skill simulate combat or hunting, as in boxing and competitive trap shooting. games of strategy may simulate chase, hunt, or war activities, as in backgammon fox and geese, or chess. the relationship between games of chance and divining (ultimately a religious activity) is well known. in instances where a game does not simulate a current cultural activity, it will be found that the games ancestral to it were more clearly models. (1959:599) cfr_2015_r.indb 9 11/22/15 10:41 am games and their rhetorics chick 10 moreover, roberts et al. (1959) regarded the types of games existing in various cultures to be products of, or at least related to, child socialization practices and to form valuable contexts for learning, particularly about things that may be dangerous in real life, such as hunting big game and warfare. in his first anthropological article on games, “the meeting of maori and european cultures and its effects upon the unorganized games of maori children,” sutton-smith (1951a) showed that the maori game huripapa, a form of knucklebones (a game that resembles jacks), predated european contact despite a claim that it had been introduced to the maori by early whalers. additionally, he briefly described numerous types of games then still played in maori schools. given his abiding interest in games, after arriving in the u.s. permanently in 1956 and having published (with clinical psychologist benjamin g. rosenberg) “sixty years of historical change in the game preferences of american children” in 1961, he was drawn to the work of roberts, then a professor of anthropology at cornell university. he first collaborated with roberts on a cross-cultural comparative project based primarily on the idea that games are expressive models of realworld activities (roberts and sutton-smith 1962). in particular, they viewed games as “exercises in mastery, with games of strategy, chance, and physical skill being related, respectively, to the mastery of the social system, the supernatural, and the nexus of the self with the environment” (168). roberts and sutton-smith (1962) utilized ratings for child training for 111 societies compiled by bacon, barry, and child (1955). bacon et al. (1955) rated boys and girls separately for child training in “responsibility, obedience, selfreliance, achievement, nurturance, and independence” (168). the ratings provided information on rewards for showing the behavior as well as the amount of anxiety displayed for not showing the behavior, the frequency of the various behaviors, and the degree of conflict over them. of the 111 societies, data on games and game play were available in the cross-cultural survey and human relations area files based at yale university. twenty-seven societies contained “moderately complete descriptions of games, and 29 societies provided descriptions which were usable though incomplete” (roberts and sutton-smith 1962:168). game play was not distinguished on the basis of age or sex since the ethnographies often failed to provide such information. hence, the separate child training ratings for boys and girls presented a problem. roberts and sutton-smith solved this by combining the ratings for boys and girls as bacon et al. (1955) indicated that females tended to receive mostly positive ratings (i.e., rewards) while males received both (i.e., rewards and punishments). roberts and sutton-smith (1962) addressed only four types of games: (1) games of physical skill, (2) games of physical skill with strategy, (3) games of strategy, and (4) games of chance. they found no instances of games that involved all three outcome determinants, that is, games of physical skill with both strategy and chance. games of physical skill with chance or strategy with chance were too infrequent to consider separately so they combined the former with games of physical skill and the latter with games of strategy. roberts et al. (1959) had determined that presence of games of strategy was associated with cultural complexity when measured by the degree of political cfr_2015_r.indb 10 11/22/15 10:41 am chick games and their rhetorics 11 integration and social stratification in societies. because complex social systems presumably required obedience to authority, roberts and sutton-smith (1962) were not surprised to find that the presence of games of strategy was associated with childhood training in obedience. in particular, societies that had games of strategy were more likely to reward children for being obedient, to punish them for disobedience, to have high frequency of obedient behaviors, and to instill conflict over obedience. the presence of games of chance was found to be associated with rewards for responsibility, the frequency of responsibility, and anxiety over achievement. finally, the number of games of physical skill had significant relationships with rewards for achievement and frequency of achievement. games of physical skill with strategy also were associated with punishment for not achieving. in sum, roberts and sutton-smith (1962) concluded that the relationships they found “show fairly specifically that strategy is associated with obedience and not with responsibility or achievement, chance with responsibility and not with obedience, and physical skill with achievement and not with obedience and responsibility” (174). based on these results, roberts and sutton-smith (1962) then conducted what they termed a “subsystem validation” to examine differences between american girls and boys. since “girls are given more consistent obedience and responsibility training” while boys received higher training in achievement, girls should then be more interested and involved in playing games of strategy and of chance while boys should prefer games of physical skill. they tested these conjectures using data on the game preferences of 1,900 third, fourth, fifth, and sixth grade midwestern children gathered earlier by sutton-smith and rosenberg (1961). the cross-cultural findings indicated that, since girls received more training in responsibility and obedience while boys received more training in achievement, the former should prefer games of strategy and chance while the latter should be biased in favor of games of physical skill. specifically, they found that boys and girls shared preferences for 18 games of strategy although girls preferred five not liked by boys. girls preferred five games of chance not liked by boys while boys preferred one game not liked by boys. girls liked five games of physical skill not liked by boys while boys liked 20 not preferred by girls. although not all of their premises were supported in a statistically significant sense, all were generally in the directions predicted. in a later study (sutton-smith, roberts, and kozelka 1963), they found support for the same predications among adults. based on their findings with regard to games, which they regarded as expressive cultural models, roberts and sutton-smith (1962) proposed a general theory of involvement in cultural models that they termed the “conflictenculturation” hypothesis (184). they indicated the theory implies (1) that there is an over-all process of cultural patterning whereby society induces conflict in children through its child-training processes; (2) that society sees through appropriate arrays and varieties of ludic models to provide an assuagement of these conflicts by an adequate representation of their emotional and cognitive polarities in ludic structure; and (3) that through these cfr_2015_r.indb 11 11/22/15 10:41 am games and their rhetorics chick 12 models society tries to provide a form of buffered learning through which the child can make enculturative step-by-step progress toward adult behavior. (183–84) games, and presumably other expressive cultural models, are therefore microcosms of social structures wherein winning and losing are represented. individuals seek these models because, in them, they can find codifications of the cognitive and emotional aspects of conflicts inculcated during their childhoods that are not available to them in real world cultural participation due to their lack of maturity. so, for example, in games of strategy such as chess or go, individuals can practice deceiving and outwitting powerful opponents while also commanding forces while still being commanded by others in the real world. according to roberts and sutton-smith (1962) between the ages of seven and twelve years the child learns, in simple direct form, how to take a chance, how to show skill, and how to deceive. increasingly, in complex games, he learns the reversibility of these styles—when to rely on one type of success gambit rather than another, how to combine them, etc. what he learns from the games are the cognitive operations involved in competitive success. these cannot be learned by young children in full-scale cultural participation. the can be learned only through models, whether games or models of other types. (183) in a 1963 publication, roberts and sutton-smith, along with adam kendon, focused on models of strategy not only in games but also in folktales (roberts, sutton-smith, and kendon 1963). in this study, sutton-smith combined his interests in folktales with roberts’ interest in games by examining folktales “that resemble games in that they display definite outcomes with winners and losers” (186). they asserted that “folk tales and games are quite different media of expression, but they are similar in that they model or represent behaviors occurring in other settings, both real and imaginary” (185). their general hypothesis was that strategy in folktales will occur in cultural settings that also include games of strategy. in line with their previous research, they hypothesized, specifically, that strategic outcomes in folktales, when they occur, should be accompanied by games of strategy, high obedience training, and high levels of political complexity (a proxy for cultural complexity, more generally). to test their hypothesis, roberts et al. (1963) used a sample of folktales assembled by child, storn, and veroff (1958). twenty-seven of the societies in the sample had previously been scored in terms of the presence of game types. twelve folktales from each society, purportedly representative of the types of tales found in each, were judged by three raters whether they had an outcome, that is, an apparent contest between two sides, or not. only those folktales agreed on by at least two of the raters were chosen for the study. then, the three judges (based on definitions established by the first judge) rated the tales in the sample in terms of the relative extent to which the outcome for each involved physical skill, strategy, and chance although the cfr_2015_r.indb 12 11/22/15 10:41 am chick games and their rhetorics 13 primary interest in the study was strategy. roberts et al. (1963) found, in support of their hypothesis, that “(a) the strategic mode of competition is modeled in both games and folktales in a number of cultures; (b) where the strategic mode of completion is modeled in one medium (i.e., games) it is likely to be modeled in the other (i.e., folktales); and (c) the strategic mode of completion as modeled in games and in folktales is associated with both obedience training and cultural complexity” (195–96). based on these and their earlier findings, roberts et al. (1963) speculated, in terms of cultural evolution, that the probable order of the appearance of the cultural inventories of child-training procedures and models is as follows: (a) nurturance and self reliance with no games; (b) independence, responsibility, and achievement with games of physical skill and games of chance; and (c) obedience with games of strategy. (198) in a 1964 study, sutton-smith and roberts showed that 8 to 12 year old children were able to attribute playing style-like characteristics to others. they created a categorization of players wherein those who “act (a) like players in games of chance and try to succeed by relying on luck, i.e., are fortunists; (b) like players in games of physical skill who try to succeed by applying physical power, i.e., are potents; or (c) like players in games of strategy who try to succeed by making wise decisions, i.e., are strategists” (15). children who either lacked followers or gave up in the face of difficulties were regarded as failures. in addition to the children’s sociometric ratings of others, teachers rated the children in terms of their success in the classroom and on the playground. sutton-smith and roberts (1964) found that 76% of the children named as classroom successes were in the top quarter of the distribution of strategists as perceived by other children. fifty per cent indicated by teachers as successful on the playground were in the top quarter attributed as being potents. fifty-nine strategists, but only four potents were regarded as classroom successes by teachers while 34 potents, but only 17 strategists, were classified as playground successes. teachers classified 65% of the children regarded by their peers as either fortunists or failures as failures either in the classroom or on the playground. sutton-smith and roberts (1964) extended their study by further examining the children who were in the top quarters of the distributions in each of the categories. as some children were in the top quarters of more than one category, sutton-smith and roberts created the additional categories of potent-strategists, potent-fortunists, and fortunist-failures. they reported: our results show that boys make distinctions among children who succeed by strategy, children who succeed by power, and children who succeed by using a combination of these two types. boys do not, however, appear to distinguish clearly between children who succeed by good fortune and those who simply fail. to succeed by luck is apparently tantamount to failure. cfr_2015_r.indb 13 11/22/15 10:41 am games and their rhetorics chick 14 girls, on the other hand, distinguish between children who succeed by fortune and those who simply fail. the largest difference between the two groups is to be found in the girls’ game preferences in which the fortunist—failures are not unlike the success groups in their responses, whereas the pure failure group is atypical and immature. the distinction made by girls between potent-strategists, strategists, and potent seems not to be a distinction in type as it is with boys so much as a distinction in degree. potent-strategists have most of the desirable characteristics, strategists somewhat less, and potents even less; but all three groups are superior to fortunists and failures. (31) sutton-smith and roberts (1964) concluded that children can consistently place each other into categories based on games and that boys, in particular, play games that are analogous to their success styles. girls tend not distinguish among success styles but do so among failure groups. roberts, hoffmann, and sutton-smith (1965) then examined playing styles in the context of a simple game of pure strategy, tic-tac-toe. in a field experimental study, they had each sixth grader in a class play every other twice resulting in a total of 313 wins/losses wins and 910 draws. arithmetic ability related to winning play styles while intelligence seemed to be linked to safe play styles (i.e., drawing). in a follow up study, sutton-smith and roberts (1967) gave tictac-toe problems (developed earlier by hoffmann) to girls and boys participating in the achievement development project at the fels research institute in yellow springs, ohio.1 they found numerous associations between problem solutions and children’s play styles. what they termed the “winning girl” was positively associated with the instigation of verbal and physical aggression, associative play, dominance of other girls, concern with mastery of motor skills, and negatively associated with socioeconomic status, the amount of time spent alone on tasks, task persistence, and gender-appropriate play choices. the “drawing girl” was positively associated with socioeconomic status, need achievement, and genderappropriate play but negatively associated with the instigation of physical aggression and concern with mastery of motor skills. the “drawing boy” was positively associated with need achievement and approval seeking from adults. in addition to their work on games of strategy and folktales involving strategy, roberts and sutton-smith looked at the cross-cultural correlates of games of chance more extensively in a 1966 publication, “cross-cultural correlates of games of chance.” in this study, they used results from a pre-publication version of textor’s (1967) a cross-cultural summary, a huge compendium of computer generated comparisons of cross-cultural codes for about 500 variables for 400 societies selected by the editors of the journal ethnology. for sampling purposes, the ethnographic universe was divided into six geographic regions. these included africa, the circum-mediterranean, east eurasia, the insular pacific, north america, and south america. while the sample was technically non-random, comparisons were accompanied by two measures of association (chi-square and phi) and included when the chi-square was significant at the 0.10 level. cfr_2015_r.indb 14 11/22/15 10:41 am chick games and their rhetorics 15 a cross-cultural summary (textor 1967) included 10 comparisons involving games, four of which dealt with games of chance. roberts and sutton-smith (1966) based their article on those four comparisons. their most important finding was that games of chance appear to be most common in cultural contexts involving uncertainty. that is, games of chance occur where “a life situation where favorable and unfavorable outcomes may occur in an uncertain way, not easily controlled by either physical skill or strategy, particularly in the areas of environmental setting, food production, social and political interaction, marriage, war, and religion” (roberts and sutton-smith 1966:143). sutton-smith’s fertile collaboration with roberts culminated in a brief chapter in a book edited by lueschen in 1970 titled “the cross-cultural and psychological study of games” and a chapter in the handbook of cross-cultural psychology, edited by triandis and heron, in 1981 titled “play, games, and sports.” suttonsmith’s and roberts’ research in the 1960s, particularly their cross-cultural studies, pointed to several conclusions. first, they established an evolutionary sequence of game development beginning with, (1) no games, (2) games of physical skill, (3) games of chance, and, (4) games of strategy. roberts et al. (1959) and roberts and sutton-smith (1962) reported, with some surprise, that some cultures (e.g., the yir yiront, the cuna) genuinely appear not to have games. they concluded that there are three possibilities: (1) some societies have never had games, (2) some societies have lost their games through deculturation and, (3) the ethnographic reports may be in error. whatever the reason for the no-game reports, later cross-cultural comparative research (e.g., chick 1998; roberts and barry 1976) has supported the sequence beginning with games of physical skill. second, their studies indicated that games are vehicles for socialization and cultural learning. socialization for achievement is associated with the presence of games of physical skill and is most often directed at males. socialization for responsibility is associated with the presence of games of chance and is most often directed at females. socialization for obedience is associated with the presence of games of strategy and is most often directed at females. and part of this socialization is directed at conflict engendered by child rearing practices and its assuagement. different types of games were also found in varied cultural complexes. societies heavily invested in food collection had games of physical skill since the games themselves served, at least in part, as models of hunting (and war, which could be looked on as a form of hunting) but offered greater safety than learning about hunting dangerous big game, for example. games of chance occur in situations where uncertainty is commonly addressed by appeals to religious or divinatory practices. and, finally, games of strategy occur in relatively complex societies with distinct social strata, higher levels of political integration, and relatively complex technology. third, games could be viewed as models of power. that, is boys (although not girls) were able to consistently categorize others as strategists, who lead through ideas, or potents, who lead through physical prowess. sutton-smith and rosenberg (1970) reported that some of the power tactics used by siblings could be regarded as primarily strategic while others primarily involved physical ability. they argued that if the distinctions between strategic and physical approaches to cfr_2015_r.indb 15 11/22/15 10:41 am games and their rhetorics chick 16 problem solving are present in general social behavior, they are also likely to exist in informal play. in a 1968 paper, sutton-smith suggested that there are “loose parallels” (50) between games of strategy and some daydreams, such as those that feature conceptual problem solving and abstract speculation. to some extent, this suggestion follows from the finding by roberts and sutton-smith (1963) that folktales that have outcomes, in terms of winners and losers, can be examined in terms of their content involving physical skill, chance, and, especially, strategy on the part of protagonists. among western children, “females prefer magical assistance (cinderella, sleeping beauty); males prefer personal prowess (jack and the beanstalk)” (sutton-smith 1971:85). based on this line of research, suttonsmith and roberts expanded the argument that games are expressive models through which children, by participating in them, learn the power tactics of other individuals and their cultures more broadly. while they coauthored summary chapters on games, sport, and play in 1970 and 1981, sutton-smith and roberts produced no empirical collaborations after their 1967 study of tic-tac-toe. for his part, roberts continued working on games, as well as other expressive phenomena, through the 1970s and 1980s with numerous other coauthors, including me. his work was heavily influenced by the theorizing about child socialization and games developed in his early collaboration with sutton-smith. in particular, he sought other contexts to test the conflict-enculturation hypothesis that they had developed, especially in expressive activities among adults. sutton-smith, while he did not drop his interest in games, spent more of his research efforts on children’s less organized activities (free play, folk games, jokes, rhymes, make-believe, folktales, teasing) and, importantly, more vigorously approached topics aligned with the philosophy of science, that is, how values cultural relativity undergirds how we have theorized play over the years. games as ambiguous agents of socialization sutton-smith’s collaboration with roberts provided one source of empirical support for sutton-smith’s enduring interest in both how children are socialized for play and the power of play to socialize. whether that socialization was for good or bad remained a question and an aspect of play’s ambiguity. this was an interest and concern for both sutton-smith and roberts. in his book, child psychology, sutton-smith wrote “in games, children learn all those necessary arts of trickery, deception, harassment, divination, and foul play that their teachers won’t teach them, but that are most important in successful human interrelationship in marriage, business, and war” (sutton-smith 1973:356–57). similarly, roberts and barry (1976) related combinations of game types to cultural complexity and to 13 traits inculcated during child training. in the cross-cultural data, they found evidence that, in societies where all three game types are present, obedience was emphasized over self-reliance or honesty. in contemporary american sports, for example, coaches have all but completely usurped decision-making. hence, there is little need for players to be self-reliant. however, coaches value obedience and self-restraint. and, as for honesty, coaches teach how to shade the rules without getting caught. at both the university of illinois and penn state university, i have cfr_2015_r.indb 16 11/22/15 10:41 am chick games and their rhetorics 17 had offensive and defensive linemen from the football teams in class. when asked how often offensive linemen are guilty of “holding,” defensive linemen respond “on every play” while offensive linemen answer, “never.” obviously, there is a difference in perspective but also in training. offensive linemen are coached in how to hold and not get caught. roberts and barry (1976) concluded, “if games build character, that character may be less than ideal” (59). as sutton-smith so often emphasized, ambiguities exist not only in how we study play but in play itself. summary: games and the rhetorics of play i chose to emphasize sutton-smith’s early studies of games in this essay, in part, because it is this area of his research with which i have the greatest familiarity. but i also selected it because i feel that these studies illuminated for him the notion that the nature of research on play, including his and roberts’ studies of games, had long been deeply affected by what he came to term “rhetorics.” finally, new methods, briefly described below, and updated data render the roberts and sutton-smith cross-cultural studies of games and child socialization open to replication, something commonly done in the “hard” sciences but neglected in the psychological and social sciences (schmidt 2009) or, when actually attempted, which results in a very high percentage of failure (bohannon 2015). games are relatively easy to define and, therefore, identify. for the most part in his work, sutton-smith adopted the definition provided by roberts et al. (1959), one that rather precisely denotes what is, and what is not, a game. in addition, and again for the most part, he adopted roberts et al.’s (1959) classification of games based on the primary outcome determinant, that is, physical skill, strategy, or chance. and while he expanded the definition a bit when referring to gamelike activities of young children, he maintained interest in activities involving skill, strategy, and chance. he observed that the way in which not only others, but also he and roberts themselves, had examined the three categories of games reflected distinct rhetorics. that is, he and roberts looked at games of physical skill—what we would commonly refer to as sports—in terms of the rhetoric of power wherein children learn not only the preferred power tactics of their culture as well as how to identify them in others. indeed, at one point, he and roberts contemplated writing a book, tentatively titled, games as models of power. unfortunately, their collaboration ended before the book was written although sutton-smith contributed a chapter by that name to a festschrift for roberts published in 1989. in “games as models of power,” sutton-smith (1989) interpreted their research together as showing: 1. games are in some way functionally related to culture. they are not trivial or unessential or random. 2. more complex cultures have more complex games and more types of games, and the various associations are merely an index of cfr_2015_r.indb 17 11/22/15 10:41 am games and their rhetorics chick 18 general complexity—cultures with no competitive games are very simple; cultures with all types are the most complex. 3. there are meaningful structural relationships between each type of game and its patterns of association. thus, chance is linked with responsibility, divination, nomadic habits, and economic uncertainty; physical skill is linked with the tropics and hunting; central-person games are linked with independence training and marriage; and strategy games are linked with class stratification and warfare. 4. the way to explain the linkages with child-training and variables and with cultural variables is in terms of the conflict-enculturation hypothesis, which says that conflict engendered by child-training procedures (one is both rewarded and punished for interest in certain behaviors), leads to a readiness to be aroused by symbolic systems (games), which configure the conflict (that is, transfer it) to culturally useful behavior. 5. the way to prove this pattern of hypotheses is to show that the same patterns hold within our own culture across variations in personalities as were found across variations in tribes in the original studies (subsystem replication). studies of adult preferences for games and of children’s play appear to provide support for the original patterns of relationships. see, in particular, the studies of tick tack toe in the folkgames of children (sutton-smith 1972). 6. the way the enculturation aspect of this thesis works is through games acting as models of cultural power relationships, including those involving strategy, chance, force, or arbitrary status (4–5). sutton-smith went on to critique these studies and their conclusions based on post-1970 research and theorizing. more important, however, is that he recognized that the studies themselves were grounded in the then-extant view that play is an ideal activity for children rather than one that is to be maligned and avoided as in previous times and other cultures (see sutton-smith and kelly-byrne 1984). thus, with respect to games, “when roberts and i called them models of power, we were becoming victims of our own and other males’ macho rhetoric […]” (suttonsmith 1989, 13). further, with respect to games, he claimed that in their own strange ways, they embody tenderness in their affairs as well as toughness. they make players love each other, or love their coaches, or love their supporters, as much as they make them hate each other. what shall we call them: the games as models of toughness and tenderness? perhaps games as models of power and pusillanimity? (13) cfr_2015_r.indb 18 11/22/15 10:41 am chick games and their rhetorics 19 in his later writings, sutton-smith included his studies of games of strategy coauthored with roberts under “play as rational power” (sutton-smith 1997:82). in tic-tac-toe, chess, or go, for example, each player assesses and anticipates the moves of the other with the winners doing so better than the losers. in a semi real-world context, military exercises, or “war games,” are at least as much about strategy as physical force. however, while sutton-smith (1997) allowed that research on play, including games, could involve more than one of the seven rhetorics, he did not delve deeply into the ways in which games of strategy relate to progress except as indicated in the quote above regarding children’s exposure to trickery, deception, and foul play. but learning about the unsavory aspects of life must be a form of progress lest one be constantly duped by others throughout life. moreover, as roberts and i showed in a 1986 study of the play of pool in western pennsylvania barrooms, even in a game that would be classified as one of physical skill in the roberts et al. (1959) scheme, the importance of strategy increases as expertise increases (chick and roberts 1986). similarly, roberts often claimed that players who treated poker as a game of chance were doomed when facing others who regarded it as a game of strategy. so, the nature of games themselves changes for players as their expertise increases. learning about strategy and how to use it certainly seems to be adaptive even if it may not fit our everyday notion of progress being something positive and good. finally, the studies of games of chance by roberts and sutton-smith (1962; 1966) fall squarely within the rhetoric of fate although, interestingly, he cites neither in his chapter on the rhetoric of fate in the ambiguity of play. this is a curious omission, particularly since he and roberts derived the notion of player styles that include both fortunist and failure in these papers. to a significant extent this may be because sutton-smith distanced himself from his cross-cultural studies of games in the 1960s with roberts. in part, he understood that “the correlational nature of these power findings makes the meaning of the empirical relationships discovered quite uncertain” (sutton-smith 1997:82–83). moreover, he recognized that “the widespread and easy diffusion of all kinds of games in modern life strongly suggest that additional principles may be required to understand the ways in which games as models come into being” (1997:82). this latter observation is well known to cross-cultural researchers, particularly experts such as roberts, as “galton’s problem.” in 1889, edward tylor presented a paper to the royal anthropological institute of great britain and ireland wherein he correlated data on forms of marriage and descent for 350 societies from the ethnographic literature. he interpreted the correlations as indicators of an evolutionary sequence. the statistician, sir francis galton, who was in the audience, disagreed by pointing out that the correlations could be due to diffusion among societies or common descent rather than independent development. while this might reasonably be thought of as a problem for tylor, it has come to be known as galton’s problem (stocking 1968:175). there are other difficulties with cross-cultural comparative research. the validity of the initial ethnographic descriptions must always be a concern as should both the validity and reliability of the codes developed from them. missing data, which is very common in such research, is also a major problem. fortunately, cfr_2015_r.indb 19 11/22/15 10:41 am games and their rhetorics chick 20 galton’s problem and the problem of missing data have recently been addressed, if perhaps not absolutely solved, in a series of publications by dow and eff (2009) and others by incorporating autocorrelation routines in multiple regression analysis to address the former and multiple imputation of missing data for the latter. while these techniques have not yet been used in an effort to replicate the studies by roberts and sutton-smith from the 1960s, doing so seems like a worthy task. updated ratings for both child training variables and games are coded for the standard cross-cultural sample (sccs) (murdock and white 1969) and the doweff software for conducting regression analyses of sccs data is readily available. cross-cultural comparative research has the great advantage of being inexpensive to do. many universities around the world have access to the electronic human relations area files (ehraf), the cross-cultural database whose precursor roberts and sutton-smith used in several of their studies and which has an excellent interface for keyword and other kinds of searches that greatly aid coding. this makes cross-cultural studies excellent vehicles for the initial testing of hypotheses. and, as indicated earlier in this essay, their cross-cultural studies led roberts and sutton-smith to attempt to reproduce their findings in subsystem replications. i believe that sutton-smith’s great and enduring contribution is not that he once-and-for-all defined play or that he determined its origin, what it is good for, and so on. instead, he is the theorist most responsible for showing that how we think about play, and therefore the kinds of data we collect and the sorts of theories we produce, is heavily influenced by our presuppositions, values, and culture. he summarized this well in the following quote: the point of view taken in this work, however, is that all of the rhetorics, whether modern or ancient, are based on or are simulacra of play forms, and all should be taken into account in any truly empirical examination of the character and functioning of play. (sutton-smith 1997:53) but, what of the series of studies that sutton-smith produced in collaboration with roberts in the 1960s? should they be disregarded, in terms of their empirical results, and simply be included as examples of the rhetorics from which they emerged? i, for one, think, as sutton-smith taught us, that understanding the theoretical context that gives birth to particular projects is of critical importance. as sutton-smith (1997) noted, this is similar to kuhn’s (1970) observation that science is not as objective or cumulative as commonly believed. indeed, one could think of sutton-smith’s “rhetorics” as quite similar to kuhn’s “paradigms.” but i also think that the roberts and sutton-smith studies of the 1960s can have a place in current thinking about play. their field experimental studies of tic-tac-toe can still stand on their own and other research suggests that the trichotomization of power styles into potent, strategist, fortunist, along with combined forms, has predictive validity in terms of behavior in winning/losing at tennis (widmeyer and loy 1989), soccer (roberts and luxbacher 1982) and in automobile driving patterns (roberts, thompson, and sutton-smith 1966). their cross-cultural studies cfr_2015_r.indb 20 11/22/15 10:41 am chick games and their rhetorics 21 relating game types to child socialization variables could now be done with much greater confidence in the results. more recent cross-cultural research lends support to the physical skill-chance-strategy evolutionary sequence of game development (chick 1998). revisiting these studies seems warranted particularly when guided by knowledge and understanding of the rhetorics described by sutton-smith. conclusion: brian sutton-smith and the character of play the english word “play” has multiple meanings and is also commonly used as different forms of speech. these include as a noun (e.g., going to a play by shakespeare, children’s play, a play on words), a verb (the children play hide-andseek, the setting sunlight played over the surface of the lake), an adjective (a play house), and various derivatives of these (e.g., gerunds, participles). sutton-smith’s early goal was to make some sort of sense of all of this. what is play? what is its origin? how did it evolve? what is it good for? i believe that he addressed these questions relatively directly in his early work on games but paused in his quest later in his career in order to look instead at how play has been theorized over the years. in his magnum opus, the ambiguity of play, sutton-smith (1997) sought “to understand the general character of play theory” (12), as noted above, rather than the character of play itself, largely because of the ambiguity of play as well as the ambiguities in play theories. both missions have merit but sutton-smith was surely correct in demonstrating that, without knowing where we have been, it is difficult to know where we are going. his work has lit the path. it now seems reasonable to retrace some of his early steps along it. in 1992, i delivered my presidential address to the association for the study of play (tasp), a group that sutton-smith, along with roberts and others, helped to establish in 1974. my title was “play as science and the science of play” and, in the presentation, i stated scientists play with ideas, or at least they ought to, and children learn though play, though they do not always learn what we want them to. … in my career to date i have had the opportunity to work with a number of bright and creative individuals and they all seem to share a player’s outlook on the world. among my colleagues, john m. roberts and brian sutton-smith are the two most outstanding scholars with whom i have had the good fortune to work and to play. each, a consummate player in his own way, brought or, in brian’s case, continues to bring that worldview to their research. while my sample of two is small (even by interpretive standards), i judge that scientists must be players and, in their own way, children at play are scientists. (chick 1993:99) sutton-smith was one of the fortunate individuals who manage to retain a childlike curiosity as well as a playful personality well into old age. because of this, he was able, based on his youth in new zealand, his research as an adult, and his playful disposition, to examine the phenomenon of play as both an insider and cfr_2015_r.indb 21 11/22/15 10:41 am games and their rhetorics chick 22 an external observer, or from emic and etic perspectives. it is difficult to imagine how a play theorist, researcher, and advocate could find himself in a better circumstance. notes 1. the fels research institute was founded in 1929 with support from the fels fund of philadelphia. it housed a complex project known as the fels longitudinal study which was devoted to research on the physical and psychological growth and maturation of children. psychological data were no longer collected after 1974 and, in 1977, the study became a part of wright state university’s school of medicine 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393–405. lanham, md: rowman and littlefield. morgan, lewis h. 1851. league of the iroquois. secaucus, nj: citadel press. murdock, george p. 1945. “the common denominator of culture.” in the science of man in the world crisis, edited by ralph linton, 123–42. new york: columbia university press. pellegrini, anthony d., ed. 1995. the future of play theory: a multidisciplinary inquiry into the contributions of brian sutton-smith. albany, ny: suny press. raum, otto f. 1953. “the rolling target (hoop-and-pole) game in africa.” african studies 12:104–21. roberts, john m., malcolm j. arth, and robert r. bush. 1959. “games in culture.” american anthropologist 61:597–605. roberts, john m., and herbert barry iii. 1976. “inculcated traits and game-type combinations: a cross-cultural view.” in the humanistic and mental health aspects of sport, exercise, and recreation, edited by timothy t. craig, 5–11. chicago, il: american medical association. roberts, john m., hans hoffmann, and brian sutton-smith. 1965. “pattern and competence: a consideration of tick tack toe.” el palacio 72 (2):27–41. roberts, john m., and joseph a. luxbacher. 1982. “offensive and defensive perspectives in soccer.” in the paradoxes of play, edited by j. w. loy, 225– 38. west point, ny: leisure press. roberts, john m., and brian sutton-smith. 1962. “child training and game involvement.” ethnology 1:166–85. ________. 1966. “cross-cultural correlates of games of chance.” behavior science notes 1:131–44. roberts, john m., brian sutton-smith, and adam kendon. 1963. “strategy in games and folk tales.” journal of social psychology 61:185–99. roberts, john m., wayne thompson, and brian sutton-smith. 1966. “expressive self-testing in driving.” human organization 25:54–63. cfr_2015_r.indb 23 11/22/15 10:41 am games and their rhetorics chick 24 schmidt, stefan. 2009. “shall we really do it again? the powerful concept of replication is neglected in the social sciences.” review of general psychology 13:90–100. stocking jr., george w. 1968. “edward burnett tylor.” in international encyclopedia of the social sciences, edited by david l. sills and robert k. merton, 170–77. new york: macmillan. stumpf, florence, and fredrick w. cozens. 1947. “some aspects of the role of games, sports, and recreational activities in the culture of modern primitive peoples: the new zealand maori.” research quarterly 18:198–218. ________. 1949. “some aspects of the role of games, sports, and recreational activities in the culture of modern primitive peoples: the fijians.” research quarterly 20:2–20. sutton-smith, brian. 1951a. “the meeting of maori and european cultures and its effects upon the unorganized games of maori children.” journal of the polynesian society 60 (2/3):93–107. ________. 1951b. “new zealand variants of the game—’buck buck’.” folklore 62:329–33. ________. 1953a. “traditional games of new zealand children.” folklore 64:411– 23. ________. 1953b. “marbles are in: some observations on the ‘seasonal’ nature of children’s games in new zealand.” western folklore 12 (3):186–93. ________. 1959. the games of new zealand children. berkeley: university of california press. ________. 1968. “games—play—daydreams.” quest 10 (1):47–58. ________. 1971. “the expressive profile.” journal of american folklore 84:80–92. ________. 1973. child psychology. new york: appleton-century croft. ________. 1989. “games as models of power.” in the content of culture: constants and variants: studies in honor of john m. roberts, edited by ralph bolton, 3–18. new haven, ct: human relations area files. ________. 1993a. “suggested rhetorics in adult play theories.” journal of play theory & research 1:102–16. ________. 1993b. “play rhetorics and toy rhetorics.” journal of play theory & research 1:239–50. ________. 1995. “conclusion: the persuasive rhetorics of play.” in the future of play theory: a multidisciplinary inquiry into the contributions of brian sutton-smith, edited by anthony d. pellegrini, 275–95. albany, ny: suny press. ________. 1997. the ambiguity of play. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. ________. 2008. “play theory: a personal journal and new thoughts.” american journal of play 1:80–123. sutton-smith, brian, and, diana kelly-byrne. 1984. “the idealization of play.” in play in animals and humans, edited by peter k. smith, 305–21. london: basil blackwell. sutton-smith, brian, john m. roberts, and robert m. kozelka. 1963. “game involvement in adults.” journal of social psychology 60:15–30. cfr_2015_r.indb 24 11/22/15 10:41 am chick games and their rhetorics 25 sutton-smith, brian, and john m. roberts. 1964. “rubrics of competitive behavior.” journal of genetic psychology 105:13–37. ________. 1967. “studies of an elementary game of strategy.” genetic psychology monographs 75:3–42. ________. 1970. “the cross-cultural and psychological study of games.” in the cross-cultural analysis of sport and games, edited by gunther lueschen, 100–8. champaign, il: stipes publishing company. ________. 1981. “play, games, and sports.” in handbook of cross-cultural psychology, vol. 4: developmental psychology, edited by alastair heron and harry c. triandis, 425–71. boston: allyn and bacon, inc. sutton-smith, brian, and benjamin g rosenberg. 1970. the sibling. oxford, u.k.: holt, rinehart, and winston. ________. 1961. “sixty years of historical change in the game preferences of american children.” journal of american folklore 74 (291):17–46. textor, robert b. 1967. a cross-cultural summary. new haven, ct: human relations area files. tylor, edward b. 1879. “on the game of patolli in ancient mexico, and its probably asiatic origin.” journal of the anthropological institute of great britain and ireland 8:116–31. widmeyer, w. neil, and john w. loy. 1989. “dynamic duos: an analysis of the relationship between group composition and group performance in women’s doubles tennis teams.” in the content of culture: constants and variants: studies in honor of john m. roberts, edited by ralph bolton, 77–99. new haven, ct: human relations area files. wright state university, boonshoft school of medicine 2015. “fels longitudinal study history.” https://medicine.wright.edu/lifespan-health-research-center/ fels-longitudinal-study/history. accessed 6 september 2015. cfr_2015_r.indb 25 11/22/15 10:41 am cfr_2015_r.indb 26 11/22/15 10:41 am 27 sutton-smith’s five easy pieces jay mechling brian sutton-smith was a sprite. i searched my vocabulary far and wide and settled on this word, this reference to lively, mythological creatures among the fairies and elves. i never met anyone like him. there is a long line of anthropologists and folklorists who have studied children’s games and folklore, stretching back into the nineteenth century (bronner 1988; bronner 2011:196–247; mcneil 1988). brian belongs in that scholarly history, of course, but he was also the sort of charismatic leader a scholarly field, especially an interdisciplinary one, needs to thrive. brian was a founding father of the children’s folklore section of the american folklore society (sutton-smith 2008:96) in 1978, and by the time i joined the association for the anthropological study of play (then taasp, now just tasp, dropping the narrower disciplinary designation) in 1978, i could see in both organizations how his energy and personality and intelligence was at the center of both groups. he was the force behind the children’s folklore section’s collaborating on a first-ever “sourcebook” for the study of children’s folklore (sutton-smith, mechling, johnson, and mcmahon 1995). i first met brian at the meeting of taasp at the university of notre dame (indiana) in 1978. i came from an interdisciplinary home of american studies, where i had all my degrees and my academic employment, and on the recommendation of an american studies friend, bernard “barney” mergen, i decided to try a taasp meeting and present my first paper based on my fresh fieldwork with a troop of boy scouts. thanks to folklorist henry glassie, who was a fellow with me at the yale national humanities institute in 1975-76, i had moved my boy scout research from historical, documentary evidence to observational, ethnographic evidence in the field—in this case, the summer encampment of a california boy scout troop high in the sierra nevada. by the time of the taasp call for papers and then meeting, i was ready to present my first paper based on that work (mechling 1980). at that taasp meeting, i saw first-hand brian’s genuine love of and enthusiasm for the study of play, especially the play of children and adolescents. i am certain that my great affection for taasp and for brian was that first encounter, where he treated me like a colleague whose work was intensely interesting to him. there were no academic hierarchies or accompanying snobbism at those taasp meetings, in part because everyone there was studying something thought “trivial” by disciplinary colleagues back home (see brian’s “triviality barrier” essay, discussed below) and partly because the gathering was so interdisciplinary. someone there could be a famous giant in his or her home discipline but at taasp people were unlikely to know that. you were just brian or barney or garry or jay. i think the best way to honor the memory of brian sutton-smith and his work is to give people unfamiliar with his work an easy way to access his thinking on the play of children and adolescents. i have selected five key essays which, if cfr_2015_r.indb 27 11/22/15 10:41 am sutton-smith’s five easy pieces mechling 28 you read nothing else by brian, would give you a good enough grasp of what he had to say to us and why he is so important to the study of the folk cultures of children and adolescents. some familiar with brian’s massive work might choose a different five; these are mine, essays i return to for ideas and a reminder of why we (i) pursue the study of children’s cultures. and, seriously, i see something new in these essays each time i reread them. what more could you ask of an essay? i do not offer here summaries of each essay. instead, i provide something of a reader’s guide that signals what i find to be important in the essay. i also show the connections between the essays. i refer often to my own work to testify to the fount of ideas i draw upon in each of these five essays. i take them in chronological order. one final note. i have struggled with what to call brian in this article—suttonsmith or s-s for short or simply “brian.” i have chosen “brian,” which is probably too informal for an article somewhere between a personal reminiscence and a scholarly discussion of his ideas, but “brian” seems right to me. i. brian sutton-smith. 1959. “a formal analysis of game meaning.” western folklore 18:13–24. brian began his study of children’s folklore with his dissertation, eventually published as a history of children’s play: new zealand, 1840-1950 (1982). he had already published the folkgames of children in 1973. the 1959 “formal analysis” article reflects brian’s dissertation work and his attempt to take a scientific approach (as a developmental psychologist) to the study of children’s games. anthropologists and others had been collecting children’s games since the late nineteenth century, but brian wanted to establish a more systematic, scientific, reproducible approach to describing and analyzing meanings of games. in part he wanted to elevate the legitimacy of the study of children’s games and children’s folklore in general (see the “triviality barrier” article, below), but he also realized that the scientific approach would require the comparative study of games across cultures to see the ways cultures shape children’s games and play. to accomplish his goals and bring other scholars into the circle of those studying children’s games, brian’s strategy in the “formal analysis” article is to describe, categorize, and analyze a single game called “bar the door” in new zealand, but going by many names in the united states (perhaps “red rover” is the most familiar to american children). brian describes the game briefly and then proceeds to analyze its play, proposing a system of “ludic analysis” based on five major game features: (1) the game challenge, (2) player participation, (3) player performance, (4) the spatial scene, and (5) the temporal structure. i will not reproduce his analysis here, but i do want to point to a few important points he introduces in his analysis. first, brian’s analysis of this “central person game” (where one player has the power over many others, a central feature of “chase and capture” games like tag) shows his interest in the ways children’s games reflect their lives in cfr_2015_r.indb 28 11/22/15 10:41 am mechling sutton-smith’s five easy pieces 29 formal and informal institutions, in this case their lives in families and schools, where children have little power in relation to the “central persons” (parents and teachers) in charge of those institutions. the reader might think that brian’s point is that games are “anticipatory socialization” for their adult roles, and there is some of that here, but brian goes beyond what he would consider a narrowly reductionist, sociobiological understanding of the functions of play. brian always attributed more agency to children than do most adults, including many scholars who study children’s lives. no, brian’s linking the “game challenge” in central person games like “bar the door” to their lives in institutions is in the service of understanding how children experience the game. even when describing and analyzing the formal structures of a game and the meanings of that structure, brian never considers the analysis complete (or even adequate) without some effort to understand the experience of the game. the second thing to notice in this article is brian’s attention (this early, 1959) to the effects of the mass media on children’s games and folklore. he notes that the earlier animal symbolism and fabulous characters in the play of their games has been replaced (in the postwar era of television) with “modern symbolisms of the mass media” (p. 19). he later picks up this appropriation of mass media by children in his 1981 book, the folkstories of children, and in his commentary on ethnographic observations by his students in preschool and elementary school play settings (e.g., see the “playfighting” article, below). third, brian is ever-attentive to the similarities and differences between the sexes in children’s play and folklore. i discuss his unique book chapter, “the play of girls,” below, but in this 1959 article he observes that the increasing mixing of boy and girls on the playground has meant that girls are as likely as boys to play games like “bar the door” and that the girls sometimes invent “feminine variants” of the game (p. 19). fourth, brian’s portrait of both boys and girls at play far from romanticizes children; in fact, he understands fully that children’s play is sometimes violent, mean, aggressive, obscene, and profane. chasing and capture (tagging) games provide children with the perfect frame (bateson 1972) for expressing aggression, sometimes real aggression but more often stylized aggression (p. 20). the folklore of male friendship groups depends on stylized aggression as the alternative to real aggression, and one of the paradoxes in this stylized aggression in games and play in boys’ folk groups (e.g., rough-and-tumble playfighting) is that the stylized aggression is a signal of closeness and trust. similarly, brian sees value in the stylized fear in the chasing and capture games. “in the game,” he writes, “fear may be experienced and yet it is not limitless. it exists within a controlled setting. the players control the fear, the fear does not control the players” (p. 20). in fact, the play frame of the chase and capture game provides a safe place and time for the child to experiment with power and control; the central person game, for example, temporarily gives power to even the less skilled player (p. 21). in the 1960s brian collaborated with anthropologist john roberts on the crosscultural study of games, a collaboration garry chick discusses in this special issue. using ethnographic evidence and at times the human relations area file, brian and roberts formulated and tested with the available data hypotheses about cfr_2015_r.indb 29 11/22/15 10:41 am sutton-smith’s five easy pieces mechling 30 the ways games (e.g., games of chance, of skill, of strategy, and combinations of these) reflect the cultures represented in the ethnographies (e.g., roberts and sutton-smith 1962). the connection is not simply anticipatory socialization, letting youth play at games that provide skills for their lives as adults in institutions, though there is some of that in the games. the relationship is more complicated. my own example from my work with a boy scout troop at their camp uses the roberts and sutton-smith categories and thesis to understand some of the games the troop played, in particular their “treasure hunt” game and ensuing “nugget auction” at the evening campfire. in my analysis (mechling 2001:254–57) i observed that, although the main message of the boy scout camp activities is the notion that hard work (skill plus strategy) yields success, a message in keeping with the ethos of capitalism, the game of treasure hunt and the nugget auction actually undermined that message by having luck play such a large role in both games. so although the games look like anticipatory socialization preparing the boys for a life in a capitalistic society, the games revealed (and disguised, the value of folklore) an ugly truth about capitalism. it is in folklore, like games, that young people can be schooled in the cultural contradictions of capitalism. ii. brian sutton-smith. 1970. “the psychology of childlore: the triviality barrier.” western folklore 29:1–8. if folklorists studying the play of children and adolescents know any piece of writing by brian, it is probably this 1970 essay, a plea for scholars to take seriously what he calls “childlore.” advanced, industrialist societies like ours tend to value work foremost and play only for its temporary, restorative relief from work (as “recreation”). in such a society, brian argues, “fun” (a main feature of play) is thought to be trivial. work requires a “mature” attitude in contrast with the “immaturity” of play. people in an industrial, competitive culture like ours value instrumental behavior more than expressive behavior. and apparently so do scholars of play, argues brian, in that those scholars tend to emphasize the functionalist interpretation of the instrumental behavior—play as anticipatory socialization for what skills the adult will need in that society, for example—rather than add to their analysis an understanding of the expressive pleasure of play. the child’s play is “autotelic,” self-sustaining, fun (p. 4). a developmental psychologist himself, brian makes the surprising complaint that psychology has “little to offer” in understanding these expressive dimensions of play. the humanists are the scholars who understand and appreciate the joyful, expressive, autotelic dimensions of play (p. 4). for this reason, brian insists that the study of play must be interdisciplinary. there is room for the developmentalists, of course, but the literary scholars, the historians, the art historians, and the humanistic social scientists provide necessary views. actually, brian sees two new (in 1970) areas of psychological research that promise an understanding of expressive behavior—research on creativity, and observational cfr_2015_r.indb 30 11/22/15 10:41 am mechling sutton-smith’s five easy pieces 31 research (in head start and poverty programs) that temper the sociobiological enthusiasms of developmental psychology and show us that “there is no natural and universal language of lore for all children” (p. 5). sociohistorical forces lead to different “expressive formal systems” in childlore (p. 5; see goodwin 1991 for an example of the work by one of his students). to demonstrate the power of an interdisciplinary analysis of the particular influences of culture on childlore, brian offers an example from the work he did with anthropologist john roberts studying children’s games cross-culturally (see above). the example is the game of tick tack toe (pp. 6–8). i shall not reproduce that discussion here but want to note simply that understanding the cultural variants in playing this seemingly simple game, including the gender differences, require perspectives from anthropology and history. iii. brian sutton-smith. 1979. “the play of girls.” in women in context: becoming female, ed. by c. b. kopp and m. kirkpatrick, 228–57. new york: plenum. we have seen in the first two articles discussed here that from his earliest work brian was interested in gender differences in children’s play and childlore. this interest was not unusual among developmental psychologists, but their studies in controlled settings (e.g., schools and labs) spoke only to issues of human development. brian was rare among the developmental psychologists in that he wanted to study children in natural settings, where children exercise a great deal more freedom and agency than they do in classrooms and labs. he wanted to understand children’s lives as much as possible as they were experiencing everyday life, not through the controlled lenses of adults who themselves projected so much upon the children. the scholarly and everyday cultural landscapes of the 1970s saw the rise of feminist theory and its challenge to the generalizations in psychology, history, and other disciplines based on the study of men’s lives. in psychology, perhaps the most influential book coming out of this era was carol gilligan’s in a different voice (1982), in which she sparred with lawrence kohlberg and his characterization of girls as “less mature” than boys in their moral reasoning. not less mature, argued gilligan, just different. the feminist research of the 1970s provided the ideas for the rise of interdisciplinary women’s studies courses and programs in universities. the sociocultural landscape in the u.s. was changing, as well. the social movements of the 1960s challenged the patriarchy. the women’s movement and, after stonewall in 1969, the gay rights movement challenged masculine, heteronormative understandings of gender and sexuality. laws in cities, states, and at the federal level increasingly forbade discrimination based on gender, and although it failed to gain the necessary number of ratifications from state legislatures by the 1979 deadline, the proposed (in 1972) equal rights amendment cfr_2015_r.indb 31 11/22/15 10:41 am sutton-smith’s five easy pieces mechling 32 (“equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the united states or by any state on account of sex”) to the constitution came very close to passing. what did become federal law was title ix of the u.s. education amendments of 1972, a law of significant relevance to the play of girls and young women. title ix forbids discrimination in school activities on the basis of gender, thereby opening to girls and women equal opportunities in organized sports. in many ways title ix is the most important, empowering social experiment in the past forty years, and brian understood that. his 1979 book chapter was published in that new world. in an effort to push the study of play beyond the textual approach and into the realm of context, brian here proposes that “sports themselves can be used as the metaphor for preliminary thinking about the context of play,” and his communication approach to sports requires seeing the roles and performances of the “quadralogue”: coach, player, co-player, and spectators (p. 231). brian then proceeds to review the current research on the play of girls using this “sportive theory of play.” here is what i find so significant about this chapter by brian, apart from its being the first comprehensive survey of what we know about the play of girls (we need another). first, brian shows how the arc of the history of girls’ play is toward bringing it closer to boys’ play. the games of girls shifted in the twentieth century from a focus on themes of status and marriage to themes of egalitarian competition (p. 233). title ix accelerated that change in the 1970s, notes brian, as girls and young women have access to team sports previously played exclusively by boys and men. note that brian added an “epilogue” to this chapter just as he was preparing it for publication, an epilogue that discusses some research by one of his students on the advice manuals for professional women in the 1970s, advice manuals that recognize that one of the goals of title ix was to give girls and young women a socialization in play and games closely resembling the socialization experiences boys and young men bring to the professional, bureaucratic, patriarchal organizations the women were entering in increasing numbers in the 1970s (pp. 251–54). second, brian’s survey of girls’ play and games (always drawing comparisons with boys’ play and games) introduces ethnic differences as another source of variation. brian’s chapter takes advantage of the new attention to ethnicity and social class in the 1960s and 1970s. oddly missing from this chapter is the attention brian pays elsewhere to the influences of the mass-media (especially television) on girls’ play and games. he and his graduate students at the university of pennsylvania were paying attention to this influence at the same time (e.g., sutton-smith 1981). it is important to recognize before leaving the discussion of this important chapter that brian mentored a good many female graduate students and young female scholars, and they, in turn, have provided us with the close ethnography of children’s play, especially the play of games and girls, which only female researchers can accomplish. i have in mind scholars like diana kelly-byrne (1989), linda hughes (1993; 1995), marjorie goodwin (1991; 2006), and felicia r. mcmahon (2007), among others. cfr_2015_r.indb 32 11/22/15 10:41 am mechling sutton-smith’s five easy pieces 33 iv. brian sutton-smith and diana kelly-byrne. 1984. “the masks of play.” in the masks of play, ed. by brian sutton-smith and diana kelly-byrne, 184– 99. new york: leisure press. i return to this essay more often than to any other by sutton-smith. a fan of bateson’s work, i also recognize that bateson’s idea of the play frame and its paradoxes betrays an uncharacteristically romantic view from someone whose scientific credentials and rhetoric do not really prepare the reader to see that romantic notion. but sutton-smith, also a fan of bateson’s theory of play and fantasy, saw early the romantic streak in bateson. goffman’s appropriation in frame analysis (1974) of bateson’s notion of frame recognizes what bateson apparently did not—namely, that not all players are in the frame voluntarily, that players bring to the frame different power, and that some players can use the play frame for ulterior motives. hence, goffman argues that all social reality is constructed, maintained, and repaired using the same communication devices as one finds in the confidence game, a social constructionist view that i have embraced and used since reading berger and luckmann (1967) in the early 1970s. sutton-smith and kelly-byrne’s (hereafter s-s/k-b) way of making this point is to provide a typology and examples of the ways people mask other motives with the play frame, as when a sibling uses the “i was only playing” defense when using the play frame to hurt a sibling more than necessary in a game. i have found the idea of the masks of play, including the “deep play” geertz writes about, endlessly useful in my writing (e.g., about deep play by warriors and veterans—see mechling 2012; wallis and mechling, in press). on re-reading the essay for this occasion, though, i have seen some things that are there—some things that have always been there—that have slipped my mind. for instance, s-s/k-b take a gentle swipe at all the authors in the volume they edited, a volume of papers first delivered at a taasp meeting. it seems to s-s/k-b that despite all the research on play presented at the conference and in this volume, the “most general strategy for not studying child play seems to be to write articles on their functions and pretty much to ignore the detailed moment by moment description of the experience itself as if we already know what that experience is” (1984:186). ouch. that sentence summarizes beautifully and accusingly the purely functionalist approach to play, a critique s-s repeatedly made throughout his career. he did not deny that play has functions, but why (he asks here and elsewhere) stand so far away from play that the scholar cannot attempt to express the inexpressible, the pure joy and fun that the player experiences when entering that state of flow described by csikszentmihalyi (1975)? amidst all the analysis in the ambiguity of play (1997), brian’s point in that book is that is that we need to understand that play is not merely instrumental, that it is expressive, consummatory, joyful, and fun. this is why brian appreciated so much the research that somehow approached the child’s experience of play, not an easy task for adults trying to access the “experience” a child is having while playing. cfr_2015_r.indb 33 11/22/15 10:41 am sutton-smith’s five easy pieces mechling 34 it may seem contradictory that, immediately after making the point that a functionalist analysis of play may be a necessary but not sufficient moment in understanding play, s-s/k-b begin their catalog of ways play masks motives and ways other frames mask play, a “function” of play. but s-s/k-b are alert to the pleasures of these masked activities, most of which boil down to the pleasure of exercising power in a situation. “children would rather argue the game than play it. the joy is the power of control rather than the play” (1984:190). note how between brian’s earlier interest (with john roberts) in the structures and functions of games and the 1984 “masks” essay, brian has come to see more interesting the pleasures of power children experience in playing and arguing the game. the example s-s/k-b use in the section of this essay on “masks for power” is childhood initiation rites, a topic of great usefulness to me as i have explored folk initiations in scouting and in fraternities and sports teams (mechling 2008b; 2009; see also bronner 2006; 2012). usually the players in children’s folk initiations, both those being initiated and those doing the initiation, are enjoying the event, though a few of those doing the hazing or initiating may be using the ritual or play frame as a mask for other motives. s-s/k-b recognize that a great deal of the power play in children’s and adolescents’ folk initiations puts forbidden parts of the body and taboo functions (urination, for example) at the center of the invented initiation, just as they are in much of children’s lore (mechling 1986). brian understood that children’s lore is profane and “dirty”; i think that is why he appreciated my first taasp paper on the game of poison pit played by the boys scouts i studied, a game involving urine and references to menstruation (mechling 1980; 2001). when geertz (1983) outlined the qualities of “common sense,” a type of knowledge deeply implicated in the study of folk ideas and folklore, he added “earthy” after a list that includes “naturalness,” “practicalness,” and “immethodicalness.” “earthiness” is geertz’s (1983:93) polite term for transgressive, profane, obscene, and taboo. as far as brian was concerned, if the scholar clings to the romantic view of the child and ignores the fact that children enjoy forbidden, obscene, profane, and cruel play, that scholar has no hope of understanding the child’s experience of play. in my own work i have found very useful the s-s/k-b discussion of play as a “mask for danger,” recognizing the thrill and pleasure of risk-taking. they make room for what geertz (1973) calls “deep play,” a phrase originated by jeremy bentham for play in which the stakes are so high (loss of fortune, health, or life) that the play is irrational from the utilitarian standpoint. s-s/k-b had their college students give accounts of their own experiences with dangerous, “deep play,” and the authors reproduce several examples (college students continue the patterns of adolescent play). even without the irrational risk, “dark play” (with death, for example) carries pleasure. i see this in the sorts of vernacular photography (snapshots) by warriors (mechling 2012) and in the accounts of dark play in warriors’ memoirs and fiction (wallis and mechling, in press). s-s/k-b, near the end of this chapter, come back to their critique of the scholars of play, and their surprising turn is to accuse even bateson of creating a metamask. put briefly, they focus on bateson’s point (in his “theory of play and fantasy,” the foundational essay on play frames) that “the peculiarity of play … cfr_2015_r.indb 34 11/22/15 10:41 am mechling sutton-smith’s five easy pieces 35 is that it is a mixture of primary and secondary process (s-s and k-b 1984:195; bateson 1972:185). s-s/k-b fault bateson for dwelling only on the secondary (conscious) process of play’s psychodynamics while neglecting the primary (unconscious) process: because his [bateson’s] own concern was largely with communication and metacommunication, he has made it easier to talk about the logic of play than about its illogic. unwittingly, he has contributed to the idealization and bowdlerization of play, which has been a part of the twentieth century’s “scientific” approach to play. (sutton-smith and kelly-byrne 1984:196) the corrective prescribed by s-s/k-b is to bring to the analysis of play both “bateson’s paradox” and “freud’s disguise,” to see the ways play both is like a dream (the title of bateson’s essay is “toward a theory of play and fantasy,” after all) and not like a dream; play both is about reality and not about reality (p. 196). the authors propose that we who study play “combine the freudian view of ambivalence with the batesonian attitude to paradox” (p. 197), and they suggest the neologism play as paraguise to capture the “scientific unidealized study of play” they hope for. v. sutton-smith, b., j. gerstmyer, and a. meckley. 1988. “playfighting as folkplay amongst preschool children.” western folklore 47 (3):161–76. when teaching and writing about bateson’s frame theory of play and fantasy, i have always found playfighting to be the best example of framed communication where the messages exchanged within the frame (ruled by the metamessage “this is play”) do not mean what they would mean outside the frame. most recently, john paul wallis and i found in bateson’s paradoxical playfighting frame the key to understanding why soldiers and marines in combat zones engage in rough-andtumble (r&t) playfighting, a surprising example of deep play when played in an active combat zone (wallis and mechling, in press). as brian and his co-authors note, playfighting has been of interest to scholars of play for a long time, but what brian’s team of graduate students brings to the topic is access to philadelphia preschools and the ability to record actual instances of playfighting in “natural settings,” in context. brian and his co-authors plunge into the 1980s debate about “war play” and whether children should be allowed to play with toy guns, a debate that rages today (mechling 2008a). this is a topic of great concern to parents and teachers, sometimes to politicians, and to the general public. the death of a twelve-year-old boy, tamir rice, in cleveland on march 2, 2015, shot dead almost instantly by a police officer arriving on the scene and taking the boy’s pellet gun for a real one, is only one among many tragedies and near-tragedies involving children’s play cfr_2015_r.indb 35 11/22/15 10:41 am sutton-smith’s five easy pieces mechling 36 with toy guns. so the debate brian and his students entered in the 1980s is far from old and far from trivial. what brian’s team of graduate students can contribute to this debate is actual ethnographic description and analysis of children’s playfighting. brian gave his student researchers two tasks in their fieldwork in the preschools: “to look for the relationships between playfighting and aggression and for any distinctions between them, and to look for the influences of television and of the teachers upon the children’s play” (p. 164). with this assignment, the researchers worked in nine preschools, taking notes on the play of two hundred children aged three to five years. as in my discussion of the first four “easy pieces,” i shall not summarize the findings here except to say what i find so useful in the article for my own work. first, boys’ drive to play with guns is almost impossible to extinguish, even in those schools (e.g., university-related schools and quaker schools) where the antigun, anti-wartoy policies were most strict (p. 169–70). the power of that drive obviously is something scholars and policymakers need to be able to understand. second, most of the aggression in these playfighting games is stylized aggression, often cloaked literally in the folk-contrived costumes suggesting superheroes and fantasy characters the children observe on television and in movies (p. 168). while the authors do not explicitly make the points i draw from this observation, i want to make the connections here. i concur with jones (2002) that children need early experience with stylized aggression, especially as an alternative to real aggression. in fact, brian’s students discovered cases where the children actually controlled and contained the real aggression of a player by making him abide by the rules of the fantasy play and stylized aggression (p. 174). third, and still on this topic of stylized aggression, the researchers found what was to them a surprising degree of folk-imposed sex segregation, and it was primarily (by far) the boys who participated in the playfighting (p. 171). looking back at brian’s “the play of girls” and his brief discussion of the changes wrought by title ix, one wonders where and how girls and young women acquire the skills of stylized aggression they will need to perform in organizational cultures that still resemble the culture of the male friendship group as honed on playing field. fourth, i value the ethnographic confirmation in this work that television programs aimed at kids clearly influence the playfighting. and the fieldwork observations should put to rest (but they won’t—this is a resistant belief) adults’ worried view that aggression and violence in children’s television programs results in real violence and aggression in children. what the ethnographic evidence shows is what i found to be true in the boy scout troop i studied, namely, that children and youth appropriate from mass-mediated, popular culture those symbols and narrative themes they find useful in their own folk cultures, their own folkplay. put differently, those adults who still believe in the direct influence of popular culture on children fail to appreciate the true agency of children and youth. and the only way to appreciate fully that agency is to observe carefully and for prolonged periods of time the actual ways children play. cfr_2015_r.indb 36 11/22/15 10:41 am mechling sutton-smith’s five easy pieces 37 conclusion the most recent of the sutton-smith “five easy pieces” i have recommended here was published in 1988, very nearly thirty years ago. brian continued writing through those years, and luckily for us he wrote a substantial memoir about his life and work in 2008 for the newly launched american journal of play. that memoir, “play theory: a personal journey and new thoughts” (2008), recounts the phases of his thinking about play and sketches his journey from naughty play in his new zealand youth to the project he was working on in his last days, a book that was to be titled play as emotional survival, ideas which he presented in his keynote address at a tasp conference in 2007 at the strong national museum of play (which holds the sutton-smith papers). in that address brian explained that (as the handout outline for his address puts it) the address and book would be “my response to my deconstruction of play theories without providing an alternative in the ambiguity of play, 1997.” what is clear from brian’s lecture is that he was drawn more and more to a darwinian explanation for the power and durability of the play instinct. neuroscientist antonio damasio’s 2005 book, descartes’s error (see also damasio 1999) gave brian scientific support for his belief that within us is a dualism, a struggle between the “primary emotions” of fear, anger, happiness, and so on, all expressed in play one way or the other, and the “secondary emotions” (pride, envy, guilt, shame), which “act as basic play regulators from rules to referees” (keynote lecture abstract 2007). play’s evolutionary role, argues brian, is “to bond all of these opposites (a synergy) into this new form of behavior” (keynote lecture abstract 2007). in evolutionary terms, as animals evolved from the “reflexivity” of reptiles to the “reflectivity” of mammals, play emerges as a behavior that enables mammals “to balance these two adaptive systems [reflexivity and reflectivity] without choosing the wrong one on any given occasion” (keynote lecture abstract 2007). play is “an alternative theatric synthesis of reflexive and reflective response systems (which is supported in neural terms by the interaction between amygdala and frontal lobes)” (keynote lecture handout 2007). in terms of my own research, for example, the stylized aggression in playfighting among male warriors in combat zones provides a “theatric synthesis” of the two adaptive systems, reflexivity and reflectivity, under stressful circumstances (wallis and mechling, in press). brian did not live to complete this work, but he left us enough of a trail for us to follow him toward a theory of play that incorporates the most recent thinking in evolution and brain science. in the 2008 article he called this his “third theory of play” (the first being “play as a viability variable” and the second being “culturally relative play forms”) and he outlined the theory in terms of four “adaptive layers” (2008:113–17). it is up to us to see where brian’s third theory of play leads us in understanding the play experience in children, adolescents, and adults. in all of brian’s work, then, from early to late, you can find the distinct perspective he began with, i.e., a commitment to understanding children’s play as experienced by the children, a firm confidence that children’s experiences can be studied scientifically without losing the magic of their play, a respect for cfr_2015_r.indb 37 11/22/15 10:41 am sutton-smith’s five easy pieces mechling 38 the agency of children, a refusal to romanticize the child, an understanding that children can be mean and obscene and profane, a commitment to championing children’s right to free play, and an insistence that functionalist analysis of play must be complemented by analysis that understands the autotelic nature of play. sadly, what has changed is the flow of ethnographic work directed by and inspired by brian. it is difficult to see whether the decline in ethnographic studies of the folk cultures of children and youth is due to waning interest by scholars or to the cultural and legal difficulties of studying children in “natural settings” rather than in classrooms and laboratories, controlled settings subject to the governmental and institutional rules for studying “human subjects.” there are occasional bright spots, like clark’s in a younger voice (2011), and clark shares brian’s views of how to study children (see also clark 1995). in gatherings of folklorists and others who know the unique value of ethnographic study of children’s lives, though, scholars often exchange stories and laments about the difficulty of getting their university irbs (institutional review boards—those committees that approve research with human subjects) to even understand the nature of qualitative research on children in natural settings, much less approve the research. usually staffed by natural scientists and social scientists who take seriously the word “scientist” in their field and only rarely staffed by the lone humanist or two, most irbs see our fieldwork with children as unscientific and maybe dangerous. indeed, another genre of stories shared by male folklorists who have attempted to study children in the natural settings of playgrounds and neighborhood streets and beaches is the “the time mothers on the playground called the police when i was trying to talk with their kids” story. parents’ concerns are understandable, if overblown (see best 1993), but a combination of the difficulty of getting a research project approved by the irb and then, if approved, the difficulty of getting adults in those natural settings to understand and accept the research methods of fieldwork with children has meant that many folklorists find it much easier to abandon the ethnography of children’s lives altogether. this is a great loss. brian’s grand project, passed down to his students and to those like-minded colleagues who knew him, and the principles guiding his project are in danger of being extinguished. i do not have a solution to the irb problem or to the problems in american culture that nurture fear for and over-protection of children (e.g., witness the recent debate over “free range children” parenting practices and the actual legal trouble for parents who let their kids roam free). we will always have our own children and grandchildren and nieces and nephews to study and write about, but that “sample” is limited and skewed. i wish, for example, that we had enough fieldwork based on the play of girls in formal and informal settings that someone will write an updated version of “the play of girls.” brian never accepted the ways adults (parents, teachers, coaches, politicians) project their fears onto children or the many ways adults try to contain and control the play of children. my wish is that this very personal review of five of the essays by brian that i return to again and again will recruit readers to brian’s “project,” that there are enough sprites or even sprites-in-training reading this that we will cfr_2015_r.indb 38 11/22/15 10:41 am mechling sutton-smith’s five easy pieces 39 conspire somehow to continue brian’s work, even against the bureaucratic and cultural forces against us. for the children. works cited bateson, gregory. 1972. “a theory of play and fantasy.” in steps to an ecology of mind, 177–93. new york: ballantine. berger, peter l., and thomas luckmann. 1967. the social construction of reality: a treatise on the sociology of knowledge. new york: anchor books. best, joel. 1993. threatened children: rhetoric and concern about child victims. chicago: university of chicago press. bronner, simon j. 1988. american children’s folklore. little rock, ar: august house. ___________. 2006. crossing the line: violence, play, and drama in naval equator traditions. amsterdam, nl: amsterdam university press. ________. 2011. explaining traditions: folk behavior in modern culture. lexington: university press of kentucky. ________. 2012. campus traditions: folklore from the old-time college to the modern mega-university. jackson: university press of mississippi. clark, cindy dell. 1995. flights of fancy, leaps of faith: children’s myths in contemporary america. chicago, il: university of chicago press. ________. 2011. in a younger voice: doing child-centered qualitative research. new york: oxford university press. csikszentmihalyi, mihaly. 1975. beyond boredom and anxiety: experiencing flow in work and play. san francisco, ca: jossey-bass. damasio, antonio. 1999. the feeling of what happens. boston: houghton mifflin harcourt. ________. 2005. descartes’ error: emotion, reason, and the human brain. new york: penguin. geertz, clifford. 1973. “deep play: notes on the balinese cockfight.” in the interpretation of cultures: selected essays by clifford geertz, 412–53. new york: basic books. ________. 1983. “common sense as a cultural system.” in local knowledge: further essays in interpretative anthropology, 73–93. new york: basic books. gilligan, carol. 1982. in a different voice. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. goffman, erving. 1974. frame analysis: an essay on the organization of experience. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. goodwin, marjorie harness. 1991. he-said-she-said: talk as social organization among black children. bloomington: indiana university press. ________. 2006. the hidden life of girls: games of stance, status, and exclusion. hoboken, nj: wiley-blackwell. hughes, linda a. 1993. “‘you have to do it with style’: girls’ games and girls’ gaming.” in feminist theory and the study of folklore, edited by s. t. hollis, l. pershing, and m. j. young, 130–48. urbana: university of illinois press. cfr_2015_r.indb 39 11/22/15 10:41 am sutton-smith’s five easy pieces mechling 40 ________. 1995. “children’s gaming.” in children’s folklore: a sourcebook, edited by b. sutton-smith, j. mechling, t. johnson, and f, mcmahon, 93–119. logan: utah state university press. jones, gerard. 2002. killing monsters: why children need fantasy, super heroes, and make-believe violence. new york: basic books. kelly-byrne, diana. 1989. a child’s play life: an ethnographic study. new york: teacher’s college press. kopp, claire b., ed., with martha kirkpatrick. 1979. becoming female: perspectives on development. new york: plenum press mcmahon, felicia r. 2007. not just child’s play: emerging tradition and the lost boys of sudan. oxford: university press of mississippi. mcneil, w. k. 1988. “introduction.” in american children’s folklore, by simon j. bronner, 11–23. little rock, ar: august house publishers. annotated edition. mechling, jay. 1980. “sacred and profane play in the boy scouts of america.” in play and culture, edited by helen b. schwartzman, 206–13. west point, ny: leisure press. ________. 1986. “children’s folklore.” in folk groups and folklore genres: an introduction, edited by elliott oring, 91–120. logan: utah state university press. ________. 2001. on my honor: boy scouts and the making of american youth. chicago, il: university of chicago press. ________. 2008a. “gun play.” american journal of play 1 (2):192–209. ________. 2008b. “paddling and the repression of the feminine in male hazing.” thymos: journal of boy studies 2 (1):60–75. ________. 2009. “is hazing play?” in transactions at play, edited by cindy dell clark, 45–61. lanham, md: university press of america. ________. 2012. soldier snaps. in warrior ways: explorations in modern military folklore, edited by eric a. eliason and tad tuleja, 222–47. logan: utah state university press. roberts, john m., and brian sutton-smith. 1962. “child training and game involvement.” ethnology 1 (2):166–85. sutton-smith, brian. 1973. the folkgames of children. austin: university of texas press. ________. 1981. the folkstories of children. philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press. ________. 1982. a history of children’s play: new zealand, 1840-1950. philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press. ________. 1997. the ambiguity of play. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. ________. 2007. “play as emotional survival: keynote address abstract.” ipa-tasp joint annual conference, april 27. ________. 2008. “play theory: a personal journey and new thoughts.” american journal of play 1 (1):80–122. sutton-smith, brian, jay mechling, thomas w. johnson, and felicia r. mcmahon. 1995. children’s folklore: a sourcebook. new york: garland publishing, inc. wallis, john paul, and jay mechling. in press. “devil dogs and dog piles.” western folklore 74 (3), forthcoming. cfr_2015_r.indb 40 11/22/15 10:41 am 41 inventing the discipline while you break it all down: an essay in memory of brian sutton-smith anna beresin after i stumbled across his 1986 book, toys as culture, in a bookstore in boston, i moved to philadelphia to study with brian sutton-smith. jointly appointed in the department of folklore and at the graduate school of education at the university of pennsylvania, he ran the interdisciplinary study of human development program with a giddy seriousness that kept students at the edge of their seats. his reading lists there were the most varied i ever encountered, and this essay offers a miniature reading list in order to share the breadth of his genius. psychology, particularly freudian psychology and cognitive psychology, was the base discipline in my independent studies with him. as admirers of d.w. winnicott, erik erikson, and jean piaget, he had all of his students challenge psychology’s assumptions by reading ethnographies of mead, benedict, levine, and whiting. for our children’s culture bible, we had schwartzman’s transformations: the anthropology of children’s play, and with it, the folkloristic historical collections of iona and peter opie, along with william wells newell’s paradoxes. folklore and anthropology were his answers to the erroneous, wide brush strokes of psychology, the neatened, expurgated versions of actual childhoods, the boredom of the textbook approach to child development. we would share fart jokes. as important as reading widely was to him, so were his reminiscences of his own childhood. his favorite new zealand recipe for guaranteed farting: fish and chips and raisins. trickery itself, to be found in the study of the festival, from bakhtin to falassi to stallybrass and whyte, emphasized to brian that the core of play is dialogic, paradoxical, a “world turned upside down” (stallybrass and white 1986). bateson was our guide to meta-communication, foucault our mirror to meta-historical analysis. hobsbawm and ranger (1983) introduced the very idea of the invention of tradition, huizinga (1949) the magic frame of play, and goffman (1959), the idea that as one plays within a frame, one plays the frame as well. the message: challenge assumptions, study real children and their folklore for counter narratives, ask who is being served by the adult perceptions of reality. play with the form of research. study animals; examine evolution. keep an eye on the playground and on video games. they keep us honest. one of sutton-smith’s own essays that deserves more attention than it has been given is the seminal “games of order and disorder” (1972). he had described games as “models of power,” yet games were no simple copies of adult culture. through his eyes we see play emerge as a methodology of inversion. and so he began to use inversion and dialogism as a way to break down the very field he was crafting. the game of academia was not just increased knowledge, but disordering the lot as you build it. challenging huizinga, sutton-smith noted play is not always voluntary. sometimes you play the game everyone else is playing, because you must, in cfr_2015_r.indb 41 11/22/15 10:41 am inventing the discipline while you break it all down: beresin 42 order to play at all. answering caillois, he demonstrated that game text in one culture could be in a totally different genre in another. dueling piaget, he cautioned against pitting assimilation over accommodation. piaget’s model did not account for destruction; it was too focused on a limited concept of progress. hollering at educational catch phrases, he observed that the opposite of play is not work. he hated the line, “play is the child’s work.” it is far more complicated than work, or not work. it is what children do. a child who does not play is a child who is ill. play is more like dreaming, than work. play is more like art or religion, a symbolic field of communication that makes life worthwhile and mysterious. he noted that play’s opposite is not work; it is depression. examining the idea of play as progress, he stated that children are not “the future.” they are in their own time, and their time here and now deserves to be playful. we can say he built a discipline of play while challenging his own and everyone else’s assumptions. play was “ambiguous” as was the very enterprise of knowledge building. to be human is to live in ambiguity, and adapt to new contexts. brian loved bad jokes, old songs, fast footwork, and children’s stories. there were worlds within worlds in children’s folk arts, and he wrote about things that others found trivial with the zeal of the art collector. his mission was to protect children’s right to be surreal, incorrect, and off-center, and to honor error as a path to thought, art, and vitality. for his best writing, see his 1961 novel, smitty does a bunk, and learn more about his childhood adventures with his very real, very loved brother. the novel centers around the adventures of brothers brin and smitty; brian was clearly the younger brin, his brother, the elder smitty. brin continuously sang and most of all wanted to be included, an observer of childhood within a children’s story. brian often recited excerpts of his folkstories of children (1981), rapturously quoting the children’s words when he wanted to demonstrate the skill children offer within their folklore. it seems fitting to take us here, words he collected from a four-year-old: once upon a time the once upon a time ate the once upon a time which ate the once upon a time and then the once upon a time which ate the once upon a time ate the princess once upon a time with the king and then the once upon a times died then the end ate the end the end the end then the end died then the end died then the end died then the end died and then the end the end the end died the end with a the end the end the end (sutton-smith 1981:114) cfr_2015_r.indb 42 11/22/15 10:41 am beresin inventing the discipline while you break it all down: 43 yet the end of a life is not the end of a life’s work. brian particularly loved rabelais, that 500 year-old writer of gargantua and pantagruel, or as i like to think of rabelais, as the precursor of jonathan swift and the inventor of cookie monster. although these words were written by french scholar denis saurat as an introduction to rabelais’s gargantua and pantagruel; every word rings true for brian (note the present tense): as for his mind, there is none better: he can argue with the subtlest … on education, we still go to him; and his criticism of the education of his day still largely holds good against ours today. against useless erudition he is splendid … his enthusiasm for science is still an inspiration … look at the absurdity of things and of men: and do not take it seriously: laugh. (saurat 1945:iv) what rabelais is for the adult carnival, brian is for the festival of children’s folklore in all its complexity, in all its grotesquery, in all its variation. a privilege to have studied with him, to have dueled with his brain, i have come to think of brian as the most intelligent, most well-read 11 year-old that ever lived. like rabelais, “as for his mind, there is none better.” works cited bahktin, mikhail m. 1968. rabelais and his world. translated by helene iswolsky. cambridge, ma: mit press. bateson, gregory. 1972. steps to an ecology of mind. new york: ballentine. benedict, ruth. 1973. an anthropologist at work. new york: avon. falassi, alessandro. 1987. time out of time: essays on the festival. albuquerque: university of new mexico press. foucault, michel. 1980. power/knowledge: selected interviews and other writings (1972-1977). new york: pantheon. freud, sigmund. 1916. wit and its relation to the unconscious. new york: moffat, yard, and co. goffman, erving. 1959. the presentation of self in everyday life. new york. doubleday. hobsbawm, eric and terrance ranger. 1983. the invention of tradition. cambridge, u.k.: cambridge university press. huizinga, johan. 1949. homo ludens: a study of the play element in culture. london: routledge and kegan paul levine, robert. 1973. culture, behavior, and personality. chicago, il: aldine. mead, margaret. 1953. coming of age in samoa: a psychological study of primitive youth for western civilization. new york: modern library. newell, william wells. 1884. games and songs of american children. new york: harper and brothers. opie, iona and opie, peter. 1967. the lore and language of school-children. oxford, u.k.: clarendon press. cfr_2015_r.indb 43 11/22/15 10:41 am inventing the discipline while you break it all down: beresin 44 ________. 1969. children’s games in street and playground: chasing, catching, seeking, hunting, racing, dueling, exerting, daring, guessing, acting, pretending. oxford, u.k.: clarendon press. piaget, jean. 1962. play, dreams, and imitation in childhood. new york: w. w. norton. saurat, denis. 1945. “introduction.” in gargantua and pantagruel by francis rabelais. london: john westhouse. schwartzman, helen. 1978. transformations: the anthropology of children’s play. new york: plenum. stallybrass, peter, and allon white. 1986. the politics and poetics of transgression. new york: cornell university press. sutton-smith, brian. 1961. smitty does a bunk. wellington, nz: price wilburn and co. ________.1972. “games of order and disorder.” paper presented to the symposium on forms of symbolic inversion at the american anthropological association, toronto. ________. 1977. “dialectics of play.” in physical activity and human well-being, edited by fernand landry and william andrew robert orban. miami, fl: symposia specialists. ________. 1981. the folkstories of children. philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press. ________. 1986. toys as culture. new york: gardner press. ________. 1997. the ambiguity of play. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. whiting, beatrice blyth, ed. 1963. six cultures: studies of child rearing. new york: wiley. winnicott, d.w. 1971. playing and reality. new york: routledge. cfr_2015_r.indb 44 11/22/15 10:41 am 45 brian sutton-smith (1924-2015) elizabeth tucker brian sutton-smith was not only a giant in the field of folklore studies and a pioneering scholar whose vision shaped the interdisciplinary study of play, but also an extremely kind, generous person who vividly remembered his own childhood in new zealand through insightful works of fiction and vigorously defended children’s rights. his studies of the dynamics of play, games, storytelling, and other expressive forms have contributed immeasurably to the study of children’s folklore. as a scholar, colleague, and teacher, he has greatly enriched our field. brian received new zealand’s first ph.d. in education in 1954 and traveled to the united states as a fulbright scholar shortly afterwards. his teaching career began at bowling green state university (ohio) and continued at columbia university and the university of pennsylvania. his legendary productivity includes more than fifty books, including the ambiguity of play (1997), and numerous articles. at the strong museum in rochester, patrons can now learn about his work by visiting the brian sutton-smith library and archives of play. i first met brian when he gave a lecture about children’s storytelling, based on stories told by children aged two to ten that his team of students had collected in new york; these narratives became the foundation for his folkstories of children (1981). before presenting his analysis, he read several stories told by two-yearolds. with careful intonation and facial expressions, he read alice’s story: the cat went on the cakies the cat went on the car the cookie was on my nose the cookie went on the fireman’s hat (1981:48). what a fantastically mobile face he had! as he read alice’s story, brian became a convincing facsimile of a two-year-old storyteller: excited, repetitive, and poetic. he took young storytellers very seriously and found parallels between their stories and the stories of adults. in the preface to the folkstories of children he observes, “the caricature of children’s stories, as of adult soap operas, is not unlike the behavior of otherwise sophisticated persons caught in situations of stress and ambiguity” (1981:xi). one of his greatest gifts to children’s folklore studies has been his insistence on perceiving play and other expressive forms as vital human experiences, rather than experiences limited to the young. working closely with his students and colleagues, brian helped folklorists and scholars in other fields learn about children’s culture. in 1977, at the request of sue samuelson, his first teaching assistant, he considered the need for more serious attention to children’s folklore. his solution to that problem was the formation of a children’s folklore society (now the children’s folklore section) within the cfr_2015_r.indb 45 11/22/15 10:41 am brian sutton-smith elizabeth tucker 46 american folklore society. i joined the steering committee for that new society and have participated in the society in a number of ways since then. we owe brian sincere thanks for the children’s folklore society and for children’s folklore review, which has been published for more than thirty years. in 1995, children’s folklore: a source book was published, co-edited by brian and other children’s folklore scholars. this innovative volume discusses interrelated genres and takes a close look at the complexity and transmission of children’s folklore. while writing and revising the book’s chapter on narratives, i enjoyed receiving letters from brian, who was always insightful and positivespirited. one of the book’s most valuable chapters is its last, titled “the past in the present: theoretical directions for children’s folklore.” i have often reread that chapter, which poses a provocative question: “how is it that our adult culture so typically suppresses the power-related aspects of children’s lives so clearly represented in this present document?” (mcmahon and sutton-smith1995:308). this question and others raised by brian’s work deserve careful consideration. when brian retired from the university of pennsylvania, my husband and i were invited to attend his retirement party. on a bone-crackingly cold january day, we drove to philadelphia and arrived just in time for the dinner. it warmed our hearts to find that each plate held a special gift: a toy! mine was a miniature yellow tractor. i wish i still had that tractor, but i gave it to my son, and it disappeared in his tangle of miniature vehicles. i remember the tractor with pleasure and will always remember brian, who was a remarkable scholar, a great teacher, and a true friend. his thoughtfulness, brilliance, and appreciation of play will stay with us as we move toward new forms and meanings of children’s folklore. works cited mcmahon, felicia r., and brian sutton-smith. 1995. “the past in the present: theoretical directions for children’s folklore.” in children’s folklore: a source book edited by brian sutton-smith, jay mechling, thomas w. johnson, and felicia r. mcmahon, 293–308. logan: utah state university press. pellegrini, anthony d. 1995. the future of play theory: a multidisciplinary inquiry into the contributions of brian sutton-smith. albany, ny: suny press. sutton-smith, brian. 1981. the folkstories of children. philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press. ________. 2001. the ambiguity of play. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. sutton-smith, brian, jay mechling, thomas w. johnson, and felicia r. mcmahon, eds. 1995. children’s folklore: a source book. new york: garland publishing, inc. cfr_2015_r.indb 46 11/22/15 10:41 am 47 “children have their own world of being”: an ethnography of children’s activities on the day of saraswati puja semontee mitra apart from diwali1 and durga puja,2 few hindu religious festivals are organized and celebrated publicly in the united states. saraswati puja is one such festival. saraswati puja, also known as vasant panchami, is a hindu festival celebrated in early february to mark the onset of spring. on this day, hindus, especially bengalis,3 worship the goddess saraswati, the vedic goddess of knowledge and wisdom, music, arts, and science. she is also the companion of lord brahma who, with her knowledge and wisdom, created the universe. bengalis consider participation in this puja4 compulsory for students, scholars, and creative artists. therefore, indian american bengali parents force their children to participate in this festival, whereas they might be lax on other religious occasions. as a participant-observer of this recent indian festival in central pennsylvania, united states, i found that the cultural scene—the collective, communal celebration of saraswati puja—was not as simple as children of foreign-born parents following a transplanted tradition and gaining ethnic identity. on the contrary, i noticed that indian american bengali children typically indulged in activities such as games that are not traditionally part of the religious observance in india. their interactions, both in and out of the social frame of a religious ritual, especially saraswati puja, reveal that in america the festive day has taken on the function of a children’s day of freedom from parental rules and ethnic regulations. thus, the day of freedom raises the following critical questions: why have these children’s agency and cultural practices emerged? how has it affected the performance of this festival in central pennsylvania? this article analyzes the ways in which indian american bengali children separate their activities from the religious festival while defining the festival as an adult observation, and use the given space and religious-cultural setting to create their own world of fun and freedom. in addition, i analyze the various kinds of games and activities chosen by different age groups. these groups of bengali children not only indulge in traditional games like singing games or chasing or tagging games, but also use technology to play games, for example different kinds of video games including strategy games. these children also participate in what i call “adventure tripping,” an act which involves no age or gender division unlike other games and activities. these trips originate with a mystery and a prolonged discussion about it, thereby encouraging every child to know the unknown, see the unseen, and enjoy the thrill of participation through a process that shares a structure and function very similar to legend tripping. i examine how all these games and activities reflect the changing meaning of religious festivals for second generation indian american bengali children and also their social and psychological developments through these games. cfr_2015_r.indb 47 11/22/15 10:41 am “children have their own world of being” semontee mitra 48 saraswati puja setting: the socio-religious-cultural frame saraswati puja is an indoor ritual that only recently has been organized by bengali organizations in the united states. sampriti, the bengali community of central pennsylvania, began organizing observances of the festival in 2012. other organizations in metropolitan areas, including philadelphia, new york city, baltimore, have sponsored public celebrations only since the late twentieth century or early twenty-first century. from the viewpoint of central pennsylvania organizers, saraswati puja serves two purposes: an occasion for socialization and handing down bengali traditions to second-generation indian americans. in 2013, the year i participated and observed the festival, it was organized in the community hall of west enola fire company. the hall was divided into five parts: the stage (for cultural program), puja area (where the goddess was placed and also the space used for the sit-and-draw event), an audience zone, dining area, and storage area (to store extra tables and chairs). the storage area was separated from the rest of the space with a temporary partition wall. there was also a large kitchen where the members of the association, including men and women, cooked lunch and dinner. the children who took part in the dance program used another separate space beside the stage as a dressing room. though the area was divided, the children occupied the entire space, except the kitchen. they were strictly forbidden, however, to get close to the deity or enter the storage area. thirty children attended the puja along with their parents. most of them came in early with their parents in indian ethnic dress: frocks, salwar kameez,5 and kurta pajamas.6 age group girls boys total 4 years 3 0 3 5-7 years 5 2 7 8-12 years 6 6 12 13-14 years 4 2 6 15-17 years 2 0 2 total 20 10 30 once inside the building, they were on their own because their parents were busy with the ritual. as fostering tradition is one of the main objectives behind organizing this puja, a cultural program was planned for the children, where they were the performers. they enthusiastically performed indian dances and songs wearing traditional attire. a “sit-and-draw” event was also organized for children under the age of fourteen. they were given a sketch of goddess saraswati that they had to fill in with colors. they shared the colors among themselves which gave rise to small clusters of children within the larger group of children. their paintings were later exhibited on one of the walls of the hall, which became a topic of conversation among the children between the ages of six and nine. the cfr_2015_r.indb 48 11/22/15 10:41 am semontee mitra “children have their own world of being” 49 sit-and-draw event was followed by a cultural program. it started with a short speech on the goddess saraswati by dr. jeffrey long, professor of hinduism at elizabethtown college (pennsylvania), and member of sampriti. during his speech, dr. long mentioned that on the day of saraswati puja, all academic and creative materials, including books, notebooks, laptops, pens and pencils, and musical instruments, should be left with the goddess for her blessings on those materials. he also explained that to excel the rest of the year, students should not study on the day of the puja. children took the “no-study day” as the essence of this religious ritual. children in india, especially in west bengal, also look forward to this day of saraswati puja as a “no-study day.” on this day, many children visit their schools and colleges in ethnic dresses (girls wear saree or salwar kameez and boys wear kurta pajama), as many schools and colleges (only in west bengal) organize and host this puja. children feel free from all restrictions as they dress up like adults, go to schools with their friends, have elaborate lunch provided by the schools, then visit friends’ houses or meet other friends and spend the whole day together. many children, who have the puja at home, spend most of their time helping other female members in ritualistic arrangements. while talking to bengali children in india, i learned that they fast (until the morning ritual is over), pray, and help their mothers to organize the puja at home because they feel that if they can prove their devotion to the goddess on this day, they can achieve success in the next academic year by putting in some hard work on their part. apart from the religious fervor, indian bengali children also associate this day with freedom, but their freedom is quite different from that of indian american bengali children. indian bengali children have the freedom of space as they go to school and visit friends.7 they usually do not indulge in any kind of games on that day, while indian american bengali children are accompanied by their parents and surrounded by adults all the time. however, indian american bengali children find out ways and indulge in activities that are not supervised by adults. given the license to organize themselves without parental supervision, indian american bengali children engaged in various games and activities either individually or in groups. due to the variation of children’s ages, their games and activities also varied. they formed their own groups based on their ages. though they were in a religious ritualistic environment, their engagement with the ritual was limited to what their parents asked them to do. by their actions, they understood the festival to be a children’s day of freedom that served as a stark contrast to their everyday lives as well as other occasions. the use of games and activities within the frame of religious festival raises the question of how the meaning of play within the religious festive frames changes. indeed, the establishment of the children’s frame within the adult controlled frame of religious festival has caused tensions at the border of children’s frame because adults, who surround these children, expect them to be a part of the festival so that they can hand down indian tradition to them. but, as mentioned earlier, these children consider this day to be the day of their freedom. therefore, in the context of saraswati puja, participating children are primarily redefining the meaning of not only the religious event, but also the space through their activities.8 cfr_2015_r.indb 49 11/22/15 10:41 am “children have their own world of being” semontee mitra 50 as a guide to ethnographic observation, i gave attention to the play frame formed by different groups of children. the idea of the play frame used as a strategy of boundary-maintenance in cultural situations in which tension exists between groups in hierarchical relation to one another points to folklore, such as the performance of games, as key evidence of addressing such tension in symbolic forms. according to folklorist simon j. bronner: the act of framing captures a narrative as well as action that have a bearing on the perception of the event from the perspective of the participants and assorted viewers. consequently, frames refer to the ways insiders and outsiders comprehend activity as a deep cognitive structure in addition to viewing, and strategizing, what occurs behaviorally. (2010:275) in my observation, children framed activities that designated social boundaries by age, and in their games separated themselves from their parents. although these children were involved in the religious rituals, they, through play frames, variously projected their interests as well as complexities in the scene as children with little or no experience of the homeland. children’s activities right after finishing their dinner, the children went for a short trip into the storage area (behind the dining area separated by a temporary partition wall), which was strictly forbidden. another children’s activity, which was common, was playing video games on portable devices. children formed groups based on their ages to chat and play together all day long. girls, up to the age of four (a group of three), were playing “ring around the rosie” until lunch. five to seven year olds formed a different group. this group had both boys and girls. they played a variety of games. chasing and/or tagging games were the most favored. they were the most active group as they always engaged in some kind of running game. children who were between eight and thirteen years old formed two groups, one of boys and the other of girls. boys were either engaged in playing video games, spinning tops, fighting, or simply chatting throughout the day. the group of girls (ages eight to ten) was playing tag games, video games, chatting with one another, or most importantly was trying to eavesdrop on the conversation of their older sisters (ages twelve to thirteen). boys and girls above thirteen years sat together and talked about various matters (school, news, fashion). some of the boys (between twelve and fourteen) played with spinning tops. boys between eight and twelve years also joined them. the two adolescent girls were seen mostly sitting and chatting. a question raised by this observation is the continuity of the games played by children with indian and american traditions. beginning with william wells newell in the nineteenth century (1884), scholars believed that traditional games were on the verge of being extinct. in the twentieth century folklorists posited that in contrast to a view of children as passive vessels of static traditions, they actively adapted traditions and changed them and that is evident in my observations cfr_2015_r.indb 50 11/22/15 10:41 am semontee mitra “children have their own world of being” 51 as children performed various games without a clear distinction to their ethnic sources (bronner 1988:12). there are a variety of reasons for these changes. first, i noticed an interchange between girls’ and boys’ games. for instance, games like tag and spin tops have gained more favor with the girls and the boys with time (sutton-smith and rosenberg 1961:21). second, many games reflect trends in the larger surrounding american society. for example, violent and/or strategic video games were considered standard fare. third, expanding technology has brought a major change in the tradition of games. the advent of television and the increasing preference for suburban living have influenced the children to separate from each other, and appear to have “conspired toward considerable desuetude in traditional children’s games” (sutton-smith 1961:37). keeping these in mind, i will discuss all the games and activities that indian american bengali children participated in on the day of saraswati puja. singing game children, especially girls, who were four years old, played “ring around the rosie” all day long. the last line “we all fall down” was the most exciting part for them as they were trying new gestures for falling down every time. for example, sometimes they jumped before falling down, and sometimes they just sat down; after falling down on the floor, they stayed on the floor for a few minutes (sometimes rolling and sometimes simply lying) and then started playing the game afresh. but, every time, the falling down was accompanied by smiles and giggles. folklorist leah rachel clara yoffie (1947) observed that children at the end of the nineteenth century played more traditional games than at the time she collected lore in the 1920s, which follows newell’s devolutionary view. but this does not hold true in my study. all the four-year-old children were engaged in playing the traditional singing game of “ring around the rosie.”9 the game never disappeared, although the stigmatization of tradition as american society modernizes might contribute to a perception of its displacement (bronner 2011:27– 36). however, on the day of saraswati puja, this game was played in a highly collaborative manner and with mutual support and fussing about the rhyme, body movement, and falling down. simon j. bronner mentions that “rhymes can appear especially playful and colorful” and through the innocent enactment of children many “real-life issues are raised in rhyme” which the children are completely ignorant of (1988:51). this is so true for this singing game: ring around the rosie, pocket full of posies, ashes! ashes! we all fall down this rhyme, according to some scholars like peter and iona opie, refers to the great plague that happened in england in 1665 or with the black death in england that happened earlier in 1347-1350 (opie 1985:221–22). a rosy rash was cfr_2015_r.indb 51 11/22/15 10:41 am “children have their own world of being” semontee mitra 52 said to be a symptom of the plague and posies were the herbs that were carried for protection. the final “all fall down,” interpreted as death, actually happened as a result of the plague (opie 1985:365). but the four year olds playing this were completely ignorant of this gruesome and somewhat dated popular interpretation.10 more relevant for their purposes was the use of the rhyme as a recognizable american tradition to socially engage one another. the rhyme and the rhythm made them giggle and encouraged them to have different body movements. bronner contends that the actions of standing and falling down became a creative performance, a celebration of youth identity for them (2011:199). chasing and tagging games children belonging to the most active age group, five and seven years old, formed a separate clique of their own. this group had both boys and girls. they played a variety of games. before lunch, they were all engaged in chasing or tagging game. after lunch and the sit-and-draw event, they were engaged in looking at what others have painted. all their games included some physical activity, for example, a chasing game, or tagging game. it is significant to note here that the chase was led by the boys and followed by the girls. no girl was ever followed by any boy at any point of time of the game. this is a reflection of the patriarchal society that permeates contemporary american life. even in indian society, men are considered superior to women. a male member is usually the head of the family and is expected to earn the bread for the family; women are considered unequal and in need of care and protection by the male members. women usually obey and follow their fathers and husbands when making major decisions. perhaps witnessing this at home, these children have understood this to be the way of the world and that girls should follow boys, especially when they are playing a game that includes following somebody. girls between eight and twelve also played tagging games (freeze tag), but they did not include the children younger to them in their game. they considered themselves to be grown-ups, so they did not even care to include “babies” (a term used by an informant to describe any younger children) in their group or games. in his book american children’s folklore, simon j. bronner claims that by indulging in “the non-singing variety of game that involves running and chasing,” children develop their thought processes as well as their bodies (1988:175). brian sutton-smith and b.g. rosenberg have similarly observed the crucial role that chasing games have played throughout in their study of sixty years of games. arguing that the physical activity of running and chasing, “the theme of pursuit and capture,” is one of the basic motifs of the american culture (1961:25).11 therefore, it is evident that tag has historically been more popular among girls, but more recently has found equal favor among both boys and girls. chasing and tagging games are quite popular among children because they can involve a large number of kids and can be played anywhere. these games are popular because in lieu of such games, children get the opportunity to explore new territories and interact with one another, especially boys with girls and vice versa (see bronner 1988). the “it” figure in the game cfr_2015_r.indb 52 11/22/15 10:41 am semontee mitra “children have their own world of being” 53 is significant because “it” is the one with authority. the children run away from “it” but they also invite the authority figure to chase them in order to bring them back to base or within their boundaries, which reflects parental guidance and control (see schwartzman 1976). but the question that arises here is whether the “it” authority scale is more indian in which there is a strong parent and expected obedience by the child or american in which there is a weak parent emphasizing independence by the child. i claim it is both for these children. living in america, indian american bengali parents appreciate the importance of independence and value it, allowing their children to do things the way the children want to do. at the same time, because these parents grew up in indian society, they cannot give away the authoritarian part of parenthood. many of these children go to sunday schools at the temple to take classes on indian languages, classical dance, and music. these children also have to live up to their parents’ expectations when it comes to studies and choosing a career, which underscores my participants’ frequent display of independence and authority displayed throughout their games. spin top, video games, and the fight boys thirteen years and above, indulged in playing with spinning tops. boys between eight and twelve years also joined them. some of the girls of various age groups also joined them, but as viewers. the girls did not participate in the games. spin top was played and enjoyed more as a competition and not as any other game.12 video games, on the other hand, were played by almost everybody, regardless of age or gender. not all of the children brought their gaming consoles, so they took turns at holding the electronic devices. it is significant to note here that although the boys were sharing the gaming devices, the girls had individual devices for themselves and so no sharing was required. a fight broke out all of a sudden between two boys (ages thirteen and nine) who were brothers. the reason behind the fight was not known initially, but later on an eight year old girl informed me that the fight and the eventual crying were strategies to attract the attention of the parents and get the device back by manipulating the authority of the elders. education and technology scholar royal van horn notes that video games have won a major share of the children’s toy market and have become a major pastime for boys between eight and eighteen years of age (1999:173). other researchers, including simon gottschalk (1995), claim that prolonged exposure to video games, especially violent video games, can result in aggressive behavior increasing feeling of anger or hostility, and a decrease in pro-social behavior. along the same line, the non-electronic activities that i observed resulted in more socialization and less aggressive behaviors. although some scholars argue that video games are the major pastime activity of the boys, i claim that it occupies the girls as well and have been integrated into traditional play, considering the fact that video games played on electronic devices are distinguished from other folk activities by their proprietary individualistic characteristic. the games played by boys and girls may vary, but they are cfr_2015_r.indb 53 11/22/15 10:41 am “children have their own world of being” semontee mitra 54 equally prevalent between both genders. the fight that broke out between the two brothers might be more than just a way for the younger brother to get the device from the older brother. i contend that such a behavior is a reflection of the aggression that happens due to prolonged exposure to violent/strategic video games (see anderson and bushman 2001). on the other hand, i noticed that the parents used time on the devices as “bribes” to their children. i witnessed parents making a deal with their children on the day of saraswati puja; for example, a mother told her son, “if you finish up your lunch quickly you will get to play video games, but you have to finish everything on your plate before that.” this indicates that video games have gained relevance in society which is more than just a pastime or a distraction; it has become coinage in a token economy for children and has become distinct from other forms of play that have more of a reference to social and traditional usage. chatting and gossiping teenagers between thirteen and seventeen years of age were mostly engaged in chatting and gossiping. they were mostly talking about fashion, style, career paths they would like to take, teachers, rumors, and television shows. children between eight and thirteen formed two separate groups: a boys’ group and girls’ group. while the activities of the boys’ group were the same, the girls’ group had a further division. the girls between eight and ten were not included in any of the discussions of the girls between eleven and thirteen. the former group (subgroup) was not even allowed to be near or around the latter group of girls. but it was completely opposite with the boys. boys talked and chatted either with other boys irrespective of age, or with girls of their own age or older. however, girls between eight and twelve were very interested in the discussions of their elder sisters who were young teenagers. as they were not allowed to be a part of the latter’s group, these young girls always tried to sit as close to their sisters as possible only to eavesdrop on their conversation. one of the major topics of discussion among the girls between eight and twelve was speculation about what their elder sisters were saying in their absence. then one of them would comment, “i know they talk about nail art” or fashion or music videos. this not only reflects the curiosity that these young girls have, but also the impact of mass media on younger generation. their world is no longer limited to dolls and fairy tales; they are more eager to grow up and do adult activities. the discussions about career path and objectives reflect that these young adolescents are highly encouraged by their parents for higher degrees and are thus, goal oriented. it also reflects their family’s economic status and the peaceful and happy relationship that they share with their parents (see schwartzman 1976). healthy relationships between parents and children promote the ability to make desirable choices and a greater ability to sustain those choices and achieve desired goals. cfr_2015_r.indb 54 11/22/15 10:41 am semontee mitra “children have their own world of being” 55 adolescent activities one of the two young adolescent girls, whose parents are separated, spent her entire time either helping her mother or talking to her friend, another girl, in the puja. both the girls took care of the children during their lunch and dinnertime. it was their responsibility, as all adults were busy with puja, to see what the children needed and they also helped young kids to finish up their food properly. psychologists sandra l. hofferth and john f. sandberg argue that children living with a single parent tend to take household responsibility earlier than is done by children living with both parents (2001:297). they further argue that such children exhibit lesser degree of participation in any religious or secular activities. but my participants were very involved in religious as well as secular activities, in the sense that they were always eager to help their mother. adventure trip after finishing their dinner, the boys between eleven and fourteen decided to make a trip to the forbidden area of the hall, the storage unit. both adolescent girls followed them. girls between eleven and thirteen followed the adolescents and their sisters (eight to ten years old), always curious about their elder sisters, also followed them. when everybody went inside, the younger children also wanted to peep in to see what was going on inside. thus all the children became a part of this adventure tripping. the children remained unnoticed even after their entry into the storage unit until there was a loud thud sound. being a storage room, it had piles of tables and chairs, and somebody did something inside and a few chairs fell down to the ground. with this crash, their “trip” came to an end. while the younger kids were frightened, the older kids were embarrassed and tried to put the blame on the little children as it attracted the attention of their parents and adults came running to them to check if anybody was hurt. this mystery-shrouded adventure trip shares structural and functional aspects with legend trips that are well defined by folklore scholars elizabeth bird (2004), bill ellis (1989), and patricia m. meley (1991). structurally, a legend trip is divided into three parts: the introduction where children/adolescents discuss about the place they are about to visit; the second part consists of the actual visit and discovering things unknown and unseen; the final part involves telling and retelling of the experiences at the site. for the children, i observed, the storage unit was a part of their discussion since morning due to three major reasons: first, it was a forbidden zone; second, they did not know what was inside it; third, they wanted to find for themselves what was inside it and why it was forbidden. the children successfully made the trip and later on, they discussed their experiences. thus, like all other legend trips, this adventure trip also shares the tripartite structural pattern of legend tripping. referring to the functional aspects of legend tripping, bill ellis states that adolescent “legend trips” is in part a “ritual of rebellion” in which they escape the authoritarian world (1983:64). patricia meley (1991) claims that the function of cfr_2015_r.indb 55 11/22/15 10:41 am “children have their own world of being” semontee mitra 56 legend tripping is “primarily recreation” (6), noting that such trips have a “social aspect” associated with them in which children do things together (11), and that “a ‘typical’ trip almost always includes a mixed-sex group of adolescents” (17). i identified all these characteristics closely associated with the adventure trip that the children under my observation made to the storage unit. the boys between eleven and fourteen actually initiated the trip, thereby portraying traits of “rebellion” against authority. though it was an act of rebellion, meley notes that through ritualization of the rebellion the children make their challenge to the adult authority manageable and comprehensible and so is not considered as a delinquent activity (1991:21); this stands true for my participant children as well. this trip also acted as an escape from boredom for the children as they spent their entire day within that demarcated indoor space and wanted to do something exciting that would rid them of their boredom. interpretation of the activities based on the discussions so far and limited by lack of comparative ethnographic material on indian children’s activities in an american society, i have some general interpretation of the children’s activities i witnessed on the day of saraswati puja. the adult-enforced context of religious ritual limited children’s activities, but children, nonetheless, controlled the space within the hall by engaging in activities of their choosing. they could not play outdoors as they were not allowed to by their parents. but this does not mean that they did not play outdoor games. the entire space became their territory and through their various activities throughout the day they exercised their freedom and blurred the space boundary. as the group of thirty children was a mixed group with children belonging to various ages and gender, i observed the following. the children formed several small groups based on their age and gender. the girls had separate groups based on their ages and inter-mixing of those groups was very limited. the younger girls were always either eager to emulate the activities of older girls or eavesdrop on their conversation. they also indulged in cooperative games like “ring around the rosie” or simply sat and chatted. unlike girls, the boys’ activities were not restricted to any specific age and they always tended to play in a larger group. the games that the boys played (spin top and video games) encouraged competition, so the more the number of competitors, the intense the competition grew. the boys’ games (especially video games) continued for a longer period of time, despite the fight, as compared to the girls. however, only chasing or tagging game involved both boys and girls. there are several reasons behind such divisions and distinctions of the games played by the boys and the girls. the games the boys played continued longer because they could resolve their differences quickly and resume the game without having any ill feeling. for example, the two brothers, who fought for one video game, were playing together sharing the device once their mother resolved the fight. thus boys quarrel all the time, but not at the cost of terminating the game. on the other hand, the girls could not continue with one game (tagging for example) for long because either they easily got bored or could not resolve the cfr_2015_r.indb 56 11/22/15 10:41 am semontee mitra “children have their own world of being” 57 disputes that arose while playing. as the girls’ games did not give rise to disputes, they “gain[ed] little experience in the judicial process” (lever 1976:483). even when problems arose, they put very little effort to resolve quarrels or problems, and their games broke up abruptly. the games and activities of the boys and the girls can also be interpreted in terms of social and psychological development. boys’ reflected their organizational skills necessary to coordinate the activities in a group of large number and diverse people. furthermore, their experience in controlled competitive situations tended to improve their interpersonal skills and their ability to handle competition and competitors. girls, on the other hand, who either played in small groups or tried to emulate their sisters or adults in general (when discussing about fashion trends and beauty tips or helping their mothers or taking care of other kids), tended to develop social and emotional skills. they reflected more socially constructed feminine traits of nurturance, spontaneity, and cooperation. restricting themselves age-wise and sharing secrets bound them together and made them emotionally dependent. therefore, any breech or quarrel disrupted such bonds and they stopped playing altogether. conclusion no matter where the children are or with whom they associate, they establish a boundary around themselves with play that can be called, as anthropologist gregory bateson (1999 [1972]) originally suggested, a “play frame.” the children separated their play from the religious festival and defined the festival as an adult observation, even though the festival allowed the play frame to form. the point of tension occurred when an altercation occurred and the adults had to intervene. it could have undermined the continuation of the frame but after its resolution, the frames resumed. in effect, the children redefined the meaning of space and religious ritual by their activities. the engagement with tradition by the children, even if different from the way the adults perceived it, allowed the children to sustain their separateness and freedom from regulation, even if temporarily. they redefined the space by blurring the boundary between indoor activities and outdoor activities. though they were restricted indoors, their activities were not just indoors. they played outdoor games indoors. they also controlled the entire space by the end of the day through their adventure tripping. moreover, redefinition was not only restricted to space; the children gave a new meaning to the religious ritual itself. i claim this because the children i observed were in a tricky situation. they were surrounded by adults throughout the day who expected them to be a part of the religious festival so that indian culture and tradition are handed down to them. but they used the religious framework in a different way to exercise their own will. taking advantage of their busy parents (due to the religious ritual and social gathering), they used this day as the day of social freedom from ethnic filial piety. or in other words, the children converted the meaning of the ritual to one challenging hierarchy. to a casual observer, this claim might seem paradoxical because the children appeared to be dressed more in line with bengali tradition, but their “framing” activity served to communicate cfr_2015_r.indb 57 11/22/15 10:41 am “children have their own world of being” semontee mitra 58 a different role to one another. my interview with them revealed that they did not get such an opportunity in other social gatherings mostly because they did not get so much of time together (as the social gatherings are restricted to one afternoon or evening unlike this one which was an all-day event). another paradox is that this freedom is in a context of being more spatially restricted than in other religious festivals. children in other religious and social gatherings are given a separate space where they can indulge in their activities. finally, the children not only did change the meaning of the ritual, but also reflected various behavioral traits passed on from one generation to another. it is perfectly clear how their games and activities portray their psychological development, their relationship with their parents and the society in general. the increasing popularity of this festival indicates more complexities as it portrays a celebration of americanism for second generation indian american, while first generation adults get to reflect upon their homeland roots. notes 1. diwali is a hindu religious festival celebrated during autumn every year. it is popularly known as the “festival of lights” because it signifies the victory of light of darkness. 2. durga puja is a bengali religious festival that celebrates the worship of goddess durga. it is a five days’ festival celebrated with great pomp and show. this festival signifies the victory of good over evil. 3. bengalis are an ethnic group of the bengal region (now divided between west bengal, india and bangladesh). it is said that they have evolved from a mixture of aryan race and austro-asiatic people. their native language is bengali and they are concentrated mostly in the states of west bengal and tripura of india and bangladesh. 4. any religious ritual performed by hindus is called a “puja.” 5. salwaar kameez is a traditional outfit worn by women all over india in different styles. it originated in south and central asia. salwaars are loose trousers with narrow ankles. kameez is a knee-length top with varying neck patterns. 6. kurta pajama is a traditional outfit worn by indian men. much like salwaar kameez, kurta pajamas are also worn in different styles. kurta is a loose kneelength shirt-like outfit worn by men. pajama is a loose trouser. 7. recently, this festival has taken the shape of valentine’s day in west bengal as teenagers go out on dates all dressed up. 8. to study the whole cultural scene (saraswati puja celebration) i adopted certain methods. as a non-participant observant, i witnessed the children in all their activities and noted down the games they were playing. i tried to be as close to them as possible, but the moment they realized that an adult is around them, they changed the subject of discussion. this is truer for the teenage girls. boys did not feel much bothered whenever i was around. the younger children had no time to sit and talk, so i observed their play. during my observation, i asked children about their activities that day. the younger children avoided answering, but children between eight and ten eagerly responded. being unable to listen to cfr_2015_r.indb 58 11/22/15 10:41 am semontee mitra “children have their own world of being” 59 the conversation of the teenage girls, one of my informants provided information on her elder sister’s conversation with her friends. i separately interviewed the adolescent girls. the purpose of my interview, in general, was (1) to find out what role saraswati puja played in their lives (2) the difference from other holidays when they also get a chance to play and spend time with friends and (3) their rationale for choosing particular activities. 9. sutton-smith and rosenberg (1961) have provided the rank of this game: “54th (1896), 41st (1898), 25th (1921), 89th (1959)” (24). 10. many folklorists have reasonably argued that the nursery rhyme “ring around the rosie” was not created because of the “black plague” that hit western europe in 1347 and had killed nearly one third of its population by 1350. though the rhyme has elements referring to the plague, yet the plague was not the reason for its creation. there are several other versions collected by charlotte sophia burne (1883), william wells newell (1884), and alice gomme (1898), which do not indicate any connection with the plague. additionally, this rhyme was first published in 1881 by kate greenaway (illustrator) in mother goose or the old nursery rhymes; folklorists in favor of this argument disagree with the fact that children recited this rhyme continuously for over five centuries, yet no one felt the importance of mentioning it between 1347 and 1881. 11. they further claim that with few exceptions girls show higher ranking in these games between 1856 and 1959: girls ranked tag game 3rd in 1896, 1st in 1921, and 3rd in 1959; for boys tag was 7th in 1896, 4th in 1921, and 2nd in 1959 (sutton-smith and rosenberg 1961:25). 12. in “sixty years of historical change” sutton-smith and rosenberg (1961) mention that with time spin top has lost popularity among the boys; it ranked 12th in 1896, 10th in 1898, 15th in 1921, and 133rd in 1959 (27). they further state that girls have developed keen interest in such games and perhaps this is the reason for the decreasing interest of the boys in spin tops (21). works cited anderson, craig a., and brad j. bushman. 2001. “effects of violent video games on aggressive behavior, aggressive cognition, aggressive affect, physiological arousal, and prosocial behavior: a meta-analytic review of the scientific literature.” psychological science 12 (5):353–59. bateson, gregory. 1999 [1972]. steps to an ecology of mind: collected essays in anthropology, psychiatry, evolution, and epistemology. chicago, il: university of chicago press. ________. 2006. “a theory of play and fantasy.” in the game design reader: a rules of play anthology, edited by katie salen and eric zimmerman, 314–28. cambridge, ma: mit press. bronner, simon j. 1988. american children’s folklore. little rock, ar: august house. ________. 2008-2009. “fathers and sons: rethinking the bar mitzvah as an american rite of passage.” children’s folklore review 31:7–34. cfr_2015_r.indb 59 11/22/15 10:41 am “children have their own world of being” semontee mitra 60 ________. 2010. “framing folklore: an introduction.” western folklore 69 (3/4):275–97. ________. 2011. explaining traditions: folk behavior in modern culture. lexington: university press of kentucky. brunvand, jan harold. 2012. encyclopedia of urban legends, updated and expanded edition. thousand oaks, ca: abc-clio. burne, charlotte s., ed. 1883. shropshire folklore: a sheaf of gleanings. london: trubner & co. foster, josephine c. 1930. “play activities of children in the first six grades.” child development 1 (3):248–54. gomme, alice b. 1898. a dictionary of british folk-lore: the traditional games of england, scotland, and ireland (vol. 1). london: david nutt. gottschalk, simon. 1995. “videology: video-games as postmodern sites/sights of ideological reproduction.” symbolic interaction 18 (1):1–18. greenaway, kate. 1881. mother goose or the old nursery rhymes. london and new york: frederick warne and co. griffiths, mark. 2005. “video games and health.” bmj: british medical journal 331:122–23. hofferth, sandra l. and john f. sandberg. 2001. “how american children spend their time.” journal of marriage and family 63 (2):295–308. horn, royal v. 1999. “violence and video games.” technology 43:173–74. lever, janet. 1976. “sex differences in the games children play.” social problems 23 (4):478–87. meley, patricia m. 1991. “adolescent legend trips as teenage cultural response: a study of lore in context.” children’s folklore review 14 (1):5–24. newell, william w. 1884. games and songs of american children. new york: harper & brothers publishers. opie, iona and peter opie. 1951. the oxford dictionary of nursery rhymes. oxford, uk: oxford university press. ________. 1985. the singing game. oxford, uk: oxford university press. schwartzman, helen b. 1976. “the anthropological study of children’s play.” annual review of anthropology 5:289–328. stutley, margaret. 2006. hindu deities: a mythological dictionary with illustrations. new delhi, india: munshiram manoharlal publishers pvt. ltd. sutton-smith, brian and b. g. rosenberg. 1961. “sixty years of historical change in the game preferences of american children.” journal of american folklore 74 (291):17–46. sutton-smith, brian. 1989. “children’s folk games as customs.” western folklore 48 (1):33–42. yoffie, leah rachel clara. 1947. “three generations of children’s singing games in st. louis.” journal of american folklore 60 (235):1–51. cfr_2015_r.indb 60 11/22/15 10:41 am 61 children’s folklore section: 2014 annual meeting santa fe, new mexico, november 7, 2014 jared rife, president/convener, opened the meeting. attendance: those in attendance were trevor j. blank (state university of new york at potsdam), monica foote (indiana university), lisa gabbert (utah state), spencer green (penn state university, harrisburg), sharrae m. hayes (michigan state university), john mcdowell (indiana university), rivanna miller (center for creativity in education in cultural heritage), priscilla ord (mcdaniel college), jared rife (penn state university, harrisburg), kate schramm (indiana university), libby tucker (binghamton university), and simon lichman (center for creativity in education in cultural heritage). finances: priscilla reported that as of september 1, the section had a balance of $4,788.00 in the general fund, and the endowed funds were as follows: life membership, $1,442.00; newell prize fund, $8,138.00; and opie prize fund, $3,016.00 with the funds having increased at a rate of 3%. since the stephen fossler company has been bought by deluxe, the price of aesop and accolade seals have gone up from $.10/seal to almost $.12, so under new business we will need to decide if we should continue to charge the original prices and absorb the increase or raise the prices for the seals. in the endowments we are good for nearly $12,600. if we did not have corporate or university sponsorship for the journal, we could probably handle it. at present, neither the newell fund nor the opie fund is actually used for the prizes, which are instead being charged against the general fund. children’s folklore review: trevor stated that we need to look for a source of funding; his university is not able to help out much. he is working to get partnerships between various campuses, and his university program has a grant program available for collaboration. one partnership he mentioned was with suny press. it would count as part of the grant’s “network of excellence.” this opened up questions of partnering with university presses. kate suggested that we contact moira marsh and michael foster regarding their relationship with a university press. there were also questions of ongoing support with shifts of editorial leadership. trevor stated that the ideal situation allows journal to be independent, not beholden to anyone. he also did not want to see journal go completely digital. libby mentioned that once the funding had been granted at binghamton, it was easy to continue getting it, but trevor said that suny potsdam is in budget constraints; the likelihood of funding from it is unlikely. libby said that the next journal is going to be great. cfr_2015_r.indb 61 11/22/15 10:41 am children’s folklore section: 2014 annual meeting 62 for funding, kate made an “unserious” suggestion that we have a children’s folklore section calendar. considerable joking ensued, and trevor suggested that a better idea would be to make a calendar that is children’s folklore specific. trevor suggested the need to set up deadlines for submission to the review. there is also a need for a book review editor. there is currently a dearth of reviews. newell prize: semontee mitra’s paper, “‘children have their own world of being’: an ethnography of children’s activities on the day of saraswati puja,” will be published in the next issue of the children’s folklore review. there was no prize awarded this year. some wondered what we should do about this. it was suggested that we need to email fernando orejuela for students to submit a paper. we need to spread the word to graduate students’ organizations. opie prize: it will be awarded next year. john mcdowell and libby tucker are presently assembling a list. aesop award committee: there were questions about how big the committee should be. could it be up to five people or should it max out at four? both kate and spencer were added to the committee for the next year. communication: concerning communication jared said that we need to push to communicate using afs central tools. we have accounts on facebook and twitter, but they only are used around afs time. both would be useful to send out calls and information. new convener election: jared described the many perks, as well as responsibilities, such as updating afs website and getting section sponsored panels together. priscilla nominated kate, and all agreed. kate is now the convener. new business: priscilla noted that trevor is eligible for membership in the council of editors of learned journals (celj). the members meet at many, various conferences and know how to secure funding. his dues will be paid for by the section. the benefit is that our journal would then be displayed at all conferences where celj meets. he needs to join personally, and he will be reimbursed from the treasury. chip sullivan found it quite useful. once again there was a suggestion for printing shorter papers in the review with commentary, perhaps calling it “children’s folklore notes.” jay mechling suggested this last year. it would be a means of presenting works in progress or ongoing research, what were good papers at afs, etc. we can get papers from people on cfs sponsored panels. another idea was to include a list of dissertations completed on the topics in the field. we could work also to incorporate people in other sections/fields who are doing work with children that may speak well here too. we need to outreach! cfr_2015_r.indb 62 11/22/15 10:41 am children’s folklore section: 2014 annual meeting 63 on the topic of book reviews, it was suggested that we incorporate books, not specifically on children’s folklore, but also in accompanying fields. irene chagall could not be here, but we need to find a reviewer for the documentary video she has completed on international girls handclapping, let’s get the rhythm! spencer pointed out that we could review other media, exhibits, websites, etc. trevor said that that would really emphasize the review aspect. aesop prize seals: priscilla stated again that the seal price has gone up and asked do we raise price for winning individuals and presses? the people who make foil seals of the quality that we have will not negotiate. it was suggested that we possibly phase in price increase. she also mentioned that with large orders we cover postage and handling. she sends letters to winning presses, plus the price list. book review editor: trevor asked how we want to get that up and running? jared said that we will send out the request to membership. lisa thought that it would take lots of one on one contact. priscilla suggested that for next year we should ask that our section be on day that is not when the folklore fellows also meet. when it is, we automatically miss having simon bronner, bill ellis, gary alan fine, john mcdowell, and jay mechling in attendance, all of whom either are or have been members of the section. jared asked for a motion of adjournment. kate moved to adjourn, and spencer seconded. editor’s note: my thanks to kate schramm and priscilla a. ord for generously transcribing and providing these 2014 cfs meeting notes for inclusion in this current issue of children’s folklore review. cfr_2015_r.indb 63 11/22/15 10:41 am 65 notes and announcements newell prize the children’s folklore section of the american folklore society annually offers the william wells newell prize (which includes a cash award) for the best student essay on a topic in children’s folklore. students must submit their own papers, and published papers are eligible. instructors are asked to encourage students with eligible papers to enter the competition. papers must be double-spaced and submitted as a word document. on the first page, include the author’s name, academic address, home address, telephone numbers, and e-mail address. deadline for this coming year’s competition is september 30, 2016. please submit papers electronically to dr. brant ellsworth, brant.ellsworth@psu.edu. book reviews children’s folklore review is seeking book review submissions for its next issue, to be published in december 2016. this is an excellent opportunity for graduate students interested in building their writing credentials and demonstrating breadth in folklore, literature, and childhood studies. books are selected for review in children’s folklore review according to their relevance to the field of children’s folklore and their year of publication (usually within the past three years). if you would like to request a book for review, please contact the book reviews editor, brant ellsworth (brant.ellsworth@psu.edu). cfr_2015_r.indb 65 11/22/15 10:41 am 67 contributors anna beresin is professor of liberal arts at the university of the arts in philadelphia, and co-director of neuarts, neighborhood engagement at the university of the arts. her books include recess battles: playing, fighting, and storytelling, and the art of play: recess and the practice of invention. brian suttonsmith was her thesis advisor at the university of pennsylvania, where she earned two doctorates; one in folklore, and one in the psychology of education. she enjoys bad puns. garry chick is professor emeritus at the pennsylvania state university and holds a ph.d. in cultural anthropology. he is a past editor of the journals leisure sciences and play & culture and a past president of the association for the anthropological study of play and the society for cross-cultural research. his primary research interests are in expressive culture, including leisure and health, adult play and games, and research methods. he has conducted field research in mexico, the northeastern united states, mainland china, and taiwan, and has authored or coauthored more than 150 research articles and book chapters. recent publications include “leisure and cultural complexity” (cross-cultural research 45, 59–81, 2011), “play and mate preference: testing the signal theory of adult playfulness” (american journal of play 4, 407–40, 2012), and “anthropology and the study of play” (in the handbook of the study of play, edited by j. johnson et al., 71–84, lanham, md: rowman & littlefield publishers, 2015). jay mechling is professor emeritus of american studies at the university of california, davis. he publishes extensively in the field of the folklore of children and adolescents. he has served as president of the children’s section of the afs, as president of the association for the study of play, and as president of the fellows of the american folklore society. he was awarded the distinguished teaching award at uc davis and is the recipient of the davis prize, the highest campus award for excellence in teaching and research. semontee mitra is a lecturer in the school of humanities and a ph.d. candidate in american studies at penn state university, harrisburg. she specializes in the study of south asian indian americans with a focus on religion, immigration, folk culture, and gender. her work has appeared in puralokbarta, a regional folk journal in india and will soon appear in children’s folklore review, a children’s folklore journal published by the children’s folklore section of the american folklore society and also in american myths, legends, and tall tales: an encyclopedia of american folklore. she is an associate editor of cultural analysis, an interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed journal dedicated to investigate expressive and everyday culture, and co-convener of the transnational asia/pacific section of the american folklore society (afs). she has won numerous awards for her research cfr_2015_r.indb 67 11/22/15 10:41 am contributors 68 papers including the w.w. newell prize from the children’s folklore section of the american folklore society (afs), jonathan t. yeh prize from the transnational asia/pacific section of the american folklore society (afs), gary burns graduate student award from the midwest popular culture association/american culture association (mpca/aca), michael schoenecke travel grant award from the popular culture association/american culture association (pca/aca), afs student travel stipend award, and research stipend from american studies program at penn state harrisburg. elizabeth tucker is professor of english at binghamton university and past president of the international society for contemporary legend research. she received her doctorate in folklore from indiana university, where she developed specializations in children’s and adolescents’ folklore, folklore of the supernatural, and legends. she has written five books, campus legends: a handbook (2005), haunted halls: ghostlore of american college campuses (2007), children’s folklore: a handbook (2008), haunted southern tier (2011), and new york state folklife reader: diverse voices (2013), and 70 articles. cfr_2015_r.indb 68 11/22/15 10:41 am cfr_2000fall.pdf cfr_2000fall.pdf "unaware to her ears": when the storyteller cannot speak elizabeth e. wein jared wein. a young man who is under continual nursing care in a rehabilitation facility in philadelphia. is diagnosed as a spas­ tic quadriplegic. he suffered a severe head injury in an automo­ bile accident that occurred over twenty years ago and. as a con­ sequence. has \'cry litllc motor control. tbe effects of his injury are continually fascinating: most of the damage was to his left brain. and consequently it is the right side of his bod) and those left brain-oriented activities that arc most impaired. his right brain seems to function as if ii were intact: he remains creative and sensitive. he can remember and recognilc people from both his present and his past. and is continually constructing fantasy worlds and possibilities for himself. while he is often unable to remember simple mathematical functions or even what year it is. though he is able lo rncalizc al will he cannot talk. and com­ municates by pointing to lctlcrs writlcn on a board or else by typing messages on an electronic communicator. and though the only limb he has control o,·er is his left arm. jared is able to express his needs and desires in a ,my that is both articulate and inventive. jared's "stories" are typical of his creativity. his case is unique; he was injured when he was eleven, was in a coma for a year, and basically has "learned" very little since that time. both his short­ term memory and his attention span are very poor, and although he was twenty-one when these tales were collected ( 1987-88), his interests and tastes were, and are, generally those of an ado­ lescent or eleven-year-old. he was still attending high school when these stories were recorded, and his peers were generally in their teens. many of the disabled, particularly the mentally disabled, do in a way "lose" their adulthood-their disabilities and the atten­ tion they command makes them childlike. because of jared's short attention span, jared's tales, when compared with the stories in brian sutton-smith's the folkstories <�/ children, are usually no more consistent or structured than those of a four-year-old. yet jared has inevitably picked up pieces of information since his ac­ cident, and inevitably matured in his own way (he graduated from high school in 1989-with a real diploma, not merely a certificate book reviews 84 as “physically superior to their american counterparts” at canoeing (68) and instinctively aware of landscape as “a source of pride” (159) as they teach their friends about the benefits of interacting positively with nature. galway makes a valuable contribution to the study of children’s literature as a source of debates on identity and nation-building. as she traces these arguments galway maintains an intelligent, objective, and insightful commentary. the scholarship is impressive for its coherent synthesis of a wide scope of data, resulting in a text that should be easily accessible to undergraduates. indeed, a class on children’s literature in canada would be remiss not to assign this as a textbook, so valuable are the ideas presented here. the book is not without its small faults, however, and there are some sections where data could have been better organized. for instance, page twelve of the introduction lists the assassination of louis real, the boer war of 1899, and the 1903 alaska boundary question as important historical points in the development of children’s literature. however, these events receive no elaboration until pages thirty-eight, forty-six, and fifty-five, respectively, and there is no notice in the introduction that these elaborations are forthcoming. it would be easy for readers—especially if they are unfamiliar with this era of canadian history—to glean from such an introduction that the book assumes a far greater comprehension than it actually does. still, such faults are relatively minor, and are few in number. overall, the text is exceedingly well-organized and lucid. though the book focuses only on canadian children’s literature of a specific period, it should be required reading for students of any aspect of children’s literature, regardless of concentration. the lessons learned in these pages about the importance of literature for national identity would be well emphasized in other works, and galway provides an excellent and attentionworthy method of analysis and discussion. the book is a wonderful and valuable contribution to the field. haunted halls: ghostlore of american college campuses. by elizabeth tucker. (jackson: university press of mississippi, 2007. pp. vii + 241, illustrations, references, index.) jodi mcdavid haunted halls is a unique approach to the somewhat familiar subject matter of campus legends. elizabeth tucker, a professor of english at binghamton university, comes to this material through an interesting set of circumstances; she has been faculty master of a residential community on the binghamton campus for a number of years. her experience as a folklorist and residence coordinator creates a unique viewpoint for this readable and academically grounded book. haunted halls straddles the line between legend collection and analytic text quite well, providing tale type and motif index references for many of the narratives. the chapters all stand well on their own, due in part to some of their previous lives as articles which have been edited for the current publication. four chapters draw on articles which were published elsewhere. tucker links legends thematically across campuses, for example, finding “wailing women” at a variety cfr_2009_r4.indb 84 10/25/09 6:19:28 pm book reviews 85 of institutions. other chapters include discussions of topics such as legend quests, encounters with ghosts, evidence of them, and ghostly lovers (jilted, waiting and so on). a variety of campuses are surveyed: tucker conducts interviews and searches university and folklore archives to provide a well-rounded selection of legends from at least fifty universities and colleges. types of ghosts are compared to those found at other institutions, and a typology of sorts is exposed through the subject matter of each chapter (although the author herself may not suggest this) with ghosts under the categories of “desperate lovers” found at a variety of colleges. chapter seven, “spectral indians,” goes beyond campus legends to discuss legends told by non-indians and to analyse these types of legends and their function. this chapter would lend itself well to american studies courses, as well as to a discussion of the concepts of emic and etic folklore that are frequently discussed in introductory folklore courses. one issue of concern for some readers may be the use of psychoanalytic theory and jungian approaches. this mode of analysis is limited to chapter four, “troubling encounters,” where tucker cites several academics who have used jungian approaches, for example, in studying bloody mary. in some ways, the use of psychoanalytic theory can be limiting, but it is necessary in a literary review of previous work by folklorists in the area of “adolescent legends.” the use of fieldwork methods which are conducive to the collection of narratives within this age group (approximately aged 17-25) is indeed a contribution to the field. student culture maintains a highly oral component even as students employ a variety of social networking sites and digital communication media. throughout the text, tucker cites legends culled through oral sources as well as those documented via instant messaging and email, a very useful means of collection for the age group that forms the crux of the study. as an instructor, i was delighted to see tucker use these forms as she provides a wonderful example of how they can be studied academically. i can see positive implications for using this book in teaching courses in american studies, children’s folklore, narrative, legends and so on. the book could be used in whole or in part for teaching, although the subject matter of some chapters (rape, murder and suicide) may not be suitable for a high school curriculum. those wishing to use it at this level—to spur creative writing or encourage discussion about legends—may find some chapters to their liking. overall, the book provides interesting approaches to some compelling subject matter, and several pages of my copy are marked for future reflection, citation and exploration. cfr_2009_r4.indb 85 10/25/09 6:19:28 pm pages from cfr_2008-2009 pages from cfr_2008-2009_part27 cfr_2006-07_r3.indb children’s folklore review volume 30 2007–2008 published by the children’s folklore section of the american folklore society with support from the dean’s office of harpur college at binghamton university. cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 1 11/6/08 11:45:59 am contents from the outgoing editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 from the incoming editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 2007 newell prize winner the shoebox museum: the aesthetics and organizational concepts of children kristiana willsey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 nursery school museum, martonvásár, hungary c.w. sullivan iii . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 a reassessment of children’s folklore classification dana hercbergs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 naming games and beyond: referencing in children’s verbal play john holmes mcdowell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 levitation revisited elizabeth tucker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 an eclectic schoolteacher: dorothy howard as applied folklorist jan rosenberg . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 children’s folklore section: 2007 annual meeting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 notes and announcements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 3 11/6/08 11:46:00 am from the outgoing editor c.w. sullivan iii some 30 years ago, i volunteered to see if east carolina university would fund the children’s folklore newsletter. cfn had been published once (by tom burns at the university of pennsylvania), and at the publication of volume i, number 2, i became the official editor. between volumes 10 and 13, cfn became cfr, the children’s folklore review, and eventually went to a once-a-year publication schedule. the volume you hold in your hands is volume 30. the previous paragraph tells so little about what happened over those years. what stands out for me are the people who contributed their articles over the years to make cfr a fine journal of children’s folklore, from established scholars who could have published their articles in other venues to beginning folklorists whom i have seen become established scholars. i do not need to name names; we are a small circle, and we all know who the others are. as you can see, libby tucker and i are co-editors. that is very generous of her as she has done a great deal of work to secure funding and begin the labor that led to the publication of this volume. i may have supplied a few bits of worthwhile advice, but mostly i have stood on the sidelines and cheered her on. i really just wanted my name on the 30th volume for symmetry. the next volume will be edited, solo, by dr. elizabeth tucker. am i glad to be stepping down? yes and no. no because i have enjoyed the friendships that cfr has brought me. no because i have enjoyed reading and editing the articles that have appeared in cfr. yes because as i sneak up on retirement, i will not have ecu to financially support cfr. and yes because it is time, and may be well overdue time, to have a new hand at the helm. for lots of reasons, and none of them good ones, i do not think i generated nearly enough library subscriptions; at our rates, libraries ought to be willing to subscribe. also, troglodyte and luddite that i am, i do not have the computer skills to do what needs be done to take cfr any farther into the 21st century that i have — and barely know what those skills would be. thank you, libby, for taking over, and thank you all for allowing me the privilege of editing the children’s folklore review for all these years. chip cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 5 11/6/08 11:46:00 am from the incoming editor elizabeth tucker as this 30th volume of children’s folklore review goes to press, i want to thank chip sullivan for his outstanding dedication to the journal for the past thirty years. his hard work and generous outreach to children’s folklore scholars around the world have resulted in a wonderful publication that has greatly benefited the development of children’s folklore as a discipline. as the incoming editor of cfr, i have “big shoes” to fill. chip’s editorial shoes are so big that they qualify as sevenleague boots! i am grateful for his co-editorship of this issue and will do my best to follow the fine example of editorial service that he has established. our first binghamton university issue presents articles that examine familiar subjects in new ways. the winner of our william wells newell prize, kristiana willsey, suggests that children’s treasure boxes are more than collections of personal memorabilia; in their own right, they qualify as children’s museums. chip sullivan’s “nursery school museum, martonvásár, hungary” describes a unique museum about which many children’s folklore scholars know very little. dana hercbergs’s “reassessment of children’s folklore classification” asks important questions about folklorists’ perception of digitally mediated games and other pursuits that do not fit the genres most commonly recognized by folklorists of childhood. john mcdowell’s “naming games and beyond” explores very young children’s naming games and routines, enhancing our understanding of these children’s creative self-expression. my own “levitation revisited” examines the origins of a well-established supernatural ritual that now thrives on the internet’s youtube. and jan rosenberg’s “an eclectic schoolteacher” takes a fresh look at dorothy howard, whose research helped to launch the field of children’s folklore. as these articles demonstrate, children’s folklore review will continue to publish exciting and innovative children’s folklore scholarship. i hope to increase our number of subscribers and plan to include a book review section in our next issue. if you would like to suggest a book for review, please e-mail our new book review editor, dana hercbergs (hercberg@sas.upenn.edu). comments and suggestions from all readers are welcome! i would be delighted to hear from you on e-mail at any time (ltucker@binghamton.edu). thanks very much for your support of cfr. cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 7 11/6/08 11:46:00 am 9 the shoebox museum: the aesthetics and organizational concepts of children kristiana willsey guests at the smithsonian, the louvre, or the met go to see pieces that have been declared important and valuable repositories of meaning, beauty and culture by trustworthy authorities. elegantly presented as final, finished objects for cultural consumption, exhibits in glass cases and behind velvet ropes are validated by hushed, reverent, paying audiences. traditional museums simultaneously recognize importance and create it, through the frame of the museum itself. however, the notion that a particular space can confer significance upon objects, marking and raising them from their quotidian context, is not unique to adults or to fully accredited cultural authorities. if the museum is reserved for fixed, established, mature “high cultural” objects, how then does that often invisible, incompletely cultured class of individuals, children, recognize/create objects that are beautiful and meaningful to them? this paper considers children as intuitive curators, whose ready grasp of collection and containment as processes of sacralization both upsets and reinscribes the values of traditional museums: authority, publicity, permanence and presentation. the children’s museum (meaning not museums designed by adults for children, but children’s own eclectic assemblages of treasures kept in shoe boxes, dresser drawers, under a loose floorboard, etc.) is here considered alongside of other (adult) critiques and parodies of traditional museums, specifically dave wilson’s museum of jurassic technology and rosamond casey’s museum of ambient disorders.1 this is not because i believe that children’s assemblages are selfconscious, calculated and incisive attacks on the stultifying artificiality of traditional museums. rather, i want to suggest that the artistic and philosophical projects of adults, which take up questions of permanence, authority, publicity and presentation, are inheritors of and modeled on the assemblages of children. this paper thus develops a novel conceptual framework for approaching children’s assemblages, with particular reference to one child’s museum: the “treasure chest” of nearly-five-year-old ben harding.2 drawing on ongoing research, my analysis is intended to be preliminary and suggestive, not argumentative or exhaustive. most significantly, this is an argument for considering children’s material “folk” culture on an equal plane with the artistic, expressive “high” culture of adult intellectuals. the word “assemblage” is used advisedly, to differentiate the specific and thematic collections children might have of rocks, dolls, baseball cards and so forth from my focus here, which is on those jumbled hodge-podges of rubber bands, vending machine prizes, feathers, pictures, costume jewelry, interesting pebbles, empty perfume bottles, matchbox cars, mysterious bits of machinery, and other unlikely treasures. the personally significant and the visually or tactilely appealing share quarters, not merely coincidentally but productively: “accumulation and layering promote a kind of benevolent contagion; the significance of one image is lent to another … intensification [of meaning] springs cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 9 11/6/08 11:46:01 am the shoebox museum willsey 10 from a process of condensing and miniaturizing” (turner 1999, 100). kay turner offers an adult parallel to the fragmentary and flexible shoebox museum with her research on the aesthetics of women’s home altars: places in the home set apart as sacred and containing “photos, candles, incense, ritual tools, potions, medicine bundles, shells, crystals, coins, momentos, knick-knacks, gifts, offerings, decorative effects, and even seemingly anomalous items, such as a jar of buttons or a door knob. some of these things may remain fixed for a lifetime, while others may change. the aesthetic of relationship is a dynamic one: expanding, sometimes contracting, then again being replenished over time” (95). children’s assemblages are similarly fluid and subject to revision; the success of the shoebox museum relies upon its accessibility and its mutability, unlike the glassed-off, carded-andcatalogued permanence of traditional museums. alternative museums like dave wilson’s museum of jurassic technology and rosamond casey’s museum of ambient disorders criticize the stifling and unnecessary “noise,” in goffman’s sense, of the museum space: the gilt frames and velvet ropes intended to honor and elevate the art and artifacts are too prone to become themselves the object of reverence. the emphasis on presentation mediates and circumscribes what wilson, casey, and others see as the natural role of art: a genuine and reciprocal conversation between guests and exhibit. american artist robert smithson said famously, “museums are tombs” (1996, 58). best known for “earthworks” sculptures like his 1970 “spiral jetty,” pieces designed to engage and interact with natural forces rather than resisting them, smithson’s criticism of the artificial abstraction of museums and galleries and the illusion of permanence is taken up as parody by alternative museums and conceptual art. dave wilson’s museum of jurassic technology is a dimly lit, labyrinthine set of rooms with an air of genteel neglect, tucked away in a suburb of los angeles. the exhibits include a series of intricate dioramas depicting the american lifestyle of the mobile home, microscopic mosaics of flowers and birds composed from the scales on a butterfly’s wing, a thick sheet of lead containing a species of bat which uses figure 1. “hanging basket.” courtesy of the museum of jurassic technology. figure 2. “rotten luck.” courtesy of the museum of jurassic technology. cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 10 11/6/08 11:46:02 am willsey the shoebox museum 11 sonar to move through solid objects, a collection of antique celluloid dice, and various other beautiful and bizarre images of dubious authenticity (figs. 1-2). as lawrence weschler exposes in his pulitzer-prize finalist for nonfiction, mr. wilson’s cabinet of wonders, the museum is a tongue-in-cheek piece of conceptual art, a destabilization of authoritative truth. wilson asks his guests to consider who has the authority to create meaning/significance, what devices (literally) frame it for audience consumption, and whether museum spaces recognize intrinsic value, create it, or both. in a similar critical project, rosamond casey’s gallery of sculptures, collectively titled the museum of ambient disorders, questions the values of authority, permanence, publicity and presentation in order to strip away superfluities and argue for a more personal, unencumbered, egalitarian engagement with art. the exhibit “white noise,” a series of stoppered bottles supposedly containing sounds stored up by an old man in the process of losing his hearing, devotes equal measures of humor and sincerity to the question of how meaning might be captured and preserved (fig. 3). casey subtly satirizes the noble aim of traditional museums, which imagine not only that certain objects (which the curators will know on sight) act as receptacles of culture, beauty, or significance, but that the museum can protect them from the rude passage of time or ugly, inevitable change of episteme. casey also pointedly takes on the issue of perspective and asks us to reevaluate who has the authority to distinguish between the worthy and the trivial. putting an old man’s reminiscences in a museum exhibit extends to them a weight they would hardly have independently. the personal is practically trivial by default; museums deal in the momentous, the universal, and the substantial. or do they? is the mona lisa in the louvre because it’s famous, or is the mona lisa famous because it’s in the louvre? casey delights in these tangled relationships of significance and authority. ben’s museum (fig. 4) offers a neat entry point into these intellectual adult projects; his “treasure chest” is both an implicit challenge to the aims of traditional museums and an affirmation of them. ben’s museum is unquestionably personal/trivial; his treasures have only individual and idiosyncratic meaning, nothing (apparently) worthy of glass cases figure 3. “white noise.” courtesy of rosamond casey and the virginia quarterly review. cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 11 11/6/08 11:46:02 am the shoebox museum willsey 12 figure 4. ben harding’s museum. photograph by kristiana willsey. cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 12 11/6/08 11:46:02 am willsey the shoebox museum 13 or admission fees. they are physically trivial: small, often broken, frequently cheap and mass-produced. presentation of artifacts in ben’s museum is nothing more polished or final than a jumble; the box is an open space within which any object can relate to any other. turner’s description of the home altar is equally applicable to children’s assemblages: “power flows through the “thingliness” of the altar [or shoebox], its material reality … images and objects that have no immediate affinity are nonetheless yoked together to forge new, interrelated meanings” (1999, 98). connections and relationships are not tidily bound in programs or catalogues, but are literally up for grabs. further, they are curated/validated by a child, someone with no cultural authority to declare meaning. but it remains that ben’s “treasure chest” is a space recognized and marked for the collection and containment of valuable and significant objects. it is in fact the ideal answer to dave wilson’s question of who has the right to determine significance or rosamond casey’s concern with the personal/trivial. moreover, ben’s jumbled and evocative assemblage is reminiscent of the sculptures of surrealist artist joseph cornell, and an interesting dialogue emerges when we permit ourselves to consider the two on equal footing. there is in ben an air of the traditional curator, “discovering” objects worthy of collection and containment. k: how do you know to put something in your pirate chest if you get something? b: (long pause, seven seconds) i know. put in my — i just think of doing that. my question was essentially the critic juan suarez’ query to cornell’s sculptures: “what makes certain objects laden with surrealist potential?” (2007, 148). the museum space suggests itself for a privileged few; the beauty and value of certain objects is — as the classic curator’s task — recognized and exalted, albeit within the limited presentation sphere available to ben. his explanation invokes the curator’s sense of inherent existing value, visible to the sensitive eye of the collector. ben, likewise, asserts, “everything that is treasurous, goes in my box.” however, the corollary is of course that everything that enters the box becomes treasure. the objects are decontextualized and “framed”; meaning is created through placement and association. an intrinsic quality of traditional museums is the impression of permanence and fixity of context, not just generally within the bound, framed world of art or history but within the specific museum or gallery: while exhibits travel, the mona lisa is practically synonymous with the louvre. authoritative adult museums fix significance and tie it to a particular place or time; generally agreedupon interpretations of a famous painting or excavated artifact are written down in programs or memorized for tours. children’s assemblages, conversely, recognize objects as naturally and readily recontextualizable. the apparent disorder is purposeful and creative; as lucy lippard points out, “fragmentation need not connote explosion, disintegration. it is also a component of networks, stratification, the interweaving of many dissimilar threads, and de-emphasis on cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 13 11/6/08 11:46:03 am the shoebox museum willsey 14 imposed meaning in favor of multiple interpretations” (qtd. in turner 1999, 100). for instance, although a string of beads or an artificial rose retain the associations with a friend’s party or a relative’s wedding where ben received them, these associations aren’t solidified or resistant to gathering new kinds of meaning. while showing me his treasures, ben incorporates them easily into his games. a highbouncer from a vending machine becomes enormous, an out-of-scale weapon in his lego-world: b: (sound of rubber ball bouncing) “ahhh! bombs dropping on the ship!” later, ben finds a purple latex snake, about an inch long, which (his mother explained in elided dialogue) came as part of a pirate game. b: oh here’s my snake! [ … ] k: so this is kind of a pirate thing too? b: nuh-uh. snakes are not pirates. k: (laughter) no, snakes are clearly not pirates, ben. what kind of a thing is this? b: (playing with legos) propeller — i am a propeller. it’s a propeller — snake. k: it’s a propeller snake? b: yeah, propeller snakes live in propellers. they live, and they never get chopped up. the simultaneity of the lego game-world and the toy snake creates a new and exciting scenario for ben; what begins as an experimental linguistic juxtaposition (“i am a propeller. it’s a propeller — snake”) suggests a cogent and appealing little narrative. and in fact, ben did offer an answer (of sorts) to my question. the snake is an available “kind of thing,” an object with unlimited potentially intriguing contexts. this fluidity of significance that ben takes for granted strikes at a central notion of traditional museums: that meaning can be extracted, distilled, and preserved in the hermetic vault of a circumscribed authoritative space. rather they are valued for “their capacity to derail automacized perception and trigger unpredictable trains of association” (suarez 2007, 147). analyzing the work of surrealist artists, suarez explicitly connects their treatment of objects to that of children: as walter benjamin was fond of pointing out, childhood vision has not yet been reduced by purposive rationality and is therefore more alert to the enigmatic quality of objects and to the webs of association in which they exist. it multiplies and transforms the object world instead of freezing it into routine: ‘[the child’s drawers] must become arsenal and zoo; crime museum and crypt. to ‘tidy up’ would be to demolish an edifice full of prickly chestnuts that are spiky clubs, tin foil that is hoarded silver, bricks that are coffins, cacti that are totem cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 14 11/6/08 11:46:03 am willsey the shoebox museum 15 poles, and copper pennies that are shields.’ to see as a child is to see as a surrealist, fully attentive to the complexity of matter.” (2007, 166) and, it would appear, to see as a surrealist is to see as a child — suarez goes on to describe joseph cornell’s “intense fascination with children” in his art (2007, 167), and biographical data offers further interesting angles. cornell lived with his parents for most of his adult life, and had a “professed distaste for shocking subject matter and overt sexual references” (suarez 2007, 142). in other words, there was something childlike about him, or at least enamored of the victorian image of the child. suarez moreover frames artistic and ideological developments within a model of human maturation: “hence to see like a child is, in a way, to see with the untutored eye of the new visual technologies at the time. cornell’s, and the surrealist’s, early years were a period when the emergent mass media had not yet [ … ] streamlined their grammar and style” (2007, 167). suarez invokes a unilinear view of culture similar to that of alice bertha gomme and other proponents of cultural evolution. surrealism is described as the infancy of modernity, and children are asked to stand in for a previous historical period. in this case, though, their vision is romanticized and the adult artist is imagined as channeling or inheriting the child’s (productive, positive) understanding of objects. underlying these surrealist sculptures, in suarez’ analysis, is a belief in the ‘naturalness’ of the surrealist perspective; it is self-consciously aligned with an idea of children as unconscious artists. we don’t need to deal with how deliberate or sophisticated children’s awareness of their assemblages actually is, because successful surrealist art is imagined as returning to that “innocent” appreciation of the objects: “rather than create, it recontextualizes and therefore reinterprets the given” (suarez 2007, 147). this conception of the artist as unconscious, rather than creative, suggests the familiar folkloristic notion of the “passive bearer,” evidence of how seamlessly the usually disassociated disciplines of folklore and fine art can converse. even the museum shell itself, the box that recognizes and creates the objects within it as significant and valuable, is subject to revision/recontextualization. initially ben’s “treasure chest” was a christmas gift containing only pirate-themed goodies: doubloons, fake beads, an activity book and so forth. however, with a child’s sensitivity to the richness of language, ben knew that “treasure” refers to both material and immaterial wealth: what was given to him as a place for gold, he transforms into a vessel for another kind of riches: memories, associations, family ties. concerning this openness to recontextualization, it is significant that ben’s museum, unlike most museums designed for adults, is entirely hands-on. his artifacts are sensuously diverse, appreciated for the rich and varied stimuli they provide. the objects’ value is described in physical and tactile terms: k: what do you like about this, this marble? b: marble? i like to roll it down. cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 15 11/6/08 11:46:03 am the shoebox museum willsey 16 likewise the aerosol bottle of lavender-scented liquid, which is both viscerally and olfactorily appealing, has a place in the museum. the coins were dumped out and sifted through for the music of metal ringing against metal. thus the availability of the objects to be made significant in novel ways requires that their presentation be informal (no glass cases) and personal, involving the fullness of sensory awareness particular to children. a brief note on methodology: because i had never met ben and i wanted him (and his mother) to be comfortable with what i was doing, i chose to interview ben in his mother’s presence. i don’t know in what way this altered the answers he gave me and i will need to do further research with other children to get a more informed sense of how private these assemblages really are. one complication that immediately emerged, though, was that i was a friend of his mother’s, manifestly an adult, and therefore was given self-consciously adultoriented answers. i don’t think it was coincidental, for instance, that ben spoke first about the money in his treasure chest, the piggy-bank component of the collection, as that which he knew adults valued and which i, an adult, would be most impressed by: k: where’d you get the marble? b: i don’t remember. but this is all my money that i keep in here, i got lots and lots. and i got this [a flattened souvenir penny] from the children’s museum, um, (sing-song intonation) it’s right heeere, it’s a mummy, and this is all my money, that i really like and, (coins falling, indecipherable) this is my money so my mommy can buy stuff for me. my attempts to turn the discussion towards the more unusual and personal objects were, more often than not, unsuccessful, but ben was eager to show off his “lots and lots” of money, emphasizing his role as an important and productive member of the household. the money was being elevated for my/adult benefit and recognition, not necessarily according to ben’s own understanding. not all the things ben called money were what adults consider legal tender; they also included foreign coins, toy money, or likely-looking pieces of metal. in fact ben explicitly referred to a flattened, stamped souvenir penny (something which has been transformed from currency into a toy) as “money.” similarly his phonetic approximations of “money” and experimentation with different articles (“it’s a mummy”) underscore that, for ben, this was a semi-foreign cultural category. knowing that i was there with my audio recorder to talk to him about important things, ben wanted to represent himself as capable and mature, helping his mother to take care of him (an endearing posturing i imagine his mother encouraged). i am not suggesting that the money was not special to ben, but rather that he represented it in a way particularly keyed to an adult audience. it’s also likely that part of his appreciation for it comes from his sense that this is an adult thing — adulthood seeming as foreign and exotic as his coin from barbados, as distant and improbable a role as a pirate whose gold doubloons have a place alongside the currency of other grown-ups. cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 16 11/6/08 11:46:03 am willsey the shoebox museum 17 a struggle to translate his sense of relationship into mine manifests itself elsewhere in the interview, when i ask ben to explain more about why he organized his treasures the way he did: b: it’s a flower. k: why is it with your pirate treasure? b: i put things in that is not apposed to go in there. k: why aren’t they supposed to go in there? b: because i got them some other place and i don’t want them to go in there. so i (indecipherable) legos especially don’t go in pirate boxes. (explosing noises) fuse bomb! digging in the fuse! (flying noises) and this is apposed to go. k: so why does the rose go with the pirate stuff? b: because, i wanted it to go, it didn’t you know it didn’t go with pirate stuff. newly conceiving of his treasures from my (adult) perspective, ben sees that his groupings are not “appropriate;” ben is aware of his sense of relatedness as deviant or dispreferred: he “put[s] things in that is not apposed to go in there.” when i pressed him, he gave an explanation of one kind of adult/appropriate category: “i got them in some other place.” things from the same place are like objects; shared context creates meaning. his diverse assemblage of objects from multiple contexts is difficult for him to explain, as he switches between aesthetics; he “wanted it to go,” but i know, “it didn’t go with the pirate stuff.” he is aware of, but resistant to, adult concepts of organization; instead “the accumulation of things, and their ability to resonate against each other, completely overcomes the subject’s ability to set them in order” (suarez 2007, 145). though ben’s museum is unconcerned with formal presentation or public display and requires only the authoritative curatorship of ben himself, there is one crucial level at which his museum is no different than any elegantly presented, culturally validated, and permanently contextualized museum space. underlying ben’s museum, as it does more polished and authoritative venues, is the troubling sense of inevitable change, transition, and loss. suarez’s description of cornell’s art — “the endless symbolic resonances and flights of association in which he indulges are attempts to bind the primary alterity of the material world” — could equally be applied to the assemblage of the not-quite-five-year-old ben (2007, 145). ben repeatedly gives rationales for his treasures in terms of protection and preservation, saying “then i um, put it in there, just to be safe. so it could be safe.” he explains that he keeps things in the box “because i don’t want it to get lost, all my toys from there get lost. so i wanna keep those in there so they won’t get lost.” and he becomes actively outraged when his mother proposed mixing his organizational schemas, specifically because it would pose a threat to the fragile order he has managed to sort out for himself: m: would you ever put your lego in the pirate chest — b: noooo! cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 17 11/6/08 11:46:04 am the shoebox museum willsey 18 m: no? b: (quietly) lost. m: it would get lost — b: no, don’t dare, dare, w, dare. don’t even think about that! this sense of his treasures as threatened is not only literal, but also symbolic. these are not only tactilely pleasing objects but, more significantly, narrative objects, vessels for memory and association. turner discusses the dual roles of women’s altars as both aesthetically appealing and personally resonant: “if the first authentic goal of an altar is to represent relationship, then the primary artistic move is to set potent images in relation to one another” (1999, 96). by “representing relationship,” the objects in ben’s museum also represent the threat of losing the people with whom they are connected. it emerged in our conversation that ben’s objects were disproportionately gifts from family: k: do these things go together? do these pictures [one of a ship his mother sailed on, the other of a smoke column from his firefighter father] go together? b: no. my dad gave me that one, and my mom gave me that one. m: do you remember who gave it to you? b: (fiercely) unclemichael! he’s my uncle definitely. m: do you remember where you got those orange beads? b: from nanny. k: why do you like it [the picture from his father]? b: because it reminds me of my dad, he lives in california! (clenched teeth, impatient) k: why did you put it in here with your treasure? b: i didn’t even know it was in there. so i didn’t, know that it was in there. (fiercely) this relationship between gift and giver is articulated by robert armstrong in his analysis of what he calls “works of affecting presence,” specifically museum exhibits and other objects of cultural worship: “such things are not, at base, symbols of something else … they are whatever they are. … [they] own certain characteristics that cause them to be treated more like persons than like things” (1981, 5). in other words, human contact humanizes things. my mother’s sweater is my mother, and when i eat from my grandmother’s china she is serving me. the exhibits in ben’s museum likewise “exist in a state of tension between these two poles: being subject and being object” (armstrong 1981, 6). they are simultaneously physical things under his control and intermediaries for independent humans whose actions he cannot predict or protect. this crosses into very personal territory, and several interesting things emerged from these exchanges. in the first place, there’s a kind of sympathetic ritual involved in the objects’ capture and containment. to keep the objects safe is to keep the people safe, or at least one’s own memories and understanding of them. it also becomes clear from ben’s tone of voice and metalinguistic gestures that cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 18 11/6/08 11:46:04 am willsey the shoebox museum 19 these aren’t things he is comfortable talking about. in fact the reason that some of these explanations were given to his mother, rather than me (and only grudgingly at that) is because she had the authority to push when ben was evasive. in the case of the picture from his father, ben denies the significance. though i want to respect the statements of my informant, his discomfort, repetition, and general unwillingness to speak about personal and emotional associations make it hard to believe the picture isn’t a valued part of his treasure chest. these are obviously things that are not only personal, but also sensitive. there is something simultaneously valuable and upsetting about these reminders of uncertain (and in his father’s case, geographically distant) relationships. as suarez says, “this is why objects combine anxiety and fascination; why, even though they evoke danger, they are also obsessively revisited” (2007, 149). the treasures both offer a kind of security and remind their collector that security is impossible. ben’s wariness regarding the personal narratives invested in his treasures adds another dimension to our consideration of his assemblage as a museum. “museum” is a term typically reserved for public display; significance is validated by the collective appreciation of an audience. this is part of the definition of “museum” rosamond casey’s museum of ambient disorders takes apart, specifically with the exhibit “bob’s flashback,” which sets apart a childhood memory within an internet forward (fig. 5). the exhibit combines all the elements of triviality that typically would label it as unfit for museum-consumption: it is transient, gone the second the window closes. besides this it is clearly not processed for a presentation; casey returns to the issue of permanence and preservation by pressing this casual fragment of a conversation — typos, awkward grammar and spelling intact — between blocks of glass, like insects in honey. but above all it is personal, of no real significance to anyone other than bob. it is this hard line between the personal and the significant that casey seems particularly interested in; while bob’s revelation is unique to him, the genuineness of his emotion and the thrill of recollection is universally accessible. casey asserts that the personal is not antithetical to a museum exhibit; rather it is a prerequisite to that connection which is the appropriate work of museums. just as “white noise” privileges the personal by reminding us that meaning and history are individually created, bob’s conversation figure 5. “bob’s flashback.” courtesy of rosamond casey and the virginia quarterly review. cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 19 11/6/08 11:46:04 am the shoebox museum willsey 20 is museum-worthy not in spite of its personal/trivial nature, but because of it. similarly, the privacy of ben’s assemblage is a mark of its sincerity. its very personalness is what elevates it from the everyday; if it were not personally important, it would not be in his box of treasures, a bounded space outside of the ordinary. k: do you like talking about your box? b: (pause) no. i don’t know. k: how come? b: because it’s too — treasured-ous! (shooting noises) m: are you saying it’s because it’s treasure — and it’s special? (to me: i know sometimes he doesn’t like to talk about things that are special to him.) b: yes i do. i do[‘nt.] k: [you] like to talk to things that are special to you [ben?] b: [no.] though i can’t really know whether ben’s problematic explanation is a function of emotional discomfort, mere boredom, frustration at my inability to understand or his inability to express it effectively, this is clearly a difficult subject for him. ben’s reticence regarding the personal significance of his objects in fact resonates with joseph cornell’s surrealist structures: a body of work that is as meticulously crafted as it is mystifyingly opaque, they consistently bypass that on the other side of art, the personal and the symbolic, cornell merely gives us things — bits of obtrusively unreadable matter in odd combination. his constructions infuse quotidian things with cultural density and human circumstance and therefore lift them from their immediate materiality; yet at the same time, they simultaneously reassert them as matter — blunt remains that symbol and sense can never exhaust (suarez 143). though ben’s museum is perhaps not “meticulously crafted,” and probably not intentionally mystifyingly, it’s worth considering that suarez’s critical analyses are only possible because cornell was not much more forthcoming about the intention of his art than ben is about the motivations for his collection. there’s a surprising and appealing symmetry between ben harding’s treasure chest and cornell’s surrealist sculptures — the latter suggests an inheritance of and refinement on the intuitive curatorship of children. moreover, as many questions and complications as ben’s assemblage raises for the typical museum, it also demonstrates a canny grasp of how to establish and defend the significance of things adults would not recognize by adopting a very ‘adult’ method: put it all together in a safe, closed, box. as candice gouchard says in turner, “the process of acquiring objects that begin to have meaning both in and of themselves and in relation to events or people or places or ideas … begins cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 20 11/6/08 11:46:04 am willsey the shoebox museum 21 to have a power of its own that exceeds the power of the individual object … accumulation describes the process of empowerment both for the individual and for the space that [the] altar [or shoebox] … occupies” (1999, 100, my emphasis). it is not only the objects in a museum that assemblage throws into conversation; the curator and the museum space are wrapped up in the process as well. if putting an ordinary object in a frame lends it significance, then it also creates significance for the framer — something children, among the least powerful members of society, are quick to appreciate. underlying ben’s treasure chest is an alignment with that most integral conceit of museum work — that to possess anything is to possess importance, that collection itself is an act of empowerment. notes 1. discussions of rosamond casey draw on an unpublished 2006 paper. 2. names of participants have been changed. works cited armstrong, robert plant. 1981. the powers of presence: consciousness, myth, and affecting presence. philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press. casey, rosamond. 2006. a museum of ambient disorders. virginia quarterly review 82: 202-227. smithson, robert. 1996. some void thoughts on museums. in robert smithson: the collected writings, ed. jack flam, 58. berkeley: university of california press. suarez, juan a. 2007. pop modernism: noise and the reinvention of the everyday. illinois: urbana and chicago. turner, kay. 1999. beautiful necessity: the art and meaning of women’s altars. new york: thames and hudson. weschler, lawrence. 1995. mr. wilson’s cabinet of wonder. new york: vintage. cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 21 11/6/08 11:46:05 am 23 nursery school museum, martonvásár, hungary c.w. sullivan iii the brunszvik family of martonvásár, hungary, is famous for its connection and friendship with ludwig von beethoven, but on my visit there, while i was spending the spring on a fulbright at debrecen university, i discovered a very interesting nursery school museum. most of what follows is paraphrased from the official handouts at the museum; all quotations come from the visitor’s guide. theresa brunsszvik, a close friend of beethoven’s, was one of the best educated and most well-informed women of her time, and she became one of the pioneers of nursery school education in europe. the nursery school she established in buda, then the capital of hungary, in 1828 was not only the first in hungary but the first in all of central europe. through her influence, the first nursery schools were later opened in austria and southern germany. the exhibit is divided into three parts. the first part includes a picture of the house in buda where teresa opened the first nursery school, and there is also a model of the school based on the original inventory and written descriptions. the teaching materials show that the children there were taught to read, write, and count in german. the teaching aids were developed by the german nursery school specialist friedrich fröbel and became widespread in hungary during the latter half of the nineteenth century. the second part of the exhibit focuses on nursery education in the latter part of the nineteenth century and the first part of the twentieth. until the 1870s, only men taught in these schools, and their classes ranged from 60 to 100 students. this part of the exhibit contains toys and teaching aids made by teachers and students from local products. there are dolls made of rags and “maize” cobs, toy soldiers, building blocks, and more. there is also an inkwell, a goose-feather pen, and a “clapper” to set the rhythm of physical exercises. private nursery schools using the montessori method became popular after about 1910. the third part of the exhibit looks at nursery education from the end of world war ii though the 1960s when it became normal practice for children to be at school all day. during the early years of communist rule, the nursery school “was the first stage in socialist education.” in the early years after the war, there were no toys in the schools, and children had to bring chairs or stools on which to sit. after 1960, hungarian schools began to regain their earlier status. the museum is working to move to a larger building and create exhibits covering nursery education from 1960 to 1990. to say that this material is fascinating is an understatement; the fulbrighters who went on this trip (sponsored by the hungarian fulbright commission) spent more time and displayed more interest in the nursery school museum than in any other part of the brunszvik estate. should you be in budapest, the brunszvik estate is an easy day trip and well worth the effort. cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 23 11/6/08 11:46:05 am 25 a reassessment of children’s folklore classification dana hercbergs in his magnum opus, the ambiguity of play (1997), psychologist and children’s folklore scholar brian sutton-smith traces the concept of play from older to more contemporary associations and argues that underlying every prominent definition of play is a rhetoric, a kuhnian paradigm informing the research questions and objectives of studies about play. sutton-smith defines a rhetoric as “a persuasive discourse, or an implicit narrative, wittingly or unwittingly adopted by members of a particular affiliation to persuade others of the veracity and worthwhileness of their beliefs” (8). for instance, among the oldest rhetorics identified by the author is the concept of play as fate, associated with games of chance that, by virtue of uncertain outcomes, mimic the belief that humans are controlled by destiny and other forces (9). on the other hand, play’s association with progress has dominated theories of animal and child development for about two hundred years, impacting the way educators see “playful imitation as a form of children’s socialization and moral, social and cognitive growth” (9). other notions of play identified by sutton-smith include frivolity, power and identity. i mention these examples to illustrate the contribution of such a foray into the history of ideas, namely, to prompt us to consider our own disciplinary assumptions and boundaries. aided by sutton-smith’s work, and after reviewing some of the key studies on children’s games and lore in the last one hundred years,1 in the present essay i identify a ‘rhetoric of play’ that applies both to the academic study of children’s games and to their popular perception: that is, the nostalgic lament of the transition from outdoor, group and physical games to indoor, solitary and digitally mediated games. this dichotomy is not only implicated in determining what qualifies as suitable material for the folkloristic study of children’s play; it also echoes adult concerns that children have less opportunity for ‘free’ outdoor recreation than they themselves had.2 children’s play is increasingly associated with solitary indoor entertainment rather than with street play among peers (sutton-smith 1986, 170), a point that both academics and general observers find disturbing. valentine’s public space and the culture of childhood (2004) confirms that parents in the united kingdom lament their children’s lack of access to the outdoor play of their own youth, while at the same time giving reasons to be concerned about child safety, traffic and stranger dangers being two factors that limit outdoor play. these concerns appear in scholarship at least as early as the 1980s in studies of children’s play spaces, both in adult-controlled play programs and in more child-derived play areas in urban and rural environments (moore 1986, dargan and zeitlin 1990, olwig and gulløv 2003, hörschelmann and schäfer 2005, kraftl, horton and tucker 2007). paralleling these studies, a nostalgic baby-boomer generation is spawning a revival of its own childhood culture in publications on popular pastimes of the 1950s and 1960s (for example, dankner and tartakover 1996). books include the cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 25 11/6/08 11:46:05 am a reassessment of children’s folklore classification hercbergs 26 “unlikely bestseller” (williams 2007, 9) the dangerous book for boys, written by irish brothers conn and hal iggulden (2006), and websites like “nostalgia online,” an israeli forum with an accompanying book of games and other amusements.3 in the israeli case, which has been the focus of my own research, there are even manuals and revivals of traditional games by television campaigns and game manufacturers (zuk 2007). these projects and others are geared variably towards adults and children, their resurgence encouraging interaction and reconnection across the generation gap. one might call it a folk revival worthy of study in itself. similarly, when we survey recent academic publications on children’s folklore, we continue to see an emphasis on the familiar genres.4 a noteworthy example is the edited volume children’s folklore: a source book (sutton-smith et al. 1995), with case studies dealing with outdoor games (beresin 75-92), “songs, poems, and riddles” (sullivan 145-60), “tales and legends” (tucker 193-212), and “teases and pranks” (jorgensen 213-24). more recent examples are play today in the primary school playground (bishop and curtis 2001) and at play in belfast: children’s folklore and identities in northern ireland (lanclos 2003), both focusing on school playground games and lore. what seems clear from this brief survey is the academic and popular convergence in valuing, dare i say idealizing the familiar, “classic” forms of play. but the work of folklorists should not stop here. if scholars have tended to privilege outdoor recreation, youth cultures and oral traditions (mcnamee 1998, mechling 2000), they can no longer ignore, for instance, the impact that computer and video games have on young people and their implications for learning in a digitally mediated society, especially as these indoor games are much more dominant and popular than before in game history. on the other hand, the burgeoning literature on computer and video games, which tends to focus on “the negative effects of playing [them]” and their potential for learning and achievement in the workplace” (yee 2006a, 3, yee 2006b, suellentrop 2007, 63), could stand to benefit from ethnographic assessments in the vein of gary alan fine’s work on role playing games of the dungeons and dragons variety (1983). such role playing games are the precursors to mmorpg’s, or massively multi-user online role playing games, suggesting that such activities are not so different from one another. i am not suggesting that qualitative studies have not been done in other fields; on the contrary, studies of digital games address a variety of subjects including gender preferences (hayes 2007), character formation (hayes 2007, yee 2006a), perceptions of the fluidity of identity (turkle 1995), and virtual community affiliation (yee 2006a). journals dedicated to the subject, like game studies (since 2001)5 and games and culture (since 2006), and a number of conferences (see raessens 2006, 52) provide platforms for these discussions. what i do envision, however, is a fruitful give-and-take whereby folklorists can adapt their schemas of what qualifies as children’s folklore to address these forms of play. folklorists, who are, after all, adept at identifying the parameters of new and changing generic forms of human expression (for example, tucker 2002-3), can contribute to a more nuanced understanding of what is going on in these framed activities. for instance, through ethnographic research folklorists can evaluate the extent cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 26 11/6/08 11:46:06 am hercbergs a reassessment of children’s folklore classification 27 to which children and teens who from a young age engage in mass-mediated digital gaming experience it as hyper-reality or a simulation of reality (baudrillard 1983, 38 in rodaway 1995, 246). indeed, folklorists’ specialization in identifying the devices that key alternate frames of discourse and behavior as separate from ordinary reality equips us amply for exploring these terrains. by rethinking and expanding our concept of what qualifies as children’s folklore, we can contribute new perspectives on play, peer interaction, and identity issues while staying abreast of these developments. to move us towards a more inclusive schema of children’s activities, i propose looking critically at a defining feature of our field: genres. much of folklore scholarship has been defined by genres (harris 1995, 509), and to a great extent they have defined the subfield of children’s folklore. in this essay i will revisit roger abrahams’ genre classification in “the complex relations of simple forms” (1976), in light of three authors’ works on children’s folklore — works that have bent the genre frame and argued going beyond it. next, rather than propose yet another model for classifying children’s folklore genres, i will show that our existing models could accommodate current research and suggest questions for future studies. this is not so much a prescriptive statement as it is a formulation of an observed trend that ought to aid our thinking about the direction the field is going. abrahams’ classification of folklore genres abrahams explains the usefulness of generic classification in “the complex relations of simple forms” (1976) thus: “we point to the genres because by naming certain patterns of expression we are able to talk about the traditional forms and the conventional contents of artistic representation, as well as the patterns of expectation which both the artist and audience carry into the aesthetic transaction” (193). abrahams devised a continuum for depicting the relations among the various genres of folklore according to performer-audience interaction that each genre involves (199). on one end of the continuum are placed the most spontaneous conversational utterances such as superstitions and proverbs, which express traditional knowledge applied to solve a specific conflict. the relationship between ‘performer’ and ‘audience’ in the conversational genres is direct; for instance, a proverb teller is the performer of the folk item, while the recipient of its embedded wisdom is cast in the role of the audience. the middle of the continuum involves slightly more removed interactions: it contains genres of ‘play’ ranging from riddling and joking to spectator sports and debates and concludes with festivals and rituals, folk drama where traditional role playing involves a high degree of formality and where the resolution of the conflict is predetermined (208). towards the second half of the continuum, where involvement is “primarily through vicarious identification,” are the fictive genres such as fables, epics, ballads and other familiar narrative forms. finally, the scheme ends with the most planned and ‘static’ forms that “present us with a fait accompli, an embodied resolution” (209). the static end of the continuum includes folk painting, folk sculpture, and folk design. cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 27 11/6/08 11:46:06 am a reassessment of children’s folklore classification hercbergs 28 while this model accounts for performer-audience interaction only, through which it elucidates the relationships among the genres in an accessible and convincing way, its shortcoming as far as play is concerned is that it does not account for interaction, identification or engrossment in the static genres themselves, some of which are placed outside of the realm of folklore — what abrahams calls “a product of technology” (213) — nor does it make room for considering the figurative and dynamic play world to which that they may give rise.6 and yet, folklorists have demonstrated the imaginative capacity of children when playing with mass-produced toys. for instance, in toys as culture (1986) sutton-smith tests the belief that manufactured toys inhibit children’s imagination as opposed to natural toys or “open-ended toys” which some parents in the study advocate. he concludes that “there is no evidence that the modern child either is or is not more creative with his current ‘plastic’ play things than were his predecessors with bits of wood or stones” (11). rather, he argues that toys are an agency for the imagination, and that the older children get, the more playful imagination dominates the toys, transforming them to make them suitable for their plans. in other words, the child controls the toys rather than the other way around (204). similarly, beresin challenges us to consider whether a mass-produced action figure does not also constitute a folk toy (1997, 799). instead of dismissing it as outside the realm of folklore, beresin emphasizes that “it is only the unused toy … divorced from both a performance context and ludic tradition — that may not become an actual folk toy” (799). indeed, toys can be used to act out a new set of conflicts as well as resolutions, both in group and in solitary activities, for not only do children engage in individual play earlier in their life than they do in social play, but there are circumstances where children are perfectly capable of amusing themselves in the absence of playmates. jeannie b. thomas reveals in a chapter on playing with dolls how one boy cast his barbie, ken, and a handful of g.i. joe dolls in television show scenarios. she writes, “by using television’s cleaver family as a model, he created and manipulated a positive family through his dolls.” in thomas’s interpretation, “his play extended his concerns about family and became a way of addressing family issues and comforting himself about them” (2003, 135). further, in this boy’s play barbie was transformed to godzilla and a cowboy, and the g.i. joes into fashion critics (135). another significant aspect of toys relates to the relationship that players develop with them. sutton-smith argues that children can come to identify with toys to an extent that they shape their sense of self for a long time, and as they endure such ‘life companions’ may have a “prognostic destiny in the subsequent life of the child” (1986, 216); this observation is in line with kirshenblatt-gimblett’s work “objects of memory” (1989) on the function and meaning that material culture holds for individual life review. play with toys as a solitary rather than group activity is missing in abrahams’ discussion and should also be taken into account. the above statements about toys as static objects that are nevertheless incorporated into the interactive play world of children, not only in the moment of playing but over the course of the life span, or part of it, support the inclusion of toys, including mass produced ones, by virtue of the dynamic play world they cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 28 11/6/08 11:46:06 am hercbergs a reassessment of children’s folklore classification 29 spawn, in the children’s folklore repertoire. this is especially relevant considering that at times toys are marketed in relation — and in complement to — television programs or other games, thus tying the products together in “dominating imaginative schemas” (sutton-smith 1986, 204) whence players draw inspiration and access models of behavior for the play world they (re)constitute with these toys. as televised narratives become prominent in children’s play schemes, sutton-smith ventures that “[players] will not be over-determined by the particular commercial, but the range of what they will think about is increasingly influenced, even confined by what they see on television” (190). in the author’s example, cowboy films frame play with hats and sticks but other objects seen as fitting the schema will be incorporated if available; for instance, water pistols may be used as weapons in a re-enacted battle game. a related anecdote i have heard comes from a player of the computer game sim city who, upon venturing out to the “real world,” felt an urge to direct people to perform different tasks, as he would do in the game. this point is made explicit in gary alan fine’s book shared fantasy, which demonstrates that role playing games (of the board game variety) can serve as a keying device for leaping to an alternative world where players identify with their character to an extent even they sometimes find disturbing. fine shows that the engrossment of players in the games corresponds with the attachment they develop to their characters. he writes: games are quintessential examples for frame analysis because of their capacity for inducing engrossment … the significance of gaming resides in the shared nature of the engrossment … and in the supportive recognition that others are equally engrossed (1983, 182). as “shared fantasy,” gaming enables role-play and immersion in a manner that abrahams attributes to play genres like festival and folk drama, but fine’s statement is equally attributable to the experience of video gaming. identity, roleplay and engrossment are aspects of play that consume game manufacturers and social science researchers alike. thus, as both children and adults identify with and make creative use of ‘static genres’ (for example, handelman 1990, turkle 1995), and players of a wider age range now constitute an entirely new leisure subculture of gamers (mayra 2006), these genres present valuable avenues of folkloristic research. further, questions about gaming behavior must now take account of the shift from age-based peer groups to multi-generational gaming communities, a reality which troubles the conception of children’s folklore as a body of traditions “performed by children without the influence of adult supervision or formal instruction” (grider 1997, 123) and of childhood as a state delimited by biological age. reassessment given that “a great deal of children’s play is now associated with toys [and other mediated games] and with their relatively solitary play condition, than with street cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 29 11/6/08 11:46:06 am a reassessment of children’s folklore classification hercbergs 30 play among their peers” (sutton-smith 1986, 170), it is only fitting that folklorists should apply their expertise to the study of play behavior and group dynamics to non-traditional genres. i propose that if we extended abrahams’ genre continuum to include toys, manufactured games, role-playing, video and computer games, we would dissolve the dichotomy between outdoor peer-group play and isolated playing and replace it with a dynamic relation among familiar and emergent forms. for as video gaming consoles might isolate children from one another physically, they bear the potential to expand their virtual community by connecting players online. indeed, the digital game industry’s aim of “total immersion” 7 might place some traditional games and computer games on the same experiential plane with comparable physical and cognitive engagement. as one article reports, a 10 yearold boy who learned to play marbles at a workshop compared it to “being inside a video game” (williams 2007, 9), a reversal that echoes baudrillard’s formulation of the hyper-real as a system of signs with the loss of original referents (1983, 2-5 in rodaway 1995, 246-7. see also turkle 1995 on the mediation of reality in malls, television and muds).8 the increasingly porous boundaries between ‘real’ and ‘virtual’ worlds extend also to the perception of self — frans mayra writes about the “identity-forming potentials” that digital games carry as a leisure form in late industrial societies: the fascinations of an unexplored world, unsolved puzzles, or unlocked but nevertheless attainable skill level can be very compelling indeed. they do not only show us something new, but they grant us something new in ourselves — a new venue or potential for selfrealization. when flying a griffin high over the lands in world of warcraft, i in a sense become something new, a subject transformed and redefined by its capacity to engage in this kind of fantastic action (2006, 104-105). taking these phenomena into consideration — attachment to toys and fantasy role play characters and the meaning they hold for players’ identities — expands folklorists’ treatment of games and play forms not traditionally considered under the rubric of children’s folklore. presumably on account of these transformations, bishop and curtis incorporate the role of imagination in their own “classification of play traditions” according to whether genres possess high verbal, physical, or imaginative content (2001, 14). although ‘games with playthings,’ ‘making things’ and ‘collecting things’ are placed at the “high physical content” end of the chart, the authors acknowledge that there is room for moving genres around. for instance, rhymes may be used independently or to supplement ball-bouncing games, thus moving the game from ‘high verbal content’ to ‘games with playthings’ under the category of ‘high physical content.’ (15). in addition, they include a “high imaginative content” category that includes role enactment and acting games, thus enabling us to insert manufactured games like dungeons and dragons here. like abrahams, bishop and curtis are aware that some categories may cross over and even change (15). cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 30 11/6/08 11:46:07 am hercbergs a reassessment of children’s folklore classification 31 expanding the above schema of traditional children’s play activities by drawing a line connecting toys to role-playing and video games, we are posing a relation between these forms and various levels of immersion and identification. if we included toys and digital games in the genre continuum, we would be in a better position to explore the relationships between existing and emergent forms of play from the point of view of physical and cognitive immersion. we may find a surprising reversal in children’s play via what i call globalized gaming: as children become more physically isolated in their play, their virtual community is geographically expanded by games that connect players online. as we seek to assess children’s deprivation from outdoor recreation and its consequences, we might begin by asking how children experience their reality by using immersion to connect physical and cognitive games involving static objects such as dolls or toys to genres with elements that are similar to ‘acting,’ to fantasy role-playing games and to digital virtual reality games, where “total immersion” occurs. perhaps focusing on the role of empathy in these activities can complement the ongoing biological research on mirror neurons’ connection to empathy. as the boundaries between virtual and real, work and play blur (yee 2006b), and these forms of mediation may be present to a degree that is unsettling to folklorists, we might ask what genres of traditional artistic expression grow out of the digital world and what communities grow out of it.9 the meanings generated by new configurations of community, through references to gaming experiences and the creation of new verbal expressions, are among the phenomena to which folklorists are attuned. i suggest the following questions to generate future research: how might we reconsider the significance of bateson’s frame analysis for digital gaming? what might research from a bodylore perspective (young 1994) discover about players’ internalization and mimicry of their avatars’ movements and reactions to emotionally powerful situations in the game world? if there is a scientific basis for research on the “mirror neurons,” which claims that they work the same way whether you act or see someone else acting, what is the difference between playing with a favorite doll or watching a personally crafted avatar perform an action? and how might role playing function in each case to resolve conflict, both in the game world and in person-to-person situations? finally, as 25% of users of mmorpgs (massively multi-user online graphical environments) are teenagers (yee 2006a, 16), what distinguishes their performance from those of adults in terms of acquired skills, their preferences for making online friends, and their experience of the world? these questions about children’s play touch on the most fascinating issues in social science research today. abrahams presented a framework for thinking about role-distance and the variability of involvement in folklore genres. at this stage of the game, folklorists’ forays into these play forms should yield fruitful insights into the competences that young people are developing through their play and the way these culturally-mediated forms of learning interact with the brain’s capacity to master a set of skills that were untapped two generations ago. our growing expertise in these activities will aid our critical assessment of the changes taking place in children’s play, learning, peer interaction and identity formation. cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 31 11/6/08 11:46:07 am a reassessment of children’s folklore classification hercbergs 32 notes 1. see schwartzman’s transformations (1978) for a thorough look at anthropological play scholarship until that period. 2. i refer to a commonly-articulated perception i have encountered in my research among palestinian and israeli residents of jerusalem as well as in casual conversations elsewhere, rather than identifying a complete historical transition in this or other milieus. jerusalemites consulted about the popular pastimes of children and teens since the 1940s expressed the cliché that for youth today the computer has replaced the pastimes of their parents and grandparents. concurrently, however, the children and teens consulted in this research continue to exhibit traditional knowledge, for instance of certain games, lore and plants, even as they engage in more mediated digital activities such as cell phone, video and computer games. 3. http://www.nostal.co.il/ 4. see mcdowell 1983. 5. the “first academic, peer-reviewed (online) journal dedicated to computer game research” (raessens 2006, 52) 6. approaching the far left end of the spectrum, where audience involvement with the performer becomes increasingly vicarious, the genre or product of the performance displaces the performer and itself becomes the object of interaction. 7. see levy and croal 2006. 8. we may interpret this as demonstrating the prominence of digitally-mediated “dominating imaginative schemas” in the lives of an increasing number of children. 9. i would like to thank john mcdowell for articulating these issues. works cited abrahams, roger d. 1976. the complex relations of simple forms. folklore genres, ed dan ben-amos, 193-214. austin: university of texas press. beresin, anna richman. 1997. folk toy. an encyclopedia of beliefs, customs, tales, music, and art, ed. thomas a. green. santa barbara, ca: abc-clio. bishop, julia c. and mavis curtis. 2001. play today in the primary school playground. buckingham: open university press. dankner, amnon and david tartakover. 1996. efoh hayinu u-mah asinu: otsar shenot ha-hamishim veha-shishim [where we were and what we did: a treasury of the 1950s and 60s]. jerusalem: keter. fine, gary alan. 1983. shared fantasy: role-playing games as social worlds. chicago: university of chicago press. grider, sylvia. 1997. children’s folklore. in folklore: an encyclopedia of beliefs, customs, tales, music, and art, ed. thomas a. green, 123-29. santa barbara,ca: abc-clio. handelman, don. 1990. the donkey game. models and mirrors: towards an anthropology of public events, 86-101. cambridge: cambridge university press. cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 32 11/6/08 11:46:07 am hercbergs a reassessment of children’s folklore classification 33 harris, trudier. 1995. genre. journal of american folklore 108(430): 509-527. hayes, elisabeth. 2007. gendered identities at play: case studies of two women playing morrowind. games and culture 2(1): 23-48. hörschelmann, kahtrin and n. schäfer. 2005. performing the global through the local — globalisation and individualization in the spatial practices of young east germans. children’s geographies 3(2): 219-42. hufford, mary. 1995. context. journal of american folklore 108( 430): 528-549. iggulden, conn and hal. 2006. the dangerous book for boys. london: harper collins. kirshenblatt-gimblett, barbara. 1989. objects of memory: material culture as life review. in folk groups and folklore genres, ed, elliott oring, 329-38. logan: utah state university press. kraftl, peter, john horton, faith tucker, eds. 2007. children, young people and built environments. built environment 33 (4). levy, steven and n’gai croal. 2006. playstation strikes back. newsweek. 20 november. http://www.newsweek.com/id/44611?+id=relatedcl (accessed april 10, 2007). mayra, frans. 2006. a moment in the life of a generation (why game studies now?). games and culture 1(1): 103-106. mcdowell, john h. 1983. children’s folklore in handbook of american folklore, ed. richard m. dorson, 314-22. bloomington: indiana university press. mcnamee, sarah. 1998. youth, gender and video games: power and control in the home. in cool places: geographies of youth culture, ed. tracey skelton and gill valentine, 195-206. london: routledge, 1998. mechling, jay. 2002. children’s folklore, children’s brains. new directions in folklore 4(2). http://www.temple.edu/isllc/newfolk/children.html (accessed may 15, 2007). moore, robin. 1986. childhood’s domain: play and place in child development. london and dover, n.h.: croom helm. nostalgia online. http://www.nostal.co.il (accessed may 15, 2007). olwig, karen fog and eva gulløv, eds. 2003. children’s places: cross-cultural perspectives. london: routledge. raessens, joost. 2006. playful identities, or the ludification of culture. games and culture 1(1): 52-57. rodaway, paul. 1995. exploring the subject in hyper-reality. in mapping the subject: geographies of cultural transformation, ed. steve pile and nigel thrift, 241-66. london: routledge. schwartzman, helen. 1978. transformations: the anthropology of children’s play. new york: plenum press. skelton, tracey and gill valentine, eds. 1998. cool places: geographies of youthcultures. london and new york: routledge. suellentrop, chris. 2007. playing with our heads. why video games are making our kids smarter — and more obedient. utne (jan-feb): 58-63. sutton-smith, brian. 1986. toys as culture. new york: gardner press. ______. 1997. the ambiguity of play. cambridge: harvard university press. cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 33 11/6/08 11:46:07 am a reassessment of children’s folklore classification hercbergs 34 sutton-smith, brian, jay mechling, thomas w. johnson, and felicia r. mcmahon, eds. 1995. children’s folklore: a source book. new york: garland. thomas, jeannie banks. 2003. naked barbies, warrior joes, and other forms of visible gender. urbana: university of illinois press. tucker, elizabeth. 2002-2003. “mean girls”: the reclassification of children’s and adolescents’ folklore. children’s folklore review 25 (1-2): 7-22. turkle, sherry. 1995. life on the screen: identity in the age of the internet. new york: simon and schuster. valentine, gill. 2004. public space and the culture of childhood. aldershot, england: ashgate. yee, n. 2006a. the demographics, motivations and derived experiences of users of massively-multiuser online graphical environments. presence: teleoperators and virtual environments 15: 309-329. yee, n. 2006b. the labor of fun: how video games blur the boundaries of work and play. games and culture 1(1): 68-71. young, katharine. 1994. an introduction to bodylore. journal of american folklore 107 (423): 3-8. zuk, nirit. ahat shtayim shalosh dag maluach (one two three salty fish). horim ve yeladim (parents and children) 2007: 68-74 (hebrew). cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 34 11/6/08 11:46:08 am 35 naming games and beyond: referencing in children’s verbal play john holmes mcdowell — what’s the difference between an elephant and a loaf of bread? — i don’t know. — remind me not to send you to the grocery store. (traditional interrogative routine) children are, among other things, little thinking machines. childhood is a period of intense mental activity wherein the child’s innate cognitive capacities work upon the raw data of sensory experience, guided by interpretive codes drawn from the ambient culture, to fashion serviceable portraits of reality capturing the possibilities of the moment but always evolving through time. with only a small stretch of the imagination, we can picture young children as madcap scientists, boldly trying out theories, testing hypotheses, and adjusting their notions as to what is going on as new data arrives. it is a conspicuous fact that a considerable portion of this mental work is accomplished in settings of pleasurable social intercourse, frequently through the framework of play, and it is this dimension of the child’s mental development that i want to address in this paper. specifically, i want to highlight a thread of children’s verbal play that pursues the linguistic theme of referencing, that is, the naming, describing, and evoking of objects, and follow this thread progressively from an initial moment, when the interlocutors are adult care-takers or older siblings, to a subsequent moment when the child becomes empowered as the agent of play and the interlocutors are its juvenile playmates. culling material from research i have done with children’s verbal play and verbal art over the years, i will describe and analyze the transformation of “the naming game” and “the animal voices game” of late infancy to “the riddling game” of the primary school years. there is a cluster of significant propositions at stake in this incursion into the mental development of children. one piece is the emergence of agency in the young child. we are accustomed to thinking of children in the first two years of life as being essentially passive recipients of communicative gestures originating from adults, older siblings, and other older children in their environments. a trend in current research throws this assumption into doubt (dissanayake 2001; meltzoff 2007) , and i hope to contribute to the questioning of the young child’s passivity — let’s call it the passivity paradigm — by showing how children as young as 12-16 months assert their agency in acquiring active control over familiar playful routines. two crucial developments can be observed here: first, the child rather quickly becomes the initiator of the sequence, and second, before long, the child learns to subvert the routine’s logic by deliberately supplying “suspect” or “wrong” contributions. a second proposition of interest in this analysis is the centrality of play, and particularly verbal play, in the development of children’s cognition and the child’s cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 35 11/6/08 11:46:08 am naming games and beyond mcdowell 36 realization of self. adults have often exhibited impatience with children at play, and children’s play frequently departs from adult canons of perspicacity. we have numerous accounts of attempts to limit, contain, and sometimes even exterminate the play of children, which seems to always find outlets that circumvent these adult-imposed measures (sutton-smith 1995). the materials at hand for this study underscore the utilitarian dimensions of play, enabling us to see the arenas of children’s play as vital, engaging, and rewarding learning environments. obviously, not all children’s play is verbal, but the materials for this study affirm verbal play as key among the arenas of children’s play, one that absorbs a great deal of the child’s time and energy, and one that is readily accessible to close inspection by those of us who seek to understand the mind of the child. at last, the approach i will elaborate in this paper — we could call it the agency paradigm — proposes a specific understanding of human nature and human society, since the prototype we will isolate in children’s verbal play can be projected well beyond childhood; indeed, it can serve as a template for the continuously evolving human personality. in this vision of things, we are all, throughout our entire lives, interacting with others, often in playful modes, and in the process calibrating our conjectures on the way things work. this process may be more dramatic in childhood, where the learning curve takes us from zero to socially competent in the space of just a handful of years. and it is possible that the child’s processing of reality is qualitatively different from what happens later in life. for instance, close observation of children’s play suggests that children possess a freedom to toy with cultural codes that diminishes as the person approaches and enters adulthood. the child’s delight in “silliness” and a striking capacity for metaphorical thought and expression are two indices suggestive of age-defined difference. but the larger linkage remains, i believe, foregrounding the child’s acquisition of agency and understanding through social play as a universally human enterprise. the naming game visualize this familiar scene: a young child is seated on an adult’s lap, with a picture-book in hand. the child is in the early stages of language acquisition — it has a small vocabulary but cannot piece together much in the way of phrases as of yet. the adult pauses over images on the page to inquire of the child: “what’s this?” the naming game begins with this pointing and questioning. catherine garvey (1984: 62-71) sees in these collaborations a key conceptual maneuver, “the ability to indicate an entity for attention, for either one’s own or another’s benefit,” and she locates it early in the second year of life. in order for the naming game to run smoothly, the child must realize that specific items can be isolated and named; hence, the naming game, in its opening gambit, is an adult-initiated rehearsal of essential cognitive skills. in this basic version, the naming game evinces a patterned set of participant turns. a round of the game begins when the adult points and inquires, “what’s this?” the child might respond with a possible label; if it does and the answer is deemed to be correct, the adult will confirm the child’s response and perhaps cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 36 11/6/08 11:46:08 am mcdowell naming games and beyond 37 repeat it. if the child does not respond, the adult is likely to provide the intended label: “a horse” (for example). garvey (1984, 63) describes a pattern of increasing demand: “the caregiver becomes more exacting as the child learns to respond: at first, any response will be accepted, then any vocalization, then only the correct label.” through this series of approximations, adult and child participate in an activity initiated and controlled by the adult; the child’s role is restricted to that of acquiring and articulating the appropriate responses. the child is an active player but the passivity paradigm accounts adequately for what is happening here — culture is being inculcated from adult to child. but garvey (1984, 63) anticipates the next version of the game: “the child, once he learns the sequence of moves, often exchanges roles and begins to lead the game himself.” before long, and under the right circumstances — a good comfort level, for example — the child is likely to seize the initiative, perhaps pointing at an object pictured and looking at the adult in expectation of an answer, or reproducing the interrogative move, “what’s this?” this reversal of roles installs the child as initiator of a round of play, and shifts the adult into the more limited role of responder. in this vignette, we can perceive the assumption of agency in the very young child, perhaps, as garvey suggests, early in its second year of life. the child has learned not only how to respond appropriately but also how to perform the complementary role in the game. this mastery allows the child to select which objects to isolate and name, and also to bend the adult’s behavior to its will. there has been a shift from responder to instigator, and the child’s options have expanded. we are viewing in sharp profile the acquisition of agency. the animal voices game this game is also familiar to most of us in the united states and probably is played in many other places as well. it consists of a question/response sequence geared to connecting an animal voice, as culturally coded, to the name of the appropriate species. the game can be played in two orders, either by giving the name of the species and inquiring what it “says,” or by giving the voicing of the species and asking for the species label. here is a sample pair: 1 “what does the cow say?” “moo.” 2 “who says (goes) ‘moo’”? “a (the) cow.” this game is typically played with the familiar animals from the barnyard and home — cow, cat, dog, horse, pig, etc. these are also the animals most frequently encountered in picture books for children, thus providing a link to the naming game discussed above. more exotic animals can be introduced to add further interest, and as with any other game, this one can be pushed to its limits and beyond through the inclusion of fanciful options — the otter, the dinosaur, the unicorn. cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 37 11/6/08 11:46:08 am naming games and beyond mcdowell 38 as with the naming game, the animal voices game facilitates pleasing episodes of fruitful collaboration between infants and their adult caregivers. in both games, a pattern of interaction is specified and complementary roles are defined. a further continuity between the two games is the focus upon isolating and identifying significant phenomena in the child’s world. and, in the voicing game’s second order, the child is once again called upon to supply the needed label in response to a stimulus, in this instance not the visual representation of the object but its culturalcoded voicing. the naming game offers the delight of visual images contained in books; the voicing game has no such need of props and offers the special pleasures of imitating animal voices and provisionally, taking on their identities. so how does the child take possession of this second routine? a first stage, obviously, is being able to adequately connect the voice to the animal, and to successfully reproduce the animal’s voice. this latter achievement is often accomplished with some verve, affording the child a space for artistic elaboration. in this stage, the child acquires the knowledge to respond in culturally appropriate ways; we are seeing the transfer of cultural (and verbal) competence from adult to child. but two additional stages lie ahead and these will launch the child into an expanded zone of personal agency. the second stage emerges when the child learns to initiate the animal voices game, shifting the original stipulation of roles as we saw with the naming game. the child initiates a round of animal voices, now selecting which of the orders to employ and selecting as well the sequence of animals to deploy. the child’s range of options has increased, and the choices made in this expanded zone of operation carry a sense of this particular child’s take on the process: the child has acquired space to develop and project a unique sense of self. i propose that a third stage emerges when the child attains sufficient mastery over the game to introduce fanciful choices — like the otter, dinosaur, or unicorn — or to subvert the integrity of the game by supplying, deliberately, the wrong voicing or species label. this third stage features a striking degree of agency — not only has the child seized the initiative in the turn-taking arena and exerted a peremptory control over the game’s sequence, but it now pretends to drive the game to hilarious wreckage by violating the game’s basic constitution, which depends upon a constant and predictable set of linkages between voicings and species labels. in both of these games, the naming game and the animal voices game, what begins as a coordinated interaction steered by adult initiative gradually transforms into a child-initiated routine that follows the stipulated rules of play or, in the perversion of the voicing game, subverts these rules. the child’s scope for asserting agency is at first restricted to mastering its allotted role and performing effectively in that role. but as time elapses and the child becomes more familiar with these games, the scope for asserting agency is greatly expanded to the point where the child becomes the master of the game and its adult interlocutor fills a reduced role as respondent to the child’s prodding. in the next sections, we will observe a similar dynamic and conceptual arena but now in the setting of childto-child discourse, as the child carries these same interests and energies into its juvenile play group, with riddling as the chosen game. cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 38 11/6/08 11:46:09 am mcdowell naming games and beyond 39 naming and describing john lyons (1977, 225) notes that “the distinction between referring to an individual by name and referring to the same individual by means of a descriptive noun-phrase is something that the child only gradually acquires.” we have seen a progression from mere naming to evoking through voice in the transition from the naming game to the animal voices game. but imitation of voices does not require the verbal equipment that producing descriptive noun-phrases does. as the child enters more deeply into the referencing project, referencing through descriptive language becomes a central quest in the process of acquiring language. continuing the theme of this paper, i want to show how involvement in playful activities, and indeed, how a renewed commitment to interrogative routines, enter into the expansion of social, verbal, and cognitive capacities, affording the pre-school, kindergarten, and primary-school child additional vehicles for the realization and expression of self. as adults we take for granted describing an object or event as a strategy of evocation that works in tandem with naming. but this skill, like so many others going into the basics of conversing and socializing, must be learned and practiced in the apprenticeship phase as children observe and begin to reproduce the verbal moves in their social environments. catherine garvey (1984, 69) tells us that young children have difficulty producing adequate descriptions when “it is necessary to use a referring expression that unambiguously selects a referent from among others that differ from it on one or more dimensions of attributes.” evocation through description is no easy task; the ideal description will locate some unique feature of the intended referent, and one that will register with the interlocutor. the skills that go into describing expand upon the skills that go into naming. once a range of objects, events, and persons can be effectively named, a supporting vocabulary of descriptive terms and phrases must be perfected so that precise reference can be accomplished. it is one of the miracles of human language that objects not present and even fanciful objects can be named, referenced, and brought into focus. children master this magic in significant degree through the playful activities discussed in this paper. i want to turn now to the challenges to be met in forging effective descriptions, and explore, in particular, how these challenges are addressed in the interrogative routines known as riddling. we leave behind, for the most part, the realm of adult-child communication, since riddling is mostly practiced, in the contemporary united states at least, in peer-group settings. we shall discover in this batch of material a progression familiar from the two games already considered, from a phase of mastery to a phase of subversion, as children in the primary-school years graduate from descriptive routines to true riddles. riddling games successful describing depends upon the ability to frame what john searle (1969, 86) calls “the unique identifying description,” a verbal proposition or set of cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 39 11/6/08 11:46:09 am naming games and beyond mcdowell 40 propositions that sets the intended referent apart from all other possible referents. john lyons (1977, 180) views this ability in terms of the “referencing expression” that allows the hearer “to pick out the actual referent from the class of potential referents.” in the early stages of riddling, as early as the fourth year of life, children build verbal exchanges ideally suited to testing and confirming appropriate describing strategies. these riddling initiates imitate the riddle technique, with its question-answer sequence, before they have mastered the subtleties of what folklorists know as the block element, that piece of deception at the heart of the true riddle. brian sutton-smith (1972) writes about the pre-riddle, which he defines as a puzzling question with an arbitrary answer, as one way to enter the riddling game before its logic is fully understood. i have written about what i call the descriptive routine (mcdowell 1979), which offers another solution to this problem — in the descriptive routine, the child presents a transparent description in hopes of eliciting the name of the described object. the descriptive routine manifests as a joint exercise in the evocation of absent referents through their identifying descriptions. as younger children seek to enter the riddling arena, and as their slightly older peers seek to sustain a flagging session, riddles of transparent description make their appearance. like sutton-smith’s pre-riddle, descriptive routines allow initiates to secure a space in the performance protocol — their productions pass as tokens of the game — even if these formulations fail to include the special conceptual twist of the genre. but to characterize descriptive routines as flawed tokens of the genre is to miss their positive contributions to the child’s developing mastery over the social and cognitive skills entailed in their construction. i prefer to see them as a legitimate forum of verbal intrigue, slanted toward the straightforward reproduction of cultural knowledge, as was the case with the child’s initial encounters with the naming game and the animal voices game. when children produce descriptive routines, they are engaged in a search for proper descriptive strategies. the proof of success in this endeavor is the capacity to call to mind the name of an object simply by describing it. for children at this stage of development, this outcome is remarkable and rewarding in itself. there are multiple techniques used by children in producing descriptive riddles. i will draw upon field data i gathered in the mid 1970s among mexican american kids in austin, texas, to illustrate some of these options. one is to describe through reference to the object’s salient physical properties. consider the following cluster: what’s red? a rose. what has five sides and lives in the sea? a starfish. what’s square and it gots a point on the top? a house. what gots a lot of colors when it rains? a rainbow. it’s in a circle, gots little sticks, and they got something planted? a tree. cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 40 11/6/08 11:46:09 am mcdowell naming games and beyond 41 as generally is done in riddling, one child enunciates the query and then leaves an interlude for the other child or children to announce the solution. if the respondents are not forthcoming with the solution, the child who began the routines provides it. three features immediately are striking as we contemplate this cluster of descriptive riddles. first, it is clear that these opening queries are spontaneously formulated. one advantage of this style of riddling for the neophyte is this readyto-hand quality of the material — there is no requirement to carefully keep in mind a complicated ploy, as in true riddles. second, these quick formulations seize on the basic perceptual categories such as color, form, extension, and so forth. they foster the perfection of an objective lexicon that can be applied across the spectrum of experience. these routines exhibit a strong empirical orientation to the world. and third, there are degrees of acuity evident in these descriptions both with regards to amount of detail and clarity. the first example can be seen as too broad in its descriptor, since any number of objects possess redness; the next item, describing the starfish, comes much closer to the desired quality of uniqueness in the descriptor. the quest for clear articulation in identifying descriptions is evident in the following exchange, where an older child improves upon the query of a younger peer: — oh, what’s red and white, red and white and doesn’t do nothing, and has a stick down its side, and the red and white thing is against the stick? — i don’t know. — flag. — to a pole, red, white, and blue, stuck on to a big pole. here the younger child inadvertently produces something closer to a true riddle, by concealing the intended referent of his description, a riddling tactic akin to what roger abrahams (1972) refers to as “the scrambled gestalt.” the older child creates a better description by eliminating the excess verbiage, replacing the word “stick” with the more appropriate “pole,” and adding the missing element “blue.” ironic descriptions as in the naming game and the animal voices game, the riddling game opens into a sophisticated twist on basic procedures as children gain mastery over technique; but in riddling, this additional twist is required in order to reproduce satisfactory examples of the genre. the riddle proper, unlike the puzzling pre-riddle or the empirical descriptive routine, pivots on the block element, that kernel of linguistic or conceptual sleight of hand that is deliberately introduced to temporarily separate the query from its solution. the riddle appears to be a venture much like the naming game or the animal voices game, in which an identifying description cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 41 11/6/08 11:46:09 am naming games and beyond mcdowell 42 launches a search for an intended referent. but right off there is something odd about these descriptions. perhaps they contain a contradiction in terms, as in this example: what has eyes but cannot see? this is a problematic description because it appears to challenge its own grounds of plausibility; robert georges and alan dundes (1963) term this strategy “privational.” other riddle queries are not inherently contradictory but instead lead to a state of semantic indeterminacy: what has four wheels and flies? a thousand lights in a dish, what is it? these descriptions do not readily evoke their intended referents. in fact, to solve such riddles the child must set aside the apparent drift of the description in order to locate the intended referent. this technique is present in the most famous riddle in the english language tradition: what’s black and white and red all over? in order to hit on “a newspaper,” the child must resist the sequence of color terms to hear “read” rather than “red.” riddles like these, the true riddles of riddling, offer a furtive act of description in the guise of an obvious one. their identifying descriptions are deliberately skewed to the opaque, to odd semantic nuances and fortuitous homophonic equivalences. they qualify as extensions of the naming game, but the quest here is for illicit rather than sanctioned modes of description. children in their seventh and eighth years of age specialize in these excursions into a shifty world of verbal intrigue. the descriptions in true riddles add word play, metaphor, and anomaly to the child’s bag of tricks. they accomplish the magic of actually describing while appearing not to describe. riddling at this level amounts to a deconstruction of the act of referencing, revealing that naming systems are only approximate and tentative. riddles built on word play, like this one, what has four wheels and flies? a garbage truck point to limitations in the verbal code, its often duplicitous matching of sound and sense and its sometimes ambiguous structures of logic. such riddles exploit these wrinkles in the code to produce descriptions with a curious semantics; they invite awareness of the arbitrary and conventional status of natural languages, of their incompleteness and imperfection, their relativity. cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 42 11/6/08 11:46:09 am mcdowell naming games and beyond 43 riddles based on metaphoric connections assess another sort of code limitation, the poverty of conventional systems of thought in comparison to the wealth of sensory experience. let’s return to one of my favorite children’s riddles: a thousand lights in a dish, what is it? the stars in the night sky. riddles like this one propose innovative arrangements of objects in our fields of experience based on the use of valid but unorthodox criteria. they reveal that conventional forms of classification, acquired with such persistence by the younger child, are in fact skeletal. these riddles momentarily bring into focus alternative visions of the cosmic order — the set of concave objects (dishes, the night panorama) and the set of points of light (stars, lights in a dish). the child correctly concludes that these phantom conceptual regimes are less pragmatic than the conventional ones, but it delights in highlighting their impeccable if impractical logics. finally, riddles based on anomaly contribute their special flair to children’s riddling. how many balls of string would it take to reach the moon? one big one. what do kangaroos have that nobody else has? baby kangaroos. what is taller sitting than standing? a dog. here we have neither word play nor fresh comparison. instead, these riddles find their block element in real-world observations that run counter to our conventional patterns of thought. their message, it seems, is that the world of experience is far more replete than our systems for classifying and codifying it can ever be. conclusion in her afs paper presented in québec city, 2007, katharine schramm looks closely at what she calls “nascent folklore,” which she positions as early manifestations of laurie mcgonnagill’s “protolore,” the first stirrings of conventionalized artistic expression among preschoolers (mcgonnagill 1993). schramm’s infants are in the preverbal stage, for the most part, yet their gurgles and coos, facial expressions, squirms, and wiggles indicate that they are already tuned into communicative networks and anxious to assert themselves as players in these arenas. what i have tried to do here is sketch out lines of continuity between the expressive profiles described by mcgonnagill and schramm and the robust activation of creative energies that we celebrate as children’s folklore (mcdowell 1995). i have no doubt that we can systematically trace this progression in artistic competence, and i offer this paper as an initial stab at marking out a consolidation of agency and expertise in one specific zone of communicative competence. cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 43 11/6/08 11:46:10 am naming games and beyond mcdowell 44 the concern here has been to construct a longitudinal portrait of the young person’s indoctrination into the naming and referencing of things. naming and referencing are undoubtedly crucial pieces in the acquisition of basic cultural competence, so they offer an important arena for observing how children gain mastery over materials and instruments of their culture. we have concerned ourselves with playful activities centered on naming — the naming game, the animal voices game, and riddling games. play, it appears, is a vital forum in the process of learning how to be a person in a society. these playful activities in one phase are places where children can absorb, try out, and perfect the naming and referencing practices of their communities. in another, subsequent phase, the newly-mastered maneuvers can be inspected for subversive potential — the possibility of odd animal voices, or of unconventional modes of description. becoming a person in society entails developing a sense of self, and these naming games provide opportunities for expressing the genius of self, from the toddler phase into early adolescence. one step is seizing control over an interactive routine; another is directing the game to the child’s preferred style and content; a third is using the game to challenge received structures of cultural coding. i hope to have demonstrated in this paper that children’s play with naming and referencing is a wonderful arena to observe the acquisition of culture and the realization of self. i propose, in conclusion, that this play is more than that — that it is, as well, an essential zone of personal engagement and growth. works cited abrahams, roger d. 1968. introductory remarks toward a rhetorical theory of folklore. journal of american folklore 81: 143-58. dissanayake, ellen. 2001. becoming homo aestheticus: sources of aesthetic imagination in mother-infant interactions. substance 30: 85-103. garvey, catherine. 1984. children’s talk. cambridge: harvard university press. georges, robert and alan dundes. 1963. toward a structural definition of the riddle. journal of american folklore 76: 111-18. lyons, john. 1977. semantics, vol. 1. cambridge: cambridge university press. mcdowell, john h. 1979. children’s riddling. bloomington: indiana university press. ______. 1995. the transmission of children’s folklore. in children’s folklore: a source book, ed. brian sutton-smith, jay mechling, thomas w. johnson, and felicia r. mcmahon, 49-62. new york: garland. mcgonnagill, laurie. 1993. preschool protolore. children’s folklore review 16(7): 41-47. meltzoff, andrew. 2007. “like me”: a foundation for social cognition. developmental science 10: 126-34. schramm, katherine. 2007. nascent folklore: infant communication and aesthetics. paper read at the annual meeting of the american folklore society, québec city, canada. cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 44 11/6/08 11:46:10 am mcdowell naming games and beyond 45 searle, john. 1969. speech acts: an essay in the philosophy of language. cambridge: cambridge university press. sutton-smith, brian, jay mechling, thomas w. johnson, and felicia r. mcmahon, eds. 1995. children’s folklore: a source book. new york: garland. ______. 1976. a developmental structural account of riddles. in speech play: research and resources for the study of linguistic creativity, ed. mary sanches and barbara kirshenblatt-gimblett, 11-119. philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press. cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 45 11/6/08 11:46:10 am 47 levitation revisited elizabeth tucker one intriguing but understudied form of children’s folklore is levitation, a ritual in which several preadolescents or adolescents lift a friend with only a few fingers of each hand. sometimes the individual who gets lifted lies on the floor; other times he or she stands or sits in a chair. records and studies since the seventeenth century have identified this process as a “spell,” an “inchantment,” a “curiosity,” a “game,” a “trick,” a “procedure,” or an “activity.”1 in my 1984 study of children’s levitation and trance sessions, i suggest, using mary douglas’s definition of ritual as symbolic action, “the presence of certain symbolic elements [in levitation], over a wide span of time and space, creates a sense of ritualistic potency” (1973,126). revisiting the subject of my earlier study, i find that further investigation of levitation’s history enhances our understanding of its meaning. both solemn and playful, patterned and open-ended, levitation rituals teach us important lessons about children’s, adolescents’, and adults’ behavior and needs. levitation rituals range from relatively simple lifting exercises to combinations of lifting with chants and storytelling about death and resurrection. children’s resurrection games have been documented but not studied in depth by folklorists. it seems necessary to make these games part of the lineage of levitation rituals and to identify some small but interesting parallels between these rituals and medieval mystery plays. william wells newell, author of games and songs of american children, originally published in 1883, notes that some children’s game-rhymes reflect “deeply mediaeval religious conceptions” (1963, 5). while we cannot know how children learned about levitation over a long period of time, we have enough information to make some educated guesses about the ritual’s development since the middle ages. more importantly, we can ask why this ritual has been so exciting and meaningful for children in different parts of the world for longer than three centuries. before turning to examples of levitation rituals, we should briefly examine their structure. in her study “’mary whales, i believe in you’: myth and ritual subdued” (1978), janet langlois examines relationships between myth and ritual and between legend and game. as the central character of a legend about a car accident, mary whales (known to other groups of children as bloody mary) behaves passively; she gets killed and scratched and then, as a ghost, disappears. langlois argues, “the ritual mary whales … appears in the mirror through the actions of the game players, who know the circumstances of her death previous to their interaction with her” (8-9). when summoned in a mirror, mary whales becomes active, scratching the faces of children who, also behaving actively, dare to summon her (9). similarly, levitation often follows legend-telling about a young person’s death; some stories describe a murder committed by the young person who is about to be lifted, while others describe the young person’s own death (tucker 1977, 412; freed 1994, 36). within the fictive frame of legend-telling, the liftee is either active (a murderer) or passive (a murder victim). during the ritual cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 47 11/6/08 11:46:10 am levitation revisited tucker 48 itself, distinctions between active and passive roles fit a consistent pattern. those who lift take an active role. eager to achieve something amazing, they hope to exercise a mysterious power. the liftee, on the other hand, plays a passive role. lying on the ground or sitting in a chair, she or he waits to be raised by helpful friends. the lifters’ and liftee’s goals complement each other. if all goes well, one person will feel the excitement of rising, while the others will enjoy the satisfaction of having made that rising possible. later in this essay i will examine metaphors associated with raising and rising, which deserve careful consideration. the first mention of a levitation ritual, practiced by four french girls, appears in an entry in the diary of samuel pepys in 1665. pepys does not use the term “levitation”; instead, he identifies what he learned from his friend john brisbane as one of a number of “inchantments and spells” (latham and matthews 1972, 177). iona and peter opie refer to pepys’s description in their lore and language of schoolchildren, commenting that they themselves practiced the levitation “trick” with friends at school (1959, 309-10). mary and herbert knapp describe both the “procedure” of levitation and the related phenomenon of trance, which involves rubbing a child’s temples while telling a scary story, in one potato, two potato: the secret education of american children (1976, 252). my 1984 essay about levitation and trance sessions, based on fieldwork with children in indiana and interviews with college students in new york, suggests that levitation and trance sessions represent an important aspect of young people’s development. usually occurring in private spaces and in girls’ groups, these rituals help children set limits “upon worrisome developmental horrors that they all share” (133). shaari freed’s essay “spooky activities and group loyalty” (1994) concurs with the conclusions of my essay and introduces other insights related to both levitation and ouija board play. referring to five stages of children’s growth in interpersonal awareness introduced by psychologists robert l. selman, dan jaquette, and debra redman lavin (1977), freed notes that children in the third stage of development, between the ages of seven and fourteen, engage in “intimate-mutual sharing” that builds group loyalty (36). she suggests that “the state of arousal involved in these rituals needs to be more carefully examined” and that “children, as well as adults, seek out arousal” (38-39). in this analysis, the term “arousal” means excitement or pleasurable stimulation. i agree that we should carefully consider why children enjoy performing levitation rituals and that we should remember that children are not the only seekers of this kind of thrill. besides occurring during sleepovers and camping trips, levitation takes place on school playgrounds, during gym classes, and during youth group meetings. both boys and girls practice levitation, and adults sometimes lead the ritual. adults’ participation in levitation reminds us that play appeals to adults as well as young people. brian sutton-smith’s “paradigm of the playful person” fits this situation very well (1994, 20-21). many folklorists of childhood, including myself, have tended to view the “childhood underground” as child-to-child communication with little adult involvement, but adults’ participation tends to be important. if an adult friend of samuel pepys had not watched four little girls lifting a boy in bordeaux, we would have had no seventeenth-century record of this fascinating form of children’s folklore. cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 48 11/6/08 11:46:11 am tucker levitation revisited 49 girls, boys, and adults when i started collecting descriptions of levitation as part of my dissertation research in 1976, i was not surprised to find that these accounts came from girls. my own childhood introduction to this ritual took place in an all-girl group of sixth-graders in washington, d.c., in the spring of 1960. before i went to my first slumber party — an eagerly anticipated event — another girl who was planning to go to the party had told me it might be possible to lift someone “like magic,” with several girls lifting a friend using only two fingers of each hand. at the slumber party, we tried to lift our friend valerie in this exciting way. nothing amazing happened; we could not get valerie off the ground. i vividly remember, however, how hard we tried to lift valerie and how intriguing the whole process seemed. our slumber party games and rituals took place late at night, free from parents’ prying eyes. sixteen years later, armed with folkloristic theory and a copy of the opies’ lore and language of schoolchildren, i looked for rituals similar to the ones i had learned and read. if i had had a chance to talk with bill ellis in 1976, i would have learned that an all-boy group was experimenting with levitation two years after i discovered it myself. in june of 2007, knowing that i was trying to learn more about levitation, ellis kindly sent me this e-mail: i don’t know a reference for this, but i know that on the playground in portsmouth, ohio, ca. 1962, when i saw this done, the pressing on the head was certainly a part of the ritual. as i recall, two “lifters” took the two fingers (forefingers iirc) and simultaneously pressed down on the levitated person’s forehead, then immediately put these fingers under the back and upper leg of the person and lifted up. the person did indeed come right up with no apparent effort. all the participants and spectators were male 7th graders. i don’t recall any rhyme or narration of spooky stories. it was one of those things, like “knocking yourself out” by hyperventilating that went the rounds of preadolescent kids like wildfire, then next week was gone. ellis aptly identifies the transience of such preadolescent pursuits. both he and i briefly tried to levitate our friends in single-sex groups, then moved on to other amusements. unlike my girlfriends, who chose a place and time conducive to secrecy, his group performed the levitation ritual outside in a playground supervised by adults. the fact that they did this outdoors proves the opies’ point that levitation is a “curiosity” that excites wonder but does not always require seclusion (1959, 309). a year ago i learned about another context for levitation from a cousin of mine who lives in rural maine.2 as a teenager during the late 1950s, my cousin martha learned levitation from the adult leader of her presbyterian youth group. she recalls: cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 49 11/6/08 11:46:11 am levitation revisited tucker 50 i think we all had the “lifters” put their hands on the subject’s head and press down for a few seconds, then say “five” and then do the two-finger lift trick and the subject becomes light and lifts very easily. martha’s focus on numbers — two fingers, “say ‘five’” — typifies the exactitude of this ritual. for the ritual to succeed, participants must use the right number of fingers (usually two) and follow any other numerical prescription that has become traditional in their peer group. another former member of martha’s youth group, bob, offered a slightly different formula for levitation’s success: seems to me four people put their hands alternately on a person sitting in a straight chair and pressed down for say 20 seconds. then those four removed their hands and each put their two fore-fingers together. two of the four put their forefingers under the sitting person’s knees and the other two put their forefingers under the sitter’s armpits — then lifted — oh i forgot — all four attempted the lift before pressing down on the sitter’s head and could not lift that person.3 bob’s version of the youth group ritual resembles martha’s in its reliance on the number two and its multiple, four. it differs significantly from martha’s, though, because it introduces an element of magic (cause leading to effect beyond rational rules). examination of available source material helps to explain how adults’ and children’s interest in magic adds to levitation’s meaning. magic since our earliest information about levitation comes from samuel pepys, who calls it a “spell” or “inchantment,” we should consider the contents of early books of spells. one especially popular spell book, the petit albert, known in latin as alberti parvi lucii libellus de mirabilibus naturae acarnis, circulated in europe in written and printed versions. there is some debate about the time that the petit albert originated; the version that i found is secrets merveilleux de la magic naturelle et cabalistique du petit albert (1776). this book’s introduction mentions science, magic, ancient hebrew sages, and diabolism. in its “love spell” section are directions for helping a young girl or widow see the man she will marry: put a little tree branch under the pillow, then rub the girl’s or woman’s temples with a little blood from a bird called huppe. at bedtime, the girl or woman should say what she wants to see; that night she will see her future husband (25). rubbing the head to produce a new state of mind in which a vision appears seems similar to pressing the head to make lifting possible. the french spell, however, only addresses a vision or state of mind. to learn about lifting the body, we must turn to later source material. information about levitation’s history can be found in sir david brewster’s letters on natural magic addressed to sir walter scott (1843). the tenth letter in this book addresses the “remarkable power of lifting heavy persons when the cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 50 11/6/08 11:46:11 am tucker levitation revisited 51 lungs are inflated.” brewster includes this experiment among a number of others practiced by samson, a traveling performer from germany. during the nineteenth century, such demonstrations of amazing capabilities were popular in england. brewster states, “one of the most remarkable and inexplicable experiments relative to the strength of the human frame is “that in which a heavy man is raised with the greatest facility, when he is lifted up the instant that his own lungs and those of the persons who raise him are inflated with air” (232). note the emphasis on a mysterious element that is hard to explain: simultaneous inflation of all participants’ lungs with air. this mysterious inflation of lungs resembles the emphasis on careful headpressing that dominates the descriptions i collected from youth group members in rural maine. both head-pressing and lung-inflating seem crucial for the rituals’ success. beyond rational explanations, magic seems to account for what happens. as in the maine youth group’s recollections, the numbers two and four figure prominently in how the nineteenth-century british ritual works. there are exactly four lifters, and lifting takes place at the intake of the second breath. also noteworthy is brewster’s choice of words to describe what happens when the liftee rises up: “to his own surprise and that of his bearers, he rises with the greatest facility, as if he were no heavier than a feather” (1843, 233). this description documents use of the currently popular phrase “light as a feather,” which may have accompanied earlier levitation demonstrations. demonstrators of this experiment traveled around europe toward the middle of the nineteenth century. brewster explains that lifting heavy persons in this fashion had first occurred in england a few years before under the direction of “major h.,” who had seen the experiment performed “at a large party at venice under the direction of an officer of the american navy” (1843, 232). this traveling military officer had a major impact (pardon the pun) on people’s familiarity with the lifting ritual, and other adult travelers almost certainly did so as well. one reason for the fast-growing popularity of lifting rituals in the midnineteenth century was the growth of spiritualism in the united states and europe. the spiritualist movement began in the united states with the wellpublicized rappings experienced by kate and margaret fox in the 1840s. as news of the fox sisters and other apparent mediums spread, people became increasingly eager to witness marvels. besides quasi-magical lifting of heavy people, raising and turning of tables became exciting events for groups of people to watch. not everyone who observed such demonstrations believed in what seemed to be happening, but spiritualism’s emphasis on occult powers encouraged suspension of disbelief. how did “levitation” became a well known word in england? the oxford english dictionary, which defines one form of levitation as “the action or process of rising, or raising (a body) from the ground by ‘spiritualistic’ means,” lists an 1874 quotation from george eliot as its earliest literary evidence of this term’s use. eliot’s legend of jubal includes the lines “on all points he adopts the latest views;/ takes for the key of universal mind/ the ‘levitation’ of stout gentlemen” (1874, 191). eliot’s focus on lifting overweight gentlemen suggests that she has seen or at least read about the kind of experiment that sir david brewster describes. samuel pepys’s diary also emphasizes the marvelousness of lifting someone heavy, cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 51 11/6/08 11:46:11 am levitation revisited tucker 52 describing four little french girls lifting “the cook of the house, a very lusty fellow, as sir g. carteret’s cooke, who is very big” (latham and matthews 1972, 178). the mysteriousness of successfully lifting a heavy person seems to explain much of levitation’s appeal from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century. late nineteenth-century magicians also helped to make “levitation” a household word. the well-known british magician john nevil maskelyne (1829-1917) introduced levitation as an on-stage performance and perfected his levitation methods over a period of almost thirty years. in his most elaborate performance, “the entranced fakir,” which took place in 1901, maskelyne passed a metal hoop around the body of a white-bearded fakir who floated high above his own sarcophagus. according to jim steinmeyer, author of hiding the elephant: how magicians invented the impossible and learned to disappear (2003), this performance surprised and confounded proud thirdand fourth-generation magicians (165). spectators with no experience in illusionists’ techniques were deeply impressed by this polished demonstration of levitation, which seemed both convincing and difficult to disprove. children watched magicians’ performances, and it was common for magicians to invite children from their audiences to come up on stage to examine floating performers. the famous american illusionist howard thurston, who was born in columbus, ohio, in 1869, invited a little boy to make cards on a deck rise by pulling his father’s hair; on another occasion, he asked a little boy to touch a golden ring on the finger of a beautiful princess who seemed to be floating above the stage (steinmeyer 2003, 14-15). children who participated in such exciting performances probably told their friends all about what happened; some of these children probably imitated the magician’s actions too. it seems likely that magicians’ levitation performances influenced children’s play in this way, and it is also likely that the term “levitation” entered the childhood underground partly because of magicians’ influence. resurrection there is, however, more to levitation than secular magic. the earliest record of the ritual in samuel pepys’s diary includes a chant in french: voicy un corps mort royde comme un baston froid comme marbre leger comme un esprit, levons te au nom de jesus christ (latham and matthews 1972, 177). my translation follows: here is a dead body stiff as a stick cold as marble light as a spirit, we raise you in the name of jesus christ. cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 52 11/6/08 11:46:12 am tucker levitation revisited 53 it must have been poignant for samuel pepys to hear this chant on july 31, 1665, when the great plague was sweeping through london. three centuries earlier, in the mid-1300s, 24 million people had died of the plague in france, germany, italy, and scandinavia. according to frederick cartwright, author of disease and history (1972), “in southern france mortality was so great that the pope consecrated the river rhone at avignon, so that corpses flung into the river might be considered to have received christian burial” (37). did this terrible epidemic become part of children’s play and games between the thirteenth and the seventeenth century? we do not know; however, it seems certain that the enormous number of deaths frightened children and increased their awareness of the thin line between life and death.4 death, burial, resurrection, and other serious subjects have emerged in european children’s play and games over a relatively long period of time. in their study of “pretending games,” iona and peter opie note that children in sixteenthcentury holland imitated weddings, christenings, and religious processions; similarly, in eighteenth-century france, children imitated clerics’ processions, soldiers’ marches, and other kinds of movement (1969, 330-31). other twentiethcentury folklorists have documented interesting games in which a child plays the part of a dead person. leea virtanen’s children’s lore (1978) includes an account of finnish children’s imitation of the dead and of priests who bless them. virtanen quotes from the recollections of a girl who grew up in a rural environment: we often played this game; i was dead and was in a coffin, which we made out of chairs laid flat and covered with newspaper. this boy, my only playmate, was always the priest. he blessed me and sang a hymn (88). this rather sad and quiet game reflects children’s interest in what happens to people’s bodies after death but lacks the excitement offered by hiding and chasing games. norman douglas, author of london street games (1931), describes the game dead man’s rise, also known as dead man’s dark scenery or coat, in which one child hides, covered with other players’ coats. when the other players call “dead man rise,” the child who has been hiding starts to run after the others. the last player that he finds becomes “it” for the next round of the game (5, 60). a similar game played outdoors is “green man rise-o, a very old game” according to douglas (59). one of douglas’s young informants explains this game’s rules as follows: the way we play the game of greenman one of us lay down and cover his self with grass and the others run out and hide then they say greenman greenman rise up then he gets up and trys to catch them and the last one thats cort goes it [sic] (59). whether or not the hider goes by the name of “dead man,” games of this kind demonstrate an interest in transition from death to life. mary and herbert knapp describe the game pray for the dead in their book one potato, two potato (1976). they explain that in this game, played in the fall, one child buries himor herself in leaves. others kneel next to this child’s “grave” cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 53 11/6/08 11:46:12 am levitation revisited tucker 54 and chant, “pray for the dead and the dead will pray for you.” after a period of chanting, “the buried child slowly stirs, then suddenly explodes from the leaves. the others run away screaming. whoever the ghost catches is it next time” (252). there is a difference between the outcome of dead man’s rise and that of green man rise-o: instead of rising from the dead, the deceased person becomes a frightening ghost that will relentlessly pursue other children. this emphasis on ghosts fits the fall season, during which, especially on halloween, ghosts supposedly walk among living people. since imitative play and games involving death and resurrection have been popular in relatively recent times, it seems worthwhile to investigate possible antecedents. the prominence of the christian religion in medieval europe made liturgical dramas focal points of community life. early in the thirteenth century, a papal edict forbade priests to act in such dramas, giving rise to miracle plays about lives of the saints and then mystery plays based on bible stories. according to peter happé, author of english mystery plays (1975), “around the betrayal of christ, his death and resurrection are centred the essential truths of christianity” (24). both jesus’s own resurrection and his resurrection of his friend lazarus are climactic events of mystery plays written in england in the fourteen and fifteenth centuries. four mystery play cycles have survived the ravages of the intervening years: the cycles of york, towneley, chester, and ludus coventriae. performed on the feast of corpus christi, mystery plays served the dual purpose of instruction and worship (happé 1975, 11). given the small number of mystery play manuscripts and the lack of a time machine to travel back to the middle ages and investigate how children responded to the plays, i cannot prove that young people’s play was influenced by performances of christ’s and lazarus’s resurrections. i do, however, believe that children in england, france, and other european countries where mystery play performances occurred would have enjoyed scenes in which someone who appeared to be dead rose from the grave. we know that children watched these performances, since mystery plays involved the whole community. in england, guild members performed mystery play scenes on wagons that they rolled from one place to another. medievalist pamela m. king explains that the york cycle in the 1460s and 1470s “was made up of forty-seven pageants, performed on wagons which stopped in sequence at each of twelve stations around the city, with around 14,000 lines of spoken dialogue, and involving a huge cast of characters, including twenty-four men capable of taking on the role of the adult christ” (2006, 7). such exciting, mobile performances would have gotten children’s attention and provided an intriguing model for imitation. there is a small but interesting linguistic similarity between the chant in pepys’s diary and some of the lines in the towneley cycle of mystery plays, written in 1450. in “lazarus” from towneley manuscript 31, maria [mary magdalene] tells jesus, “lorde, mekill sorrow may men se/ of my sister here an me//we are heavy as any lede,/ for our broder that thus is dede” (happé 1975, 402). similarly, in “the resurrection” from towneley manuscript 26, maria expresses joy at christ’s rising through proverbial comparison: “i am as light as leyfe on tre,/for ioyfull sight that i can se,/for well i wote that it was he,/ my lord ihesu/he that cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 54 11/6/08 11:46:12 am tucker levitation revisited 55 betrayed that fre,/sore may he rew” (happé 1975, 100). perhaps emphasis on such comparisons in mystery plays encouraged children to create similar lines when enacting resurrection scenes. on the other hand, lines such as “stiff as a stick/cold as marble/light as a spirit” and “light as a feather, stiff as a board” may simply reflect well-known proverbial comparisons in french and english. it is also interesting to note that both medieval english mystery plays and relatively recent levitation rituals focus on determining whether the person who will rise up is actually dead. in “lazarus” of the towneley manuscript, jesus talks with his disciple peter about their friend lazarus. peter suggests that lazarus needs his sleep, but jesus replies, ‘i say you sekerly he is dede” (happé 1975, 401). similarly, in the play “christ’s appearance to the disciples” from the ludus coventriae manuscript 38, the disciple thomas (generally known as “doubting thomas” to christians) insists upon touching christ’s wounds to make sure that christ has truly triumphed over death. thomas states, “i xal never be-leve that he is qwyk and sownde/in trewth whyl i knowe that he was dede on rood” (happé 1975, 41). once he sees and touches jesus, thomas proclaims in latin, “quod mortuus et sepultus nunc resurrexit” (happé 1975, 42). recent examples of children’s levitation rituals similarly focus on whether or not someone has died. simon j. bronner includes an example collected from a 29-year-old female college student in 1987, in american children’s folklore (1988). this student remembered using the following words as a prelude to levitation between sixth and eighth grade: i think he’s dead i know he’s dead he feels dead he looks dead he looks dead he looks dead he is dead (167). note that the word “dead” appears in each line, driving home the point that the chant explores various modes of perceiving the end of life. i collected variants of this chant in new york while doing the research for my 1984 essay on girls’ levitation at slumber parties. in indiana eight years earlier, i had heard other descriptions with a similar emphasis. in 1976, ten-year-old betsy explained that “somebody makes up a real spooky story and says that you’re dead, and then you say, ‘okay, now that you’re dead let’s rise you from the grave,’ and it feels like you’re floating when they lift you up” (tucker 1977, 412). in that description and in others, the word “dead” signals the start of levitation. cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 55 11/6/08 11:46:12 am levitation revisited tucker 56 marvels and metaphors levitation rituals offer young people a mysterious process that might (or might not) rely on magic. when it works, levitation seems marvelous and wonderful. in my 1984 essay i concluded that the act of lifting mattered more than symbolically bringing a dead person back to life: “if the attempt worked, [the girls] were happy, and that was the main thing” (130). my recent research supports that viewpoint. kids want levitation to work and feel thrilled when it does. in haunting experiences, diane e. goldstein suggests that testing supernatural evidence follows a pattern similar to application of the scientific method. goldstein notes that “the spontaneous telling of a personal supernatural experience runs counter to one of the central principles of academic rationalist traditions — that supernatural belief would decline as education and technology increased” (2007, 60). in our current era, information science and technology have become prominent in people’s everyday lives. rather than spurning the supernatural, however, many young people embrace it, seeking amazing experiences. this process begins in preadolescence and may continues into young and older adulthood. to understand this process better, i talked with adolescents and spent time surfing the world wide web, watching movies, and reading summaries of episodes of certain television shows. back in the 1970s and early 1980s, it was sufficient to talk with young people and watch them demonstrate what they knew. now, in our complex cyberworld, we need to consider mass-cultural influences. in his recent essay “seuss on the loose: children’s folklore on the internet,” c.w. sullivan iii reminds us that “children have ready access to the internet in ways that they do not have access to textbooks and folklore collections” (2006-2007, 36). children’s and adolescents’ use of electronic media provides one of the most intriguing areas of study that folklorists can pursue today. first, however, i talked with a group of young people with whom i met regularly. in the spring of 2007 i asked my 52 introduction to folklore students, most of whom were freshmen and sophomores, what they knew about levitation. all of the young women in the class knew about this ritual, and many of them had tried it. five of the young men had not heard about levitation before; the others had either tried it or heard about it. the usual age for this ritual, my students said, was 10-13. among the places where they had tried it were houses, playgrounds, gyms, and camps. all of the students called the ritual “light as a feather.” eight out of ten small discussion groups cited sleepovers as the main setting. seven groups mentioned chanting; one mentioned storytelling. all of the students who had tried levitation remembered how important it was for the ritual to succeed. four of them admitted that they had tried levitation as college students, but most of the others viewed the ritual as “kid stuff.” when i went online in the fall of 2007, i discovered that the interactive video website youtube offers a plethora of videos in which kids chant “light as a feather” before trying to lift each other. recently, in july of 2008, youtube listed 478 videos under the keywords “light as a feather.” not all of these are about levitation; some are music videos, including the lunachicks’ punk rock song “light cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 56 11/6/08 11:46:13 am tucker levitation revisited 57 as a feather,” chick corea’s jazz piece by the same name, and bob marley’s “misty morning.” many “light as a feather” videos on youtube seem to have been filmed by teenagers who live in the united states, england, and the caribbean. among the settings for these videos are basements and living rooms of private homes, camps, schools, and playgrounds: very similar to the range of spaces that my college students described. in all the videos that i have viewed, the words “light as a feather, stiff as a board” comprise the only verbal part of the ritual. as might be expected in a medium that features films, action (in this case, lifting) seems very important. some commentators on videos mention storytelling, but they do not give storytelling much attention. it can be difficult to figure out the names, ages, and geographical areas of people who post videos on youtube. fortunately, the maker of one of the most popular “light as a feather” videos, which had been viewed 28,217 times by july 27, 2008, lists plenty of identifying information. trace, aged 17, is a student at del norte high school in albuquerque, new mexico. her video shows four teenagers chanting “light as a feather, stiff as a board” before raising a friend in a hooded sweatshirt up into the air. after the boy rises, a shocking image of the face of a monster with filmy white eyes appears on the screen. this monster’s sudden appearance brings to mind metaphors associated with the word “raising.” parents want to raise their children well: to “bring them up” from childhood to adulthood with success and pride. the parents’ role is active, while the children’s role is passive. during the process of child-raising, which strives toward an upward progression in maturity, parents may chide their children for causing trouble. children may “raise a ruckus,” a phrase which suggests bringing something disruptive up from lower regions. some teenagers have prided themselves on “raising hell”: doing something so disturbing that it makes people think of the devil’s domain. most serious-sounding of all, the phrase “raising the devil” suggests demonic consequences for causing a disturbance or playing around with supernatural forces. in raising the devil (2000), bill ellis cites christian minister maxwell whyte’s conclusion that demons do the lifting in levitation (54). concern about punishment for chanting and summoning occult forces is certainly part of levitation’s mystique, although most of the young people with whom i have spoken have not seemed concerned about adverse consequences. in fact, most “light as a feather” videos on youtube seem playful and lighthearted. in many of these videos, kids laugh and joke. some videographers enjoy poking fun at each other, as in the video that begins with the description “cody, lameass. everyone in biology used only 2 fingers from each hand to lift him.” several teens explain that they filmed “light as a feather, stiff as a board” because they felt bored (pun intended?) at home or at school. comments on many of the videos include accounts of similar experiences, disputes about rules, and debates on diamagnetism and other scientific or pseudo-scientific explanations for the ritual’s success. researchers who have the time and patience to sift through these reams of comments and view all the videos can get a great deal of information about this kind of interaction among young people. other relevant information comes from movies and television shows. before the late 1980s, as far as i know, kids did not learn about levitation through movies cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 57 11/6/08 11:46:13 am levitation revisited tucker 58 or tv. since the beginning of the 1990s, the tv shows captain planet, as told by ginger, the girls next door, and south park have all had episodes in which levitation takes place. the 1987 movie the gate includes a levitation scene; since the gate in question is a backyard gate to hell, the ritual’s context suggests dangerous possibilities. also threatening and mysterious are the circumstances that surround four young witches in the 1996 film the craft, who perform acts of magic to torment fellow students at high school. in one of this movie’s most exciting scenes, sarah, nancy, and bonnie make rochelle rise into the air by chanting “light as a feather, stiff as a board.” bonnie’s mother, worrying about what the girls are doing behind bonnie’s closed bedroom door, shouts “are you getting high?” this line makes viewers laugh, because one of the girls is floating high above the floor. this movie’s exploitation of the double meaning of rising up high foregrounds the significance of altered states of consciousness. when i started revisiting the material i had collected before writing my 1984 essay, i noticed that the word “high” came up often. deanne, for example, a ten-year-old girl in indiana, had told me, “well, you lay down, and you get real real real high, and you play that, uh, they step over you, make you real high, and say like if you wanta be a feather, they tell a story what you do, and everything” (tucker 1977, 411). in my 1984 essay, i noted, in a tentative way, that this emphasis on “getting high” sounded like taking drugs (126). now i see a clear relationship between levitation and mind-expanding experiences favored by teenagers. in aliens, ghosts, and cults (2001), bill ellis observes that adolescents’ supernatural experiences during legend trips resemble recreational drug use “in that both are ‘trips’ — deliberate escapes into altered states of being where conventional laws do not operate” (189). while preadolescents’ and young teenagers’ levitation experiments tend to be short, safe, and simple, they represent an early step toward new and exciting states of mind. amazing and delighting children, adolescents, and some adults, levitation rituals draw people together so that they can experiment with supernatural experiences. since participants can choose to lift or to be lifted, either action or passivity is a socially acceptable option. when the ritual succeeds, levitation results in positive feelings. the lifters feel powerful, and the liftee feels “high.” beneath the surface of this brief ritual lie serious questions about the borderline between life and death, which is explored in stories about murder that precede the ritual. metaphoric implications of the words “raising,” “rising,” and “high” enrich our understanding of participants’ hopes and fears. as youtube and other electronic sites continue to attract young video-makers, it will be fascinating to see how levitation performances develop in the future. cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 58 11/6/08 11:46:13 am tucker levitation revisited 59 notes i want to thank janet langlois and c.w. sullivan iii for their helpful comments. 1. the terms “spell” and “inchantment” appear in the diary of samuel pepys; “trick” and “curiosity” appear in the opies’ lore and language of schoolchildren. mary and herbert knapp call levitation a “procedure” in their one potato, two potato: the secret education of american children, and simon j. bronner calls it an “activity” in his american children’s folklore. bill ellis uses the term “game” in raising the devil. 2. my cousin martha, a resident of southern maine, kindly provided me with this information on june 20, 2007. 3. bob, also a resident of maine, sent this information on june 20, 2007. 4. a recent study of children’s play in response to traumatic events is ann richman beresin’s “children’s expressive culture in light of september 11, 2001 (2002). while there are no records of children’s responses to the tragic loss of so many people during the plague’s passage through europe, we should note sylvia ann grider’s point that “images of burials of corpses wrapped in winding sheets” were familiar to young survivors of the plague and that the contemporary image of a ghost in a white sheet may have originated during the plague years (114). in once upon a virus (2004), diane e. goldstein describes a canadian child in the midst of a game of tag saying “tag, you’ve got aids” (1). this description, as well as the line “barney died from hiv” in children’s song parodies of the early 1990s, shows how easily children’s concerns about epidemics become part of their games and songs. works cited albert, petit. 1776. secrets merveilleux de la magie naturelle et cabalistique. lyons: héritiers de beringo fratres. beresin, ann richman. 2002. children’s expressive culture in light of september 11, 2001. anthropology and education quarterly 33:3: 331-37. brewster, sir david, walter scott, and j.a. smith. 1843. letters on natural magic addressed to sir walter scott. new york: harper and brothers. bronner, simon j. 1988. american children’s folklore. little rock: august house. cartwright, frederick f., and michael d. biddiss. 1972. disease and history. new york: dorset press. douglas, mary. 1973. natural symbols. new york: vintage books. douglas, norman. 1931. london street games. london: chatto and windus. eliot, george. 1874. the legend of jubal, and other poems. edinburgh and london: w. blackwood. ellis, bill. 2000. raising the devil. lexington: university press of kentucky. ______. aliens, ghosts, and cults: legends we live. 2001. jackson: university press of mississippi. ______. 2007. e-mail communication. 8 june. cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 59 11/6/08 11:46:13 am levitation revisited tucker 60 freed, shaari. 1994. spooky activities and group loyalty. children’s folklore review 17(1): 33-39. goldstein, diane e. 2004. once upon a virus: aids legends and vernacular risk perception. logan: utah state university press. ______. 2007. scientific rationalism and supernatural experience narratives. in haunting experiences: ghosts in contemporary folklore, ed. diane e. goldstein, sylvia ann grider, and jeannie banks thomas, 60-80. logan: utah state university press. grider, sylvia ann. 2007. children’s ghost stories. in haunting experiences: ghosts in contemporary folklore, ed. diane e. goldstein, sylvia ann grider, and jeannie banks thomas, 111-42. logan: utah state university press. happé, peter. 1975. english mystery plays. harmondsworth, england: penguin books. king, pamela m. 2006. the york mystery cycle and the worship of the city. cambridge, england: d.s. brewer. knapp, mary and herbert. 1976. one potato, two potato: the secret education of american children. new york: norton. langlois, janet. 1978. “mary whales, i believe in you”: myth and ritual subdued. indiana folklore 11(1):5-33. latham, robert and william matthews, eds. 1972. the diary of samuel pepys, vol. 6. berkeley and los angeles: university of california press. newell, william wells. 1963. games and songs of american children. new york: dover. opie, iona and peter opie. 1959. the lore and language of schoolchildren. new york: oxford university press. ______. 1969. children’s games in street and playground. new york: oxford university press. selman, robert l., dan jaquette, and debra redman lavin. 1977. interpersonal awareness in children: toward an integration of developmental and clinical child psychology. american journal of orthopsychiatry 47: 264-74. steinmeyer, jim. 2003. hiding the elephant: how magicians invented the impossible and learned to disappear. new york: carroll and graf. sullivan iii, c.w. 2006-2007. seuss on the loose: children’s folklore on the internet. children’s folklore review 29:33-38. sutton-smith, brian. 1994. paradigms of intervention. in play and intervention, ed. joop hellendoorn, rimmert van der kooij, and brian sutton-smith, 3-22. albany: state university of new york press. tucker, elizabeth. 1977. tradition and creativity in the storytelling of pre adolescent girls. phd diss., indiana univ. ______. 1984. levitation and trance sessions at preadolescent girls’ slumber parties. in the masks of play, ed. brian sutton-smith and diana kelly-byrne, 125-33. new york: leisure press. virtanen, leea. 1978. children’s lore. helsinki: suomalisen kirjallisuuden seura. cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 60 11/6/08 11:46:14 am 61 an eclectic schoolteacher: dorothy howard as applied folklorist jan rosenberg i met dorothy gray mills howard (1902-1996) in 1983 at the annual meeting of the association for the anthropological study of play in baton rouge, louisiana. she was dressed in a bright blue suit, her head framed by brilliant white hair. she was 80 years old. she was in attendance to receive an achievement award from taasp. i recognized her by her name tag. i introduced myself, and we talked about the meeting, by which she was impressed. but she didn’t understand why she was getting this award; perhaps she felt a kind of texas humility. my next contact with her was in 1989. i had been studying her writings and called her to talk about them. it was then that i learned she had had a hard time with institutions, naming some whose journals she felt had ripped her off. she gave me her blessing to study her published work. i didn’t do so until 2000, when i received a traditional arts growth (tag) grant from the national endowment for the arts. then i went to the university of north texas, which was once the north texas state college for teachers. by this time howard had passed away, and all of her work was available for study. on my way to denton, i drove over to lone oak, the place where howard grew up. this small community had a convenience store and a church. other than those gathering places, the community seemed empty, like a place people called home after a day at work, wherever that might be (dallas? garland? fort worth? denton?). the following is an examination of dorothy howard’s work in light of the intersection of children’s folklore and folklore and education. i will illustrate howard’s approaches to education and folklore with an eye on her progressive stance and child-centeredness. i will suggest that howard be viewed as an educator and as a folklorist, a scholar of expressive culture and a guide through language arts in exploring the whole child. in other words, dorothy howard was a pioneer applied folklorist. the work of dorothy howard has been thoughtfully chronicled by sylvia ann grider (1994). in her children’s folklore review article, grider outlines howard’s early journey as a teacher, beginning at age seventeen, when she was asked to take over the class of a teacher who had died during the great flu epidemic, and ending with her position as professor at frostburg state teachers college (19441967), now known as frostburg state university. she made a year-long stop in australia, where she had a fulbright fellowship to document children’s folklore in another english speaking country. pedagog in embryo dorothy gray mills was born on 8 july 1902 and was reared in the sabine bottoms of east texas. she went to school in the bottoms region until she transferred cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 61 11/6/08 11:46:14 am an eclectic schoolteacher rosenberg 62 to a high school in denton, texas, approximately forty miles north of dallas/ fort worth. when asked to take over the class of a deceased teacher, howard immediately latched on to the child-centeredness approach and asked the students to write her a letter about themselves to which she would respond individually. in this lesson she conveyed the form of letter writing, using the students’ own interests. mills graduated from north texas state teachers college in 1923 with a b.s. in education and a permanent certificate to teach in texas schools. in 1925 she married james howard. she had two children and went east to teach school in new york and new jersey, where she taught the middle grades, then moved to western maryland to teach at frostburg state teachers’ college. as a progressive educator, she believed that the child develops naturally according to the way he or she perceives the whole environment. very much in line with john dewey (dewey 1916), howard was able to toe the curricular line with an individual’s eye, using the experiences of her students.1 for example, in howard’s essay “on our own in the classroom” (1941), danny is having trouble with her writing assignment. howard reminds him of an earlier essay in which he wrote about his mother making spaghetti. danny lights up and starts to tell how his mother made ravioli. howard acts as his scribe until he feels more comfortable writing. in “the bell always rang” (1940), the students play a game with the parts of speech until one student asks another how she spells her name. from there the students move into researching their surnames for historical information. the grammar lesson turns into a spelling lesson and a personal history excursion as students share information on their names. howard was progressive, though she didn’t like to assign any label to herself, as she told me in 1989. she saw the child as she or he was, and this is a hallmark of the thinking of progressive education. indeed, this educational approach involves a balance between the child and the environment, the lessons given, and the lessons experienced. in fact, howard and progressive educators were very much on the same level. according to historian of education lawrence cremin, progressive education embraced seven principles in a progressive learning situation: 1. freedom to develop naturally 2. interest, the motive of all work 3. teacher as a guide, not as a task master 4. scientific study or pupil development 5. greater attention to all that affects the child 6. cooperation between school and home to meet the needs of childlife 7. the progressive school a leader in educational movements (1961, 243-245)2 howard followed each principle in a natural flow. she didn’t follow a checklist of principles. for her, education and self were seamless. as a result, lessons could flow from one subject to another. cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 62 11/6/08 11:46:14 am rosenberg an eclectic schoolteacher 63 howard made folklore part of the flow of education. in both “the bell always rang” and “on our own,” it is clear that she applied lore to lessons. at frostburg students documented their childlife by authoring autoethnographies (ruffo 1951). this was a continuation of an approach to childlore that started in 1930. as she explains in her own autoethnography, dorothy’s world: one problem that soon became [howard’s] great concern was the fact that most of the children, especially the boys, reached the junior high school grades ‘hating’ poetry. looking for the causes, she learned that their elementary classroom experiences with poetry had included: (1) homework memory assignments of (2) poems chosen by the teacher (a woman) for (3) didactic purposes and (4) memorized as a chore to escape punishment. then one spring day at noon she stood at an open classroom pondering that problem, casually watching the children play on an unsupervised playground. skip ropes were turning, marbles rolling, balls bouncing. gradually she became aware of metaphoric rhythmic language accompanying the body movements of children. by the time the bell rang calling the children in, she had counted on her fingers more than a dozen rhymes and formulae; and when the children came to class, rhymes, rhythms, and metaphors of the playground were discussed. the next day, self assigned homework was brought in and by week’s end the class had a collection of more than two hundred playground rhymes (1977, 287-288). although howard had difficulty understanding why students didn’t like poetry, she located an infinite resource in her students’ expressive culture. in order to learn the lessons of the day, students supplied grist for the mill. from then on she relied on student culture to develop and execute her lessons. howard, the folklorist howard learned of folklore around 1933, when she met with walter barnes, an english professor at new york university. she was introduced to barnes through howard’s sister, and she spent much time with him learning about this field that was new to her. he introduced her to the work of gomme, newell, and other collectors of children’s lore. barnes suggested that howard corral her collection into a doctoral dissertation, which she did, titling it “folk jingles of american children: a collection and study of rhymes used by children today” (1938). and she continued to teach middle school.3 “folk jingles of american children” howard’s dissertation “explores children’s rhyming traditions as unconscious literature that are an integral part of childlife; that parents recognize the cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 63 11/6/08 11:46:14 am an eclectic schoolteacher rosenberg 64 educational value of children’s folk literature and that writers for children use as a model” (“sixty dirty republikins” 1939). “folk jingles” was a national study in which howard enlisted the aid of her colleagues in folklore and education, as well as children themselves across the united states. it was bold in its present-tense orientation, which enabled howard to bridge the gap between armchair scholar and ethnographer (see grider 1994). in her studies of folk cultures howard was aware of the transmission of expression. like her teachers before her, boas, benedict, and mead,4 howard saw children as constituting a folk group with their own system of expressions, mores, and beliefs. their culture stood three foot tall, and through howard’s studies she confirmed that children had a place on the cultural landscape. she hoped that her schoolchildren would learn the fundamentals of language and that her students would grow to be the peacemakers of the world through their words. she had high expectations of her boys, her girls, and herself. their training was very demanding, involving all of their senses in experiencing the world. “folk jingles” is a breakthrough anthology. howard combined fieldwork with older texts. the older text was her armchair. the fieldwork was that of the ethnographer who explored context as well as performance. it is unfortunate that “folk jingles” is incomplete. howard did not assign dates to the collection she made; therefore we don’t have ethnographic chronology. what we do have is an incredibly variegated collection of taunts, jump rope rhymes, charms, autograph album rhymes, songs, chants, and plenty more. it is an exciting compilation because it explores childlife in the present tense on american soil. most of the collections of childhood rhymes at that time came from overseas, with the exception of newell and barnes. folklore and education: australia these intersections of lore, cultural dynamics, and the english language prepared howard for her next step, documenting children’s folklore in australia. originally she planned to document one group in one environment. but the fulbright group asked that she document the whole of down under, and she spent a year doing fieldwork (factor and darien-smith 2005), sharing her research in a variety of articles in the journal of american folklore, folklore, southern folklore, and western folklore. even while howard practiced this new craft of folklore, she still maintained her stance as a progressive educator. she wrote: “folklore has a justifiable place in the schools, not as a separate subject, or for the purpose of making folklorists out of children, or as an academic book exercise but as an integral part of a co-ordinated [sic] program for child growth and development where children become aware of the folklore process, what it is, and how it operates in their own lives and in their community, demonstrating . . . four ways to use folklore in the schools: as an introduction to poetry; as material for written composition work leading to classroom folklore archives; as a beginning step in creative writing, and fourth, as vital material for social studies” (1950, 106) cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 64 11/6/08 11:46:15 am rosenberg an eclectic schoolteacher 65 one thing shared between folklore and education here is the concept of experience that envelops the classroom and the field. in the educational sense, experience as defined by john dewey (1916) is the interaction of the student and the environment (biesta and burbules 2003). in folklore, experience is marked by the creation of context and performance. in this light the creation of context is the creation of environment. the individual is the folk, and both folklore and education have attempted to create an environment in which the student, the folk, can thrive. this is most visible in howard’s teaching style. for one thing, she needed to have her students trust her. without trust there would be no way students could share their lore and be taken seriously. the same thing holds true with respect. howard respected her students, and they in turn respected her. that enabled the creation of lessons that were homemade and in line with education’s demands. of course teachers need training, and howard’s courses at frostburg were designed to do just that. students’ autoethnographies and visits to museums offered lessons in transmission and preservation, as howard told me in july of 1989. the transmission of lore was made understandable via folklife examples. howard did not intend to make teachers folklorists. rather she wanted to have them understand transmission as something not limited to learning a lesson. it was a way of understanding, knowing life. it was a way of becoming a better person and citizen. between 1955 and 1969 howard published her australia articles. she wrote an introduction to the dover edition of gomme’s traditional games of england, scotland, and ireland (1964). she became more involved in the discipline of folklore, ever continuing to absorb and apply what she had learned in the 1930s. dorothy’s world: an autoethnography during the 1960s and 1970s howard practiced what she preached when it came to autoethnographies.5 dorothy’s world is an exploration of howard’s youngest years in texas, 1902-1910 (1977). in the autoethnography she describes her family life, school, games, friends, and home as a whole. howard wanted to do the autoethnography as a way of expressing herself, albeit in a style somewhat romanticized with age. her book is a lengthy and detailed work that is considered a model for folklorists. i do not know if educators use this book as source material, but folklorists consider it seminal. the book gives a very well rounded view of what childlife looked like in earlier times for an earlier age. it deals with oral tradition and with material culture. the lessons garnered from the book are powerful and eye-opening. dorothy’s world has been a success, with a wide readership now found on amazon and barnes and noble, as well as powell’s in portland, oregon. it is no longer published by prentice-hall. cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 65 11/6/08 11:46:15 am an eclectic schoolteacher rosenberg 66 howard as applied folklorist howard was a pioneering applied folklorist; she utilized childlore for furthering other purposes, primarily education. benjamin botkin, writing on applied folklore in 1953, was of the opinion that the “ultimate aim of applied folklore is the restoration to american life of the sense of community — a sense of thinking, feeling, and acting along similar though not the same lines” (botkin 1953, 204) he had a sense of folklore as something that could be used in the creation of class and social programs: “thus applied folklore goes beyond cultural history to cultural strategy, to the end of creating a favorable environment for the liberation of our creative energies and the flourishing of the folk arts among other social cooperative activities” (1953, 204). although he didn’t look at the classroom per se, he instead explored a curriculum. howard, on the other hand, infused lessons with lore and lore with lessons. nothing was set aside, unless, as in “the bell always rang,” lessons were shifted to accommodate new learning. howard was an applied folklorist in that she saw the ways folk culture could promote social harmony and excite learning. as far as can be told, howard didn’t call herself an applied folklorist or even a folklorist. she was a teacher, an eclectic schoolteacher, a “mugwump pedagog” (dorothy’s world). and she stayed true to her pedagogical roots throughout her days.5 dorothy howard’s work also lays bare a distinction between applied and public folklore. in acting out the latter, the public folklorist develops programs that celebrate and explore a particular theme, people, and folk cultures of communities and individuals while creating programs such as festivals, school assemblies, concerts, demonstrations, and exhibits to highlight those groups and themes. applied folklore helps people in need. traditions are used to help others in one way or another. it is a kind of public folklore in that it focuses on the common good through traditions. but it is the application of traditional practices to enhance such activities as lessons that makes it what it is. howard as an applied folklorist utilized what was present in her students’ lives to create lessons. the students (except for the frostburg students) were not ethnographers. they got the chance to work with materials with which they were familiar. on the one hand, students working with familiar expressions had a certain amount of control over their lessons. on the other hand, it was an astute instructor who looked to her students for answers about language, writing, and overall expression. end piece/end peace 6 dorothy howard had keen insights into the unspoken literature of childhood. she knew the english language well enough to be able to identify traditional structure in children’s unwritten verse. howard was a maverick; there is no doubt about that. she was able to utilize student lore in a variety of learning situations (except math and science), and she gained the trust of her students so that they could be sure of themselves. as cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 66 11/6/08 11:46:15 am rosenberg an eclectic schoolteacher 67 a progressive educator, she was able to connect the class with the lore to create a meaningful experience. as a folklorist she understood how the transmission equation fit into the lives of children. as an applied folklorist, howard understood how traditional culture could be used to support lessons of most all kinds. she believed that children’s folklore had a wide variety of uses in the classroom, and she practiced what she preached. notes i would like to thank sylvia grider, libby tucker, loretta brockmeier, diana kellybyrne and diane sidener for their suggestions. all thanks, no blame. 1. howard was teaching in a very challenging time for education. while small, unconsolidated schools were run essentially by the teacher and the school board, the larger schools, including urban schools, were working within a combination of outlined curriculum and progressive ideas. howard taught in both unconsolidated and consolidated schools and was completely aware of the progressive movement. 2. the progressives’ journal, progressive education, included this on the frontispiece of each number. 3. the doctorate in education was new at new york university. when howard first tried for the ph.d., she was told that her subject matter was not worthy of exploration. barnes, as her champion, found a fit for howard with the university’s new ed.d. program. 4. howard doesn’t specifically name what these scholars taught her, but she conveys a sense of awe at what they taught. 6. dr. howard called herself an “eclectic school teacher” in her authoethnographic writings, most of which are not dated. 7. along i 30 between texarkana and dallas, there are a lot of communities that have their basis in northeast texas agriculture: cotton, soy, vegetables. at the outset the community of lone oak looks fairly deserted, but it is just very small. works cited biesta, gert and nicholas burbules. 2003. pragmatism and educational research. lanham, maryland: rowman and littlefield publishers. botkin, benjamin. 1953. applied folklore: creating understanding through folklore. southern folklore quarterly 17:199-206. cremin, lawrence. 1961. the transformation of the school: progressivism in american education. new york: vintage. dewey, john. 1916. democracy and education. new york: macmillan. dubois, rachel davis. 1984. all this and something more: pioneering in intercultural education. bryn mawr: dorrence. factor, june and kate darien-smith, eds. 2005. child’s play: dorothy howard and the folklore of australian children. melbourne: museum of victoria. cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 67 11/6/08 11:46:15 am an eclectic schoolteacher rosenberg 68 graham, patricia a. 1967. progressive education from arcady to academe: a history of the progressive education association, 1919-1955. new york: teachers college press. grider, sylvia ann. 1994. dorothy howard: pioneer collector of children’s folklore. children’s folklore review 17(1): 3-17. howard, dorothy. 1938. folk jingles of american children: a collection and study of rhymes used by children today. ed.d. diss., new york univ. ______. 1940. the bell always rang. elementary english review 17(7): 262-64. ______. 1941. “our own” in the classroom. story parade (october): 5-6. ______. 1950. folklore in the schools. new york folklore quarterly 6: 99-107. ______. 1958. australian “hoppy” (hopscotch). western folklore 17(3): 163-75. ______. 1958. the game of “knucklebones” in australia. western folklore. 17(1): 34-44. ______. 1959. ball bouncing customs and rhymes in australia. midwest folklore 9(2): 77-87. ______. 1959. autograph album customs in australia. southern folklore quarterly 23(2): 95-107. ______. 1960. counting-out customs of australian children. new york folklore quarterly 16(2): 131-44. ______. 1960. marble games of australian children. folklore 71: 165-79. ______. 1961. string games of australian children. folklore 72: 385-87. ______. 1964. introduction. in the traditional games of england, scotland, and ireland, vol. 1, by alice bertha gomme. new york: dover. ______. 1965. folklore of australian children. keystone folklore quarterly 10(3): 99-115. ______. 1977. dorothy’s world: childhood in sabine bottom. englewood cliffs, nj: prentice hall. ______. 1990. untitled. manuscript. university of north texas archives. ______. n.d. (a) odyssey of a country school teacher. manuscript. university of north texas archives. ______. n.d. (b). pedagog in embryo. manuscript. university of north texas archives. katz, michael b. 1987. reconstructing american education. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. kilpatrick, william. 1918. the project method. teachers college record 19: 319-35. rosenberg, jan. 1990. a history lesson in folklore and education: dorothy howard. paper delivered at the annual meeting of the american folklore society, oakland, ca. ruffo, ronald. 1951. my play life. childhood autoethnography paper for howard’s class. sixty dirty republikins. time. 21 aug. 1939. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/ article/0,9171,762504,00.html (accessed 25 apr. 2008). cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 68 11/6/08 11:46:15 am 69 children’s folklore section: 2007 annual meeting the children’s folklore section of the american folklore society met on october 19, 2007 at the hilton québec in québec, canada. those present included carole carpenter (york university) stephanie crouch (university of texas), joseph edgette (widner university), sean galvin (laguardia community college, city university of new york), michael jung (arizona state university), john mcdowell, indiana university), priscilla a. ord (mcdaniel college), kate schramm (indiana university), robert smith (southern cross university, australia), c. w. sullivan iii (east carolina university), jacqueline thursby (brigham young university), elizabeth tucker (binghamton university), and robert y. walser (university of aberdeen, scotland) in the absence of president of the section for a portion of the meeting, priscilla ord, president pro tempore, called the meeting to order, and those present introduced themselves. secretary’s report: the minutes of the 2006 section meeting in milwaukee were distributed online. there were no amendments or corrections, so the minutes were approved as distributed. treasurer’s report: priscilla reported that according to the records provided to her by tim lloyd, executive secretary of the american folklore society (afs), the endowment had earned $177.00, bringing the total value to $11,982.00. other income included $946.00, from memberships, and $16.50, from miscellaneous, for a total of $1,139.50. expenses included $100 to the newell prize recipient and $266.00 in management fees to afs for a total of $266.00. income, less expenditures, was, therefore, $773.50. outstanding items for the 2006-2007 year yet to be paid are publishing and postage for volume 29 of children’s folklore review and the dues for the editor’s membership in celj (council of editors of learned journals). editor’s report: chip sullivan reported that volume 29 of the children’s folklore review will be complete and in the mail before the end of 2007. it is currently a work-in-progress and will be the final issue he edits. after twenty-nine years of serving as editor, chip is turning over the responsibility for editing the children’s folklore review to elizabeth tucker of binghamton university. libby is expecting to receive financial support from her department. cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 69 11/6/08 11:46:16 am cfs: 2007 annual meeting 70 aesop prize report: the 2006-2007 committee consisted of brian sturm (chair), vicky sworkin, rosemary vohs, irene chagall, and robert young walser. robert reported for the committee. the 2007 aesop award winners were: lugalbanda: the boy who got caught up in a war. told by kathy henderson. illustrated by jane ray. candlewick press, 2006. the legend of hong kil dong: the robin hood of korea. retold by anne sibley o’brian. charlesbridge, 2006. the 2007 aesop accolades were: solomon and the ant and other jewish folktales. retold by sheldon oberman. introduction and commentary by peninnah schram. boyds mills press, 2006. tatanka and the lakota people: a creation story. illustrated by donald f. montileaux. south dakota state historical press, 2006. newell prize report: chip sullivan indicated that there was a newell prize winner this year, but he did not provide the person’s name. the newell prize, given by the children’s folklore section of the american folklore society for the best student essay on a topic in children’s folklore has since been awarded to kristiana willsey for her paper, “the shoebox museum: the aesthetics and organizational concepts of children.” the committee remarked on both the originality of the topic and the interesting way ms. willsey presented her analysis of the materials that students keep in shoeboxes, cookie tins, and other personal spaces. kristiana is a student of john mcdowell’s at indiana university and her paper will be published in volume 30, 2007-2008 of children’s folklore review. carole carpenter moved and chip sullivan seconded that, in addition to the $100 award, the newell prize winner also be given a one-year membership in the section. the motion was passed unanimously. opie prize report: without a designated contact person, there have been no nominations or submissions for the opie prize, a $200 award to the author(s) of the best book published within the two previous years on children’s folklore. carole carpenter (york university, carolec@yorku.ca<mailto:carolec@yorku.ca>) volunteered to chair the committee and receive nominations. children’s folklore section sessions: the section sponsored two sessions at the current afs meeting. they were: contexts of children’s folklore/contextes du folklore des enfants carole h. carpenter, chair patricia haseltine (providence university) taming “ancient” chinese dragons in early 20thcentury western children’s literature cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 70 11/6/08 11:46:16 am cfs: 2007 annual meeting 71 kate schramm (indiana university) nascent folklore: socialization and the formation of protolore in infants and toddlers kristiana willsey (indiana university) the shoebox museum: aesthetic values and organizational concepts of children carole h. carpenter (york university) children’s folklore in a bubble-wrapped childhood john h. mcdowell (indiana university), discussant play as intangible cultural heritage/le jeu comme patrimoine culturel immatériel anna beresin, chair dana hercbergs (university of pennsylvania) a reassessment of children’s folklore generic classification fernando orejuela (indiana university) hip hop as children’s folklore: exploring an alternative approach to the hip hop culture phenomenon anna beresin (the university of the arts) drawing happiness: art and children’s folklore, philadelphia style john h. mcdowell (indiana university), discussant old business: the major concern of those present was how to raise both interest and membership in the section. the following ideas were put forth: • take information about the section and its work to other appropriate organizations, such as ira (international reading association), mla (modern language association), ncte (national council of teachers of english), etc. • have john mcdowell send out an email to all members welcoming them back to activity in the section. • make a one-page representation of the children’s folklore section on the afs website. • have an auction or drawing of children’s toys (or other items). new business: in order to have two sessions or panels at the 2008 afs meeting in louisville, ky, priscilla asked for volunteers to chair the sessions. since the 2008 conference is to be held in louisville, graduate students at the universities in the region should be notified. universities in illinois, indiana, kentucky, ohio, and tennessee were mentioned. it was also suggested that the section have or sponsor something along the line of an ice cream social with children’s games as an event at the annual meeting. carole carpenter announced the new children’s studies program, the only one of its kind, at york university, www.yorku.ca/human/csp cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 71 11/6/08 11:46:16 am cfs: 2007 annual meeting 72 the meeting was closed with expressed appreciation for the great work chip sullivan has done for so many years as editor of the children’s folklore review. he earned a standing ovation and long applause. in 2006 chip received the cfs life achievement award for his years of service as editor. i wish to offer my sincere thanks to jackie thursby for serving as “scribe,” while i had to conduct the meeting, and taking the time to draft the minutes for me. respectfully submitted, priscilla a. ord priscilla a. ord, secretary/treasurer children’s folklore section, american folklore society cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 72 11/6/08 11:46:16 am 73 notes and announcements newell prize the children’s folklore section of the american folklore society annually offers the william wells newell prize (which includes a cash award) for the best student essay on a topic in children’s folklore. students must submit their own papers, and published papers are eligible. instructors are asked to encourage students with eligible papers to enter the competition. papers must be typed, double-spaced, and on white paper. on the first page, include the author’s name, academic address, home address, telephone numbers, and e-mail address. deadline for this coming year’s competition is september 1, 2009. submit papers or write for more information to dr. c.w. sullivan iii, english department, east carolina university, greenville, nc, 27858-4353 (sullivanc@ecu. edu). book reviews children’s folklore review is seeking book review submissions for its next issue, to be published in october of 2009. this is an excellent opportunity for graduate students interested in building their writing credentials and demonstrating breadth in folklore, literature, and childhood studies. books are selected for review in children’s folklore review according to their relevance to the field of children’s folklore and their year of publication (within the past two years). if you would like to request a book for review, please contact the book review editor, dana hercbergs (hercberg@sas.upenn.edu). book reviews should not exceed 750 words. silent auction at the american folklore society’s 2009 meeting in boise, idaho, the children’s folklore section will hold a silent auction of books, toys, and other objects related to folklore of childhood. if you will be coming to the boise meeting, please think about bringing an item for the silent auction table. proceeds of this auction will benefit the children’s folklore section. cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 73 11/6/08 11:46:17 am 75 contributors dana hercbergs is a doctoral candidate in the graduate program in folklore and folklife at the university of pennsylvania. her dissertation explores children’s folklore from the perspectives of palestinians and israelis living in jerusalem, through both memories and contemporary experiences. her research interests include cultural geography, healing traditions, and arab-jewish relations. john holmes mcdowell is professor of folklore and ethnomusicology at indiana university. his dissertation research was with chicano children in austin, texas, and his first book, children’s riddling, was a winner of the chicago folklore prize. his most recent monograph is poetry and violence: the ballad tradition of mexico’s costa chica (university of illinois, 2000). in addition, he has published two books on the indigenous peoples of andean colombia, both with university press of kentucky: sayings of the ancestors: the spiritual life of the sibundoy indians (1989) and “so wise were our elders”: mythic narratives of the kamsá (1994). jan rosenberg is an independent folklorist who currently makes her home in tallahassee, florida. she began working with dorothy howard’s materials in 1988 and continues to demonstrate how howard used folklore in educational settings. c.w. sullivan iii is harriot college of arts and sciences distinguished professor at east carolina university and is a full member of the welsh academy. his major publications include welsh celtic myth in modern fantasy, the mabinogi: a book of essays, fenian diary: denis b. cashman on board the hougoumont, 18671868, six other books, and a variety of articles on mythology, folklore, fantasy, and science fiction. he is the outgoing editor of children’s folklore review and the editor of the e-journal celtic cultural studies. elizabeth tucker, the new editor of children’s folklore review, has taught folklore at binghamton university for thirty-one years. her areas of interest include the folklore of children and college students, legends, and folklore of the supernatural. she has published three books, of which the most recent is children’s folklore: a handbook (2008). recently she became the editor of the international society for contemporary legend research’s e-newsletter, foaftale news. kristiana willsey is a graduate student in the folklore and ethnomusicology department of indiana university. she received her bachelor’s degree in linguistic anthropology from scripps college in 2006. her research interests include narrative and oral performance, fairy tales and feminist folklore, forms of textuality, the relationship between folklore and nationalism, and the personal politics of collection and consumption. cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 75 11/6/08 11:46:17 am ocr document book reviews de vos, gail and anna altmann. new tales for old: folktales as literary fictions for young adults. englewood, colorado: libraries unlimited, 1999. 406p. $39.00 hc. as society changes and the entertainment industry impacts our culture, traditional fairy tales borrowed from the oral tradition have been adopted and adapted into new forms by the popular media. the unique contribution of new tales for old is the listing and discussion of a wide range of contemporary adaptations—movies, novels, operas, poetry, short stories, picture books, and internet resources based on eight folktales: "cinderella," "the frog king," "hansel and gretel," "little red riding hood," "rapunzel," "rumpelstiltskin," "sleeping beauty," and "snow white." the persistence of these familiar fairy tales—often in dramatically altered forms—highlights the haunting power of these images and messages whose roots lie deep in oral tradition. replete with interdisciplinary interpretations, this book is a treasure trove for teachers who work with undergraduates or high school populations. folklorists, too, will find this a useful and stimulating resource. after discussing the theories of walther j. ong as presented in orality and literacy: the technologizing of the word, the authors provide an overview of the folktale genre and various interpretative approaches. in the following chapters, each focusing on a single tale, scholarly commentaries from folkloristic, literary, social, political, and psychological perspectives follow the story text. these scholarly syntheses, which emphasize the symbolism. of each tale as well as gender issues, are offered in an objective and non-judgmental manner. versions of the tale in various popular media are discussed, and each chapter ends with thoughtful and creative classroom exercises and an extensive bibliography. an overview of one of the chapters will serve to illustrate the breadth and variety of scholarship in this work. "snow white" (chapter nine) begins by comparing the version of the tale in giambattista basile's the pentamerone (seventeenth century) with the grimm version, including a chart showing revisions made in subsequent editions of the grimm texts. in their "overview of critical interpretations," book reviews the authors summarize in chronological order commentaries on "snow white" by karl schenkl, alfred nutt, ernest boklen, bolte and polivka, kurt heyman, j.p grant duff, a.n. foxe, a.s. macquisten and r.w pickford, julius heuscher, bruno bettelheim, n.j. girardot, roger sale, sandra m.gilbert and susan gubar, derek brewer, kay stone, max luthi, maria tatar, betsy cohen, ruth bottigheimer, wolfgang mieder, joyce thomas, shuli barzilai, steven swann jones, james mcglathery, lutz rohrich, trina schart hyman, nancy walker, martin hallett and barbara karasek, diane purkiss and christiana bacchilega. interpretive and philosophical' statements are presented without criticism, as the authors' purpose is "to provoke rather than to judge." the authors' discussion also covers literary works based on "snow white," including three novels: pictures of the night by adele geras (san diego, ca: harcourt, 1992), the godmother by elizabeth ann scarborough (new york: ace, 1994) and little snow white, a graphic novel by david wenzel and douglas wheeler (new york: nantier, beall and minoustchine, 1995). donald bartheleme's snow white is not included, perhaps because the authors considered it inappropriate for young adults? references to "snow white" in children's picture books along with synopses of eighteen short stories and eleven poems (presented in chronological order of their publication) are also presented. the chapter includes a lengthy examination of "snow white and the seven dwarfs" (1937), walt disney's first full-length animated film which sparked interest in animated reworkings of traditional and literary tales. de vos and altmann even include a section on "movie trivia" which reveals that individualized dwarfs were previously found only in a picture book published in england (1921) where the illustrator drew names on the dwarf's trousers: stool, plate, spoon, fork, knife, bread and wine. disney's innovation was not only to provide names for the dwarfs, but in addition, to give them distinct personalities. (other names disney considered included gabby, jumpy, sniffy, puffy, lazy, stubby, shorty, nifty and wheezy.) additional contemporary films discussed in this chapter include snow white: a tale of terror (1996), directed by michael cohen and willa: an american snow white (1997), directed by tom davenport as well as several short films. finally, in the internet category, the authors describe a site developed by professor kay e. vandergrift: www.scils.rutgers.edu/spe 106 book reviews cial/kay/swteach.html. here an 1898 edition of "snow white" can be used to compare highlighted portions of the text with more than thirty other variants. the "classroom extensions" exercises include questions for discussion on essay writing: to what extent can the apple in "snow white" be compared with the spindle in "sleeping beauty?" what is the role of the witch in history? in folklore? is this witch different than the witch in "hansel and gretel" and "rapunzel?" the chapter concludes with an extensive bibliography. each of the other stories is presented with the same in detail coverage, referencing media publications and productions. new tales for old is enhanced by an attractive book design which includes convenient headers and footers, easy to read charts, and use of a bold font for story titles and section headings. i heartily recommend this book for lovers of folk tales and/or popular culture. ruth stotter suwyn, barbara j. edited and with an introduction by natalie o. kononenko. the magic egg and other tales from ukraine. [world folklore series.] englewood, co: libraries unlimited. 1997. isbn: 156308-425-2. 222p, b&w and color illustrations, bibliography, index. $29.50 this is a collection of delightful stories, rewritten to appeal to children, suitable for reading aloud or retelling orally. the volume, part of the world folklore series, has been designed with a school and library market in mind. it includes supplemental material such as a glossary and pronunciation guide, introductions that provide historical and cultural context, and bibliographies with suggestions for further reading. the collection is divided into animal tales, how and why stories, moral stories, and legends and fairy tales. the variety of stories is chosen to appeal to a range of age levels and teachers and parents are urged to be selective in deciding which stories to share. a young child enchanted by stories like "the turnip" or "the little round bun" might find stories like "the stranger" (a vampire story) or "the sorceress" frightening, although these are gripping tales that will captivate older readers. the work is the result of collaboration between suwyn, a professional copywriter and poet, and kononenko, 107 59 the karma of violence glen retief when i was twelve years old and skinny as a grasslands cheetah, my parents sent me away to boarding-school. they had no choice in the matter. we lived in a staff village in a game park more than an hour away from the nearest secondary school, so boarding-school was both an unavoidable and unremarkable rite of passage for all of those entering standard six (eighth grade). one baking hot, glaring monday afternoon in january 1983, the day before the start of the school year, they drove me to nelspruit, a shady farming town on the main road between johannesburg and mozambique. here, they dropped me at a complex of red brick buildings in a newly-built first-floor dormitory still smelling of concrete dust, builders’ tape and paint, and lined with metal lockers and identical blue-andwhite-quilted beds. it didn’t take me very long to get into trouble at my new school. that very first afternoon, after the parents had left, all of us had to stand, according to boardingschool tradition, in the downstairs showers and wait for our two seventeen-yearold dormitory prefects to finish soaping and rinsing themselves. after a minute or two one of them, a skinny blond muscular boy named john, with bright red acne all over his face, announced an initiation ritual which involved dropping our towels, placing our hands on our heads, and singing an athletics song while jumping up and down in the nude. at some point he caught me looking at his groin. “you,” he said, beckoning me to come to the front. he asked my name, then told me to bend over. from somewhere he produced a cricket bat. he proceeded to give me six hard strokes on my bum. i remember that he put tremendous force into them, swinging back on his strokes so that the cracks echoed through that stark concrete bathroom. i also recall that the burning on my buttocks was absolutely extraordinary, a fierce, searing agony that caused my throat to harden and my eyes to mist up. i was terrified. bile rose in my mouth. it was tough to breathe. “let that be a lesson to you, standard six,” he said when he was finished. “we are fighting a war in this country, and there isn’t any room here for queers and weaklings.” he actually used those words—queers; weaklings. after my whipping i had to ask martin, the skinny freckled boy who slept in the bed opposite mine, to explain to me what queers were; when he told me there were men in the world who lived together and had intercourse, at first i refused to believe him. “it’s true,” martin said, “and john thinks you’re one.” and so many other boys all agreed that martin was right, that in the end i had to bow to their superior numbers. unfortunately, that was just the beginning of it. over the next ten months, and especially during the first three of them, when john lived in the standard six dormitory with us, i, along with to varying extents the other standard sixes in the dormitory, would, in the name of “initiation,” face an avalanche of sexual violence and torture. i would be given hidings with a cricket bat for walking past candy cfr_2009_r4.indb 59 10/25/09 6:19:24 pm the karma of violence retief 60 wrappers lying on the floor or not greeting a matric (twelfth-grader) energetically enough when i saw him. i would receive electric shocks to my genitalia and be beaten with pillowslips full of athletics spikes; for laughs i would be made to pretend that my penis was a drill bit and i had to plow through the concrete floor into the building foundations. i would have my food and snacks confiscated from me; on an afternoon when the temperature in the shade was more than a hundred degrees, i would be confined to my bed under a pile of blankets, with the rest of the standard sixes forbidden from bringing me water. by the end of that calendar year – easily the worst year of my life to date, and certainly my closest brush with the kind of oppression that society usually metes out to those on its furthest margins—i would be gaunt and skeletal as a stray dog; so petrified, fragile and shell-shocked that i would spend afternoons hidden away in the toilets, lying with my head on my hands and listening to the water drip into the septic tank; and touched, for the first time in my life, with a kind of existential sadness that has never quite left me, a sense that something was fundamentally out-of-kilter both with myself and the larger world, and that whatever this thing was, it wouldn’t be easy to restore to balance again or put right. these memories are hard to summon up in the daylight. they lurk, somewhere in the shadows of my mind, as much a part of me as the freckles on my arms or the oval-shaped birthmark on my left thigh, but in some mysterious way they also seem separate from me, disassociated film clippings of things that happened to someone else. on rose-tinted south florida mornings, when i drive to the private high school where i teach, and i see the tranquil school buildings surrounded by the banyans and poinsettias, the lawns and sports fields and neat little wooden benches where the students sit at break and eat their sandwiches, the thought that crosses my mind is: none of that was real. all of that porn-flick, abu ghraib-style stuff was just a bad dream. in my daily sequence of high school english classes, there is little to remind me of my past. at this school, which is attended mostly by the ultra-wealthy sons and daughters of investment bankers and mogul land developers, a strict anti-bullying policy makes even the slightest suggestion of physical violence or intimidation punishable by detention, suspension, or expulsion. all over campus, rectangular brass and steel plaques remind students of their contractual obligation to report all instances of hostile teasing to the administration. according to my tenth and eleventh graders, students here settle their differences either through conversation or through threats, humorous or actual, to contact their fathers’ hot-shot lawyers. “if one student really bullied another here, there’d be a lawsuit before you could dial 911,” they tell me, and i believe them, these fresh-faced, optimistic ruling-class denizens of the world’s richest and most powerful country. there are times, watching my students, that i pity them for living such sheltered lives. the gleaming suvs bringing them to school seem obscenely far from the barefoot african children who trudged to school near where i grew up. (“don’t forget how much harder the black people have it,” the teachers said whenever we complained about our own rough boarding school, and of course, in a sense cfr_2009_r4.indb 60 10/25/09 6:19:24 pm retief the karma of violence 61 they were right). the case management meetings called for every flunked test or irritable outburst by a student in math class, where a thoughtful, sympathetic school counselor suggests anger management strategies or procrastination-beating mental tricks—these seem from a different universe than our mock hangings in school bathrooms, where once my friend andre involuntarily stained the wood of an improvised gallows with his urine. (“disgusting! phew!” said the seniors when he did this, and they, too, were in a sense correct). i look at my american students in their polo shirts, wedged between their counselors, homeroom advisors, parents, teachers, and administrators, and i think: i’m happy you’re so spoiled, even though you don’t have a clue. but then, after the school day, superciliousness gives way to envy—a blind rage at them and their lucky country, accompanying me on the i-95 highway past the billboards and the palm trees. this, in turn, later decomposes in its constituent elements: a naked pain as i sit in front of the television, and unadulterated abandonment plaguing me as i try to do my grading. a hole throbbing in my chest, right above my diaphragm. a cold terror in my hands, spreading over my body. and i ask myself yet again: why was there no one? why did no teacher take the trouble to notice what was happening, all of those years ago, in bathrooms with doors left unlocked and open, in dormitories with glass windows open to the clouds and birds? why did no one snap abu ghraib-style pictures of our grinning and jaunty tormentors—cause a local scandal? at that year’s final honors assembly, when john received the award for community service and moral leadership for making sandwiches for the neighboring old age home – everyone in the audience rising to applaud, john standing in the amber-colored spotlight, smiling his awshucks grin, holding up his trophy for the school photographer—why did no one heckle him from the back rows? a memory: late afternoon, perhaps a week or so after the beating in the shower room. the sun is a luminous blood-red, the color of the hostel bricks. i stand at a wooden door, the entrance to the apartment of the teacher-on-duty. the teacher answers it, a ruddy-faced man with ginger hair and thick, stocky arms full of blonde hairs. i try to explain to him that john has been beating me several times a day ever since i arrived, for everything from walking past an empty coke bottle left on the landing to not folding the corners of my bed hospital-style. in my mouth these jumbled complaints transmute into a mangled story about how i need to cover my textbooks and john won’t let me do this during study hall because he wants all the standard sixes to go to a dance the next evening. sometime during this jeremiad i begin to sob and ask if i can call my parents from his phone. the teacher touches me on the arm, firmly but not unkindly. “you tell john i say he needs to let you cover your textbooks,” he says. “be strong now. you’ll be ok, i promise you.” why does he never mention this incident to me again? or here is another one: another late afternoon, just before sunset, the quality of light heavy-red and golden. i am in my parents’ car driving back to the game reserve, the first weekend i have been permitted to go back home—along with the other boarders, i am required to stay in the hostel and cheer at sports events when the school is playing one of our neighbors. i have contacted my parents several cfr_2009_r4.indb 61 10/25/09 6:19:24 pm the karma of violence retief 62 times since the abuse began, mostly from my aunt’s office in the newsroom of a community newspaper across the street: i have been stealing away, unseen, after lunch, and spending entire afternoons sitting on piles of phone books and stacks of returned tabloids. my father shifts the vehicle into third gear to go up a hill. then he sighs, a sigh deeper than any i have heard him issue before, a moan that seems pregnant with a grief that is far beyond my twelve-year-old comprehension. “the thing is, it’s not true, glen,” he says. “i know it isn’t. you’re not a sissy or a nancy boy, or another of the other things they’re calling you. this is what makes this all so unfair.” perhaps the tremble that starts on his lip also indicates that he is angry with them; his shoulders and neck tense up. is he also annoyed at me? he says: “some of these young guys just act like walking penises.” i don’t understand what he means. he says: “this does happen to everyone, you know.” he never, to my recollection, articulates the sentiment that in retrospect i so long to hear from him, the words that will touch my inner ache: the fact that this is happening is a moral abomination, and i will do everything, i mean everything, my son, to protect you from it. or here, at last, is the most painful memory. it is late one afternoon at school— i think the afternoon after john made me lie under a pile of blankets. somehow i have made my way to the top of the school, to the fourth storey of the building we called the east wing, with the view over rolling green hills covered with citrus orchards and the ribbon of tarred road leading to johannesburg. i can see the little toy houses where my grandparents live, on an orange farm ten minutes’ drive away: these are the grandparents whom i have begged my parents to let me live with, but they have refused. i lean over the railing, the top half of my body precipitously hanging above the hard ground. death’s release exerts a strong attraction. i pray: “please, if i jump now, lord jesus, send your angels and carry me over there, to granny and grandpa, and make it so that i don’t have to come back here.” but there are no angels, at least none that i believe in enough to risk my fate. i do not jump. a significant part of my adult life has been spent trying to come to terms with these experiences. “i am a survivor of torture,” i have said to myself, by way of trying to force myself to take my own victimization seriously. but the words survivor and torture stick in the throat like fruit pits; they clang hollow and untrue, sound to me like self-pity and dramatization. i long to spit them away from me – even though, reading through the incidents listed in reports by human rights watch and amnesty international it is hard to see how the actions of john and his friends back in 1983 could not at some level have qualified as war crimes. denial is complex and multi-faceted, universal, pernicious. to confront it means not just to challenge the multiple lies and half-truths embedded in the self, but also to face loved ones and personal anchors, family and friends, the communities that provide structure and identity. until age twenty-four, when i first arrived in new york city as an immigrant and expatriate, i truly had no idea there was even anything strange in the story cfr_2009_r4.indb 62 10/25/09 6:19:24 pm retief the karma of violence 63 of my early adolescence. all of my life i had simply thought of myself as unlucky for having been hit “harder” than the average standard six, because of being visibly homosexual. being stripped naked, though, and forced to enter a pillow slip lined with menthol muscle relaxant; being punched and clobbered and called names; dealing with jokes and high jinks, a little telephone-crank “cock-shock” machine here and some humorous armpit hair-burning over there: all of this i took for granted as a regular part of growing up. when, after three months of john’s depredations, my parents managed to persuade the school authorities to transfer him to another passage—an action they took without telling me, for fear i would give away the secret and become more of a target—the abuses continued, albeit at a reduced intensity, and in fact they persisted throughout high school. my father was not wrong in telling me these things happened to “everyone.” a 2001 report of the south african human rights commission, authorized by the new democratic parliament, found that such abuses were widespread and accepted in schools “within an institutional culture of authoritarianism and bullying.”1 it took several years and the utterly anguished, horrified expressions on the faces of friends of several different nationalities—american, swiss, spanish, brazilian and chinese—for me to realize that, say, having one’s head shoved in a tiny wooden mailbox while being caned with a three-foot hockey stick was not a universal coming-of-age ritual. even then, i was reluctant to acknowledge that my childhood wasn’t “normal,” “happy” and “safe.” it is no exaggeration to state that it is those moments sitting around in brooklyn brownstone apartments watching faces crumple into utter bewilderment at the descriptions of my childhood and adolescence that i felt the first serious stirrings to provide a fiction and nonfiction of witness; to share with the wider world my story and its implications. in talking to my family over the years, and in sharing my published memoirs and personal essays, it has been hard to share this newfound international perspective. my parents tend to be sympathetic, yet guarded. “we did the best we can,” says my father. “in those days, that’s the way things were done.” it is all but impossible to communicate frankly with my former teachers who still live and work in the town where i grew up. recently, when i suggested to one of my old math instructors that school discipline may have been cruel in the old days, she proceeded to regale me with a diatribe about how, under democracy, academic standards have collapsed and the blacks have brought drugs, laziness, and knife fights into previous citadels of order. “yours was the last generation,” she tells me, “to be educated in safety.” at the political level, the denial of the abuse of young white male preadolescents under apartheid is a glaring absence in the national discourse about reconciliation, healing, and the building of the so-called “rainbow nation.” existing narratives of the apartheid era rely heavily on notions of white aggression and black victimhood. to some extent feminists have succeeded in adding to the mix concepts of male belligerence and female injury. entirely missing from this world view is any sense of white males themselves as dual victims and perpetrators, stuck in a perverse, topsy-turvy karma of oppression—not being subjected to the ills that they inflicted on others, as in the hindu cosmology, but cfr_2009_r4.indb 63 10/25/09 6:19:25 pm the karma of violence retief 64 rather treating others they way they were once treated, and thus perpetuating the cycle ad nauseum. and yet in the universe of apartheid, this is exactly what happened. at countless institutions like my boarding school, spread across the african veld like red-brick blisters, boys without hair on their bodies became, for a time, honorary black south africans. as the years went by, these boys, with all the verve of understudies stepping into stage roles, went on to bully the juniors under them, shouting orders to polish shoes or make beds, walloping them in the kidneys when they took too long to bring back coca-cola from the corner store. when the time came for these seventeen-year-olds to be conscripted into the south african defence force, the roles flipped once more. this time, they were made to do push-ups over mud puddles until their arms collapsed, or run miles with backpacks on their shoulders, or perhaps even have sexual intercourse with female prostitutes to prove their masculinity. according to at least one postapartheid human rights study, if they showed signs of gentleness or effeminacy they were made to endure punishments including electric shock treatment and having their genitalia rubbed with shoe polish and inspected by whole platoons.2 in white male south african society, the final step on this ladder of suffering and oppression was to become a soldier or officer entrusted with the task of maintaining white supremacy. according to the report of desmond tutu’s truth and reconciliation commission, here there were few limits on the exercise of brute power. herero and ovambo women on the namibian border were beaten and gang-raped. captured guerilla fighters got fried alive on the engines of armored cars. at the higher levels of military command, white men who looked and spoke just like john and his friends gave orders for the engineering of civil wars and famines that would claim millions of lives. like so many mad kurtzes, many white men seemed to lose all sense of themselves in those days, to become intoxicated with power and cruelty, and to have no qualms about destroying individuals, families, and nations. by time it all came to an end, the damage done, both to south africa and its neighbors—the child soldiers with their legs blown up, the families left abandoned and destitute—simply beggared the human imagination. perhaps i was either too gentle or too tough a soul to succumb to the karma of violence. perhaps it was simply that as a gay man i was a natural misfit in my own society, with no hope, under apartheid, of ever being comfortable in the laager, the circle of wagons drawn against indigenous africans. perhaps, back in those humid summer days when john was standing over my bed, with his smell of clearasil facewash and his ironed black boxer shorts, trying to plant in me the spiritual kernel of what he was—perhaps on one of those, another seed managed to blow into my soul, much as, even on the hottest afternoons in the dormitory, a breath of honeysuckle would come in through the open windows. grace, divine or otherwise, is inevitably mysterious. when i myself reached standard ten, i never participated in the torture of the younger boys. i never punched them full-force in the chest or struck them with cfr_2009_r4.indb 64 10/25/09 6:19:25 pm retief the karma of violence 65 canes and athletics spikes; i never seized them, thrust them up into corners, and threatened to bash out all the teeth in their mouths. but i cannot claim to be a hero. i never reported or spoke out against any abuse or bullying. i never looked at the juniors while they were being tormented, never offered them as much as a commiserating shake of the head. on one occasion, so as not to appear a weakling in front of my peers, i did make a standard seven in my passage bend over for being disrespectful to me, and i hit him as hard as i could with a cricket bat, until he begged me to stop. i remember that when i was done i threw up in the passage toilets. i never joined the south african defence force. at age nineteen, a student at the university of cape town, i joined the end conscription campaign and declared that i was a conscientious objector, that i would not fight for white supremacy. along with many thousands of white men of my generation, i decided simply to ignore the call-up papers, not to show up at one of those train or bus stations where we were supposed to shave our heads, heave our duffel bags onto our shoulders, and be transformed into killers. the penalties for refusing military service were six years’ prison, if they caught you. by that time, though, the laws had become virtually unenforceable. i have said that the karma of violence was repetitious and unchanging, but that is not strictly true. by the time i reached matric, the so-called initiation rituals in my school were already markedly reduced in intensity, and soon after that, under the leadership of a new school principal, they were forbidden. after the transition to democracy in 1994, all forms of corporal punishment and bullying were outlawed. the rest of the story of the south african transformation is well-known. today, the liveliest wars fought are on the soccer fields, cricket pitches, and rugby stadiums. as i write these words, summer has once again descended on miami. days so scalding that when i leave the air conditioning it feels like i have stepped into a furnace give way to cool, fresh evenings lit up by thunderstorms. the poinciana trees are all in red, fiery bloom; my students are on summer vacation. before leaving, one of my favorite students, who plans to one day become a memoirist herself, ran up to me early one morning and told me that she had not only managed, with the help of a peer counselor, to defuse a bullying situation between an older boy and a younger one, but that she had joined the local amnesty international club, and would be working next year to secure the release of political prisoners in guantanamo, havana, mexico, and the middle east. she was so exuberant and happy; her arms wheeled as she talked about going to washington, d.c.; her mouth opened wide as she laughed about the fun she was going to have in chiapas. you, too, i thought, are going to be a witness. and this time, instead of provoking jealousy, her open, innocent face, so full of youthful happiness, gave me hope. cfr_2009_r4.indb 65 10/25/09 6:19:25 pm the karma of violence retief 66 notes an earlier version of “the karma of violence” appeared in hotel amerika. 1. see south african human rights commission 2001. 2. for examples of such violations within the sadf, see van zyl, mikki, et al. 1999. works cited south african human rights commission. 2001. report into initiation practices at educational institutions and a preliminary report on cultural initiations. cape town: sahrc, october. van zyl, mikki, et al. 1999. the aversion project: human rights abuses of gays and lesbians in the sadf by health workers during the apartheid era. simply said and done: cape town. cfr_2009_r4.indb 66 10/25/09 6:19:25 pm pages from cfr_2008-2009_part18 cfr_2008-2009_part19 cfr_2008-2009_part20 pages from cfr_2008-2009_part21 "life for me ain't no crystal stair"; readin', writin', and parental (il)literacy in african american children' s books neal a. lester learning would spoil the best nigger in the world. now. . . if you teach that nigger. . . how to read, there would be no keeping him. it would forever unfit him to be a slave. -frederick douglass (1845) mass literacy is a relatively new social goal. a hundred years ago people didn't need to be good readers in order to earn a living. but in the information age, no one can get by without knowing how to read well and understand increasingly complex material. -newsweek (22 november 1999) literacy as democratic ideal while frederick douglass's important narrative of the life of frederick douglass, an american slave, written by himself (1845) demonstrates an individual's alleged personal liberation spiritually and psychologically through reading and writing, the narrative equally forwards a culturally chauvinistic agenda that privileges the printed word. proposing to show his learned northern abolitionist, primarily white male audience that access to reading and writing transforms him from his perceived animal barbarism to civilized humanhood, douglass impressively and eloquently details human bondage and his release from it through elaborate rhetorical strategies: symbolisms, ironies, allusions, parallelisms, ambiguities, repetitions.2 indeed, douglass's liberation from his enslavement comes less from his physical freedom than from his ability to read and write: though conscious of the difficulty of learning without a teacher [his master's wile, mrs. auld], i set out with high hope, and of a fixed purpose at whatever cost of trouble to learn how to read. (667) he learns indirectly from mr. auld how threatened masters were of "life for me ain't no crystal stair" lester slaves' becoming literate—among other things, they might write their own passes to freedom literally and figuratively—and this knowledge fuels his intense determination to become literate by any means necessary: what he [mr. auld] most dreaded, that i most desired. what he most loved, that i most hated. that which to him was a great evil, to be carefully shunned, was to be diligently sought; and served to inspire me with a desire and determination to learn. in learning to read, i owe almost as much to the bitter opposition of my master, as to the kindly aid of my mistress. (668) douglass's learning to read from mrs. auld's instruction and from manipulating little white boys so that he could write what they wrote is fundamental to douglass's newly realized selfhood. douglass's copyingphysically mimicking "white literacy" –speaks to a cultural binary that exists between literacy and illiteracy in the western world. although douglass clarifies that slaves' physical and psychological survival was also connected to slaves' "reading" masters' behaviors and motives, he feels completely human and humanized largely because he can read and write. in a broader sense, "formal" education generally and alphabetical literacy were believed to be keys to african american liberation from economic, social and political oppression. as violet j. harris explains in "african-american conceptions of literacy: a historical perspective," african americans hold many of the same views [on the sacredness of education as white american citizens]; they, too, maintain an unstinting belief in the power of literacy to effect essential political, cultural, social, and economic change. in the past, and to some extent now, education was a privilege, albeit a privilege literally acquired through blood, sweat, tears, and enormous economic sacrifice. unquestionably, acquiring access to literacy for african americans has involved continuous struggle, in the face of unrelenting opposition from segments of the planter aristocracy, politicians, clergy, and ordinary citizens.3 hence, to connect individual worth and selfhood, as does douglass, with the ability or inability to read and write—one dimension of lit 76 lester "life for me ain't no crystal stair" eracy—is not uncommon, however problematic, in a western culture that is, as harlem renaissance writer jean toomer describes, "hypnotized by literacy." according to the 1992 national adult literacy survey, literacy is the ability "to use printed and written information to function in society, to achieve one's goals, and to develop one's knowledge and potential."4 buried in this definition is the ideal of literacy as realized personal goals, social worth, and fullest self-potential, implying that illiteracy constitutes failure on any number of personal and social levels. despite its obvious language bias by specifying "standard" english as the definitive marker, the national literacy act of 1991 broadens this definition of literacy by adding orality to the equation: literacy is "an individual's ability to read, write, and speak in english and compute and solve problems at levels of proficiency necessary to function on the job and in society, to achieve one's goals, and to develop one's knowledge and potential."5 personal goals and social values are again emphasized, literacy underscored as a prescribed personal and social ideal and standard. neither definition, however, acknowledges literacy as a multitude of practices that legitimize realities and communicate diverse and varied experiences. if in fact literacy grants opportunities to achieve various ideals, those unable to read and write are perceived and treated as being socially handicapped and personally burdened. while nancy n. rue, in coping with an illiterate parent, maintains that "literacy is not a single skill" (38) and has little to do with the moral and ethical decency of a non-reading individual (19), she nevertheless writes of this issue with extreme pessimism and oversimplification, maintaining that illiterate parents are most often "trapped in a nowhere job, imprisoned by a sense of inferiority, shamed by the inability to give [a child] everything [that child] needs intellectually and socially and emotionally because he/she can't read and write competently"(emphasis added 11). rue implies that illiterate parents are in some ways less than complete and upstanding social individuals fully capable of maintaining satisfying familial and social relationships and leading productive lives. even the book title itself—"coping with an illiterate parent"—suggests that illiteracy is a kind of social disease or illness with which a child has to deal until a "cure" or "treatment" is found. literacy idealized and moralized surprisingly or unsurprisingly, few children's texts address the issue of parental illiteracy. the treatment of illiteracy in a picture or 77 "life for me ain't no crystal stair" lester storybook for those learning to read seems on the surface oxymoronic, perhaps even absurd from the perspective of a publisher wanting to sell books. the idea of illiteracy i examine here is not about glorification of nonreading and non-writing. rather, my concern is that books that dare to deal with parental illiteracy at all present parental illiteracy as a shameful secret, always to be hidden from the world of the parents' children. eve bunting's the wednesday surprise (1989) presents an elderly, presumably white grandmother learning to read as a "gift" to her adult son on the occasion of his birthday. dick king-smith's the school mouse (1995) deals with the issue of non-reading parents in the racially and cultural neutral world of mice: young literate flora "saves" her illiterate parents from eating poison. both dolores johnson's papa's stories (1994), now out-of-print, and vashanti rahaman's read for me, mama (1997) deal specifically with african americans and parental illiteracy. in all of these books, the parent/ adult-as-teacher role is reversed, and parents are led to literacy by the efforts of and responsibilities to a child. in these texts, literacy is idealized and those who can read idolized; literacy also—according to these accounts—allegedly signifies personal and social value and measures adult self-esteem and selfworth. with minimal complexity and compassion for individual circumstances even for or especially for children's texts, all of these treatments of illiteracy create artificial, culturally biased binaries that further marginalize those unable to read and write. children's texts that celebrate being able to read and write are not problematic in and of themselves. problems arise however when such texts presume and forward the position that parental illiteracy is simple personal choice and not a series of complicated circumstances almost always beyond individuals' control. for example, my 79-year-old grandfather, with whom i spoke recently about his own illiteracy when i was mulling over ideas for this project, does not read and write, and to my knowledge this reality has never been an issue of family concern or discussion. it was an understood and rarely spoken fact, and clearly evident when, for instance, other family members read father's day and birthday cards to him. the whole tenor of my conversation with him was one of apology from him for this inability to read. he had a third grade education when his parents died and was forced to leave school to help work for the livelihood of his other five siblings. my grandfather and his older preacher brother were the only two who had minimal reading and writing skills. others managed to continue studies along the way. with my ph.d. in english, i felt awkward, embarrassed, and invasive talking about something the family had never 78 lester "life for me ain't no crystal stair" broached in such a manner. my conversation with my grandfather about his illiteracy was a lesson for me in his personal history and circumstances, a lesson of which i had no previous knowledge.6 in children's texts that deal with the subject of non-reading and writing parents but the non-reading and writing parents are not in fact the subjects, the circumstances of illiteracy—be they environmental or social, emotional, psychological, visual or even neurological as in dyslexia ("a disorder that makes learning to read extremely difficult")7 are unaddressed. instead, literacy is celebrated at the expense of parental embarrassment, shame, and even morality. literacy is championed with near religious fervor in vashanti rahaman's read for me, mama, wherein a young seven or eight-year-old african american boy is the instrument of his mother's "salvation" from illiteracy. rahaman's story perpetuates class and race stereotypes, equating illiteracy with dirtiness, personal shame, even sin, and literacy with moral cleanliness and spiritual enlightenment. the story polarizes joseph's ideal school/library experiences and the drudgery and mundane nature of his seemingly less than desirable home environment. the school librarian—older, wiser and proportional in weight—is almost god-like because of her professional authority and joseph's adulation of her; she inspires joseph with her engaging story reading. in fact, joseph wants to emulate mrs. ricardo as a story reader. while joseph's mother's storytelling is as exciting as the librarian's story reading, rahaman's text affords the librarian and literacy an idealized position of power and authority not realized in joseph's home life. race and class stereotyping occurs in other textual details. in fact, rahaman makes illiteracy the source of these stereotypes. the overweight, late twenty-something african american woman, also a single parent—the text affords no clues to how this circumstance came to be—is trapped financially in two janitorial jobs. she has no independent means of transportation—she rides a bus or walks wherever she goes—and lives in an apartment next to empty lots of garbage and in a neighborhood with broken sidewalks. while these images alone are not distinct class markers, contextually, they render this less than ideal family unit as limited and existing in less than ideal american middle-class circumstances. again, images of dirtiness and cleanliness are synonymous with illiteracy and literacy respectively. the illiterate mama cleans hotel rooms, dirty dishes, the dirty apartment, and presumably white mrs. holder's apartment. these clean/dirty images appear in the illustrations as well. the literate librarian is either a light-skinned ethnic minority or a white person. the illiterate mother 79 "life for me ain't no crystal stair" lester is dark-complected.8 the university student who reads to joseph at the laundromat is also non-african-american. because of the mother's illiteracy, the text suggests, her participation in society is limited to working two jobs, doing laundry, shopping for groceries, and attending church activities. the implication is that the mother wants more or should want more or deserves more from life than these social rituals afford when in reality, some individuals, whether literate or not, may be quite satisfied in these circumstances.9 while leaving joseph's mother unnamed in the text affords some degree of character universality in treating this issue of illiteracy, it also suggests that an illiterate parent may not warrant the authority of an identity, a name, not even the ability or opportunity to name herself. recall that frederick douglass's consummate mark of selfhood and manhood comes in his ability to name himself, to "subscribe [him] self frederick douglass," suggesting the power and authority of one who can name or possess a non-generic name. surely, there is more to this individual's identity than her named motherhood identity, an identity that is neither personalized nor individualized. all of the other literate characters, even the son joseph, are privileged with a named identity: ms. ricardo (librarian), mr. beharry (university student), and old mrs. holder. that joseph's mother finds literacy through her church might easily be connected with the role black churches played historically in educating african americans during and after slavery. as leo mcgee and harvey g. neufeldt note in education of the black adult in the united states: an annotated bibliography, "[t]he black churches, most noteably [sic] the african methodist church, took the lead in providing educational opportunities for blacks of all ages" (92). yet this historical note is not revealed in the story but rather the notion that literacy is a "gift" from god. just as a mysterious and seemingly divine presence puts a "pot of geraniums. . . in the deep hole in the sidewalk" in joseph's neighborhood, the preacher and the congregation at mama's church pray fervently to god for her to become literate, and god answers their collective prayers with evening adult reading courses and tutorials for mama. one of the last images in the book shows joseph and his mama reading together as though their mouths are reading in unison. this image of open mouths even suggests singing as at mama's choir practice or church revival service. indeed, the illustration and the final words—"slowly and carefully, mama's voice stepped from word to word, page after page. mama was reading!"—resound with the religiosity of singing, shouting, and celebration. with mama's newfound literacy, she is presumably no longer desperate and 80 lester "life for me ain't no crystal stair" blinded by personal shame, deception, and inadequacy. she rather cryptically explains her illiteracy before her "conversion": "i have to learn to read. . .. my boy needs a mama who can read. but i never practiced up my reading, never learnt it good in school, and it all got lost from my mind, all got lost" (emphasis added). notice that the mother equates literacy with good parenting. importantly, the book's title, "read for me, mama" (emphasis added), rather than "read to me, mama" (emphasis added), further suggests that this parent's becoming literate is a response to her son's desperate plea, a plea that goes beyond the son's leisure entertainment: if mama does not respect herself enough to be literate, then certainly she will become literate for her child. notice also that mama's spoken language is mangled and awkward, and presumably once she learns to read, she will be a better parent and will speak correct "standard" english. indeed, literacy brings light and enlightenment to mama. in this sense, the final open mouthing might well be the words read or sung of the popular folk hymn "amazing grace": amazing grace how sweet the sound/ that saved a wretch like me. i once was lost but now i'm found. was blind but now i see. rahaman's text associates illiteracy with "wretchedness," being "lost," and being "blind"; literacy, in contrast, with sight and moral purity. while illiteracy may be perceived as a blindness, it is nevertheless one dimension ofa person's life experience, not a whole human condition. hence, although mama may already know the words to the hymn as she does the hymns she knows well in her church choir, she can now read other unfamiliar verses and other less familiar hymns.10 with literacy, the book contends, mama is a soldier armed to conquer the world. armed with literacy, the author contends, this mother and by extension this family will break from its personal and social shackles. even the book jacket reiterates this religious romanticizing of literacy as "salvation": "vashanti rahaman's story of how a mother and son face the challenge of literacy is told with warmth and sensitivity, while [the illustrator's] bold and beautiful oil paintings light the pages with images of hope and love." the message of read for me, mama oversimplifies even for a child audience the issue of illiteracy. we see mama's life of drudgery before she becomes literate and are to believe that her daily busyness as a single parent will either change or cease and that she will have more time for her son. indeed, while the mother may not spend time avoiding reading to her son, perhaps too much of the relationship between 81 "life for me ain't no crystal stair" lester a mother and her son is connected with her (il)literacy. the message presumes that mama will not arrive home from work late if her work times are changed because she will be able to read announcements about revised schedules. the story avoids the reality that even literate persons misread or do not always read carefully. and how likely is it that mama's work place would present revised schedules and have no verbal announcement or discussion so that mama and others might at least hear about the schedule change? the final lesson of the book also suggests that mama's literacy will change the quality of the relationship between this mother and her child. while reading to a child is an unquestionably important act that can be a bonding experience between a parent and a child, there is no reason to believe that the quality of this family's life overall or needs to change significantly. although joseph admits that his mother is a great story teller—"mama was the best storyteller in the world. her voice danced and played with the words. she could make the most ordinary things seem not so ordinary after all" –her storytelling is not really celebrated.11 indeed, the book makes clear that mama's stories are interesting to joseph because mama is an engaging storytelling performer: she uses interesting voices to make stories come alive. but while mama is a great storyteller, even better than mrs. ricardo and the university student mr. beharry, mama's storytelling—to which joseph has undoubtedly been exposed long before he goes to school and hears a librarian read to him—ranks second in importance and value to mrs. ricardo's, the librarian's, story reading: "mrs. ricardo, the librarian, was the best story reader in the world. she could make her voice loud and soft and squeaky and growly. she could sound angry and happy and oh, so very sad. she knew all of the great big words in the books. joseph wished he could read like that." the librarian, because of her literacy performance, is idolized. joseph's mother's storytelling performance is as exciting and actually comparable to mrs. ricardo's animated performances, yet what distinguishes the librarian from the mother in this context is the librarian's ability to "know great big words." surely, literacy is more than decoding big words. mama's conversion to literacy furthers the primary bias that literacy exempts individuals from limitations and creates false hopes: "literacy," one source claims, "arouses hopes, not only in society as a whole but also in the individual who is striving for fulfillment, happiness and personal benefit by learning how to read and write. literacy. . . means far more than learning how to read and write. . . the aim is to transmit. . . knowledge and promote social participation."12 while literacy allegedly "saves" mama from public and personal shame. read 82 lester "life for me ain't no crystal stair" for me, mama does little to move what can be the painful realities of illiteracy to a deeper understanding. rather, it maintains and even perpetuates faulty assumptions that illiteracy determines one's self worth and the quality of one's personal relationships. the text confirms nancy n. rue's assertions that "illiteracy is considered by our society to be a shameful thing-certainly not something that is volunteered in the course of casual conversation. . . if [adults] tell people they can't read, they're likely to lose jobs, friendships, and even the respect of their kids" (9). that mama wears a pair of heart-shaped earrings prominently positioned in the illustrations just before her "true confession" before the church congregation and during and after the "conversion" further presents literacy as a divine "gift" from god, suggesting once again that literacy directly impacts on the loving relationship between a parent and child. with the mother's literacy also comes a seemingly newfound church community rallying around the new "convert." was there no community around mama before this moment? perhaps rahaman works too hard to idealize literacy with assumptions that can surely undermine parental authority and individual self-respect. perhaps she tries too hard to present a "happily ever after ending" to a story and circumstance that are more complicated than she realizes or dares to explore. perhaps the story would achieve a greater impact if it explored some possible or probable causes of mama's illiteracy beyond her cryptic explanation in the church. perhaps rahaman's reading audience might be better served by using mama's illiteracy to discuss the cultural bias and social marginalization of those who do not share the same abilities, talents, opportunities, or even reading levels. the book might have been an occasion to educate both reading parents and children that there are degrees of functioning literate practice, that joseph's mother's inability to read his library books, her church hymn books, or her work schedule announcements does not mean that she can not differentiate between cleaning supplies, shop for groceries, read numbers on her paycheck, or pay bills. perhaps the book might have included some awareness on the author's part of the social, historical, and political history of illiteracy specifically among african americans since according to jonathan kozol, in illiterate america (1985), "[illiteracy] figures for the younger generation of black adults are increasing. forty-seven percent of all black seventeen-yearolds are functionally illiterate. that figure is expected to climb to 50 percent by 1990" (2). although the national education association reports that among the total population of adult non-literate in english—41 % are english speaking whites, 22% are english speaking african ameri 83 "life for me ain't no crystal stair" lester cans, 22% are spanish speaking, and 15% are non-english speaking people"the actual numbers of white non-readers is twice that of the number of african american and hispanic non-readers, dispelling the myth that illiteracy is not a problem among whites. "13 still, kozol further urges the rightful need to address illiteracy specifically within a particular cultural context of race politics: when nearly half of all adult black citizens in the united states are coming out of public schools without the competence to understand the antidote instructions on a chemical container, instructions on a medicine bottle, or the books and journalistic pieces which might render them both potent and judicious in a voting booth, who can pretend that literacy is not political? (92) while kozol's comments are fundamentally sound, his call for urgency certainly warranted, perhaps he, too, overestimates the alleged "saving" powers of literacy. joseph's mother seems not to have endangered her life or joseph's or suffered any devastating trauma as a result of her inability to read. nevertheless, the need to historicize illiteracy in any such discussion is clear: the politics of literacy are nothing new. long before the politics of racial segregation in the schools came to the national attention, long before woodrow wilson argued for the merits of class stratification in the public schools, long before laws throughout the nation made it a crime to teach black people how to read and write, long before the u.s. constitution measured the black citizen as three-fifths of a man, one hundred years before the present government existed, a powerful leader, sir william berkeley, governor of virginia, stated his views in clear, unflinching terms. "i thank god," he said, that "there are no free schools nor printing [in this land]. for learning has brought disobedience, and heresy, and sects into the world, and printing hath divulged them..god save us from both!"(93)14 while rahaman's children's story need not be a history textbook, readers might well benefit from a cursory explanation of the richness of the african american oral tradition represented to some extent in the mother's storytelling, a tradition often less valued by a learned people. carl f. kastle farther adds in literacy in the united states: readers 84 lester "life for me ain't no crystal stair" and reading since 1880: for some centuries after the introduction of alphabetic writing, literacy was restricted to a small elite and limited to a few functions. . . . these early developments took place in the contexts of pervasive oral culture. oral culture did not atrophy in contact with written culture; rather, the written word modified and extended communication networks. not only has the great majority of the earth's population been illiterate throughout history, but the great bulk of communication in literate societies is still oral. (6-7) the artificial white literate vs. oral and african american illiterate dynamic speaks largely to the race dynamics more fully understood within the context of social and political history. kastle adds: on all measures of literacy, at all points during the last century, white americans have been more literate than black americans. in 1880, the differences were vast, of course, with american black population emerging from slavery and subject to massive poverty and discrimination. . . . a large, durable portion of literacy differences between black and white americans clearly cannot be explained by measurable economic and family characteristics. in the unexplained portion of the variation lie such elusive but real factors as the effects of prejudice, cultural alienation, discouragement, and differential aspirations, all related to race. (125-26)15 additionally, the various ways in which different races, ethnicities, and even genders experience the world impact on their learning to read and write. for instance, african americans, historically and politically denied access to writing and reading, emerge from and celebrate an aural, oral, and visual culture often at odds with the culture of the written word, authors such as zora neale hurston raising oral rituals of folk culture to high art. "the white man," according to hurston, "thinks in a written language and the negro thinks in hieroglyphics" (50). to offer some commentary that presents parental illiteracy often as the result of varied and complex circumstances is to enlighten readers, young and old alike, rather than perpetuate further ignorance and misunderstanding among the alleged literate. dolores johnson's book on parental illiteracy, papa's stories, comes with mixed and confused messages, again associating illiteracy 85 "life for me ain't no crystal stair" lester with parental love for a child and with individual self-love. emphasizing folktales, fairy tales, and the rich textures of oral traditions, johnson's detail of a father's illiteracy seems incidental, not fundamentally connected with the story's inadvertent final message: that good storytelling is good storytelling whether the story is read, recited, or improvised. perhaps without really intending to, johnson has written a book that celebrates folklore and performance. not only does the narrative engage fairy tale rhetoric and a young kindergartner, kari—her father's growing "princess"—stumbling upon her thirty-something-year-old father and mother's secret of his illiteracy, but the story also romanticizes literacy as a middle-class ideal. while kari's dad does not "read" words in his daily "reading" rituals with kari, he reads the pictures and creates wonderfully exciting stories from those pictures. in the illiterate father's hands, the culturally familiar stories of little red riding hood, snow white, sleeping beauty, and jack and the beanstalk take on new life for kari.16 and since kari herself is not quite a reader, there is no immediate confusion for her about what she sees on the printed page and what she hears her father "reading" to her. the father-daughter reading ritual seems complete until the fairy tale's wicked stepmother or witch figure—kari's older neighborhood friend, jennifer—disillusions kari about her whole relationship with her dad. ironically, it seems that jennifer's literacy threatens the ideal world kari and her papa have created: papa settled into his favorite chair, his skin smelling as fresh as fir trees. kari climbed into his lap and snuggled into the crook of his arm. then papa read her a story. . . . there were times kari and papa got so wrapped up in their reading that mama let supper sit while she joined kari and papa on the porch in the moonlight. or, during winter's chilliest evenings, the whole family would snuggle close together on the sofa and read by the light of the fire. although jennifer's alleged literal reading of the little red riding hood story affords kari an opportunity to discuss her dad's illiteracy with him—the story does not clarify why kari should believe her friend's version over her dad's—the story does nothing to advance an understanding of the issue of illiteracy. that illiteracy seems secondary stems also from the fact that the illiterate father is not presented with any problems particular to his disability: he and his literate wife own a nice house in a pleasant middle-class rural environ 86 lester "life for me ain't no crystal stair" ment, and he presumably has an adequate blue-collar job. johnson is not quite sure what her book is about; its focus seems too fuzzy to know what kari or johnson's reading audience is to glean from the details other father's cryptic explanation of why he is unable to read: "when i was young, i didn't care enough about learnin'. and there was no one who seemed to care about me. when i got older, i didn't love myself enough to even try." might johnson have allowed the family to have an honest discussion of less vague reasons for the father's illiteracy? how young is "young" when this father did not care about learning? did extenuating family circumstances impact on this father's early education? how is learning to read and write fundamentally connected to this father's lack of self-love, and how has this lack of self-love manifested itself in his life as an adult? did this father drop out of school when he was young? is it possible for an illiterate individual, a parent even, to have healthy self-esteem? were the circumstances of this father's illiteracy forced upon or "chosen" by him? what specific lessons might kari learn from her father's reading inability? indeed, as papa "reads" to kari, johnson does not initially make clear that the father is not choosing to improvise. that kari prefers her dad's improvised, more creative versions of stories accentuates the performative nature of good storytelling that in this case is not handicapped by the father's illiteracy. when this father learns to read a little from his wife and is able to read the words on the pages of kari's books, not just the pictures, kari prefers what might easily be considered sillier revisionist versions where "little boys swallowed magic till they were full of beans, and giants. . . were angry because their mustaches didn't fit." at the book's end, kari makes this request of her father: "excuse me, papa. when you finish this book, read it to me again like you always did. i love the extra-special way you read the stories. " it seems odd that johnson foregrounds her text allegedly about illiteracy in fairy tale folklore since fairy tales are part of cultural literacy and even those who may not be able to read them have surely heard of them and know their narrative germs. as folklore, these fairy tales have surely circulated in the father's own childhood whether or not he is the product of a literate family. just as kari and anyone else starts the journey toward literacy by inventing stories from pictures, kari's father has every right to be respected for and confident in his storytelling abilities despite his illiteracy. are story readers necessarily the best storytellers? 87 "life for me ain't no crystal stair" lester beyond the literacy binary many readers and writers take for granted the privilege and authority given those who can do the same. for them, daily tasks such as reading traffic signs, a newspaper or magazine in a doctor's office waiting room, a restaurant menu, telephone books, a child's school progress report, checks, recipes, maps, and medicine bottles are believed fundamental to our social and personal survival. i was starkly reminded of my own middle-class assumptions when i recently assigned to my african american children's literature class an intergenerational oral history midterm project specifically about african american identity and childhood reading experiences. students were asked to interview two individuals—one at least ten years older than they and another between the ages of five and ten—about their reading experiences as african american children. i had expected to get stories from individuals that allowed students to see how images of african americans had or had not changed over generations and how early reading experiences impact on adult identity formations. when one student submitted his project, his younger interviewee was the only instance of twenty who could not read. while i had assumed that all parents are reading to their children before they are put to bed, the reality of non-reading children and non-reading parents became an issue i had inadvertently overlooked in all of my fairly extensive preparations for teaching the class. the young boy, now age ten and in a juvenile jail until age eighteen for various crimes, was never read to and never learned to read; he still acknowledges no value in learning to read as he is the product of a non-reading adult environment. another student submitted a project that revealed an eleven-year-old boy's extreme written and verbal giftedness despite having grown up with totally illiterate grandparents. and just as it is necessary to understand the circumstances of young johnny's inability to read, it was equally important to understand the circumstances of johnny's parents' illiteracy since illiterate children become illiterate adults and illiterate parents. while this project has made no efforts to be exhaustive in its exploration of parental illiteracy in african american children's books, it recognizes the grave misinformation and incomplete information available to children with non-reading parents.17 failure to address parental illiteracy in children's texts in many ways furthers the marginalization of those unable to read and write. treatments here evidenced are rudimentary and grossly inadequate. to equate illiteracy with hopelessness, immorality, lack of self-love, limited quality 88 lester "life for me ain't no crystal stair" family relations, latchkey childhood, parental dishonesty, and limited social participation is to accept the cultural bias associated with literacy and to remain ignorant to complicated realties. as a professor of education clarifies, "the great divide in literacy is not between those who can read and write and those who have not yet learned to. it is between those who have discovered what kinds of literacy society values and how to demonstrate their competencies in ways that earn recognition."18 sojourner truth, an illiterate former slave and one of the first black feminist abolitionists, "protested against discriminatory laws that denied the ballot to women. . . blacks and illiterate citizens. after she was once turned away from a voting booth, she said, 'i can't read a book, but i can read the people."19 indeed, her comment speaks to a dimension of (il)literacy that must be considered in order to eradicate myths and stereotypes used to determine individual self and social worth. my exploration reveals that literate authors can be totally unaware of the complexities of (il)literacy and the multitude of literate practices at the core of social, cultural, and individual identity formations. among african americans, the issue of (il)literacy must be further contextualized not as a way of condoning not learning to read and write but as a way of understanding more fully that non-reading and writing is seldom if ever a simple matter of personal choice. arizona state university tempe, arizona notes i. langston hughes. "mother to son," selected poems of langston hughes (new york: vintage, 1974), 187. this poem is selected and recited by precious jones, sapphire's illiterate teenage african american female in push (1996), as one of her pre-ged adult illiteracy course assignments. the poem is dedicated to her infant son, abdul (112-113). 2. alphabetical literacy and orality need not exist in cultural opposition. even though the "readerly" narrative is a model of rhetorical flourish at its best and meant to be read as a demonstration of "mastering the muster" through mastering the master's language, other rhetorical strategies by douglass-emotional flourishes, metafictive moments, and rhythmic patterns-render the narrative its distinctly sermonic/ "speakerly" textures, its clear connections with orality and african american folk storytelling. robert g. o'meally, in his essay "frederick douglass's 1845 narrative: the text was meant to be preached," comments on the oral "preacherly" dimensions 89 "life for me ain't no crystal stair" lester of douglass's text: the narrative does more than touch upon questions often pondered by black preachers. its very form and substance are directly influenced by the afro-american preacher and his vehicle for ritual expression, the sermon. in this sense, douglass' narrative of 1845 is a sermon, and, specifically, it is a black sermon. this is a text meant to be read and pondered; it is also a clarion call to spiritual affirmation and action: this is a text meant to be preached. . . . but douglass, who grew up hearing sermons on the plantation and who heard and delivered them throughout his life, produced, in this greatest account of his life, a text shaped by the form and the processes of speaking characteristic of the black sermon. this is a mighty text meant of course, to be read. but it is also a text meant to be mightily preached. (dexter fisher and robert b. stepto, eds., afro-american literature: the reconstruction of instruction. new york: mla, 1978, 192-193; 210). 3. violet j. harris, "african-american conceptions of literacy: a historical perspective" theory into practice 31 (autumn 1992): 276. not only does harris provide a rudimentary summary of historical realities facing african americans in their quest for literacy, she also comments on the fact that literacy, depending on the nature of what one becomes literate in or about, can be both "emancipatory and oppressive": literacy serves emancipatory functions when appropriated to reconstruct society and/ or provide individuals with the options needed to participate in all sociocultural institutions. literacy functions in an oppressive manner. . . when curricular materials, educational philosophies, and pedagogical techniques combine to inculcate an ideology that denigrates a group, omits or misrepresents the history and status of a group, or limits access to knowledge that would enable the individual or group to participate in sociocultural institutions. (277). 4. "literacy and life." <http://www.edentek.net/litlife.htm> (26 febru ary 2000): 1. 5. ibid. 6. in circulating drafts of this essay, a couple of african american friends, responding with familiarity to these details of my illiterate father, were compelled to share illiteracy details in their own families. both email accounts show how adult family members' illiteracy impacted on their own educational values. one, an adult literacy volunteer teacher, writes: the men on my mom's side of the family are illiterate. they were not encouraged to do well in school like the women were. so they 90 lester "life for me ain't no crystal stair" didn't. none of my uncles could read or write past elementary school level. survival came from what they learned on the streets and others doing their reading and writing for them. my dad, who was a math whiz, dropped out of school in the third grade to roam around and do nothing. in his fifties, he joined a literacy organization to learn how to read and write. we are proud of his accomplishments. it was never a secret in my family. when my brothers slack, they try to use the excuse that [since] dad made it without an education, why can't they? he sets them straight. one of my students (female) also quit in the third grade to help feed the family. she never really had the opportunity or drive to go back until recently. she is now eighty years old. (personal email, 19 january 2000) another writes of the circumstances other parents' illiteracy: my mother died at the age of forty; she did not get her ged until she was thirty-seven. she was a very smart woman and it was fun when she went to school because we sometimes go to help her with her homework to an extent. my stepfather never graduated from grade school as i can recall; however, he traveled the world in the army. it was not until i was a grown woman that i found out how extremely well his math was, something i suffer with. the point is that neither mom nor dad ever helped us with our homework. there was no doubt that we would go to school and were expected to graduate, but there was never any reading to help us or helping with math so that we could move to the next level. other than school books and the bible, we had no books around our house. there was no money for them and of course we never went to a library. i do however remember them telling stories when the weather caused the lights to go out. that was fun! as you can tell, i sometimes have very mixed feelings about education and its benefits. so many non-formally educated folk have become millionaires. (personal email, 2 february 2000) 7. barbara kantrowitz and anne underwood, "dyslexia and the new science of reading" newsweek (22 november 1999): 72. in their investigation of this disorder that affects about 20% of children, kantrowitz and underwood point out that this inability to decode sounds, essential to reading, results from mixed brain signals; in this case, "reading disorders are most likely the result of what is, in effect, faulty wiring in the brain-not laziness, stupidity, or a poor home environment" (74). they also cite instances of individuals who are successful despite these childhood reading and learning challenges: "indeed, famous and successful dyslexics include tom cruise, artist robert rauschenberg and olympian dan o'brien" (74). although the article obviously does not champion non-reading, it emphasizes that non 91 "life for me ain't no crystal stair" lester readers can succeed, further evidenced in the example of john corcoran: "by sixth grade john corcoran, a severe dyslexic, still couldn't spell 'cat' and could tell men from women on restroom doors only because one was longer. still illiterate as an adult, he taught social studies in high school—by using movies for lessons, inviting guest speakers and having students grade papers. at 48, he registered for a public library literacy program. . . . now 60, he published the teacher who couldn't read in 1994" (78). corcoran's book details his life of deception and riskiness as he successfully moved up the career ladder through elementary and high school, college, and ultimately to his own classroom as a teacher unable to read words on a page. learning how to read was to him like "being set free from almost five decades of bondage." notice the analogy made here between illiteracy as a form of enslavement and frederick douglass's alleged liberation from slavery through his ability to read and write. although not a children's text, sapphire's controversial novel push (1996) is the disturbingly graphic account of an adolescent african american girl's tortured journey to realized selfhood through literacy. the novel demonstrates the complex circumstances-emotional, psychological, social, and physical-that interfere with claireece precious jones's efforts to become literate. because of many complicated circumstances and situations revealed in the novel, precious is sixteen and unable to read and write. in fact, she confesses in her narrative that except for pages with pictures, "the pages look all the same" (48). importantly, literacy is less precious's "savior" from her traumatic life of paternal and maternal incest and two subsequent pregnancies, aids, and social neglect, than her teacher, blue rain, whose approach to helping precious realize her own self-worth despite her past and present circumstances is through reading and writing. the narrative shows precious's spiritual blooming after enrolling in a pre-ged adult literacy class for beginning writers. in addition to mastering alphabetic literacy, precious gains a community of fellow students who respect and care for her as never before. the novel ends with precious reading to her infant son and committing herself to making her son's life better than hers. interestingly, some details of precious's circumstances echo a situation shared in one of the emails from an adult literacy tutor friend that, after reading a draft of this essay, shared an experience with one other student: i had a student once who quit school in the ninth grade. she thought she was stupid because she never did well. it was not until just before we began our lessons that she found out that she was dyslexic. when i started working with her, her kids would make fun of her. when she started improving, they started helping her with her homework. when she was on her way, she got a job in her child's school as an office aide. before, she was on welfare, just passing the time doing much of nothing. i would say she had very low self-esteem. in the two years we worked together, i saw her grow as a person. (personal email, 19 january 2000) 92 lester "life for me ain't no crystal stair" 8. historically, the intraracism that exists within african american communities and households associates light skin with power, authority, and success. dark-skinned african americans were presumed to be, were treated as, and perceived themselves as less socially advantaged. such dynamics emerge from the history of american slavery that rewarded on many levels african americans closest to masters' white ideal in skin color or hair texture. masters' children with slaves often were treated as privileged and socially gifted. see kathy russell, et.al., the color complex: the politics of skin color among african americans (new york: doubleday, 1992). 9. nikki giovanni's autobiographical poem, "nikki roasa," is an adult's perspective on childhood memories often misrepresented or misinterpreted when others impose their values onto another's realities or experiences. despite her family's material lacking and problems with a father who drank too much and too often, giovanni is not necessarily in psychological and emotional denial when she insists that her childhood "was quite a happy one": childhood remembrances are always a drag if you're black . . . and if you become famous or something they never talk about how happy you were to have your mother all to yourself and how good the water felt when you got your bath from one of those big tubs that folk in chicago barbecue in . . . and though you're poor it isn't poverty that concerns you. . . . . . i really hope no white person ever has cause to write about me because they never understand that black love is black wealth and they'll probably talk about my hard childhood and never understand that all the while i was quite happy. ("nikki-roasa." in demetrice a. worley and jesse perry, jr., eds., african-american literature: an anthology, 295) 10. this instance of illiteracy is explored briefly in harper lee's to kill a mockingbird when the narrator scout attends her black maid calpurnia's church and wonders why the congregation is not reading from the hymnals as they sing. coupled with the economic issue of the black church not having sufficient funds to buy enough hymnals for its members is the fact that most of the congregation is illiterate. calpurnia's literacy came from the whites whose house she keeps and she has passed that "gift" of literacy on to her son zeebo who lines hymns—announces the words of hymns for the congregation in a call-and-imitation response format. notice the conversation between scout and calpurnia about this performance: 93 "life for me ain't no crystal stair" lester "how're we gonna sing it [hymn] if there ain't any hymn-books?" calpurnia smiled. "hush baby," she whispered, "you'll see in a minute. " zeebo cleared his throat and read in a voice like the rumble of distant artillery. . . . miraculously on pitch, a hundred voices sang out zeebo's words. . . . (121) it never occurs to scout that folks who can not read as she and others around her can function quite efficiently. scout's naivete highlights again the assumptions of privilege attached to literacy. the reality of illiteracy in her church congregation offers calpurnia the opportunity to explain literacy as something that potentially separates rather than unites her with other blacks socially: jem [scout's older brother] said it looked like they [illiterate congregation] could save the collection money for a year and get some hymn books. calpurnia laughed. "wouldn't do any good," she said. "they can't read." "can't read?" i asked. "all those folks?" "that's right," calpurnia nodded. "can't but about four folks in first purchase [church] read. . . i'm one of 'em." . . . (124) class and race are here connected with literacy. in this moment, lee shows that illiteracy does not mean individuals are unable to function or suffer from low selfesteem because they are unable to read and write. at the same time, the literacy and calpurnia's attachment to her white family further separate her from the "regular" lot of blacks in maycomb county. not only are illiterate church members able to function in literate circumstances, but there are even illiterate preachers who manage effectively as well. my maternal grandfather's older brother is an illiterate preacher and has been all of my life. for those who do not know that he is illiterate, he "performs" literacy quite effectively. he has heard biblical scriptures so often that he has memorized them, giving audiences a sense of his spiritual commitment. he knows familiar songs and the word of god so well that he does not have to read them word for word. since there are so many translations and modifications of the bible for various audiences, his recitations might easily be taken as a modernized revision of scriptural texts. he does open the bible to some text as he recites. those who know him well know how he skillfully manages to avoid situations calling for spontaneous reading on his part. since a number of illiterate black preachers in my childhood were not formally trained in seminaries or other theology schools, they managed quite effectively to preach soul-stirring sermons and to negotiate their leadership, authority, and credibility masterfully. literacy as privilege and a means of separating blacks from the illiterate masses is evidenced in harriet jacobs's slave narrative incidents in the life of 94 lester "life for me ain't no crystal stair" a slave girl, written, by herself. notice the emphasis as in frederick douglass' title when both authors clarify that their narratives were "written by [themselves]." literacy marks their liberation from slavery. jacobs, who allegedly taught herself to read, is more self-confident, arrogant even, because she is literate, unlike the other slaves around her: "i was invited to attend [slaves' churches] because i could read" (emphasis added 45). there is no sense that jacobs/ brent has any other connection, spiritual or communal, with those who share her lot beyond her ability to read to them. she even comments on her ability to pass on news information because others depended on her reading abilities: "they knew that i could read; and i was often asked if i has seen anything in the newspapers about white folks over in the big north, who were trying to get their freedom for them" (45). while literacy puts jacobs/ brent on equal grounds with the white populace, it separates her from her fellow lots of slaves. this middleclass preoccupation with literacy surfaces again when jacobs/ brent is reunited with her nine-year-old daughter ellen after seven years of being separated and in bondage. although jacobs/ brent is concerned about ellen's unkempt appearance, she is most bothered by daughter's inability to read: "when she [ellen, the daughter] was placed with mrs. hobbs, the agreement was that she should be sent to school. she had been there two years, and was now nine years old, and she scarcely knew her letters. there was no excuse for this, for there were good public schools in brooklyn, to which she could have been sent without expense" (166). at the same time, brent/ jacobs's concern for her daughter's literacy might seem any literate parent's desire that her child receive an education that will aid in living a "better" life. 11. story reading and story telling need not be as dichotomized culturally as this narrative presents. in other words, reading stories is certainly not any more important than good story telling. for instance, angela johnson's tell me a story, mama (new york: orchard books, 1989) is an african american children's book that celebrates a storytelling tradition. when a young daughter requests that her mother tell her a story as she is being tucked into bed, the young preschool girl clarifies which story she wants her mother to tell by ultimately telling the story to the mother as the mother has told her. the narrative re-creates the mother's childhood story through the daughter's retelling. whether or not the mother is literate does not influence this equally important parent-child ritual. two other children's texts importantly present talking and storytelling as a source of communal celebration: deborah m. newton chocolate's retelling of the ashanti legend, talk, talk (mahwah, nj: troll associates, 1993) and angela shelf medearis's too much talk, a west african folktale (cambridge: candlewick press, 1995). 12. "quotations about literacy."<http://www.literacytrust.org.uk/ database/quote.html> (03 september 1999): 2. 13. "the typical adult non-reader," <http://indian-river.fl.us/living/ services/als/tvpical.html> (26 january 2000): 1. according to a 1987 report, the subtle danger: reflections on the literacy abilities of america’s young adults, published by the educational testing service (princeton, n.j.), "on 95 "life for me ain't no crystal stair" lester the average, african americans perform 20% behind whites on literacy tests and hispanic perform halfway between the two." 14. not only were slaves punished if caught learning to read and write, but whites that assisted in slave learning were also subject to legal consequences. describing feminist abolitionist lydia maria child's crusade against slave illiteracy in child's an appeal in favor of americans called africans (1833), cecelia mccall, in her essay, "a historical quest for literacy," recounts the deliberate obstacles to slave learning: [lydia maria child] reports that various laws were enacted to maintain illiteracy. for instance, south carolina was the first state to order that any person caught instructing a slave be fined one hundred pounds. virginia declared that schools established to teach either slave or free black people should be disbanded and each pupil lashed twenty times. anyone caught teaching slaves in georgia was imprisoned for ten days and given thirtynine lashes. by 1837, all states in the slaveocracy had enacted similar laws. . . . in the free north, . . . ohio, for instance, refused to educate "colored" children at the public expense or allow them to attend schools with white children." (4) after slavery ended, literacy continued to be a weapon of white supremacy used against black social and political participation: "literacy or other tests as a condition for voting were suspended by the voting rights act in 1965 initially only in those states in which congress found there had been pervasive discrimination against blacks in registration and in which literacy tests had been specifically designed to disfranchise racial minorities. later, the ban on literacy and other tests was made nationwide and permanent by amendments to the act in 1970 and 1975. the supreme court held the nationwide ban constitutional after concluding that literacy tests had reduced voter participation in a discriminatory manner throughout the country and not merely in those states originally covered by the act" (mcdonald, laughlin. "minority vote dilution: the fourteenth amendment and the voting rights act" <http://www.aclu.org/aclu-e/course3_mcdonald3.html> 4 january 80, 3). 15. recall that frederick douglass, even after being free from slavery and "armed" with literacy, is unable to secure a job as a calker because whites will not work with him: "i went in pursuit of a job of calking; but such was the strength of prejudice against color, among the white calkers, that they refused to work with me, and of course i could get no employment" (mack 714). the myth of frederick douglass's liberation from slavery and racism is perpetuated even in historical texts for elementary students. as if literacy exempts frederick douglass from racial discrimination, karen h. dusek's essay, "frederick douglass, abolitionist writer" boldly asserts: "when frederick douglass was a boy, he wanted more than anything else to be free. believing that he would never be truly free without an education, he learned to read and write. his ability to read and write soon proved to be his most powerful weapon in his lifelong fight against slavery and prejudice" (cobble 96 lester "life for me ain't no crystal stair" stone: the history magazine for young people, 21). neither douglass's narrative nor this essay on him speaks of literacy—the ability to read and write—as a way of personal liberation imaginatively. rather, liberation is ideally connected to overcoming social circumstance. 16. john corcoran, chronicling his life as an illiterate parent and high school teacher, offers a similar experience with the fairy tales he pretends to read to his daughter, also called his "princess." because of the pictures and his familiarity with the fairytales orally, corcoran confidently embellishes the stories of the three little bears and cinderella but is at a total lost when his young daughter requests a story with which he is unfamiliar. he recounts the pain of that experience: the big golden books and their wonderful pictures would stimulate my imagination to weave some crazy yarns. when i told the three bears, cinderella, or another well-known fairy story, they were embellished with all the drama of orson wells or alfred hitchcock. sometimes i cold hear kathy [corcoran's wife] laughing in the kitchen at my tall tales. i had a lot of practice at storytelling. colleen had a surprise for me that night. "read this daddy," she said, snuggling closer to me. she held out a new book, one with smaller pictures and more words. her blue eyes were bright with anticipation. . . . i looked at the first page, hoping there would be a clue. . . i couldn't decipher one word in this preschool children's book. how i wanted to be able to read, to help her [daughter] during those valuable growing-up years before school. parents who can't read can't teach their children to read. my heart was wrenched, knowing that i could not give her what i didn't have. (4-5) 17. eve bunting's the wednesday surprise intends to be a warm, fuzzy middleclass, white family moment celebrated when an elderly grandmother and her sevenyear-old granddaughter, anna, give the adult son a "gift": the grandmother learns to read from the granddaughter's instruction. although the message encouraging everyone to value reading is undeniably important—"it's much smarter if you learn to read when you're young. . . . the chance may pass along with the years"—the story is full of unanswered questions that might explain rather than boldly proclaim without explanation or clear illustration the advantages of literacy. as in other children's books examined in this exercise, illiteracy is synonymous with an individual's lack of self-esteem, poor self-image, and is tainted with presumed immorality. as the narrative moves rather fumblingly, it leaves more narratively unsatisfying questions than answers and explanations: how does the grandmother choose the books from which the granddaughter will teach her? how has the family responded to the grandmother's illiteracy up to the point of this story? what is the grandmother's life like as a nonreader? how and why is grandmother's learning to read such a "gift" to her son? why has the grandmother resisted 97 "life for me ain't no crystal stair" lester her son's insistence that "she must learn to read"? why does the son insist that his mother become literate?: "you were always telling me to go to classes, classes, classes," grandma says to dad." to what extent does the relationship between this mother and son suffer because she is a non-reader? to what extent has the grandmother's illiteracy affected the son's literacy? what are the specific circumstances of the grandmother's illiteracy? to what extent does a seven-year-old read well enough to teach anyone how to read? how long has the granddaughter been teaching the grandmother? why has no adult in the family bothered to teach grandma to read? why and how is grandma's reading "the best gift ever" for her son? while bunting supports the notion that everyone should learn to read when young, her book never explains through the grandmother's experiences why and how reading is important on many levels. once grandmother "performs" her literacy—"this wonderful thing" –before the family at her son's birthday party, how does literacy change her life or the family's? mom will continue to have her office job, dad will continue to work as a truck driver, and sam will continue his sports practice. once grandmother learns to read, will she and anna continue to read during their weekly wednesday night sittings? derek king-smith's the school mouse, a level four reader and chapter book, is the story of a mouse, flora, desperately making herself literate: "by day, she educated herself, and in the evenings she taught her class" of other mice. while the story champions literacy in the very act of the mouse's saving her mouse parents from eating "poison" because she has learned to read—"thank goodness i have learned to read. . . or else i might well have sampled these attractive-looking blue pellets" (28)— the journey toward literacy is both dangerous and lonely for flora. she meets with hostility and resentment from her mouse family who initially have no interest in learning to read. flora's literacy quest begins as and leads to arrogance and alienation from her other mouse family. she says: "i am not an ordinary school mouse. i'm sure i'm not. i'm sure i can learn all sorts of things that no mouse has ever learned before, if only i study hard enough, and then i shall be an extraordinary school mouse" (16). flora has accepted the assumption and cultural bias that literacy elevates individuals from the masses and that that such elevation is socially valued by all. despite her mouse family's initial resistance to flora's "too high an opinion of herself' (15), flora recognizes her literacy acquisition as part other self-esteem in much the same way as does calpurnia in harper lee's to kill a mockingbird: "i am lucky. i don't suppose there's another mouse on the face of the earth that knows as much as i do already. but i can't talk much about my lessons to the others because they wouldn't understand. . . . they're all uneducated. and why? because there's no one to teach them" (104). literacy isolates the questing mouse and she is lonely until she meets another literate male mouse and they live happily ever after. as do the other children's texts, this one misleadingly idealizes literacy through flora's action and proclamation that: ". . . the first and most important thing, for mice and humans, is to learn to read. once you can do that, there is no limit to what you can get into your heads" (108). 98 lester "life for me ain't no crystal stair" 18. "quotations about literacy." <http://www.literacytrust.org.uk/da tabase/quote.html> (03 september 1999): 1. 19. peter krass. black americans of achievement: sojourner truth (new york: chelsea house publishers, 1988),97. works cited bunting, eve. the wednesday surprise. new york: houghton mifflin, 1989. chocolate, deborah m. newton. talk, talk: an ashanti legend. mahwah, nj: troll associates, 1993. corcoran, john, with carole c. carlson. the teacher who couldn't read. colorado springs: focus on the family publishing, 1994. douglass, frederick. narrative of the life of frederick douglass, an ameri can slave (1845). in maynard mack, ed. the norton anthology of world masterpieces. new york: w.w. norton, 1985.646-719. dusek, karen h. "frederick douglass, abolitionist writer." in cobblestone: the history magazine for young people 10 (february 1989):21-23. vanni, nikki. "nikki-roasa." in demetrice a. worley and jesse perry, jr., eds. african-american literature: an anthology. lincolnwood, il: ntc publishing group, 1998. 294-95. harris, violet j. "african-american conceptions of literacy: a historical perspective." theory into practice 31 (autumn 1992): 276-86. hughes, langston. "mother to child." selected poems of langston hughes. new york: vintage, 1974. hurston, zora neale. "characteristics of negro expression," the sanctified church: the folklore writings of zora neale hurston. berkeley: turtle island, 1981. 49-68. jacobs, harriet a. incidents in the life of a slave girl, written by herself cambridge: harvard up, 1987. johnson, angela. tell me a story, mama. new york: orchard books, 1988. johnson, dolores. papa’s stories. new york: macmillan, 1994. kantrowitz, barbara, and anne underwood. "dyslexia and the new science of reading." newsweek. 22 november 1999. 72-79. kastle, carl f. literacy in the united states: readers and reading since 1880. new haven: yale up, 1991. king-smith, dick. the school mouse. new york: hyperion, 1997. kozol, jonathan. illiterate america. new york: new american library, 1985. krass, peter. black americans of achievement: sojourner truth. new york: chelsea house publishers, 1988. lee, harper. to kill a mockingbird. new york: warner books, 1960. "literacy and life." <http://www.edentek.net/litlife.htm> 26 january 2000.1. macdonald, laughlin. "minority vote dilution: the fourteenth amendment and the voting rights act." <http://www.aclu.org/aclu-e/course3 mcclonald3.html> 04 january 1980. 1-8. mccall, cecelia. "a historical quest for literacy." interracial books for 99 "life for me ain't no crystal stair" lester children bulletin 19 (n.d.): 3-6. mcgee, leo, and harvey g. neufeldt. education of the black adult in the united states: an annotated bibliography. westport, ct: greenwood, 1985. medearis, angela shelf. too much talk: a west african folktale. cambridge: candlewick press, 1995. o'meatly, robert g. "frederick douglass' 1845 narrative: the text was meant to be preached." in dexter fisher and robert b. stepto, eds. afro-american literature: the reconstruction of instruction. mla, 1978. 192-211. personal email. 19 january 2000. personal email. 2 february 2000. "quotations about literacy." <http://www.literacytrust.org.uk/database/ quote.html> 03 september 1999. 1-2. rahaman, vashanti. read for me, mama. honesdale, pa: boyds mills, 1997. rue, nancy n. coping with an illiterate parent. new york: rosen, 1990. russell, kathy, midge wilson, and ronald hall. the color complex: the politics of skin color among african americans. new york: doubleday, 1992. sapphire. push. new york: vintage books, 1996. "the typical adult non-reader," <http://mdianriver.fl.us/livmg/services/als/ typical.html> 26 january 2000. i. 100 cfr_2002-2003_part24 cfr_2002-2003_part25 cfr_2002-2003_part26 cfr_2002-2003_part27 cfr_2002-2003_part28 cfr_2002-2003_part29 cfr_2002-2003_part30 cfr_2002-2003_part31 cfr_2002-2003_part32 47 levitation revisited elizabeth tucker one intriguing but understudied form of children’s folklore is levitation, a ritual in which several preadolescents or adolescents lift a friend with only a few fingers of each hand. sometimes the individual who gets lifted lies on the floor; other times he or she stands or sits in a chair. records and studies since the seventeenth century have identified this process as a “spell,” an “inchantment,” a “curiosity,” a “game,” a “trick,” a “procedure,” or an “activity.”1 in my 1984 study of children’s levitation and trance sessions, i suggest, using mary douglas’s definition of ritual as symbolic action, “the presence of certain symbolic elements [in levitation], over a wide span of time and space, creates a sense of ritualistic potency” (1973,126). revisiting the subject of my earlier study, i find that further investigation of levitation’s history enhances our understanding of its meaning. both solemn and playful, patterned and open-ended, levitation rituals teach us important lessons about children’s, adolescents’, and adults’ behavior and needs. levitation rituals range from relatively simple lifting exercises to combinations of lifting with chants and storytelling about death and resurrection. children’s resurrection games have been documented but not studied in depth by folklorists. it seems necessary to make these games part of the lineage of levitation rituals and to identify some small but interesting parallels between these rituals and medieval mystery plays. william wells newell, author of games and songs of american children, originally published in 1883, notes that some children’s game-rhymes reflect “deeply mediaeval religious conceptions” (1963, 5). while we cannot know how children learned about levitation over a long period of time, we have enough information to make some educated guesses about the ritual’s development since the middle ages. more importantly, we can ask why this ritual has been so exciting and meaningful for children in different parts of the world for longer than three centuries. before turning to examples of levitation rituals, we should briefly examine their structure. in her study “’mary whales, i believe in you’: myth and ritual subdued” (1978), janet langlois examines relationships between myth and ritual and between legend and game. as the central character of a legend about a car accident, mary whales (known to other groups of children as bloody mary) behaves passively; she gets killed and scratched and then, as a ghost, disappears. langlois argues, “the ritual mary whales … appears in the mirror through the actions of the game players, who know the circumstances of her death previous to their interaction with her” (8-9). when summoned in a mirror, mary whales becomes active, scratching the faces of children who, also behaving actively, dare to summon her (9). similarly, levitation often follows legend-telling about a young person’s death; some stories describe a murder committed by the young person who is about to be lifted, while others describe the young person’s own death (tucker 1977, 412; freed 1994, 36). within the fictive frame of legend-telling, the liftee is either active (a murderer) or passive (a murder victim). during the ritual cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 47 11/6/08 11:46:10 am levitation revisited tucker 48 itself, distinctions between active and passive roles fit a consistent pattern. those who lift take an active role. eager to achieve something amazing, they hope to exercise a mysterious power. the liftee, on the other hand, plays a passive role. lying on the ground or sitting in a chair, she or he waits to be raised by helpful friends. the lifters’ and liftee’s goals complement each other. if all goes well, one person will feel the excitement of rising, while the others will enjoy the satisfaction of having made that rising possible. later in this essay i will examine metaphors associated with raising and rising, which deserve careful consideration. the first mention of a levitation ritual, practiced by four french girls, appears in an entry in the diary of samuel pepys in 1665. pepys does not use the term “levitation”; instead, he identifies what he learned from his friend john brisbane as one of a number of “inchantments and spells” (latham and matthews 1972, 177). iona and peter opie refer to pepys’s description in their lore and language of schoolchildren, commenting that they themselves practiced the levitation “trick” with friends at school (1959, 309-10). mary and herbert knapp describe both the “procedure” of levitation and the related phenomenon of trance, which involves rubbing a child’s temples while telling a scary story, in one potato, two potato: the secret education of american children (1976, 252). my 1984 essay about levitation and trance sessions, based on fieldwork with children in indiana and interviews with college students in new york, suggests that levitation and trance sessions represent an important aspect of young people’s development. usually occurring in private spaces and in girls’ groups, these rituals help children set limits “upon worrisome developmental horrors that they all share” (133). shaari freed’s essay “spooky activities and group loyalty” (1994) concurs with the conclusions of my essay and introduces other insights related to both levitation and ouija board play. referring to five stages of children’s growth in interpersonal awareness introduced by psychologists robert l. selman, dan jaquette, and debra redman lavin (1977), freed notes that children in the third stage of development, between the ages of seven and fourteen, engage in “intimate-mutual sharing” that builds group loyalty (36). she suggests that “the state of arousal involved in these rituals needs to be more carefully examined” and that “children, as well as adults, seek out arousal” (38-39). in this analysis, the term “arousal” means excitement or pleasurable stimulation. i agree that we should carefully consider why children enjoy performing levitation rituals and that we should remember that children are not the only seekers of this kind of thrill. besides occurring during sleepovers and camping trips, levitation takes place on school playgrounds, during gym classes, and during youth group meetings. both boys and girls practice levitation, and adults sometimes lead the ritual. adults’ participation in levitation reminds us that play appeals to adults as well as young people. brian sutton-smith’s “paradigm of the playful person” fits this situation very well (1994, 20-21). many folklorists of childhood, including myself, have tended to view the “childhood underground” as child-to-child communication with little adult involvement, but adults’ participation tends to be important. if an adult friend of samuel pepys had not watched four little girls lifting a boy in bordeaux, we would have had no seventeenth-century record of this fascinating form of children’s folklore. cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 48 11/6/08 11:46:11 am tucker levitation revisited 49 girls, boys, and adults when i started collecting descriptions of levitation as part of my dissertation research in 1976, i was not surprised to find that these accounts came from girls. my own childhood introduction to this ritual took place in an all-girl group of sixth-graders in washington, d.c., in the spring of 1960. before i went to my first slumber party — an eagerly anticipated event — another girl who was planning to go to the party had told me it might be possible to lift someone “like magic,” with several girls lifting a friend using only two fingers of each hand. at the slumber party, we tried to lift our friend valerie in this exciting way. nothing amazing happened; we could not get valerie off the ground. i vividly remember, however, how hard we tried to lift valerie and how intriguing the whole process seemed. our slumber party games and rituals took place late at night, free from parents’ prying eyes. sixteen years later, armed with folkloristic theory and a copy of the opies’ lore and language of schoolchildren, i looked for rituals similar to the ones i had learned and read. if i had had a chance to talk with bill ellis in 1976, i would have learned that an all-boy group was experimenting with levitation two years after i discovered it myself. in june of 2007, knowing that i was trying to learn more about levitation, ellis kindly sent me this e-mail: i don’t know a reference for this, but i know that on the playground in portsmouth, ohio, ca. 1962, when i saw this done, the pressing on the head was certainly a part of the ritual. as i recall, two “lifters” took the two fingers (forefingers iirc) and simultaneously pressed down on the levitated person’s forehead, then immediately put these fingers under the back and upper leg of the person and lifted up. the person did indeed come right up with no apparent effort. all the participants and spectators were male 7th graders. i don’t recall any rhyme or narration of spooky stories. it was one of those things, like “knocking yourself out” by hyperventilating that went the rounds of preadolescent kids like wildfire, then next week was gone. ellis aptly identifies the transience of such preadolescent pursuits. both he and i briefly tried to levitate our friends in single-sex groups, then moved on to other amusements. unlike my girlfriends, who chose a place and time conducive to secrecy, his group performed the levitation ritual outside in a playground supervised by adults. the fact that they did this outdoors proves the opies’ point that levitation is a “curiosity” that excites wonder but does not always require seclusion (1959, 309). a year ago i learned about another context for levitation from a cousin of mine who lives in rural maine.2 as a teenager during the late 1950s, my cousin martha learned levitation from the adult leader of her presbyterian youth group. she recalls: cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 49 11/6/08 11:46:11 am levitation revisited tucker 50 i think we all had the “lifters” put their hands on the subject’s head and press down for a few seconds, then say “five” and then do the two-finger lift trick and the subject becomes light and lifts very easily. martha’s focus on numbers — two fingers, “say ‘five’” — typifies the exactitude of this ritual. for the ritual to succeed, participants must use the right number of fingers (usually two) and follow any other numerical prescription that has become traditional in their peer group. another former member of martha’s youth group, bob, offered a slightly different formula for levitation’s success: seems to me four people put their hands alternately on a person sitting in a straight chair and pressed down for say 20 seconds. then those four removed their hands and each put their two fore-fingers together. two of the four put their forefingers under the sitting person’s knees and the other two put their forefingers under the sitter’s armpits — then lifted — oh i forgot — all four attempted the lift before pressing down on the sitter’s head and could not lift that person.3 bob’s version of the youth group ritual resembles martha’s in its reliance on the number two and its multiple, four. it differs significantly from martha’s, though, because it introduces an element of magic (cause leading to effect beyond rational rules). examination of available source material helps to explain how adults’ and children’s interest in magic adds to levitation’s meaning. magic since our earliest information about levitation comes from samuel pepys, who calls it a “spell” or “inchantment,” we should consider the contents of early books of spells. one especially popular spell book, the petit albert, known in latin as alberti parvi lucii libellus de mirabilibus naturae acarnis, circulated in europe in written and printed versions. there is some debate about the time that the petit albert originated; the version that i found is secrets merveilleux de la magic naturelle et cabalistique du petit albert (1776). this book’s introduction mentions science, magic, ancient hebrew sages, and diabolism. in its “love spell” section are directions for helping a young girl or widow see the man she will marry: put a little tree branch under the pillow, then rub the girl’s or woman’s temples with a little blood from a bird called huppe. at bedtime, the girl or woman should say what she wants to see; that night she will see her future husband (25). rubbing the head to produce a new state of mind in which a vision appears seems similar to pressing the head to make lifting possible. the french spell, however, only addresses a vision or state of mind. to learn about lifting the body, we must turn to later source material. information about levitation’s history can be found in sir david brewster’s letters on natural magic addressed to sir walter scott (1843). the tenth letter in this book addresses the “remarkable power of lifting heavy persons when the cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 50 11/6/08 11:46:11 am tucker levitation revisited 51 lungs are inflated.” brewster includes this experiment among a number of others practiced by samson, a traveling performer from germany. during the nineteenth century, such demonstrations of amazing capabilities were popular in england. brewster states, “one of the most remarkable and inexplicable experiments relative to the strength of the human frame is “that in which a heavy man is raised with the greatest facility, when he is lifted up the instant that his own lungs and those of the persons who raise him are inflated with air” (232). note the emphasis on a mysterious element that is hard to explain: simultaneous inflation of all participants’ lungs with air. this mysterious inflation of lungs resembles the emphasis on careful headpressing that dominates the descriptions i collected from youth group members in rural maine. both head-pressing and lung-inflating seem crucial for the rituals’ success. beyond rational explanations, magic seems to account for what happens. as in the maine youth group’s recollections, the numbers two and four figure prominently in how the nineteenth-century british ritual works. there are exactly four lifters, and lifting takes place at the intake of the second breath. also noteworthy is brewster’s choice of words to describe what happens when the liftee rises up: “to his own surprise and that of his bearers, he rises with the greatest facility, as if he were no heavier than a feather” (1843, 233). this description documents use of the currently popular phrase “light as a feather,” which may have accompanied earlier levitation demonstrations. demonstrators of this experiment traveled around europe toward the middle of the nineteenth century. brewster explains that lifting heavy persons in this fashion had first occurred in england a few years before under the direction of “major h.,” who had seen the experiment performed “at a large party at venice under the direction of an officer of the american navy” (1843, 232). this traveling military officer had a major impact (pardon the pun) on people’s familiarity with the lifting ritual, and other adult travelers almost certainly did so as well. one reason for the fast-growing popularity of lifting rituals in the midnineteenth century was the growth of spiritualism in the united states and europe. the spiritualist movement began in the united states with the wellpublicized rappings experienced by kate and margaret fox in the 1840s. as news of the fox sisters and other apparent mediums spread, people became increasingly eager to witness marvels. besides quasi-magical lifting of heavy people, raising and turning of tables became exciting events for groups of people to watch. not everyone who observed such demonstrations believed in what seemed to be happening, but spiritualism’s emphasis on occult powers encouraged suspension of disbelief. how did “levitation” became a well known word in england? the oxford english dictionary, which defines one form of levitation as “the action or process of rising, or raising (a body) from the ground by ‘spiritualistic’ means,” lists an 1874 quotation from george eliot as its earliest literary evidence of this term’s use. eliot’s legend of jubal includes the lines “on all points he adopts the latest views;/ takes for the key of universal mind/ the ‘levitation’ of stout gentlemen” (1874, 191). eliot’s focus on lifting overweight gentlemen suggests that she has seen or at least read about the kind of experiment that sir david brewster describes. samuel pepys’s diary also emphasizes the marvelousness of lifting someone heavy, cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 51 11/6/08 11:46:11 am levitation revisited tucker 52 describing four little french girls lifting “the cook of the house, a very lusty fellow, as sir g. carteret’s cooke, who is very big” (latham and matthews 1972, 178). the mysteriousness of successfully lifting a heavy person seems to explain much of levitation’s appeal from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century. late nineteenth-century magicians also helped to make “levitation” a household word. the well-known british magician john nevil maskelyne (1829-1917) introduced levitation as an on-stage performance and perfected his levitation methods over a period of almost thirty years. in his most elaborate performance, “the entranced fakir,” which took place in 1901, maskelyne passed a metal hoop around the body of a white-bearded fakir who floated high above his own sarcophagus. according to jim steinmeyer, author of hiding the elephant: how magicians invented the impossible and learned to disappear (2003), this performance surprised and confounded proud thirdand fourth-generation magicians (165). spectators with no experience in illusionists’ techniques were deeply impressed by this polished demonstration of levitation, which seemed both convincing and difficult to disprove. children watched magicians’ performances, and it was common for magicians to invite children from their audiences to come up on stage to examine floating performers. the famous american illusionist howard thurston, who was born in columbus, ohio, in 1869, invited a little boy to make cards on a deck rise by pulling his father’s hair; on another occasion, he asked a little boy to touch a golden ring on the finger of a beautiful princess who seemed to be floating above the stage (steinmeyer 2003, 14-15). children who participated in such exciting performances probably told their friends all about what happened; some of these children probably imitated the magician’s actions too. it seems likely that magicians’ levitation performances influenced children’s play in this way, and it is also likely that the term “levitation” entered the childhood underground partly because of magicians’ influence. resurrection there is, however, more to levitation than secular magic. the earliest record of the ritual in samuel pepys’s diary includes a chant in french: voicy un corps mort royde comme un baston froid comme marbre leger comme un esprit, levons te au nom de jesus christ (latham and matthews 1972, 177). my translation follows: here is a dead body stiff as a stick cold as marble light as a spirit, we raise you in the name of jesus christ. cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 52 11/6/08 11:46:12 am tucker levitation revisited 53 it must have been poignant for samuel pepys to hear this chant on july 31, 1665, when the great plague was sweeping through london. three centuries earlier, in the mid-1300s, 24 million people had died of the plague in france, germany, italy, and scandinavia. according to frederick cartwright, author of disease and history (1972), “in southern france mortality was so great that the pope consecrated the river rhone at avignon, so that corpses flung into the river might be considered to have received christian burial” (37). did this terrible epidemic become part of children’s play and games between the thirteenth and the seventeenth century? we do not know; however, it seems certain that the enormous number of deaths frightened children and increased their awareness of the thin line between life and death.4 death, burial, resurrection, and other serious subjects have emerged in european children’s play and games over a relatively long period of time. in their study of “pretending games,” iona and peter opie note that children in sixteenthcentury holland imitated weddings, christenings, and religious processions; similarly, in eighteenth-century france, children imitated clerics’ processions, soldiers’ marches, and other kinds of movement (1969, 330-31). other twentiethcentury folklorists have documented interesting games in which a child plays the part of a dead person. leea virtanen’s children’s lore (1978) includes an account of finnish children’s imitation of the dead and of priests who bless them. virtanen quotes from the recollections of a girl who grew up in a rural environment: we often played this game; i was dead and was in a coffin, which we made out of chairs laid flat and covered with newspaper. this boy, my only playmate, was always the priest. he blessed me and sang a hymn (88). this rather sad and quiet game reflects children’s interest in what happens to people’s bodies after death but lacks the excitement offered by hiding and chasing games. norman douglas, author of london street games (1931), describes the game dead man’s rise, also known as dead man’s dark scenery or coat, in which one child hides, covered with other players’ coats. when the other players call “dead man rise,” the child who has been hiding starts to run after the others. the last player that he finds becomes “it” for the next round of the game (5, 60). a similar game played outdoors is “green man rise-o, a very old game” according to douglas (59). one of douglas’s young informants explains this game’s rules as follows: the way we play the game of greenman one of us lay down and cover his self with grass and the others run out and hide then they say greenman greenman rise up then he gets up and trys to catch them and the last one thats cort goes it [sic] (59). whether or not the hider goes by the name of “dead man,” games of this kind demonstrate an interest in transition from death to life. mary and herbert knapp describe the game pray for the dead in their book one potato, two potato (1976). they explain that in this game, played in the fall, one child buries himor herself in leaves. others kneel next to this child’s “grave” cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 53 11/6/08 11:46:12 am levitation revisited tucker 54 and chant, “pray for the dead and the dead will pray for you.” after a period of chanting, “the buried child slowly stirs, then suddenly explodes from the leaves. the others run away screaming. whoever the ghost catches is it next time” (252). there is a difference between the outcome of dead man’s rise and that of green man rise-o: instead of rising from the dead, the deceased person becomes a frightening ghost that will relentlessly pursue other children. this emphasis on ghosts fits the fall season, during which, especially on halloween, ghosts supposedly walk among living people. since imitative play and games involving death and resurrection have been popular in relatively recent times, it seems worthwhile to investigate possible antecedents. the prominence of the christian religion in medieval europe made liturgical dramas focal points of community life. early in the thirteenth century, a papal edict forbade priests to act in such dramas, giving rise to miracle plays about lives of the saints and then mystery plays based on bible stories. according to peter happé, author of english mystery plays (1975), “around the betrayal of christ, his death and resurrection are centred the essential truths of christianity” (24). both jesus’s own resurrection and his resurrection of his friend lazarus are climactic events of mystery plays written in england in the fourteen and fifteenth centuries. four mystery play cycles have survived the ravages of the intervening years: the cycles of york, towneley, chester, and ludus coventriae. performed on the feast of corpus christi, mystery plays served the dual purpose of instruction and worship (happé 1975, 11). given the small number of mystery play manuscripts and the lack of a time machine to travel back to the middle ages and investigate how children responded to the plays, i cannot prove that young people’s play was influenced by performances of christ’s and lazarus’s resurrections. i do, however, believe that children in england, france, and other european countries where mystery play performances occurred would have enjoyed scenes in which someone who appeared to be dead rose from the grave. we know that children watched these performances, since mystery plays involved the whole community. in england, guild members performed mystery play scenes on wagons that they rolled from one place to another. medievalist pamela m. king explains that the york cycle in the 1460s and 1470s “was made up of forty-seven pageants, performed on wagons which stopped in sequence at each of twelve stations around the city, with around 14,000 lines of spoken dialogue, and involving a huge cast of characters, including twenty-four men capable of taking on the role of the adult christ” (2006, 7). such exciting, mobile performances would have gotten children’s attention and provided an intriguing model for imitation. there is a small but interesting linguistic similarity between the chant in pepys’s diary and some of the lines in the towneley cycle of mystery plays, written in 1450. in “lazarus” from towneley manuscript 31, maria [mary magdalene] tells jesus, “lorde, mekill sorrow may men se/ of my sister here an me//we are heavy as any lede,/ for our broder that thus is dede” (happé 1975, 402). similarly, in “the resurrection” from towneley manuscript 26, maria expresses joy at christ’s rising through proverbial comparison: “i am as light as leyfe on tre,/for ioyfull sight that i can se,/for well i wote that it was he,/ my lord ihesu/he that cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 54 11/6/08 11:46:12 am tucker levitation revisited 55 betrayed that fre,/sore may he rew” (happé 1975, 100). perhaps emphasis on such comparisons in mystery plays encouraged children to create similar lines when enacting resurrection scenes. on the other hand, lines such as “stiff as a stick/cold as marble/light as a spirit” and “light as a feather, stiff as a board” may simply reflect well-known proverbial comparisons in french and english. it is also interesting to note that both medieval english mystery plays and relatively recent levitation rituals focus on determining whether the person who will rise up is actually dead. in “lazarus” of the towneley manuscript, jesus talks with his disciple peter about their friend lazarus. peter suggests that lazarus needs his sleep, but jesus replies, ‘i say you sekerly he is dede” (happé 1975, 401). similarly, in the play “christ’s appearance to the disciples” from the ludus coventriae manuscript 38, the disciple thomas (generally known as “doubting thomas” to christians) insists upon touching christ’s wounds to make sure that christ has truly triumphed over death. thomas states, “i xal never be-leve that he is qwyk and sownde/in trewth whyl i knowe that he was dede on rood” (happé 1975, 41). once he sees and touches jesus, thomas proclaims in latin, “quod mortuus et sepultus nunc resurrexit” (happé 1975, 42). recent examples of children’s levitation rituals similarly focus on whether or not someone has died. simon j. bronner includes an example collected from a 29-year-old female college student in 1987, in american children’s folklore (1988). this student remembered using the following words as a prelude to levitation between sixth and eighth grade: i think he’s dead i know he’s dead he feels dead he looks dead he looks dead he looks dead he is dead (167). note that the word “dead” appears in each line, driving home the point that the chant explores various modes of perceiving the end of life. i collected variants of this chant in new york while doing the research for my 1984 essay on girls’ levitation at slumber parties. in indiana eight years earlier, i had heard other descriptions with a similar emphasis. in 1976, ten-year-old betsy explained that “somebody makes up a real spooky story and says that you’re dead, and then you say, ‘okay, now that you’re dead let’s rise you from the grave,’ and it feels like you’re floating when they lift you up” (tucker 1977, 412). in that description and in others, the word “dead” signals the start of levitation. cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 55 11/6/08 11:46:12 am levitation revisited tucker 56 marvels and metaphors levitation rituals offer young people a mysterious process that might (or might not) rely on magic. when it works, levitation seems marvelous and wonderful. in my 1984 essay i concluded that the act of lifting mattered more than symbolically bringing a dead person back to life: “if the attempt worked, [the girls] were happy, and that was the main thing” (130). my recent research supports that viewpoint. kids want levitation to work and feel thrilled when it does. in haunting experiences, diane e. goldstein suggests that testing supernatural evidence follows a pattern similar to application of the scientific method. goldstein notes that “the spontaneous telling of a personal supernatural experience runs counter to one of the central principles of academic rationalist traditions — that supernatural belief would decline as education and technology increased” (2007, 60). in our current era, information science and technology have become prominent in people’s everyday lives. rather than spurning the supernatural, however, many young people embrace it, seeking amazing experiences. this process begins in preadolescence and may continues into young and older adulthood. to understand this process better, i talked with adolescents and spent time surfing the world wide web, watching movies, and reading summaries of episodes of certain television shows. back in the 1970s and early 1980s, it was sufficient to talk with young people and watch them demonstrate what they knew. now, in our complex cyberworld, we need to consider mass-cultural influences. in his recent essay “seuss on the loose: children’s folklore on the internet,” c.w. sullivan iii reminds us that “children have ready access to the internet in ways that they do not have access to textbooks and folklore collections” (2006-2007, 36). children’s and adolescents’ use of electronic media provides one of the most intriguing areas of study that folklorists can pursue today. first, however, i talked with a group of young people with whom i met regularly. in the spring of 2007 i asked my 52 introduction to folklore students, most of whom were freshmen and sophomores, what they knew about levitation. all of the young women in the class knew about this ritual, and many of them had tried it. five of the young men had not heard about levitation before; the others had either tried it or heard about it. the usual age for this ritual, my students said, was 10-13. among the places where they had tried it were houses, playgrounds, gyms, and camps. all of the students called the ritual “light as a feather.” eight out of ten small discussion groups cited sleepovers as the main setting. seven groups mentioned chanting; one mentioned storytelling. all of the students who had tried levitation remembered how important it was for the ritual to succeed. four of them admitted that they had tried levitation as college students, but most of the others viewed the ritual as “kid stuff.” when i went online in the fall of 2007, i discovered that the interactive video website youtube offers a plethora of videos in which kids chant “light as a feather” before trying to lift each other. recently, in july of 2008, youtube listed 478 videos under the keywords “light as a feather.” not all of these are about levitation; some are music videos, including the lunachicks’ punk rock song “light cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 56 11/6/08 11:46:13 am tucker levitation revisited 57 as a feather,” chick corea’s jazz piece by the same name, and bob marley’s “misty morning.” many “light as a feather” videos on youtube seem to have been filmed by teenagers who live in the united states, england, and the caribbean. among the settings for these videos are basements and living rooms of private homes, camps, schools, and playgrounds: very similar to the range of spaces that my college students described. in all the videos that i have viewed, the words “light as a feather, stiff as a board” comprise the only verbal part of the ritual. as might be expected in a medium that features films, action (in this case, lifting) seems very important. some commentators on videos mention storytelling, but they do not give storytelling much attention. it can be difficult to figure out the names, ages, and geographical areas of people who post videos on youtube. fortunately, the maker of one of the most popular “light as a feather” videos, which had been viewed 28,217 times by july 27, 2008, lists plenty of identifying information. trace, aged 17, is a student at del norte high school in albuquerque, new mexico. her video shows four teenagers chanting “light as a feather, stiff as a board” before raising a friend in a hooded sweatshirt up into the air. after the boy rises, a shocking image of the face of a monster with filmy white eyes appears on the screen. this monster’s sudden appearance brings to mind metaphors associated with the word “raising.” parents want to raise their children well: to “bring them up” from childhood to adulthood with success and pride. the parents’ role is active, while the children’s role is passive. during the process of child-raising, which strives toward an upward progression in maturity, parents may chide their children for causing trouble. children may “raise a ruckus,” a phrase which suggests bringing something disruptive up from lower regions. some teenagers have prided themselves on “raising hell”: doing something so disturbing that it makes people think of the devil’s domain. most serious-sounding of all, the phrase “raising the devil” suggests demonic consequences for causing a disturbance or playing around with supernatural forces. in raising the devil (2000), bill ellis cites christian minister maxwell whyte’s conclusion that demons do the lifting in levitation (54). concern about punishment for chanting and summoning occult forces is certainly part of levitation’s mystique, although most of the young people with whom i have spoken have not seemed concerned about adverse consequences. in fact, most “light as a feather” videos on youtube seem playful and lighthearted. in many of these videos, kids laugh and joke. some videographers enjoy poking fun at each other, as in the video that begins with the description “cody, lameass. everyone in biology used only 2 fingers from each hand to lift him.” several teens explain that they filmed “light as a feather, stiff as a board” because they felt bored (pun intended?) at home or at school. comments on many of the videos include accounts of similar experiences, disputes about rules, and debates on diamagnetism and other scientific or pseudo-scientific explanations for the ritual’s success. researchers who have the time and patience to sift through these reams of comments and view all the videos can get a great deal of information about this kind of interaction among young people. other relevant information comes from movies and television shows. before the late 1980s, as far as i know, kids did not learn about levitation through movies cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 57 11/6/08 11:46:13 am levitation revisited tucker 58 or tv. since the beginning of the 1990s, the tv shows captain planet, as told by ginger, the girls next door, and south park have all had episodes in which levitation takes place. the 1987 movie the gate includes a levitation scene; since the gate in question is a backyard gate to hell, the ritual’s context suggests dangerous possibilities. also threatening and mysterious are the circumstances that surround four young witches in the 1996 film the craft, who perform acts of magic to torment fellow students at high school. in one of this movie’s most exciting scenes, sarah, nancy, and bonnie make rochelle rise into the air by chanting “light as a feather, stiff as a board.” bonnie’s mother, worrying about what the girls are doing behind bonnie’s closed bedroom door, shouts “are you getting high?” this line makes viewers laugh, because one of the girls is floating high above the floor. this movie’s exploitation of the double meaning of rising up high foregrounds the significance of altered states of consciousness. when i started revisiting the material i had collected before writing my 1984 essay, i noticed that the word “high” came up often. deanne, for example, a ten-year-old girl in indiana, had told me, “well, you lay down, and you get real real real high, and you play that, uh, they step over you, make you real high, and say like if you wanta be a feather, they tell a story what you do, and everything” (tucker 1977, 411). in my 1984 essay, i noted, in a tentative way, that this emphasis on “getting high” sounded like taking drugs (126). now i see a clear relationship between levitation and mind-expanding experiences favored by teenagers. in aliens, ghosts, and cults (2001), bill ellis observes that adolescents’ supernatural experiences during legend trips resemble recreational drug use “in that both are ‘trips’ — deliberate escapes into altered states of being where conventional laws do not operate” (189). while preadolescents’ and young teenagers’ levitation experiments tend to be short, safe, and simple, they represent an early step toward new and exciting states of mind. amazing and delighting children, adolescents, and some adults, levitation rituals draw people together so that they can experiment with supernatural experiences. since participants can choose to lift or to be lifted, either action or passivity is a socially acceptable option. when the ritual succeeds, levitation results in positive feelings. the lifters feel powerful, and the liftee feels “high.” beneath the surface of this brief ritual lie serious questions about the borderline between life and death, which is explored in stories about murder that precede the ritual. metaphoric implications of the words “raising,” “rising,” and “high” enrich our understanding of participants’ hopes and fears. as youtube and other electronic sites continue to attract young video-makers, it will be fascinating to see how levitation performances develop in the future. cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 58 11/6/08 11:46:13 am tucker levitation revisited 59 notes i want to thank janet langlois and c.w. sullivan iii for their helpful comments. 1. the terms “spell” and “inchantment” appear in the diary of samuel pepys; “trick” and “curiosity” appear in the opies’ lore and language of schoolchildren. mary and herbert knapp call levitation a “procedure” in their one potato, two potato: the secret education of american children, and simon j. bronner calls it an “activity” in his american children’s folklore. bill ellis uses the term “game” in raising the devil. 2. my cousin martha, a resident of southern maine, kindly provided me with this information on june 20, 2007. 3. bob, also a resident of maine, sent this information on june 20, 2007. 4. a recent study of children’s play in response to traumatic events is ann richman beresin’s “children’s expressive culture in light of september 11, 2001 (2002). while there are no records of children’s responses to the tragic loss of so many people during the plague’s passage through europe, we should note sylvia ann grider’s point that “images of burials of corpses wrapped in winding sheets” were familiar to young survivors of the plague and that the contemporary image of a ghost in a white sheet may have originated during the plague years (114). in once upon a virus (2004), diane e. goldstein describes a canadian child in the midst of a game of tag saying “tag, you’ve got aids” (1). this description, as well as the line “barney died from hiv” in children’s song parodies of the early 1990s, shows how easily children’s concerns about epidemics become part of their games and songs. works cited albert, petit. 1776. secrets merveilleux de la magie naturelle et cabalistique. lyons: héritiers de beringo fratres. beresin, ann richman. 2002. children’s expressive culture in light of september 11, 2001. anthropology and education quarterly 33:3: 331-37. brewster, sir david, walter scott, and j.a. smith. 1843. letters on natural magic addressed to sir walter scott. new york: harper and brothers. bronner, simon j. 1988. american children’s folklore. little rock: august house. cartwright, frederick f., and michael d. biddiss. 1972. disease and history. new york: dorset press. douglas, mary. 1973. natural symbols. new york: vintage books. douglas, norman. 1931. london street games. london: chatto and windus. eliot, george. 1874. the legend of jubal, and other poems. edinburgh and london: w. blackwood. ellis, bill. 2000. raising the devil. lexington: university press of kentucky. ______. aliens, ghosts, and cults: legends we live. 2001. jackson: university press of mississippi. ______. 2007. e-mail communication. 8 june. cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 59 11/6/08 11:46:13 am levitation revisited tucker 60 freed, shaari. 1994. spooky activities and group loyalty. children’s folklore review 17(1): 33-39. goldstein, diane e. 2004. once upon a virus: aids legends and vernacular risk perception. logan: utah state university press. ______. 2007. scientific rationalism and supernatural experience narratives. in haunting experiences: ghosts in contemporary folklore, ed. diane e. goldstein, sylvia ann grider, and jeannie banks thomas, 60-80. logan: utah state university press. grider, sylvia ann. 2007. children’s ghost stories. in haunting experiences: ghosts in contemporary folklore, ed. diane e. goldstein, sylvia ann grider, and jeannie banks thomas, 111-42. logan: utah state university press. happé, peter. 1975. english mystery plays. harmondsworth, england: penguin books. king, pamela m. 2006. the york mystery cycle and the worship of the city. cambridge, england: d.s. brewer. knapp, mary and herbert. 1976. one potato, two potato: the secret education of american children. new york: norton. langlois, janet. 1978. “mary whales, i believe in you”: myth and ritual subdued. indiana folklore 11(1):5-33. latham, robert and william matthews, eds. 1972. the diary of samuel pepys, vol. 6. berkeley and los angeles: university of california press. newell, william wells. 1963. games and songs of american children. new york: dover. opie, iona and peter opie. 1959. the lore and language of schoolchildren. new york: oxford university press. ______. 1969. children’s games in street and playground. new york: oxford university press. selman, robert l., dan jaquette, and debra redman lavin. 1977. interpersonal awareness in children: toward an integration of developmental and clinical child psychology. american journal of orthopsychiatry 47: 264-74. steinmeyer, jim. 2003. hiding the elephant: how magicians invented the impossible and learned to disappear. new york: carroll and graf. sullivan iii, c.w. 2006-2007. seuss on the loose: children’s folklore on the internet. children’s folklore review 29:33-38. sutton-smith, brian. 1994. paradigms of intervention. in play and intervention, ed. joop hellendoorn, rimmert van der kooij, and brian sutton-smith, 3-22. albany: state university of new york press. tucker, elizabeth. 1977. tradition and creativity in the storytelling of pre adolescent girls. phd diss., indiana univ. ______. 1984. levitation and trance sessions at preadolescent girls’ slumber parties. in the masks of play, ed. brian sutton-smith and diana kelly-byrne, 125-33. new york: leisure press. virtanen, leea. 1978. children’s lore. helsinki: suomalisen kirjallisuuden seura. cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 60 11/6/08 11:46:14 am pages from cfr_2007-2008_part10 cfr_2007-2008_part11 cfr_2007-2008_part12 cfr_2007-2008_part13 pages from cfr_2007-2008_part14 41 inventing the discipline while you break it all down: an essay in memory of brian sutton-smith anna beresin after i stumbled across his 1986 book, toys as culture, in a bookstore in boston, i moved to philadelphia to study with brian sutton-smith. jointly appointed in the department of folklore and at the graduate school of education at the university of pennsylvania, he ran the interdisciplinary study of human development program with a giddy seriousness that kept students at the edge of their seats. his reading lists there were the most varied i ever encountered, and this essay offers a miniature reading list in order to share the breadth of his genius. psychology, particularly freudian psychology and cognitive psychology, was the base discipline in my independent studies with him. as admirers of d.w. winnicott, erik erikson, and jean piaget, he had all of his students challenge psychology’s assumptions by reading ethnographies of mead, benedict, levine, and whiting. for our children’s culture bible, we had schwartzman’s transformations: the anthropology of children’s play, and with it, the folkloristic historical collections of iona and peter opie, along with william wells newell’s paradoxes. folklore and anthropology were his answers to the erroneous, wide brush strokes of psychology, the neatened, expurgated versions of actual childhoods, the boredom of the textbook approach to child development. we would share fart jokes. as important as reading widely was to him, so were his reminiscences of his own childhood. his favorite new zealand recipe for guaranteed farting: fish and chips and raisins. trickery itself, to be found in the study of the festival, from bakhtin to falassi to stallybrass and whyte, emphasized to brian that the core of play is dialogic, paradoxical, a “world turned upside down” (stallybrass and white 1986). bateson was our guide to meta-communication, foucault our mirror to meta-historical analysis. hobsbawm and ranger (1983) introduced the very idea of the invention of tradition, huizinga (1949) the magic frame of play, and goffman (1959), the idea that as one plays within a frame, one plays the frame as well. the message: challenge assumptions, study real children and their folklore for counter narratives, ask who is being served by the adult perceptions of reality. play with the form of research. study animals; examine evolution. keep an eye on the playground and on video games. they keep us honest. one of sutton-smith’s own essays that deserves more attention than it has been given is the seminal “games of order and disorder” (1972). he had described games as “models of power,” yet games were no simple copies of adult culture. through his eyes we see play emerge as a methodology of inversion. and so he began to use inversion and dialogism as a way to break down the very field he was crafting. the game of academia was not just increased knowledge, but disordering the lot as you build it. challenging huizinga, sutton-smith noted play is not always voluntary. sometimes you play the game everyone else is playing, because you must, in cfr_2015_r.indb 41 11/22/15 10:41 am inventing the discipline while you break it all down: beresin 42 order to play at all. answering caillois, he demonstrated that game text in one culture could be in a totally different genre in another. dueling piaget, he cautioned against pitting assimilation over accommodation. piaget’s model did not account for destruction; it was too focused on a limited concept of progress. hollering at educational catch phrases, he observed that the opposite of play is not work. he hated the line, “play is the child’s work.” it is far more complicated than work, or not work. it is what children do. a child who does not play is a child who is ill. play is more like dreaming, than work. play is more like art or religion, a symbolic field of communication that makes life worthwhile and mysterious. he noted that play’s opposite is not work; it is depression. examining the idea of play as progress, he stated that children are not “the future.” they are in their own time, and their time here and now deserves to be playful. we can say he built a discipline of play while challenging his own and everyone else’s assumptions. play was “ambiguous” as was the very enterprise of knowledge building. to be human is to live in ambiguity, and adapt to new contexts. brian loved bad jokes, old songs, fast footwork, and children’s stories. there were worlds within worlds in children’s folk arts, and he wrote about things that others found trivial with the zeal of the art collector. his mission was to protect children’s right to be surreal, incorrect, and off-center, and to honor error as a path to thought, art, and vitality. for his best writing, see his 1961 novel, smitty does a bunk, and learn more about his childhood adventures with his very real, very loved brother. the novel centers around the adventures of brothers brin and smitty; brian was clearly the younger brin, his brother, the elder smitty. brin continuously sang and most of all wanted to be included, an observer of childhood within a children’s story. brian often recited excerpts of his folkstories of children (1981), rapturously quoting the children’s words when he wanted to demonstrate the skill children offer within their folklore. it seems fitting to take us here, words he collected from a four-year-old: once upon a time the once upon a time ate the once upon a time which ate the once upon a time and then the once upon a time which ate the once upon a time ate the princess once upon a time with the king and then the once upon a times died then the end ate the end the end the end then the end died then the end died then the end died then the end died and then the end the end the end died the end with a the end the end the end (sutton-smith 1981:114) cfr_2015_r.indb 42 11/22/15 10:41 am beresin inventing the discipline while you break it all down: 43 yet the end of a life is not the end of a life’s work. brian particularly loved rabelais, that 500 year-old writer of gargantua and pantagruel, or as i like to think of rabelais, as the precursor of jonathan swift and the inventor of cookie monster. although these words were written by french scholar denis saurat as an introduction to rabelais’s gargantua and pantagruel; every word rings true for brian (note the present tense): as for his mind, there is none better: he can argue with the subtlest … on education, we still go to him; and his criticism of the education of his day still largely holds good against ours today. against useless erudition he is splendid … his enthusiasm for science is still an inspiration … look at the absurdity of things and of men: and do not take it seriously: laugh. (saurat 1945:iv) what rabelais is for the adult carnival, brian is for the festival of children’s folklore in all its complexity, in all its grotesquery, in all its variation. a privilege to have studied with him, to have dueled with his brain, i have come to think of brian as the most intelligent, most well-read 11 year-old that ever lived. like rabelais, “as for his mind, there is none better.” works cited bahktin, mikhail m. 1968. rabelais and his world. translated by helene iswolsky. cambridge, ma: mit press. bateson, gregory. 1972. steps to an ecology of mind. new york: ballentine. benedict, ruth. 1973. an anthropologist at work. new york: avon. falassi, alessandro. 1987. time out of time: essays on the festival. albuquerque: university of new mexico press. foucault, michel. 1980. power/knowledge: selected interviews and other writings (1972-1977). new york: pantheon. freud, sigmund. 1916. wit and its relation to the unconscious. new york: moffat, yard, and co. goffman, erving. 1959. the presentation of self in everyday life. new york. doubleday. hobsbawm, eric and terrance ranger. 1983. the invention of tradition. cambridge, u.k.: cambridge university press. huizinga, johan. 1949. homo ludens: a study of the play element in culture. london: routledge and kegan paul levine, robert. 1973. culture, behavior, and personality. chicago, il: aldine. mead, margaret. 1953. coming of age in samoa: a psychological study of primitive youth for western civilization. new york: modern library. newell, william wells. 1884. games and songs of american children. new york: harper and brothers. opie, iona and opie, peter. 1967. the lore and language of school-children. oxford, u.k.: clarendon press. cfr_2015_r.indb 43 11/22/15 10:41 am inventing the discipline while you break it all down: beresin 44 ________. 1969. children’s games in street and playground: chasing, catching, seeking, hunting, racing, dueling, exerting, daring, guessing, acting, pretending. oxford, u.k.: clarendon press. piaget, jean. 1962. play, dreams, and imitation in childhood. new york: w. w. norton. saurat, denis. 1945. “introduction.” in gargantua and pantagruel by francis rabelais. london: john westhouse. schwartzman, helen. 1978. transformations: the anthropology of children’s play. new york: plenum. stallybrass, peter, and allon white. 1986. the politics and poetics of transgression. new york: cornell university press. sutton-smith, brian. 1961. smitty does a bunk. wellington, nz: price wilburn and co. ________.1972. “games of order and disorder.” paper presented to the symposium on forms of symbolic inversion at the american anthropological association, toronto. ________. 1977. “dialectics of play.” in physical activity and human well-being, edited by fernand landry and william andrew robert orban. miami, fl: symposia specialists. ________. 1981. the folkstories of children. philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press. ________. 1986. toys as culture. new york: gardner press. ________. 1997. the ambiguity of play. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. whiting, beatrice blyth, ed. 1963. six cultures: studies of child rearing. new york: wiley. winnicott, d.w. 1971. playing and reality. new york: routledge. cfr_2015_r.indb 44 11/22/15 10:41 am 57 wrestling with masculinity andrew delfino and jay mechling once you’ve found the gym at a high school you’ve never visited before the saturday morning of a wrestling match, you pay a modest entrance fee and enter a world of thuds and whistles and cheers and boys’ locker room smells. depending upon the size of the meet—on how many schools brought teams and how many brackets—there will be one or more large mats laid out on the gym floor, mats marked with large boundary circles and a small center circle. at any moment, matches are at different stages—some beginning, some in progress, and some just ending with the victor’s arm raised by the referee. there is a din of shouting— teammates urging on a wrestler, coaches shouting advice, whistles screeching, timers buzzing, parents and friends shouting, cheering, clapping. wrestlers with their match coming up next have shed their sweats and loose-fitting basketball shorts, have pulled on the shoulder straps of their wrestling singlets, have donned the protective headgear, and are bouncing in place, pacing, or otherwise getting their bodies and minds ready for the match. other wrestlers, between matches, are in their loose clothing walking around, talking, or off alone listening to an ipod in a corner of the gym. the scene resembles a cross between a three-ring circus and a high school quad at lunch time. you can almost smell the testosterone. what, at first, might seem to be the most primal and brutal of male contact sports is far more complicated, civilized, and mental than one might think. jay had only seen one college wrestling match before his grandson joined his high school wrestling team, and as a scholar of masculinity jay saw immediately that the high school wresting he was observing every weekend for months was a remarkable, often paradoxical, display of masculinity. jay did not expect to see young women wrestling with the young men, but they were at every match in the lower sacramento valley circuit he observed in the 2008 and 2009 seasons. sometimes the woman beat the man. he was unprepared to see the blind young man wrestling for one of the high schools, and unprepared to see him win his matches. he was surprised by a story told by a fan sitting near him of a one-armed high school wrestler who was amazingly good, and he was surprised to see on youtube a video of a wrestler with no legs. clearly wrestling is about more than brute strength. andy, the first author, comes to this collaboration with extensive wrestling experience, first as a high school student and later as a wrestling coach at a prep school in atlanta’s suburbs. the authors share an interest in studying the social construction and performance of masculinity in american culture, and the combination of andy’s insider knowledge and jay’s outsider knowledge seemed like the perfect combination for studying high school wrestling. we aim to understand how this particular form of playfighting-become-sport displays and performs masculinity. the presence of female wrestlers now complicates some generalizations about the sport, and we do address that gender issue, but here our attention is primarily on the young men. wrestling with masculinity delfino and mechling 58 with high school wrestling as our focus, we encounter the drama of the interaction of the formal organizational culture controlled by the adult coaches and adult volunteers and the informal adolescent folk culture of the wrestlers themselves. as mechling says about the california boy scout troop he studied for decades (mechling 2001), the culture created at a boy scout camp or on a wrestling team is a tertium quid, a third thing, which is neither the culture created by the adults nor the culture created by the adolescents but a culture that results from the dynamic interaction of the two, a hot “border culture.” the culture of a wrestling team is nowhere near the “total institution” (goffman 1961) of a two-week boy scout encampment, where the boys and men eat, sleep, play, and work together. but the members of a wrestling team spend a lot of time together and, if all goes well, they create a strong adolescent male friendship group, a male folk group. as folklorists we have a broader understanding of the significance of the everyday “practices” by the young participants. we seek to understand the expressive functions of the everyday folk cultures of the young wrestlers as well as the instrumental functions that sociologists tend to emphasize. the existing scholarship on scholastic (high school) and collegiate wrestling in the united states tends to be by sociologists interested in the role of the sport in the social construction of masculinity, and with that goal in mind those scholars place the masculinity learned and performed in wrestling within the larger context of the construction and performance of gender in american culture. that topic interests us, too, but when we approach scholastic wrestling as folklorists we are as attentive to the expressive aspects of the wrestling experiences as to the instrumental aspects. we bring to this inquiry a strong focus on play, particularly bateson’s (1972) theory of play and fantasy, an approach and perspective missing in the other scholarship on scholastic wrestling. as folklorists we are more attuned to the informal folk culture of the adolescent wrestlers, an informal culture often at odds with the formal culture of scholastic wrestling. nowhere is this difference more pronounced than in the folk practices of hazing new members, an aspect of adolescent male group culture the social science scholarship on scholastic wrestling generally ignores. we begin with the most genuinely folk aspect of this study—namely, the informal playfighting that is so much a feature of the socialization of boys and young men in american culture. we then establish the importance of the central symbol in this sport—the male body—and then we get to our central thesis about the paradox of both informal and formal rough-and-tumble (r&t) playfighting: wrestling both is and is not combat, wrestling both is and is not sex. we consider the complexity of scholastic wrestling for the performance of normative masculinity, and throughout our discussion we pause to speculate on what wrestling means to the increasing numbers of women who participate in the sport at both the high school and college level. from playfighting to organized sport formalized male wrestling is very old and nearly universal in human history and cultures. no doubt this physical form of rough-and-tumble (r&t) playfighting has delfino and mechling wrestling with masculinity 59 some roots in evolutionary biology and psychology, as humans are not the only mammalians to engage in playfighting from an early age (groos 1898, burghardt 2005). there is also no doubt that playfighting serves cultural functions, and the many people who have written about the rise of male cultures and customs—from bettelheim (1954) on initiation rites to ong (1981) on male contest to dundes (1997) on football and more—note how men have created cultural institutions to compensate for their lack of direct procreation and as substitutes for the lethal male combat so common in the animal world. many of the features of performed masculinity, including the stylized violence that replaces real violence, can be understood as serving some very deep need in men for direct combat. civilized society masks this urge in the games and sports it provides men as a safer, sometimes symbolically displaced, alternative to real male violence. playfighting and real fighting, just as play war and real war, dance dangerously on the razor edge of controlled violence. as folklorists we see the expressive functions of playfighting as well as the instrumental ones posited by psychologists (pelligrini, 1988, 1993), sociobiologists and sociologists. as sutton-smith (1998, 2017) says, too many scholars neglect to acknowledge the main reason why we play—it is fun. the play frame, especially the frame for r&t playfighting, requires a level of trust, so paradoxically that play frame signals strong bonds of affection. brown (2000) found in direct observation fig. 1 – boys’ wrestling practice 1940s (mechling personal collection) wrestling with masculinity delfino and mechling 60 and in interviewing primary school-age boys (ages 6-9, ethnically diverse) that the r&t playfighting was “a means by which boys express care and intimacy for one another” (brown 2000). watching the game of smear (short for smear the queer, see dundes 1987), brown observed many instances of “care” of one boy by others, including care for boys who fall and might be injured. the boys understood, as they said in the interviews, that the game frame permitted them to touch friends intimately in ways they could not outside of that play frame. mechling discovered the same intimacy and bonding in the r&t playfighting he observed over several summers at the boy scout summer encampment he studied, including versions of smear the queer and capture the flag (mechling 2001:73, 152-62). these expressive dimensions of playfighting for boys and young men are the sources of their enjoyment, pleasures probably more important to the boys than the “problem” of constructing a performance of normative masculinity. unlike informal r&t playfighting, formal amateur wrestling, from the required clothing and headgear to the rules, aims always at creating a fair fight, that is, a contest that protects (as much as possible) the wrestlers from serious injury and that makes for a real contest. like boxing, wrestling is a weight class sport. wrestlers compete against others roughly their same weight. occasionally two wrestlers in a weight class will be very different heights, but height is not much of an advantage when one considers that the important element is the center of gravity. wrestling moves and holds rely on balance and leverage. one of the paradoxes of wrestling is that the stronger wrestler does not always win. when a heavily muscled wrestler faces off against a less muscled one, or when a young man faces off against a young woman, we have learned not to assume that the stronger wrestler will win the match. speed, balance, skill (knowledge of holds, escapes, and so on), strategy, and endurance count for more than sheer strength. less talented wrestlers sometimes try to muscle their way through a match; it almost never works. a young woman who knows holds, leverage, and strategy will beat a strong young man who does not have mastery of those techniques and strategies. scholars sometimes have divided games into three sorts—games of chance, skill, and strategy—recognizing that many games combine these elements (roberts, arth, and bush 1959). in ball sports, the ball provides a large measure of chance in the play. wrestling involves very little chance. the first face-off is from the standing position, but the second round in a high school or college match (2-minute rounds in high school, 3-minute rounds in college) begins with a “coin toss” (actually a circle of cardboard, red on one side and green on the other, representing each wrestler) to determine who gets to decide his position in the prone start. in the third round (if there is a second or third round—a pin ends the match) the wrestler who lost the toss in the second round or deferred the choice in the second round gets to choose his place in the starting prone position. skill and strategy drive this sport. as promised, our aim here is to analyze the meanings of male wrestling in the performance of masculinity. before presenting that structural analysis and its conclusions, though, we want to pause here to comment on the male body in wrestling. delfino and mechling wrestling with masculinity 61 the male body in wrestling there is no escaping the presence of the male body in wrestling. the original greek olympic games were played in the nude. when the modern olympic games were revived in 1896, the athletes were clothed. clothing in the games required and still require unrestricted movement, but the additional issue in wrestling is that clothing should not provide an opportunity for a competitor to grab, hold, and pull an opponent. nude wrestling would be ideal for that goal, so the clothing worn by wrestlers has always clung to the body to some extent. the modern singlet made of form-fitting materials (like lycra) is the next best solution to being nude, as it provides the required modesty. but the singlet provides an odd brand of modesty, clinging tightly to the male genitals and buttocks. the thin arm straps on most singlets make visible the muscles of the arms and chest, while the short legs of the singlet expose the muscles of the leg. there can be no doubt that the male body is on display in wrestling, even before the match begins. wrestlers have all sorts of male bodies, thanks largely to the organization of the sport by weight class. small, thin boys can wrestle their counterparts, and the heavyweights can be quite successful and admired with male bodies far from the cultural norm. the organization by weight class introduces an unusual element into the individual wrestler’s relationship to his body. scholars make the point that men and women, thanks to both biology and culture, tend to have different relationships with their bodies. women are more likely than men to experience themselves as a body, whereas men are more likely than women to experience themselves as having a body. men tend to have an instrumental view of their bodies, and the folk speech men use to describe their body parts and actions support that view (murphy 2001). men’s distance from their bodies has many consequences (ask any physician), and one is the sense of disappointment and anger when the body fails. a true man “plays through the pain,” often not telling a coach or a team medic about an injury until the game is over. wrestlers, though, bear an added burden. their workouts for strength and endurance, for flexibility and balance, may resemble the workouts of other athletes, but “making weight” always looms as a worry. the weight classes are pretty narrow, so the goal of a wrestler is to keep his weight in that range. the “moment of truth” is the weigh-in just before a meet begins. a wrestler can be disqualified if his weight is over or under the class he has been registered as. weight becomes a wrestler’s obsession. normally we talk about “eating disorders” in women, but bordo (1999) and others write about the male equivalent, a medical category called “muscle dysmorphia” (bordo 1999, 221). put simply, most young men are dissatisfied with some aspect of their bodies, often believing they are not muscular enough. wrestlers have that additional worry that they are too fat or too thin, so their obsession with food and fluids comes to resemble the obsessions medical and psychological professionals see in women with eating disorders. male wrestlers often make themselves sick by avoiding food and drink to “make weight,” and in the wake of some deaths of high school wrestlers the wrestling establishment modified the wrestling with masculinity delfino and mechling 62 weight categories and insist upon hydration tests at the weigh-in. so even before the wrestler sheds his sweats to step onto the mat in his singlet, he has had a long history of trying to shape, condition, and control his body. once on the mat, the two wrestlers’ bodies are on display. they shake hands, take their stances facing each other, and when the referee’s whistle blows their bodies come together in a stylized, choreographed, physical combat. the match is won either by pinning the opponent’s shoulders to the mat for two seconds or by points awarded for holds, escapes, falls, near-falls, and a few other moves. despite appearances, the match usually is not a “mixup” or “free-for-all”; rather, the wrestlers have learned and practiced moves, holds, and escapes, each with its own name, and the wrestler needs a strategy for combining these skilled moves to score points or even pin the opponent. andy’s coach called this aspect of the sport “physical chess.” a wrestling match looks primal, two bodies locked in holds, rolling, twisting, spinning, sometimes bending in ways limbs and torsos don’t seem designed to bend without breaking. so what is happening when these two young men wrestle? what are the meanings of the event? fig. 2 – high school wresters (mechling personal collection) delfino and mechling wrestling with masculinity 63 the paradox of play in male wrestling it amazes us that on each rereading of bateson’s remarkable 1955 (1972) essay, “a theory of play and fantasy,” we see something new. it is well known that in this formulation of the “play frame” bateson is struck by the paradox of play, that (as he puts it using an animal playfight as his example) “not only does the playful nip not denote what would be denoted by the bite for which it stands, but, in addition, the bite itself is fictional” (1972, 182). that’s the well-known part, but bateson then goes on to say that sometimes this paradox has an odd effect, and he uses some examples from action films to show how some images “did not denote that which they seemed to denote, but these same images did really evoke that terror which would have been evoked” by a real event or threat (1972, 183). bateson turns to some examples of films which encode sexuality. since bateson’s view helps understand both dundes’s controversial analysis of football and the analysis of wrestling we are about to present here, it is worth quoting bateson directly. in the film hans christian andersen, writes bateson (1972 183-4), the hero starts out accompanied by a boy. he tries to get a woman, but when he is defeated in this attempt, he returns to the boy. in all of this, there is, of course, no homosexuality, but the choice of these symbolisms is associated in these fantasies with certain characteristic ideas, e.g., about the hopelessness of the heterosexual masculine position when faced with certain sorts of women or with certain sorts of male authority. in sum, the pseudohomosexuality of the fantasy does not stand for any real homosexuality, but does stand for and express attitudes which might accompany a real homosexuality or feed its etiological roots. the symbols do not denote homosexuality, but do denote ideas for which homosexuality is an appropriate symbol. bateson’s stunning insight here is that play engages “a special combination” of primary (unconscious) and secondary (conscious) processes. “in primary process,” explains bateson, “map and territory are equated; in secondary process, they can be discriminated. in play, they are both equated and discriminated” (1972, 185). bateson’s insight helps us see the unique meanings of wrestling. everything dundes (1997) says about football and other ball sports applies in some ways to wrestling, but wrestling distills the symbolism. in wrestling, there are no distancing, mediating symbols; the male contact is as direct and as intimate as a sport can get. for the wrestlers, but also (we think) for the observers, wrestling combines primary and secondary processes. put differently, wrestling both is and is not combat. wrestling both is and is not sex. it looks and feels like combat, and it looks and feels like sex, but the peculiar, paradoxical genius of the wrestling play frame is that it both is and is not either of these. wrestling with masculinity delfino and mechling 64 wrestling both is and is not combat we begin with the informal r&t playfighting that seems to be such a constant element in the folk cultures of boys. girls sometimes engage in playfighting, and scholars of play have chronicled how girls’ play has become increasingly like boys’ play, especially after title ix began giving girls and young women access to the team sports that are part of the upbringing of boys and reflect the male friendship group. males are capable of injurious violence, so to sustain the bonding of the male friendship group, most boys learn how to perform “stylized” violence, violence in the play frame, violence that has the look and sound and feel of real violence, but keep in mind that what is signified in the play frame is “not real.” the stylized violence can be verbal, as in ritual insulting, or can be physical. wallis and mechling (2015:278-9) begin their inquiry into the puzzle of warriors’ r&t playfighting in the combat zone (iraq and afghanistan), a puzzle because it seems so risky, with a look at the scholarship by psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, and folklorists on playfighting in children. without reproducing that survey here, we can say briefly that boys’ playfighting (elementary school age) helps develop social competence in the male friendship group (pellegrini 1988, 1993). boys often “script” their playfighting using popular culture narratives from television, movies, even video games (jarvis 2006:273, 277; jordan 1995:76; o’donnell and sharpe 2004; botvin and sutton-smith 1977; sutton-smith, gerstmeyer, and meckley 1988). r&t playfighting in the boys’ group teaches them about hierarchy in the male friendship group and experience with playfighting in the play frame teaches them the difference between fantasy violence, stylized violence, and real violence (jones 2002). it also teaches them that what happens in the play frame means nothing outside of the play frame. boys also learn that you can play fiercely and competitively in the play frame, but once you leave that frame you are still friends. in fact, the stylized combat in playfighting actually functions to reinforce the male bonding, as boys can participate in the frame of playfighting only if they trust each other. this last point lets us comment briefly on r&t playfighting in girls and young women, as this is relevant to our speculating below on what scholastic wrestling means to young women. scientific studies find playfighting in mammals as common in young females as young males, so culture rather than biology overly determines gender differences in human play. through the 20th century girls’ play in the u.s. has become more and more like the play observed in boys of the same age, though ethnographers rarely observed girls engaging in r&t playfighting for most of the century. that changed by the 1990s, when ethnographers began to observe elementary school girls playing as aggressively and as competitively as the boys on the playground (thorne 1993; hughes 1993, 1999; beresin 2010). wallis and mechling (2015:295-299), based on their reading of the war memoirs by female veterans of the wars in iraq and afghanistan, note that many of those veterans report their own “tomboy” upbringing among brothers and male playmates, an upbringing that made them more comfortable as members of the very masculine cultures of the military folk group (platoons and smaller units). even delfino and mechling wrestling with masculinity 65 these warriors could not engage in the r&t playfighting so common among the men; female warriors have to negotiate a difficult identity project so as to not be perceived as sexual objects. the female warriors, especially those raised as “tomboys,” were confortable with the stylized aggression of the male friendship group, often in the form of insults, teases, even practical jokes, forms of stylized violence involving less intimate body contact than male r&t playfighting. in this regard the female warriors could avoid what female wrestlers cannot, for female wrestlers in high school are engaged in the intimate body contact of wrestling. we return to this point below. what had changed by the 1990s to make girls’ play more like boys play? in part the women’s movement of the 1960s created a generation of parents determined to raise their daughters in less stereotypical ways, buying them fewer barbie dolls and more baseball mitts. young women entered youth sports more easily in the 1970s, and the passage of title ix of the education amendments of 1972 opened up for women of all ages access to the team sports that had been the realm of boys and men. several of the female warriors studied by wallis and mechling (2015:297) had been athletes in high school and college, and they attributed to team sports not only their physical fitness for the military but also their easy familiarity with male folk cultures (solaro 2006:243-44). scholastic wrestling takes the folk play of r&t playfighting and turns it into a more formal activity. the pleasures of formal, scholastic wrestling lie in the more basic drives and needs in both young men and women. biology starts out making no gender distinctions regarding playfighting, but culture and history worked on making those gender distinctions, making the pleasures of r&t playfighting out of the reach of young women. it is only in the past two decades that american culture has made it possible for women to engage fully in everything valuable in r&t playfighting. r&t playfighting both is and is not combat. as such, it creates a frame for stylized combat, as need felt (apparently) by both males and females, and provides the pleasures one experiences in stylized combat—the pleasures of the contest (ong 1981). the novelist john irving always writes and talks about his love of writing and his love of wrestling. his long autobiographical essay, “the imaginary girlfriend,” traces these two threads in his life, and the essay explores the meanings of wrestling from the viewpoint of a wrestler. irving says that “wrestling is not about knocking a man down—it’s about controlling him” (irving 1996, 36). another paradox of this play is that wrestling doesn’t seem to suffer from the usual symptoms of the “trouble with testosterone” (sapolsky 1998). wrestlers tend to be exceedingly polite and civilized on and off the mat. you do not see in wrestling the stylized, performed masculine aggression you might see in football, basketball, and baseball, for example. before a match wrestlers are too busy preparing themselves mentally for the match (some pace, some listen to music or inspirational recordings on their ipods, some sit in quiet meditation) to puff and swagger, and after a match they are too exhausted to waste any energy on male foolery. moreover, you can’t wrestle angry; that’s a sure path to losing a match. as primal and seeming violent as a match is, wresters need cool concentration to succeed. wrestling with masculinity delfino and mechling 66 r&t playfighting offers another set of pleasures, as well. we turn now to exploring the second truth about framed playfighting, namely, that wrestling both is and is not sex. wrestling both is and is not sex in speculating on the psychological functions of the structures of male contests, from verbal dueling to football, alan dundes (1997) uses the folk speech of the contestants to argue that the key theme in these contests is the male’s proving his masculinity by feminizing the male opponent, by “putting down” the male opponent (that is, down into the female, submissive and receptive position in conventional western intercourse). “typically,” continues dundes, “the victory entails some kind of penetration” (dundes 1997, 27; emphasis in original), and he argues that the fear of symbolic anal penetration, the ultimate feminizing act for a male, energizes the contest. football players drive toward the opponents’ “endzone,” basketball players put “balls” through ringed holes, hockey players slap the puck into the “crease,” and so on. dundes borrows from ong (1981) to point out that the latin roots of the word contest– con (with) and testis (testicle)—confirm these sexual meanings. feminist psychoanalytic theory (e.g., chodorow 1978) provides the understanding that masculinity is a fragile construct, needing proof every day, and that the act of feminizing another male through words or physical actions is a favored strategy for distancing oneself from the feminine (mechling 2005). heterosexual men’s touching each other, from hugs to pats on the butt, has to be framed and performed carefully to be read as non-sexual, hence nonfeminizing. horan’s (1988) ethnography of the folk culture of a group home for boys concludes that the playfighting among the boys is the only carefully framed, permissible touching in their lives, satisfying even minimally their human need to be touched and solving the problem that for the abused boys touch is a highly problematic experience. the lesson beyond horan’s particular ethnographic site is that american boys and adolescents need to be touched and need to touch each other, but only under carefully framed circumstances. playfighting and wrestling provide those cultural frames. the playfight frame, including formalized wrestling, permits men to embrace and touch each other in ways otherwise forbidden or carefully framed to maintain heterosexual performance. some of the holds themselves resemble sexual positions (true for male-female wrestling, as well). the folk speech of wrestling, including the formal names of the holds, sometimes reflects these sexual resemblances. for example, a wrestler may be “on top” or “on bottom” in a given hold or moment, language similar to the common references to “topping” and “bottoming” in gay sex. in fact, to be “on bottom” in wrestling clearly means to be dominated, to be in the passive, submissive position, in short, to take the feminine position in sex. a wrestler lying face-to-face on another wrestler is in the top, male position, but holding another wrestler around the waist from behind is also a dominant position, in that case symbolizing a threat of anal penetration. sometimes a wrestler with such a grip on another will be on his own back and technically on delfino and mechling wrestling with masculinity 67 the bottom, but in that position he can bring the opponent’s shoulder’s back down upon the mat for a pin, a dominant male move. other language reinforces the sexual symbolism. coaches talk about aggressively “penetrating” the opponent from the standing position. wrestlers look for the “takedown” (another version of putting the other male “down” into the female position). in john irving’s wrestling memoir he talks about another wrestler as a “rider”—“he could ride me” (1996, 51)—language that could be used to describe sexual intercourse. one hold, the “double grapevine,” is also called the “saturday night ride” (www.urbandictionary.com). the t-shirt vendors are hard to miss at wrestling meets. many of the sayings on the shirts traffic in sexual double entendres (e.g., “ other sports play with them, wrestlers have them”). delfino reports that the most common t-shirt he has seen at matches announces the “ten reasons to date a wrestler”: 10. always wears his headgear 9. will eat anything 8. knows when to push and pull 7. endurance, endurance, endurance 6. goes hard from start to finish 5. can work a two-on-one 4. knows how to use his hips 3. can score from any position 2. never stalls on bottom 1. knows how to ride the homoerotic dimension of male wrestling is lost on neither the participants nor the fans. as brian pronger notes in his study of sports, homosexuality, and sex, a common genre of gay pornography features athletes, including wrestlers (pronger 1990, 145). in his interviews with gay and straight amateur athletes, pronger found that the homoeroticism in wrestling was a recurring topic. for the gay men, it was their first, safe, framed “opportunity to explore, unwittingly, the homoerotic potential of masculine physical contact” (1990:183). “boys and teenagers are intuitively aware of this kind of fun,” writes pronger, “and wrestle with their friends. some are content with the subtle, nongenital expression of the paradox…” (1990:184). as for dundes (1978), pronger sees “territorial domination” as the key objective in male contests (pronger 1999:376). young male wrestlers report worries about getting erections, which would be all too obvious in their singlets and might signal something more serious than playful homoeroticism among heterosexual males. actually, the physiology of erections means that it is highly unlikely that a wrestler in a real match would get an erection; the demand for blood for other muscles in use is too great. but some of the young men interviewed by pronger did mention unwanted erections while playfighting with teammates between matches (1990:185). and, as pronger notes, the lack of erections does not diminish the homoeroticism in wrestling any more than the absence of erections in nude male hazing negates the homoeroticism of those events and customs (mechling 2008, 2009). http://www.urbandictionary.com http://www.ebaumsworld.com/jokes/read/843035/## wrestling with masculinity delfino and mechling 68 for some wrestlers and observers, the male body in pain may be erotic. wallis and mechling (2015) found many references to the eroticization of pain in the memoirs by war veterans and in commentary on experiences in basic training and in the combat zone (see zeeland 1996, for example). snyder (2012) sees “hard work” as a phrase male wrestlers use in their construction of a hard, tough masculinity, a rhetorical defense against the perception by others that male wresting is “gay,” and we read this as a celebration of pain. please note that we are not arguing that male wrestling is a form of homosexual behavior or that straight-identifying wrestlers are repressed homosexuals. rather, if we understand and take seriously bateson’s point about the paradox of play, then we can see that male wrestling does not stand for real homosexuality, but it does stand for the unconscious need for male intimate touching with other males, touching that can be an important component of the emotional bonding with other males in the group. some male sports mask these meanings with far more indirection and symbolic displacement than does wrestling. wrestling and the performance of masculinity for good reasons, many adolescent males worry about their performances as males. although high schools now are the sites for a broad range of performances of masculinity, in general adolescent males continue to experience strong pressures to perform a normative (hegemonic) heterosexual identity, regardless of their actual sexual identity. masculinity is always a fragile construction, and young men in high school encounter daily tests to “prove” their masculinity. the sociologists who have studied scholastic wrestling hone in on the problems of “impression management” (goffman 1959, 1963) for young men who wrestle. the “problem” facing these wrestlers is the outsiders’ too-often held view that “wrestling is gay.” all of the wrestlers interviewed by fair (2011:492) mentioned the homophobic teasing they endure among their high school peers. the young men, in most cases, want to bolster the impression that they are heterosexual, even though some teams (e.g., michael 2015) practice “inclusive masculinity” and will accept gay wrestlers in their folk group, so long as the gay teammate does not “hit” on a straight member of the group. fair argues that “wrestlers achieve normative masculinity by symbolically framing sexual relations as acts of domination” (2011:492), and it is easy to see how domination in wrestling (putting the opponent “down” in the female role, as we have said) bolsters the performance of normative heterosexuality. fair also found a second male wresters’ strategy for constructing and performing normative masculinity: “the way in which wrestlers’ use of ‘pussy’ parallels how other adolescents typically deploy the epithet ‘fag’” (2011:492). andy experienced this same pattern in his own high school wrestling team, where the coach often sang “pussy… pussy…” in a falsetto voice while making a simulated vulva with his fingers. the boys got the message; wrestle hard, wrestle tough, wrestle like a man. fair’s explanation for the common use of “pussy” and not “fag” or “faggot,” the latter terms so often deployed in adolescent male culture (pascoe 2005), centers on penetration, taking pascoe’s (2005:329) point that faggots “represent a penetrated delfino and mechling wrestling with masculinity 69 masculinity,” the greatest threat to masculinity. “it is precisely this specter of penetrated masculinity,” writes pascoe, “that functions as a regulatory mechanism of gender for contemporary american adolescent boys” (2005:329). fair develops his own argument about “penetration discourse.” the team he studied had a folk term, “girly d,” short for “girly defense,” to describe “a defensive wrestling maneuver that is deemed somehow ‘girly’ or feminine,” especially when the move is in defense against “an offensive attack on the opponent’s legs… called the ‘penetration step’” (fair 2011:499). the homophobia and misogyny so common in adolescent male folk groups mix and reinforce each other in all this discourse. and if in male sports a major source of anxiety is fear of symbolic “penetration” by the opponent (pronger 1999), a feminizing act, then wrestling intensifies that anxiety in both its bodily actions and folk speech. the figurative penetration in wrestling becomes literal in some hazing practices, as we shall see. baker and hotek (2011) discovered in their ethnographic study of a high school wresting team more evidence of the “inclusive masculinity” other researchers have found. the authors observed a range of behavior the young men employed to perform masculinity. some body practices were stereotypically masculine (“being strong, taking pain”), while others were more androgynous (“making weight”), and others even stereotypically feminine (“physical intimacy”). they see the same spread of gender performance across “performance practices” and “emotion practices” (baker and hotek 2011:53-60). in short, as physically aggressive and combative as wrestling seems, the male adolescent wrestlers actually construct, maintain, and repair, if necessary, their performances of masculinity across a range of folk practices, from orthodox masculinity through androgyny to some practices stereotypically feminine. women wrestlers we titled this article “wrestling with masculinity,” realizing at the same time that an increasing number of women are wrestling at the high school level and necessarily are wrestling as a sexual minority on male wrestling teams (lewin 2007). as folklorists interested in the social construction, maintenance, and (when necessary) repair of masculinity in american culture, most of our examples and discussion reflect the experiences of young men. the presence of young women in scholastic wrestling (and, later, in the military) raises some interesting issues and puzzles as we attempt to understand the multiple meanings of wrestling. we have not interviewed high school women who wrestle, and we have not found any ethnographic accounts of the experiences of those women. hall (2015) provides some insight, having both wrestled and coached collegiate women’s wrestling, and it makes some sense to read her study as applying to high school women, though a significant difference is that women wrestlers at the collegiate level wrestle only women. we are in dire need of ethnographic accounts by folklorists of the experiences of high school women who wrestle. that caution aside, we have some clues signaling the sorts of issues and questions that ought to guide the ethnographic work with young women on high school wrestling teams. for example, men and women have different “body wrestling with masculinity delfino and mechling 70 issues.” there are some high school and collegiate sports that require physical conditioning producing musculature in women similar to that of athletic men. in her senior thesis on a collegiate women’s rowing (crew) team, bosworth (2000) notes that many of the women were self-conscious about the non-stereotypical musculature the women were building in their physical training, and these women often changed quickly from their tight-fitting rowing uniforms into loose-fitting sweatshirts and pants at the end of a race. similarly, women wrestlers face issues with their clothing, from their tight wrestling clothes (for obvious reasons, not cut the same way as are the men’s singlets) to the clothes they should wear during team workouts (hall 2015:6-7, 18, 20). the folklorist can assume, reasonably, that the women on a sports team might muster folklore to allay the social and psychological anxieties surrounding their bodies. we expect that the paradox that wrestling both “is and is not combat” and “is and is not sex” would create a different social and psychological drama for the women wrestlers than the ones we found with the young men. first, as we indicated above, girls’ play in the u.s. slowly became more like boys’ play through the 20th century. traditionally girls were less likely to engage in r&t playfighting than were boys, but the access to team sports title ix of the education amendments of 1972 created for girls and young women seems to have accelerated the movement of girls’ play toward the way boys play. one might say, for example, that team sports began to teach young women the framed, stylized aggression boys learned on the playing field. so the observation that wrestling “both is and is not combat” should apply to how young women understand the playfighting as well as do the young men. folklorists and other ethnographers should be able to find increased “stylized” aggression and violence in the folk groups that include women. the second point we take with bateson in mind—namely, that wrestling “both is and is not sex”— is that wrestling becomes more problematic when one of the wresters is a young woman. a young man facing a match against a young woman often is reluctant to wrestle and will sometimes even forfeit a match, facing (in his mind) a lose-lose situation. beat a woman, not so impressive; lose to a woman, you are less than a woman. for boys wrestling boys, the play frame usually sustains the “both is and is not sex” fiction. without any evidence, we have to speculate that the dual nature of the playfighting frame is even more fragile and difficult to sustain for male-female matches. wrestling haze most of the scholarship on scholastic wrestling steers clear of discussing a folk practice that lives mainly underground in the folk culture of wrestlers. hazing is common in all male folk groups, and over the past 20 years highly publicized hazing incidents, some resulting in injury and death, have led to efforts to ban hazing in the military, fraternities, and sports teams. some of the publicized hazing incidents were on university women’s sports teams, though we will not deal with the issue of scholastic wrestling and women’s experiences of hazing for lack of any evidence. instead, we focus on the young men and their hazing customs. delfino and mechling wrestling with masculinity 71 hazing on male wrestling teams does not surprise us. nor does it surprise us that efforts to ban and suppress hazing have largely failed, driving the practices further underground. the urge to haze and initiate members into the male group is strong. anthropologists long ago recorded and analyzed male initiation rites across many cultures, and in most cases those are rites created by adult males to mark the transition of a boy into manhood. in contrast, many scholars of the social construction, maintenance, and repair of masculinity in american culture (e.g., kimmel 2008) note that our culture is more a fratiarchy than a patriarchy, so it is peers who do the initiation into manhood. lacking more formal male initiation rites in american culture, these folk groups of young men must “invent” ways to initiate neophytes into the group, invent tests of manhood that must be passed to prove a masculinity free from feminine traits (raphael 1988, bronner 2012:251-67). hence the misogyny and homophobia in these male folk cultures (mechling 2005). delfino witnessed no hazing in his own wrestling days, nor did he get a hint that the team he was coaching hazed the new members. we do not mean to suggest that hazing on scholastic wrestling teams is widespread; it is common, but it is likely that hazing is mild on most teams. curiously, the serious cases of hazing on scholastic wrestling teams seem, from reports, not to involve alcohol, as do some many serious hazing events (some fatal) on the collegiate level (nuer 1999, nuer ed. 2004). most of the high school wrestling team cases that reach the newspapers take place in locker rooms, showers, and on team buses. lundeen (2013) reports the 2012 cases of three iowa high school wrestling teams discovered to be hazing new members. public details were few, but the hazing involved “humiliation” and nudity (2013:55). in one case, the hazing involved sexual assault with a jump rope handle (2013:59-60). an espn (2002) list of hazing incidents on athletic teams just from 1997-2000 describes hazing incidents on high school wrestling teams in california, connecticut, south carolina, utah, michigan, and nebraska, many of them involving sexual assaults using mop handles, brooms, and (again) a jump rope handle. these cases appeared in newspapers so usually there is not much detail so as to protect the victims, but the account of a hilton head, sc, hazing of younger wrestlers by older includes reference to specific practices—“trademarking,” which involves hitting the wet body to raise welts, and “dinking,” which involves placing a finger on or near the rectum, a move sometimes used even during a practice match to startle the opponent. the “butt drag,” a permissible move in wresting which involves one wrestler’s grabbing an opponent’s butt for leverage, lends itself to “dinking,” and a 2010 court case in modesto, california, opened a public debate about the “butt drag” hold; the allegation in that case was that one wrestler sexually assaulted an opponent in practice by “ramming two fingers into a teammate’s anus” (anteola 2010). none of the scholarship on scholastic wrestling (baker and hotek 2011, fair 2011, snyder 2012, michael 2013, and hall 2015) discusses hazing, possibly because it is an aspect of adolescent male folk groups that the scholars worry would cast a negative light on the sport. on the contrary, we think that hazing in scholastic wrestling teams expands our understanding of the unique meanings of the sport for the young men, a formal sport which, as we noted, actually is a formal wrestling with masculinity delfino and mechling 72 extension of folk r&t playfighting. r&t playfighting requires the play frame, of course, which is fragile and can be broken easily by the wrong acts or words. the formal version of r&t playfighting—scholastic wrestling—satisfies the wrestlers so long as the play frame remains in place. that is, the wrestlers experience the practice matches and the competition as “both is and is not” combat and sex, satisfying the adolescent male’s need for stylized aggression and permissible intimate touch of another male. that formal play frame in scholastic wrestling seems to us less fragile than the play frame of informal r&t playfighting, as the wrestling holds are more formally planned and policed by the referee. what strikes us about the hazing practices in the cases made public is the absence of a play frame, which has many consequences. one problem with bateson’s theory of the play frame is that he seems to assume that everyone in the play frame is there voluntarily and has equal power in the frame. goffman (1974) corrected that romantic view of the play frame by showing how players in the frame can be there with hidden motives, using the frame to manipulate others. goffman thought all of socially constructed reality was, in essence, a confidence game, with the actions aimed at convincing others in the frame that everyone was there voluntarily and had equal power. sutton-smith and kelly-byrne (1984) also draw our attention to “the masks of play,” to the ways people will mask other motives with the play frame (“it’s only play”). hazing can be consensual, of course. mechling (2009) argues that hazing most often takes place in a play frame and that most times those being hazed experience the humiliation and other elements (nudity, mild pain) as “not real” (see, also, bronner 2006). hazing becomes abusive when, for example, alcohol destroys the inhibitions of the members hazing the neophyte or when one or more members of the group use the play frame of hazing to “mask” other motives, most often a streak of sadism. these are the ingredients that too often result in injury and fatalities in hazing. the publicized cases of hazing on wrestling teams complicate the meanings of the r&t playfighting of scholastic wrestling. recall that formal and informal wrestling appeals to adolescent men precisely because the play frame of playfighting is a “safe” frame for expressing aggression and even symbolic sexual contact, all in a frame that affirms the strong male bond between the members of the male folk group. there are some things that can break that play frame, like an unwanted erection, but in general the play frame of both formal and informal r&t playfightng serves well the psychological and social needs of the young men. the cases of hazing on wrestling teams, hazing practices that go beyond mere humiliation (which can be executed in the play frame) and involve sexual assault, actually threaten the male bonding that both wrestling and less violent hazing cements. for example, several of these cases involved sexual assault with jump rope handles, broom handles, mop handles, and in one case a brush handle, all inserted in the anus, symbolic sodomy which, apart from the significant pain involved, humiliated the young man being hazed by feminizing him. in his analysis of the custom of paddling in fraternity and some collegiate sports team hazing, mechling (2008) notes that it is important to the male bonding that the paddling involves the buttocks and the potential of sodomizing the initiate without actually doing so. not delfino and mechling wrestling with masculinity 73 so when the members actually penetrate the victim’s anus with a symbolic phallus; that actual penetration destroys the trust and the bonding, which can remain intact when the penetration is symbolic and potential, never enacted. although we know that women’s sports teams sometimes haze the new members, we have no ethnographic evidence or direct testimony from participants to make any solid generalizations about the specific hazing practices or their meanings for the participants. the anecdotal evidence from college women’s sports teams, evidence gleaned from publicized cases, suggests that women’s hazing practices often reproduce the male traditions, which puzzles us. we see clearly the social and psychological functions of those folk practices for the dynamics of a male folk group; how those same practices serve the women is unclear. as bosworth (2000) and the memoirs of female warriors make clear, though, one major aim for women in sports and in the military is to prove to each other and to men that they are as “tough” as men, that they can work and play “through the pain” as well as any man. conclusion of all the team sports played by adolescent men, wrestling poses the greatest challenges to the young man as he attempts to perform a masculine identity. adolescence is a precarious stage of life in american society, in any case, but young men often count on organized sports as a venue for “proving” their normative masculinity. most sports young men play, from football and rugby to soccer and lacrosse, provide rather easy ways to demonstrate the physical toughness, emotional control, and ability to withstand pain that are among the qualities americans consider signs of masculinity. the unique nature of wrestling provides a much more precarious stage for the construction of adolescent masculinity. our batesonian analysis of some of the meanings of male wrestling based on its structures and folk speech suggests the usefulness of the paradoxes of play for male wrestlers as they experience the pleasures wrestling brings, especially the pleasures of r&t playfighting boys learn from a very early age. the two paradoxes—that wrestling both “is and is not combat” and “is and is not sex”—address the social and psychological needs of the adolescent boys in a “safe,” symbolic frame. and the male body, so central in the performance of normative masculinity, is on display in wrestling as it is in few other sports. like all play frames, wrestling’s frame is fragile, sometimes accidentally broken by accident (e.g., an erection or an accidental touch of the opponent’s anus) and quickly repaired, but we also see in unauthorized hazing practices on some teams the cost of violating the play frame. what the fields of folklore studies and play studies need now are ethnographic studies of female wresters in high school to understand better the gender revolution sparked by title ix and by other forces in the last half century. and to make the matter of wrestling and the social construction of gender even more complicated, even as we write this essay a female-to-male transgender high school wrestler in texas is causing turmoil in the world of scholastic wrestling (babb 2017). also on the subject of rapid cultural changes regarding gender, gender identification, and the performance of gender in folk groups, the near-full integration wrestling with masculinity delfino and mechling 74 of women into the armed forces of the u.s. becomes the testing ground for this gender revolution. wrestling seems like a framed play setting ideal for socializing women into the formal institutions, especially the military, that still are extensions of the informal male folk group. if, as the duke of wellington is said to have intoned, “the battle of waterloo was won on the playing fields of eton,” then perhaps the battle for women’s success in previously all-male organizations such as the military will be won, at least for some, on the wrestling mat. works cited anteola, bryant-jon. 2010. fresno court case alarms wrestling community: controversy over “butt drag” could further damage sport’s fragile reputation. fresno bee, december 7. http://www.fresnobee.com babb, kent. 2017. transgender wrestler mack beggs identifies as a male. he just won the texas state girls title. washington post, february 25. https://www. washingtonpost.com/sports/highschools/meet-the-texas-wrestler-who-wona-girls-state-title-his-name-is-mack/2017/02/25/982bd61c-fb6f-11e6-be051a3817ac21a5_story.html?utm_term=.93c0b5e71a41 baker, phyllis l., and douglas r. hotek. 2011. grappling with gender: exploring masculinity and gender in the bodies, performances, and emotions of scholastic wrestlers. journal of feminist scholarship 1:49-64. bateson, gregory. 1972. a theory of play and fantasy. in bateson, steps to an ecology of mind, pp. 177-193. chicago: university of chicago press. orig. pub 1955. beresin, anna r. 2010. recess battles: playing, fighting, and storytelling. jackson: university press of mississippi. bettelheim, bruno. 1954. symbolic wounds: puberty rites and the envious male. new york: collier books. bordo, susan. 1999. the male body: a new look at men in public and in private. new york: farrar, straus, and giroux. bosworth, rita. 2000. playing the gender game: an ethnographic study of women in competitive sport and gender socialization. unpublished. senior thesis in american studies, university of california, davis. botvin, g.j., and brian sutton-smith. 1977. the development of structural complexity in children’s fantasy narratives. developmental psychology 13:377-388. bronner, simon j. 2006. crossing the line: violence, play, and drama in naval equator traditions. amsterdam: amsterdam university press. _____. 2012. campus traditions: folklore from the old-time college to the modern mega-university. jackson: university press of mississippi. brown, mac. 2000. the expression of care in the rough and tumble play of boys. journal of research in childhood education 15(1):104-16. burghardt, gordon m. 2005. the genesis of animal play. cambridge, ma: mit press. chodorow, nancy. 1978. the reproduction of mothering: psychoanalysis and the sociology of gender. berkeley: university of california press. http://www.fresnobee.com https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/highschools/meet-the-texas-wrestler-who-won-a-girls-state-title-his-name-is-mack/2017/02/25/982bd61c-fb6f-11e6-be05-1a3817ac21a5_story.html?utm_term=.93c0b5e71a41 https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/highschools/meet-the-texas-wrestler-who-won-a-girls-state-title-his-name-is-mack/2017/02/25/982bd61c-fb6f-11e6-be05-1a3817ac21a5_story.html?utm_term=.93c0b5e71a41 https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/highschools/meet-the-texas-wrestler-who-won-a-girls-state-title-his-name-is-mack/2017/02/25/982bd61c-fb6f-11e6-be05-1a3817ac21a5_story.html?utm_term=.93c0b5e71a41 https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/highschools/meet-the-texas-wrestler-who-won-a-girls-state-title-his-name-is-mack/2017/02/25/982bd61c-fb6f-11e6-be05-1a3817ac21a5_story.html?utm_term=.93c0b5e71a41 delfino and mechling wrestling with masculinity 75 dundes, alan. 1978. into the endzone for a touchdown: a psychoanalytic consideration of american football. western folklore, 37:75-88. _____. 1987. the american games of “smear the queer” and the homosexual component of male competitive sport and warfare. in parsing through customs: essays by a freudian folklorist, pp. 178-94. madison: university of wisconsin press. _____. 1997. from games to war and other psychoanalytic essays in folklore. lexington: university press of kentucky. espn. 2002. “sports hazing incidents.” june 3. https://espn.go.com/otl/hazing/list. html fair, brian. 2011. constructing masculinity through penetration discourse: the intersection of misogyny and homophobia in high school wrestling. men and masculinities 14(4):491-504. goffman, erving. 1959. the presentation of self in everyday life. garden city, ny: anchor. _____. 1961. asylums: essays on the social situation of mental patients and other inmates. garden city, ny: anchor books. _____. 1963. stigma: notes on the management of spoiled identity. new york: prentice-hall. _____. 1974. frame analysis: an essay on the organization of experience. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. groos, karl. 1898. the play of animals. new york: d. appleton and co. hall, tianna. 2015. the warrior mentality: the stigmatized identity of female wrestlers. social sciences capstone projects, paper 36. horan, robert. 1988. the semiotics of play fighting at a residential treatment center. in adolescent psychiatry: developmental and clinical studies, vol. 15, ed. sherman c. feinstein, pp. 367-381. chicago: university of chicago press. hughes, linda. 1993. “you have to do it with style”: girls’ games and girls’ gaming. in feminist theory and the study of folklore, eds. t. hollis, l. pershing, and m.j. young, pp. 230-48. urbana: university of illinois press. _____. 1999. children’s games and gaming. in children’s folklore: a sourcebook, eds. b. sutton-smith, j. mechling, t.w. johnson, and f.r. mcmahon, pp. 94119. logan: utah state university press. irving, john. 1996. the imaginary girlfriend. in trying to save piggy sneed, pp. 25145. new york: arcade publishing. jarvis, pam. 2006. “rough and tumble” play: lessons in life. evolutionary biology 4:330-346. jones, gerard. 2002. killing monsters: why children need fantasy, super-heroes, and make-believe violence. new york: basic books. jordan, e. 1995. fighting boys and fantasy play: the construction of masculinity in the early years of school. gender and education 7:69-87. kimmel, michael. 2008. guyland: the perilous world where boys become men. new york: harpercollins. https://espn.go.com/otl/hazing/list.html https://espn.go.com/otl/hazing/list.html wrestling with masculinity delfino and mechling 76 lewin, tamar. 2007. more girls take part in high school wrestling. new york times, february 17. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/17/ nyregion/17wrestle.html?_r=1& lundeen, richard. 2013. hazing: rituals of bondage. charleston, sc: createspace. mechling, jay. 2001. on my honor: boy scouts and the making of american youth. chicago: university of chicago press. _____. 2005. the folklore of mother-raised boys and men. in manly traditions, ed. simon j. bronner, pp. 211-227. bloomington: indiana university press. _____. 2008. paddling and the repression of the feminine in male hazing. thymos: journal of boy studies 2(1): 60-75. _____. 2009. is hazing play? in transactions at play, ed. cindy dell clark, pp. 4561. lanham, md: university press of america. _____. 2016. the erotics of adolescent male altruism. boyhood studies 9(2):92-115. michael, b. 2015. “just don’t hit on me and i’m fine”: mapping high school wrestlers’ relationship o inclusive masculinity and heterosexual recuperation. international review for the sociology of sport 50(8):912-928. murphy, peter f. 2001. studs, tools, and the family jewels: metaphors men live by. madison: university of wisconsin press. nuwer, hank. 1999. wrongs of passage: fraternities, sororities, hazing, and binge drinking. bloomington: indiana university press. _____, ed. 2004. the hazing reader. bloomington: indiana university press. o’donnell, m., and sharpe, s. 2004. the social construction of youthful masculinities: peer group subcultures. in routledgefalmer reader in sociology of education, ed. s. balla, pp. 89-127. london: routledgefalmer. ong, walter j. 1981. fighting for life: contest, sexuality, and consciousness. ithaca, ny: cornell university press. pascoe, c.j. 2005. “dude, you’re a fag”: adolescent masculinity and the fag discourse. sexualities 8(3):329-46. pelligrini, anthony. 1988. rough and tumble play and social competence. developmental psychology, 24: 802-06. _____. 1993. boys’ rough and tumble play and social competence, contemporaneous and longitudinal relations. in the future of play theory, ed. a. pellegrini, pp. 107-26. new york: suny press. pronger, brian. 1990. the arena of masculinity: sports, homosexuality, and the meaning of sex. new york: st. martin’s press. _____. 1999. outta my endzone: sport and the territorial anus. journal of sport and social issues 23(4):373-389. raphael, ray. 1988. the men from the boys: rites of passage in male america. lincoln: university of nebraska press. roberts, john, m., malcolm j. arth, and robert r. bush. 1959. games in culture. american anthropologist 61:597-605. sapolsky, robert m. 1998. the trouble with testosterone; and other essays on the biology of the human predicament. new york: scribner. snyder, bryan. 2012. hard work, overcoming, and masculinity: an ethnographic account of high school wrestlers’ bodies and cultural worlds. unpublished ph.d. diss. university of nebraskalincoln. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/17/nyregion/17wrestle.html?_r=1& http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/17/nyregion/17wrestle.html?_r=1& delfino and mechling wrestling with masculinity 77 solaro, erin. 2006. women in the line of fire. emeryville, ca: seal press. sutton-smith, brian. 1998. the ambiguity of play. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. _____. 2017. play for life: play theory and play as emotional survival. rochester, ny: the strong museum. sutton-smith, brian, john gertsmyer, and alice meckley. 1988. playfighting as folkplay amongst preschool children. western folklore 47:161-76. sutton-smith brian, and diana kelly-byrne. 1984. the masks of play. in the masks of play, eds. b. sutton-smith and d. kelly-byrne, pp. 184-199. new york: leisure press. thorne, barrie. 1993. gender play: girls and boys in school. new brunswick, nj: rutgers university press. wallis, john paul, and jay mechling.2015. devil dogs and dog piles. western folklore 74(3/4):275-308. zeeland, steven. 1996. the masculine marine: homoeroticism in the marine corps. new york: harrington park press. pages from cfr_2017_part13 cfr_2017_part14 cfr_2017_part15 cfr_2017_part16 cfr_2017_part17 cfr_2017_part18 ocr document book reviews the introductions suggest that this book is a product of its time, arising out of efforts to reclaim ukrainian culture and heritage as a distinctive tradition following the dissolution of the soviet union. the emphasis on the tales as "a portrait of the country's soul" (xxv) that contribute to a persistent sense of national identity despite centuries of oppression by successive dominating forces reflects the nation's political history but is also indicative of the romantic nationalist attitude that underlies this work. still, the political and historical details provide a useful context for the tales. the stories themselves are wonderful humorous, robust, some simple and some complex. some are ukrainian variants of widely distributed stories -comfortably familiar although perhaps with a surprising twist; others are new to me and i am glad to learn of them. suwyn's charming black-and-white marginal drawings add to the book's visual appeal. the short section of color illustrations are used as an educational supplement to expose readers to the ukrainian folk arts of pysanky (elaborately decorated easter eggs) and rushnyky (ceremonial embroidered cloths). illustrations of folktales by ukrainian artists are also included. suwyn is a good storyteller, despite a few disconcerting slips. in "the frog princess," one of my favorite stories, the frogs are supposed to say "ribbet, ribbet, " -a startling americanism accompanied by a footnote explaining that ukrainian frogs actually say "kvak, kvak." but on the whole, the stories are well told quickly moving narratives, accessible yet culturally specific. relatively little ukrainian folk material is available for the general public, especially children. altogether, this is an appealing collection that will be welcome to schools and libraries. vicky dworkin ph. d. candidate in american studies, student of storytelling, university of hawaii at manoa mabie, hamilton wright. norse stories. new york: hippoerene books, 1999. 250pp. $14.95 hc growing up as a child in scandinavia you were automatically introduced to the heathen religion of your forefathers by virtually daily references to some pagan god or other. if there was a thunderstorm, it was said that thor was out riding in the sky, if the harvest failed 109 book reviews frey was seen as ill-tempered. now, children and adults alike have the change to get acquainted or re-acquainted with this mythical world. norse stories, first published in 1901, has been brought back into print. on 250 pages, each with a handsome border depicting various mythical creatures, the author brings to life the adventures of the gods and goddesses, giants, dwarfs, serpents and other creatures and animals inhabiting this world. he tells how our forefathers thought the world was created, how odin was the ruler of this world, how thor got his hammer, how frey fell in love with the beautiful gerd, how idun's apples kept them young, how loke always tried to ruin everything and finally succeeded by having balder slain, an occurrence that ultimately introduced evil into the world and finally led to ragnarok, or the end of the world. balder was the best of the gods, the fairest and the kindest. prior to being slain he had a dream about his own death and the goddess frigg, his mother, extracted an oath from everybody and everything not to hurt balder. thinking that the mistletoe was too tiny and insignificant, she neglected to extract an oath from it. loke soon found out, went looking for the mistletoe and brought it to hoder, balder's blind brother, and asked him to throw it at balder. since balder was thought to be invincible, the gods had been using him for target practice by throwing darts, spears, and other weapons at him, all of which fell harmless at his feet. hoder throws the mistletoe twig at balder, it pierces his heart and he falls dead to the ground. since he did not die in battle, he is not allowed to go to valhalla but ends up in hel. frigg sends his other brother, hermod, to retrieve him in hel. however, this can only be accomplished if everybody weeps for him. again, loke, disguised as an old woman, refuses to weep for balder who therefore must remain in hel. the tale of balder's death can be seen as representative for all the other tales in that it describes the everyday life of the gods with them playing or waging battles against the giants during the day and feasting at night, but it also shows the dichotomy between good and evil, here symbolized by balder and loke, and the ongoing battle between these forces. these stories are based on the prose edda by snorre sturieson, which was written in the 13th century. by this time scandinavia had already been converted to christianity and snorre himself was a christian. the stories had been handed down from generation to genera 110 book reviews tion and it can be assumed that they had changed in the process and that snorre's version is more the result of a brilliant storyteller bringing these tales to he than an accurate rendition. however, even today, the edda is considered the most important source of norse mythology. these tales again have been transformed, this time into individual fairytales with titles such as "the making of the world," "odin's search for wisdom," "thor goes fishing," "the binding of the wolf' and so on. the tales in the edda are intertwined and are told by one or several narrators. dividing the tales into separate chapters obviously makes them more accessible and easier to follow, especially for a youthful audience. whereas the narrators in snorre's edda repeatedly point out that "there is no need to make a long story of it," this is exactly what this author has done. the language is highly embellished and filled with descriptive adjectives, creating a distinct mood or impression, but sometimes unnecessarily slowing down the flow of events. passages such as "words could hardly describe the beautiful country through which odin took his way-its deep, quiet green valleys, with the sparkling cold streams rushing through them; its steep mountains, crowned with fir and pine; its great crags standing out into the sea; and its fjords breaking the coast into numberless bays," gives a marvelous description of the landscape but might, however, make a young reader reach for his "asterix." in addition, the author/narrator often comments on an event or personage. observations such as "like all other people of little nature, they were envious or cruel" or "but when one has nothing to do, it's easy to do wrong." are strewn throughout the stories. in comparison, snorre generally abstained from such philosophical or moral judgments. in spite of the above comments, norse stories, make for entertaining reading about gods and heroes and their heroic or not so heroic deeds, their longings and their fears. norse stories can be enjoyed at any age, however, with the presentation of the stories as fairy tales, the most likely target audience would be 10-14 year olds. with black and white instead of the colorful illustrations in the original edition, younger children might not appreciate it and adults might prefer reading the original text in the prose edda. anita burns, hawaii 111 67 children’s oral poetry: identity and obscenity1 c.w. sullivan iii i offered this paper for publication not so much for any original insights present but as it may be (or may not be!) an example of how to take children’s folklore scholarship into other venues—in this case, children’s literature, at a conference where this was the only children’s folklore paper. introduction we were all children once, and according to children’s folklorist jay mechling, that might pose a problem for collectors of children’s folklore. in an essay entitled “children’s folklore,” in elliott oring’s collection, folk groups and folklore genres, mechling begins his argument by saying, “the white, male folklorist recognizes that he will never really know what it means to be a black woman, but we all think we know what it means to be a child” (1986, 91). but our knowledge of what it means to be a child is filtered through a lens that is thick with the years that have passed since we were children, years during which we have forgotten or glossed over much, years during which selective memory has compressed some experiences and expanded others, years during which we have developed our own “presumptions and emotional responses” to the very subject that we think we are treating objectively (91). in fact, some adults, when confronted with certain materials collected by children’s folklorists, deny the reality of those materials or, worse, accuse folklorists of unethical behavior. i, as editor of children’s folklore review, was accused of providing children with obscene materials when i published a series of articles by sociologist gary alan fine on pre-adolescent male slang. my accuser, a local high school principal, neither recognized that the publication was for adults, not children, nor remembered that children of that age, especially perhaps boys, were capable of such language. thanks to an understanding department chair and dean who defended me and the journal, i suffered no professional ill effects from the situation and cfr has continued on as a successful and, i hope, a wellrepescted journal of children’s folklore research. other scholars have not been so fortunate. an australian collector photographing girls’ playground games took a picture of girls flipping up their dresses and showing their undergarments as such an action was described in the rhyme they were chanting: flintstones, flintstones, yabba, yabba, doo! (repeat) fred does the bow, wilma does the curtsy, pebbles shows her knickers, and we all go “wow!” cfr_2009_r4.indb 67 10/25/09 6:19:25 pm children’s oral poetry sullivan 68 his dissemination of these photographs caused him to be arrested and suspended from his university position for distributing child pornography. the case dragged on for six months or so until it came before an understanding magistrate who threw it out of court (australian children’s folklore newsletter 1994, 1). neither of these cases is about the children, but both illustrate adults’ misperceptions about childhood, adults projections of their own attitudes onto what they see happening on the baseball field or the playground. these projections arise for at least two reasons. one one hand, as mechling recounts, our imagination is still dominated by “[e]nlightenment and romantic era portraits of the child,” by our “american commonsense understanding of childhood…[as] a period of separation, protection, preparation, and innocence,” and by the “various schools of child psychology” that are all “bound by cultural assumptions and biases” (93). on the other hand, it seems to me that the american (if not western) process of “growing up” encourages us to leave childhood behind. how often are children told “act your age,” “don’t be a baby,” and “you’re too old for that”? children are told, with regard to rivalry with younger siblings, “you should know better; you’re older.” some growing up, “act like a lady” and “big boys don’t cry,” is gender coded. this attitude is nothing new, as an often-quoted, ancient passage indicates: “when i was a child, i spake as a child, i understood as a child, i thought as a child; but when i became a man, i put away childish things” (1 corinthians 13:11). the solution, mechling argues, is for the folklorist to “approach the child’s folk group assuming very little” (93). one of the definitions of a folk group is that it operates on a very “high context” level; that is, things happen in the group that outsiders would not understand without explanation. this is especially true of folk speech; within a folk group there are words and phrases that members of the group will share with each other and understand that outsiders would need explained—if, in fact, members of the group were willing to share such words and phrases with outsiders. mechling continues his argument by suggesting a solution: “the folklorist [should take] an approach that views children’s folk cultures as if they were fully complex, developed, and autonomous. this ‘as if’ assumption means that we approach children’s folk cultures just as we would any unfamiliar culture” (93). to rephrase mechling, then, one might say, “the adult folklorist recognizes that he or she no longer really knows what it means to be a child and approaches the collection of children’s folklore as one would apporoach the collecting of folklore from any group of which he or she is not a member.” what i would like to present here, then, is a look a children’s oral poetry as the creation of a culture significantly different from the adult culture around it and examine the ways in which the members of this culture use poetic forms to create, first, an identity separate from the adult culture and, second, especially through the medium of obscenity, an identity in opposition to the adult culture. cfr_2009_r4.indb 68 10/25/09 6:19:25 pm sullivan children’s oral poetry 69 identity much of what i wish to say about identity in general has been said before, but i hope to be able to add something to the discussion. in american children’s folklore, simon bronner asserts that the division between adult authority and the children under adult control is reflected in children’s folklore in general: “for children, we must remember, do not simply ape the mores of adults. they want to declare their own identity, and lore is their protected expression of cultural connection to one another” (1988, 29).2 bronner continues, “besides rebelling against adult norms, children’s folklore reflects children’s concerns about their rapid growth, the appropriate responses to adult society, and traditional roles and values in a nation being modernized” (31). oral poetry, whether handed down traditionally to deal with recurring situations or created and circulated in response to contemporary cultural stimuli, forms a very large part of younger children’s folklore. children use traditional rhymnes in what iona and peter opie, in the lore and language of schoolchildren, call “oral legislation” (1959, 121-153); that is, they use rhymes in the way older children and adults use books of rules. countingout rhymes, for example, such as “eenie, meenie, miney, moe” or “one potato, two potato,” are considered unbiased ways of selecting the first “it” in a game, the sacrificial person who has to be “it” without having been caught.3 game or play rhymes are not always legislation, but they do structure children’s activities; examples include game rhyme “the farmer in the dell,” hand-clapping rhyme “i’m a pretty little dutch girl,” ball-bouncing rhyme “my name is alice,” and the largest category of all, jump-rope rhymes “cinderella dressed in yellow,” “teddy bear, teddy bear, turn around,” and “policeman, policeman do your duty.” such rhymes have been circulated by children for generations as they organized their own play, without direct adult supervision, long before they were whisked off to such regulated activities as adult-organized football or baseball leagues, boy scouts, or girl guides. in addition to regulating their own games, children have a series of rhymes that attempt to enforce conformity. children have their own ideas, independent of (but to some extent derived from) the adult culture that surrounds them, and they have rhymes which make fun of or insult transgressors within the group. overweight children hear “fatty, fatty, two-by-four,” a child hastily dressed might hear, “i see london, i see france / i see [name]’s underpants,” informers to authorities hear, “tattletale, tattletale, / hanging on the bull’s tale,” liars hear “liar, liar, pants on fire,” and, of course, immature or sensitive children hear, “cry, baby cry, stick your finger in your eye.” there are many more such rhymes, and the point is that they are circulated by children, not taught by adults, and address what the child’s folk group considers proper or, more to the point, improper behavior. on a slightly more complex level, and more obviously influenced by the adult community, perhaps especially by the family, are rhymes that insult people outside the child’s immediate peer and age group. the opies, collecting in the 1950s, included the following rhymes in a chapter entitled “partisanship.” some rhymes have historical origins: cfr_2009_r4.indb 69 10/25/09 6:19:25 pm children’s oral poetry sullivan 70 the irishmen ran down the hill, the englishmen ran after, and many a pat got a bullet in his back at the battle of boy’an water. (1959, 343). other kinds of partisanship can be directly religious. protestants may say, “catholic, catholic, ring the bell, / when you die you’ll go to hell” and be answered by the catholics, “protestant, protestant, quack, quack, quack, / go to the devil and never come back” (344). still other rhymes can be political, this one based on an oscar meyer bologna commercial jingle: my peanut has a first name it’s j-i-m-m-y my peanut has a second name it’s c-a-r-t-r [sic] oh, i hate to see him every day and if you ask me why i’ll say ’cause jimmy carter has a way of messing up the u-s-a (sullivan 1980, 9). what are serious matters to adults—war, religion, and politics—become fodder for children creating parodies of that adult seriousness. there are also national and ethnic attitudes in some children’s rhymes. when i was young, we caught “a nigger by the toe,” although later and more sensitive versions of “eenie, meenie, miney, moe” change “nigger” to “tiger.” in one potato, two potato: the folklore of american children, herbert and mary knapp, collecting collecting and publishing some twenty years after the opies,4 include, in addition to political rhymes, what i would call derisive rhymes about africanamericans, asian-americans, jews, and “polacks”5 (1976, 190-206). one that the knapps collected covers several bases: franklin said to eleanor, “eleanor, how are you?” eleanor said to franklin, “i’ve got some advice for you. roses are red, violets are blue, you kiss the niggers, i’ll kiss the jews, and we’ll stay in the white house as long as we choose.” (1976, 201). rather than reinforcing internal conformity, these rhymes solidify the folk group’s identity in opposition to what anthropologists and sociologists, as well as folklorists, would call “the other”; i.e., those people who are obviously and demonstrably not “us.” cfr_2009_r4.indb 70 10/25/09 6:19:26 pm sullivan children’s oral poetry 71 another way in which children assert their own identity is through parody. this seems to me a more subtle kind of partisanship or derision in which children take what is presented to them by the adult culture and parody it; that is, they take something serious and change it to make it humorous. bronner suggests that “children are fond of parodying the standard and familiar, especially when in the process of doing so they can establish that they have a world of their own making” (1988, 77). nothing is out of bounds as far as children are concerned. they will parody religious materials from evening-meal grace, “good bread, good meat, / good god, let’s eat” to evening prayers, “now i lay me down to sleep, / a bag of peanuts at my feet,” to christmas carols, “joy to the world, the school burned down.” school is a particular target; “the battle hymn of the republic” becomes “mine eyes have seen the glory of the burning of the school” and in a parody of “on top of old smokey,” we hear “i shot my poor teacher / with a forty-four gun.” commerical jingles, too, are prime targets: “macdonald’s is your kind of place, / they throw french fries in your face,” “pepsi cola hits the spot, / smells like vinegar, tastes like snot,” or “sani-flush, sani-flush, / cleans your teeth without a brush.” and there are many more parodies of this sort. while most parodies serve to establish children’s identity as separate from the adult world, some parodies indicate different levels within children’s folk culture.6 by parodying the theme song from the television show, barney and friends, older children can indicate that they have outgrown a program directed at the very young viewer. in “‘i hate you, you hate me’; children’s responses to barney the dinosaur,” elizabeth tucker, while also acknowledging timely references to topics like the aids epidemic, asserts this very point. the original theme song, which begins “i love you, you love me,” becomes in parody versions: i hate you, you hate me. let’s go out and kill barney and a shot rang out and barney hit the floor no more purple dinosaur (1999, 28). and as judy mckinty points out, there are similar songs about the teletubbies set to the barney tune: i hate po, po hates me, we’re not a happy family, with a dagger in his back and a bullet in his head, uh-oh laa laa, dipsy’s dead (2000, 49). the older child’s execution of barney or one of the teletubbies signals his or her rejection of that earlier stage of life and is part of the putting behind of childish things i spoke of earlier. by far, the most popular area of parody is the nursery rhyme. nursery rhymes are among the earliest rhymes to which children are exposed, the earliest rhymes they learn themselves, and the earliest rhymes they parody. moreover, the cfr_2009_r4.indb 71 10/25/09 6:19:26 pm children’s oral poetry sullivan 72 parodies show both the separation from the adult world and the development of the child within his or her folk group. the earliest of these, that is, those said by the youngest children, are usually innocent. mary had a little lamb, it was a greedy glutton, she fed it on ice cream all day, and now it’s frozen mutton (opie 1959, 90). and one of my favorites: mary had a little lamb, her father shot it dead, now mary takes her lamb to school, between two hunks of bread. but as children get a bit older, the parodies become somewhat more daring: mary had a little lamb she tied it to a heater every time it turned around it burned its little peter. (bronner 1988, 80). and then more sexually suggestive and linguistically complex: mary had a little lamb, and, boy, was the doctor surprised. and: mary had a little lamb, she also had a bear; i’ve often seen her little lamb, but i’ve never seen her bear [bare]. what is true of the “mary had a little lamb” parodies is also true of other nursery rhymes. parodies tell what jack burned when he jumped over the candle stick, what jack and jill were really doing up on that hill, what happened to mother hubbard when she went to get her dog a bone from the cupboard, how having so many children affected the old woman who lived in the shoe, and what jack horner was eating in the corner—just to name some of the most popular. obscenity7 this obviously brings us to the r-rated section of the performance. children’s rude or off-color or obscene humor (let’s just settle on “obscene” as the cover term) cfr_2009_r4.indb 72 10/25/09 6:19:26 pm sullivan children’s oral poetry 73 has been a problem for folklorists for some time. on one hand, as iona opie has testified (see note #4), publishers would not accept such materials in the 1950s. by the time of the knapps’ one potato, two potato in 1976, things had changed, and materials that could not have been published in the 1950s could be published. when simon bronner published american children’s folklore, in 1988, it seems as of anything was allowed. however, the opies said, “genuinely erotic verse…is unusual” (1959, 95), and the knapps echoed that sentiment, “little erotic verse shows up in grade school” (1976, 85); however, as the knapps admitted on the very next page (86), it wasn’t easy, and was sometimes impossible, for adults to convince children to tell them such materials—and for obvious reasons. as the knapps suggest and bronner’s examples reinforce, such erotic materials become plentiful among junior high school age children. as with the “mary had a little lamb” parodies, children’s obscene humor is developmental within the folk group; that is, as the children get older, their obscene verse changes. the first subject of such verse is feces. one of the first insults a child learns is to call someone else a “doo doo head,” and there is an attendant verse, “nanny, nanny boo boo / stick your head in doo doo.” the very first obscene verse i learned from an older boy in the neighborhood was: 1944 the monkey climbed the door the door split the monkey shit 1944 why this made me laugh heartily, i now have no idea. a rhyme reported by the knapps may illustrate its age with a reference to a chain-pull toilet, “push the button, pull the chain, / out comes a little black choo-choo train” (1976, 62). bronner includes the night was dark the sky was blue down the alley a shit wagon flew a bump was hit a scream was heard a man was killed by a flying turd and remarks that “these rhymes comment on children’s growing understanding of taboos on certain images and words” (1988, 81). they are also opportunities for children to engage in what mechling might call “obscene play” or “forbidden play” (1986, 94), a kind of play which is their own and in which they engage in direct opposition to the attitudes of the adult folk group. and feces is just the beginning. cfr_2009_r4.indb 73 10/25/09 6:19:26 pm children’s oral poetry sullivan 74 in addition to feces, there is a general interest in all eliminatory and excretory functions. a rhyme in which the reciter points to the general areas of chest, crotch, and buttocks creates interesting food metaphors: milkly milky, lemonade, around the corner, hot dogs made. as the title of donna lanclos’ article “bare bums and wee chimneys,” indicates, there is a great deal of children’s lore—rhymes, jokes, sayings, and songs—about those two areas of the body. in addition, underwear, which covers those body parts, is another topic of more than passing interest to children, and in addition to the “i see london, i see france” admonitory rhyme, there are others; and most of the rhymes in this category involve someone’s having lost his or her underwear. one such rhyme begins: tarzan, tarzan, through the air tarzan lost his underwear tarzan say, “me don’t care— jane make me another pair” (bronner 1988, 78). in that rhyme and its many variations, jane, boy, and cheetah are also naked. these rhymes about body parts and underwear, as well as the jokes and songs and sayings about them, allow children to engage in some forbidden language play, and because adults would find at least some of that language play objectionable, the children have, once again, delineated and taken possession of something that is not only their own but in opposition to adult norms. from a focus on body parts and their excretory and eliminatory functions, it is probably not a huge step to focus on body parts and their reproductive functions. the information children have about sex and reproduction is often incomplete, hazy, and/or erroneous; but as soon as they are aware that babies come from women’s bodies, their lore begins to reflect this. the knapps report the following recitation by a ten-year-old boy: “now i lay her on the bed, / i pray to god i’ll use my head” (1976, 172), both a parody of “now i lay me down to sleep” as well as a rather vague rhyme about sexual activity. more familiar, but no less vague, is a parody of “my bonnie lies over the ocean”: my bonnie lies over the ocean my bonnie lies over the sea, my daddy lies over my mommy, and that’s how they got little me. (knapp 1976, 185). about a variation of the song, bronner reports the person from whom the song was collected learned it in second or third grade; he comments, “within the apparent innocence of this ditty, the singer is declaring her astute awareness cfr_2009_r4.indb 74 10/25/09 6:19:26 pm sullivan children’s oral poetry 75 of sexual knowledge supposedly kept hidden from children” (1988, 218, n.22). children’s questions about where babies come from show that they are, indeed, interested in the subject, and the rhymes, songs, jokes, and sayings indicate not only a sort of innocent knowledge, but also a willingness to know and share whatever information they have. while it may be obvious that children know what they are talking about in the immediately previous examples of innocent sexual rhymes, it may be that they are saying more than they know in others. according to roger abrahams (1969, 3132), the single most popular jump-rope rhyme is: cinderella dressed in yellow went upstairs to kiss a fellow made a mistake and kissed a snake how many doctors did it take? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5…(bronner 1988, 70). in a variant reported by the knapps, cinderella “came downstairs with a bellyache” between “kissed a snake” and “how many doctors did it take?” (1976, 125). mechling argues: one way to account for the popularity of this rhyme is to see in it a disguised discussion of sex and pregnancy. the rhyme begins innocently enough with a fairytale character, probably known to children through the disney film and storybooks. but the cinderella story itself is about the sexual awakening of a young woman. in the jump-rope rhyme, the young woman goes upstairs to kiss her boyfriend, but she kisses a “snake” instead, and one way to interpret the meaning of “kissing a snake” is in sexual symbolic terms. in the child’s vague understanding of reproduction and the difference between the womb and the stomach, sexual contact could result in a “stomach ache”—that is, pregnancy (1986, 101). the “bellyache” figures in numerous hand-clapping, jump-rope, and other game rhymes; and it is important to note that these are girls’ game rhymes, making the sexual interpretation even more convincing.8 conclusions where does one draw the line? i do not mean with children; this is their material, and forbidding it to them would be as successful as king canute’s fabled attempt to halt the incoming tide. i do not mean in this presentation, although i will admit a certain trepidation in presenting increasingly obscene materials (as well as some cfr_2009_r4.indb 75 10/25/09 6:19:26 pm children’s oral poetry sullivan 76 i have already presented) to such an august gathering as this. no, i mean where do we draw the line between children’s and adolescents’ folklore? folklorists often talk about age-group folklore (brunvand 1998, 54-56), and that almost works here, ending childhood at 12 and beginning adolescence at 13, but some children learn things sooner and others later. perhaps it might be better to look at intent. i mentioned earlier the opies’ and the knapps’ comments that little erotic verse exists at the grade-school level. it does exist at the junior-high and high-school levels, where it is recited or told perhaps expressly for its erotic value (the basic knowledge of sex and sexuality being fairly well understood by the tellers at that age). in other words, the intent of the adolescent teller is different from the intent of the child teller. the adolescent teller intends to be erotic; the child teller, generally, does not. on the first level, “identity,” the child tellers are creating and passing on verses that are their own, outside of and sometimes in opposition to what they hear from and see in the adult community; and it is difficult to tell just how important it is for those who are essentially powerless to have something of their own, something that they can control. on the second level, “obscenity,” the child tellers are also asserting their independence from the adult culture, especially with the verses about bodily functions and the like; but they are also beginning to show an awareness of, in their own language, direct and metaphorical, that most secret of all adult knowledge, the knowledge of sexuality. but the child’s intent, whatever else it is, is not to be erotic. we will read our children poems from a child’s garden of verses, when we were very young, and now we are six, and our children will love those books and poems, but when they are on their own, on the playground or in the woods, it is more likely that they will be reciting some of the materials, or variations thereof, mentioned above. and this is as it should be; they are entitled to their own poetry and to their identity as children as they express it in that poetry. notes 1. a shorter version of this article was originally presented at the “poetry and childhood conference and exhibition” sponsored by cambridge university and the british library, london, 20-21 april 2009, and will be published in a volume of selected papers from the conference. 2. by “protected,” i assume that bronner means that children protect their lore from adults, not that someone else is protecting the children. 3. examples, unless otherwise noted, are from my own experiences or collections. 4. the publication date is important. iona opie has since said to me in private conversation that oxford university press would not publish some of the ruder materials that she and peter collected. 5. polack jokes, of course, are not really about polish people but are actually an iteration of the numbskull jokes that have circulated about various groups with ethnic and religious labels suitable to the time. cfr_2009_r4.indb 76 10/25/09 6:19:27 pm sullivan children’s oral poetry 77 6. see donna m. lanclos’ “bare bums and wee chimneys” for an extended discussion of defining lines between children and adults. 7. i am omitting the larger category of what simon bronner (1988, 81-82) calls gross rhymes, as violence and other subjects of gross rhymes are not generally considered “rude” or “obscene.” 8. prior to the twentieth century, boys may have participated in what are now considered girls’ games. for a discussion of gender and hopscotch, see derek van rheenan, “boys who play hopscotch: the historical divide of a gendered space” 1998. works cited australian children’s folklore newsletter. 1994. 26 (august): 1-2. abrahams, roger, ed. 1969. jump rope rhymes: a dictionary. austin: university of texas press, bronner, simon j. 1988. american children’s folklore. little rock: august house. brunvand, jan h. 1998. the study of american folklore. 4th ed. new york: norton. fine, gary alan. 1979-1981.pre-adolescent male slang, i-vii. children’s folklore newsletter ii.1, ii.2, iii.1, iii.3, iv.1, iv.2, and iv.3 (fall -winter). knapp, herbert, and mary knapp. 1976. one potato, two potato: the folklore of american children. new york: norton. lanclos, donna m. 2000. bare bums and wee chimneys: rudeness and defining the line between child and adult. children’s folklore review 22.2 (spring): 7-48. mckinty, judy. 2000. e-contributions. children’s folklore review 22.2: 49. mechling, jay. 1986. children’s folklore.. in folk groups and folklore genres, ed. elliott oring. logan: utah state university press, 91-120. opie, peter, and iona opie. 1959. the lore and language of schoolchildren. london: oxford university press. sullivan, c.w. iii. 1980. peanuts and baloney. center for southern folklore 3.1 (winter): 9. tucker, elizabeth. 1999. “i hate you, you hate me”: children’s responses to barney the dinosaur. children’s folklore review 22.1 (fall): 25-33. van rheenan, derek. 1998. boys who play hopscotch: the historical divide of a gendered space. children’s folklore review 21.1 (fall): 5-34. cfr_2009_r4.indb 77 10/25/09 6:19:27 pm cfr_2008-2009_part21 cfr_2008-2009_part22 cfr_2008-2009_part23 cfr_2008-2009_part24 children’s folklo re review volume 38 2017 published by the children’s folklore section of the american folklore society volume 38 2017 contents from the editor 5 articles hair today, gone tomorrow: upsherin, alef-bet, and the childhood navigation of jewish gender identity symbol sets amy k. milligan 7 “there’s an app for that”®: ghost hunting with smartphones elizabeth tucker 27 “little pitchers have big ears”: the intricate world of children and proverbs wolfgang mieder 39 wrestling with masculinity andrew delfino & jay mechling 57 growing little traditions: baltimore’s little miss hon contest david puglia 79 finding new monsters in old places: a review of the works of simon j. bronner through an age-intersectional lens cory thomas hutcheson 93 book review children’s games in the new media age: childlore, media and the playground (burn and richards) anna beresin 99 film review let’s get the rhythm (chagall) cory thomas hutcheson 103 minutes from children’s folklore section: 2016 annual meeting 107 notes and announcements 109 information about contributors 111 5 from the editor brant w. ellsworth i am proud to present the thirty-eighth volume of children’s folklore review, a special issue honoring the distinguished career of simon j. bronner, who, among many other accolades, is a prolific scholar of cultural history, psychological ethnology, material culture and folklife; a master educator and program builder; a tireless public heritage consultant; a past convener and long-time executive board member of the children’s folklore section of the american folklore society; and, to those who have contributed to this issue, a colleague, a mentor, and a friend. the essays found within this issue were penned by those who know simon and his scholarship best: his colleagues and his students, past and present. each essay is illustrative of the tremendous influence his scholarship continues to have in shaping the theoretical orientations and methodology within the study of children’s folklore. it is a great honor to pay tribute to his career, legacy, and, most importantly, to his character. it is this last part—character—that i wish to address in this introduction as the contributors do a splendid job illustrating the import of his “career” and “legacy.” i first met simon—er, dr. bronner—about ten years ago when i was a newly enrolled graduate student at penn state harrisburg. he was the director of the graduate program and was leading a summer seminar in folklore. one night the class gathered at a nearby historic building to conduct hands-on field work. after the work had ended, simon pulled me aside happy to announce he had found funding to award me a graduate assistantship that would cover my tuition and provide a meager monthly stipend. simon did not know me well enough to know that i was newly married, my wife was expecting, and that i was prepared to sacrifice everything in pursuit of my dream of becoming a college professor. he did not know that this offer financially paved the way for me to pursue this dream. i was simon’s student and, as i have learned over the past decade and my colleagues in this issue can attest, simon frequently goes out of his way to find or create opportunities for his students that they may become successful in pursuit of their academic and professional goals. he arms his students with the knowledge and tools requisite for success and then ensures they have opportunities—as instructors, researchers, and writers—to apply them. on behalf of your students, past and present, i thank you for caring. this volume has been a tremendous undertaking, simplified by the authors’ outpouring of interest and willingness to meet impossible deadlines. given a short window, the authors dropped their individual projects and enthusiastically accepted the opportunity to pay tribute to simon. some of the authors—wolfgang meider and libby tucker—even volunteered to subvent the costs of publication and shipping when concerns arose about the size and cost of the issue. wolfgang and libby: thank you for making this volume possible. after making your way through this issue, remember that back issues of children’s folklore review are available through our digital repository, hosted by from the editor 6 indiana university’s scholarworks. i invite you to go back and read through some of simon’s publications over the years, including “the shooter has asperger’s”: autism, belief, and “wild child narratives” (2014), “fathers and sons: rethinking the bar mitzvah as an american rite of passage” (2009), and “expressing and creating ourselves in childhood: a commentary” (1992). finally, i would like to express my appreciation for trevor blank, who, under extremely challenging circumstances, needed to relinquish his editorial position with the journal this past year. during his two-year tenure as editor of the children’s folklore review, trevor tirelessly endeavored to promote scholarship in children’s folklore and propelled the journal forward into the digital age (rightfully so). he is a rising star in the field, though i am not sure how much longer we can or should use that qualifying adjective. i am confident the children’s folklore review will continue to benefit from his scholarship, vision, and leadership for years to come. i would also like to express my immense gratitude to elizabeth (libby) tucker, who has been so incredibly kind and helpful in providing advice, insights, and encouragement as i transitioned into my new role as editor of the journal. her correspondences exude positivity and never fail to make me smile. thanks, too, are due to kathy buchta, sheridan press, priscilla ord, the cfr editorial board, peer reviewers, and contributors. 7 hair today, gone tomorrow: upsherin, alef-bet, and the childhood navigation of jewish gender identity symbol sets amy k. milligan, phd but these hairs, all and singular, radiate into four hundred and ten worlds. (zohar vii:67) in my first semester of my doctoral program, dr. simon j. bronner, my academic idol, agreed to do an independent study course with me on hair. acutely aware that the great folklorist’s time was valuable, i selected charles berg’s the unconscious significance of hair (1951) as our first reading. this seemed fitting, as it was one of the earliest comprehensive hair studies texts. at our first meeting, i sat across from simon in a nervous sweat. what i hadn’t realized was that the book was largely about the phallic motivations of men who shave their heads. simon ran his hand over his shaved head, a twinkle in his eye, and said, “well, where do you want to start?” years later, simon remains my most trusted and cherished mentor, and i am lucky to also count him as a friend. as i have established myself as a bodylorist working in hairlore, simon has been an unwavering voice of support and encouragement, reminding me time and again that if the research isn’t there that i need to write it. as i worked on this essay for this journal commemorating his retirement from teaching—because we all know that it does not mark his retirement from writing—i emailed simon to ask if, in his encyclopedic memory, he could recall any studies mentioning upsherin (a ritual in which an orthodox jewish boy’s hair is cut for the first time at the age of three) that i might be overlooking, as my research was turning up scant results. his response? he encouraged me to get writing. truly, a finer mentor has never been. simon, i continue to learn from and be inspired by you. thank you for believing in me and my crazy hair-brained ideas (and for sharing a mutual love of word play); i can only hope to make you proud and to build my students up as you taught me through your example. in this essay, i introduce the theoretical framework of hairlore, discussing its challenges when applied to the hair of infants and very young children. i contextualize the ritual of upsherin, reviewing its history, describing contemporary applications, and discussing variations of the practice. finally, i offer an analysis of upsherin, considering its role in the shifting relationship between mother and son, as well as in the maintenance of a gendered orthodox symbol set, and discuss the possibility of egalitarian parallels for young girls. i ultimately argue that upsherin is ripe for adaptation by liberal jewish communities in its celebration of jewish core values. hair today, gone tomorrow milligan 8 theoretical basis for childhood hair studies bodylorists and hairlorists tend to focus their attention on the adult body (crane 2000; demello 2000; farrell 2011; grosz 1994; hagen and giuntini 2007; luciano 2002; pitts 2003; thompson 2015; young 1993). in many ways, this makes sense: adults are able to make choices about their self-presentation and engage autonomously with their bodies in ways in which children are unable. attention is also given to teens and young adults, who interact with their bodies as they cultivate their identities, often in contrast to parental wishes, but this consideration tends to have a health and medical scope (montgomery and parks 2001; carroll, riffenburgh, roberts, and myhre 2002; benjamins, risser, cromwell, feldmann, bortot, eissa, and nguyen 2006; silver, silver, siennick, and farkas 2011). other body studies of the pubescent and pre-pubescent body focus on general body image satisfaction (ballentine and ogle 2005; tiggemann and slater 2014; malachowski and myers 2013; coffey, budgeon, and cahill 2016). however, small children and babies also warrant the attention of bodylorists. while their engagement with their bodies is different than that of adults, indeed, it is this very difference that merits consideration. children’s bodies are a canvas for parental or cultural decisions, whereupon they are marked by external factors that exist outside of their control, including body modifications like circumcision, ear piercing, scarification, female genital mutilation, neck or lip expansion, and foot binding (silvester and wilson 2009; rush 2005; fan 1997; skaine 2005). hairlore, a subset of bodylore, considers specifically the role that hair has in the presentation of self (berg 1951; byrd 2002; leach 1958; mccracken 1995; obeyesekere 1984; prince 2010; simon 2001; weitz 2004). the analysis of the hair of infants and children poses three significant hurdles not faced when considering the hair of teens or adults. first, as infants and children grow hair, the rates and ways in which it grows are unpredictable. this seems an obvious truth, but not all small children have hair, and when they do, it is of various lengths and thicknesses. second, baby hair is fine and difficult to style. texturally, baby hair is not like mature hair. as many caregivers1 will attest, at best they can simply attempt to wrangle their small child’s hair into “looking presentable” by slicking it down or using hair accessories to tame it. third, when considering the hair of small children, the analysis does not probe the decisions of children. rather, the hairlore reflects the choices made by caregivers, as they maintain and groom the children’s hair. while it is true that after a certain age small children can voice their opinions about their hair, their corporeal decisions still rest with their caregivers. hair analysis of youth is limited and has concentrated on pubescent or postpubescent youth (mccracken 1995). it is, of course, at this age that young people generally start to make their own decisions about their body, whether it be fashion, hair, or other external manifestations of identity. before puberty, hair is under-analyzed, as it is attributed to marking only young age and, therefore, is not theorized as a conscious manifestation of the self. although this explanation is tempting in its simplicity, the hair of children is fertile ground for the roots of identity. there are multitudes of ways in which our community, ethnic, cultural, and religious identities are worn on our heads beginning at a young age. milligan hair today, gone tomorrow 9 examples of this include the long, unshorn hair of old order anabaptist girls, often worn in braids until it is pinned up under a prayer covering after baptism (reynolds 2001; scott 2008); the uncut and carefully wrapped hair and turban of a sikh child; twists and braids with bright beads worn by african american girls (byrd 2002; leeds craig 2002; prince 2010); a muslim infant’s first haircut on the seventh day of his life; or, as discussed in this essay, the creation of payot (sidelocks or sidecurls worn by jewish men, sometimes also referred to as payos in yiddish) for jewish boys during their upsherin. the changing of hair to mark a life change finds voice in a variety of ways across cultures. examples include amish men growing a beard after marriage (scott 1998); the donning of head coverings after baptism in old order groups (reynolds 2001; scott 2008); orthodox jewish women covering their hair after marriage (milligan 2014a); the creation and maintenance of mystical matted locks (obeyesekere 1984); the shaving of the heads of prisoners (weitz 2004); military recruits getting particular hairstyles after enlisting; or cancer patients shaving their heads prior to chemotherapy. all of these examples demonstrate how hair and its manipulation represent a way of controlling our appearance, especially in times of transition. some hairstyles are attributed especially to young children, including pigtails and bowl-cuts. thickly cut bangs come in and out of fashion for small girls, as has the spiking of little boys’ hair. for babies, the use of large headbands, hats, and even stick-on bows serve as gender identifiers. when young girls do not have long enough hair to put into pigtails or braids, they are marked as female by hair accessories or headwear. young boys often have haircuts that typify their youth, including slightly longer cuts that do not use hair styling techniques like tapering or blending. in recent years, it has also become fashionable to put male babies in baseball caps, fedoras, and other hats as a gender marker. there is historic precedence for the creation of “little adults” in the styling of children (demause 1974; fass 2013; greenleaf 1978). the same can be said for the creation of “little adult” hairstyles. the practical office-friendly bob, for example, has a certain charm on a little girl. likewise, a military style buzz cut is not only practical for little boys, but it is also considered charmingly impish. other adult styles, though, like a french twist for girls or slicked and parted hair for boys, are generally considered too mature for small children. as children transition from infancy to childhood, hair serves as one of the most important signifiers of maturity. small children’s appearances are constantly evolving, whether it is physical growth or eternal signifiers of age like diapers. along with these changes, hair serves an important role in marking the stages of early childhood. at an age where a child is still being bathed by someone else, the maintenance and care of a child’s hair rests with an adult. many caregivers express that they cannot wait for their little girls to have long enough hair to style, creating a bonding ritual and level of intimacy between child and caregiver that extends beyond the shampooing and drying of hair. likewise, caregivers also voice sadness when their children have their first haircut, as it marks the transition between baby and child. similarly, another important rite of passage for children is getting their first school haircut, marking their transition from toddler to school aged hair today, gone tomorrow milligan 10 child, often also coinciding with a child’s ability and responsibility for bathing and dressing herself. the first haircut is a celebrated milestone for many families. the event can happen in the intimate setting of the home or in a barbershop or salon. there are even hairstylists and shops that cater exclusively to children, including offering first haircut experience packages. typically, caregivers will keep a lock of their child’s hair in commemoration of the event. this hair, often a curl, is a different texture and often a different color than the hair an individual will have as an adult, representing the short-lived phase of infancy. likewise, the first haircut also symbolizes independence. although the child is not yet autonomous, the absolute dependency of an infant is replaced by the stubborn independence of a toddler. a baby enters the hair cutting ritual, and she emerges a child. the first haircut milestone is particularly striking in the transformation of young boys. more often than not, young girls have their hair grown long. in doing so, the first haircut is delayed and, even when trimmed, does not dramatically change the overall appearance of the little girl. for young boys, however, the first haircut can drastically alter the way they look. in clipping off the wispy baby hair and shaping the remaining hair into a more mature style, he is transformed from a baby to a child, or, as parents will often exclaim, “he looks like a little man!” the impact of this moment is even more profound when the transformation of the young boy also coincides with an externalization of religious affiliation through the creation of payot and the boy beginning to wear a yarmulke (the traditionally male skullcap worn by jews, also known as a kippah in hebrew) and tzitzit (the knotted ritual fringes traditionally worn by observant jewish men, typically attached to a fourcornered garment), as is experienced during the upsherin ritual. contextualizing upsherin upsherin is commonly practiced only among the most religiously observant2 jewish communities, typically among the hasidic, haredi, and other orthodox communities.3 upsherin, also sometimes transliterated from the yiddish as upsherin, opsherin, or upsherinish, literally means “to shear off” and includes both a haircutting ritual and, as will be discussed, a school initiation. this section begins by offering a brief history of the practice of upsherin followed by a description of the ritual in contemporary practice. finally, it concludes by discussing some of the variations of the practice. not only has upsherin been underanalyzed by scholars—indeed, yoram blau (2003) offers the only other theorized analysis of the ritual—it warrants little mention even in examinations of jewish orthodoxy (diamond 2000; gurock 2009; heilman 1999; heilman 2006; heilman and cohen 1999; landau 1992; mintz 1998; poll 1962). because of this, upsherin is a ritual largely unrecognized outside of the jewish community, unlike circumcision or bar/bat mitzvahs. despite this lack of wider recognition, upsherin is familiar to most contemporary jews, even among more liberal jewish movements who do not engage with the practice. it is difficult to trace the exact origins of upsherin, in part because it encompasses two distinct rites of passage: the physical haircut and the education milligan hair today, gone tomorrow 11 initiation. the haircut alone also amalgamates two distinct practices: the cutting or shaving of the hair and the creation of payot.4 there is historic religious precedence for childhood ritual haircutting, including the hindu and muslim customs of shaving the hair of children. in hindu tradition, the chudakarana (when a child receives his or her first haircut) takes place to remove the birth hair which is associated with past lives, and is, when possible, cast into the holy river ganges. similarly, many muslims shave the heads of infants on the seventh day of life to demonstrate submission to god as part of the aqueeqah ritual, where a sheep is sacrificed in order to ensure the child’s safety from harm (two sheep for a boy and one sheep for a girl). the hair is weighed and an equivalent amount is given to charity. sometimes this hair shaving ritual takes place in conjunction with khitan (circumcision, which can take place up until puberty and often is performed on the seventh day of life or on the seventh birthday). childhood haircutting rituals first were embraced by palestinian jews in the middle ages. the musta’arabi jews were arabic-speaking jews living in the middle east and north africa prior to the expulsion of jews from spain in 1492. after the ladino-speaking jews settled in the same area, they would merge together to form what is now referred to as the sephardic community (referring to jewish communities with roots in spain and north africa, pl. sephardim) (barnett and schwab 1989; dobrinsky 2002). the practices of the musta’arabi jews likely influenced rabbi isaac luria ashkenazi (16th century) in his writings, which ascribe mystical qualities to payot (blau 2003, 185). prior to the 1800s, ritual haircutting remained a sephardic practice. it would not be introduced into ashkenazic (referring to the jewish communities with roots in germany and eastern europe, pl. ashkenazim) practice until the 1800s (ibid.). in contrast, education initiation developed among the ashkenazic community. school or education initiations became prominent in europe during the 12th and 13th centuries, particularly in germany and northern france (ibid., 187). blau contends that the education initiations of young boys were gradually replaced with the bar mitzvah (ibid.), blurring the historical continuity between these medieval school initiations and contemporary. the fact that these two ceremonies evolved independently in different diasporic communities (hair cutting among sephardim and education initiation among ashkenazim) and now have converged into one unique blended ritual indicates that it is only in the last two centuries that upsherin, as is practiced today in conjunction with education initiation, has codified into a modern hybrid jewish ritual. unlike other practices that find their roots in halakha (referring to jewish law, may also be used to refer to individual jewish laws or commandments)—for example, keeping kosher—upsherin and education initiations are part of minhag (modern jewish traditions or customs that have evolved into expected community norms). that is to say, there is no jewish legal imperative for upsherin; rather, it has become an accepted cultural custom such that it has taken on particular significance. contemporary upsherin events are comprised of two rituals: the boy’s haircut (the upsherin itself) followed by the education initiation ceremony. this second ceremony is an extension of the upsherin and does not have a distinct ritual name; however, many refer to it as the alef-bet (the first two letters in the hebrew hair today, gone tomorrow milligan 12 alphabet; the phrase used to refer to the alphabet as a whole) to distinguish this part of the ritual from the hair cutting. this is an important distinction because, although it is common for the two ceremonies to happen together, that is not always the case, as will be discussed later in variations of the practice. in the united states, the upsherin typically takes place in the family home, although it can also occur in the synagogue. the boy’s hair is sometimes adorned with ribbons or pulled into a ponytail, and he enters the ritual space wearing a yarmulke and tzitzit for the first time. depending on the family, the boy may sit by himself or on his father’s lap (or, in rare cases, on the mother’s lap) for his haircut. the forelock is snipped first by the father, symbolizing where the boy will one day lay tefillin (leather boxes holding scripture that are bound to the forehead and left arm). sometimes the honor of the first snip of hair is afforded to a rabbi or a kohen (a member of the priestly tribe (direct patrilineal descent from aaron) who has special duties in the synagogue). this first lock of cut hair is typically preserved, often pressed in a siddur (a jewish prayer book). the boy’s remaining hair is cut, frequently with the mother making the next cut and then by allowing those in attendance to each snip off one lock of hair. in some families, the hair is collected and weighed, and a donation is made in that amount to charity, paralleling the muslim rituals discussed earlier. others will make a donation matching the total number of locks trimmed. some boys are given a tzedakah (charitable giving or donations, considered a moral obligation in jewish practice) box to hold and with each snip will deposit money, usually given to them by each person cutting their hair. families often will select a charity related to education like a yeshiva (an institution of jewish education that focuses on the study of religious texts) or library. although less common, some families additionally donate their son’s hair to be made into a wig for cancer patients, and others choose to hide or bury the hair (pinson 2010, 48). s im o n j . b r o n n e r milligan hair today, gone tomorrow 13 during the upsherin, the hair is carefully cut to ensure that payot remain. at the end of the ritual, some families shave their son’s head, making the payot even more prominent. the child is showered in sweets representing sweetness raining down from angels in heaven. the sweets are distributed to guests in pekalach (small bags of sweets). the tradition of throwing sweets has ashkenazic origins and also appears at other major orthodox male life cycle events, including vach nacht (the night before the circumcision); when a groom is called for aliyah (reciting a blessing over the torah) the sabbath before his wedding; and at bar mitzvahs. in the united states, it is customary for the alef-bet ritual to immediately follow the upsherin. the boy is wrapped in his father’s tallit (the prayer shawl traditionally worn by jewish men, also known as tallis in yiddish), to symbolize purity and to demonstrate the father’s protective role. the boy is carried in his father’s embrace to the teacher. the alef-bet usually occurs in the same location as the upsherin, although sometimes the boy is brought to a yeshiva or synagogue. the boy is placed in the lap of the male teacher or rabbi, and a laminated card or tablet of the hebrew alef-bet is placed in front of him. mimicking the teacher, the child reads each hebrew letter aloud, starting from the beginning to the end, and then again in reverse. the alef-bet tablet from which the child reads is sprinkled with honey, and the boy is encouraged to dip his finger in the honey on each letter and to lick his finger or sometimes even the tablet. in doing so, he is given his first taste of the sweetness of learning. the teacher also recites several textual passages, which the child is encouraged to repeat.5 in some communities, the child is also given a hard-boiled egg with torah verses engraved on it. sometimes a special honey cake, often decorated with a torah verse, is served to the child or to those in attendance. as with any ritual, there are variations of upsherin and alef-bet. each hasidic court, as well as other haredi and orthodox communities, has its own minhag. those cultural variations are compounded by the variations experienced by a multi-national diasporic religious community. blau’s consideration of upsherin, for example, focuses on the experiences of israeli jews (2003). in contrast to american jews, who hold the upsherin on a boy’s third birthday or on lag ba’omer if the boy’s birthday falls during the counting of the omer,6 many israelis deliberately wait until lag ba’omer to cut their sons’ hair so that they can do so in conjunction with a pilgrimage to the tomb of rabbi shimon bar-yohai7 in meron, or, less commonly, in jerusalem at the grave of shimon hatzaddik (ibid., 183-185). in recent years, it has also become popular to conduct upsherin at the western wall. when upsherin is done in this israeli context, its maleness is multiplied. women’s roles are further sidelined while they wait in gender-segregated areas, unable to enter into the ritual space. as such, they peer into the area, often with their view blocked by screens, to see the dancing, celebration, and upsherin. the celebrations at meron are drastically different than the smaller home-based upsherin of the united states because of the large crowds and simultaneous celebration of lag ba’omer. in meron, boys sit on their fathers’ shoulders, swirling hair today, gone tomorrow milligan 14 in a milieu of mystic maleness, and clutching alef-bet flags and bags of sweets (ibid., 184). for the boys who have their first haircuts in meron, school initiation ceremonies are typically delayed and performed at a different time. although the boys symbolically clutch alef-bet flags, the two-fold ceremony is split, sometimes with the alef-bet ritual occurring months later on the first day of school with the entire class and their fathers’ present (ibid., 185-186). similarly, some boys will have a private alef-bet ceremony near their birthday or lag ba’omer and then engage with the ritual again on the first day of school. this difference in practice is undergirded, of course, by the fact that israeli youth engage with hebrew differently than their english and yiddish speaking american counterparts. there are two other ritual variations that are important to note. first, the reason upsherin occurs at the age of three is based on leviticus 19:23, where it is forbidden to eat the fruit of a tree for the first three years. hasidic thought has interpreted this metaphorically to mean that a three-year-old child with uncut hair will grow tall and fruitful, growing in knowledge and goodness as a man (pinson 2010, 3-4). however, some hasidic groups—including skver, chernobyl, and gur—perform upsherin at the age of two. while they are in the minority, they look instead to genesis 21:8, where abraham prepares a great feast for isaac’s birthday. second, among some sephardic communities, upsherin is delayed until the age of five. in this context, the ritual is referred to as chalaka (from the arabic lakya, a haircut). done without a school initiation ritual, the chalaka ritual is a reverse parallel to muslim customs. in this sephardic context, jewish boys are circumcised at eight-days-old and have their hair cut at age five, an inverse mirroring of muslim boys having their hair cut on the seventh day and their circumcision at the age seven. the chalaka is done independently of a school initiation, reflecting the practices of musta’arabi jews and the sephardic communities prior to ashkenazic influence (blau 2003, 1989; pinson 2010, 52). analysis of upsherin this essay contends three primary points of analysis. first, upsherin represents a gendered divide between a young boy and his mother. second, upsherin finds voice as a unique childhood ritual within the jewish male life cycle, gaining importance because of its role in teaching gendered performance through the creation of a specifically orthodox male identity kit. finally, upsherin is without sufficient egalitarian parallel, which will be addressed through a discussion of candle lighting and jewish feminist engagement with upsherin. upsherin marks an important moment in the life of a young orthodox boy in terms of his relationship to his mother. as an infant, the boy was reliant on his mother, either through a literal dependence on breast milk or an intimate reliance on the comfort of a mother figure. his upsherin marks a moment when he is figuratively removed from his mother, transitioning into the maleness of the orthodox jewish world. prior to his upsherin, his mother was primarily responsible for his care, but this ritual marks a transfer of power. the boy will milligan hair today, gone tomorrow 15 now be educated and raised under male leadership (including his father, rabbi, and teachers) and among male peers. blau contends that upsherin functions as a secondary circumcision, whereby the boy is once again physically marked and sanctified as a jew (blau 2003, 187193). unlike his circumcision, at the conclusion of which he is returned to his mother’s care and, as blau aptly notes, is in direct contact with her postpartum “impurities” (ibid., 180), his upsherin marks a point of purity where a boy departs from his mother and enters the world of jewish masculinity. in this way, upsherin is not the first marker of maleness for a jewish boy, as his circumcision represents the first gender affirming ritual in his life, but rather it indicates a new expectation of his navigation of orthodox gender roles. blau’s approach to upsherin considers the anthropological and psychological implications of the ritual with a careful rhetorical eye (for example, the move from milah (circumcision) to milah (the word), offering a compelling rhetorical and anthropological argument for the upsherin representing a secondary circumcision (ibid., 176-183). however, by bringing the tools of folklore to bear on upsherin, the ritual reveals itself to be less about repurification through a secondary circumcision and more about addressing the parental anxieties experienced in the transition of authority from the mother to the father. this is a familiar theme for folklorists, who see ritual often used to ease transition periods and anxieties. likewise, this folkloric understanding of a ritual easing periods of transition is replicated in the other anthropological examples blau identifies in sambia (ibid., 193-198), further strengthening his argument for their parallels. the transition away from mother and into the gendered world of orthodoxy is literally reenacted during the upsherin. the boy appears wearing a yarmulke and tzitzit, both traditionally male garments. it is the father who holds the boy on his lap while hair is being cut and the father who is given the honor of cutting the first lock of hair. in meron, the boys sit on their fathers’ shoulders as they dance on lag ba’omer in a space into which only men may enter. it is the father who wraps the son in his (male-encoded) tallit and carries him to a male rabbi or teacher who guides the boy through his alef-bet. in these ways, the sweetness of the mother’s milk is replaced when the boy is given his first taste of the sweetness of the torah and of orthodox masculinity. contemporary gender theory identifies that gender is performative (leighton 2012; miller 2010; askew 1998; butler 2006). bodylore undergirds this theoretical framework by demonstrating the cultural malleability of gender, especially in how bodies are used in both common and discursive contexts (hollis, pershing, and young 1993; radler 1993). blau contends that upsherin represents the repurification of the young male body by physically marking when a boy begins his journey in learning secondary male identity (blau 2003, 177; see kimmel 2009; goldberg 1987; bronner 2005). in this way, the body of the young boy can be theorized both through gender theory (as he learns the ideals of masculinity within his community) as well as bodylore (as his body is physically modified so that he might engage in this gendered performance). learning and maintaining appropriate gendered performance, then, is central in the upsherin experience. in a religious world where gender roles are distinct and hair today, gone tomorrow milligan 16 specific, this marks the moment when children are guided clearly down different paths. for the young boy, his physical transformation, coupled with his change in dress, indicates his maleness. he will be sent to yeshiva; he will begin to regularly attend synagogue with his father; he will be responsible for upholding certain laws and commandments; and his body will eventually count toward a minyan (the quorum of ten men required for certain religious events or rituals). no longer an infant, he must now learn how to modestly interact with the opposite sex. his upsherin marks the moment when the boy enters the gender-segregated world of orthodoxy and will begin to learn the particular responsibilities of orthodox men. if viewed through a broader lens, upsherin features the performance and maintenance of gender for all participants. the significance of the male body and maleness is highlighted by the centrality of the boy and his father, further underscored by the roles of the male teachers, rabbi, and other men at the scene (including the other fathers, for example, at meron). as such, the centrality of maleness, both within the family and as leaders in the jewish community, is strengthened. the role of women at the upsherin is markedly different. for mothers, as previously mentioned, the ritual signifies the shift of the infant’s care. however, the location of female bodies during the ritual underscores several important aspects of orthodox gender expectations, highlighting the non-central role of women in public religious life. during the upsherin, women are sidelined as observers, particularly when the ritual takes place in locations like meron where women are literally divided from their son and husband by a physical barrier. even in the american context, they are secondary voices to the ritual script, as further demonstrated by their place second in line to cut their son’s hair. in these spaces, young girls are similarly sidelined, reinforcing their non-central role in public religious life. in these ways upsherin functions just as much as a ritual to mark a change for the boy as it does a community ritual, affirming the gendered roles and expectations of orthodox jewish life for all in attendance. upsherin fulfills several of the primary functions of folklore as identified by william bascom (1954). first, it is a pedagogical device to reinforce cultural values, in this case through teaching the young boy. second, it justifies culture, including the rituals, institutions, and practices ascribed to a particular group. this justification of culture is critical in the maintenance of distinct community identity, and the upsherin reinforces orthodox identity for all in attendance. finally, bascom also identifies that folklore is a means of applying social control. this theory can be woven into hairlore through an understanding that loss of hair is often congruent with submission. examples of this include the shaving of gang members’ heads as part of initiation; buzz cutting soldiers’ hair at their enlistment; the shearing of nuns’ hair; the tonsuring of monks’ hair; or the forced shaving of prisoner’s heads. in each of these cases, the loss of hair indicates a literal or symbolic submission to a greater authority or force. upsherin, when viewed through this lens, is an extension of the same theme. not only is the boy literally submitting to his parents’ will, but he is also physically marked as submitting to the greater authority of his orthodox community. milligan hair today, gone tomorrow 17 hair removal, when viewed in this context, is reflective of how hair can be viewed simultaneously as a marker, a symbol, and an object (milligan 2014a, 7-13). blau’s psychological approach alludes to upsherin’s potential symbolic link to charles berg’s work (1951) and the association of shaved male heads and the phallus (blau 2003, 190-191); whereby blau expands on this idea to consider the creation of two phallic payot also to be significant (ibid., 188, 190-191). using a psychoreligious approach (milligan 2014a, 117-128) informed by erich fromm’s distinction between rational and irrational ritual (1950; see reik 1931), it is pertinent to consider the implications of the symbol set and identity kit (goffman 1965) given to the boy during upsherin and how the maintenance and cultivation of these symbols will follow him throughout his maturation both as a man and as a jew. at his upsherin, the boy is given a symbolic identity kit comprised of tzitzit, a yarmulke, his new short hair, and payot styled and shaped in a way that represent his affiliation within orthodoxy. unlike the hidden symbol of his circumcision, this symbol set is carried externally, and his upsherin signifies that he is mature enough to properly engage with the symbols and, as such, begin to navigate both religious and cultural gendered performance. payot, tzitzit, and yarmulkes are symbols of rational daily ritual, not attached to penis envy or outgrowths of religious crises; rather, in line with fromm’s analysis of rational ritual (1922; 1950), they reflect a human need to feel included and rooted in community. externally marking himself as a jewish male creates a space within orthodox life for the young boy, ensuring that he feels attached and rooted in his community. in addition to the symbolic inventory of the body afforded to the boy at his upsherin, he is also taught several hallmarks of jewish practice by engaging with tactile symbols. he learns the sweetness of learning and torah study by dipping his fingers in honey on the alef-bet. he is taught the importance of halakha and completes his first mitzvah (a commandment of divine origin, a good deed) in the creation of payot and by wearing his first tzitzit and yarmulke. likewise, placing money in a tzedakah box for each lock of hair cut is a physical engagement with the virtue of charity. by using tactile symbols in these ways, the lessons of upsherin are tangible for a child. much of what we try to teach children is theoretical—for example, why it is good to be truthful and moral. however, upsherin allows a boy to embody the abstract in a multi-sensory context by using a nuanced symbol set, engaging taste, touch, sight, hearing, and speech. moreover, in line with bascom’s assertion that folklore grows out of our need to validate culture (1954), upsherin engages those attending to also interact with the same symbols. whether or not the child himself remembers his upsherin does not diminish the importance that the ritual has in reinforcing the religious cultural identities of those attending. the ritual highlights central tenets of orthodoxy (gendered roles, learning, charity, family, community) and strengthens community identity by refreshing the boundaries established by orthodox jews to negotiate the pressures of assimilation and diasporic dilution. if upsherin marks one of the ways in which orthodox jews use folklore in the maintenance of community boundaries, it is important to also consider how little girls in this same context are also taught to avoid assimilation and engage hair today, gone tomorrow milligan 18 with gendered symbol sets. within orthodox judaism, the closest female parallel to upsherin is candle lighting. there are three gender-specific commandments for jewish women (lighting sabbath candles [nerot], breaking off a portion of the bread [challah], and sexual purity laws [niddah]). within the orthodox community, it is typically around age three that little girls begin helping to light sabbath candles. nerot is an interesting parallel to upsherin because, although it underscores the gendered divide of the orthodox world, it simultaneously affirms a girl’s maturity and ability to perform jewishness. likewise, through her preparation of the sabbath, the young girl is given her own gender-specific symbol set to learn, helping her to navigate her gender both in the home and in the larger orthodox community. her childhood domestic education enables the girl to mimic her mother, helping her learn the lessons that she will use as a woman who is expected to cultivate a jewish home and raise an orthodox family that will stand strong against pressures of assimilation. when viewed through this lens, upsherin is linked to the beginning of formal jewish education for boys the same way that nerot is linked to domestic learning for girls. despite occurring at roughly the same age, there are several significant differences between upsherin and nerot. although both rituals can take place in the home, only the upsherin is attended by those outside of the immediate family. likewise, although coupled with a physical transformation, upsherin is a onetime event, in contrast to nerot, which occurs weekly. finally, the analogously gendered parent is responsible for the instruction of the ritual and thereafter for the education of that child. in this regard, the little girl never departs from her mother or the home; whereas, the little boy transfers into the care of his father, rabbi, teachers, the yeshiva, and the synagogue. as discussed in this essay, upsherin has found voice almost exclusively within the orthodox community. other gendered lifecycle events, on the other hand, have developed analogous egalitarian rituals and are practiced across judaism (including within conservative, reconstructionist, and reform movements). examples of these rituals include bar and bat mitzvahs, pidyon ha-ben and pidyon ha-bat (redemption of the first born), and bris and bris bat ceremonies (circumcision and baby naming ceremonies). while these egalitarian practices for girls have not gained traction in orthodox circles, they have resonated with non-orthodox jews. similarly, other historically gendered body practices (wearing yarmulkes, tzitzit, and tallisim, or laying tefillin) as well as worship practice (counting men and women for a minyan or allowing women on the bimah [the platform area or altar of a synagogue]), have been adapted by non-orthodox jews. why, then, has upsherin remained largely ignored when other jewish practices have been made egalitarian and adopted by non-orthodox jews? there are three primary reasons why upsherin has not been reconceptualized and implemented outside of orthodoxy. first, the ritual itself creates payot, which mark the child as religiously observant. at the same time, the child is given tzitzit and a yarmulke. for more liberal jews, who themselves do not have payot or wear a yarmulke and tzitzit, the ritual seems decidedly orthodox. second, as minhag, upsherin has gradually increased in popularity among the orthodox community. because of this, there is no familial precedence set in non-orthodox communities. milligan hair today, gone tomorrow 19 unlike a circumcision or a bar/bat mitzvah, there is no external familial impetus to engage with the ritual, making it easy to ascribe solely to the orthodox community, undergirding an “us and them” dynamic. finally, upsherin has strong ties to religious learning, particularly to the hebrew alef-bet. for caregivers who themselves may not read hebrew, this ritual can seem foreign. likewise, the ritual affirms that a child will engage with jewish religious education. because of this, caregivers who intend to send their children to public or non-religious schools may feel like this is an empty promise. even if they intend for their child to attend hebrew school and become a bar/bat mitzvah, if they are a family unlikely to send their child to a jewish day school, this ritual may not resonate with them. within feminist judaism, there are numerous examples of women reclaiming patriarchal practices in rich and meaningful ways, both for themselves and their daughters. whether it is through the reclamation of yarmulkes, tallisim, tefillin, or tzitzit—or historically, in finding voice on the bimah, inclusion in minyanim, or the bat mitzvah—jewish women have been innovative in their transformation of jewish practices (adler 1972; alpert 1998; elper 2003; fishman 1995; heschel 1987; hyman 1995; levitt 1997; milligan 2014b; plaskow 1991; plaskow 1997; ruttenberg 2001). although upsherin has not taken on the same significance for feminist jews as other practices, it has not been entirely ignored. there have been small movements among non-orthodox jewish women to claim upsherin—but in an interesting twist, as a ritual for their daughters. this decision is particularly striking because there has been little non-orthodox movement to engage with upsherin for boys, begging the question, why, as a feminist jew, would you claim the upsherin for your daughter? the practice itself has not been formally well documented, as it remains uncommon and a very grassroots and progressive practice, happening primarily in the home and not in formal jewish settings. the number of “clarifying” responses found online by orthodox rabbis explaining that upsherin is only for boys (with the explanation that payot are only for men and that women get their own hair ritual upon marriage) suggests that an increasing number of individuals are at least asking about the practice for girls, even if they are not enacting the ritual. in personal interactions with women and in reviewing some women’s written reflections on this practice (gechter 2017; cooper 2014), there seem to be two primary motivations. first, there is a desire to mark the transition from baby to child, especially when it comes from a bodily reliance of a baby on the mother (for example, needing breast milk or soothing physical touch like rocking or cradling) to a child’s reliance on a mother for moral and cognitive development. the mothers describe that, like non-jewish mothers, the first haircut is symbolic of this transition from infancy to childhood. however, they have opted to claim the first haircut rite of passage and infuse it with jewishness. as women who are passionate about their own jewish observance and engagement with jewish life, it seems only fitting to take this developmental milestone and view it jewishly. second, and perhaps more importantly, by having an upsherin for their daughters, the mothers acknowledge that this is a moment where they commit themselves to raising a jewish daughter. this is a positive feminist statement, whereby they celebrate the jewish female potential through affirming their hair today, gone tomorrow milligan 20 daughters’ access to progressive and spiritual jewish education. through their daughters’ upsherin, the mothers take on the responsibility for ensuring that their daughters have equal opportunities not only to grow and learn as children and jews, but also to engage in the full spectrum of jewish practice. for their daughters, upsherin teaches the same lessons that orthodox boys glean—a love of learning, the importance of charity, and the embodiment of jewishness. moreover, it also teaches them gendered performance—that they, as female jews, are equal, deserve respect, and can have their voices centered in public jewish practice. upsherin among non-orthodox jews is not necessarily exclusionary of jewish boys, but the feminist application demonstrates a deeply intimate moment between generations of jewish women. as women who are acutely aware of the patriarchy that exists even in liberal judaism, they are reclaiming and reinterpreting a practice to reflect their commitment to raising a daughter who will have equal opportunities afforded to her in celebration of—rather than despite—her female body. although this is as much a political statement as a religious statement, for the mothers, it is reflective of an unwavering commitment to raising their daughters jewishly. conclusion: the potential egalitarian future of upsherin as a ritual, upsherin demonstrates the malleability of jewish folklore and practice. from its blending of sephardic and ashkenazic rites of passage to its implementation in two seemingly conflicting religious contexts, upsherin embodies the potential plurality of the contemporary jewish experience. by taking something as ordinary as a haircut and encoding it with jewishness, upsherin is a moment of ritual sweetness. like the literal honey in which the children dip their fingers, upsherin celebrates familial joy, the children’s growth, and the hope for their future, as jewish adults. although it is easy for liberal jews to dismiss upsherin as part of patriarchal jewish tradition, it is only because the ritual has not yet been reconceptualized in a mainstream egalitarian way. if other life cycle events like circumcisions/baby namings and bar/bat mitzvahs can achieve widespread practice, an egalitarian upsherin has potential for acceptance. like these other events, an egalitarian upsherin focuses on the family, a critical anchor for the maintenance of childhood jewish identity. moreover, upsherin celebrates several central tenets of jewishness: charity, family, community, and education. although the gendered performance roles taught in the orthodox practice of upsherin are unlikely to find voice within more liberal communities, the other commitments are universally shared. as a diasporic culture, one of the hallmarks of american jewishness has been its emphasis on both secular and jewish education. the alef-bet school initiation ceremony could find voice in liberal jewish contexts, especially if it is tied to a celebration of all forms of education. in this way, the ceremony is broad enough to welcome a variety of jewish and secular practices, family structures, and differently abled children, celebrating their collective potential and future. in the same way, although liberal jews are unlikely to create payot for their children or expect them to wear yarmulkes or tzitzit after their upsherin, the practice can be milligan hair today, gone tomorrow 21 adapted to mark the milestone of the first hair cut without engaging these other symbols or where, for example, both boys and girls are given yarmulkes. in a world where much of our focus is external, upsherin reminds us to look inward at what values and principles guide us, especially as we decide the lessons we teach our children. simultaneously, upsherin reinforces cultural and community connections that extend outside of the family, situating both children and their caregivers in relational contexts with others. as families and communities gather together to commemorate this moment of blossoming childhood, they celebrate the infinite promise of a child’s ability to learn, recognizing her as a vessel waiting to be filled with knowledge. upsherin reminds us of the best of our childhoods – that we are loved, that we have wonder and whimsy, and that we should embark upon the sweetness of learning with joy. notes 1. i recognize that not all children have parents or a parent. because of this, i have made the rhetorical decision to refer to the caregivers of a child, allowing for various legal and biological relationships. later, in the discussion of orthodoxy, i utilize the gendered terms of mother and father, reflecting the community norms of the group and ritual. 2. i use observant here to refer to modern orthodox, orthodox, hasidic, ultraorthodox, and haredi jews. in this colloquial usage, it refers to those who would label themselves as “torah observant.” i recognize, though, that this label is problematic for non-orthodox jews who view themselves to be observant and religious, albeit in various ways and levels. 3. throughout this essay i will refer to these groups collectively, either as orthodox or observant jews. when their practices diverge, i parse the group labels accordingly. 4. religious texts offer little historic guidance for when or how payot should be groomed, leaving groups to develop various interpretations of leviticus 19:27, which instructs “you shall not round off the side-growth of your head or destroy the side-growth of your beard.” 5. these include, but are not limited to, deuteronomy 33:4, “moses charged us with the torah as the heritage of the congregation of jacob,” the talmudic phrase “may the torah be my occupation and g-d my aid,” and the shema. 6. hair cutting is not permitted between passover and lag ba’omer, a holiday commemorating the death of rabbi shimon bar yochai and the day when the central mystical text, the zohar, is believed to have been revealed. it is also worth noting that some orthodox jews will refrain from hair cutting until shavuot, extending the prohibition through for the entire counting of the omer. 7. rabbi shimon bar-yohai is reported to have written the zohar, the central text of jewish mysticism. because of this, his tomb has particular meaning and importance to hasidic jews. hair today, gone tomorrow milligan 22 works cited adler, rachel. 1972. the jew who wasn’t there: halakhah and the jewish woman. davka (summer 1972): 7–13. alpert, rebecca. 1998. like bread on a seder plate: jewish lesbians and the transformation of tradition. new york: columbia university press. askew, kelly m. 1998. ambiguous discourses: performative approaches to gender and race. american anthropologist 100(4): 1030-033. ballentine, leslie winfield, and jennifer paff ogle. 2005. the making and unmaking of body problems in seventeen magazine, 1992–2003. family and consumer sciences research journal 33(4): 281-307. barnett, richard david and walter m. schwab. 1989. the western sephardim: the history of some of the communities formed in europe, the mediterranean, and the new world after the 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from “snow white” holding a smartphone on a selfie stick and gazing at its surface, asking “smartphone, smartphone on a stick, who has the fairest profile pic?” (stahler 2015). this cartoon wryly recognizes the smartphone as an arbiter of status and places it in the long tradition of oracle consultation that scholars have documented for many years (stoneman 2011). if the smartphone is a source of magic, its applications, downloadable programs for mobile devices known colloquially as “apps,” provide a cornucopia of wondrous possibilities. apps, obtainable from “app stores,” offer access to delicious food, comfortable hotels, quick transportation, and other pleasing commodities. unstinting in their provision of choices, they remind us of the genie that emerges from a bottle in the arabian nights (mahdi 2008). there are apps for courtship, weddings, pregnancy, and other life crises. in 2010 the apple corporation registered a trademark for its slogan “there’s an app for that,” which appeared in its 2009 commercials. gradually, this slogan has proved its validity. in june of 2016, apple’s app store offered two million apps and android’s app store offered 2.2 million (“number of apps” 2016). besides satisfying people’s practical needs, apps respond to their spiritual needs and interests. a few examples of spiritually-oriented apps are archangel oracle cards, buddha mantra, wicca spells, and dialing god. ghost hunting is one of the many expressions of interest in life after death. a broad range of ghost-hunting apps—ghost radar, phantom radar, spirit story box, ghost hunter, and others— makes ghost hunting easier than ever for those who want to take legend trips to haunted places. this essay will explore how smartphone apps have influenced legend trips during the second decade of the twenty-first century. since the late 1960s, folklorists have recognized that visitors to legend-related sites tend to follow a certain sequence: telling stories during travel to the site; participating in ritualistic, possibly rebellious behavior; and telling stories during travel home (dégh 1968, thigpen 1971, ellis 1982-1983). when smartphone technology becomes dominant, does this sequence change in any way? because it seems important to consider both long-established and more recent aspects of legend trip behavior, both will receive careful consideration here. all the four legend trippers whose adventure i will analyze in this essay are college students. in haunted halls: ghostlore of american college campuses “there’s an app for that”® tucker 28 (2007), i explore reasons why late adolescents who are attending college may have a strong interest in taking legend trips. intensely interested in learning, both in and outside the classroom, they may choose to enter “a mysterious realm filled with sensory stimulation and ambiguity” (2007:182). older adolescents’ reasons for visiting legend sites include “desires to understand death, probe the horror of domestic violence, confront racism, and express the uneasy relationship between humans and technology” (2007:182). but of course, college students’ legend trips are not just attempts to learn; they also combine fear with excitement, allowing for thrills under safe circumstances. important insight into late adolescents’ legend trips comes from simon j. bronner, whose campus traditions: folklore from the old-time college to the modern mega-university (2012) analyzes college students’ folklore in depth and detail. in the “legend quests” section of his chapter about “legendary locations, laughs, and horrors,” bronner notes, “on these playfully framed trips, students talk to one another about frightening scenarios under the cloak of legend, and they experience for themselves the reality of the spooky sites, even as they confront their own cloudy fears and doubts” (2012: 323). emphasizing the centrality of late adolescents’ own fears and uncertainties, bronner reminds us that play provides a frame for trips to legendary locations. like other forms of play that late adolescents and young adults enjoy, legend trips are spontaneous, exciting, creative, and fun. after graduating from college, people tend to cherish their memories of legend trips, as bronner does in recalling his trip to visit a rural graveyard with friends from indiana university on a foggy summer night (2012: 319). both playful and meaningful, these trips offer intriguing ambiguities that provoke reflection long after the experience ends. hypermodern ostension as linda dégh and andrew vázsonyi explain in their article “does the word ‘dog’ bite? ostensive action: a means of legend-telling,” ostension is “presentation as contrasted to representation” (1983:6). dégh and vázsonyi identify three forms of ostension: pseudo-ostension (hoaxing), proto-ostension (appropriating a legend as one’s own experience), and quasi-ostension (misunderstanding something that happens in a legend) (1983:18-20). in relation to slenderman, the fictive bogeyman created on the internet in 2009, jeffrey a. tolbert identifies reverse ostension, which “weav[es] together diverse strands of ‘experience’ (in the form of personal encounters with the creature, documentary and photographic evidence, etc.) into a more or less coherent body of narratives (2013:3). tolbert’s recognition of reverse ostension on the internet shows that this medium of communication is making further forms of ostension possible. according to sociologist avery gordon, author of ghostly matters, some of the most “dominant and disturbing” aspects of american culture are “the commodification of everyday life, the absence of meaning and the omnipresence of endless information,” as well as “the relentless fascination with catastrophes” (1997:14). gordon characterizes our information-overload era with eerie precision; during the years since her book was published, we have seen the rise of fake tucker “there’s an app for that”® 29 news and other phenomena documented by russell frank in his study newslore (2011). the ubiquity of internet rumors and legends about politics, health, and other important subjects makes ostension even more meaningful than it might be otherwise. for legend trips involving significant use of smartphone and internet technology, a new kind of ostension emerges. in putting the supernatural in its place: folklore, the hypermodern, and the ethereal, jeannie banks thomas introduces the term “hypermodern folklore”: “lore that emerges from, deals with, or is significantly marked by contemporary technology and media (including the omnipresent internet) or consumerism (with all its accessible excesses and its ability to generate pleasure mixed with anxiety)” (2015:7-8). this term works very well for folklore related to digital technology. during legend trips influenced by smartphone apps, hypermodern ostension takes place. presentation of legends during these trips relies upon smartphone technology and popular media, as well as consumerism. “accessible excesses” of consumerism appear during hypermodern ostension. people who want to use their smartphones to find ghosts can choose among a dizzying array of ghost hunting apps, including phantom radar, ghost radar, ghost hunter, haunted house, ghost locator, ghost communicator, ghost detector, ghost observer, spirit story box, and many others. app stores generally offer multiple versions of ghost-hunting apps that have become popular. because such apps tend to cost very little, it is easy for people to download multiple apps to try out. many ghost-hunting apps cost ninety-nine cents, and many are free. evaluative articles on the internet such as “we tested every ghosthunting app in the haunted buildings of nyc” (crowley 2014), encourage consumers to try out new apps. as a result of low prices and high praise of new products, experimentation with numerous apps has become very common. this experimentation involves both hunting for ghosts with apps and posting videos of ghost-hunting experiences on youtube. the first ghost-hunting app for smartphones was ghost radar, introduced by spud pickles in 2009. ghost radar free, developed for iphones, became known as phantom radar later; phantom radar was the app that the four students used in the ghost hunt analyzed in this chapter (phantom radar 2017). ghost radar has an “faq” (frequently asked questions) page that gives consumers helpful information. the question “is ghost radar real?” is followed by the reply, “it is as effective as an emf detector or a kii [electromagnetic frequency detector]. the theory of what is happening is that intelligent energy can be made aware of their ability to influence the sensors of the device. you must decide for yourself if the readings are indicative of actual paranormal activity” (ghost radar® 2016). it is important to note that the app developer encourages the consumer to trust his or her own judgment. as linda dégh and andrew vázsonyi demonstrate in “dialectics of the legend” (1973), a wide range of beliefs keeps legends alive; skepticism is one reaction that keeps both narratives and descriptions of legend trips circulating. ghost radar’s developer, jack jones, welcomes questions submitted online. when i asked him how successful his apps have been, he answered, “the apps “there’s an app for that”® tucker 30 have simply been more successful than we ever anticipated. the ghost radar® apps have been downloaded tens of millions of times.” jones also mentioned that this app appeals to “people of all ages” (jones 2016). he did not, however, answer my question about the role of stories in usage of ghost radar. although his website does not emphasize app users’ stories, the websites of many other ghosthunting apps do. for example, spirit story box’s website encourages app users to submit stories about their own experiences. spirit story box’s homepage includes a running feed of users’ personal experience stories that describe their successes using the app (spirit story box 2016). as lynne mcneill notes in “contemporary ghost hunting and the relationship between proof and experience,” placement of personal experience stories on ghost hunters’ websites can make the website seem more persuasive (2006:105). no personal experience stories appear on the download page for phantom radar, the app chosen by many college students i know. available on itunes and in other app stores at no cost, this app has been popular among young people. its developer, inner four, inc., understands the appeal of easy availability. phantom radar has received enthusiastic reviews in youtube videos (e.g. blast process 2014). there are, of course, other factors besides cost. how much does use of ghosthunting apps depend upon narration of legends and personal experience stories? answers to this question vary according to the app and its user or group of users. people can use ghost-hunting apps anywhere, not just in places known through legends, but legends attract visitors to promising places and encourage hope for having a similar experience. in “the commodification of culture,” diane goldstein observes that in belief tourism, “the real sought-after experience [is] the potential for one’s own supernatural encounter” (2007:197). although using one’s own smartphone to hunt ghosts is not the same as participating in belief tourism, the goal is the same: experiencing something supernatural that can become an exciting story to share with others. roots in nineteenth-century spiritualism ghost hunting with smartphone apps derives from american spiritualism, which began in the mid-nineteenth century. in 1848 two teenaged sisters, margaret and kate fox, claimed that spirits were contacting them by making rapping noises in their home in hydesville, new york. news of their claim spread rapidly through the media of that period: telephone, telegraph, and newspaper. the fox sisters gave many lectures and psychic readings, becoming international celebrities. even though margaret admitted in 1888 that the spirit rappings had been a hoax, she recanted her confession afterwards, and most of the sisters’ followers remained loyal to them (weisberg 2005:1-4). by the 1870s there were spiritualist churches in both the united states and great britain. members of the spiritualist church believe that the dead can send messages to the living through psychic mediums and by other means. lily dale assembly in western new york, founded in 1879, is one spiritualist village that has remained active up to the present. visitors to lily dale consult psychic mediums, attend lectures, and view paintings and writings said to have been generated by spirits. tucker “there’s an app for that”® 31 they also hear stories about the fox sisters’ experiences in hydesville and see pictures of early mediums’ contact with spirits through table tipping (tucker 2015). the first efforts to record spirits’ voices involved long-playing records in the 1940s; in 1982, sarah estes founded the american association of electronic voice phenomena. frank sumption created the ghost box, also known as frank’s box, in 2002. this box generates white noise and captures bits of sound from an am radio receiver. smartphone apps that are supposed to respond to sound patterns and electromagnetic frequencies belong to the tradition established by frank’s box. through generation of words and symbols such as dots of different colors, these apps offer messages from nearby spirits. legends of old dickinson users of ghost-hunting apps tend to bring them to places that have a reputation for being haunted. old houses and hotels make especially good legend trip sites, as do cemeteries hospitals, schools, colleges, and universities. institutions whose existence began some time ago have an intriguing connection to the past. for college students, haunted places have a particular appeal. while pursuing their educations and preparing for future careers, students may feel a heightened sense of their environment’s possibilities. legends that tell of statues coming to life and students walking through a gate that marks the mouth of hell or flunking out because they have stepped on the wrong spot contribute to the impression that the college campus is a strange, enchanted place. many campus legends tell of hauntings in residence halls, viewed as liminal places because students both study and sleep there. in the liminal zone between alertness and sleep, ghosts become non-living residents of the campus environment. as i discovered when doing the research for my book haunted halls (2007), it is common for each campus to have its own haunted places. simon j. bronner’s campus traditions documents an intriguing range of haunted locations on college campuses (2012: 277-332). a well-known haunted place on the campus of binghamton university inspired the legend trip that four of my students took on may 2, 2014. mike, amy, jack, and simon, all of whom were residents of newing college, decided to venture into the dark, semi-deserted basement of old rafuse, a former residence hall that now holds administrative offices and a couple of classrooms. old rafuse is part of old dickinson, a complex of eight former residence halls that has gradually begun to serve other purposes. across the street from old dickinson stand the current dickinson community and newing college. old dickinson no longer functions primarily as a residential area at binghamton university, but it has an invisible network of legends about which students quickly learn. many of these legends focus on the sub-basement, where a student supposedly hanged himself back in the 1970s. students have told the story of this suicide with minor variations, including the names of two residence halls in which the suicide took place. in haunted halls, i explore several variants of this legend, one of which describes a female student seeing the face of a male student in the mirror of her room. after going down to the sub-basement with a friend to try to “there’s an app for that”® tucker 32 figure out what she has seen, she realizes that this was the face of the student who committed suicide by hanging from a pipe many years ago (tucker 2007: 98-99). there have also been legends about a cleaning lady fainting in the subbasement and refusing to clean there again. this legend is based on an upsetting experience that a member of the custodial staff went through. when she was reaching up to clean a light fixture, she fainted and fell off a stepladder. upon awakening from the faint, she declared that she had felt the spirit of a student named michael pass through her body. both students and staff members were troubled by the report of this incident, but staff members did not worry about it for long. students, however, found stories about what had happened to be very intriguing. some of them brought ouija boards down to the sub-basement to see if they could find any ghosts there. once a small group of students tried to summon spirits in the sub-basement with a ouija board and claimed that handprints of little baby ghosts had appeared on the surface of windows there. this claim would sound familiar to anyone who had heard a legend about a “gravity hill,” including the one that carl lindahl examines in his “ostensive healing: pilgrimage to the san antonio ghost tracks” (2005). as lindahl explains, legend trips to the san antonio train tracks inspire a sense of wonder; similarly, students who explore old rafuse’s sub-basement approach their destination with excitement and awe. when old rafuse still functioned as a residence hall, the sub-basement contained a room full of washers and dryers. one legend tells of a demonic face appearing in the glass windows of washing machines, frightening students who had nervously come down to the subbasement alone, late at night, to do their laundry. a small room that contained an incinerator did not inspire legends while students still lived in the building but gained a reputation for being haunted once the students moved out. when people perceive a building as abandoned or semi-abandoned, ghost stories tend to multiply. the comforting routines of daily life no longer make the place seem familiar, so legends about ghosts become more common. such was the case at mansfield university, when a temporarily abandoned building inspired many rumors and legends (glimm 1983:120-22). down to the depths of the sub-basement at the beginning of their adventure in old rafuse on may 2, 2014, amy, mike, jack, and simon felt excited and curious. their first attempt to enter the building failed, because the doors were locked when classes were not in session. on their second try, however, they entered the building holding two smartphones: one for making a video of the trip and the other for using the phantom radar app. bright-colored dots appeared on the screen as they walked down the two flights of stairs that led to their destination: the sub-basement. simon shouted, “we got a shiny blue dot and a big red dot! oh, yeah! red, that means something!” on phantom radar, red means a strong ghostly presence; yellow means the presence is less strong, and blue means it is weak. going beyond those explanations, one of the male students wondered whether the color red showed how the ghost was responding to their visit: “red on the thing, i saw it! maybe it’s angry!” his mention of anger coincided with their arrival in the dimly lit, shadowy sub-basement, tucker “there’s an app for that”® 33 where they saw pipes protruding from the walls. mike said, “there’s a story about a guy hanging himself on a pipe” and simon replied, “oh god, creepy!” then they took a quick look at the laundry room, where students had seen scary faces. with these reminders of the building’s invisible, inherited story structure, the legend quest moved forward. as dots appeared on the screen, words also came up. the first two words, “height” and “introduce,” got no reaction from the students, but the next, “maria,” fully engaged their attention. “are there any stories about a ghost named maria?” amy asked. the others shook their heads as they entered one of the subbasement’s storage rooms, which contained old music stands, books, boxes of old clothes used by a group of performers, a few compact discs, and other castoffs jumbled together. mike plunged his arm into a box of women’s clothes and blankets, shouting, “oh, my god, it’s some girl’s bed stuff! it smells!” his reaction reminded me of a visit to the boys’ unit of a camp with my girl scouts in the late 1970s in southern indiana; the sights and smells of the boys’ tents and bathrooms at the camp fascinated the girls. although this group of students was much older, three out of four of them were young men who seemed eager to find clues about a mysterious female ghost, so gender was a factor in their quest. one of the clues they discovered in the storage room was a video, “the little princess,” which jack pulled out of the bottom of the box of clothes. holding the video up, jack asked, “could this be maria?” amy had seen the movie, but the three male students hadn’t. as i watched their video i remembered that the 1995 film a little princess, based on the 1905 novel by the same name by frances hodgson burnett, shows the quasi-magical transformation of a dreary boarding school bedroom into a luxurious, delightful place to live. to some extent, that transformation resembled the one that these four students were experiencing: a change from a dull basement to a space haunted by significant ghosts from the building’s past. the next two words that appeared on the screen were “july” and “sunday.” as soon as they heard “july,” the students got excited. “i was born in july!” shouted jack; amy said, “so was i!” mike commented in a sepulchral voice, “jack, you’re going to die.” amy added ominously, “it’s really cold.” with a little help from phantom radar, they were establishing the time frame of a possible story and predicting a grim denouement for their own legend trip. their prediction may have been influenced by the blair witch project, the 1999 film in which all three student filmmakers die, or, more generally, by the many horror films in which visitors to creepy places do not survive. one prototype for this expectation is the legend “the fatal initiation,” in which a fraternity initiate spends a night in a graveyard and dies of fright. right after mike’s prediction of jack’s demise, the four students walked into the scariest room in rafuse’s sub-basement. they could see it was the scariest room, because a few years ago someone had written a message on its door: “rumor has it that a ghost haunts this room.” maintenance staff kept the door closed, so anyone brave enough to go into the room had to push the door open. the room was small and did not contain much: just a pile of trash, a plug surrounded by “there’s an app for that”® tucker 34 soot, a dirty sink with a red spot that looked like blood, graffiti, and an incinerator. part of the pile of trash was a heap of broken glass. the room looked as if it had been abandoned and left to fall apart for many years, even though students had lived in the building just a few years before. no wonder someone had designated this creepy room with the closed door the haunted room! as sylvia ann grider observes, basements of houses have a “subliminal association…with castle dungeons and torture chambers” (155). this association comes through even more strongly in the basements of residence halls, which belong to campus legend landscapes involving stories of suffering students who commit suicide, get possessed by spirits, and experience other kinds of misery. the longer a residence hall basement is left mostly unoccupied and the dirtier it gets, the better it works as a setting for a legend trip in which seekers confront decay, suffering, and the presence of a ghost. and a room within the basement that seems to be secret is particularly intriguing, as the well-known folktale “bluebeard” suggests (tatar, 2006). who was the ghost in this strange, uncomfortable room? as they stood there, the four students saw two new words pop up on phantom radar: “couple” and “forget.” at this point they did something they had not done before: they started talking to the smartphone as if it were a ouija board. jack asked, “what does sunday mean, and who is maria? are you maria? do you have anything to do with a sunday in july?” mike asked, “what do you want us to forget? what does this word mean?” no more words appeared on the smartphone, but something else happened: the students heard noises that scared them. some of them heard water dripping, and others heard broken glass crunching on the floor. maybe a ghost was signaling its presence, as it did in so many folktales, including those that contained the motif e402, “mysterious ghostlike noises heard.” “run!” said jack. “run for your lives!” they scrambled up the two flights of stairs and exited the building. once they were safely outside, mike summed up what had happened: “looks like this was a pretty productive ghost hunt. we found out something about this girl, maria, and a sunday in july. it was probably in the sub-basement, where it said there was a ghost and something having to do with a couple. it could have been a summer program when they were in high school. maybe maria was a girlfriend with a boyfriend. that’s all we know. there were a bunch of noises in that room. it sounded like water dripping, something on the floor. there was a lot of broken glass. we are not going back there!” feeling good about having made it through their descent to rafuse’s sub-basement, he and the other students posted their video of the trip on youtube (old dickinson 2014). conclusions this exciting ghost hunt followed the classic legend trip sequence identified by dégh, thigpen, and ellis in many respects. the four students discussed dickinson legends before choosing old rafuse hall and making their way down into its dark, spooky sub-basement. with some trepidation, they entered the laundry room, the storage room, and finally the furnace room that earlier students had identified as tucker “there’s an app for that”® 35 a haunted place. when they heard strange noises, they got scared and ran back up the stairs, exiting the building as fast as they could. immediately after the hunt they told a story about what had happened; then they ambled across the street to their well-lit, comfortably-furnished residential community. there was, however, an important change in the older pattern. besides recalling details from the stories they had learned from oral tradition, the students used a smartphone app as their guide for the hunt. phantom radar supplied a tantalizing series of colored dots that told them where ghosts might be; it also gave them words that became a story. to some extent, these words facilitated reverse ostension, defined by jeff tolbert as creation of a story through combination of digital elements. the words that appeared on phantom radar’s screen could be recognized as a narrative, although this narrative’s disjointedness made it seem unlikely to become part of old dickinson’s enduring legends. the most significant change was the students’ use of hypermodern ostension: representation of legend elements that demonstrates reliance on the contemporary era’s “accessible excess” (thomas 2015:7). using one smartphone to record their trip and another to run ghost radar, amy, simon, jack, and mike made constant use of digital technology. they used ghost radar as both a guide and an oracle to which they could speak directly, as people would speak to a ouija board. they planned to upload their video to youtube and did so immediately after their ghost hunt ended. because of this plan, they were aware of performing for an audience throughout their search for ghosts. their video might have “gone viral” and reached many viewers; most youtube videos do not become that famous, but one never knows which way the fickle finger of fame will point. mike’s summary of his group’s hunt shows that he wanted it to be “productive.” the students would have been disappointed if nothing much had happened and they had simply left the building. using the phantom radar app helped them put together a scenario in which something exciting would take place. a name, a month, a day of the week, and other information gave them ingredients from which a narrative could grow. significantly, the story about mysterious “maria” did not matter as much to the students as their own experience did. mock-seriously predicting their own death, hearing scary sounds, and feeling uncomfortable in the dirty, haunted room scared them enough that they ran away from the basement. although the dots and words on phantom radar intrigued them, what they saw, heard, and felt in the sub-basement affected them more deeply than messages received on the machine. they were proud of having experienced something frightening in that spooky place underground and enjoyed posting their video for others to view on youtube. information flows constantly from phantom radar, ghost radar, spirit story box, and other ghost-hunting apps that we can buy for low prices or download for free. these images and sounds not only offer guidelines for locating ghosts; they also represent our current era of semi-reliable electronic communication. at the center of each college ghost hunt stand young people whose eagerness to confront their own fears motivates them to move forward. as long as they keep daring to undertake such quests, their stories deserve to be told. “there’s an app for that”® tucker 36 works cited the blair witch project. directed by daniel myrick and eduardo sanchez. 1999. haxan films. dvd. blastprocess 2014. app review: phantom radar the ghost detector. 24 march. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjgyshmdf4w/. accessed november 26, 2016. bronner, simon j. 2012. campus traditions: folklore from the old-time college to the modern mega-university. jackson: university press of mississippi. burnett, frances hodgson. 2013. a little princess. new york: oxford university press. dégh, linda. 1968. the haunted bridges near avon and danville and their role in legend formation. indiana folklore 1: 77-81. ellis, bill. 1982-83. legend-tripping in ohio: a behavioral study. in papers in comparative studies 2, eds. daniel barnes, rosemary o. joyce, and steven swann jones, pp. 61-73. columbus: center for comparative studies in the humanities, ohio state university. frank, russell. 2011. newslore: contemporary folklore on the internet. jackson: university press of mississippi. glimm, james york. 1983. flat-landers and ridge-runners. pittsburgh: university of pittsburgh press. goldstein, diane e. 2007. the commodification of belief. in haunting experiences: ghosts in contemporary folklore, eds. diane e. goldstein, sylvia ann grider, and jeannie banks thomas, pp. 171-205. logan: utah state university press. gordon, avery. 1997. ghostly matters: haunting and the sociological imagination. minneapolis: university of minnesota press. grider, sylvia ann. 1999. the haunted house in literature, popular culture, and tradition: a consistent image. contemporary legend, new series 2:174-204. lindahl, carl. 2005. ostensive healing: pilgrimage to the san antonio ghost tracks. journal of american folklore 118: 164-85. a little princess. directed by alfonso cuarón. 2006. warner home video. mahdi, muhsin, ed. and trans. 2008. the arabian nights. new york: norton. mcneill, lynne s. 2006. contemporary ghost hunting and the relationship between proof and experience. contemporary legend 9: 96-110. number of apps available in leading app stores as of june 2016. 2016. statista: the statistics portal. https://www.statista.com/statistics/276623/number-ofapps-available-in-leading-app-stores/. accessed november 21, 2016. phantom radar—the ghost detector. 2017. cnet. http://download.cnet.com/ phantom-radar-the-ghost-detector/3000-2094_4-75186987.html. accessed march 18, 2017. stahler, jeff. 2015. smartphone, smartphone on a stick, who has the fairest profile pic? 2015. [cartoon]. universal uclick for ufs. tatar, maria. 2006. secrets beyond the door: the story of bluebeard and his wives. princeton: princeton university press. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjgyshmdf4w/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/276623/number-of-apps-available-in-leading-app-stores/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/276623/number-of-apps-available-in-leading-app-stores/ http://download.cnet.com/phantom-radar-the-ghost-detector/3000-2094_4-75186987.html http://download.cnet.com/phantom-radar-the-ghost-detector/3000-2094_4-75186987.html tucker “there’s an app for that”® 37 thigpen, kenneth a. 1971. adolescent legends in brown county: a survey. indiana folklore 4:2 (1971): 141-215. tolbert, jeffrey a. 2013. the sort of story that has you covering your mirrors: the case of slender man. semiotic review 2 (november). http://www. semioticreview.com. accessed 23 november 2016. tucker, elizabeth. 2007. haunted halls: ghostlore of american college campuses. jackson: university press of mississippi. http://www.semioticreview.com http://www.semioticreview.com 39 “little pitchers have big ears” the intricate world of children and proverbs wolfgang mieder the titular proverb from the 16th century, not particularly current these days, used to be employed by parents to signal each other that their little children (pitchers) were listening in on something that was not meant for their ears (handles on the pitchers). the assumption was that children could not possibly understand this metaphorical message and, judging by some experiments i have conducted with youngsters as well as my university students, it is indeed a proverb whose hidden meaning is difficult to comprehend. but the proverb also implies that the children are good and keen listeners to what adults are saying, and sooner or later they will catch on at decoding the metaphors of proverbs whose imagery is less obscure. this begs the question at what age children become comfortable in processing proverbs in their mind, whether it is worthwhile to teach them some of the most popular proverbs, and what educational tools exist in addition to normal discourse to aid in this developmental process. once children are introduced to metaphorical proverbs that relate to their very existence, their interest in dealing with this type of indirect language is awakened. there is no doubt that children can handle proverbs at an earlier age than has long been thought possible, but much more study needs to be undertaken on how children employ proverbs once they have become part of their natural vocabulary. ever since the swiss psychologist jean piaget published his seminal study on the language and thought of the child (1926) with its influential chapter “some peculiarities of verbal understanding in the child between the ages of nine and eleven” (piaget 1959: 127-161), scholars have struggled with the question at what age children are capable of processing, understanding, and employing metaphorical proverbs. there are those who maintained with piaget that youngsters are incapable of dealing with proverbs until at least twelve years of age (billow 1975, cometa 1976, douglas and peel 1979), but this view began to be questioned by the end of the 1970s by primarily psycholinguists employing various innovative research methods, such as placing proverbs in a pictorial context (honeck, sowry, voegtle 1978) or asking children to choose an appropriate proverb from a list of ten to end a vignette, to pair proverbs of similar meaning, and to paraphrase them rather than confronting them with a multiple choice proverbs test (resnick 1977 and 1982). especially marilyn nippold and her colleagues have advanced such developmentally oriented studies on proverb comprehension by children and adolescents, arguing that it is of paramount importance that proverbs are presented in a contextualized form (nippold 1985 and 1988, nippold et al. 1988 and 1998). such carefully executed investigations of various proverb tasks with statistical analyses have amply shown that children by the age of ten (fourth graders) are certainly ready to comprehend proverbs, that is at least two years earlier in their development than what piaget had postulated. “little pitchers have big ears” mieder 40 the same has been shown to be true for the related proverbial expressions or general idioms (gibbs 1987, lodge and leach 1975, prinz 1983) while psycholinguists have done impressive work in advancing knowledge about how children’s minds process and understand metaphorical proverbs, they have basically ignored the question of when children begin using proverbs once they have become acquainted with them. folklorist catherine hudson, in her short paper on “traditional proverbs as perceived by children from an urban environment” (1972), tried to deal with proverbs in actual use, but she was able to observe only that while her fourth and fifth graders could deal with proverbs cited by adults they “never reached the point where they used proverbs in their conversation” (hudson 1972: 17). but in this regard it is important to point to judith pasamanick’s unfortunately ignored dissertation the proverb moves the mind: abstraction and metaphor in children six-nine (1982) with folklorist barbara kirshenblatt-gimblett being on the thesis committee at yeshiva university in new york city. she took the time to set up discursive situations with 48 children in which she, as the investigator, would discuss a given proverb to the point that they understood its meaning, were able to talk about it, and also put it to use. it took many weeks of serious transcription work and detailed analysis to show by realistic verbal exchanges that these youngsters could manage proverbs. altering the proverb that “talk does not cook rice” for a summary of sorts to “talk does cook rice: proverb abstraction through social interaction” (1983), she used a most fitting metaphor for her seminal work that shows that a narrative approach to proverb understanding and use is better than employing proverbs tests without contexts. it was a special pleasure and privilege for me when judith pasamanick and her husband visited me in vermont. our discussions resulted in the publication of her paper “watched pots do boil: proverb interpretation through contextual illustration” (1985) in proverbium. the recorded transcripts of her discussions with the children of such proverbs as “you can’t have your cake and eat it too,” “talk does not cook rice,” “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush,” “don’t count your chickens before they hatch,” “you can’t unscramble eggs,” “you can’ teach an old dog new tricks,” “the early bird catches the worm,” and others are most revealing of the social and ethical aspects of these discussions among young peers, and they are most certainly unique in the scholarship of children and proverbs. in this regard let me also point out the fascinating scholarship by the finnish folklorist and paremiologist liisa granbom-herranen who has investigated life stories of adults who recall in their narratives what pedagogical roles proverbs played as behavioral models once they had learned them as children (granbom-herranen 2008, 2009, 2011). personal narratives can shed much light on lasting effects of proverbs encountered in youth. regrettably, judith pasamanick did not become a paremiologically oriented folklorist but rather entered the professorial profession in the college of education at columbia university where she invited pack carnes, known for his fable and joke scholarship, and me to teach a folklore summer course – an unforgettably rewarding experience. in any case, a third section of her dissertation deals with “pedagogic applications” (322-351) where she discusses how her socialinteractional mode of proverb elicitation and employment can be used in a mieder “little pitchers have big ears” 41 constructive way in the classroom of an ethnically diverse group of children. without wanting to be prescriptive, she argues that proverbs can facilitate the discussion of ethical values by giving the children the opportunity to analyze their implied wisdom. and it is with gladness and appreciation that i acknowledge here the influence that the pioneering work of my friend had on my own involvement with proverbs and children. she was correct more than thirty years ago, and she will remain so since there is absolutely nothing wrong with teaching children at least the most commonly known proverbs. the question is, of course, how to accomplish this task that ought to include pasamanick’s open-mined discursive approach. as luck would have it, i received a generous grant from the templeton foundation in 1999 to develop teaching strategies for acquainting fourth-grade students with wisdom in the form of proverbs. i teamed up with their teacher, deborah holmes, and we put together a number of teaching units that proved most beneficial to the youngsters who reacted with spirited enthusiasm that perhaps only children of the age between nine and ten are capable of exhibiting in a classroom situation. for the character development and ethics unit, we covered proverbs like “where there is a will, there is a way,” “if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again,” “do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” and “actions speak louder than words.” during the united nations’ unit, we employed proverbs like “the pen is mightier than the sword,” “different strokes for different folks,” “love thy neighbor as thyself,” “united we stand, divided we fall,” and “a house divided cannot stand.” and during the science/math units we dealt with such proverbs as “a stitch in time saves nine,” “two heads are better than one,” “a rolling stone gathers no moss,” and “a miss is as good as a mile.” altogether we covered 150 proverbs during the school year chosen from the established paremiological minimum of 300 anglo-american proverbs (haas 2008, mieder 1992). it was important to us to teach only those proverbs that are definitely current in our modern society, and we made sure that we included modern proverbs like “garbage in, garbage out,” “there is no such things as a free lunch,” and “one picture is worth a thousand words.” one of the criticisms that i would level at some of the psycholinguistic studies is that they at times use proverbs that are not particularly current, to wit “scalded cats fear even cold water,” “a caged bird longs for the clouds,” “the restless sleeper blames the bed,” “the pretty shoe often pinches the foot,” and “a mouse may help a lion” (duthie et al. 2008: 162-163). in any case, i traveled to the elementary school at milton, vermont about every three weeks with my slide projector for a number of school years, telling my university students before going that they better be well prepared for the next lesson if they wanted to come even close to the excitement and eagerness of these wonderful young learners. they loved my slides from art, cartoons, comics, advertisement, headlines, etc., and they had absolutely no problems understanding so-called anti-proverbs, i.e., intentional humorous or satirical manipulations of the proverbs they had learned. there were also exciting projects for the children like writing essays about a proverb, translating the proverbial metaphors into drawings, acting out proverbs, etc. we have described all of this in our book “children and “little pitchers have big ears” mieder 42 proverbs speak the truth”: teaching proverbial wisdom to fourth graders (mieder and holmes 2000). our joint efforts with these incredible youngsters got into the papers, and we also had a half-hour interview with npr that aired numerous times over the years as part of its “humankind” series. but speaking of the book that includes forty proverbial drawings, perhaps the most exciting aspect are the answers of the students to the following questions of a questionnaire handed out at the end of the school year. let me cite some of the questions with but a couple of answers here: what is your favorite proverb? actions speak louder than words. every cloud has a silver lining. (p. 197) describe a situation when a proverb you learned this year helped you make a good decision. don’t judge a book but its cover helped me read a great book. it had an ugly green cover and a boring name but “the lost bear” was a great book. my little sister and i were about to cross a street without looking and i stopped and said look before you leap. (p. 198) which proverb would help you if there was trouble on the playground? two wrongs don’t make a right. do unto others as you would have them do unto you. (p. 204) which proverb would you like to remember for the rest of your life? why? time flies because you have to make life the fullest because it is so short once you think about it. there is no such thing as a free lunch. because we need to learn that if we want something we have to work for it or earn it. (p. 205) did learning and discussing proverbs change your thinking or behavior in any way? yes – no. yes. learning and discussing proverbs changed my behavior in how i thought. i think with more maturity now that i have learned proverbs. yes. it changed my thinking about the way everything works. (p. 207) would you like to continue to learn proverbs? yes – no. yes. because they are very interesting and can help you in life. yes. because proverbs are like morals. the more you know the less you make bad decisions. (p. 208) our book has seventeen such answers to these and other questions, and in my international proverb archives, i have many more from other years of teaching these kids. this is material that the psycholinguistic studies mentioned above— mieder “little pitchers have big ears” 43 except for those by judith pasamanick—do not have and thus do not consider. there is no doubt that much more contextualized field research is necessary to really understand how children at a young age relate to proverbs. the fact that proverbs can be taught and that they might have a positive influence on the character development of youngsters is nothing new. they have long been taught as ready-made bits of wisdom or at least as generalized expressions of experiences and observations as can be seen from early educational collections, school-books from the middle ages, translation exercises in foreign language classes, etc. (mieder 2009, orkin 1978). and let us not forget benjamin franklin’s poor richard’s almanacks (1733-1758) and his infamous essay “the way to wealth” (1758) that ushered in the puritan ethics with its 105 proverbs! can’t you just imagine those children during the past two centuries who sat at the breakfast table and drank their milk out of a cup standing on a plate that both are inscribed with such proverbs as “early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise,” “laziness travels so slowly, that poverty soon overtakes him,” or “he that by the plough would thrive, himself must either hold or drive”? in addition to such proverbial inscriptions these dishes often carried the label “franklin’s maxims” – no wonder that his name became attached to so many proverbs when in fact he only coined very few, to wit “there is sleeping enough in the grave” and “three removes are as bad as a fire” (mieder 2004b: 216-224). these franklin mugs and plates have long since become collector’s items, and my wife has spent up to $300 a piece to assemble a dozen of these rare curiosities for me as very special and much-appreciated presents (mcclinton 1980, riley 1991). we have modern lists of proverbs that serve similar educational purposes, as for example the one in the dictionary of cultural literacy: what every american needs to know (hirsch et al. 1988: 46-57, mieder 1992: 195-197). e.d. hirsch has also published what your fourth grader needs to know with a list of sayings and phrases (hirsch 2005: 57-65) that are explained by way of short statements and concise educational dialogues, as for example: birds of a feather flock together we use this saying [proverb] to mean that similar people, or people who have similar interests, like to be with each other. “those guys always eat lunch together,” jenny said, nodding toward a group of boys in the cafeteria. “yeah,” said june, “they’re on the same baseball team and they love to talk about mitts and bats and home runs.” jenny nodded. “birds of a feather flock together!” (hirsch 2005: 58) but nowhere in these two books does he explain how these texts were chosen. it certainly would have been appropriate to have consulted proverb scholars to help select those texts (old and modern) that are current today. jay mechling has dealt with the issue of oversimplifying the educational and cultural value and significance of proverbs in his eye-opening article on “‘cheaters never prosper’ and other lies adults tell kids: proverbs and the culture wars over character” (2004). as he points out, there are plenty of inappropriate proverbs, and the mere “little pitchers have big ears” mieder 44 memorization of “good” proverbs – even they can be put to negative use due to their polyfunctionality, polysituativity, and polysemanticity (mieder 2004b: 132) – does not make a good child let alone adult. and yet, at least some knowledge and understanding of proverbs is part of cultural literacy and there is no harm in acquainting children with them without making absolute rules out of their all-too-human limitations, as is immediately obvious from such contrasting pairs as “absence makes the heart grow fonder” vs. “out of sight, out of mind” and “look before you leap” vs. “he who hesitates is lost.” a proverb at the right time in the right place is just fine, but the proverbial caveats “nothing in excess” and “everything in moderation” also apply to the use of proverbs. now that educational books have been mentioned, it is time to take a look at richly illustrated small books for children that have been published over the years to serve as enjoyable early introductions to the rich treasure trove of proverbs (mieder et al. 1992). they are clearly intended to teach children proverbs, just as other children’s books acquaint youngsters with fables, fairy tales, legends, myths, etc. as part of cultural literacy. judging by my university students who enroll in my lecture course on “‘big fish eat little fish’: the nature and politics of proverbs” every fall (mieder 2015), i can honestly and without riding my proverbial hobby-horse state that they would well have benefitted from one of these charming books. it is always amazing to me at the beginning of the course that they have plenty of difficulties filling out a questionnaire with fifty common proverbs for which i ask them to complete either the first or the second half. even though i have selected especially common proverbs from the anglo-american paremiological minimum, many students cannot complete the partial queues for such standard proverbs as “a stitch in time saves nine,” “cobbler stick to your last,” “a miss is as good as a mile,” “there is nothing new under the sun,” “you never miss the water until the well runs dry,” and “a burnt child dreads the fire.” but they all know the “fish”-proverb used in the catch-title of my course as becomes clear during the introductory lecture that deals with a diachronic survey of this proverb with references from literature, politics, the mass media, and about fifty slides of illustrations from pieter bruegel all the way to modern cartoons and advertisements (mieder 1987: 178-228, and 2004b: 34-43). at that time i also show them that ever popular children’s book swimmy (1963) by leo lionni that on a few beautifully illustrated pages first shows how a big fish swallows little fish, then how a special little fish starts organizing his peers into the shape of a large fish – i call it the solidarity fish – and how that unified creature chases the big fish away. more than fifty years after its first appearance this book is still on the market in numerous languages, and many of my students remember it from their childhood. in comparison to other children’s books on proverbs that i have collected over the years, this is particularly memorable since it is basically a pictorial story with but little writing that teaches youngsters about just one important proverb about power, greed, rapacity that unfortunately is part of human nature that can, at least at times, be overcome by unified efforts. my interest in children’s books on proverbs – besides my obsession with collecting everything proverbial for my ever expanding international proverb archives – began when, some thirty years ago, i came across the sixteen-page mieder “little pitchers have big ears” 45 booklet old proverbs with new pictures by lizzie lawson published without a date by the merrimack publishing corporation in new york city. realizing that this treasure of beautifully illustrated children depicting the proverbs “little boats keep near shore, big ships may venture more,” “half a loaf is better than no bread,” “there’s many a slip twixt the cup and the lip,” “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush,” “it’s an ill wind that blows no body good,” “you may lead a horse to water but you cannot make him drink,” “the more haste, the less speed,” “birds of a feather flock together,” “never buy a pig in a poke,” “out of the frying pan into the fire,” “too much of a good thing is good for nothing,” “tis a poor heart that never rejoices,” “the greatest strokes make not the sweetest music,” too many cooks spoil the broth,” and “coming events cast their shadows before.” i never succeeded in finding out more about this slender publication, but i have discovered the fabulous book from which these illustrations were taken. it is old proverbs with new pictures (london: cassell, petter, calpin & co.) that on 64 pages contains 35 proverb illustrations by the british children’s book artist lizzie lawson (1867-1920) and little explanatory poems by the unknown british poet clara mateaux that were deleted from the small reprint. here is at least one example, albeit without the illustration: it is no use crying over spilt milk do not fret for fretting ended, never bowl or platter mended, bind that finger, wipe that tear, next, more careful step my dear, and remember what i say, milk, once spilt, is spilt for aye. (p. 22) admittedly, such verses would not come across to today’s children, and the illustrations are also dated for modern youngsters. nevertheless, it is one of the most splendid children’s proverb books that definitely deserves to be reprinted as a unique curiosity with plenty of entertaining value. and paremiologists like myself will, of course, also enjoy the fact that lord john russell’s famous proverb definition “the wit of one, the wisdom of many” (1823) appears – albeit in reverse order – underneath the cover picture of five children. for the past three decades, i have searched for other proverb books intended for children by spending time in the children’s section of bookstores, asking shopkeepers for possible leads, and also trying the internet. while i am excited about the ten additional books that i have been able to purchase during the past decades, it is a regrettably small harvest. proverb collections as such – popular and scholarly – can actually be found in general bookstores, and i would think that “little pitchers have big ears” mieder 46 well-illustrated children’s books on proverbs could conquer their market as well. and it would be desirable that such books would include particularly popular traditional proverbs as well as more modern proverbs like “go big or go home” or “the second mouse gets the cheese” (doyle et al. 2012). in any case, what follows is a short survey of the children’s proverb books that i possess: hughes, shirley (ill.). 1977. make hay while the sun shines. a book of proverbs. chosen by alison m. abel. london: faber and faber. 48 pp.; rpt. london: faber and faber, 1998. 40 pp. the book with its proverbial title includes 33 pen and ink drawings of children acting out standard proverbs like “many hands make light work,” “don’t swap horses in mid-stream,” and “let sleeping dogs lie.” the proverbs are cited at the bottom of the page with very short explanatory comments. i was especially pleased to see the proverb “a stitch in time saves nine” illustrated together with the concise explanation: “if you put something right as soon as it goes wrong, you won’t have so much trouble later” (p.7). this is one of the proverbs that not a single student in my proverb class this past fall knew! little wonder perhaps, since nobody appears to be mending clothes any longer. i personally have fond memories seeing my mother stitch the holes in our socks when we grew up after the second world war. since the proverb obviously need not refer only to mending clothes, it still has plenty of good use in our modern society and could well still be taught and learned. hughes, shirley (ill.). 1980. “over the moon”: a book of sayings. london: faber and faber. 48 pp.; rpt. london: faber and faber, 1998. 40 pp. having had success with her first proverb book, shirley hughes brought out a companion volume depicting 47 proverbial expressions in pen and ink drawings (sometimes two on a page). the proverbial expressions are once again printed at the bottom of the page with a very short explanatory comment beneath. some of the depicted phrases are “up the creek with a paddle,” “a bull in a china shop,” “casting pearls before swine,” and “hitting the nail on the head.” such metaphorical expressions literally call out to be illustrated, and i was especially interested to see that shirley hughes included the proverbial expression “being a dog in the manger” that i have traced back to classical times (mieder 2011). the pen and ink drawing makes its meaning perfectly clear, but the explanatory comment “refusing to give up something you don’t really want to someone who needs it” (p. 6) helps to understand the metaphor. none of my university students knew this expression and not surprisingly so, since fables, where the metaphor comes from, are not covered much in school any longer. and yet, it is such a great image, and i wish we could maintain it since it still fits perfectly to human behavior in the modern age. fraser, betty (ill.). 1990. first things first: an illustrated collection of sayings – useful and familiar for children. new york: harper & row. 32 pp. while the two books by shirley hughes probably would not appeal to youngster these days because of the lack of colorful illustrations, this book by mieder “little pitchers have big ears” 47 betty fraser presents plenty of them with children from various ethnic groups. it includes two dozen well-known proverbs for which it explains in words and pictures what they mean and when to use them. the pictures are full of good humor, and they are entitled by an introductory statement with one or two possible proverbial answers interspersed on the page, as for example: what to say when you are the first the early bird catches the worm. first come, first served. first things first. (p. 14) the accompanying picture shows a bird outside of the kitchen eating a worm and a child sitting at the table as the first family member being served breakfast by the mother. there is also a little dog wanting to eat and thinking to himself “first things first”. this book is clearly meant to teach children proverbs, and my proverb students would be able to explain to the little girl that the proverb “first come, first served” is actually a medieval latin legal proverb that relates to the miller. the customary law was that the farmer who would arrive at the mill first would have his grain ground first. the proverb was translated into the vernacular languages, with geofrrey chaucer still alluding to this practice with “whoso that first to mille comth, first grynt”. but by 1599 the truncated variant “first come, first served” already appeared in england and it has long displaced the longer version (mieder 2004b: 43-52). a child does not need to know this, of course, but this example shows that there is much to learn about proverbs for the inquisitive mind, even at a young age. i am not sure if i would have included “a trouble shared is a trouble halved” that is not really current, but i am glad that there is a two-page spread on the golden rule “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” the twice repeated text and the two series of three pictures each make the meaning of this basic rule of civil and humane behavior perfectly clear to the young readers and viewers. kneen, maggie (ill.). 1992. “too many cooks ...” and other proverbs. new york: green tiger press. 26 pp. this is a beautifully illustrated book with all the characters being animals. it presents twenty-five very well-known proverbs, with some proverbs like “birds of a feather flock together” getting a two-page illustration, while another two-page spread presents a horse and buggy at a stable with five proverbs written next to appropriate place: “if wishes were horses, beggars would ride,” “never look a gift horse in the mouth,” “don’t put the cart before the horse,” “you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink,” and “don’t lock the stable door after the horse has bolted.” the first and last proverb might be a bit difficult for a small child to grasp. for parents who might have difficulties there are two pages at the end of the book with short explanations, to wit for the “stable”-proverb: “it is useless to take precautions after an accident has happened when they should have been taken before.” in any case, this is a charming and entertaining book for very “little pitchers have big ears” mieder 48 young children, but it is, as the others mentioned thus far, unfortunately out of print. hurwitz, johanna. 1994. a word to the wise and other proverbs. illustrations by robert rayevsky. new york: morrow junior books. 32 pp. as stated on the dust cover of this book, its author johanna hurwitz was inspired by an oil painting called the dutch proverbs (1646/4) by david teniers ii that depicts 45 proverbs and proverbial expressions on a large canvas very much in the tradition of pieter bruegel’s famous painting the netherlandish proverbs (1559) with its over 100 proverbial scenes (dundes and stibbe 1981, mieder 2004a): “a picture is worth a thousand words, but sometimes words can inspire a picture. on a trip to england, i saw a large painting at belvoir castle [at grantham]. it depicted many proverbial scenes together on a single canvas. that painting sparked the idea for this book.” as my wife and i did on our pilgrimage to belvoir castle some years ago, hurwitz too must have bought a postcard of the picture at the museum shop that lists the proverbial phrases. in turn she showed it to the children’s book illustrator robert rayevsky who adapted the 17th-century small-town painting to the metropolis of new york city with teniers’ small river becoming the east river. altogether his picture is comprised of twenty proverb scenes, with the actual texts printed around the outside borders. the left side includes proverbs like “don’t cry over spilt milk,” “birds of a feather flock together,” and “too many cooks spoil the broth,” while the right side features such proverbs as “where there’s smoke, there’s fire,” “an apple a day keeps the doctor away,” and “don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.” the proverb picture appears twice on the front and back inside cover pages, clearly entertaining children and adults alike in searching out the proverb scenes and gaining some understanding of their traditional wisdom. the inside of this oversize book (9x11) includes 22 proverbs with some of them like “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush” and “when the cat’s away the mice will play” covering two whole pages. the proverbs are printed at the top or the bottom of the page in relatively small lettering without any explanations. this surely is a book that is intended primarily for viewing pleasure while at the same time introducing children to very well-known proverbs, with the one about “the pen is mightier than the sword” showing benjamin franklin at a lectern with a quill in hand and surrounded by children. this illustration serves as the introduction and is accompanied by a short preface that quite correctly states that franklin is “known of having recorded many proverbs in a series of books called poor richard almanack. benjamin franklin was aware that there was much for us to learn from the simple truths of proverbs” (p. 3). in other words, hurwitz refrains from perpetuating the falsehood that franklin coined dozens of proverbs that one hears and reads to this day, something that is especially the case for the apocryphal attachment of his name to the beautifully illustrated proverb “early to bed, and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise” (pp. 24-25) that actually dates back to a late medieval latin proverb (barbour 1974, mieder 1993: 98-134) mieder “little pitchers have big ears” 49 brennan-nelson, denise. 2003. my momma likes to say. illustrations by jane monroe donovan. chelsea, michigan: sleeping bear press. 32 pp. brennan-nelson, denise. 2004. my teacher likes to say. illustrations by jane monroe donovan. chelsea, michigan: sleeping bear press. 32 pp. brennan-nelson, denise. 2007. my grandma likes to say. illustrations by jane monroe donovan. chelsea, michigan: sleeping bear press. 32 pp. these somewhat oversized (10x10) books are proof of the proverb that all good things come in three! the collaborative work between the author denise brennan-nelson and the illustrator jane monroe resulted in the poetic, prosaic, and pictorial explanation of about a dozen proverbs and proverbial expressions in each book. the children learn that they most likely have heard them from their mother, teacher, or grandmother. on a two-page spread the proverb is written in large letters at the top followed by some verses and in smaller print a few explanatory comments, with the wonderful colorful illustrations bringing it all to life. the first book presents proverbs like “money doesn’t grow on trees” and proverbial expressions like “it’s raining cats and dogs” (the illustration of animals tumbling through the rain is also on the cover), and i was pleased to see a modern proverb included that might serve as an example of the modus operandi of these books: “when life hands you lemons, make lemonade,” my momma likes to say. i’m not sure what she means but i like it anyway. if life gives me lemons i’ll squeeze them good and hard, then add some sugar, stir it up and sell it from our yard. all of this is surrounded by several children preparing lemonade in a front yard to be sold to passersby, but in the upper right corner, in small print, is this additional information: andrew carnegie (1835-1919) first said, “when fate hands us lemons, let us try to make lemonade.” lemons are very sour and yet they are used to make something very sweet and delicious – lemonade! this idiom suggests that we should take a difficult situation and turn it into something good. can you think of a time when you took a bad situation and turned it into something good? [this is followed by eight lines of a lemonade recipe] (24-25) all of this is written in such small print that i doubt that children would enjoy reading it. but perhaps this is meant for the parents to read and discuss with the children. i should also add that none of the books state anywhere what the age“little pitchers have big ears” mieder 50 range of the children is that are being addressed. finally, calling andrew carnegie the originator of the proverb is stretching things a bit. he helped to popularize it, with the earliest reference thus far being from 1910 (doyle, mieder, shapiro 2012: 140). by the third book proverbial expressions and comparisons like “growing like a weed,” “a horse of a different color,” “being no spring chicken,” and “hit the hay” outnumber proverbs like “when the cats away the mice will play” and “where there’s a will there’s a way.” one of my favorites is the verbal and pictorial treatment of the proverbial comparison “like a bull in a china shop” (16-17) that has been shown to have an international distribution from classical times to today in a number of variants including an elephant instead of the bull (trokhimenko 1999). gregorich, barbara. 2006. waltur [sic] buys a pig in a poke and other stories. illustrations by kristin sorra. boston, massachusetts: houghton mifflin. 54 pp. gregorich, barbara. 2007. waltur [sic] paints himself into a corner and other stories. illustrations by kristin sorra. boston, massachusetts: houghton mifflin. 48 pp. these two books are very different from the others in that they teach or exemplify proverbs by stories with many colorful illustrations showing how waltur the bear in company with his bear friends finds out the truth behind them. the first volume treats the three proverbs “don’t buy a pig in a poke,” “don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched,” and “you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.” here are a few of the short prose lines printed as if they were poems of the first story: a pig in a poke the three friends went to the fair. “i will go on rides,” said darwin. “i will play games,” said matilda. “and i will buy a pig,” said waltur. “be careful,” said matilda. “do not buy a pig in a poke.” “what’s a poke?” asked darwin. “a poke is a bag,” matilda answered. “you cannot see through a bag. you should not buy what you cannot see,” she said. matilda went to play games. darwin went to go on rides. waltur went to buy a pet. (6-7) mieder “little pitchers have big ears” 51 and on it goes for more pages as waltur finds his understanding and appreciation of the proverb. the second volume presents stories around “don’t put the cart before the horse”, “don’t paint yourself into a corner,” and “let sleeping dogs lie” of which the first two would normally be considered as proverbial expressions that are rendered into proverbs of sorts by adding the negative imperative “don’t” element to them. but to be sure, the stories and illustrations are educational in an entertaining fashion, and children would surely enjoy having them read to them or reading them on their own while glancing at the pictures. these then are the books that i have been able to collect over the years, leaving examples of similar books in german, russian, and spanish aside for now. of course, there are other ways to teach proverbs to children bringing to mind a large framed colorful poster of a painting by the british artist william belcher with the title as the saying goes (1973) that hangs in my office in our home. it contains 51 proverb scenes with captions for the obvious delight and edification of children. as in the netherlandish proverbs by bruegel, a house is placed into an open landscape with a river running through it, with the various scenes and captions bringing to life such proverbs as “cleanliness is next to godliness,” “too many cooks spoil the broth,” “a rolling stone gathers no moss,” “look before you leap,” “you can’t have your cake and eat it too,” and, befitting an english poster, “an englishman’s home is his castle” which is nowadays usually cited more generally as “a man’s home is his castle.” my wife and i remember fondly how our nephews and niece would stand in front of the picture enjoying the proverbial messages. observing children deal with proverbs can indeed be a lot of fun for adults. as they learn and understand them, it is of developmental interest to hear them utter them correctly in different contexts. but there are also those perennial lists prepared by elementary school teachers where children have been asked to complete truncated proverbs that they often do not yet know. we have all received such humorous lists via the internet, and i have quite a collection of them. two of my favorites are “a rolling stone plays a guitar” and “a bird in the hand is warm” that clearly have some truth to them. and children also come up spontaneously with proverb-like statements that might just have it in them to become new proverbs, to wit such wisdom as “parents have eyes in the backs of their heads,” “you can’t hide mashed potatoes in your hat,” “popping popcorn without a lid isn’t smart,” and “you can’t trust dogs to watch your food” that h. jackson brown has collected in his richly illustrated book wit and wisdom from the peanut butter gang. a collection of wise words from young hearts (1994: 25, 52, 63, 64, see also gash 1999, knox 1925, stark 1992). adults throughout the world have coined plenty of proverbs about children and child-rearing (palacios 1996, reinsberg-düringsfeld 1864), and so why should we not also look more seriously at children’s very own proverbs? it certainly behooves folklorists and others to pay much more attention to children and proverbs not only from the dominant psycholinguistic approach but also by way of rigorous field research to find out when, how, and why children employ proverbs that they have learned in actual verbal communication. teaching them traditional and modern proverbs, “little pitchers have big ears” mieder 52 not so much as moral maxims as was done in former times but rather as culturally relevant generalizations, still makes a lot of sense as they develop into responsible citizens with at least a little bit of help from the insights of the experienced wisdom of proverbial common-sense. works cited primary sources brennan-nelson, denise. 2003. my momma likes to say. illustrations by jane monroe donovan. chelsea, michigan: sleeping bear press. 32 pp. ———. 2004. my teacher likes to say. illustrations by jane monroe donovan. chelsea, michigan: sleeping bear press. 32 pp. ———. 2007. my grandma likes to say. illustrations by jane monroe donovan. chelsea, michigan: sleeping bear press. 32 pp. brown, h. jackson (ed.). 1994. wit and wisdom from the peanut butter gang [i.e., children]. nashville, tennessee: rutledge hill press. 128 pp. with illustrations. fraser, betty (ill.). 1990. first things first: an illustrated collection of sayings – useful and familiar for children. new york: harper & row. 32 pp. gash, amy (ed.). 1999. what the dormouse said. lessons for grown-ups from children’s books. illustrations by pierre le-tan. chapel hill, north carolina: algonquin books. 146 pp. gregorich, barbara. 2006. waltur [sic] buys a pig in a poke and other stories. illustrations by kristin sorra. boston, massachusetts: houghton mifflin. 54 pp. ———. 2007. waltur [sic] paints himself into a corner and other stories. illustrations by kristin sorra. boston, massachusetts: houghton mifflin. 48 pp. hughes, shirley (ill.). 1977. make hay while the sun shines. a book of proverbs. chosen by alison m. abel. london: faber and faber. 48 pp.; rpt. london: faber and faber, 1998. 40 pp. ———. 1980. “over the moon”: a book of sayings. london: faber and faber. 48 pp.; rpt. london: faber and faber, 1998. 40 pp. hurwitz, johanna. 1994. a word to the wise and other proverbs. illustrations by robert rayevsky. new york: morrow junior books. 32 pp. kneen, maggie (ill.). 1992. “too many cooks…” and other proverbs. new york: green tiger press. 26 pp. knox, d.b. 1925. children’s funny sayings. an amusing book for everybody. new york: e.p. dutton. 206 pp. lionni, leo. 1963. swimmy. new york: alfred a. knopf. 32 pp. mateaux, clara. 1881. old proverbs with new pictures. illustrations by lizzie lawson. london: cassell, petter, calpin & co. 64 pp. partial reprint new york: merrimack publishing, ca. 1980. 16 pp. stark, judith. priceless proverbs: from the tongue of the young. 1982. los angeles, california: price, stern, sloan. 76 pp. with illustrations. mieder “little pitchers have big ears” 53 secondary sources barbour, frances m. 1974. a concordance to the sayings in franklin’s “poor richard”. detroit, michigan: gale research company. billow, richard m. 1975. a cognitive development study of metaphor comprehension. developmental psychology 11: 415-423. cometa, michael stephen. 1976. logical operations in semantic development: a piagetian model of metaphor and proverb comprehension. phd diss., state university of new york at albany. douglas, joan delahanty, and bettina peel. 1979. the development of metaphor and proverb translation in children grades 1 through 7. journal of educational research 73: 116119. doyle, charles clay, wolfgang mieder, and fred r. shapiro. 2012. the dictionary of modern proverbs. new haven, connecticut: yale university press. dundes, alan, and claudia a. stibbe. 1981. the art of 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university of vermont. 57 wrestling with masculinity andrew delfino and jay mechling once you’ve found the gym at a high school you’ve never visited before the saturday morning of a wrestling match, you pay a modest entrance fee and enter a world of thuds and whistles and cheers and boys’ locker room smells. depending upon the size of the meet—on how many schools brought teams and how many brackets—there will be one or more large mats laid out on the gym floor, mats marked with large boundary circles and a small center circle. at any moment, matches are at different stages—some beginning, some in progress, and some just ending with the victor’s arm raised by the referee. there is a din of shouting— teammates urging on a wrestler, coaches shouting advice, whistles screeching, timers buzzing, parents and friends shouting, cheering, clapping. wrestlers with their match coming up next have shed their sweats and loose-fitting basketball shorts, have pulled on the shoulder straps of their wrestling singlets, have donned the protective headgear, and are bouncing in place, pacing, or otherwise getting their bodies and minds ready for the match. other wrestlers, between matches, are in their loose clothing walking around, talking, or off alone listening to an ipod in a corner of the gym. the scene resembles a cross between a three-ring circus and a high school quad at lunch time. you can almost smell the testosterone. what, at first, might seem to be the most primal and brutal of male contact sports is far more complicated, civilized, and mental than one might think. jay had only seen one college wrestling match before his grandson joined his high school wrestling team, and as a scholar of masculinity jay saw immediately that the high school wresting he was observing every weekend for months was a remarkable, often paradoxical, display of masculinity. jay did not expect to see young women wrestling with the young men, but they were at every match in the lower sacramento valley circuit he observed in the 2008 and 2009 seasons. sometimes the woman beat the man. he was unprepared to see the blind young man wrestling for one of the high schools, and unprepared to see him win his matches. he was surprised by a story told by a fan sitting near him of a one-armed high school wrestler who was amazingly good, and he was surprised to see on youtube a video of a wrestler with no legs. clearly wrestling is about more than brute strength. andy, the first author, comes to this collaboration with extensive wrestling experience, first as a high school student and later as a wrestling coach at a prep school in atlanta’s suburbs. the authors share an interest in studying the social construction and performance of masculinity in american culture, and the combination of andy’s insider knowledge and jay’s outsider knowledge seemed like the perfect combination for studying high school wrestling. we aim to understand how this particular form of playfighting-become-sport displays and performs masculinity. the presence of female wrestlers now complicates some generalizations about the sport, and we do address that gender issue, but here our attention is primarily on the young men. wrestling with masculinity delfino and mechling 58 with high school wrestling as our focus, we encounter the drama of the interaction of the formal organizational culture controlled by the adult coaches and adult volunteers and the informal adolescent folk culture of the wrestlers themselves. as mechling says about the california boy scout troop he studied for decades (mechling 2001), the culture created at a boy scout camp or on a wrestling team is a tertium quid, a third thing, which is neither the culture created by the adults nor the culture created by the adolescents but a culture that results from the dynamic interaction of the two, a hot “border culture.” the culture of a wrestling team is nowhere near the “total institution” (goffman 1961) of a two-week boy scout encampment, where the boys and men eat, sleep, play, and work together. but the members of a wrestling team spend a lot of time together and, if all goes well, they create a strong adolescent male friendship group, a male folk group. as folklorists we have a broader understanding of the significance of the everyday “practices” by the young participants. we seek to understand the expressive functions of the everyday folk cultures of the young wrestlers as well as the instrumental functions that sociologists tend to emphasize. the existing scholarship on scholastic (high school) and collegiate wrestling in the united states tends to be by sociologists interested in the role of the sport in the social construction of masculinity, and with that goal in mind those scholars place the masculinity learned and performed in wrestling within the larger context of the construction and performance of gender in american culture. that topic interests us, too, but when we approach scholastic wrestling as folklorists we are as attentive to the expressive aspects of the wrestling experiences as to the instrumental aspects. we bring to this inquiry a strong focus on play, particularly bateson’s (1972) theory of play and fantasy, an approach and perspective missing in the other scholarship on scholastic wrestling. as folklorists we are more attuned to the informal folk culture of the adolescent wrestlers, an informal culture often at odds with the formal culture of scholastic wrestling. nowhere is this difference more pronounced than in the folk practices of hazing new members, an aspect of adolescent male group culture the social science scholarship on scholastic wrestling generally ignores. we begin with the most genuinely folk aspect of this study—namely, the informal playfighting that is so much a feature of the socialization of boys and young men in american culture. we then establish the importance of the central symbol in this sport—the male body—and then we get to our central thesis about the paradox of both informal and formal rough-and-tumble (r&t) playfighting: wrestling both is and is not combat, wrestling both is and is not sex. we consider the complexity of scholastic wrestling for the performance of normative masculinity, and throughout our discussion we pause to speculate on what wrestling means to the increasing numbers of women who participate in the sport at both the high school and college level. from playfighting to organized sport formalized male wrestling is very old and nearly universal in human history and cultures. no doubt this physical form of rough-and-tumble (r&t) playfighting has delfino and mechling wrestling with masculinity 59 some roots in evolutionary biology and psychology, as humans are not the only mammalians to engage in playfighting from an early age (groos 1898, burghardt 2005). there is also no doubt that playfighting serves cultural functions, and the many people who have written about the rise of male cultures and customs—from bettelheim (1954) on initiation rites to ong (1981) on male contest to dundes (1997) on football and more—note how men have created cultural institutions to compensate for their lack of direct procreation and as substitutes for the lethal male combat so common in the animal world. many of the features of performed masculinity, including the stylized violence that replaces real violence, can be understood as serving some very deep need in men for direct combat. civilized society masks this urge in the games and sports it provides men as a safer, sometimes symbolically displaced, alternative to real male violence. playfighting and real fighting, just as play war and real war, dance dangerously on the razor edge of controlled violence. as folklorists we see the expressive functions of playfighting as well as the instrumental ones posited by psychologists (pelligrini, 1988, 1993), sociobiologists and sociologists. as sutton-smith (1998, 2017) says, too many scholars neglect to acknowledge the main reason why we play—it is fun. the play frame, especially the frame for r&t playfighting, requires a level of trust, so paradoxically that play frame signals strong bonds of affection. brown (2000) found in direct observation fig. 1 – boys’ wrestling practice 1940s (mechling personal collection) wrestling with masculinity delfino and mechling 60 and in interviewing primary school-age boys (ages 6-9, ethnically diverse) that the r&t playfighting was “a means by which boys express care and intimacy for one another” (brown 2000). watching the game of smear (short for smear the queer, see dundes 1987), brown observed many instances of “care” of one boy by others, including care for boys who fall and might be injured. the boys understood, as they said in the interviews, that the game frame permitted them to touch friends intimately in ways they could not outside of that play frame. mechling discovered the same intimacy and bonding in the r&t playfighting he observed over several summers at the boy scout summer encampment he studied, including versions of smear the queer and capture the flag (mechling 2001:73, 152-62). these expressive dimensions of playfighting for boys and young men are the sources of their enjoyment, pleasures probably more important to the boys than the “problem” of constructing a performance of normative masculinity. unlike informal r&t playfighting, formal amateur wrestling, from the required clothing and headgear to the rules, aims always at creating a fair fight, that is, a contest that protects (as much as possible) the wrestlers from serious injury and that makes for a real contest. like boxing, wrestling is a weight class sport. wrestlers compete against others roughly their same weight. occasionally two wrestlers in a weight class will be very different heights, but height is not much of an advantage when one considers that the important element is the center of gravity. wrestling moves and holds rely on balance and leverage. one of the paradoxes of wrestling is that the stronger wrestler does not always win. when a heavily muscled wrestler faces off against a less muscled one, or when a young man faces off against a young woman, we have learned not to assume that the stronger wrestler will win the match. speed, balance, skill (knowledge of holds, escapes, and so on), strategy, and endurance count for more than sheer strength. less talented wrestlers sometimes try to muscle their way through a match; it almost never works. a young woman who knows holds, leverage, and strategy will beat a strong young man who does not have mastery of those techniques and strategies. scholars sometimes have divided games into three sorts—games of chance, skill, and strategy—recognizing that many games combine these elements (roberts, arth, and bush 1959). in ball sports, the ball provides a large measure of chance in the play. wrestling involves very little chance. the first face-off is from the standing position, but the second round in a high school or college match (2-minute rounds in high school, 3-minute rounds in college) begins with a “coin toss” (actually a circle of cardboard, red on one side and green on the other, representing each wrestler) to determine who gets to decide his position in the prone start. in the third round (if there is a second or third round—a pin ends the match) the wrestler who lost the toss in the second round or deferred the choice in the second round gets to choose his place in the starting prone position. skill and strategy drive this sport. as promised, our aim here is to analyze the meanings of male wrestling in the performance of masculinity. before presenting that structural analysis and its conclusions, though, we want to pause here to comment on the male body in wrestling. delfino and mechling wrestling with masculinity 61 the male body in wrestling there is no escaping the presence of the male body in wrestling. the original greek olympic games were played in the nude. when the modern olympic games were revived in 1896, the athletes were clothed. clothing in the games required and still require unrestricted movement, but the additional issue in wrestling is that clothing should not provide an opportunity for a competitor to grab, hold, and pull an opponent. nude wrestling would be ideal for that goal, so the clothing worn by wrestlers has always clung to the body to some extent. the modern singlet made of form-fitting materials (like lycra) is the next best solution to being nude, as it provides the required modesty. but the singlet provides an odd brand of modesty, clinging tightly to the male genitals and buttocks. the thin arm straps on most singlets make visible the muscles of the arms and chest, while the short legs of the singlet expose the muscles of the leg. there can be no doubt that the male body is on display in wrestling, even before the match begins. wrestlers have all sorts of male bodies, thanks largely to the organization of the sport by weight class. small, thin boys can wrestle their counterparts, and the heavyweights can be quite successful and admired with male bodies far from the cultural norm. the organization by weight class introduces an unusual element into the individual wrestler’s relationship to his body. scholars make the point that men and women, thanks to both biology and culture, tend to have different relationships with their bodies. women are more likely than men to experience themselves as a body, whereas men are more likely than women to experience themselves as having a body. men tend to have an instrumental view of their bodies, and the folk speech men use to describe their body parts and actions support that view (murphy 2001). men’s distance from their bodies has many consequences (ask any physician), and one is the sense of disappointment and anger when the body fails. a true man “plays through the pain,” often not telling a coach or a team medic about an injury until the game is over. wrestlers, though, bear an added burden. their workouts for strength and endurance, for flexibility and balance, may resemble the workouts of other athletes, but “making weight” always looms as a worry. the weight classes are pretty narrow, so the goal of a wrestler is to keep his weight in that range. the “moment of truth” is the weigh-in just before a meet begins. a wrestler can be disqualified if his weight is over or under the class he has been registered as. weight becomes a wrestler’s obsession. normally we talk about “eating disorders” in women, but bordo (1999) and others write about the male equivalent, a medical category called “muscle dysmorphia” (bordo 1999, 221). put simply, most young men are dissatisfied with some aspect of their bodies, often believing they are not muscular enough. wrestlers have that additional worry that they are too fat or too thin, so their obsession with food and fluids comes to resemble the obsessions medical and psychological professionals see in women with eating disorders. male wrestlers often make themselves sick by avoiding food and drink to “make weight,” and in the wake of some deaths of high school wrestlers the wrestling establishment modified the wrestling with masculinity delfino and mechling 62 weight categories and insist upon hydration tests at the weigh-in. so even before the wrestler sheds his sweats to step onto the mat in his singlet, he has had a long history of trying to shape, condition, and control his body. once on the mat, the two wrestlers’ bodies are on display. they shake hands, take their stances facing each other, and when the referee’s whistle blows their bodies come together in a stylized, choreographed, physical combat. the match is won either by pinning the opponent’s shoulders to the mat for two seconds or by points awarded for holds, escapes, falls, near-falls, and a few other moves. despite appearances, the match usually is not a “mixup” or “free-for-all”; rather, the wrestlers have learned and practiced moves, holds, and escapes, each with its own name, and the wrestler needs a strategy for combining these skilled moves to score points or even pin the opponent. andy’s coach called this aspect of the sport “physical chess.” a wrestling match looks primal, two bodies locked in holds, rolling, twisting, spinning, sometimes bending in ways limbs and torsos don’t seem designed to bend without breaking. so what is happening when these two young men wrestle? what are the meanings of the event? fig. 2 – high school wresters (mechling personal collection) delfino and mechling wrestling with masculinity 63 the paradox of play in male wrestling it amazes us that on each rereading of bateson’s remarkable 1955 (1972) essay, “a theory of play and fantasy,” we see something new. it is well known that in this formulation of the “play frame” bateson is struck by the paradox of play, that (as he puts it using an animal playfight as his example) “not only does the playful nip not denote what would be denoted by the bite for which it stands, but, in addition, the bite itself is fictional” (1972, 182). that’s the well-known part, but bateson then goes on to say that sometimes this paradox has an odd effect, and he uses some examples from action films to show how some images “did not denote that which they seemed to denote, but these same images did really evoke that terror which would have been evoked” by a real event or threat (1972, 183). bateson turns to some examples of films which encode sexuality. since bateson’s view helps understand both dundes’s controversial analysis of football and the analysis of wrestling we are about to present here, it is worth quoting bateson directly. in the film hans christian andersen, writes bateson (1972 183-4), the hero starts out accompanied by a boy. he tries to get a woman, but when he is defeated in this attempt, he returns to the boy. in all of this, there is, of course, no homosexuality, but the choice of these symbolisms is associated in these fantasies with certain characteristic ideas, e.g., about the hopelessness of the heterosexual masculine position when faced with certain sorts of women or with certain sorts of male authority. in sum, the pseudohomosexuality of the fantasy does not stand for any real homosexuality, but does stand for and express attitudes which might accompany a real homosexuality or feed its etiological roots. the symbols do not denote homosexuality, but do denote ideas for which homosexuality is an appropriate symbol. bateson’s stunning insight here is that play engages “a special combination” of primary (unconscious) and secondary (conscious) processes. “in primary process,” explains bateson, “map and territory are equated; in secondary process, they can be discriminated. in play, they are both equated and discriminated” (1972, 185). bateson’s insight helps us see the unique meanings of wrestling. everything dundes (1997) says about football and other ball sports applies in some ways to wrestling, but wrestling distills the symbolism. in wrestling, there are no distancing, mediating symbols; the male contact is as direct and as intimate as a sport can get. for the wrestlers, but also (we think) for the observers, wrestling combines primary and secondary processes. put differently, wrestling both is and is not combat. wrestling both is and is not sex. it looks and feels like combat, and it looks and feels like sex, but the peculiar, paradoxical genius of the wrestling play frame is that it both is and is not either of these. wrestling with masculinity delfino and mechling 64 wrestling both is and is not combat we begin with the informal r&t playfighting that seems to be such a constant element in the folk cultures of boys. girls sometimes engage in playfighting, and scholars of play have chronicled how girls’ play has become increasingly like boys’ play, especially after title ix began giving girls and young women access to the team sports that are part of the upbringing of boys and reflect the male friendship group. males are capable of injurious violence, so to sustain the bonding of the male friendship group, most boys learn how to perform “stylized” violence, violence in the play frame, violence that has the look and sound and feel of real violence, but keep in mind that what is signified in the play frame is “not real.” the stylized violence can be verbal, as in ritual insulting, or can be physical. wallis and mechling (2015:278-9) begin their inquiry into the puzzle of warriors’ r&t playfighting in the combat zone (iraq and afghanistan), a puzzle because it seems so risky, with a look at the scholarship by psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists, and folklorists on playfighting in children. without reproducing that survey here, we can say briefly that boys’ playfighting (elementary school age) helps develop social competence in the male friendship group (pellegrini 1988, 1993). boys often “script” their playfighting using popular culture narratives from television, movies, even video games (jarvis 2006:273, 277; jordan 1995:76; o’donnell and sharpe 2004; botvin and sutton-smith 1977; sutton-smith, gerstmeyer, and meckley 1988). r&t playfighting in the boys’ group teaches them about hierarchy in the male friendship group and experience with playfighting in the play frame teaches them the difference between fantasy violence, stylized violence, and real violence (jones 2002). it also teaches them that what happens in the play frame means nothing outside of the play frame. boys also learn that you can play fiercely and competitively in the play frame, but once you leave that frame you are still friends. in fact, the stylized combat in playfighting actually functions to reinforce the male bonding, as boys can participate in the frame of playfighting only if they trust each other. this last point lets us comment briefly on r&t playfighting in girls and young women, as this is relevant to our speculating below on what scholastic wrestling means to young women. scientific studies find playfighting in mammals as common in young females as young males, so culture rather than biology overly determines gender differences in human play. through the 20th century girls’ play in the u.s. has become more and more like the play observed in boys of the same age, though ethnographers rarely observed girls engaging in r&t playfighting for most of the century. that changed by the 1990s, when ethnographers began to observe elementary school girls playing as aggressively and as competitively as the boys on the playground (thorne 1993; hughes 1993, 1999; beresin 2010). wallis and mechling (2015:295-299), based on their reading of the war memoirs by female veterans of the wars in iraq and afghanistan, note that many of those veterans report their own “tomboy” upbringing among brothers and male playmates, an upbringing that made them more comfortable as members of the very masculine cultures of the military folk group (platoons and smaller units). even delfino and mechling wrestling with masculinity 65 these warriors could not engage in the r&t playfighting so common among the men; female warriors have to negotiate a difficult identity project so as to not be perceived as sexual objects. the female warriors, especially those raised as “tomboys,” were confortable with the stylized aggression of the male friendship group, often in the form of insults, teases, even practical jokes, forms of stylized violence involving less intimate body contact than male r&t playfighting. in this regard the female warriors could avoid what female wrestlers cannot, for female wrestlers in high school are engaged in the intimate body contact of wrestling. we return to this point below. what had changed by the 1990s to make girls’ play more like boys play? in part the women’s movement of the 1960s created a generation of parents determined to raise their daughters in less stereotypical ways, buying them fewer barbie dolls and more baseball mitts. young women entered youth sports more easily in the 1970s, and the passage of title ix of the education amendments of 1972 opened up for women of all ages access to the team sports that had been the realm of boys and men. several of the female warriors studied by wallis and mechling (2015:297) had been athletes in high school and college, and they attributed to team sports not only their physical fitness for the military but also their easy familiarity with male folk cultures (solaro 2006:243-44). scholastic wrestling takes the folk play of r&t playfighting and turns it into a more formal activity. the pleasures of formal, scholastic wrestling lie in the more basic drives and needs in both young men and women. biology starts out making no gender distinctions regarding playfighting, but culture and history worked on making those gender distinctions, making the pleasures of r&t playfighting out of the reach of young women. it is only in the past two decades that american culture has made it possible for women to engage fully in everything valuable in r&t playfighting. r&t playfighting both is and is not combat. as such, it creates a frame for stylized combat, as need felt (apparently) by both males and females, and provides the pleasures one experiences in stylized combat—the pleasures of the contest (ong 1981). the novelist john irving always writes and talks about his love of writing and his love of wrestling. his long autobiographical essay, “the imaginary girlfriend,” traces these two threads in his life, and the essay explores the meanings of wrestling from the viewpoint of a wrestler. irving says that “wrestling is not about knocking a man down—it’s about controlling him” (irving 1996, 36). another paradox of this play is that wrestling doesn’t seem to suffer from the usual symptoms of the “trouble with testosterone” (sapolsky 1998). wrestlers tend to be exceedingly polite and civilized on and off the mat. you do not see in wrestling the stylized, performed masculine aggression you might see in football, basketball, and baseball, for example. before a match wrestlers are too busy preparing themselves mentally for the match (some pace, some listen to music or inspirational recordings on their ipods, some sit in quiet meditation) to puff and swagger, and after a match they are too exhausted to waste any energy on male foolery. moreover, you can’t wrestle angry; that’s a sure path to losing a match. as primal and seeming violent as a match is, wresters need cool concentration to succeed. wrestling with masculinity delfino and mechling 66 r&t playfighting offers another set of pleasures, as well. we turn now to exploring the second truth about framed playfighting, namely, that wrestling both is and is not sex. wrestling both is and is not sex in speculating on the psychological functions of the structures of male contests, from verbal dueling to football, alan dundes (1997) uses the folk speech of the contestants to argue that the key theme in these contests is the male’s proving his masculinity by feminizing the male opponent, by “putting down” the male opponent (that is, down into the female, submissive and receptive position in conventional western intercourse). “typically,” continues dundes, “the victory entails some kind of penetration” (dundes 1997, 27; emphasis in original), and he argues that the fear of symbolic anal penetration, the ultimate feminizing act for a male, energizes the contest. football players drive toward the opponents’ “endzone,” basketball players put “balls” through ringed holes, hockey players slap the puck into the “crease,” and so on. dundes borrows from ong (1981) to point out that the latin roots of the word contest– con (with) and testis (testicle)—confirm these sexual meanings. feminist psychoanalytic theory (e.g., chodorow 1978) provides the understanding that masculinity is a fragile construct, needing proof every day, and that the act of feminizing another male through words or physical actions is a favored strategy for distancing oneself from the feminine (mechling 2005). heterosexual men’s touching each other, from hugs to pats on the butt, has to be framed and performed carefully to be read as non-sexual, hence nonfeminizing. horan’s (1988) ethnography of the folk culture of a group home for boys concludes that the playfighting among the boys is the only carefully framed, permissible touching in their lives, satisfying even minimally their human need to be touched and solving the problem that for the abused boys touch is a highly problematic experience. the lesson beyond horan’s particular ethnographic site is that american boys and adolescents need to be touched and need to touch each other, but only under carefully framed circumstances. playfighting and wrestling provide those cultural frames. the playfight frame, including formalized wrestling, permits men to embrace and touch each other in ways otherwise forbidden or carefully framed to maintain heterosexual performance. some of the holds themselves resemble sexual positions (true for male-female wrestling, as well). the folk speech of wrestling, including the formal names of the holds, sometimes reflects these sexual resemblances. for example, a wrestler may be “on top” or “on bottom” in a given hold or moment, language similar to the common references to “topping” and “bottoming” in gay sex. in fact, to be “on bottom” in wrestling clearly means to be dominated, to be in the passive, submissive position, in short, to take the feminine position in sex. a wrestler lying face-to-face on another wrestler is in the top, male position, but holding another wrestler around the waist from behind is also a dominant position, in that case symbolizing a threat of anal penetration. sometimes a wrestler with such a grip on another will be on his own back and technically on delfino and mechling wrestling with masculinity 67 the bottom, but in that position he can bring the opponent’s shoulder’s back down upon the mat for a pin, a dominant male move. other language reinforces the sexual symbolism. coaches talk about aggressively “penetrating” the opponent from the standing position. wrestlers look for the “takedown” (another version of putting the other male “down” into the female position). in john irving’s wrestling memoir he talks about another wrestler as a “rider”—“he could ride me” (1996, 51)—language that could be used to describe sexual intercourse. one hold, the “double grapevine,” is also called the “saturday night ride” (www.urbandictionary.com). the t-shirt vendors are hard to miss at wrestling meets. many of the sayings on the shirts traffic in sexual double entendres (e.g., “ other sports play with them, wrestlers have them”). delfino reports that the most common t-shirt he has seen at matches announces the “ten reasons to date a wrestler”: 10. always wears his headgear 9. will eat anything 8. knows when to push and pull 7. endurance, endurance, endurance 6. goes hard from start to finish 5. can work a two-on-one 4. knows how to use his hips 3. can score from any position 2. never stalls on bottom 1. knows how to ride the homoerotic dimension of male wrestling is lost on neither the participants nor the fans. as brian pronger notes in his study of sports, homosexuality, and sex, a common genre of gay pornography features athletes, including wrestlers (pronger 1990, 145). in his interviews with gay and straight amateur athletes, pronger found that the homoeroticism in wrestling was a recurring topic. for the gay men, it was their first, safe, framed “opportunity to explore, unwittingly, the homoerotic potential of masculine physical contact” (1990:183). “boys and teenagers are intuitively aware of this kind of fun,” writes pronger, “and wrestle with their friends. some are content with the subtle, nongenital expression of the paradox…” (1990:184). as for dundes (1978), pronger sees “territorial domination” as the key objective in male contests (pronger 1999:376). young male wrestlers report worries about getting erections, which would be all too obvious in their singlets and might signal something more serious than playful homoeroticism among heterosexual males. actually, the physiology of erections means that it is highly unlikely that a wrestler in a real match would get an erection; the demand for blood for other muscles in use is too great. but some of the young men interviewed by pronger did mention unwanted erections while playfighting with teammates between matches (1990:185). and, as pronger notes, the lack of erections does not diminish the homoeroticism in wrestling any more than the absence of erections in nude male hazing negates the homoeroticism of those events and customs (mechling 2008, 2009). http://www.urbandictionary.com http://www.ebaumsworld.com/jokes/read/843035/## wrestling with masculinity delfino and mechling 68 for some wrestlers and observers, the male body in pain may be erotic. wallis and mechling (2015) found many references to the eroticization of pain in the memoirs by war veterans and in commentary on experiences in basic training and in the combat zone (see zeeland 1996, for example). snyder (2012) sees “hard work” as a phrase male wrestlers use in their construction of a hard, tough masculinity, a rhetorical defense against the perception by others that male wresting is “gay,” and we read this as a celebration of pain. please note that we are not arguing that male wrestling is a form of homosexual behavior or that straight-identifying wrestlers are repressed homosexuals. rather, if we understand and take seriously bateson’s point about the paradox of play, then we can see that male wrestling does not stand for real homosexuality, but it does stand for the unconscious need for male intimate touching with other males, touching that can be an important component of the emotional bonding with other males in the group. some male sports mask these meanings with far more indirection and symbolic displacement than does wrestling. wrestling and the performance of masculinity for good reasons, many adolescent males worry about their performances as males. although high schools now are the sites for a broad range of performances of masculinity, in general adolescent males continue to experience strong pressures to perform a normative (hegemonic) heterosexual identity, regardless of their actual sexual identity. masculinity is always a fragile construction, and young men in high school encounter daily tests to “prove” their masculinity. the sociologists who have studied scholastic wrestling hone in on the problems of “impression management” (goffman 1959, 1963) for young men who wrestle. the “problem” facing these wrestlers is the outsiders’ too-often held view that “wrestling is gay.” all of the wrestlers interviewed by fair (2011:492) mentioned the homophobic teasing they endure among their high school peers. the young men, in most cases, want to bolster the impression that they are heterosexual, even though some teams (e.g., michael 2015) practice “inclusive masculinity” and will accept gay wrestlers in their folk group, so long as the gay teammate does not “hit” on a straight member of the group. fair argues that “wrestlers achieve normative masculinity by symbolically framing sexual relations as acts of domination” (2011:492), and it is easy to see how domination in wrestling (putting the opponent “down” in the female role, as we have said) bolsters the performance of normative heterosexuality. fair also found a second male wresters’ strategy for constructing and performing normative masculinity: “the way in which wrestlers’ use of ‘pussy’ parallels how other adolescents typically deploy the epithet ‘fag’” (2011:492). andy experienced this same pattern in his own high school wrestling team, where the coach often sang “pussy… pussy…” in a falsetto voice while making a simulated vulva with his fingers. the boys got the message; wrestle hard, wrestle tough, wrestle like a man. fair’s explanation for the common use of “pussy” and not “fag” or “faggot,” the latter terms so often deployed in adolescent male culture (pascoe 2005), centers on penetration, taking pascoe’s (2005:329) point that faggots “represent a penetrated delfino and mechling wrestling with masculinity 69 masculinity,” the greatest threat to masculinity. “it is precisely this specter of penetrated masculinity,” writes pascoe, “that functions as a regulatory mechanism of gender for contemporary american adolescent boys” (2005:329). fair develops his own argument about “penetration discourse.” the team he studied had a folk term, “girly d,” short for “girly defense,” to describe “a defensive wrestling maneuver that is deemed somehow ‘girly’ or feminine,” especially when the move is in defense against “an offensive attack on the opponent’s legs… called the ‘penetration step’” (fair 2011:499). the homophobia and misogyny so common in adolescent male folk groups mix and reinforce each other in all this discourse. and if in male sports a major source of anxiety is fear of symbolic “penetration” by the opponent (pronger 1999), a feminizing act, then wrestling intensifies that anxiety in both its bodily actions and folk speech. the figurative penetration in wrestling becomes literal in some hazing practices, as we shall see. baker and hotek (2011) discovered in their ethnographic study of a high school wresting team more evidence of the “inclusive masculinity” other researchers have found. the authors observed a range of behavior the young men employed to perform masculinity. some body practices were stereotypically masculine (“being strong, taking pain”), while others were more androgynous (“making weight”), and others even stereotypically feminine (“physical intimacy”). they see the same spread of gender performance across “performance practices” and “emotion practices” (baker and hotek 2011:53-60). in short, as physically aggressive and combative as wrestling seems, the male adolescent wrestlers actually construct, maintain, and repair, if necessary, their performances of masculinity across a range of folk practices, from orthodox masculinity through androgyny to some practices stereotypically feminine. women wrestlers we titled this article “wrestling with masculinity,” realizing at the same time that an increasing number of women are wrestling at the high school level and necessarily are wrestling as a sexual minority on male wrestling teams (lewin 2007). as folklorists interested in the social construction, maintenance, and (when necessary) repair of masculinity in american culture, most of our examples and discussion reflect the experiences of young men. the presence of young women in scholastic wrestling (and, later, in the military) raises some interesting issues and puzzles as we attempt to understand the multiple meanings of wrestling. we have not interviewed high school women who wrestle, and we have not found any ethnographic accounts of the experiences of those women. hall (2015) provides some insight, having both wrestled and coached collegiate women’s wrestling, and it makes some sense to read her study as applying to high school women, though a significant difference is that women wrestlers at the collegiate level wrestle only women. we are in dire need of ethnographic accounts by folklorists of the experiences of high school women who wrestle. that caution aside, we have some clues signaling the sorts of issues and questions that ought to guide the ethnographic work with young women on high school wrestling teams. for example, men and women have different “body wrestling with masculinity delfino and mechling 70 issues.” there are some high school and collegiate sports that require physical conditioning producing musculature in women similar to that of athletic men. in her senior thesis on a collegiate women’s rowing (crew) team, bosworth (2000) notes that many of the women were self-conscious about the non-stereotypical musculature the women were building in their physical training, and these women often changed quickly from their tight-fitting rowing uniforms into loose-fitting sweatshirts and pants at the end of a race. similarly, women wrestlers face issues with their clothing, from their tight wrestling clothes (for obvious reasons, not cut the same way as are the men’s singlets) to the clothes they should wear during team workouts (hall 2015:6-7, 18, 20). the folklorist can assume, reasonably, that the women on a sports team might muster folklore to allay the social and psychological anxieties surrounding their bodies. we expect that the paradox that wrestling both “is and is not combat” and “is and is not sex” would create a different social and psychological drama for the women wrestlers than the ones we found with the young men. first, as we indicated above, girls’ play in the u.s. slowly became more like boys’ play through the 20th century. traditionally girls were less likely to engage in r&t playfighting than were boys, but the access to team sports title ix of the education amendments of 1972 created for girls and young women seems to have accelerated the movement of girls’ play toward the way boys play. one might say, for example, that team sports began to teach young women the framed, stylized aggression boys learned on the playing field. so the observation that wrestling “both is and is not combat” should apply to how young women understand the playfighting as well as do the young men. folklorists and other ethnographers should be able to find increased “stylized” aggression and violence in the folk groups that include women. the second point we take with bateson in mind—namely, that wrestling “both is and is not sex”— is that wrestling becomes more problematic when one of the wresters is a young woman. a young man facing a match against a young woman often is reluctant to wrestle and will sometimes even forfeit a match, facing (in his mind) a lose-lose situation. beat a woman, not so impressive; lose to a woman, you are less than a woman. for boys wrestling boys, the play frame usually sustains the “both is and is not sex” fiction. without any evidence, we have to speculate that the dual nature of the playfighting frame is even more fragile and difficult to sustain for male-female matches. wrestling haze most of the scholarship on scholastic wrestling steers clear of discussing a folk practice that lives mainly underground in the folk culture of wrestlers. hazing is common in all male folk groups, and over the past 20 years highly publicized hazing incidents, some resulting in injury and death, have led to efforts to ban hazing in the military, fraternities, and sports teams. some of the publicized hazing incidents were on university women’s sports teams, though we will not deal with the issue of scholastic wrestling and women’s experiences of hazing for lack of any evidence. instead, we focus on the young men and their hazing customs. delfino and mechling wrestling with masculinity 71 hazing on male wrestling teams does not surprise us. nor does it surprise us that efforts to ban and suppress hazing have largely failed, driving the practices further underground. the urge to haze and initiate members into the male group is strong. anthropologists long ago recorded and analyzed male initiation rites across many cultures, and in most cases those are rites created by adult males to mark the transition of a boy into manhood. in contrast, many scholars of the social construction, maintenance, and repair of masculinity in american culture (e.g., kimmel 2008) note that our culture is more a fratiarchy than a patriarchy, so it is peers who do the initiation into manhood. lacking more formal male initiation rites in american culture, these folk groups of young men must “invent” ways to initiate neophytes into the group, invent tests of manhood that must be passed to prove a masculinity free from feminine traits (raphael 1988, bronner 2012:251-67). hence the misogyny and homophobia in these male folk cultures (mechling 2005). delfino witnessed no hazing in his own wrestling days, nor did he get a hint that the team he was coaching hazed the new members. we do not mean to suggest that hazing on scholastic wrestling teams is widespread; it is common, but it is likely that hazing is mild on most teams. curiously, the serious cases of hazing on scholastic wrestling teams seem, from reports, not to involve alcohol, as do some many serious hazing events (some fatal) on the collegiate level (nuer 1999, nuer ed. 2004). most of the high school wrestling team cases that reach the newspapers take place in locker rooms, showers, and on team buses. lundeen (2013) reports the 2012 cases of three iowa high school wrestling teams discovered to be hazing new members. public details were few, but the hazing involved “humiliation” and nudity (2013:55). in one case, the hazing involved sexual assault with a jump rope handle (2013:59-60). an espn (2002) list of hazing incidents on athletic teams just from 1997-2000 describes hazing incidents on high school wrestling teams in california, connecticut, south carolina, utah, michigan, and nebraska, many of them involving sexual assaults using mop handles, brooms, and (again) a jump rope handle. these cases appeared in newspapers so usually there is not much detail so as to protect the victims, but the account of a hilton head, sc, hazing of younger wrestlers by older includes reference to specific practices—“trademarking,” which involves hitting the wet body to raise welts, and “dinking,” which involves placing a finger on or near the rectum, a move sometimes used even during a practice match to startle the opponent. the “butt drag,” a permissible move in wresting which involves one wrestler’s grabbing an opponent’s butt for leverage, lends itself to “dinking,” and a 2010 court case in modesto, california, opened a public debate about the “butt drag” hold; the allegation in that case was that one wrestler sexually assaulted an opponent in practice by “ramming two fingers into a teammate’s anus” (anteola 2010). none of the scholarship on scholastic wrestling (baker and hotek 2011, fair 2011, snyder 2012, michael 2013, and hall 2015) discusses hazing, possibly because it is an aspect of adolescent male folk groups that the scholars worry would cast a negative light on the sport. on the contrary, we think that hazing in scholastic wrestling teams expands our understanding of the unique meanings of the sport for the young men, a formal sport which, as we noted, actually is a formal wrestling with masculinity delfino and mechling 72 extension of folk r&t playfighting. r&t playfighting requires the play frame, of course, which is fragile and can be broken easily by the wrong acts or words. the formal version of r&t playfighting—scholastic wrestling—satisfies the wrestlers so long as the play frame remains in place. that is, the wrestlers experience the practice matches and the competition as “both is and is not” combat and sex, satisfying the adolescent male’s need for stylized aggression and permissible intimate touch of another male. that formal play frame in scholastic wrestling seems to us less fragile than the play frame of informal r&t playfighting, as the wrestling holds are more formally planned and policed by the referee. what strikes us about the hazing practices in the cases made public is the absence of a play frame, which has many consequences. one problem with bateson’s theory of the play frame is that he seems to assume that everyone in the play frame is there voluntarily and has equal power in the frame. goffman (1974) corrected that romantic view of the play frame by showing how players in the frame can be there with hidden motives, using the frame to manipulate others. goffman thought all of socially constructed reality was, in essence, a confidence game, with the actions aimed at convincing others in the frame that everyone was there voluntarily and had equal power. sutton-smith and kelly-byrne (1984) also draw our attention to “the masks of play,” to the ways people will mask other motives with the play frame (“it’s only play”). hazing can be consensual, of course. mechling (2009) argues that hazing most often takes place in a play frame and that most times those being hazed experience the humiliation and other elements (nudity, mild pain) as “not real” (see, also, bronner 2006). hazing becomes abusive when, for example, alcohol destroys the inhibitions of the members hazing the neophyte or when one or more members of the group use the play frame of hazing to “mask” other motives, most often a streak of sadism. these are the ingredients that too often result in injury and fatalities in hazing. the publicized cases of hazing on wrestling teams complicate the meanings of the r&t playfighting of scholastic wrestling. recall that formal and informal wrestling appeals to adolescent men precisely because the play frame of playfighting is a “safe” frame for expressing aggression and even symbolic sexual contact, all in a frame that affirms the strong male bond between the members of the male folk group. there are some things that can break that play frame, like an unwanted erection, but in general the play frame of both formal and informal r&t playfightng serves well the psychological and social needs of the young men. the cases of hazing on wrestling teams, hazing practices that go beyond mere humiliation (which can be executed in the play frame) and involve sexual assault, actually threaten the male bonding that both wrestling and less violent hazing cements. for example, several of these cases involved sexual assault with jump rope handles, broom handles, mop handles, and in one case a brush handle, all inserted in the anus, symbolic sodomy which, apart from the significant pain involved, humiliated the young man being hazed by feminizing him. in his analysis of the custom of paddling in fraternity and some collegiate sports team hazing, mechling (2008) notes that it is important to the male bonding that the paddling involves the buttocks and the potential of sodomizing the initiate without actually doing so. not delfino and mechling wrestling with masculinity 73 so when the members actually penetrate the victim’s anus with a symbolic phallus; that actual penetration destroys the trust and the bonding, which can remain intact when the penetration is symbolic and potential, never enacted. although we know that women’s sports teams sometimes haze the new members, we have no ethnographic evidence or direct testimony from participants to make any solid generalizations about the specific hazing practices or their meanings for the participants. the anecdotal evidence from college women’s sports teams, evidence gleaned from publicized cases, suggests that women’s hazing practices often reproduce the male traditions, which puzzles us. we see clearly the social and psychological functions of those folk practices for the dynamics of a male folk group; how those same practices serve the women is unclear. as bosworth (2000) and the memoirs of female warriors make clear, though, one major aim for women in sports and in the military is to prove to each other and to men that they are as “tough” as men, that they can work and play “through the pain” as well as any man. conclusion of all the team sports played by adolescent men, wrestling poses the greatest challenges to the young man as he attempts to perform a masculine identity. adolescence is a precarious stage of life in american society, in any case, but young men often count on organized sports as a venue for “proving” their normative masculinity. most sports young men play, from football and rugby to soccer and lacrosse, provide rather easy ways to demonstrate the physical toughness, emotional control, and ability to withstand pain that are among the qualities americans consider signs of masculinity. the unique nature of wrestling provides a much more precarious stage for the construction of adolescent masculinity. our batesonian analysis of some of the meanings of male wrestling based on its structures and folk speech suggests the usefulness of the paradoxes of play for male wrestlers as they experience the pleasures wrestling brings, especially the pleasures of r&t playfighting boys learn from a very early age. the two paradoxes—that wrestling both “is and is not combat” and “is and is not sex”—address the social and psychological needs of the adolescent boys in a “safe,” symbolic frame. and the male body, so central in the performance of normative masculinity, is on display in wrestling as it is in few other sports. like all play frames, wrestling’s frame is fragile, sometimes accidentally broken by accident (e.g., an erection or an accidental touch of the opponent’s anus) and quickly repaired, but we also see in unauthorized hazing practices on some teams the cost of violating the play frame. what the fields of folklore studies and play studies need now are ethnographic studies of female wresters in high school to understand better the gender revolution sparked by title ix and by other forces in the last half century. and to make the matter of wrestling and the social construction of gender even more complicated, even as we write this essay a female-to-male transgender high school wrestler in texas is causing turmoil in the world of scholastic wrestling (babb 2017). also on the subject of rapid cultural changes regarding gender, gender identification, and the performance of gender in folk groups, the near-full integration wrestling with masculinity delfino and mechling 74 of women into the armed forces of the u.s. becomes the testing ground for this gender revolution. wrestling seems like a framed 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hazing. thymos: journal of boy studies 2(1): 60-75. _____. 2009. is hazing play? in transactions at play, ed. cindy dell clark, pp. 4561. lanham, md: university press of america. _____. 2016. the erotics of adolescent male altruism. boyhood studies 9(2):92-115. michael, b. 2015. “just don’t hit on me and i’m fine”: mapping high school wrestlers’ relationship o inclusive masculinity and heterosexual recuperation. international review for the sociology of sport 50(8):912-928. murphy, peter f. 2001. studs, tools, and the family jewels: metaphors men live by. madison: university of wisconsin press. nuwer, hank. 1999. wrongs of passage: fraternities, sororities, hazing, and binge drinking. bloomington: indiana university press. _____, ed. 2004. the hazing reader. bloomington: indiana university press. o’donnell, m., and sharpe, s. 2004. the social construction of youthful masculinities: peer group subcultures. in routledgefalmer reader in sociology of education, ed. s. balla, pp. 89-127. london: routledgefalmer. ong, walter j. 1981. fighting for life: contest, sexuality, and consciousness. ithaca, ny: cornell university press. pascoe, c.j. 2005. “dude, you’re a fag”: adolescent masculinity and the fag discourse. sexualities 8(3):329-46. pelligrini, anthony. 1988. rough and tumble play and social competence. developmental psychology, 24: 802-06. _____. 1993. boys’ rough and tumble play and social competence, contemporaneous and longitudinal relations. in the future of play theory, ed. a. pellegrini, pp. 107-26. new york: suny press. pronger, brian. 1990. the arena of masculinity: sports, homosexuality, and the meaning of sex. new york: st. martin’s press. _____. 1999. outta my endzone: sport and the territorial anus. journal of sport and social issues 23(4):373-389. raphael, ray. 1988. the men from the boys: rites of passage in male america. lincoln: university of nebraska press. roberts, john, m., malcolm j. arth, and robert r. bush. 1959. games in culture. american anthropologist 61:597-605. sapolsky, robert m. 1998. the trouble with testosterone; and other essays on the biology of the human predicament. new york: scribner. snyder, bryan. 2012. hard work, overcoming, and masculinity: an ethnographic account of high school wrestlers’ bodies and cultural worlds. unpublished ph.d. diss. university of nebraskalincoln. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/17/nyregion/17wrestle.html?_r=1& http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/17/nyregion/17wrestle.html?_r=1& delfino and mechling wrestling with masculinity 77 solaro, erin. 2006. women in the line of fire. emeryville, ca: seal press. sutton-smith, brian. 1998. the ambiguity of play. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. _____. 2017. play for life: play theory and play as emotional survival. rochester, ny: the strong museum. sutton-smith, brian, john gertsmyer, and alice meckley. 1988. playfighting as folkplay amongst preschool children. western folklore 47:161-76. sutton-smith brian, and diana kelly-byrne. 1984. the masks of play. in the masks of play, eds. b. sutton-smith and d. kelly-byrne, pp. 184-199. new york: leisure press. thorne, barrie. 1993. gender play: girls and boys in school. new brunswick, nj: rutgers university press. wallis, john paul, and jay mechling.2015. devil dogs and dog piles. western folklore 74(3/4):275-308. zeeland, steven. 1996. the masculine marine: homoeroticism in the marine corps. new york: harrington park press. 79 growing little traditions: baltimore’s little miss hon contest david j. puglia baltimore’s honfest festival draws folkloristic attention because it is one of the few urban public festivals to celebrate a folk group not based on any particular ethnic, religious, or occupational affiliation. the little miss hon contest is one popular part of the two-day honfest festival.1 recognized as a “baltimore” tradition, 60,000 festivalgoers attend honfest each year. these range from neighborhood locals to out-of-state revelers. many hail from in between: the baltimore metropolitan area, but not the city proper. some of the notice the festival receives derives from its controversial depictions of longtime, blue-collar, local residents, especially apparent in the two featured stage contests: the adult’s best hon contest and the children’s little miss hon contest. the performed “hon” image is perceived by some as a buffoonish characterization, while others see it as an exaggerated celebration of strong women based in an accurate historical past. additionally, the festival—and particularly the stage contests—raises folkloristic questions of the invention of tradition in urban america as a means of battling an inferiority complex. baltimore, a once great city, lives in the shadows of new york, philadelphia, and washington, d.c. elaborating on this urban issue, the little miss hon contest reveals a devotion to a tradition, a tradition that itself is devoted to the image of a white, blue-collar city. further, in the baltimore context, both supporters and detractors have heightened the symbolic meaning of the “hon” image because of the perceived connection to ideas of local identity, belonging, race, class, gender, and occupation. there is a small body of scholarly research on or related to honfest (gadsby and chidester 2007, rizzo 2008, shackel and gadsby 2008, chidester 2009, chidester and gadsby 2009, rizzo 2010, gadsby 2011, britton and faust 2012, puglia 2015). in addition, it has received much attention in the local media, from the baltimore sun to the blogosphere. the event that receives the most attention is the adult best hon contest. but little attention has been paid to the children’s version, the little miss hon contest, which takes place in advance of the best hon contest and on the same stage. in some ways, the little miss honest contest is the best hon contest’s undercard. the junior event is quicker, breezier, and receives less notice than its older sibling. but it has also become some festivalgoers’ most anticipated honfest event. the best hon contest is a rhetorical attempt to reclaim baltimore as a white, blue-collar city, differentiated by a down-to-earth, quirky, and kitsch aesthetic, in the face of baltimore’s class and racial discord—a fact that became national headline in 2015 following the death of freddie gray and the subsequent baltimore protests (berlinger 2015). but what can the little miss hon contest tell us about the uses of tradition in baltimore? one might assume the little miss hon contest would portray the same message, albeit watered down to suit children’s needs. in fact, the little miss hon contest has a much stronger message than that. it is a continuation of the sociocultural program set forth by the best growing little traditions puglia 80 hon contest, that is, an attempt at growing and cultivating a “little tradition”2 that boldly proclaims white, blue-collar ownership of a majority black, postindustrial city. the little miss hon contest takes place during honfest, which is held one weekend each june. the girls, or their parents, register to participate the day of the contest. some prepare in advance, while others sign up on a whim. this essay focuses on the little miss hon contest, attempting to understand it in relation to the adult version of the tradition, the best hon contest.3 i conduct a brief ethnographic description, followed by a rhetorical and contextual analysis of the little miss hon contest tradition, in the context of my honfest and best hon contest research. the little miss hon contest a girl bearing a number “1” walks onto the stage. she wears cat-eye glasses, a beehive hairdo, and a leopard print dress. she appears tentative, but she receives roaring approval from the large festival crowd, many of whom are dressed the same way. a woman in a similar outfit approaches the girl, microphone in hand. “kaylee, can you say hi, hon?” “hi, hon.” “where are you from?” “bal-ti-more.” “yeah? and what school do you go to?” the girl at first appears stumped. somebody shouts from the crowd that she doesn’t go to school. “oh, are you in school yet? do you go to preschool?” “i go to ballet school!” the crowd roars with laughter. the woman sends the girl to stand on a bench at the back of the stage. and with that, the number “2” is on stage. she also has a beehive hair-do and cat-eye glasses, but in place of a leopard skin dress, she wears a flower patterned house dress. “julie, can you say hi, hon?” “hi, hon” “can you say how you doin’?” “how you doin’?” “can you say welcome to baltimore?” “welcome to baltimore” “and where do you go to school?” “pine grove elementary” “and where is that?” “in maryland” (more laughter) each girl is interviewed on stage for twenty to thirty seconds, twelve in total, all between the ages of four and seven. the host asks the same questions, with only slight variations. the girls give short, direct answers, rarely approaching a baltimore accent, some even leaving out the “hon” altogether (although one peppers everything with hons, to howls of the crowd’s delight). the girls’ puglia growing little traditions 81 unpredictability and their costumes hold the attention of the crowd. when one young girl in a short leopard dress is complimented on her dress, she motions like a price is right model. yet another whispers her answers into the hosts ear rather than the microphone. another contestant, sporting a beehive with a long pink ribbon and dressed in a pink shirt and striped pink skirt is asked on stage “what brings you to hampden today?” “i don’t know,” she replies. each is dressed in an immaculate, exaggerated style, a combination of post-war women’s wear and trash connoisseur john waters films. as the girls line up on the bench in the rear of the stage, they create a kaleidoscope of florescent colors. this is the little miss hon contest, a tradition that is part of baltimore’s ever-growing annual honfest, a celebration of baltimore’s hon tradition. while on the stage of the little miss hon contest, host denise whiting sometimes uses the rhetoric of the beauty pageant, including occasionally telling girls that they look beautiful. bits of the performance are similar to a classic beauty pageant. the girls strut across the stage, do interviews, listen to a concluding serenade, and blow kisses. however, differentiating this contest from other child beauty pageants, many conventions are turned on their head. the blatantly amateur contestants do not so much strut as stumble onto the stage. the interviews are softball questions that last in total no more than twenty to thirty seconds, yet the girls often flub them anyway. and rather than a tuxedoed host concluding the ceremonies with a rendition of “there she is miss america,” a fouryear-old sings “skiddy-mer-rink-a-doo.” perhaps most importantly, the little miss hon contest does not have a winner, whereas child beauty pageants and the best hon contest do. the little miss hon contest holds the experience higher than winning. there is little overt competition in the contest beyond the reactions of the crowd. in fact, at the conclusion, the girls are told that they are all winners.4 upon closer inspection, the lack of competition between contestants makes sense under the guise of promising a future generation of a particular type of baltimorean. it is not the winner but the approval of the crowd and the consensus of the image. the little miss hon contest is growing a tradition. growing little traditions what was the meaning of the little miss hon contest as revealed in ethnographic observation in the opening scene? the practices i documented reveal that honfest is a location, or “play frame”—to cite the folkloristic concept of a subaltern space in which behaviors outside that frame can be reversed and mocked, and inside the frame cultural expressions build solidarity—for baltimoreans to create a current, idealized identity out of a romantic, nostalgic past (bronner 2010). the local folk speech of “hon” transitions into the female “hon” image. for some onlookers, the hon is a folk hero who symbolizes hard-working women, strong communities, and baltimore’s idiosyncrasies. for others, it is either a mischaracterization of baltimore’s working class or an attempt to romanticize baltimore’s white, workingclass past in lieu of its african american present. according to u.s. census data, baltimore underwent a rapid demographic shift in the second half of the twentieth growing little traditions puglia 82 century. baltimore was majority white from its founding through the early 1970s. today, baltimore’s racial demographics stand at approximately two-thirds black to one-third white, and its neighborhoods remain highly stratified.5 how did we get to this strange scene that plays annually in modern baltimore? baltimore has been growing the “hon” tradition for nearly three decades: linguistically, visually, and performatively. for those baltimoreans whose value system is rooted in an industrial economy and a working-class ethos, the collapse of the local industrial economy in the second half of the twentieth century created an existential crisis questioning whom the city and its residents are and what they stand for. the difficult discourse on identity has shifted to more manageable battlegrounds, including the little miss hon contest. in fact, honfest has been at the front of these vernacular wars. baltimoreans have sought to solve baltimore’s problems through the creation of public traditions for many years. proponents of these invented traditions have attempted to bring a cohesive identity to a fragmented, chaotic city. examples abound over the centuries. the baltimore sesquicentennial and its successor, the oriole festival, heeded the zeitgeist of uniting the city and served as the first attempt to do so through the creation of a citywide tradition. beginning in 1880, baltimore endeavored to capture its penchant for public display through festival. on its 150th anniversary, baltimore attempted to bring disparate baltimore groups together as baltimoreans for the baltimore sesquicentennial to celebrate their illustrious past and to prepare for the city’s future. the festival returned the following year as the oriole festival.6 the oriole festival only lasted three years, from 1881-1883, but the acclaimed7 festival and pageant proved that baltimore was capable of more than ethnic and neighborhood celebrations (ammen 1912, 255-258). other citywide festivals succeeded the oriole festival, including the couth and polite flower mart of the early twentieth century and the civic-corporate hybrid baltimore city fair of the late twentieth century. these festivals have sought to create a sense of shared identity, although some residents have contested that vision. honfest’s tradition of staged events are a powerful form of symbolic practice that residents enact in an attempt to define an authentic sense of place and identity and that participants reshape to negotiate a cognitive sense of identity and belonging. little miss hon performs and exaggerates the hon image through a self-perpetuating, self-referential, and evergrowing tradition. geographically, baltimore’s regional identity remains ambiguous. neither northern enough to be northeast nor southern enough to be a southern city, and too far east to be a rustbelt city, baltimore is left with the lukewarm designation of middle atlantic. that is, the middle atlantic is the “remainder” or “left overs” after the stronger regions of new england and the south are identified. folklorist simon j. bronner has noted that the middle atlantic is “the least conspicuous of america’s regions, both to outsiders and to its inhabitants” (bronner 2006, 789). it was not always so. from 1830-1860, baltimore was america’s second largest city. it ceded that honor to philadelphia after the civil war and never regained it. baltimore was also once a city of a million residents (1950s), but the population has declined puglia growing little traditions 83 ever since then. today, baltimore is a midsized and prosaic city, set near the rich and the powerful. baltimore has some legitimate reasons to feel inferior. officially “charm city,” baltimore has received some negative nicknames in the twentieth century, including “harm city,” “the heroin capital of america,” “the city that bleeds,” and “bodymore, murdaland”8 due to the high per capita murder rate in the city, hitting its peak of violence in 1993 with 353 slayings.9 baltimore ranks 33rd among the most deadly places in the united states.10 although the murder rate has dropped substantially since its peak in the 1980s and 1990s (a low of 196 murders in 2011), baltimore is still two to three times the national average in all varieties of violent and property crime. in addition, residents are referred to as (and sometimes refer to themselves by) the humorous folk demonym “baltimorons,” referencing the city’s slack education accolades.11 fifty percent of baltimoreans have a high school diploma or less, and baltimore’s public schools are constantly mired in controversy.12 in response to the negative publicity, energetic and optimistic mayors like william donald schaefer and martin o’malley have attempted to devise new images for the city with nicknames like “america’s comeback city,” “the greatest city in the world,” and the ubiquitous park bench placard “believe.” but it is the non-institutional “hon” image that has been the most powerful rebranding. baltimore is known as a “blue-collar” city.13 but the city’s easy blue-collar designation merits examination, especially with its once blue-collar workers now employed in the service and information economy at a rate of 90%. the aesthetic leaks overtly into the city’s perception of its culture. historian kenneth d. durr argues that baltimore is indeed a blue-collar town, and a prescient one at that. its blue-collar workers seem to be harbingers for working-class sentiment to come elsewhere. durr notes particularly how “baltimore was far ahead of the nation when it came to the era’s defining conflict—one staged by policymakers but waged by working whites and blacks—over the deteriorating institutions and the economic crumbs left over in the deindustrializing city” (durr 2003, 4). the continued deindustrialization of the city and continuing competition for cultural ownership of the city has propelled the hon image, showcased in the little miss honfest, into baltimore’s spotlight. but why is the word “hon,” heard across the united states, so closely associated with baltimore and so dear to many baltimoreans hearts? while “hon” is not unique or distinctive to baltimore, it has been adopted as symbolic of baltimorese—the local vernacular—and the related local, blue-collar aesthetic. the embracing of the term “hon” first became a citywide tradition when a mysterious gentlemen nicknamed “hon man” began plastering the word on the “welcome to baltimore” parkway sign. this word transitioned to the capitalized “hon,” a beehived, cat-eyed woman in garish or frumpy dresses and indulgent make up sporting a strong baltimore accent (and likely to use the word “hon”).14 an essential starting point to unpacking the hon image and the little miss hon contest is a closer look at filmmaker john waters’ most successful movie, hairspray (1988). born near baltimore in 1946, baltimore filmmaker waters embraced baltimore’s quirks in a way few others had. he writes, “i would never growing little traditions puglia 84 want to live anywhere but baltimore. you can look far and wide, but you’ll never discover a stranger city with such extreme style. it’s as if every eccentric in the south decided to move north, ran out of gas in baltimore, and decided to stay” (waters 2005, 76). in 1988, waters released hairspray. set in baltimore in the 1960s, tracy turnblad and other beehived baltimoreans endeavored to integrate a televised dancing show. although never referred to as hons, the big haired women who set the canon for honfest are seen throughout. in fact, in many ways, honfest is an unattributed hairspray fan convention, although because the iconography has gone beyond the movie and into “tradition,” attendees can reference previous honfests rather than hairspray directly. throughout the second half of the 1990s, “hon” continued to transition from the term of address, “hon,” to a type of person, the admirable baltimore “hon.” in 1996, for example, the baltimore sun’s fashion editor, vida roberts offered an elaborate, mostly positive description of how a hon dressed. the subtitle of her article, “treasure those baltimore ladies who call you ‘hon,’ hon. because they’re a vanishing treasure characterized by hearts of gold—and some other traits you can’t miss” is reminiscent of the “eleventh-hour ethnography” of folkloristics’ past (kirshenblatt-gimblett 1998, 300). boiled down to the essentials, roberts article listed the characteristics of a hon (1996). in her estimation, hons are the bighaired, down-to-earth, friendly, maternal, hard-working women of baltimore. roberts’ article was a clear transition toward the hon as a type of woman, although she was not yet at the point where she was ready to capitalize the word “hon.” roberts made an effort to add benign feminist and maternal connotations to the “hon” phenomenon. for example, she argued “big hair alone does not a hon make; a real hon has a generous spirit as big as her beehive. it’s her willingness to scrub, hug, scold and help family and her neighbors that singles her out” (roberts 1996). this connotation of the motherly hon seems to have been created to give the “hon” image a positive connotation, in contrast with the “slutty” hon that some perceived. in addition, one can see the romanticism and nostalgia at play, reminiscing back to the time when neighbors looked out for and assisted one another. this is an embodiment of the nostalgic white, blue-collar image of baltimore’s past. since his upset victory in 2000, baltimore mayor martin o’malley had made it his mission to change the perception of baltimore. but a horrendous murder rate and a national portrayal on the wire (2002-2008) as a center of drugs, crime, violence, and corruption had done little to improve the city’s image. as the official commissioned report would later state, “baltimore is plagued by negative press and harmful characterizations by the media, resulting in an inferiority complex” (donovan 2005). o’malley and the city council brought in branding strategy experts landor associates to change the image of the city and improve nationwide perception. instead of attempting to compete directly with new york, washington, d.c., orlando, or las vegas, the report encouraged baltimore to play up its downhome, authentic characteristics, what it referred to as “the hon factor” (donovan 2005). this factor brings a small town feel to a big city, something not to be found in washington, d.c., or new york. the residents surveyed had puglia growing little traditions 85 spoken positively of baltimoreans as “quirky,” “funky,” “off-kilter,” “hilarious,” “bizarre,” and “a little-off center” (donovan 2005). while this was never adopted as an “official” baltimore brand, the hon fills this need by playing precisely to these characteristics. the “hon” tradition in baltimore seems to follow dundes’ inferiority complex thesis that small countries (or cities in this case) suffering from poor self images are particularly active in using folklore to promote themselves and allow them to actively reflect on and debate their identity (dundes 1985). in baltimore, a city with a well-documented, century-long inferiority complex, “hon” and “the hons,” best captured in the best hon contest and the little miss hon contest, are deployed to distinguish and redeem a location in the midst of the competing east coast cities of washington, d.c., philadelphia, and new york. as a little big city that has fallen on hard times since the 1970s, baltimore is in the midst of a local inferiority complex. enter the baltimore hon. in many ways, baltimore’s hon image is similar to the american folk heroes of yore, reminiscent of richard m. dorson’s “american comic demigods”: hard-working, kind, of the people, down-to-earth, and independent (dorson 1941). while dorson despised the commercially fabricated paul bunyan, dundes pointed out that dorson’s criticism is primarily a matter of origins rather than function. as far as function, dundes saw fakelore filling “a national, psychological need: namely, to assert one’s national identity, especially in a time of crisis, and to instill pride in that identity” (dundes 1985, 13). further, he argued fakelore seemed to be invented “where folklore is deemed lacking or insufficient” and creative people “fill the void” by “creating a national epic or national ‘folk’ hero ex nihlio if necessary” or, more common, “embroider and inflate fragments of folklore into folkloristic fabrications” (dundes 1985, 13). that is, when needed, locals grow their own folk heroes. when asked, the baltimore area convention and visitors association denied that “the hon” was a baltimore tourist draw or even on the average tourist’s radar. the association claimed tourists are primarily interested in strolling through the inner harbor, visiting historic neighborhoods, and feasting on steamed crabs. the spokesperson told the baltimore sun, “if you do a survey with visitors and you ask them, hons wouldn’t rank…hons wouldn’t even be on the radar screen…it’s not something that people think of, and it’s not as if visitors come in the visitors center and say, ‘where’s the hon?’” (sessa 2008). while his comment was meant to downplay the importance of the hon phenomenon in baltimore, it proves honfest to be even more locally important. according to the baltimore’s tourist bureau, honfest is not an important tourist destination. it is a performance by baltimoreans for baltimoreans, even if it is only organized by a select few and only appreciated by some others.15 as part of the land-language-lore complex (abrahams 1993), urban american folk speech is used in an attempt to create a local tradition that connects people to place. in the face of a rapidly changing city, “hon” transitioned from a stigmatized vernacular term associated with the lower class to an esteemed vernacular term tied to local roots and city identity. “hon” and the “hon” image served both as baltimore’s most prominent example of the esteemed vernacular growing little traditions puglia 86 and as a rhetorical battleground where issues of race, class, gender, and belonging clash with conceptions of identity, heritage, and nostalgia over the attempt of civic leaders to construct a citywide local tradition. the little miss hon contest demonstrates a commitment to an annual performance of this tradition. furthemore, “hon” seeks to create a “natural” connection between an imagined group and a recently demarcated political boundary (abrahams 1993). if baltimore represents the epitome of an overindustrialized, and, now, postindustrial landscape, “hon” helps redeem a sacred homeland by referring not to the vacant buildings and shuttered plants, but instead to a nostalgia for an neighborly, folksy, down-to-earth city. while there was some stigma associated with “hon” in the 1990s16 and earlier,17 by the 2000s, “hon” had entered the esteemed vernacular. baltimoreans now use “hon” in speech, on merchandise, and on highway signs to make what linguist barbara johnstone calls “self-conscious regional identity claims” (johnstone, andrus, and danielson 2006, 78; see also johnstone 2009). in response to baltimore’s conflicted, volatile past, this esteemed vernacular tradition has been one growing attempt to connect residents to the local in a transient world. alan dundes encouraged folklorists to collect not just folklore, but the meaning of folklore. these native interpretations are valuable, and i have attempted to elicit honfest’s meaning from the festival’s devotees. however, crossing the “triviality barrier” has proved challenging (sutton-smith 1970). most festivalgoers reiterate that the festival is fun and carefree, that they have a familial connection to baltimore, that they want to celebrate the old way of life, or that they want their children to experience baltimore. these native interpretations call attention to a deeper unspoken meaning that demands analytic interpretation. in such instances, dundes hypothesized that “it is often the taboo activities and ideas which find expression outlets in symbolic form” and “if the folk consciously recognized the symbolic significance of the joke or folksong element, this element might not be able to continue to serve as a safe, socially sanctioned element” (2007, 85). viewed in isolation, the native interpretations appear valid, perhaps even accurate. but when the festival is studied in the context of baltimore’s race relations, perhaps best exemplified by the death of freddie gray and the 2015 protests, a deeper meaning emerges. the little miss hon contest, and honfest in general, is one battle waged in the larger, symbolic campaign for cultural ownership of baltimore. through this annually invoked and embodied ritual, baltimore’s heritage as a white, blue-collar city is reassured for the audience and participants. the battle must be waged symbolically rather than overtly, lest the violent and chaotic baltimore of 2015 become the constant state of the city. conclusion: baltimore’s little tradition in baltimore, the hon image, taken from and symbolizing the larger local, working class dialect known as baltimorese, became a symbolic battlefield for issues of race, class, gender, identity, and belonging. while some residents and commentators dismiss the image as trivial, the attention the issue receives coincides with the symbolic significance that baltimoreans implicitly understood about the image. in the land-language-lore complex, the owner of the local puglia growing little traditions 87 language has the best claim to cultural ownership of the land. the little miss hon contest is not a silly diversion, but a cultural battle over who can lay natural claim to baltimore. its function is an extension of the function of the best hon contest (see puglia forthcoming, “the hons of honfest” chapter). the difficult, unspeakable, symbolic discourse on racial and class identity has shifted to this safer, more manageable, and more respectable battleground. children are paraded as extensions of their parents who have prepared them to play a role. while the little miss hon contestants lack the agency and maturity of best hon contest contestants, more important than their individual motivations is the event, the city, and the zeitgeist that celebrates them. in baltimore, the “hon” image’s understated but understood commentary on local identity, belonging, race, class, gender, and occupation have made the “hon” a powerful symbol. in this essay, i have attempted to show how this seemingly benign, recently invented tradition lends its support to the nostalgic vision of a white, blue-collar city of the past. in addition to the quickly changing demographics, baltimoreans seem to have an inferiority complex, living in the shadow of new york, philadelphia, and washington, d.c. honfest, and especially the little his hon contest and the best hon contest, give folklorists ample opportunities to explore how inferiority complexes are addressed through the invention of tradition in the modern american city. baltimore’s current answer, the “hon,” is denigrated by some as a lampooning of baltimore’s working class past, but celebrated by others as a commemoration of the strong, hard-working, maternal, and uniquely stylish women of baltimore. the “hon” tradition seems to hold importance to little miss hon and best hon contest participants and the honfests tens of thousands of attendees, who come from both baltimore and the baltimore diaspora. the little miss hon contest is an annual celebration of a perceived traditional group, one not based on any particular ethnic, religion, or occupation affiliation, but rather a group formed purely out of the american urban experience. children are presented strategically as part of this growing tradition. while adults provide the framework for the annual contest, it is exclusively children who perform as the little hons. by performing, they confirm the establishment and continuity of the tradition, showing that this is a wide-ranging, multigenerational tradition that encompasses youth and that will carry forth. now firmly planted, the little hon tradition has spread its roots, blossomed, and continued to grow. notes 1. this is reminiscent of what richard m. dorson was searching for in gary, indiana in his classic article “is there a folk in the city?” (1970). dorson yearned to find distinctive american traditions that came directly out of the american experience, rather than immigrant traditions imported from abroad. 2. my title is meant to be a double entendre, referencing both the small children who perform the annual tradition in baltimore and the work of anthropologists such as mckim marriott (1955), robert redfield (1955, 1960), gustave e. von grunebaum (1955), john h. bodley (2000), and knut odner (2000) growing little traditions puglia 88 who distinguished between “great” and “little” traditions. this school of thought referred to the cultural and religious tradition of nations and empires, including its art and literature, as the “great” traditions, and the local and informal traditions of the peasants as “little” traditions. 3. i chose to analyze the 2007 little miss hon contest, as that year was the only time the contest was fully documented. a full recording can be found on youtube uploaded by wbal-tv 11 baltimore titled “lil miss hon contest.” https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=ari0vwxhxqa/ while it would be preferable to have a wide range of little miss hon contests to observe, only one has ever been recorded in full. 4. joel best has written about the everyone-is-a-winner phenomenon extensively in everyone’s a winner: life in our congratulatory culture. 5. as of 2011, the u.s. census reports that baltimore is 63.7% black or african american and 29.6% white alone. http://www.census.gov/quickfacts/table/ pst045215/2404000/. for additional demographic analysis, see yeip (2015). yeip points to the baltimore’s low score on the u.s. census bureau’s “diversity index” as another indicator of baltimore’s stratification. 6. the oriole festival as sometimes alternatively referred to as the festival of the oriole or the oriole celebration. the oriole is the maryland state bird and one of the mascots of baltimore, not because it is native to baltimore, which for the most part it is not, but rather because its orange and black coloring is similar to lord baltimore’s coat of arms. 7. it even received a september 13, 1882 write up in the new york times. the author says the festival was “celebrated to-day with more than usual ceremony and display.” 8. this nickname was popularized by real street graffiti featured in the opening credits of the hbo television series the wire. 9. if it had the same population as new york, new york, baltimore would have recorded nearly 4,000 murders in 1993. (new york reported 1,960 homicides that year). 10. city-data, baltimore, maryland, “baltimore on our top lists” http://www. city-data.com/city/baltimore-maryland.html 11. also see baltimore local ernest smith’s hey hon!: how to talk like a real bawlamoron. 12. for an example of the accolades maryland receives for its public school system, see “maryland schools ranked number one—again,” washington post, january 12, 2012. the level of individual educational attainment can be found on united states census bureau’s table 233 “educational attainment by state.” more marylanders hold advanced degrees than any state but massachusetts. 13. “blue collar” can at times be polite code for “dowdy” or “depressed.” 14. for more on the events that led to honfest and the little miss hon contest, see puglia (forthcoming). 15. folklorist regina bendix refers to a similar phenomenon in interlaken, switzerland. she argues that in interlaken, even if traditions are performed outwardly for tourists, the act of performing gives the interlaken community the opportunity to express their culture in their own words and on their own terms. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ari0vwxhxqa https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ari0vwxhxqa http://www.census.gov/quickfacts/table/pst045215/2404000 http://www.census.gov/quickfacts/table/pst045215/2404000 http://www.city-data.com/city/baltimore-maryland.html http://www.city-data.com/city/baltimore-maryland.html puglia growing little traditions 89 16. there had been complaints about racial, gender, and class connotations and the general association of “hon” with diner-waitress speak. for more about the specific debates, see puglia (forthcoming). 17. informants in the podcast “welcome to baltimore, hon: exploring hon as a linguistic and identity marker in baltimore” by holly-catherine britton and heidi j. faust recall their parents attempting to eliminate their baltimorese as a means of social advancement. works cited abrahams, roger d. 1993. phantoms of romantic nationalism in folkloristics. journal of american folklore 106(419): 3-37. ammen, s. z. 1912. history of baltimore, 1875-1895. in baltimore: its history and its people, volume 1, ed. clayton coleman hall, pp. 241-88. new york: lewis historical publishing company. bendix, regina. 1989. tourism and cultural displays: inventing traditions for who? journal of american folklore 102: 131-46. berlinger, joshua. 2015. baltimore riots: a timeline. cnn.com, april 28. http:// www.cnn.com/2015/04/27/us/baltimore-riots-timeline/. best, joel. 2011. everyone’s a winner: life in our congratulatory culture. berkeley: university of california press. bodley, john h. 2000. cultural anthropology: tribes, states, and the global system, 3rd ed. mountain view: ca: mayfield publish co. britton, holly-catherine and heidi j. faust. 2012. “welcome to baltimore, hon!” exploring hon as a linguistic and identity marker in baltimore. american speech 87(2): 208. bronner, simon j. 2006. encyclopedia of american folklife, volume 3. armonk, ny: m.e. sharpe. ———. 2010. framing folklore: an introduction. western folklore 65: 401-34. chidester, robert c. 2009. class, community, and materiality in a blue-collar baltimore neighborhood: an archaeology of hampden-woodberry. phd diss., university of michigan. chidester, robert c. and david a. gadsby. 2009. one neighborhood, two communities: the public archaeology of class in a gentrifying urban neighborhood. international labor and working-class history 76: 127-146. donovan, doug. 2005. baltimore: the city in search of a slogan. baltimore sun, november 8. http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2005-11-08/ news/0511080037_1_brand-baltimore-area-convention-slogan dorson, richard m. 1941. america’s comic demigods. the american scholar 10(4): 389-401. ———. 1970. is there a folk in the city? journal of american folklore 83(328): 185-216. dundes, alan. 1985. nationalistic inferiority complexes and the fabrication of folklore. journal of folklore research 22: 5-18. http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/27/us/baltimore-riots-timeline/ http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/27/us/baltimore-riots-timeline/ http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2005-11-08/news/0511080037_1_brand-baltimore-area-convention-slogan http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2005-11-08/news/0511080037_1_brand-baltimore-area-convention-slogan growing little traditions puglia 90 dundes, alan. 2007. metafolklore and oral literary criticism. in the meaning of folklore: the analytical essays of alan dundes, ed. simon j. bronner, pp. 8887. logan: utah state university press. durr, kenneth d. 2003. behind the backlash: white working-class politics in baltimore, 1940-1980. chapel hill and london: the university of north carolina press. gadsby, david a. 2011. “we had it hard…but we enjoyed it”: class, poverty, and pride in baltimore’s hampden. historical archeology 45(3):11-25. gadsby, david a. and robert c. chidester. 2007. heritage in hampden: a participatory research design for public archaeology in a working-class neighborhood, baltimore, maryland. in archaeology as a tool of civic engagement, eds., barbara j. little and p. a. shackel, pp. 223-242. altamira press. johnstone, barbara, jennifer andrus, and andrew e. danielson. 2006. mobility, indexicality, and the enregisterment of “pittsburghese.” journal of english linguistics 34:77-104. johnstone, barbara. 2009. “pittsburghese shirts: commodification and the enregisterment of an urban dialect. american speech 84(2): 157-175. kirshenblatt-gimblett, barbara. 1998. folklore’s crisis. journal of american folklore 111(441): 281-337. marriott, mckim. 1955. little communities in an indigenous civilization. in village india: studies in the little community, ed. m. marriott, pp. 171-222. chicago: university of chicago press. odner, knut. 2000. tradition and transmission: bantu, indo-european, and circumpolar great traditions. bergen, norway: norse publications. bergen studies in social anthropology, no. 54. puglia, david j. 2015. hon culture wars: revering and reviling the vernacular in baltimore and beyond. phd diss., penn state harrisburg. ———. forthcoming. welcome to baltimore, hon: vernacular wars and local identity. lanham, md: lexington books. redfield, robert. 1955. social organization of tradition. the far eastern quarterly (15)1: 13-21. redfield, robert. 1960. the little community and peasant society and culture. chicago: the university of chicago press. rizzo, mary. 2008. the café hon: working-class white femininity and commodified nostalgia in postindustrial baltimore. in dixie emporium: tourism, foodways, and consumer culture in the american culture, ed. anthony j. stanonis, pp. 264-285. athens and london: the university of george press. ———. 2010. hon-ouring the past: play-publics and gender at baltimore’s honfest. international journal of heritage vol. 16, no. 4-5 july-september 2010: 337-351. roberts, vida. hon heaven culture: treasure those baltimore ladies who call you ‘hon,” hon. because they’re a vanishing treasure characterized by hearts of gold—and some other traits you can’t miss, baltimore sun, june 7, 1996. puglia growing little traditions 91 sessa, sam. 2008. hon-estly, hon, it’s just fun. baltimore sun, june 13. http:// articles.baltimoresun.com/2008-06-13/news/0806120410_1_cafe-honhairspray-john-waters/. shackel, paul a. and david a. gadsby. 2008. “i wish for paradise:” memory and class in hampden, baltimore. in collaboration in archaeological practice: engaging descendant communities, eds., c. colwell-chanthaphonh and t. j. ferguson, pp. 225-242. altamira press. smith, ernest. 1993. hey hon! how to talk like a real bawlamoron. baltimore, md: 38th street press. sutton-smith, brian. 1970. psychology of childlore: the triviality barrier. western folklore 29(1): 1-8. von grunebaum, gustave e. 1955. the problem: unity in diversity. in unity and variety in muslim civilization. chicago: university of chicago press. yeip, randy. 2015. baltimore’s demographic divide. wall street journal, may 1. http://graphics.wsj.com/baltimore-demographics// waters, john. 2005. shock value: a tasteful book about bad taste. philadelphia, pa: running press book publishers. http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2008-06-13/news/0806120410_1_cafe-hon-hairspray-john-waters/ http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2008-06-13/news/0806120410_1_cafe-hon-hairspray-john-waters/ http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2008-06-13/news/0806120410_1_cafe-hon-hairspray-john-waters/ http://graphics.wsj.com/baltimore-demographics// 93 finding new monsters in old places: a review of the works of simon j. bronner through an age-intersectional lens cory thomas hutcheson in the fall of 2015, midwestern folklore: journal of the hoosier folklore society published a collection of essays by students from simon j. bronner’s graduate course on the folklore of aging and the life cycle. i was fortunate enough to be among those students selected to contribute to the issue, which featured essays on mormon baptism, life-cycle board games, and quilting traditions. my piece discussed the phenomenon of father-child “horror play,” in which the adult pretends to be a monster in pursuit of the child or children. in his introduction to the issue, bronner said “the subject of aging has been approached mostly by categorizing folklore under the heading of an age group, especially children or senior adults, rather than analyzed as a human-cultural developmental process in which folklore plays an instrumental role” (bronner 2015:3). dr. bronner is, of course, being a bit modest in his assertion that aging has mostly been seen as a taxonomic activity rather than a scholarly pursuit of process. in fact, he has published copiously on exactly that process over the years. even his landmark 1988 work, american children’s folklore, turns to questions of linear and cyclical development in the aging stages of young people. bronner’s encouragement has led many of his students—several of whom appear in this volume—to engage with the aging process ethnographically, symbolically, functionally, and folklorically to determine how people create meaning out of the dynamic temporal structure of their lives. his work has covered aging from many angles, including two which became central to my study of father-child play: the role of “horror” in childhood (and adult) development and the intersectionality of age-related lore among generations. as bronner passes his own life-cycle milestone and retires from the legacy program he founded at penn state harrisburg, we, as folklorists, would do well to take stock of his influence and re-interrogate his work in light of our own scholarship (and vice versa) to discover the vast territory he has already mapped and the many lands he is leaving us to explore. my most natural point of departure is bronner’s chapter in american children’s folklore (1988:143-60) on supernatural tales and legends, given my previous focus on the monstrous. as a way of marking children’s evolving maturity, bronner locates the transmission of folk narratives involving ghosts, witches, monsters, and other malevolent forces in the spaces between children. even in his introduction to the chapter, however, bronner points out that “[p]arents, camp counselors, and babysitters have helped to stock the children’s world with stories in order to warn them about potential dangers and to exert some control over their wanderings” (143). why are adults and, more importantly, teenagers and young adults, interested in scaring children in this way? a functionalist interpretation could situate these stories as educational, guarding the well-being and safety of the child by providing supernatural forces of discipline in the form of ogres and bogeymen finding new monsters in old places hutcheson 94 (bascom 1954). bronner’s interpretive framework suggests such a reading, although it does not make that analysis definitive. bronner specifically devotes a portion of his supernatural chapter to the discussion of “horror legends of killers and cars,” although even in tales more generically labeled as “ghost stories,” automobiles make repeated appearances: “this man and lady were riding down the street, and they had a car wreck in this one place…” “the street in front of a school had been covered with tar and cement…one gloomy, muddy day, a man was carelessly driving down this road…” “one day a little boy was playing near the street. he was sitting on the curb near a car. the little boy was playing with something he found in the street and did not hear a lady get in the car…” [all italics mine] children emphasize cars, bronner demonstrates, because of the association of automobiles with “maturity and arrival into society,” but their lore also warns of the “dangers” posed by that change (147). similarly, the impetus to work for money and join adult society informs legends of babysitters, who, being left alone, fall prey to killers and monsters. camp counselors share traditional tales that mingle humor and horror in an environment “[a]way from the restrictions of parents and teachers” where children “far [outnumber] counselors” and “feel a streak of independence and mischief” (152). given the deep anxieties children may feel about their growing self-reliance and maturity, supernatural legends do manifest a degree of what longtime bronner-friend and associate alan dundes labels “projection” in folklore. dundes perceives as the transference of an unconscious and symbolic understanding of the world to external actions, beliefs, narratives, and behaviors in a way that characterizes supernatural legends as functional projections of fear and externalizations of powerful internal anxieties rooted in the life cycle process. children, through projection, face their fears. what, then, are those who disseminate the tales to younger children getting out of the exchange? is this merely a case of deploying the monstrous to keep children from wandering away from camp or into the street? approaching bronner’s research with an eye towards generational intersectionality might tell us a bit more about the motivations of the tellers. in my paper on father-child monster play, i drew upon psychoanalytic interpretations of fairy tales by sheldon cashdan, who asserts that “fairy tales are not for children, do not teach moral lessons, and…[point] to a psychodrama of anxieties played out in narration” (hutcheson 2015:40). cashdan is overzealous and ignores the intersectional ways in which children can make meaning out of hearing fairy tales while adults simultaneously make meaning out of telling them, but he does raise the question of adult use of folklore. cashdan believes that adults see the deployment of folklore as primarily educative, a narrative performance that reinforces the values teachers and parents wish to see develop in their children, hutcheson finding new monsters in old places 95 as well as a social control to outline taboo behaviors (cashdan 1999:15). cashdan emphasizes that children experience lore on a psychological level despite the best intentions of adults, of course, but fails to give enough psychological agency to grown-ups who engage with children through fairy tales, urban legends, and monstrous performances. when adults, here construed as anyone aged above their mid-teens, share lore, they do so expecting a response from their listeners. the negotiation between audience and performer has been well-explored by others (bauman 1974; dundes 1980; toelkein 1996; blank 2009), but many explorations of lore transmission frame the exchange as a two-way dynamic. bronner has addressed the inadequacy of that transmission model recently by emphasizing the ways traditional expression operates at, what he terms, a “purposeful activity with a repeatable, multi-layered message that can be called phemic” as opposed to a more functionally, “phatic” expression (bronner 2016). when camp counselors transmit lore, for example, the children who hear the tale are certainly a target audience, but so are the other counselors listening. a parent engaging a child in a ghost story may be performing both as an “adult” and as a “husband” or “friend’s dad” at the same time, creating multivalent channels of communication that situate the narrative transmitter as a person belonging to myriad life-cycle stages simultaneously. the children hearing the tale validate the challenges of those who have passed through young adulthood with their awed or stricken responses. similarly, bronner’s 2012 campus traditions contains a chapter on supernatural legends and horrors in the lives of young adults, presumably many of whom have already experienced these stories at earlier stages in their lives, but who now begin circulating urban legends and terror tales anew. these students, according to bronner, are explicitly acting out phemic meaning, fulfilling “a need to adjust to this [college] environment by connecting themselves to those who have come before” (277). the performative nature of the tales, which often reframe the unfamiliar and temporary home of the campus in terms similar to previously encountered environments such as the childhood home or summer camp bonfire, offers those who tell and hear a way to interact with their new peers in a particular life-cycle phase—“college kids”—while synchronously linking to their own experiences of childhood. most potently, they synchronously experience a narrative and performance in which the campus itself plays a role, and all students who have engaged in the practice of sharing the legends associated with the school are brought into harmony. the multifaceted, multivalent expression of supernatural tales demonstrates that tales are not affixed to a single life-stage, but form the reusable material of an extended lifetime of folk practice. one of the clearest examples of intersectionally phemic folklore in action is the belsnickel, a holiday guising figure found in pennsylvania german culture primarily. several scholars have investigated the symbolism and social role of the belsnickel, most notably richard bauman (1972), alfred shoemaker (1954, 1999), and susan g. davis (1992). the belsnickel is a thickly fur-clad fellow, often with a mask or soot-smeared face to hide his identity. he visits nearby homes and farms, where he is welcomed by parents into the family home and proceeds to cut capers and play the bombastic fool. at some point, his attention turns to the children, whom he quizzes about their behavior over the previous months. he finding new monsters in old places hutcheson 96 uncannily seems to know all the wrongs they think they have kept hidden, and his fearsome demeanor cows them into promises of better obedience in the future. with a flourish, he scatters treats about the floor and then playfully whips or raps their knuckles as they grab for them. soon, he is gone, often with a bit of cake or a draught of ale to warm him on his journey. under the mask and furs, however, was a person—a local boy in his late teens or early twenties, usually unmarried, who knew his community very well. bauman identified the belsnickel performer exactly in terms of his adolescence: [b]elsnickling…was thought of as an activity predominantly for the older boys and young unmarried men of the community…the youngest belsnickles [sic] were fifteen or sixteen years old, with the majority around eighteen to twenty-one and the oldest between twenty-five and thirty…[t]he age of belsnickling was a socially transitional one, between childhood and full adulthood; boys began working for a living around sixteen, but did not conventionally marry or leave their parents’ households till their early twenties. (bauman 1972:232) bauman, along with others like shoemaker (1999) and davis (1992), point towards the liminal nature of the belsnickel in every rural community in which he is found. he is a figure neither fully adult nor fully child. he occupies the period of misrule and topsy-turvy in the closing of the year. why did neighborhood lads take on the belsnickel role? shoemaker and bauman both identify a transgressive function which fell within acceptable community parameters. in short, the belsnickel boy could play the fool and act upon his aggressions without fear of reprisal, so long as he did not overstep the bounds of the role—he could not do serious harm to the children, for example, and often households with very small youngsters would be bypassed on the belsnickel’s rounds. one component has been underemphasized in previous accounts of the singular, domestic belsnickel visit, however. the belsnickel boy certainly underwent his rite of passage, being both isolated and reintegrated into the community as noted in previous scholarship. we can also ask what function the belsnickel’s visit played for the larger community. in many accounts of the belsnickel, we do not have the memories of those performing the role to rely upon nearly so much as we have the memories of those visited by the belsnickel. visits such as these were remembered fondly long after the lone belsnickel receded from the scene. several remembrances note the mixture of fear and pleasure the belsnickel’s visit provided. the belsnickel, as a lord of misrule, was a creature both fearsome and benevolent, and as such would have embodied the experience of the new world for many first and second generation immigrant families. boys taking on the role of the belsnickel represented an important concept to the community: they had passed the dependence and dangers of childhood and were nearing an age of majority, in which they would be expected to provide for others. here we have the phemic folklore operating in a multivalent fashion in both performed time and the practiced time of memory. teenage and young adult boys performed hutcheson finding new monsters in old places 97 for the children, yes, but also for the parents, other boys in their peer group, the communities around them, and for themselves. they inhabited a folk practice that brought circles of time into overlapping conjunction, and those points of conjunction then became the basis for new memorate transmission later in the lives of those visited by the belsnickel. perhaps not surprisingly, bronner has also written extensively about the traditions of the pennsylvania germans, including an article on folk speech and humor (2011) and 2017’s pennsylvania germans: an interpretive encyclopedia, which he co-edited with joshua r. brown, although he has not written at any length on the belsnickel to date, despite the figure’s clear articulation of his phemic principle. what has all of this to do with the fathers chasing their children around a room, roaring like a dinosaur? in writing my own assessment of “horror play” among father and their children, i chose to de-emphasize the children’s experience and instead incorporate the much less richly explored perspective of the fathers who engaged in such play. the dynamics of parental-child relationships are complicated and tricky, a web of multiple meanings that can represent simultaneously constructive and destructive principles at play in cultural formation. bronner has also noted that intergenerational web and its influences in his work on the african american storytelling traditions within the powell family (2011). his detailed ethnographic work with eugene powell and his son, ernest, demonstrated the continued practice of storytelling within the family and the personal emphasis on differentiation for ernest. the son did not wish to be his father or to tell his father’s stories, but he did wish to do as his father had done. when ernest told stories, he told them for his audience and filled them with a level of violence beyond anything in his father’s tales, but he also performed for his father as a tradition-bearer. bronner decoded a level of tension between father and son, noting that “eugene’s insecurity spilled over into his relationship with ernest. eugene saw much of himself in his son…eugene worried about his control over ernest” (bronner 2011:261). eugene was telling his stories in the same way a father might pretend to be godzilla or a zombie for a five-year-old. he entertained his audience but simultaneously accommodated his own anxieties about his role in his child’s life and, crucially, in his own life. eugene and ernest powell occupy different “stages” of life but also reflect the stages of one another’s lives through the sustained practice of storytelling. the materials which simon j. bronner has gathered through his prolific corpus of work on american folklore continue to provide much to think about. his recent concentration on a “practice theory” of folklore offers new insights into materials he has compiled over a lifetime. similarly, as we develop our own insights and ideas with relation to new material, bronner’s work provides a bank of comparative fodder rich with potential for close reading and reinterpretation. my own work with the intersectional father-child “horror play” dynamic, which was supported from its inception to publication by bronner, represents only the smallest fragment of possible interpretive lenses that might be applied to concepts of phemic folklore. here, bronner has remained ahead of the game, and provided scholars with new terminology and frameworks to apply to their findings. bronner’s earlier work, such as american children’s folklore, demonstrate finding new monsters in old places hutcheson 98 significant opportunities for review and rediscovery. his proclivity for production has cast a wide net, and we are certainly indebted to him for what he has given us so far. yet his work also demonstrates a notable “lack,” if i may co-opt dundes’ term from game morphology and apply it here. he leaves us much yet to do in the form of a lifetime of work that can still benefit from attentive reinterpretation. is he then playing a game across time, whose object is an “elimination” of his “lack” through our own diligent scholarship? if so, that would be very much the playful and phemic bronner, acting the part of mischievous child as he crosses the threshold of retirement. works cited bascom, william r. 1954. four functions of folklore. the journal of american folklore. 67(266): 333-49. bauman, richard. 1972. belsnickling in a nova scotia island community. western folklore 31(4): 229-43. bronner, simon j. 1988. american children’s folklore: a book of rhymes, games, jokes, stories, secret languages, beliefs, and camp legends for parents, grandparents, teachers, counselors, and all adults who were once children. little rock: august house. ———, ed. 2005. manly traditions: the folk roots of american masculinities. bloomington: indiana univ. press. ———. 2011. explaining traditions: folk behavior in modern culture. lexington: univ. of kentucky press. ———. 2012. campus traditions: folklore from the old-time college to the modern mega-university. jackson: university press of mississippi. ———. 2015. foreword: folklore for the ages. midwestern folklore: journal of the hoosier folklore society. 41(2): 3-8. ———. 2016. toward a definition of folklore in practice. cultural analysis 15(1). bronner, simon j., and joshua r. brown, eds. 2017. pennsylvania germans: an interpretive encyclopedia. baltimore: johns hopkins univ. press. cashdan, sheldon. 1999. the witch must die: the hidden meaning of fairy tales. new york: basic books. davis, susan g. 1992. “making night hideous”: christmas revelry and public order in nineteenth-century philadelphia. american quarterly 34(2): 185-99. dundes, alan. 1980. interpreting folklore. bloomington: indiana univ. press. hutcheson, cory thomas. 2015. domesticating the ogre: horror play and fatherhood. midwestern folklore: journal of the hoosier folklore society 41(2): 39-49. shoemaker, alfred. 1999. christmas in pennsylvania. mechanicsburg, pa: stackpole books. 99 book review children’s games in the new media age: childlore, media and the playground. edited by andrew burn and chris richards. (surrey and burlington: ashgate publishing, 2014. xiii+pp.224, acknowledgments, introduction, notes, bibliography, contributors, list of figures and tables, index.) winner of the 2016 opie award from the american folklore society’s children’s folklore section, this fine volume brings the collection of children’s games smartly into the 21st century. how fitting that the work itself is dedicated to iona opie, as it showcases and builds upon her legacy. three topics vie for our attention, all reflected in the subtitle. one wonders if the title and subtitle were fighting off camera for the volume’s heading. perhaps this is due to the ambivalence over the word “playground” in our time. the editors, both professors in the department of culture, communication and media at the institute of education, university of london, have collected a set of essays that merit individual attention. burn’s introduction addresses “children’s playground games in the new media age,” yet another version of the book’s title. pointing to the work of iona and peter opie over 50 years ago, the chapter readdresses one of the ideas that the opies themselves debunked, that they had started the collection of children’s folklore “fifty years too late” (p. 1) happily, the intent of the book is to show that children’s folklore—that irreverent mix of playful genres belonging to children’s peer culture—is still alive and well. we read of the history of “children’s games, songs, and rhymes” with particular attention to change and children’s agency and are introduced to five projects that frame the book. the british library digital archive, the first of these projects, includes the opie collection of children’s games and songs, new material collected in the united kingdom, and the australian collection of ethnomusicologist kathryn marsh. the project exceeded their initial plan and hosts games from australia, the uk, america and scandinavia. the second project involved ethnographic studies in two primary schools, one in sheffield and one on london’s edge, from 2009-2011. methods included surveys, panel interviews of children, and video footage taken by adults and children alike. the third project involved website development: “playtimes: a century of children’s playground games and rhymes,” an industrious addition intended to display to the public both the opie material and the ethnographic work collected in these two schools. additional collaboration with the bodleian libraries at the university of oxford, repository of the opie archive, and the pitt rivers museum, university of oxford, adds the wonderful game photos by father damian webb. most impressive was the involvement of children in the website development, as “researchers, designers, and curators.” the fourth project associated with the book is an innovative application of “the game catcher prototype,” an adaptation of motion sensitive video game book review 100 controllers of nintendo wii and microsoft kinect. the intention was to use the video game system to both record hand games as well as revitalize clapping. this project models the lack of separation in children’s culture between “traditional” games and technology. it would be worth watching such applications longitudinally to see how they hold up over time. the final project frames game collection through the development of a documentary film: ipi-dipi-dation, my generation. a catchy title, it references the counting out rhyme ip dip, and ties in to the notion of historical study. filmmaker grethe mitchell thoughtfully pays attention to camera angle and children’s commentary, not just game content. it should be noted that the film is tantalizingly difficult to find, almost impossible. it is hoped that the authors will find a way to make it more accessible. language of social critique appears throughout, from bourdieu’s “embodied history” to raymond williams’ notion of “residual culture” to henry jenkins’ emphasis on “cultural production and circulation.” readers familiar with the anthropology of levi-strauss and caillois will find the term “ludic bricolage” interesting. burns invites us to think of the chapters as puzzle pieces, and what follows is a brief discussion of each piece. chapter 2 “the opie recordings: what’s left to be heard” by laura jopson, andrew burn, and jonathan robinson invites us to listen to the archive, now fully cataloged and available online. there appears to be much in the opie archive that had never been published, a gold mine of games for the game researcher or childlore scholar. chapter 3 by folklorist julia c. bishop examines online/offline transmission and how “the whole hand-clap thing passes on.” this particular chapter is one i will return to with my own classes, as she charts transmission face-to-face, through media culture, and through youtube. movement variations are analyzed in a study of variation of one particular game, and there are rich quotes directly from children. chapter 4 by chris richards offers a mix of memoir and social commentary on “rough play, play fighting and surveillance: school playgrounds as sites of dissonance, controversy and fun.” he writes of “childhood at risk, children as a threat,” and briefly addresses gender differences in terms of playground conflict. in chapter 5, education professor jackie marsh examines “the relationship between online and offline play: friendship and exclusion.” here the chapter mixes fine-grained ethnographic quotes with internet use surveys. of particular interest is the innovative contrast between the social webs of one group and their friendship patterns online and offline. in chapter 6, librarian rebekah willet looks at the process of remixing and the study of “media-referenced play in the playground.” the chapter wisely points to how “children produce meaning from the variety of texts with which they engage in their remix culture” (p. 149). “children’s remix culture” might have been a fourth contender for book title. filmmaker grethe mitchell’s chapter on “the game catcher: a computer game and research tool for embodied movement” is perhaps the most innovative project in childlore collection to date. an adaptation of motion sensitive video game controllers of nintendo wii and microsoft kinect, it translates children’s hand games onto the screen for archival purposes and analysis, not to mention the book review 101 pleasure of seeing one’s motions on screen. whether the application is affordable enough, portable enough, and easy enough for widespread use remains to be seen. it certainly suggests new ways of thinking about game research, borrowing the tools of media captured choreography and dance notation. john potter’s chapter, focusing on website development and heterotopia, raises the ethical implications of having children as “co-curators.” part of the challenge rests with the essentially private, yet public, display of children’s folklore, and yet when posted, it becomes an exposed performance. the book raises more questions than it has space to answer. i appreciate the ways in which it finds consistency and innovation in children’s folklore, and how it suggests that the answer to the rigidity of school curricula can be found outside. anna beresin the university of the arts 103 film review let’s get the rhythm!: the life and times of miss mary mack. directed by irene chagall (new york: women make movies/city lore & public art films, 2014, 53 mins., color.). director irene chagall’s let’s get the rhythm!: the life and times of miss mary mack covers familiar folkloric territory: hand-clapping and rhythm games among young girls. the wide-ranging film frames rhythmic play as something inherent to human beings, particularly girls, with foundations in psychology and anthropology and connected to other forms of artistic expression. chagall takes her camera around the world and through long stretches of human history to develop the film’s thesis that clapping games are serious business for the girls who play them and that such games are worthy of focused attention. students of other social sciences will find as much to contemplate in the film as folklorists, a testament to the richness of source materials and scholarship found in its hour-long running time. while chagall offers a great deal of enriching context, let’s get the rhythm! also leaves a number of avenues unexplored and unresolved, creating both a problem for a viewer who wants more and an opportunity for ongoing scholarly work. as an instructor in san francisco’s community music center specializing in children’s musical education, chagall spent thirty years working with city youth and learning about the music they create. her study of that rhythmic expression earned her a smithsonian research fellowship, and she spent several years assembling footage from archival sources and gathering her own fieldwork. chagall knows she is not covering new ground at a broad level, and draws upon bess lomax hawes’ 1967 film, pizza pizza daddy-o frequently for both footage and conceptual underpinnings about the role of hand-clapping among girls. hawes herself is a frequent onscreen presence, giving her perspectives on the interpretation of the game-playing rituals shown to the audience in both her own film and in chagall’s examples. the film’s other experts include kyra gaunt, author of the games black girls play, and ellen dissanayake, author of art and intimacy, as well as experts from fields, including african art history and cultural anthropology. methodologically, the film presents copious ethnographic footage of girls playing the games or speaking about the games. some elements of the film work remarkably well to serve both chagall’s thesis and the viewer’s understanding of the clapping games in local and global contexts. one particularly engaging sequence follows the game “hello operator,” a game that traffics in near-miss ribaldry, through around a dozen different iterations, including historical and contemporary versions played among girls from different age groups, localities, and backgrounds. at the heart of the film are questions about how society values its girls and their culture, and the cultural habit of discounting such games as “mere play.” chagall deftly demonstrates the ways that film review 104 the games not only create social bonds among the girls who play them—as shown when an american girl travels to tanzania to meet a pen pal and plays clapping games to break the ice with the local girls—but also address large-scale cultural and social issues. one of chagall’s interviewees makes the point that the games are a form of “graffiti with your hands,” a motif reflected in the paint-splash palm prints used to accentuate onscreen text in the film. clapping games, demonstrates chagall, can address problems like jim crow segregation or the high incidence of sickle cell anemia in sierra leone, where the girls play a clapping game called “ah mella sickle cella.” chagall’s particular exploration of rhythmic-clap sophistication among children elevates the discussion of the games. informants like hawes and jazz musician bobby sanabria repeatedly show that these games are not always simple, but often require a very sophisticated understanding of patterns and rhythm. the clapping patterns in a game called “numbers,” which requires ever-more complex rhythms as the girls play it, appears onscreen as an equation. the informants, largely children and teens from diverse cultural backgrounds, come largely from american cities like san francisco and new york but also from international locations including japan, south korea, mexico, brazil, russia, spain, and israel, do much to reinforce chagall’s points about the pervasive importance of the games. a strong current of what nina glick-schiller and others have termed “cosmopolitan sociability” pervades the presentation, too, offering a way of contextualizing what the viewer sees as a transnational phenomenon. the film’s wide range of subjects, experts, and ideas all keep it lively and engaging, but do sacrifice some depth to meet the timeframe. a number of speculative points in the film appear and disappear with a frustrating evanescence. chagall relates egyptian hieroglyphics to the hand-clapping games she records, but the claim has only a small piece of interpretive text to stand on, and seems as flimsy as william wells newell’s claim that girls play these sorts of games merely to warm their hands in the winter. similarly, ellen dissanayake attempts to connect hand-clapping with the production of oxytocin in the body, and then makes some sweeping claims about gender roles related to that hormone. gender also becomes problematic, as one self-described “tomboy” struggles to connect with the handclapping rhymes, which has the—hopefully unintended—effect of making her look “broken” as a woman because of her limited ability to interact through the games. chagall does explore the ways in which girls’ games get appropriated by men, particularly in popular music, but interestingly presents a pair of girls later playing a game that clearly appropriates a portion of k.c. & the sunshine band’s “that’s the way i like it” without discussing the folkloric process of that counterappropriation. strangely, despite the film’s subtitle, the actual discussion of the game “miss mary mack” occupies only about ten minutes of the film’s runtime. such unexplored, underexplored, or problematic presentations read much more like opportunities for future scholars, however, than any sort of failure on chagall’s part. the immense scope of let’s get the rhythm! necessarily requires a tight editorial hand in order to accommodate the timeframe of the presentation. chagall’s previous work on the subject, published in 2005/2006’s children’s folklore review, presented a rough draft of the film’s thesis while answering some of the questions the video version of her work merely skimmed, such as the issue film review 105 of counter-appropriation. in this article, chagall quotes simon bronner on the evanescent but vital role these games play in the lives of young girls, noting that these games merge “performance and integration of different expressive behaviors that [defy] easy typology” (bronner 1988:166). that typological defiance is clear in chagall’s work as well, and students of folklore have no shortage of raw material or refined analysis available between her earlier article and this film. in the end, the film will likely be a strong future companion piece to bess lomax hawes’ earlier work, and set the stage for scholars who follow to build upon what chagall has done. cory thomas hutcheson pennsylvania state university, harrisburg bronner, simon. 1988. american children’s folklore. little rock: august house, quoted in irene chagall. 2005/2006. “let’s get rhythm,” children’s folklore review 28:42-63. 107 children’s folklore section: 2016 annual meeting miami, florida, october 21, 2016 attendance: eleven members were in attendance, including kate schramm (convener); john mcdowell, elizabeth tucker, priscilla ord, elizabeth coberly, fernando orejuela, brant ellsworth, ruth stotter, lisa gabbert, kate mccormick, and spencer green. many other members were unable to attend due to other section responsibilities. treasurer: priscilla ord reported on the status of the section’s finances. the children’s section has approximately 90 members of which 40 people are duespaying members. as the fee is optional, there was some discussion about whether or not the section should make it mandatory. discussion was inconclusive because, as the journal is moving on-line (and presumably open-access) the question was raised as to what people might receive from paying dues. pricilla noted that afs had not yet deducted administrative fees for this year so financial report was somewhat incomplete. editor: trevor blank’s report as editor of children’s folklore review was accepted. it was noted that the editor is actively seeking submissions to the journal and that submissions are somewhat low. brant ellsworth is coming onto the journal as assistant editor and trevor would like to see him take over as editor when he rotates off. there was some question as to how advertisements and other issues would be handled once the journal moves online. kate schramm asked that trevor blank, priscilla ord, and brant ellsworth get together to hash out a timeline to ease this transition. social media: there was discussion about how many people used/participated in the section’s facebook page. a decision was made to seek out a person to fill a new position as the section’s social media manager. aesop committee: there was much discussion of the aesop prize. the winners were announced and hard copies of books passed around. the winner was lowriders to the center of the earth, by cathy camper and raúl the third. aesop accolades were awarded to i am pan! by mordicai gerstein, the princess and the warrior, by duncan tonatiuh, and the storyteller, by evan turk. it was noted that 85 books were submitted for the prize, of which only 24 were eligible. of that 24, it was estimated that only 6-7 were prize-worthy. kate schramm noted that most of the books submitted under “children’s folklore” tended to focus on decontextualized ethnic folklore and thus tended to reinforce stereotypes. there was discussion of how to increase communication about the importance of the prize since there is no cash award. some discussion was held as to the possibility of a cash prize, but section finances must be figured out first regarding the journal. children’s folklore section: 2016 annual meeting 108 newell prize: brant ellsworth noted that there were no submissions this year and only one submission last year. this led to a broader discussion of the lack of graduate student work being done in children’s folklore. lisa gabbert will take over chairing the newell prize and it was decided to broaden the criteria to include “emerging scholars” in order to increase submissions. opie prize: libby tucker and john mcdowell will continue to chair the opie prize. the winner for this year was children’s games in the new media age: childlore, media and the playground, edited by andrew burn and chris richards (ashgate, 2014). section elections: kate schramm was re-elected as convener. brant ellsworth was elected as secretary and this position shall now be separated out from the position of treasurer, held by priscilla ord. discussion: the section meeting concluded with ideas about how to raise the profile of the children’s folklore section within the society. lisa gabbert suggested initiating an annual lecture on children’s folklore lecture and wondered whether we might bring national media personalities such as lenore skenazy to the meeting. libby tucker noted that we could still initiate the lecture and have afs members deliver it. katie schramm encouraged people to think about collaborative ideas for panels for next year’s meeting, noting the very good panel that had taken place this year in conjunction with the folklore and education section. the meeting was adjourned at 1:50. 109 notes and announcements newell prize the children’s folklore section of the american folklore society annually offers the william wells newell prize (which includes a cash award) for the best student essay on a topic in children’s folklore. students must submit their own papers, and published papers are eligible. instructors are asked to encourage students with eligible papers to enter the competition. papers must be double-spaced and submitted as a word document. on the first page, include the author’s name, academic address, home address, telephone numbers, and e-mail address. deadline for this coming year’s competition is september 30, 2017. please submit papers electronically to dr. lisa gabbert, folklore@usu.edu. book reviews children’s folklore review is seeking book review submissions for its next issue, to be published in december of 2017. this is an excellent opportunity for graduate students interested in building their writing credentials and demonstrating breadth in folklore, literature, and childhood studies. books are selected for review in children’s folklore review according to their relevance to the field of children’s folklore and their year of publication (within the past two years). if you would like to request a book for review, please contact the editor, brant w. ellsworth (brantellsworth@centralpenn.edu). book reviews should not exceed 1,000 words. mailto:folklore%40usu.edu?subject= mailto:brantellsworth%40centralpenn.edu?subject= 111 contributors anna beresin is professor of liberal arts at the university of the arts in philadelphia, and co-director of neuarts, neighborhood engagement at the university of the arts. her books include recess battles: playing, fighting, and storytelling, and the art of play: recess and the practice of invention. briand sutton-smith was her thesis advisor at the university of pennsylvania, where she earned two doctorates; one in folklore, and one in the psychology of education. she enjoys bad puns. andrew delfino has a b.a. in english from the university of california, davis, with a minor in american studies; he graduated with highest honors. he won the university of california, davis’s prized writing awards in consecutive years. his research into las vegas’ neon signs as postmodern architecture was awarded a president’s undergraduate fellowship. after graduating, he taught writing and literature to junior high students in atlanta, georgia; he also coached junior high wrestling. delfino earned a master’s degree in literary studies at georgia state university, where his thesis focused on masculinity, gender, and sports in post-modern literature. he currently teaches technical writing at the university of maryland at college park. since 2015, he has been working to include more of the cultural studies turn in composition to his technical writing course as well as researching digital pedagogy as he helped umd develop a completely asynchronous, online technical writing curriculum. cory thomas hutcheson is a phd candidate in american studies at penn state harrisburg. his research focuses on american vernacular religion with an emphasis on folk magic and cosmology. jay mechling is professor emeritus of american studies at the university of california, davis. a past convenor of the children’s section of the american folklore society, past president of the association for the study of play, and past president of the fellows of the afs, he has been writing lately about the folk cultures of warriors. wolfgang meider is university distinguished professor of german and folklore at the university of vermont, where he served as chairperson of the department of german and russian from 1977 to 2008. he is an internationally acknowledged proverb scholar and the founding editor of proverbium: yearbook of international proverb scholarship. his numerous books in german and english include bibliographical, folkloric, literary, and philological studies, with a recent volume being “behold the proverbs of a people”: proverbial wisdom in culture, literature, and politics. contributors 112 amy milligan is the batten endowed assistant professor of jewish studies and women’s studies at old dominion university, where she is also the director of the institute of jewish studies and interfaith understanding. she is the author of hair, headwear, and orthodox jewish women: kallah’s choice (lexington, 2014), and her research continues to explore the intersections of hair, body, gender, sexuality, and religion. examples of her work include “colors of the jewish rainbow: a study of homosexual jewish men and yarmulkes” in the journal of modern jewish studies (2013) and “expanding sisterhood: jewish lesbians and externalizations of yiddishkeit” in the journal of lesbian studies (2014). in 2011, she received the raphael patai prize in jewish folklore and ethnology from the american folklore society for her study of orthodox women’s headcovering, which was published in framing jewish culture (littman, 2014). david j. puglia is assistant professor of english at the bronx community college of the city university of new york, where he teaches courses in folklore and folklife. he received his ph.d. from penn state harrisburg, where simon j. bronner was his dissertation director. he is the author of three books, south central pennsylvania legends & lore, maryland legends: folklore from the old line state (with trevor j. blank), and welcome to baltimore, hon: vernacular wars and local identity. his essays have appeared in contemporary legend, new directions in folklore, and the folklore historian. he is the co-editor of the scholarly journal new directions in folklore and the past president of the middle atlantic folklife association. elizabeth tucker, professor of english at binghamton university, is co-editor of children’s folklore review. she served twice as president of the children’s folklore section and is past president of the international society for contemporary legend research. her publications include campus legends: a handbook (2005), haunted halls: ghostlore of american college campuses (2007), children’s folklore: a handbook (2008), haunted southern tier (2011), and, with ellen mchale, new york state folklife reader: diverse voices (2013). contents from the editor brant w. ellsworth hair today, gone tomorrow: upsherin, alef-bet, and the childhood navigation of jewish gender identity symbol set amy k. milligan, phd “there’s an app for that”®: ghost hunting with smartphones elizabeth tucker “little pitchers have big ears” the intricate world of children and proverbs wolfgang mieder wrestling with masculinity andrew delfino and jay mechling growing little traditions: baltimore’s little miss hon contest david j. puglia finding new monsters in old places: a review of the works of simon j. bronner through an age-intersectional lens cory thomas hutcheson book review: children’s games in the new media age: childlore, media and the playground anna beresin film review: let’s get the rhythm!: the life and times of miss mary mack cory thomas hutcheson children’s folklore section: 2016 annual meeting notes and announcements contributors cfr_2010.pdf children’s folklo re review volume 32 2010 published by the children’s folklore section of the american folklore society with support from the dean’s office of harpur college at binghamton university. contents from the editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 help! i’m a feminist but my daughter is a “princess fanatic!”: disney’s transformation of twenty-first-century girls alisa clapp-itnyre . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 “i saw mrs. saray, sitting on a bombalerry”: ralph ellison collects children’s folklore robert baron . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 boise ikastola: boise basque language immersion preschool jacqueline thursby . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 winner of the 2010 william wells newell prize “cheeky behavior”: the meaning and function of ‘fartlore’ in childhood and adolescence trevor j. blank . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 book reviews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 children’s folklore section: 2009 annual meeting . . . . . . . . . . . 93 notes and announcements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97 from the editor elizabeth tucker as this thirty-second volume of children’s folklore review goes to press, i feel grateful for the assistance of many people. the executive board of the american folklore society’s children’s folklore section has helped me to affiliate our journal with indiana university’s scholarworks, which will soon put back issues of children’s folklore review online. it will be exciting for children’s folklore researchers to have easy access to all of our past issues. in this era of rapid online research, it is crucial to have this kind of availability. i want to thank the whole executive board and especially c.w. sullivan iii, the journal’s editor for thirty years, for helping to make this transition possible. i also want to thank the other members of our staff who have worked on this volume: kristiana m. willsey, our assistant editor, dana hercbergs, our book review editor, and jay mechling, priscilla ord, and simon j. bronner, our editorial board. all of their contributions are greatly appreciated. special thanks go to the dean’s office at harpur college of binghamton university, which has generously continued to support children’s folklore review. i am also very grateful to kathy buchta for her excellent work on layout/design and to sheridan press for its fine services. this volume of children’s folklore review contains diverse and very interesting articles: one on disney princesses, one on ralph ellison’s collection of children’s folklore, and one on a basque pre-school in utah. the article by trevor j. blank, the winner of this year’s william wells newell prize, explores the fascinating realm of “fartlore.” submissions and comments are always very welcome. please feel free to contact me any time: ltucker@binghamton.edu. dana hercbergs, our book review editor, can be reached at the e-mail address hercbergs@yahoo.com. thanks very much for your support of our journal. 7 help! i’m a feminist but my daughter is a “princess fanatic”! disney’s transformation of twenty-first-century girls1 alisa clapp-itnyre as i began this paper, my then four-year-old daughter, annetta, sat singing “part of your world” from disney’s little mermaid, playing with her pocahontas barbie doll, wearing her cinderella dress, and planning to watch disney’s snow white for the umpteenth time that night ... and i wondered where i had gone wrong. from dolls to lamps, bikes and bathing suits, underpants and toothpaste, the “princess theme” is everywhere. disney is cleverly pulling together all its heroines from earlier film classics — snow white, cinderella, and sleeping beauty — and adding the latest versions — belle, jasmine, ariel, now even tiana — to create a whole world populated by women whose only desire is to marry a prince. kids now attend “princess” ice shows in costume and throw “princess” birthday parties — while parents (like me) pay for all the souvenirs and party supplies. is there anything that goes beyond consumerism and sexist fairy tales in the disney formula? i am not the only scholar-parent asking this question and, drawing upon the published record as well as my own very “intimate” knowledge of disney’s princesses, i will consider in this paper the transformation of girls today into “sleeping beauties,” “material girls,” and potentially even “radical feminists” after having been “touched” by the disney spell. ironically, the princess phenomenon started with a disney ice show which disney consumer products president andy mooney attended in 2000 and there witnessed, as he says, “thousands of young girls dressed in costumes, mulan and snow white. it was like a rock concert for little princesses” (qtd. in wloszczyna 2003)). he was inspired to combine the “princess” heroines together into one brand, a “pretty controversial” move, he says, given how these princesses had only ever existed “in their own mythological worlds. […] but young girls and mothers voted with their dollars. they believed in the unifying attributes of the disney princesses” (qtd. in wloszczyna 2003). geared towards little girls, three to five, this line has created a financial explosion. between 2002 and 2005 the princess brand grew a whopping 300% (business wire), and has now overtaken both disney’s winnie-the-pooh and mickey mouse himself as their most popular brand (arkoff 2009). since its inception, disney princess merchandise has garnered $3.4 billion in profits (arkoff 2009). today it is the largest “global girls franchise” (business wire) with markets in ninety countries (arkoff 2009) , including russia, china, and india (millard 2006). three of the ten top-selling videos around the world are princess films (beauty and the beast, aladdin, and pocahontas; artz 2004, 117); five of the top six disney videos ever released have been princess films (arkoff 2009).2 raves entertainment editor for sweet sixteen magazine, vicki arkoff, “moms embrace it because, in a time when little girls are maturing at a much faster pace, disney princess lets little girls remain children for a little longer time. disney aims to empower girls with the wholesome stories about virtues of integrity, honor, discovery, friendship, and love” (2009). “princess fanatic” clapp-itnyre 8 scholarly opinion, on the other hand, has been more wary of the intense consumerism and social implications of disney tales. the original “princess” tales (snow white, cinderella, and sleeping beauty) have especially come under intense scrutiny. from frances clarke sayers in 1965, kay stone in 1975, jill may in 1981, to jack zipes in 1995, all have regretted disney’s distortions of folk literature.3 as jack zipes has said, “there is something sad in the manner in which disney ‘violated’ the literary genre of the fairy tale and packaged his versions in his name through the merchandising of books, toys, clothing, and records” (1995, 40). kay stone, in her classic “things walt disney never told us,” further pointed out the feminist implications: “the only tests of most [disney] heroines require nothing beyond what they are born with: a beautiful face, tiny feet, or a pleasing temperament. […] [yet] to judge from the 186 heroines found in five major angleamerican folktale collections, oral narrators do not confine themselves to passive princesses” (1975, 45). i will divide my own examination into three sections, examining first the “princess” movies under walt disney’s own direction (snow white, cinderella, sleeping beauty); the second “golden age” of disney in the 1990s under eisner and “team disney” which began with the little mermaid (1989) (i will not include aladdin in this discussion since it is mainly aladdin’s story, not jasmine’s); and then the phase we are experiencing right now in the 21st century, when disney is regurgitating its “masterpieces” through products and re-releases, while apparently also trying to inaugurate another decade of princess films with the princess and the frog (2009) and tangled (anticipated late 2010). within each era, i will analyze 1) the narratives, 2) the images, and 3) the songs that indoctrinate and influence successive generations. i do believe, along with many scholars, that disney’s attempts in the 1990s to become more politically correct were fairly successful and can become a positive model for our young girls. the other eras, the 1930s through 50s, due to patriarchal bias, and now our own, due to crass consumerism, have been less golden. “someday my prince will come”: princesses of the ‘walt era’ perhaps disney’s princess theme seems so engrained within the imagination and corporation of disney because its first full-length feature was a princess film: snow white (1937). marie claire simonelli feels that “disney breathed new life into a genre that had long been forgotten” with his films snow white and cinderella (1999, 69). from snow white, to cinderella, to sleeping beauty, early “princesses” were undeniably sweet, patient, and obedient girls whose only emotions ranged from extreme happiness to utter dejection.4 it is likely due to these fairly dull heroines that the narratives containing them so quickly move to other characters and stories: it is indeed a breath of fresh air when the dwarves and talking mice arrive on the scene. artz even argues that sleeping beauty failed at the box office because it was the only disney film “without an animal sidekick” (2004, 121). the plots involving the heroines are simplistic and standard fairy-tale narrative, with heroines portrayed as “helpless, passive victims who need protection” (henke, umble, and smith 1996, 234); they receive this protection from princes, fairies, clapp-itnyre “princess fanatic” 9 even male mice. as m. thomas inge sums up, “[snow white] accurately reflected the general public attitude toward the place of women in society [of the 1930s] and continued a long tradition in western culture of portraying women as passive vessels of innocence and virtue, although [he adds] disney’s snow white shows a good deal more spunk than most fairy tale princesses” (2004, 141).5 in terms of image, early princesses were, obviously, stereotypically slender, beautiful, and elegant, modeled after current stars and icons of the time. snow white “was envisioned as a ‘janet gaynor’ type” (inge 141); “under the peasant costume,” writes rebecca anne c. dorozario, “snow white is a 1920s/’30s starlet with a flapper’s haircut, rosebud mouth, and highpitched warble” (2004, 38), yet drawn to be about fourteen. cinderella may look older, but, like snow white, even she looks amazingly elegant even under the most impoverished of circumstances.6 finally there is sleeping beauty who, as dorozario points out, is “a prototype baby boomer,” walking about barefoot, crushed when she misses her date with a boy. like her barbie doll image, which came out in 1959, too, she represents “the idealized american teen” of the 1960s (2004, 38). these are the images still being pushed and packaged as seen on the re-released vhs and dvd covers. my special interest is in the songs that accompany these firms, which carry ideological meaning more strongly than any dialogue because viewers still sing the songs well after they have stopped watching the films. who does not know the song “someday my prince will come” with or without watching snow white, after all? my four-year-old daughter did and pointed out an error in one of scholarly articles i was reading to her which erroneously credited sleeping beauty with the song! little girls are bombarded with “happily-ever-messages” even from the first moments of snow white, which, in fact, opens with six songs in just the first thirty minutes. as simonelli writes, “songs carried the central themes of the stories, conveyed the personality of the characters who sang them, and finally helped unify the whole works through musical themes” (1999, 65). the words exude romantic ideals now parodied and problematic by today’s standards: “someday my prince will come … and away to his castle we’ll go. to be happy forever, i know … and the birds will sing and wedding bells will ring. someday when dreams come true.” as journalist jami bernard described in 1993, at the film’s re-release, the song is “eminently hummable, ennobling the virtues of passivity and prefigure 1. annetta as belle, age three. photograph by alisa clapp-itnyre. “princess fanatic” clapp-itnyre 10 determined happy endings. […] that song sets up little girls for a lifetime of feverish romantic expectations that don’t easily mix with the jungle out there that is the modern dating scene” (qtd. in inge 2004, 141). these songs suggest more potent influence on little girls since it is their tunes and words which little girls remember long after viewing the film itself. cinderella is especially known for its songs and had academy award nominations for best musical score and best song (bibbidi-bobbidy-boo; o’brien 168).7 “a dream is a wish your heart makes” could be a complex statement about abject poverty and how to face it: “in dreams you will lose your heartaches. whatever you wish for, you keep. have faith in your dreams and someday, your rainbow will come smiling through. no matter how your heart is grieving, if you keep on believing the dream that you wish will come true.” cinderella uses aesthetics to escape the reality of her life though, like snow white, cinderella lacks any motivation to change her and others’ poor circumstances: note that the only time she shows any kind of anger is in this song--to the clock for waking her up: “o that clock! killjoy! i hear you! come on, get up, you say. time to start another day. even he orders me around. well, there’s one thing: they can’t stop me from dreaming.” it is interesting that this appears to be the only time cinderella gets angry, yet she reverts to dreaming as escape. the male-identified clock further is significant; cinderella is living under patriarchal rule. as naomi wood writes, “cinderella’s challenge over the course of the movie is to hold on to her dreams … [but she learns that] all wishes have to be earned by obedience to the dream-fulfilling authorities who reward good behavior and innocent faith. […] her acceptance and promotion of patriarchal values […] provide the justification for the fulfillment of her dream” (1996, 37-8). her relationship with the prince is given very little film space, limited to just the dorisday-like ballad “so this is love,” a duet in which, significantly, the prince only echoes cinderella throughout. this, and a similar love duet from sleeping beauty based on the tchaikovsky ballet score (“i know you! i walked with you once upon a dream”) are significant not only in that men share the songs with the women (a trend dropped in 1990s films) but also in reinforcing the concept of “dreaming,” taking young women’s minds away from realistic problems and relationships, and letting “fate” work its magic. figure 2. annetta as snow white, age three, at a disney ice show with “princess” friends: andrea pegg, madelyn brunton, and natalie pegg. photograph by alisa clapp-itnyre. clapp-itnyre “princess fanatic” 11 “i want so much more than they’ve got planned”: princesses by ‘team disney’ after walt disney’s death in 1966, the walt disney company, led by family members who often lacked business savvy, began to flaunder (o’brien 1996, 168). churning out simplistic, “cutesy” films like the fox and the hound (1981), disney began to lose money and viewers. by 1984, disney stockholders brought in new leaders from other studios, with michael eisner from paramount as chairman of the board (o’brien 1996, 169). termed “team disney,” this committee led by eisner, determined to return to disney’s very successful fairy-tale adaptations of earlier years.8 a number of recent critics are willing to praise “team disney’s” attempts to rectify gender and cultural biases of past films: “[l]ater films shift from simple stories of passive, young virgins in conflict with evil, mature women to more complex narratives about rebellion, exploration, and danger” according to henke, umble, and smith (1996, 234). two sociological studies of disney films (hoerrner; towbin et al.) both find that, though not completely free of gender stereotyping, recent films show stronger women “with problem-solving abilities and actions on a more equal footing with their male peers” (hoerrner 1996, 225). not that the little mermaid (1989) was any immediate break-through; regina bendix, in “seashell bra and happy end,” argues that “the little mermaid follows the same formula disney created with his snow white adaptation” (1993, 289). admittedly, ariel is now spunky and feisty but channels this towards obtaining a man, at great cost: as henke, umble, and smith write, “little wonder […] that alarms sound for feminists concerned with the psychological development of girls and women’s sense of self when ariel literally sacrifices her voice” (1996, 237). disney makes this condition more sexist than in anderson; note ursula’s quips such as “it’s she who holds her tongue who gets a man.” leading a barrage of critics,9 roberta trites, in her 1991 article, concluded, “the movie depicts women as either self-effacing or evil, incapable of creating their own responsible power without either depending on men or stealing power from them. thus, disney’s interpretation of anderson’s story perpetuates sexist values by teaching those values to a new generation” (152). some critics found “team disney’s” next production, beauty and the beast (1991), to be “the same old story, a romance plot that robs female characters of self-determination and individuality,” to quote june cummins (1995, 22). others, myself included, found that the film really did break new ground in greatly submerging the fairy-tale-romance ending almost to an afterthought. additionally, the agency accorded to belle is ground-breaking: she “exercises more power on her own behalf than previous disney heroines” (henke, umble, and smith 1996, 238) and claims literally twice as much screen time as any other character in the film (thomas in henke, umble and smith 1996, 238). belle resists societal pressures by engaging in reading, dreaming beyond “provincial” norms, rejecting the town suitor, and even defying the beast himself. as henke, umble, and smith explain, “no victim, belle sets the terms for the bargains she makes. in this sense, she exercises more power on her own behalf than previous disney heroines. […] she preserves her own options […] [and] by freeing her father from the beast’s “princess fanatic” clapp-itnyre 12 prison, becoming a prisoner herself, and saving the beast from the wolves, [s] he holds their futures in her hands” (1996, 239). in stark contrast to those lightlyglossed-over relationships of the early princess films, “it offers to viewers a model for intimacy which presumes that both partners must seek wholeness of self before either can find wholeness in relationship,” according to susan z. swan (350), with belle choosing a man “who wants the same things [books and intellect], [thus] symbolically [… ] marrying an aspect of herself” (ross 2004, 63). i am pleased to say that my daughter annetta’s first princess favorites were, in fact, belle and pocahontas. acknowledging that there has been a large outcry especially from native americans and cultural critics against pocahontas (1995),10 from a strictly feminist perspective, i still do appreciate “team disney” portraying a minority heroine who shows even greater personal risk in “saving her man” than even ariel or belle and who, in other ways, goes against the grain. forget that we know from the historical record that pocahontas in fact married someone else and migrated to england, or that race relations could not be mitigated by simply one strong person. it is enough, i think, that the last image we see on the screen is of a courageous woman standing alone without a husband but with a mighty purpose to undertake. as henke, umble, and smith write, “our reading of pocahontas implies that she is clearly the most elaborate and complex character in this group of heroines. […] [she is] an adventurous female who […] chooses a destiny other than that of heterosexual romantic fulfillment” (1996, 240-1). “team disney”’s last “princess” movie, mulan (1998), is possibly their best. again i admit that cultural critics have much maligned the film in its huge deviations from traditional renderings of the mulan legend, using clichéd images of the east, and using “streetwise black lingo” through the character of eddy murphy’s mushu character (ma 2003, 151).11 nevertheless, there are important strides here in showing a strong, independent, brave woman whose story, for the most part, does not even rely on a romance plot but is one about martial bravery and quick-thinking as mulan concocts strategies for defeating the huns and rescuing the emperor. in the first instance, she cleverly aims her gun not at one soldier but at a snow-covered to create an avalanche that subdues the entire hun figure 3. annetta as pocahantas, age two, trick-or-treating on halloween. photograph by alisa clapp-itnyre. clapp-itnyre “princess fanatic” 13 army. she then creates a plan to save the emperor when the huns kidnap him and, knowing her resourcefulness by now, the men immediately follow her. many of the strides made in narrative strategy are backed by more politically acceptable physical images. belle and mulan, for instance, reveal fewer curves, and flaunt “untidy” hair which shows rebellion of society’s codes of neat femininity. in fact, mulan is androgynous for most of the movie. of course, the same could not be said for ariel and pocahontas. ariel is barely clothed with small shells to cover her breasts while pocahontas is leggy with hardly any waist, an off-the-shoulder look to show off her voluptuous breasts. dorozario refers to their athleticism, “enact[ing] a shift from the ‘princesses’ of ballet to the ‘heroes’ of sport” (2004, 47) and describes them as moving with “the grace of sportswomen. ariel performs underwater feats and rescues eric from drowning in a storm. […] pocahontas dives off waterfalls, sings a solo while shooting the rapids and duets while running cross-country” (46-7). however, as bean notes, they are “maledefined fantasies of female biological perfection. drawn according to the same impossible dimensions as the barbie doll — or any number of surgically altered hollywood actresses — disney’s heroines all feature tiny waists, large breasts, curvy hips, and sensuous hair” (2003, 55). queries jacquelyn kilpatrick, “would [pocahontas], like barbie, fall over if really given those dimensions?” the simple image of her body threatens to undermine any powerful feminist or ecological message she might promote, kilpatrick writing, “she does sing to john about living naturally in tune with the earth […] but does she have to do it in an off-theshoulder miniskirt?” (1995, 36-7) but the 1990s disney films would still probably have failed had they not been enhanced by incredibly promoted soundtracks. the little mermaid won an oscar for “under the sea”12 while celine dion and peabo bryson’s pop version of “tale as old as time” blared over all radio stations in 1991-2. the “princess” songs from these films now appear in various sing-along and princess collection cd’s, dispersing their ideologies to more and more generations of kids. i find “kiss the girl” masking some dangerous sentiments (“you know she wants it”) with our increased attention to date rape in recent decades. but many of the others, including ariel’s song, “part of your world,” belle’s song, pocahontas’ “just around the river bend,” and “mulan’s “reflection,” are all about a young woman’s sense of confinement under patriarchal laws; to quote ariel, “bright young women, sick of swimmin’, ready to stand.” most speak about defying society and choosing their own course of action, as belle sings: “i want adventure in the great, wide somewhere, i want it more than i can say … i want so much more than they’ve got planned.” “mulan’s “reflection,” though least known, probably best sums up this powerful trend in revealing women’s anger and rebellion in a patriarchal society: now i see, that if i were truly to be myself, i would break my family’s heart. … somehow i cannot hide, who i am, though i’ve tried. when will my reflection show who i am inside? “princess fanatic” clapp-itnyre 14 if there is a problem in these songs, it is the self-deprecating way that each woman begins her song, ariel asking “maybe there is something wrong with me,” for example. pocahontas, in “colors of the wind” is made to blindly state, “you think i’m an ignorant savage, and you’ve been so many place, i guess it must be so” while even mulan begins her reflection by admitting, “look at me, i will never pass for a perfect bride or a perfect daughter.” too, as i have just delineated, most of the songs’ feminist stances run counter to the ultimate romance plots; despite defying society’s marriage expectations, all women end up married or sought after by the end.13 i would argue that, taken independent of their opening recitatives and especially the ultimate outcomes in the films, though, these songs, sung on their own, are fairly liberating “hymns to her.” “look at this stuff, isn’t it neat?” 21st century manifestations of the disney princesses i end, then, with contemporary manifestations of the disney princesses. indeed, the re-releases and sequels of these now classic films keep their images alive on the screen for each new generation. the disney company tries to redeem the historical record by having pocahontas marry john rolfe in england in pocahontas ii: journey to a new world (1998); ariel, ironically, succumbs to overly-protective motherhood herself in little mermaid ii: return to the sea (2000) while we learn of her own mother’s tragic adventure in the little mermaid: ariel’s beginning (2008); and mulan and her romantic interest li shang, in un-asian fashion, try to prevent three arranged marriages in mulan ii (2004). in the midst of my revision of this article, disney unveiled their first princess movie in eighteen years, the princess and the frog (december 2009). clearly, disney was attempting to address earlier “sins:” tiana is the first african-american princess and her dream is to own her own restaurant, not find a “prince;” in fact, her rich, white friend, lotty, whose only aspiration is to find a prince becomes easy fodder in the “evil plot.” in the end, it is tiana who gets the prince, and her dream becomes his, so she achieves that twentieth-first-century, feminist goal of having a man and a successful career, too. but tiana’s desire to own her own restaurant is, in large part, an extension of her dead father’s dream, and much of the movie serves to point out her almost foolish one-tracked obsession with it, figure 4. annetta as mulan, age six, and cousin becca as ariel, age five. photograph by alisa clapp-itnyre. clapp-itnyre “princess fanatic” 15 to the exclusion of “finding love.” further, disney playfully inverts the princessand-the-frog motif so that both tiana and prince naveen spend most of their on-screen time as amphibians; this thus limits the amount of time disney can devote to exploring human gender roles. its release has not, ultimately, seemed to have made a huge impact. it made only $263 million worldwide at the box-office and $67 million on dvd sales (by comparison, the next big children’s film, toy story 3 [june 2010] grossed $984 million world-wide; the-numbers.com). though nominated for best animated feature film of 2010 at the academy awards, it lost to pixar’s up; ticket sales, too, confirmed popular preference for up (#4 in ticket sales for 2009) than princess and the frog (which was 38th). even disney seems to have pulled back in promoting the film: their official princess magazine highlighted tiana in their october 2009 magazine in anticipation of the film, but subsequent issues have simply shown her as part of the princess line-up at the back, with no feature stories. internet articles and blogs show viewers divided on disney’s achievement, commending tiana’s minority status while complaining that she follows the stereotype of a poor black in the segregated south, that she marries a “whiter” prince, and that the use of voodoo is overwhelming and frightening. maybe their next princess movie, tangled, set to be released in november 2010, with a feisty — albeit still blonde and sexy — rapunzel, will bring back a flamboyant 1990s heroine. it may be no surprise, then, that disney has continued to promote their other princesses. for our twenty-first century computer-savvy little girls, disney has its own princess website at http://disney.go.com/princess where “happily ever after happens every day.” ironically, much of the website is devoted to more consumerism: purchasing princess products and videos, viewing disney theme parks, etc. when girls are asked to participate, it is to paint, hear a story, decorate a room, or to help a princess dress. girls love this: the princesses call the girls their “friends,” play their favorite songs in the background, and “you get to pick out their clothes and they’re all so pretty,” my eight-year-old tells me. yet i respond that it is too bad she wasn’t asked to greet the guests, help rule the kingdom, or do other more meaningful work! as meghan sweeney recently pointed out, the covert messages are still conservative: princesses look coy, are overly appreciative and sweet, while the little girls’ own agency — simply dressing and decorating — is severely limited.14 book publishers are also eager to share the princess market. random house uses princesses in their step into reading series. redan publishing, using disney artwork by permission, publishes a disney princess magazine targeting girls 3-8 years old with crafts and stories. a plethora of golden and other such books repeat the film’s versions of these fairy tales. scholastic books publishes a line of books through their princess book club: the disney princess collection. these books are aesthetically weak, using disney princesses to tote pedantic stories about being brave, paying attention, taking turns, and telling the truth. what is potentially useful about the books is that they enlarge the meaning of “princess” beyond those who are royal or rich, and clearly define it as a character trait — something any brave or clever girl could emulate — by giving a problem and then asking, “what would a princess do?” the books further disavow the princesses’ “princess fanatic” clapp-itnyre 16 royal and/or romantic status by setting books before they have married their prince, or quickly dismissing their princely-husband. in the first instance, we often find cinderella back dealing with problems with her stepsisters and see mulan back as a man among the troops. in the second instance, princess snow white will leave her prince to visit the dwarves, and when her prince is off visiting another kingdom, princess cinderella cavorts around the castle with the mice, often dressed very much like the servant cinderella. in several pocahontas books, pocahontas actually plays with capt. radcliffe’s dog percy, reminding readers that the context is post-smith but not once mentioning him while pocahontas carries on her daily routine with fellow villagers. this is fascinating to me because it suggests that, despite the “hype” over the princess status — as romantic and royal — it is much more interesting to tell stories of their lives as single, poor women. it is not a bad reminder to make to girls. and girls everywhere need to be reminded of this to offset the bombardment of images on everything from cereal boxes to pajamas. combining the princesses erases any individuality among them: belle is simply not snow white if you have seen the movies. the most common combination of princesses is the caucasian cinderella, belle, and sleeping beauty, as we see on towels, clothes, and many other products. pocahontas, mulan, even tiana are still shown much less often, defeating the cultural strides the films had made. too, the princesses are now usually shown in very regal and sexual ways, again disappointing given the statements of the actual movies: the book-worm belle now has a cleavage, the modest aurora looks alluring, and jasmine often seems to be starting a striptease.15 all of these points are manifested visibly at walt disney world itself where my daughter (in 2008, age six) and her four-year-old cousin stood in half-hour lines to be photographed with the royal belle, aurora, and cinderella in the magic kingdom. mulan, on the other hand, was showcased only briefly, and without wait, at the china exhibit in epcot — as if she were an exotic cultural icon like the great wall. pocahontas is easy to miss in animal kingdom, appearing in her own small nature show completely dwarfed by the lion king show next door … and was never available to be photographed with little girls. both facts suggest pocahontas as an “animal-other”, housed far from humans, used only to teach ecology lessons.16 and what songs are ringing in little girls’ ears these days? when not singing along to soundtracks and sing-along cds — which encourage rote memory of potentially problematic lyrics just discussed — little girls may be singing adulterated versions of classic and folk songs; my daughter owns a princess fairy tale song book in which irving berlin’s classic “in my easter bonnet” is now perverted to “smile and show your dimples”! when disney tries to be original, with their much heralded 2004 release of a newly written song, the “princess anthem,” ‘if you can dream,’ on walt disney record’s the ultimate song collection, performed by many of the original soloists of princess films (judy kuhn, jodi benson, paige o’hara, and lea salonga, etc.), a ridiculous hodgepodge of clichés from all the princess songs are put together into unrealistic, romantic sentiments: clapp-itnyre “princess fanatic” 17 there is a world where hope and dreams can last for all time a wondrous place to go you’ll know it when your heart finds … hearing our song as old as rhyme, hold my hand, we’re gonna’ fly what a magic ride, and just a kiss away … [refrain] if you can dream, the wish we’re making on a star is coming true the colors of the wind will lead my heart right back to you ‘cause if you can dream, reflections in a diamond sky come shinin’ on through romance will always be so new and love will save the day. i am especially disturbed to see the “colors of the wind” phrase torn from its environmental theme and appropriated into the romantic message. if this is as good as disney can now do, i am turning off my cd player. conclusion and so we come to some conclusions as i ponder the eminent fate of my eightyear-old daughter, now in her sixth year of “princess fan-dom.” bendix reminds us that “how children ultimately process their encounters with [disney] […] remains a largely unexplored domain. […] it remains to be hoped that children around the world will be resilient enough to challenge the commodified fantasies that are coming their way” (1993, 290). hastings warns that “such moral simplification [of good/bad people; of all desires fulfilled] increases the likelihood that these children will become adults who find the causes of their own unhappiness in personalized, ‘evil’ antagonists — a sure formula for continued conflict” (1993, 90). yet o’brien points out that children usually use the characters, not the plots, in their play so rebellious girls from the 1990s films still offer positive role models (1996, 178). in 2004, alexander m. bruce conducted a study of secondand thirdgraders about the disney princesses, concluding that “the girls did tend toward one general reaction: they want the life of the princess — just not necessarily the prince himself” (2005-2006, 7).17 though reassured that girls may be shaking off some of disney’s romantic notions and are becoming more independent (paralleled, in fact, by the phenomenon found in scholastic’s book-series where the men actually disappear), i note the troubling extension of this: that to be a princess yet means “to have all the beautiful possessions they could hope for” with great significance placed on physical beauty (bruce 2005-2006, 15). in my limited experience, i do find that annetta has always been more fascinated by the characters themselves, not the storylines or romantic endings. she and her friends love waltzing into a room in full princess regalia or stealing around the backyard as pocahontas and friends, creating their own stories. we talk about the physical beauty, tiny waists, jewelry, and moments of complete acquiescence not being necessary or even appropriate to being a “princess.” indeed, mia adessa towbin and others suggest using the films as a “springboard for family discussion. if parents watch the movies with their children and ask questions before, during, “princess fanatic” clapp-itnyre 18 and after, parents can begin to increase their children’s media literacy” of how to read films (2003, 40). i cannot ignore the look of rapture whenever my daughter dons her sleeping beauty dress or meets ariel at walt disney world. so i am going to continue to let annetta enjoy her princess dolls and dresses, but i am also going to be a continual presence in the reading, listening, and viewing of anything “princess.” to enjoy, with an analytical eye; to share, while developing a critical world view: these can be the feminist attitudes i can pass on to my exuberant “princess fanatic.” acknowledgements i would like to thank my sister, amy clapp, and friends kristen brunton and beverly pegg for reading and discussing portions of this paper, and for allowing me to showcase their daughters in the imbedded images: rebecca salmonson, madelyn brunton, and andrea and natalie pegg, respectively. i would also like to thank dr. elizabeth tucker, editor of children’s folklore review, for an incredibly enjoyable experience publishing this paper. finally, i thank my daughter, annetta itnyre, and husband, ron itnyre, who have been with me every step of the way with this project! notes 1. this study originated as a conference paper given at the annual children’s literature association conference, manhattan beach, california, 10 june 2006. 2. i am using internet articles and ebscohost database news-articles: vicki arkoff, “how disney princess works,” howstuffworks. 2006-9. howstuffworks, inc. may 31, 2009. <entertainment.howstuffworks.com>; rosie millard, “in five years, disney princess has bloomed into a hugely successful multinational brand,” in new statesman (january 9, 2006); “disney princess proves she’s still the fairest of the land,” “business wire” (new york, june 21, 2005); and susan wloszczyna, “disney princesses wear merchandising crown,” in usa today (sept. 17, 2003). see also lee artz, “the righteousness of self-centered royals: the world according to disney animation.” critical arts: a journal of south-north cultural and media studies. 18. 1 (2004): 116-46. 3. frances clarke sayers accused disney of “sweeten[ing] a folk tale … [which] destroys the proportion and purpose of the story, the conflict and its resolution” (118). jill may has regretted that “one of disney’s greatest achievements in the realm of film was to replace the reader’s desire to pursue a book’s theme through the viewing pleasure of light-hearted american entertainment” (464). 4. their sweetness is amplified by consistently including older women — not their mothers — who are the antagonists of the films, from snow white’s evil stepmother, to lady trumain, to millicifent, those “femme fatales” ably discussed in henke, umble, and smith; bell; and dorozario. the princess’s “weaknesses are contrasted with the awesome and awful power of the evil women with whom they struggle” (hemke, umble, and smith 234). clapp-itnyre “princess fanatic” 19 5. see both of their articles for close analyses of what disney changed from the original grimm version. 6. naomi wood suggests the voyeurism of cinderella, as when the duke looks at her through his monocle which “serves to focus on and frame cinderella, particularly her legs and feet, and places us as the audience in the same appreciative position” (32). 7. with cinderella, walt disney used every star and advertising gimmick to sell the movie through its songs, with well-known singers such as dinah shore and bing crosby signed on to sing promotional versions of “bibbidi-bobidi-boo” on radio and recordings (o’brien 166). 8. noting the lack of fathers in these earlier films now often corrected in this new films, dorozario writes that “team disney’s re-affirmation of a closer bond suggests the company’s own paternal attachment to the more challenging daughters of the late twentieth-century and early twenty-first, to whom walt disney himself is little more than a black and white photograph of a rather oldfashioned looking man” (36). 9. see bendix; hastings; o’brien; henke, umble, and smith; finkelstein in ayres; and ross. 10. see edgerton; kilpatrick; kiyomi; and perekh. 11. it is regrettable that team disney felt so unsure of their story that they had to add the sassy dragon voiced by eddy murphy whose jokes are not only culturally inappropriate but bordering on the disrespectful at times. too, its ending, mulan returning to her home with a suitor soon following, is a bit disappointing. 12. lyricist howard ashman, co-author of the little shop of horrors, and composer alan menken came together to write the songs for the little mermaid; eisner credits ashman as being “the most important creative decision we made on” the film (qtd. in dorozario 48). 13. it is significant that ashman and menken wrote the songs to the little mermaid before the animation was started (sells 183), because there is a sharp disconnect between the liberating lyrics here and the ultimate conclusion of her tale: as ross puts it, “yes, she gets her legs, she makes her stand, she marches — but only down the aisle, to marry some guy named eric” (60). 14. meghan sweeney, “we have an opening for a princess: disney princess culture on the web,” 37th annual international conference of the children’s literature association, eastern michigan university, 11june 2010. 15. see bean for a discussion about the erotic portrayal of these princesses in the films and elsewhere. 16. kenneth b. kidd problematizes the animal kingdom in other ways in “disney of orlando’s animal kingdom.” 17. bruce and his students asked useful, probing questions of their elementary students, such as “do you think cinderella was right to act as she did?” and “how do belle (beauty and the beast) and mulan differ from aurora (sleeping beauty) and snow white?” see alexander m. bruce, “princesses without a prince: a consideration of girls’ reactions to disney’s ‘princess” movies” in children’s folklore review, 28 (2005-6): 7-21. “princess fanatic” clapp-itnyre 20 works cited arkoff, vicki. 2009. how disney princess works. howstuffworks. 2006-9. howstuffworks, inc. may 31. entertainment.howstuffworks.com (accessed may 31, 2009). artz, lee. 2004. the righteousness of self-centered royals: the world according to disney animation. critical arts: a journal of south-north cultural and media studies 18(1): 116-46. ayres, brenda, ed. 2003. the emperor’s old groove: decolonizing disney’s magic kingdom. new york: peter lang. bean, kellie. 2003. stripping beauty: disney’s ‘feminist’ seduction. in the emperor’s old groove: decolonizing disney’s magic kingdom, ed. brenda ayres, 53-64. new york: peter lang. bell, elizabeth. 1995. constructing the pentimentos of women’s animated bodies. in from mouse to mermaid: the politics of film, gender, and culture, ed. elizabeth bell, lynda haas, and laura sells, 107-124. bloomington: indiana university press. bell, elizabeth, lynda haas, and laura sells, eds. 1995. from mouse to mermaid: the politics of film, gender, and culture. bloomington: indiana university press. bendix, regina. 1993. seashell bra and happy end: disney’s transformation of the little mermaid. fabula. 34(3-4): 280-90. bruce, alexander m. 2005-2006. princesses without a prince: a consideration of girls’ reactions to disney’s ‘princess’ movies. children’s folklore review 28: 7-21. budd, mike and max h. kirsch, eds. 2005. rethinking disney: private control, public dimensions. middleton, ct.: wesleyan university press. cummins, june. 1995. romancing the plot: the real beast of disney’s beauty and the beast. children’s literature association quarterly 20(1): 22-28. disney princess proves she’s still the fairest of the land. 2005. business wire. 21 june. lexis-nexis academic. dorozario, rebecca anne c. 2004. the princess and the magic kingdom: beyond nostalgia, the function of the disney princess.women’s studies in communication. 27(1): 34-59. downey, sharon d. 1996. feminine empowerment in disney’s beauty and the beast. women’s studies in communication 19(2): 185-211. edgerton, gary and kathy merlock jackson. 1996. redesigning pocahontas: disney, the ‘white man’s indian,’ and the marketing of dreams. journal of popular film and television 24(2): 90-98. finkelstein, richard. 2003. disney’s tempest: colonizing desire in the little mermaid. in the emperor’s old groove: decolonizing disney’s magic kingdom, ed. brenda ayres, 131-48. new york: peter lang. hastings, a. waller. 1993. moral simplification in disney’s the little mermaid. the lion and the unicorn 17: 83-92. clapp-itnyre “princess fanatic” 21 henke, jill birnie, diane zimmerman umble, and nancy j. smith. 1996. construction of the female self: feminist readings of the disney heroine. women’s studies in communication. 19(2): 229-49. hoerrner, keisha l. 1996. gender roles in disney films: analyzing behaviors from snow white to simba. women’s studies in communication 19(2): 213-228. inge, m. thomas. 2004. walt disney’s snow white: art, adaptation, and ideology. journal of popular film and television 32(3): 132-44. jeffords, susan. 1995. the curse of masculinity: disney’s beauty and the beast. in from mouse to mermaid: the politics of film, gender, and culture, ed. elizabeth bell, lynda haas, and laura sells, 161-74. bloomington: indiana university press. kidd, kenneth b. 2004. disney of orlando’s animal kingdom. in wild things: children’s culture and ecocriticism, ed. sidney i. dobrin and kenneth b. kidd, 267-88. detroit: wayne state university press. kilpatrick, jacquelyn. 1995. disney’s “politically correct” pocahontas: race in contemporary american cinema: part 5. cineaste: america’s leading magazine on the art and politics of the cinema. 21(4): 36-37. kiyomi, kutsuzawa. 2004. disney’s pocahontas: reproduction of gender, orientalism, and the strategic construction of racial harmony in the disney empire. atlantis: a women’s studies journal 29(1): 43-53. ma, sheng-mei. 2003. mulan disney, it’s like, re-orients: consuming china and animating teen dreams. in the emperor’s old groove: decolonizing disney’s magic kingdom, ed. brenda ayres, 149-66. new york: peter lang. may, jill p. 1981. walt disney’s interpretation of children’s literature. language arts 58 (4): 463-72. millard, rosie. 2006. in five years, disney princess has bloomed into a hugely successful multinational brand. new statesman. 9 january. lexis-nexis academic. o’brien, pamela colby. 1996. the happiest films on earth: a textual and contextual analysis of walt disney’s cinderella and the little mermaid. women’s studies in communication 19(2): 155-83. perekh, pushpa naida. 2003. pocahontas: the disney imaginary. in the emperor’s old groove: decolonizing disney’s magic kingdom, ed. brenda ayres, 16778. new york: peter lang. rollins, lucy. 1987. fear of faerie: disney and the elitist critics.” children’s literature association quarterly. 12: 90-3. ross, deborah. 2004. escape from wonderland: disney and the female imagination. marvels and tales: journal of fairy-tale studies 18(1) : 53-66. sayers, frances clarke. 1973. walt disney accused. 1965. in children and literature: views and reviews, ed. virginia haviland, 116-25. glenview, il: scott, foresman. sells, laura. 1995. where do the mermaids stand? voice and body in the little mermaid. in from mouse to mermaid: the politics of film, gender, and culture, ed. elizabeth bell, lynda haas, and laura sells, 175-92. bloomington: indiana university press. “princess fanatic” clapp-itnyre shortsleeve, kevin. 2004. the wonderful world of the depression: disney, despotism, and the 1930s. or, why disney scares us. the lion and the unicorn. 28(1): 1-30. simonelli, marie. 1999. a facelift for timeworn tales: walt disney’s vision in snow white and cinderella. creative screenwriting 6(3): 63-69. stone, kay. 1975. things walt disney never told us. journal of american folklore 88 ( ): 42-50. swan, susan z. 1999. gothic drama in disney’s beauty and the beast: subverting traditional romance by transcending the animal-human paradox. critical studies in mass communications. 16: 350-69. sweeney, meghan. 2010. we have an opening for a princess: disney princess culture on the web. 37th annual international conference of the children’s literature association. eastern michigan university. 11 june. towbin, mia adessa, shelley a. haddock, toni schindler zimmerman, lori k. lund, and litsa renee tanner. 2003. images of gender, race, age, and sexual orientation in disney feature-length animated films. journal of feminist family therapy. 15(4): 19-44. trites, roberta. 1991. disney’s sub/version of anderson’s the little mermaid. the journal of popular film and television 18(4): 145-52. wloszczyna, susan. 2003. disney princesses wear merchandising crown. usa today. 17 september.ebsco-host. wood, naomi. 1996. domesticating dreams in walt disney’s cinderella. the lion and the unicorn 20: 25-49. zipes, jack. 1995. breaking the disney spell. in from mouse to mermaid: the politics of film, gender, and culture, ed. elizabeth bell, lynda haas, and laura sells, 21-42. bloomington: indiana university press. 23 “i saw mrs. saray, sitting on a bombalerry”: ralph ellison collects children’s folklore robert baron along harlem streets, in housing projects and on playgrounds, ralph ellison employed his formidable gifts for observing and rendering speech play as a collector of children’s folklore. his collecting for the federal writer’s project (fwp) in 1939 represented one dimension of a life long engagement with african american folklore. it extended from traditions acquired in his youth in oklahoma city through works of fiction employing multiple folkloric genres and essays discussing the centrality of folklore for the african american experience and its indispensable role for cultural resilience. collecting at a time of heavy african american migration from the south, ellison researched folklore that embodied both a southern heritage of largely rural character and traditions adapted to a new urban environment. as a new yorker who moved permanently to harlem in 1938, ellison experienced first hand the struggles of recent arrivals adjusting to a vastly different social and cultural situation. remarking on these challenges in “harlem is nowhere”, written in 1948, he wrote of how “american negroes are caught in a vast process of change that has swept them from slavery to the condition of industrial man in a space of time so telescoped … that it is literally possible to step from feudalism into the vortex of industrialism simply by moving across the mason-dixon line”. in harlem, the “folk personality” was “caught in a process of chaotic change” (321, 325). writing on “harlem’s america” in the new leader eighteen years later, ellison saw continuity as well as change in harlem’s folklore, where “you see the transformation of the southern idiom into a northern idiom,” in “a place where our folklore is preserved, and transformed” and “the body of negro myth and legend thrives” (1966, 28). the modern and the traditional were also at play in ellison’s own fiction. he was one of the great modernist writers of twentieth century literature and, without contradiction, infused folklore throughout his work. influenced by existentialism and writing surrealistically, counting eliot, dostoyevsky, faulkner, and malraux among his literary “ancestors,” (1995f, 185) ellison all the while incorporated folklore in his work at least as much as any of his peers. writing in 1958, he stated that “i use folklore in my work not because i am a negro, but because writers like eliot and joyce made me conscious of the literary value of my folk inheritance,” and he found early in his career that the “negro american folk tradition became precious as a result of an act of literary discovery” (1995d, 111, 112). a few years after seeing that “in both the waste land and ulysses ancient myth and ritual were used to give form and significance to the material” ellison came to “realize that the myths and rituals which we find functioning in our everyday lives could be used in the same way” (1995g, 216). the “grist for my fictional mill” included “details of old photographs and rhymes and riddles and children’s games, church services and college ceremonies, practical jokes and political activities observed during my prewar days in harlem” (1994, xxvii). “i saw mrs. saray, sitting on a bombalerry” baron 24 for ellison and other major midand latetwentieth century writers, field research for the fwp provided indispensable source material, which was utilized along with experiences remembered from their working class youths in subsequent literary works. in the cultural front, michael denning notes that “the writings of the plebeian writers who worked on the projects – algren, ellison, himes, tomasi, sincliar, conroy — embodied a dialectic between fictional invention, autobiographical reflection, and urban fieldwork” (1996, 228). the fwp represented for ellison and many other writers their first employment as cultural workers. through the wpa arts projects, the numbers of people employed as artists increased vastly, and many of them, like ellison, saw that it was possible to make a living through their creative work. in new deal modernism, michael szalay contends that the wpa arts projects “led to new ways of conceiving literary labor”, creating a “newly professionalized industry of salaried writers (2000, 5), acting as, according to denning, “a way-station for the young plebeian artists and intellectuals of ethnic working-class backgrounds who would go on to careers in the federal bureaucracies, the culture industries, and the universities” (48). making a living for the first time through his cultural work for the fwp, ellison collected personal narratives from compelling harlem characters (published many years later in ann banks’s 1980 anthology, first person america), carried out extensive research about local african american history for a planned publication, “the negro in new york,” (which was never published) and took to the streets to collect children’s folklore in situ. rhymes, games and other forms of children’s folklore were collected as a major focus of the fwp in new york city. in new york city, ellison was among a group of fwp workers supervised by folklorist herbert halpert, who instructed them to “look for children’s rhymes, making specific note of the nationality of the reciter, the place of collection, and any comments made by the children. since the workers were untrained, a questionnaire for each collector’s guidance was prepared” (1946, 5). in all, about 1000 items of children’s folklore were collected, and ellison contributed approximately 100 different items. he observed children at play and noted contexts while recording texts, conducted interviews with adults as well as children, probed their memory culture, and even contributed folklore remembered from his own childhood. consisting mainly of folk rhymes, the children’s folklore collected by ellison included texts retained from southern tradition as well as others transformed and localized to new york city. while many were maintained largely or entirely within african american tradition, with some exhibiting african derivations, others were part of repertoires shared by new yorkers of diverse ethnic backgrounds. in his master’s thesis, “folk rhymes of new york city children”, which included rhymes collected by ellison, halpert singled out african american and puerto rican children as each having “unique” rhymes, while noting that they also perform variants of nearly all the rhymes he collected elsewhere in new york city. however, halpert found that rhymes introduced to harlem by migrants from the south are not disseminated elsewhere in new york city (1946,15). he suggested that a “large part of the stock of rhymes and games … held in common by white baron “i saw mrs. saray, sitting on a bombalerry” 25 and negro children dates from before world war i,” when the “color barrier” was not as strong, and the african american population was smaller (16). whatever their cultural source, the rhymes collected by ellison were distinguished by their innovative and improvisatory qualities, features often noted by him and consonant with the high value placed upon innovation within tradition in african american folk culture. according to halpert’s proposal for a book based upon the entire new york city fwp children’s folklore collection, children’s rhymes and games, more old english rhymes make their appearance” in african american children’s folklore “than in any other group, but there are, on the other hand, considerably more innovation and invention.” they were also distinguished by “a greater variety of subject matter and rhythmic pattern” than the rhymes of other groups in the fwp new york city collection (n.d., n. pag.).1 the ellison children’s folklore collection is housed in the manuscript division of the library of congress. while some of the folk rhymes he collected have been previously published, they lack the information about ellison’s collecting process and the tradition bearers that appear in the collection housed in the library of congress and which i am including in this article.2 in the collection at the library of congress, we see the collector at work as he observed, interviewed and recorded texts of children’s traditions. at times, ellison recorded variants and versions of the same folklore item. he had a keen eye for observing creativity in process through improvisation, and delight in word play suffuses the collection. ellison recognized the musicality of the rhymes, noting “polyphony” on one occasion, and referring to performance as “chanting,” implying that they could be viewed as being somewhere between speech and song. the rhymes contained influences from popular culture, specific local references, topical references, and content reflecting harsh urban realities like problems in paying rent and gun violence. much of ellison’s field research occurred near his home at 25 hamilton terrace. one report, dated october 13, 1939, described field research on “the streets and playground located in the area extending from 125th st to 145th st and between st. nicholas and lenox avenues.” this report contained the most complete accounts of ellison’s field research on children’s play, offering multi-layered descriptions of the collecting situation. he presented multiple dimensions of text, context and performance rarely before provided in collections of children’s folklore. one group of children demonstrated improvisation and individual creativity as they performed a taunt, followed by improvised lines to what ellison called a “jingle,” and a riddle. he describes their performance of folklore as an emergent process, rather than as repetition of a fixed text. we see what hymes has called a “breakthrough into performance” as interviewees move from reporting folklore to spontaneous performance (1981, 79-86): buster brown when you see a guy got on brown pants you say: buster brown went down town with his britches hanging down.” “i saw mrs. saray, sitting on a bombalerry” baron 26 when the above was given other members of the group chimed in with the following. while most of the jingles appear to have a set formula, there were many attempts at improvisation. each voice followed the other in rapid succession, giving an antiphonal effect as varied as the colors named. “yellow, yellow kiss a fellow.” “blue, blue i love you” “black, black sit on a tack” “green, green eat ice cream stick your nose in kerosene” “white, white, you can fight” hey mister, if you shut up in an iron house without any windows and you didn’t have nothing but a baseball bat? in an iron house? yeah, yeah that’s right. come on sister, what’ll you do? well, i guess i don’t know. gee, don’t you know how to play baseball? anybody who can play baseball knows how to get outa there. well how would i get out? three strikes and you out, mister … you see what he means, three strikes an you out!3 thickly describing these performances, ellison anticipated the approach to folklore as emergent performance and situated small group interaction developed in folklore studies three decades later.4 one actually sees folklore as it is created, as “living lore,” the term of fwp national folklore editor benjamin a. botkin, who stressed that folklore is “living speech … responsive to the mood of the moment,” which, rather than disappearing, was still being created, in urban as well as rural areas (1958, 190). as hirsch indicates, botkin’s manual for folklore studies instructed collectors to “submit complete field notes from every interview together with a personal history of the informant” (1988, 58). while ellison regrettably submitted minimal personal information about almost everyone he interviewed, his field notes, at their best, provide highly textured accounts of the collecting baron “i saw mrs. saray, sitting on a bombalerry” 27 of folklore in, and as, performance. in his later fiction writings, he would vividly render the performative and improvisatory qualities of speech in general, and oral folklore in particular. these writings embody a “collaboration … between oral and literary techniques and traditions; between performance and composition” which john f. callahan sees in “frequencies of eloquence: the performance and composition of invisible man” as intrinsic to invisible man (1994, 89). while ellison scholars have long emphasized the influence of improvisation in jazz upon his fiction, his folklore collecting for the fwp demonstrates an emphasis upon improvisation, emergence and performance in folklore which reemerges in subsequent literary works. ellison’s field research involved close observation of children at play as well as interviews with both adults and children to elicit traditions both in active tradition and memory culture. he drew reports and performances of folklore from tradition bearers young and old who recalled folklore from a younger age. his october 13, 1939 report included a series of descriptions of traditions both reconstructed from memory and actively practiced, with some traditions presented in the sequence in which they were performed: helen simons, of 201 w. 139th street, gave the worker the following chants. helen is now eight years old and had some difficulty in remembering some of the chants since “only the little kids play them.” the following verse was sung to the tradition melody of “pop-goes the weasel!” and as far as helen knew is not used in any of the games the children in the neighborhood play. i went up to mary’s house mary had the measles. this is the way the measles go, pop! went the measles. the following rhyme was chanted very fast and like the above was not used in a game: once upon a time, goose drink wine. monkey chewed tobacco on a street car line. street car broke, monkey choke and they all went to heaven on a streamlined boat.5 “when we play ‘blue bird’ in my window we all stand in a circle and one girl skips around behind us and we all sing: blue bird, blue bird in my window … “i saw mrs. saray, sitting on a bombalerry” baron 28 and when she gets to the one she wants to be next she taps him on the shoulder and sings: oh, johnny i’m sorry. or whatever the kid’s name is. then the one what got tapped skips around and you go like that.” london bridges all broke down (sung, to the tradition melody) london bridge is all broke down all broke down, all broke down. london bridge is all broke, my fair lady. london bridge is half built up, half built up, half built up, london bridge is half built up, my fair lady. london bridge is all built up, all built up, all built up. london bridge is all built up, my fair lady. mrs. julia fisher of 2816 eighth avenue sung the following words to a slightly varied melody of “little sallie walker.” mrs. fisher learned this version as a child in key west, florida: little sallie water little sallie water sitting in a saucer, crying and weeping for a young man oh, rise, sallie, rise, wipe your weeping eyes, and turn yourself to the water front and tell them who you love the best.6 versions and variants of “little sally walker” and “little sallie water” have been collected widely in the united states, including two versions collected by zora neale hurston in florida and included in her writings on folklore for the fwp, go gator and muddy the water (1999, 100, 101-102). another “little sallie water” was collected by ellison at the utopia children’s house. he described it as a “singing game” in which “the child chosen as ‘sallie water’ stands in the middle of circle as the others sing the song. she goes through the directions of the verse pantomime.” baron “i saw mrs. saray, sitting on a bombalerry” 29 little sallie water sitting in the saucer rise, sallie rise, wipe your winking eyes turn to the east, my darling, turn to the west, my darling, turn to the very one that you love the best put your hands on your hips, and let your backbone shake my darling shake it to the east, my darling shake it to the west, my darling shake it to the very one that you love the best. a group of young girls demonstrated singing games substantially maintained from southern folklore, embodying the creolization of traditions. one game included a refrain, “sail away, sail away, sail away,” well known in anglo-american folk song. a tap dance, perhaps a new element, was introduced in another game. had moving images and/or sound recordings also been used, african cultural sources for these games might be adduced, since, as bess lomax hawes has noted in notes to the film “pizza pizza daddy-o,” african american singing games “stylistically, especially in terms of musical and kinesic elements … seem equally clearly african, or at least afro-american as british and anglo-american in derivation” (qtd. in sanches and kirshenblatt-gimblett 1976, 69). at times, such as in the following accounts of “buckeye the rabbit,” “lady in the river and “i had a little dog his name was buster,” ellison demonstrates how the singing games of african american girls involve a tight interrelationship between song and movement, which kyra d. gaunt, in the games black girls play, sees as “embodied musical practices” (2006, 2) incorporating “intrinsic” relationships between movement and music (7). “buckeye the rabbit,” in another variant, appears in invisible man as the narrator experiences electroshock treatment after the factory accident. asked “who is buckeye the rabbit?” the narrator responds in a manner both “giddy” (1972 [1952],183) and grounding, a moment which, keith edward byerman notes in fingering the jagged grain: tradition and form in recent black fiction, brings out “cultural history” which “prevents his total loss of identity” (1985, 27). the narrator in invisible man remembers that “i was buckeye the rabbit … or had been, when as children we danced and sang barefoot in the dusty streets” (1972 [1952], 184). in harlem, ellison had observed children dancing as they sang in this children’s singing game played in both the north and the south: buckeye the rabbit i’m riding through kentucky i’m riding through the sea, and all i catch behind me is a buckle on my knee buckeye the rabbit, “i saw mrs. saray, sitting on a bombalerry” baron 30 shake it shake it with a buckle on my knee, i swing to the bottom i swing to the sea and all i catch behind me is a buckle on my knee so buckeye the rabbit shake it shake it so buckeye the rabbit shake it shake it with a buckle on my knee. the worker observed this game played by a group of five girls, four of whom joined hands and formed a circle around the fifth. all five took part in singing the above verses up to the line “buckeye the rabbit” upon which the girl in the center began dancing steps from a tap dance routine. one girl, mary suarez of 259 w. 139th st., sung the following words as she continued to dance after the others had finished one of the songs. “you jump to the front and you jump to the back and you do the snake-hips 1,2,3 a riding to the sea.” the others joined in: “so buckeye the rabbit, shake it shake it etc. upon finishing this, girls took her place in the circle and one of the others took her place, whereupon the same routine began again. the game is flexible and allows for the use of varied dance steps. the worker was informed that this game was learned from other children, while one girl, catherine mason, said she learned it in richmond va. lady in the river (a game song) there’s a lady in the river sail away, sail away, sail away there’s a lady in the river sail away, looking for her lover sail away, sail away, sail away. baron “i saw mrs. saray, sitting on a bombalerry” 31 then she found her lover sail away, sail away, sail away then she found her lover sail away, sail away, sail away. this game was not played for me but the lyrics were sung. helen and fredric lewis vividly described and demonstrated another singing game. ellison noted that it was “spoken rhythmically”: “‘i had a little dog his name was buster’ is a game that had a rhyme to it. you pick some body to get in the circle and when we sing they shake their duster.” helen placed her hands upon her hips and sang, while fred stamped his foot and clapped his hands: i had a little dog, his name was buster. i sent him to the store to shake his duster oh, come on, buster shake your duster.7 when she came to the end of the verse she shook herself and flipped the tail of her dress. helen lewis offered what she claimed was an original, collectively created “taunt”. it expresses the competitiveness and fierce identification that many new york city residents have felt for their own block. in city play, dargan and zeitlin note that streets, like public schools, buildings and playgrounds, are often identified by number in new york city, but can be the subjects of great pride. they describe play about such numbered places, and indicate that while “identified by number seemingly anonymous places in a crowded city are rendered meaningful through play” (1990, 10). this “taunt” contains, like older rhymes of southern provenance collected by ellison, the formulaic refrain, “buckeye the rabbit,” along with newer content. “when the 134th street girls get together we all say this rhyme, we made it up ourselves.” take off your shoes and stockings, and let your feet go bare. for we are the girls from one hundred-thirty-four so don’t you dare come near. so, buckeye, the rabbit, shake, shake buckeye the rabbit shake, shake so don’t you dare come near. “i saw mrs. saray, sitting on a bombalerry” baron 32 ellison documented several folk rhymes on october 13th used for quick repartee between friends or acquaintances. this speech play seems as if it might be primarily used by older children and adults: “you know this one, mister? see you meet a guy you know and he’s doing something good and you say “gee, that’s fine!” and the other guy says, “wine!!” and you say, `sho nough, that’s fine as wine, as a georgia pine two old grandmothers drinking wine.” “here’s another one. you ask me ‘gimme a nickle’” “gimme a nickle.” “go down town and tickle.” “you want a dollar? go on, say ‘yes’” “yes” “go up on the roof and holler!” ellison recorded a number of ball bouncing rhymes found, with variations, in other new york city neighborhoods and ethnic groups. ball bouncing involves hitting a rubber ball or tennis ball with the open palm, with the bouncing in time to the rhyme (halpert 1946, 41). ellison asked the children performing the rhymes about acquisition and observed that the traditions were learned from other children rather than adults – a characteristic of children’s folklore that folklorists have noted wherever it is collected: the following are rhymes chanted by little girls while bouncing their balls and were collected at the corner of 141st street and hamilton terrace, manhattan. none of the children questioned were able to tell where they learned the rhymes. in each instance they replied that they had been taught by “another girl”, or “another kid.” sometimes the writer was told that certain rhymes were the original creations of the child involved, but in no case was i able to obtain a rhyme which had been taught a child by his parents. one two three a nation one, two, three a nation, i received my confirmation in the church of the annunciation one, two, three a nation.8 one, two, three a nation doctor, doctor here’s a patient waiting for an operation, one, two, three a nation.9 baron “i saw mrs. saray, sitting on a bombalerry” 33 one two three o’lerry one, two, three, o’lerry, i saw mrs. saray sitting on a bombalerry just like a chocolate ferry.10 i had a little monkey i had a little monkey, i sent him to the country to buy a loaf of bread. along came a choo choo and knocked my monkey coo coo and now my monkey’s dead with a bullet in his head charlie chaplin charlie chaplin went to france to teach the ladies how to dance this is what he taught them: “heel and toe, clap your hands and over you go.”11 a marginal note by ellison alongside “charlie chaplin” indicates a “contemporary reference.” he collected other rhymes featuring such figures from radio, film and comic strips as charlie mccarthy, the lone ranger, rin tin tin and buster brown. remarking on the use of characters from popular culture, halpert said that “girls blithely incorporate their heroes and heroines from these media (a startling number) into the world of play” (1946, 48). like “charlie chaplin,” another rhyme which appears in ellison’s october 13th report, “gypsy, gypsy lived in a tent” was used as both a jump rope rhyme and counting out rhyme. gipsy gipsy gipsy, gipsy lived in a tent, she couldn’t afford to pay her rent. she borrowed one she borrowed two, she passed it over to y-o-u12 the october 13, 1939 report was unique in its substantial number of detailed accounts of folklore in performance. on other occasions, ellison relied entirely upon interviews, apparently recognizing that it would have been preferable to observe spontaneous performance. a report dated december 15, 1939 noted that because of the “weather and the seasonal character of the games i was unable to see, and hear, these games in the actual play situation.” he reported that these rhymes “were received near the corners of 134th and 135th streets and lenox avenue, around public school 89” and “in all instances the informants were born “i saw mrs. saray, sitting on a bombalerry” baron 34 in new york city, though several said that their parents came from the south.” p.s. 89 itself was the subject of two rhymes. in his book proposal for children’s rhymes and games, halpert indicated that there were few rhymes in the entire new york city fwp collection which referred to schools, with the exception of derogatory ones (like the ones reported by ellison). in this collecting situation, ellison noted the effect of his presence upon the performance: most of the rhymes in this group were collected in the vicinity of public school #89 and in every instance the informant was a boy. the followingrhyme reveals one boy’s attitude toward p.s. #89; the first version before he knew the words were to be taken down, and the second, more respectable version, when he saw the pencil put to paper. remember the eight remember the nine remember that ‘city dump’ 89 remember the eight remember the nine remember that ‘white house’ 89 ellison’s remarks about his impact as a collector upon the content of these rhymes reflects his awareness of the dynamics of subject/object relationships in fieldwork situations. he became at once both the subject and object of his own research when he acted as his own informant. interspersed among the texts collected in harlem are several items of children’s folklore remembered from his oklahoma childhood. ellison, after all, was part of the great migration of african-americans to northern cities, and he retained his own memory culture of southern tradition even while moving in literary circles and beginning his writing career in new york city. ellison remembered a “choosing rhyme” from 1925. other versions of this widespread counting out rhyme have been reported from canada, england, scotland and the united states:13 my mother and your mother were hanging out clothes my mother hit your mother right in the nose o-u-t spells out! a “taunt” was remembered from 1920, when he was about six years old: patty on the brooms tick patty on the sea baron “i saw mrs. saray, sitting on a bombalerry” 35 patty tore his britches and layed it on me another taunt, from 1922, was “used to taunt white children as well as for the choosing of sides”: enny meany minny moe catch a white peck by the toe if he bites you let him go enny meany minny moe! both ellison’s texts and children’s folklore collected from non-african americans in new york city for the fwp include a number of taunts referring to other ethnic groups. coming across the taunts in these collections came as no surprise to me, having grown up in the bronx in the 1950s and 1960s and remembering folklore performed by members of various white ethnic groups referring disparagingly to other groups, most viciously about african americans. taunts, whether with ethnic reference or not, are a widespread genre of children’s folklore. halpert indicates that “the pattern of insulting another group” has long been practiced in the united states, although sometimes they “reflect an attitude that children do not feel with any particular force (1946, 17, 19). they are pervasive among children, and jorgensen, in “teases and pranks,” notes that as “forms of victimization”, represent “behaviors that children are likely to experience at almost any time and in any place.” taunting, especially when it involves “socially unacceptable words or taboos,” is “usually not done in the presence of adult authorities, but otherwise it is a fairly everyday type of occurrence” (1999, 213-14). the large number of taunts collected by ellison testifies to his ability to establish rapport with his research subjects. they included taunts referring to various kinds of other groups. one, about “crackers,” collected on 142nd and eighth avenue from william and eddie freeman, was both pithy and pointed. the freemans reported, “that’s what we used to say when the white boys made us mad”: cracker, cracker ring the bell cracker, cracker go to hell! children who “cannot read well” felt the signifying sting of another taunt: can you read can you write can you smoke your daddy’s pipe? an overweight child was the target of another taunt: fat and skinny had a race fat fell down and broke his face skinny said i won the race “i saw mrs. saray, sitting on a bombalerry” baron 36 fat said that ain’t fair cause i lost my underwear “delaware” rhymed easily with “square” and “fair” (for the 1939 world’s fair) in a taunt used for “strangers”: look at them squares from delaware they musta got left from the world’s fair ellison noted that the following version was recited “when a stranger or out-oftown license on a car driven by negroes, is noticed.” the last two lines were recited by herbert lambert, sung to the tune of shave and a haircut. lambert, who recited other rhymes for ellison, used this tune “to end off every verse he gave.” i’m a square from delaware just in town to see the fair boom da dee ah dee boom, boom! while lambert is named as the tradition bearer, ellison usually did not give the names of the performers. an unusual amount of personal history was provided for william and eddie freeman, who like many other african american new yorkers, before and since, spent time during their childhood visiting relatives in the south: the following rhymes were given the writer by william and eddie freeman, who operate a vegetable cart in the eighth avenue market near143rd street. william was born in charleston, south carolina but was brought to new york when three months old. eddie was born in conn. during 1936 the boys visited relatives in charleston and the “cracker cracker” rhyme was learned there. eddie chose to recite the rhymes and during the recitation was advised by william not to use the word black, but to use the word dark instead. the boys are twelve and thirteen years of age. once upon a time a darkey found a dime, dime turned red, the darkey fell dead i know something you caint tell three dark niggers on a peanut shell one kin sing, one kin dance, one kin sew my old man’s pants. baron “i saw mrs. saray, sitting on a bombalerry” 37 topical references appear in other items collected by ellison. the opies, in the lore and language of schoolchildren, categorize such rhymes as “topical rhymes” since “the era in which it has belongs is immediately apparent,” but caution that a “topical rhyme” may be a version of much older rhymes (1959, 98). halpert found widespread reference to “contemporary events, personalities and institutions” in rhymes collected during the 1930s (1946, 14). joe louis appears in the following rhyme, with a notation in ellison’s hand about the “trucking” dance : joe louis and bob pastor bob pastor was on his knees said, “joe, don’t hit me please, just go on trucking on out the ring.” (use) this rhyme tells the story of the pastor-louis fight, which took place in 1939. the term ‘trucking’ refers to a dance step popular at that time; a version of which was inspired by louis’ peculiar, shuffling footwork. according to halpert, children “quickly became adept exponents of truckin’,” introducing it in a number of songs and games” (1946, 114). he indicated that the “truckin’ “rhymes were not known outside of harlem. halpert viewed them as a kind of emergent folklore, as “for the most part recent compositions either based on older rhyme forms or composed from scratch” (15-16). another rhyme was chanted rhythmically to african american dance steps which “were popular in new york around 1928”: hay, hay, farmer gray, took another load away ellison collected a ball bouncing rhyme about an encounter with a policeman guarding macy’s department store. while this rhyme was found among other ethnic communities in new york city, it might have had special resonance for residents of harlem. during the mid and late 1930s, struggles against discrimination in hiring in department stores were a focus for african american political activism. this rhyme illustrates how children’s folklore (in any culture) provides mechanisms for working through issues, concerns and anxieties through play: i won’t go to macy’s any more, more, more! there’s a big fat policeman at the door, door, door he grabbed me by the collar and made me pay a dollar and i won’t go to macy’s any more, more, more!14 “i saw mrs. saray, sitting on a bombalerry” baron 38 only a few jump rope rhymes appear in the collection. as in ball bouncing rhymes, the rhymes used for jumping rope act to structure movement, as sullivan notes in “songs, poems and rhymes” (153). halpert, in his proposal for children’s rhymes and games, speaks of how specific words may be used to indicate actions. in the first of the two rhymes which follow, the rope jumper is expected to either straddle the rope or miss her turn, allowing the jumper to avoid a “faux pas”. both of these rhymes are found extensively in anglo-american tradition and great britain: i know a lady by the name of miss sat by the fire and gave me a kiss all of a sudden she missed like this!15 johnny on the ocean johnny in the sea johnny broke a windowpane and blamed it on me i told ma and ma told pa and johnny got a beating and ha ha ha16 ellison almost always presented ball bouncing and jump rope rhymes as texts, without describing the form of the activity which the rhymes accompany. an exception was the following ball bouncing rhyme, with ellison’s comments alongside the text: i live in chinka china my name is carol see. i wash and dry the dishes for fifty cents a week. so sister, sister, sister you ought to be ashame to marry, marry, marry a man without a name. so my father is a butcher my mother cuts the meat. i am a little hot dog hat runs across the street. this is one of the longer ball bouncing jingles. the repeated words represent variations in the bouncing, for instance on the words `sister, sister, sister’ the leg is crossed over and the ball bounced over it, after which the bouncer returns to the straight pattern. baron “i saw mrs. saray, sitting on a bombalerry” 39 a rhyme beginning “your old man is a dirty old man” was collected in different versions and variants by halpert in various parts of manhattan. he characterized it as an adaptation of the song “old dan tucker”, well known as a minstrel song in the nineteenth century. for halpert, it demonstrated how some children’s folklore in new york city can contain the “remnants” of older adult folklore (children’s rhymes and games). the version collected by ellison includes a street address in the lower east side, on the other end of manhattan from harlem: my mother and your mother live across the way 315 east broadway every night they have a fight and this is what they say your old man is a dirty old man he washes his face with the frying pan he combs his hair with the leg of a chair your old man is a dirty old man17 ellison ascribes various genres to the folk rhymes he collected. categorization of children’s rhymes, however, is a tricky business. sanches and kirshenblatt-gimblett contend that taxonomies created through categorizations of rhymes cannot be “predictive” since the same rhyme in different play groups can accompany jumping rope, ball bouncing, or taunting another child (1976,67).18 this “gag” collected by ellison was also recited in my own childhood in the northwest bronx, with the addition of a “the” before “ice”: ladies and gentlemen take my advice pull down your pants and sit on ice. a variant called for movement: ladies and gentlemen take my advice pull off your pants and slide on ice.19 a very short verse collected by ellison was labeled a “baseball rhyme.” short verses were found widely among new york city children — halpert speaks in his proposal for children’s rhymes and games of the “distinctly new yorkese rhyme which is short, snappy and to the point.” in and out three strikes and out “i saw mrs. saray, sitting on a bombalerry” baron 40 another rhyme was used as a mnemonic, with ellison noting the use of such rhymes in the south: columbus was a jew fourteen-ninety-two! (use) such rhymes are used to aid the memory; in this instance it is a historical date which is memorized. in the south, superstitions, moral and other observations are given such a statement. a “dare” was also categorized by ellison by its “use”: you can slip and you can slide but i’ll kick you for a buggy ride. (use) dare some rhymes were classified as “pastimes.” the polysemy of the word “bill” was at play in one of these rhymes. as sanches and kirshenblatt-gimblett note, it embodies two kinds of rhetorical patterns found in children’s rhymes, “adnominatio (pun and wordplay) and conversio (repetition of the last word in successive phrases” (1976, 109). variants of this rhyme were recorded by other fwp fieldworkers among italians and puerto ricans in east harlem, and in the bronx and brooklyn among performers whose ethnicities were not indicated. well hello bill where you going bill down town bill what for bill to pay my gas bill how much bill ten dollar bill so long bill some rhymes were uncategorized by ellison. the text of a rhyme which improvised upon a popular song was followed by a note about continuities between african american folk and “commercial” song: margie is a swimming pool all around the house but never in the pool well allright then … the above rhyme is an improvised lyric to a popular song, originating in harlem, the title of which is “well all right then.” this title, which baron “i saw mrs. saray, sitting on a bombalerry” 41 gives the tune its refrain, is nonsensical as far as actual meaning is concerned. and as is typical of such negro songs, the pattern of “well allright then” is very elastic in order to allow for such improvisations; a characteristic which comes out of the folk period of negro music and which has been carried over into the commercial. african american children’s rhymes and singing games have continued to incorporate popular music. kyra gaunt shows that this relationship works both ways in an ongoing circulation between folk and popular traditions, citing many examples of rhythm and blues, blues and hip hop songs appropriating children’s game songs (2006, 2-3, 68-69, 89-110). ellison saw how such use of popular song underscores the fluid, improvisatory character of african american music, characteristic of both a “folk period” when african american music consisted largely of folk music, and his own time, when commercially produced popular music had become a dominant force shaping cultural preferences. in referring to continuity and change in african american music, ellison speaks to transformations in black american culture occurring during the interwar period, when he was working for the fwp. he collected traditions brought by migrants from the south who maintained them in harlem, as both active and passive carriers of tradition. these traditions were often adapted, localized and changed by children in harlem, who also performed traditions maintained as well by other ethnic groups, and practiced emerging folklore newly created in new york. in the craft of ralph ellison, o’meally indicates that ellison perceived southern sources “even when the harlem lore seemed indigenous,” and he would sometimes “recognize a remnant of a saying or rhyme he had heard in the south reduced to a `mumble’ or nonsense phrase in harlem.” o’meally discusses ellison’s contention that these traditions suggested a bridge to the south and to african ancestry, and he cites ellison as stating that their “tradition goes way back to the south, and some of it goes back to africa” (1980, 34). while much of the children’s folklore collected by ellison was distinctively african american in provenance and current practice, some of these traditions were also practiced by whites, including traditions with sources in great britain. in zora neale hurston’s collections of african american children’s folklore in florida, she noted that they included “white games that have been learned by negro children in contact with whites” like “ ‘london bridge is falling down’, … white games that have been modified by negro use, like ‘little sally walker’, and purely negro games like ‘bama,’ ‘rabbit dance,’ and ‘chick-mah-chick” (1999, 105) — a pattern like that of the games ellison collected in harlem. the critical essays and fiction of ellison embody his views of the creative genius and cultural distinctiveness of african american cultures, the importance of southern roots, and the americaness of african americans, all characteristics evident in the children’s rhymes he collected early in his career. the children whose rhymes were collected by ellison experienced both tradition and change, through their folklore as in other aspects of their lives. in his own life at this time, ellison was experiencing personal and professional transformations as a migrant as well as a writer. like other fwp folklore workers, “i saw mrs. saray, sitting on a bombalerry” baron 42 he collected during the day and wrote in the evenings (35-36), working for the first time as a full time cultural worker, now possessing a primary occupational identity as a writer. ellison’s experiences collecting folklore resonated in later works of fiction and short stories. o’meally notes that “the project’s structured examination of language and folklore planted seeds that helped his writing grow beyond the limits of literary realism” (1980, 36). he writes of how the “process of interviewing and transcribing” the narratives “sharpened ellison’s ear for idiosyncrasies of speech and gave him practice in getting particular speech patterns onto paper”(34).” his performative and improvisatory renderings of african american speech and oral traditions of various genres demonstrates, as callahan puts it, a “commitment to an american improvisatory vernacular” (89). rather than serving only illustratively, folklore was deeply infused within ellison’s fiction. ellison viewed the use of folklore in fiction as absorbing “folk tradition into … thematic structures … plots, symbolism and rhetoric” (1995d, 111). as his collecting was informed by both text and context, so was his fiction, as o’meally indicates: many of the rhymes, jokes and peculiarities of speech which enrich ellison’s fiction were drawn from his experience in oklahoma and alabama; many others were drawn from notes he made while researching and interviewing in harlem for the federal writer’s project. beyond simply copying bits of already collected folklore into his fiction, ellison developed a working knowledge of afro-american rhymes, games and stories. moreover, he refined his sense of the folkloric context: the moments and the settings in which persons, particularly afro-americans, were likely to use the stylized speech of folklore. he studied text as well as context. in his fiction … the lore is more than local color; it is ritualistic as well as reflective of a whole lifestyle (1980, 35). folklore also figured multifariously in ellison’s essays and creative non-fiction. drawing from wellsprings of memories from his oklahoma boyhood, formative years as tuskegee student and migrant to new york, and keen observations as a fwp field researcher, he possessed an abundant store of folklore material borne out of firsthand experience. while working for the fwp, ellison was associated with leftist politics and wrote about folklore in publications self-consciously identified with the working class. the writers for these publications, who were of working class origin, asserted, according to michael denning, “pronounced class awareness or consciousness” which framed “working class ideologies” central to a “cultural front” that shaped american culture for generations to come. (8). during this early phase of his literary career, ellison authored essays and reviews about folklore found among african americans and elsewhere in the world which marxist literary scholar barbara foley, in her article “ralph ellison as proletarian journalist” sees as demonstrating “a materialist and internationalist approach” which views “folklore as a site of resistance” ellison definitively rejected communism by the mid-1940s and became increasingly critical of baron “i saw mrs. saray, sitting on a bombalerry” 43 the left. nevertheless, he continued to see folklore as a means of resistance despite a profound ideological shift which has been variously interpreted by ellison scholars. foley contends, for example that his view of folklore remained consonant with the ideology of the popular front , arguing against critics who saw the representation of folklore as resistance in invisible man as representing “a culturalist tendency antipathetic to marxist analytical categories” (1998-99, 543) . as rampersad demonstrates in ralph ellison: a biography, ellison’s immersion in leftist intellectual circles and, eventually, in the new york literati, was accompanied by personal disengagement from participation in african american vernacular culture. nevertheless, even as he became personally more distant from working class culture, he continued to strongly assert the significance of folklore for african american cultural resilience and survival. as a young writer, ellison was profoundly influenced by the cambridge school’s view of the relationship of myth and ritual, especially lord raglan’s archetypal study of the hero. he was also inspired by the applications of mythology and folklore by eliot and joyce, and he came to see that african american folklore could be used in his fiction as well. according to rampersad, this revelation emerged during ellison’s collecting of folklore in harlem for the fwp. “ironically,” rampersad states, “explaining new york street life had taken him back into the arcane world he had entered in exploring the footnotes of t.s. eliot’s the waste land, and especially the indebtedness of eliot to jessie weston and other british scholars in the so-called cambridge school of myth and ritual studies” (2007, 116). the cambridge school’s approach to folklore differed greatly from other twentieth century folklore scholarship, including the approaches of both comparative, text oriented european folklorists and american folklorists engaged in ethnographic studies of living traditions. its conceptualization of the origins of myth in ritual is unverifiable and reductive, positing relationships belied by systematic field research. for ellison, there was apparently no contradiction between his systematic collecting of folklore in a project guided by ethnographic methodologies and the inspiration his studies of myth and ritual brought to the genesis of invisible man as well as his essays about african americans. ellison viewed folklore as central for understanding african american culture, and over the years he increasingly spoke in terms of both its universal significance and cultural specificity. in “richard wright’s blues,” published in 1945, ellison saw the blues as a quintessential african american art form, “an autobiographical chronicle of personal catastrophe expressed lyrically” (129). a 1948 new york star article, “a journalist considers the position of the negro in american history,” contended that “negro americans … evolved, from disparate influences, a folk culture embodying … a conception of human life, a ‘style,’ a musical culture, a somewhat crude psychology, and a very advanced philosophy of human freedom” (qtd. in rampersad 2007, 240). later writings argued against reducing african american folklore to archetypes and seeing it primarily as a vehicle of resistance, as they stressed its transcendent value for african americans in particular and humankind in general. in “change the joke and slip the yoke,” written in 1958, ellison criticized stanley edgar “i saw mrs. saray, sitting on a bombalerry” baron 44 hyman’s view of the archetype of the trickster in invisible man, with ellison asserting his freedom as a novelist to create characters with specific cultural resonances. he stated that “spirituals .. blues, jazz and folk tales” have “much to tell us of the faith, humor and adaptability to reality necessary to live in a world which has taken on much of the insecurity and blues-like absurdity known to those of us who brought it into being” (112). his 1964 review of blues people argued against its sociogenic approach and emphasis upon the blues as a means of political protest. he underscored the universal significance of the blues and its importance as an art form along with its value for african americans as a technique of cultural survival. for ellison, the blues “speak to us simultaneously of the tragic and comic aspects of the human condition and they express a profound sense of life shared by many negro americans precisely because their lives have combined these modes” (286). folklore was integral to ellison’s view of african american culture as a major shaping force in the lives of all americans, and the continuing cultural interactions of blacks and whites throughout american history. stressing the importance of the vernacular in american culture, and black influence on american culture, a news release for ellison’s first course at new york university in 1970 stated that it would be “exploring the relationship between sophisticated and vernacular culture in the united states … one of the abiding phenomena in this country starting from our american and british background.” european cultural traditions had come “into ceaseless contact with the imaginations of negro americans who have been in the unique position of being inside the society and yet outside” (quoted in rampersad 2007, 471). ellison’s collections of children’s folklore for the fwp incorporated traditions distinctive to african americans as well as others shared by new yorkers and other americans from diverse cultural backgrounds. while ellison did not note that many of these traditions were also practiced by non-blacks, their provenances reflected the interactions through culture of blacks and whites as well as the distinctive contribution of african americans to american life, themes which ran through ellison’s writings over the years. in his scathing critique of blues people by amiri baraka (known at the time as leroi jones), ellison contends that “jones has stumbled over that ironic obstacle which lies in the path of anyone who would fashion a theory of american negro culture while ignoring the intricate network of connections which binds negroes to the larger society. to do so is to attempt delicate brain surgery with a switchblade” (1964, 283). mutual influences between african americans and other americans were seen by ellison as continuous and ongoing. in “some questions and some answers,” written in 1958, ellison wrote of a “body of folklore” as among the fundamental expressions of “american negro” culture, but hastened to add that “it must, however, be pointed out that due to the close links which negro americans have with the rest of the nation, these cultural expressions are constantly influencing the larger body of american culture and in turn influencing them” (292). while recognizing the reciprocal cultural influences between african americans and other americans, ellison viewed african american folklore as a hallmark of african american cultural genius, asserting humanity and creativity over centuries of oppression. much of african american folklore, baron “i saw mrs. saray, sitting on a bombalerry” 45 like many of the children’s traditions ellison collected, is distinctively african american in character, created and shaped by blacks in the southern united states and harlem. like folklore, fiction by ellison and other african american writers counters dehumanizing representations of their culture20, following from the imperative ellison states in “twentieth century fiction and the mask of humanity” for “negro writers” to take on the “task of defining negro humanity” (1953, 99), a task which for ellison integrally involved folklore. while ellison’s fwp folklore collections have enduring significance as a foundation for both his fiction and non-fiction, they also have substantial but unrecognized value as folklore collections on their own terms, drawing from multiple cultural sources while demonstrating creativity in the creation of emerging traditions. reading ellison’s field notes and texts of seventy years ago from the standpoint of a folklorist trained in the performance centered approach to folklore study, i am struck by his accounts of performance situations, his sensitivity to performance styles, and the contextual details he provided. contemporary folklorists should also be impressed by his frequent notes about the uses of particular traditions and his remarks about distinctive features of form and the localization of particular traditions. as a writer, ellison was a literary modernist who wrote stylistically advanced fiction deeply infused with folklore, representing african americans maintaining traditions while experiencing modern life. as a folklorist, he was a modern folklorist, observing and reporting context while recording texts, collecting older traditions maintained by southern migrants, folklore localized and transformed in the city and emerging urban traditions. rather than seeing folklore as residual culture, as static relics of a southern past, ellison projects a dynamicist view of the children’s folklore he collected as emergent in performance. folklore, and speech in general, are viewed performatively, marked by improvisation and innovation. folk culture is located within modernity, rather than outside it, through the folklore research he carried out at the outset of his career as well as in subsequent fiction and essays about african-american culture. tradition and modernity are intertwined throughout the body of ellison’s folklore research and literary production, embodying a view of the traditional and the modern in dynamic interaction rather than as disjunctive forces. while ellison’s brief period collecting folklore occurred early in his career, it represented a highly formative episode in his literary career which continued to reverberate on many levels. notes an earlier version of this work was presented at the american folklore society’s annual meeting in milwaukee in 2006. research for this article was carried out while i was a non-resident fellow of the w.e.b. du bois institute for african and african-american research at harvard university. i am grateful to roger d. abrahams, henry louis gates, jr., felicia r. mcmahon and john f. szwed for their encouragement and critical comments about this article. 1. while the manuscript for the proposal for children’s rhymes and games in the manuscript collection of the library of congress does not include the “i saw mrs. saray, sitting on a bombalerry” baron 46 author’s name, halpert refers to it an account of his early career in “coming into folklore more than fifty years ago.” he recounted that he was “fired” from the fwp, “mainly because the book i had proposed, on new york city children’s lore, was thought to be too large a project – one that would take too long to reach publication” (451). the proposed book was never published. 2. nine “children’s street rhymes” in this collection were included in a book of photographs by aaron siskind, harlem: photographs 1932-40, taken for the “harlem document” initiative associated with the photo league, as battle indicates in “harlem: a document” ( 2-6). the book of negro folklore, edited by langston hughes and arna bontemps, has a section “harlem children’s rhymes and gags” in a chapter on playsongs and games, which included four items collected by ellison, each framed by either ellison’s notes or comments by the children reciting the rhymes (433-35). a number of the rhymes collected by ellison also appeared in halpert’s master’s thesis. 3. all of ellison’s transcriptions of children’s rhymes and associated field notes are reprinted here as they appear in the reports held in the manuscript collection of the library of congress, without emendation, except for small changes to regularize spelling. 4. during the 1970s, the academic discipline of folklore turned from an emphasis on textual analysis to a performance-centered approach. viewing folklore as artistic communication in small groups, it focused upon how folklore emerges in face-to-face interaction, and its social and cultural context. in their “introduction” to an issue of western folklore marking the twentieth anniversary of the landmark toward new perspectives in folklore which articulated the new approach to the study of folklore in context and as performance, shuman and briggs write of how “style, content, and context” were “brought under a single theoretical aegis as they were studied in particular, situated acts of communication” (114). 5. abrahams indicates that this rhyme derives “from a formula opening of english tales” (145). versions of this rhyme were collected by johnson on st. helena island (134, 137, 155) as opening formulae for folk tales: once upon a time monkey chaw tobacco an’ spit white lime once upon a time monkey chaw tobacco an’ de cat drink wine once upon a time, a very good time monkey chaw tobacco on de railroad line 6. bessie jones and bess lomax hawes suggest that little sallie’s last name as “water” is found in “perhaps the oldest versions” of this game of british origin which they collected as an african american ring play. they note that the concluding stanza, “shake it to the east/shake it to the west,” is an african baron “i saw mrs. saray, sitting on a bombalerry” 47 american addition to this game (1972, 107). 7. hale and hale indicate that the expression “shake your duster” dates to the second decade of the twentieth century or earlier, when it had an “admonitory” purpose, to “speed up a person’s effort in the business at hand,” and they “suspect it may refer to long coats, or ‘dusters’” which the “first automobilists” wore “when the motor car was young.” (1938, 918). another version collected by ellison had a more plausible rationale for the visit to a store: i had a little dog his name was buster sent him to the store to buy some mustard oh well a come on buster bring that mustard! 8. variants of this rhyme were recited throughout new york city, its suburbs, and in northwestern connecticut. halpert notes variants of this rhyme recited in new york city, with a different third line, as “on the day of decoration” or “on the day of declaration” (folk rhymes 172). in her dissertation, “folk jingles of american children”, dorothy howard indicated that “the day of declaration” variant was found in east orange, new jersey, nangotuck (sic), connecticut and westchester county (1938, 115). 9. halpert notes that this rhyme was also collected at greenwich house, in greenwich village (1946, 172). greenwich house served a largely immigrant population at the time. 10. this rhyme was also reported from throughout new york city. a variant included in “folk rhymes of new york city children” was transcribed (or spelled) differently, as “one, two, three a-lairry,/ i spy mrs. sarey,/ sitting on a bumble lairry,/just like a chocolate fairy” (1946, 171). howard reported a version from “new york state” as “one, two, three a-larry/i spy sister sarrie/sitting on a bumbleberry/ eating chocolate like a fairy” (1938, 116). ethel and oliver hale indicated that “no one has told us what a bumble-airy or bumble-eery is, so we must assume it is a concocted word, created to fit a rhyme scheme” (1938, 126). 11. abrahams provides 39 references from throughout the united states of variants and versions of “charlie chaplin” as a jump rope rhyme (1969, 26-27). in new york city, halpert reports, in “folk rhymes of new york city children” that charlie chaplin as counting out rhyme and jump rope rhyme included a variety of last lines, “and turn yourself around,” “and turn around to the submarine,” “and turn your back to the kaiser,” from greenwich and church house, jones house and greenwich house, respectively. 12. according to halpert, “gypsy, gypsy, lived in a tent” was found throughout new york city (1946, 192). abrahams notes, that it is more frequently found as a counting-out rhyme than as a jump rope rhyme (57) versions of this rhyme are found in england and scotland (abrahams 1969, 57; abrahams and rankin 1980, 87). “i saw mrs. saray, sitting on a bombalerry” baron 48 13. abrahams reports that more common versions than the one ellison remembered begin with the same two lines, but the following lines say; my mother gave your mother a punch in the nose what was the color of the blood? blue [or red] b-l-u-e or r-e-d (152) halpert collected another version, from the west side, as: your mother and my mother were hanging out the clothes your mother gave my mother a sock in the nose. what color was the blood? ‘red’ r-e-d (1946, 125) 14. versions collected by halpert had different third and fourth lines. in one from the west bronx, “i socked him in the nose/and i stepped on his toes,” in another from jones house “i squeezed him like a lemon and sent him up to heaven, and, in a text from brooklyn’s willoughby house, “he’ll pull me by my pants/and make me do a dance .” abrahams reports that as a jump rope rhyme, “i won’t go to macy’s” has been collected in california and nevis (1969, 97). 15. abrahams references sixteen versions of “miss, miss, little miss, miss:/when she misses she misses like this” from the throughout the united states, britain and scotland in jump-rope rhymes: a dictionary, including one from britain which begins, “i know a woman/and her name is miss (1969, 123-24). 16. in jump-rope rhymes: a dictionary, abrahams lists references to versions and variants found in thirty one states and scotland (1969, 102). 17. this rhyme is used both as a counting-out rhyme and a jump rope rhyme. abrahams’s jump-rope rhymes: a dictionary and abrahams’s and rankin’s counting-out rhymes: a dictionary identify, all together, versions and variants from thirteen states (abrahams 135-36, abrahams and rankin 154-55). 18. sanches and kirshenblatt-gimblett reference the research on rope skipping games of the cooperative research project in rope skipping games: language, belief and customs, tri-university project on elementary education, university of nebraska and u.s. office of education. 1968. 19. another variant, which halpert dates to 1918 from east 78th street, was reported as “ladies and gentlemen/take my advice/take off your britches/and slide on the ice” (1946, 93). 20. ellison’s views of the received dehumanizing and distorted representations of blacks in american literature are akin to toni morrison’s notion of the “africanist” presence in american literature discussed in her playing in the dark: whiteness and the literary imagination (1992). baron “i saw mrs. saray, sitting on a bombalerry” 49 works cited abrahams, roger. 1969. jump-rope rhymes: a dictionary. austin: university of texas press. abrahams, roger and lois rankin. 1980. counting-out rhymes: a dictionary. austin: university of texas press. banks, ann, ed. 1980. first person america. new york: knopf. battle, marcia. 1990. harlem: a document. new introduction to aaron siskind, harlem: photographs 1932-1940, 3-6. washington: smithsonian institution press. bauman, richard and américo paredes, eds. 1972. toward new perspectives in folklore. austin: university of texas press. botkin, b[enjamin] a. 1958. we called it living lore. new york folklore quarterly 14(3): 189-201. byerman, keith eldon. 1985. fingering the jagged grain: tradition and 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immersion preschool jacqueline thursby defining the boise basques it is said that the first basques to reach the western hemisphere were early cod fishermen. following them was the fleet of christopher columbus, whose ships had been built in northern spain by basques, and there were basque sailors in his fleet. some remained in south america and their descendants still flourish there, mostly in argentina and uruguay. at the time of the california gold rush, many of the basques who ran cattle and sheep in the pampas region of south america migrated to the united states. they were not made to feel welcome in the gold rush camps, because they were looked on as sojourners rather than american citizens. in order to survive, they slowly took over what had traditionally been the work of the native americans: namely, the sheep herding industry. during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, many basques, young men and women, migrated to the united states from the basque country in northern spain and the basque region in southern france. economic need forced vast southern european migration at that time because of little hope for the future. by the turn of the century, large sheep companies had been created in the american west, located mostly in the states of california, nevada, wyoming, oregon, and idaho. the companies were often owned or tended by reliable and competitive basque sheepherders. invitations were extended to brothers, uncles, nephews, and friends to join and work with the herders in the american west. a network of one hundred twenty-one basque hotels sprung up throughout the west, and young women were invited to come from the old country to work in the hotels. those gathering places were sometimes called “marriage mills,” because many of the young basques met their life-partners there. boise was one of the early settling places for the basque people. there were hotels where the language was spoken, familiar foods were served, and familiar music, games, and dances were practiced. the language is a major marker in the basque tradition. it cannot be definitively traced to any other language. there is an old joke told again and again to explain why the basques are so good. it seems the devil decided to corrupt the pure people of the basque region. try as he might, he could not learn the difficult language. he learned “yes bi” and “ no es,” but that was all. consequently, because he couldn’t tempt the basques in their own language, he left and they remained very, very good people – even to this day. right here on grove street, there is an old basque hotel that has been lovingly restored and donated to the basque community of boise. maintaining cultural identity there are many people in the united states of basque heritage, and the basques are recorded as a group separate from the spanish or french in the united states boise ikastola thursby 54 census. because of the unique language, cultural mores, and rich traditions of the old country, the american basques work hard to blend and syncretize their basque heritage and their american national identity, and that often begins with the young children. the national american basque association, called nabo, has chapters in many states throughout the country, including new york and florida, and nabo provides club interaction, language training, and other activities for adults. for children, the basque museum and cultural center sponsors summer euskara immersion camps, and nabo supports other opportunities for basque language training, dance and music lessons, arts and crafts, and a variety of other basque cultural experiences from festivals to study abroad programs (through the university of nevada at reno and boise state university) to trips and tours of the old country. history, purpose, and goals of the basque ikastola founded in 1998, boiseko ikastola is a preschool for children to learn to understand and speak basque. housed at st. paul’s catholic church on the boise state university campus, it introduces young children to basque and not only aids in their comprehension of the basque language, but also helps with developing other language skills. twenty-five years ago the basque government was one of the first to recognize the need to establish a curriculum especially designed for preschool aged children. the program, called the urtxintxa project, has been replicated by other european countries. the ikastola uses this same curriculum and has proven very successful for children continuing on at both private and public kindergartens. there are two full-time instructors with early childhood development degrees. language and literacy children learn the basque language through thematic units and interaction with teachers, peers, music and print. other opportunities for conversation include dramatic play, story time, circle time and puppet shows. the ikastola’s print-rich literacy environment includes some of the following: books in basque and english, books made by individual children, magazines and newspapers appropriate for young children, calendars, bulletin boards, alphabet charts, labels on materials, supplies, equipment, lists of all kinds, children’s names displayed, child dictation or writing and drawings displayed. when the children want to write, copy or draw, the “tools” are always available. science open-ended questions by the teacher help the children learn how to question, how to be thinkers. hands-on activities include using simple machines, sensory table play, plant and animal life, and cooking activities. thursby boise ikastola 55 math the children learn to print and work with numbers. they compare, sort, classify, and organize objects. the concepts of time and seasons are introduced, and the children learn the days of the week and months of the year. clocks and calendars are used to teach time. social studies learning about the “world around us” is the focus of this curriculum area. field trips and studies of occupations are included. art exploratory, sensory art activities help the child experience a variety of media. paints, chalk, pencils, crayons, markers, glue and play dough (made by the children) are available in a “free choice” area for the children to use as they wish. large and small motor skills movement activities including dance, running, balancing, and sports are just part of the large motor program. from using scissors to completing small puzzles, children are continually offered opportunities to develop their smaller muscles. field trips students enjoy a variety of field trips that add to the rich learning experience. common trips are to the basque museum and cultural center, fronton, edwards greenhouses, the pumpkin patch, zoo, and the boise public library. dramatic play dramatic play is one of the most valuable forms of play for children. the preschool gives children many opportunities to play and the toys and tools with which to learn. play provides opportunities for exploration, manipulation, and experimentation that are vital for a child to construct knowledge. through immediate feedback of peers, children refine their learning and restructure concepts. guidelines because it is a non-profit center, a portion of the annual budget is generated through fund raising activities and events. boiseko ikastola requires a parent participation activity from each student’s family. this parent participation activity program is designed to keep students safer, and to keep parents involved in their boise ikastola thursby 56 children’s learning environment. under the auspices of the urtzintza project, the following guidelines (condensed here for time purposes) are to be followed: confidence, physical abilities, social and communicative skills. autonomy and shared social development. reinforce human values and self-respect. basque country. thus, the contents of the lessons are directed to develop among the children knowledge of the basque language, culture, customs, and sentiment all over the eight territories of the country in and out of europe. the project includes the study of traditional songs, poetry, art, literature, theatre, mythology, and rural sports as a way to widen their love and respect for the basque language and culture. the program heightens the respect, use and knowledge of the basque language. for developing within the students the respect, admiration, and care for the rest of the nations, cultures, languages, and peoples all over the world. purpose and linguistic performance for many adult basque americans or american basques, learning the language of the old country is a frustrating dream. the unique language itself is non indo-european, and it is difficult to learn because the vocabulary is not rooted in latin or greek, the common origin languages of the western world. because the basque language is dialectical and can vary significantly from village to village, basque scholars created a consensus language called batua, which is now taught both in the old country and in the united states. there are basque language classes in various american cities including boise, reno, fresno, san francisco, and new york. in the basque country, much of the dominant language is spanish. the primary reason for the rise in early second-language acquisition in the basque country is a result of studies conducted there concerning monolingual and bilingual presence thursby boise ikastola 57 in families in various regions of the country. basque language scholar maria josé ezeizabarrena reported that “research into early language acquisition has lead many researchers to conclude that bilinguals with ‘sufficient “ input behave like monolinguals” (2007, 1). in other words, in homes where basque is the dominant language, children are monolingual before the age of three or four. older children become more and more bilingual as they pass through the educational system. production data of basque vocabulary, verb morphology, case morphology, and spanish-basque mixed utterances have shown that monolingual and balanced bilingual children follow a very similar developmental pattern in linguistic production. the value of second language acquisition in early childhood is particularly significant because it can enhance cross-cultural understanding, and it fosters an active interest in learning one’s own cultural knowledge and maintenance. in the united states, as children progress through the elementary grades, studies suggest that they retain the ability to form certain sounds of the language learned in early childhood even though they may not remember all of the vocabulary. this ability to enunciate the sounds correctly will serve as an aid in their mastering the language in their later years should they return to the study. through shared lore, songs, expressions, games, and belief practices, children in these early second language acquisition programs learn to understand and adapt to new situations. the ikastola enculturates children into their own ancient heritage as well as the language and culture of the united states, their homeland. w. k. mcneil, in his introduction to simon bronner’s 1988 edition of american children’s folklore, referred to the research of william wells newell as saying: “by this means he also demonstrated that games, songs, and rhymes moved across linguistic and geographic barriers just as easily as folktales and legends” (1988, 11). though newell feared that traditional lore was waning, time has proven differently, and many scholars have demonstrated that children’s lore continues over time and space. referring to the playful sound sequences in dr. seuss’s sleep book (1962), such as “up at herk-heimer falls, where the great river rushes and crashes down crags and in great gargling gushes,” a scholar of children’s language and learning, judith wells lindfors, stated, “i believe that it is the unexpected in the language of these books that is most engaging to the child” (1987, 73). the books i observed at the boise ikastola, written in basque, carry the same kind of language play presented in stories familiar to american children. the three pigs, for instance, called hiru txerrikumeak, cleverly tells the old tale and is profusely illustrated with the expected visual images: first a house of straw, then a house of sticks, followed by a house of bricks, and then what appears to be a foiled (but still living) picture of a wolf with a scalded foot. another book tells the story of the peculiar duckling, rather than the ugly duckling. as these changes are pointed out, the different tellings of the tales introduce the children not only to subtle differences in story, but also subtle and sometimes not subtle differences in the expressed culture of varied people. boise ikastola thursby 58 second language acquisition in a stanford doctoral dissertation, l. w. fillmore posed a question and offered a succinct answer: “what is it that second-language learners must learn? after intensively observing during an entire school year five spanish monolingual children (ages five to seven) acquiring english as their second language, one researcher summed up the second-language learner’s task this way. the learner must figure out how the sound system of the new language is organized, how units of meaning are organized into words, by what principles these words are put together to form sentences, how these sentences can be used appropriately in given settings, and in what ways meanings can be conveyed in the new language and culture (1976, 634). using the new language as it is learned, “it is fascinating to watch children of all ages in dramatic play as they assume high-status roles and role play interactions in various status relationships. they play with various language styles, deliberately changing style when they are queen or subject, teacher or pupil, boss or employee, parent or child. such play is an important support for the children’s growing ability to express and to interpret language expressions of role relationships, one of the many reasons that sociodrama should be an ever-present opportunity in every elementary and preschool classroom” (lindfors 1987, 377). children possess an innate curiosity and actively pursue their urge to find out about the world, and school is a good place to do it. in an interesting study about questions asked by pre-school children with the categories being curiosity, procedural, and social-interactional, researchers found that “of the 159 preschoolkindergarten questions analyzed, approximately 45 percent (almost half) were social in nature, approximately 33 percent (one-third) were curiosity questions, and approximately 23 percent (less than one-fourth) were procedural” (lindfors 1987, 288). lindfors continued her discussion with examples of typical pre-school/ kindergarten questions demonstrating the various categories of the questions under consideration. a curiosity question addressed to an adult observer in the classroom was: “is god in cookies?” a procedural question asked of the teacher during an art lesson was, “do i have to write my name up here?” and a socialinteractional question, spoken after an argument between children at an art gable was, “i forgive you, jenny. do you forgive me?” (lindfors 1987, 288-89). questions help children build a rich theory of the world, and in a focused school like the boise ikastola, curiosity, play, and learning are constantly fed. conclusion october 2008 marked ten years since the boiseko ikastola opened its doors in boise, idaho. on may 15, 2008, ikastola families (past and present), teachers and supporters gathered to commemorate this milestone. more than 130 people came to the basque block to enjoy lively music, good food, entertaining games, and precious memories. as in the japanese foreign language in elementary school (fles) programs in the united states, islamic primary schools for teaching arabic in order for the children to study the q’uran, jewish early hebrew training, and thursby boise ikastola 59 even the folkloric and play activities taught to the yupik eskimo children, like carving stories in mud with a knife, basque people are sensitive to the realities of lost cultures and languages. professor dan dewey, an early childhood linguistic scholar at brigham young university, stated that early second language acquisition has many benefits. he listed increased brain development and capacity, even without mastery; greater use of the left and particularly the right brain; a more sensitive cultural awareness; increased ability to pronounce sounds in language; increased vocabulary; and an early knowledge of the subtleties of language (dewey 2008). in the article “narrative practices and the social construction of self in childhood,” the authors state: “although we believe that personal storytelling plays an important role in the social construction of self throughout the life span, we are especially interested in the beginnings of this process. there is evidence that conversational stories of personal experience are available early in life to children from a variety of cultural backgrounds. … the process of self-construction may be especially visible in early childhood, when it first gets under way. bruner (1986) has suggested that stories are one of the first cultural constraints on the nature of selfhood” (miller, potts, fung, hoogstra, mintz 1990, 263). wouldn’t it be fascinating to sit in on a conversation among these budding bilingual children and see for ourselves how they are or are not constructing themselves with a strong american basque identity? works cited bruner, jerome. 1986. actual minds, possible worlds. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. dewey, dan. 2008. personal interview. november. provo, utah. ezeizabarrena, maria josé. 2008. “the linguistic performance of early bilingual speakers of basque compared to monolinguals.” paper presented at the economic and social research council (esrc) centre for research on bilingualism. bangor, north wales, uk, 28 april. fillmore, l. w. 1976. the second time around: cognitive and social strategies in second language acquisition. doctoral dissertation. stanford university, stanford, california. lindfors, judith wells. 1987. children’s language and learning. 2nd edition. englewood cliffs, new jersey: prentice-hall, inc. mcneil, w. k. 1988. introduction. in american children’s folklore, ed. simon j. bronner, 11-23. little rock: august house publishers. miller, peggy j., randolf potts, heide fung, lisa hoogstra, and judy mintz. 1990. “narrative practices and the social construction of self in childhood.” american ethnologist. vol. 17, no. 2 (may) 292-311. seuss, dr. 1962. dr. seuss’s sleep book. new york: random house. 61 cheeky behavior: the meaning and function of ‘fartlore’ in childhood and adolescence trevor j. blank whether it is due to social taboos about bodily functions or sheer ingenuity, flatulence has well over a dozen common terms associated with its occurrence: passing gas, breaking wind, letting one rip (or go), cutting the cheese, busting ass, pooting, tooting, foofing, fluffing, puffing; folk retorts that mask the anxieties caused by flatulence through euphemistic annotations also exist, such as “dropping a bomb,” “making a stinker,” “cooking some eggs,” “baking brownies,” “making an air biscuit,” “stepping on a duck,” “cracking a boom-boom,” or “rolling out some thunder.” 1 regardless of the fact that flatulence is a universal bodily production, the public discussion of its occurrence is a forbidden social taboo; as josepha sherman and t.k.f. weisskopf point out, the aforementioned genteel euphemisms “emphasize its unsuitability as a topic of polite adult conversation” (1995, 55). still, farting (as the passing of flatulence is most commonly referred to in american culture) is a part of our daily lives as well as our folklore — so much so in fact that the term “fartlore” has emerged to refer to the folklore of flatulence.2 fartlore research has appeared sporadically in children’s folklore scholarship, but in nearly every instance the collected materials are a mere footnote in comparison to the other topics reported upon. likewise, most existing collections are descriptive rather than analytical, and they insufficiently explain the meaning and function that flatulence-themed folklore has in the lives of children, adolescents, and adults. this begs the question: beyond their face value, what do the flatulence-themed components of folklore mean when enacted in games, songs, humor, beliefs, or verbal art? more importantly, what purpose do they serve in society and why?3 using an interdisciplinary framework drawn from psychoanalysis, folkloristics, and sociology, this essay seeks to elucidate the means by which children and adolescents attempt to circumvent, challenge, or cope with adult authority in their confrontation of social taboos while establishing their own identities. through a survey of historical and contemporary texts, i interpret the projective functional purpose and meaning of fartlore in the social worlds of pre-adults. in doing so, i contend that the data i have accumulated represents a distinct genre within children’s and adolescent folk culture in which folklore about bodily functions — especially those with scatological themes — is ubiquitous. in addition, my study of fartlore intends to demonstrate that fartlore is a subversive and compensatory genre that is a reflexive manifestation of unspoken societal attitudes and anxieties (see sidoli 1996). ethnographers should consider the value of collecting folklore for the broader interpretation of gendered and life-course experiences (including in national contexts) and especially those areas that dwell outside of mainstream scholarship boundaries in their future research endeavors. when i was a graduate student at indiana university, i wanted to complete my master’s thesis on latrinalia in the twenty-first century. i was quickly shut down boise ikastola thursby 62 after receiving the explanation that my proposed topic was (and i quote), “too unsanitary.”4 clearly, the topics of flatulence and scatology trigger highly emotional responses in the public sphere! in an example outside of my own personal experience, the children’s book walter, the farting dog (kotzwinkle and murray 2001) — which tells a rather innocent story about a loveable, adopted dog that has a chronic flatulence problem — was banned from numerous public school libraries in wisconsin in 2009. some public schools have openly discussed banning children from farting (mills 2008), and a twelve-year old boy was even arrested recently for deliberately “breaking wind” during class.5 why all the fuss? everybody farts. on average, men fart fourteen to fifteen times a day and women do it an average of eight to nine times a day en route to creating over a quart of gas (dawson 2006, 1). stemming from swallowed air, food, and other natural body processes, the accumulation of internal gases eventually passes through the rectum, whereupon the anal sphincter vibrates and creates the distinctive sounds associated with flatulence (alvarez 1942). a combination of gasses are present in flatus (the medical term for gas expelled from the digestive tract), which is composed of approximately 79% nitrogen, 17% oxygen, 4% carbon dioxide, and small traces of hydrogen and methane. of that, less than 1% of the gas in the average fart contains the unpleasant smell associated with its passing; this includes small amounts of ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, indole, skatole, volatile amines, and short-chain fatty acids (rabkin and silverman 1991, 8, 14). before i scare anyone off, i would like to contextualize my rationale for including this information. it is understandable that one may be “grossed out” by the physiological processes behind flatulence. we strive to avoid discussions about flatulence when we fart; if we break wind, we might pray that it does not make a sound or smell that will draw attention to us; we may simply avoid acknowledging that a fart has taken place, or if we do, we might pass the blame onto the family pet6 or to a peer with diffusing remarks or posturing; undeniably, some people will endure great physical discomfort in order to withhold flatulence or acknowledge anal productions in public. as such, it is not surprising to note the lack of social awareness or interest about how we fart, much less (and more curiously) why, when, and where we do it. despite its proclivity for creating anxiety, flatulence is a pervasive part of folklore — beginning with learned behaviors during childhood and reinforced by parents and society throughout the life course — and as such, the subversive and compensatory nature of fartlore serves as an excellent entrypoint into a deeper understanding of the myriad ways that people — especially children and adolescents — navigate and respond to the pressures of not only their bowels, but their social worlds. indeed, one would be hard-pressed to find someone over the age of ten who was unfamiliar with the enduring children’s song, “beans, beans,” which features stanzas such as: beans, beans, they’re good for your heart the more you eat, the more you fart the more you fart, the better it feels beans should be served at every meal! thursby boise ikastola 63 and: beans, beans, the musical [or magical] fruit the more you eat, the more you toot the more you toot, the better it feels so serve some beans at all your meals! even though a significant portion of fartlore plays on the social anxieties stemming from flatulence, it bears noting that “passing gas” was not always a socially taboo subject matter; cultural awareness and engagement with flatulence has been documented for centuries.7 societal attitudes about the public embrace or acknowledgment of flatulence have been undergoing revision since the mid-19th century, when the social classification of highbrow and lowbrow culture became increasingly dichotomous and subjects such as flatulence began to be associated with immaturity or the lower class (see levine 1988). accordingly, the historical accounts about the deliberate engagement of flatulence in customs or narrative forms show a cultural revelry with the subject in past generations and cultures, whereas modern fartlore collections hint at secretive, malicious, or emotionally reactive causes behind the creation of fartlore, especially amongst pre-adults. perhaps the most (in)famous study of scatology was conducted by soldierscientist john g. bourke, who witnessed a ritual urine-drinking ceremony among the zuñi in new mexico in 1881 and subsequently became fascinated with the role of excrement in world cultures. bourke spent over a decade researching and collecting scatological folklore from around the world en route to publishing the exhaustive scatologic rites of all nations in 1891. unsurprisingly, the folklore of flatulence was well-represented in bourke’s treatise, including the proposition that the fart was seen as a divinity to ancient egyptians who saw flatulence as the personification of a natural function (87-88) and the revelation that farts were once used as a means of toll payment in france dating back to 1398 (109-10). my point in sharing these incidents of cultural awareness about flatulence and their influence on the creation of fartlore is to underscore the longstanding tradition of social commentary and interest in the subject and its narrative byproducts. fartlore is more than just a response to the constraints of modern social norms; it is a derivative of tradition that has managed to repeat and vary throughout history. could it be that between the psychological need for the creation of fartlore (to bypass social restrictions in order to gain pleasure) and the contemporary social pressures to control one’s anal productions (through reinforcement, peer group dynamics, and the social construction of normalcy) that folklore helps to negotiate children’s understanding of their body and corporeal presence with the expectations and constraints of society in the early years of their development? and if so, why are males seemingly more likely than females to participate in fartlore? flatulence is a liminal category between excretion and relief and thus serves as a fertile testing ground for establishing cognitive categories of dirtiness and cleanliness in pre-adulthood (especially childhood). by extension, identification of what makes something profane and sacred, aggressive or submissive, is also a boise ikastola thursby 64 component of flatulence’s importance to child and adolescent development of understanding social boundaries. the agent is unclear in the social construction of the flatulence taboo, and as such the sense of liminality serves to test honesty and responsibility; in a sense it serves as a means of moral conditioning through training the child in a more influential way than during other periods of the life course. william bascom’s (1954) classic identification of the “four functions of folklore” — escape, validation, education, and social control (with the goal of stabilizing society) — embodies the functionalist approach to understanding the reasons for folklore’s creation and dissemination; that is, the assumption that folklore has a purpose or “function” in society and can thus be viewed through this lens of interpretation. functionalism has long served as a theoretical framework for the study of children’s folklore (gaignebet 1974; knapp and knapp 1976; opie and opie 1953); however, elliott oring (1976) and others have criticized functionalism as merely interpreting folklore by providing a greater sense of understanding the consequence of social phenomena, instead of truly explaining its causation through empirical evidence and analysis. as an example, the knapps (1976, 21116) use functionalism as an entry point into explaining fartlore, and while their collection shows a body of folklore that is clearly mediated by the performative presence of flatulence, their reportage falls short of uncovering the motivational sources or contexts that influence their informants and does not make any notation of gendering issues with fartlore.8 the functionalist approach has merit as an analytical framework, but — as critics suggest — it requires deeper inquiry into the sources of the tradition that produced the functions, particularly with regard to its role as a cognitive source of categorization. the reluctance to openly embrace flatulence may be due to the fact that malodorous scents attributed to bodily secretions or emissions (such as perspiration and flatulence) have long been associated with persons of wanton moral character or those of lower class status (brill 1932, 40; largey and watson 1972). even today, negative connotations are attributed to things that are perceived to be unclean or foul-smelling (see drobnick 2006).9 a person who acts undesirably may be called a “stinker,” while a clean or pious person might be described as emitting the “odor of sanctity.” in the animal kingdom, skunks are symbols of avoidance not for their temperament, but for their smell; similar social contempt is held for people who do not smell pleasantly or appear unkempt. the hesitation to openly acknowledge our body’s waste is due in part to the social perception that most of our secretions (from saliva to feces) are “dirty” and therefore symbolize what mary douglas (1966) calls “matter out of place” that can threaten contamination and consequently impinge on an individual’s personal safety (see also dundes 1968; jones 1913, 431; jones 2000; praeger 2007, 51). although the elimination of waste and the passing of gas are two naturally occurring bodily functions, individuals often take proactive measures to mask from others their urge to defecate or flatulate. sociologists have labeled this behavioral response as the “fecal habitus,” or the delicate social organization of the ways that people go about ridding themselves of feces and their subsequent methods for creating a perception of distance from their excrement (inglis 2000). central to the concept of fecal habitus is the assumption that anxiety, embarrassment, or thursby boise ikastola 65 shame follows a bowel movement or the passing of flatulence if they occur in situations where other people are present. proximity to one’s anal productions (such as feces or flatulence) suggests ownership and creates a sense of shame or embarrassment, especially if there are visual or olfactory remnants that can be linked to the individual.10 weinberg and williams assert that the “threat to character is especially severe with regard to defecation, as failure to control the disposition of fecal outputs [including flatulence] in an appropriate way can project a self that is incompatible with a person’s identity as a competent, mature adult” (2005, 316). to this point, erving goffman (1967) notes that the embodied signs of embarrassment (blushing, fumbling, stuttering, sweating, etc.), usually occur when identity claims are unfulfilled or when someone does not appropriately present themselves to others in a social situation. still, there is a performative component to fartlore. folklorist michael owen jones points out that “bravado and the allure of the forbidden are not the only reasons to participate in the disgusting. no sooner do children develop a concept of contagion and learn the disgust response than many of them flaunt it, challenging rules of decorum” (2000, 59). thus, children may “break wind” intentionally or unintentionally, playfully or maliciously. if children cannot pass gas on command, they might imitate the sound by making noises under their armpits or with their mouths, or engage in a prank such as placing a whoopee cushion on a peer’s seat. a certain license is given for children to engage in these activities, although they become aware that as they become older, it is less desirable behavior. children and adolescents frequently experiment with social taboos through humor and play frames in an effort to better understand the limits of their own corporeal existence, and also in an effort to define their role within the limits of their social networks (see bronner 1988; sutton-smith et. al. 1999). in any case, it is clear that fartlore allows children and adolescents to make their most tangible connections to reality — their own, physical bodies — symbolically disembodied and ethereal, which serves as a psychological release.11 but how is this applied in children’s folklore? flatulence in child and adolescent folklore: examples and interpretations in order to understand and explain the meaning and function of fartlore, i have identified several pervasive categories of the genre, but they are by no means representative of all the texts or types of fartlore in circulation. i purposely provide only a handful of examples for each heading in order to keep the focus on the meaning and contextual function of selected texts, while attempting to avoid overloading this essay with numerous descriptions that lack proper annotation and context.12 as i have mentioned, a problem with the scant collections of fartlore available is the fact that the authors have often done little more than reprint fartlore texts verbatim without contextual information beyond the geographical location of its collection and perhaps the informants’ age. instead, i wish to reveal a few salient examples of fartlore within each category and utilize an interdisciplinary approach in order to interpret them effectively in this section and the proceeding ones. boise ikastola thursby 66 games games have been one of the most popular genres of children’s folklore observed, yet many child and adolescent games that incorporate flatulence have gone unreported. this may be due to difficulty of collecting such corrosive material in the moment of their occurrence. one such game of fartlore in many groups of children and especially early adolescents today is the game of “doorknob,” which is played immediately after someone farts and like most performative fartlore is almost exclusive to males.13 there is no official sanctioning of the game’s beginning other than the passing of flatulence itself; the farter is supposed to quickly yell “safety” as an invocation of protection from physical retaliation for passing gas. however, if one of their peers cries “doorknob” before “safety” can be called, then the farter will be repeatedly punched in the arm until he is able to touch a door handle. as one boy proudly stated, “the game is best when you’re out camping or somewhere where it’s hard to find one to touch!” weinberg and williams note that “breaches of the fecal habitus can be downplayed through normalization and neutralization … [and some] are celebrated in some instances” and tend to occur among young people in samesex settings (2005, 318). this may also serve to ease the anxiety of repressed anal-erotic desires, which fartlore subconsciously invokes during its performance. on the one hand, the game of “doorknob” seems to thrive on the farter’s ability to acknowledge and subsequently revel in the creation of flatulence, especially if there is a big reaction amongst “defenseless” peers. after someone farts and it is acknowledged through the invocation of a magic word (either “safety” or “doorknob,” depending on the child’s role), a play frame is instantly created and entered amongst members of the group of friends that have the game in their repertoire of tomfoolery. once engaged, the play frame enables the farter to claim reprieve from their peers’ admonishment if he yells the magic word first. doing so allows him to not only diffuse his level of embarrassment after passing gas, but also talk, mock, or joke about his farts with his peers afterward; this exchange usually takes the form of celebration or humor from the farter and jeering or humorous, derisive commentaries from the “victims” about the farter’s inconsiderateness or the potency or supernatural qualities of the fart (like its ability to linger endlessly, or make someone’s nostrils burn). to this point, as mary and herbert knapp explain, “the child who farts is almost always the butt of a jeer; thus he is reminded of a cultural prohibition. at the same time, the formulaic nature of these jeers testifies to the frequency and the ordinariness of the situation, and thereby reduces embarrassment to manageable proportions” (knapp and knapp 1976: 216). significantly, farters risk danger playing “doorknob”; they may fail to recognize that the play frame can be initiated by their peers’ invocation of their magic word, “doorknob,” could result in physical punishment through an aggressive release of energy that symbolizes the peers’ retaliation for the “fart attack” they have endured. from an historical perspective, the modern game of “doorknob” shows evidence of repetition and variation taking place in the passing down of traditional fartlore. in the scatologic rites of all nations, john g. bourke describes the game thursby boise ikastola 67 of “touch wood,” in philadelphia, pennsylvania. in bourke’s description of the game, the non-farters would yell “touch wood” when a classmate farted and then proceed to flee for the nearest tree-box. “those who were slow in doing this,” bourke notes, “were pounded by the more rapid ones” (93). humorous narratives and verbal art humor is also a large part of child and adolescent folklore, yet fartlore is often subsumed in collections of jokes rather than given separate attention. anxiety, coupled with the desire to normalize an embarrassing bodily function, yields a considerable amount of the content from which fartlore is composed. humor may be categorized as being predominantly sexual and aggressive in its intention,14 and according to freud, jokes allow people to “evade restrictions and open sources of pleasure that have become inaccessible” (1905b, 103). in sum, humor allows people to have the freedom to express sentiments and thoughts that may be otherwise considered socially reprehensible. children and teenagers are no different, and although the measurement of their social capital is more flexible and forgiving than their adult counterparts, they are nevertheless aware of social taboos and actively work to either circumvent them or subconsciously face them through symbolic interactions (see opie and opie 1953; lytle 2003). jokes are “a powerful way to test and reaffirm cultural values” (ellis 2001, 8) and act as “an expressive genre through which one is encouraged to defuse, by means of laughter or groans, anxieties about and consequent hostility” toward socially deviant issues (smyth 1986, 254). the performance and dissemination of humorous or playful fartlore not only massages children’s or adolescents’ repressed desire for anal play, but also helps to alleviate their unpronounced frustrations, anxieties, or resentment over the restrictions of social decorum or elements of society that are beyond their comprehension and acts as a challenge to the authority of adults or social expectations. a relevant example of this phenomenon comes in the form of homophobic joking, which is especially prevalent amongst adolescents.15 homophobic joking helps adolescents to reaffirm their masculine prerogatives and reassures both their peers and themselves that they are in fact “normal” and heterosexual. considering the social stigma that accompanies deviance from heterosexual orientations, especially during adolescence, homophobic joking appears to engage tensions about sexual orientation, but also reinforces the learned disgust of the anus and promotes the continued repression of anal desires stemming from psychosexual development. another telling example can be found in a narrative that i collected from a 14-year-old male: these two gay guys just had sex. the first gay guy asks if he can take a shower. the other gay guy says “okay, as long as you promise not to jack off in my shower.” so the first gay guy says “okay.” about ten minutes later, the first gay guy comes out of the shower. the second gay guy then goes into the bathroom to go pee and looks in the shower and sees [semen] everywhere. he gets really mad and goes back into the other room and yells, “i thought i told you not to jack off boise ikastola thursby 68 in my shower!” the first guy looks at him and then laughs. he goes, “i didn’t! i farted!” (collected april 9, 2010). this story is highly sexual in its content and seeks to mock the perceived “grossness” of homosexual intercourse through an intentionally graphic humorous narrative. when performed by the adolescent, the story appears to serve three primary functions: first, to reaffirm the teller’s heterosexuality and disgust for homosexual behavior (thus conforming to the masculine expectations of his peer group); second, to distance the teller from any association or empathy for homosexuals — note that the characters in the story do not even have names, they are simply “the first gay guy” and “the second gay guy” — ; and lastly, to demonstrate the teller’s willful disregard of societal attitudes about how “extreme” a narrative should be and what language is appropriate for friendly storytelling. folk beliefs and proverbs fartlore does not always have to begin with observations or jokes about the act of flatulence itself in contemporary society; as a matter of fact, there appear to be a few folk beliefs and customs that are derived from historical attitudes and lore about flatulence.16 considering that folklore is largely reliant on repetition and variation for continued survival, history provides insight into the influence of oral tradition in the formation of fartlore. for example, there was a medieval belief that a man’s soul is passed through his anus at death in the form of flatulence; an accompanying narrative associated with this belief is a tale about a demon that appears and places a sack over the anus of a man who has just died, then flies away with his soul (bourke 1891, 151). in numerous cultures, people similarly believe that sneezing signifies an attempt by one’s soul to leave the body (orientalia 2008). when someone sneezes in contemporary american society we tend to offer a customary “bless you” or “gesundheit,” either out of imitated kindness, or for some, in order to influence another person’s soul to stay in place. as gershon legman points out, “under every layer of folklore another deeper layer will be found, going as far back and as deep down as anyone can trace” (1964, 442). clearly, the logical similarities between modern sneezing beliefs and medieval ideas about the soul at death suggest a connected lineage.17 among the other child and adolescent folk beliefs about flatulence that i collected was the incorporation of fire, usually including a variation about how one could “light a fart” or how farting near a fireplace would create green smoke. these beliefs reveal a desire to make an uncomfortable or embarrassing occurrence into one that not only seems intentional or controlled, but almost supernatural and therefore permissible. additionally, freud (1932) notes that fire can occasionally serve as a symbol of masculinity; in the context of fartlore, the presence of fire as a performative component or neologistic companion (as with labeling a smelly fart to be akin to “dropping a bomb” or “making an explosion”). proverbs about flatulence suggest an awareness of the social pressure not only to control one’s bodily functions in the way that they divert blame to a potential accuser, as with “whoever smelt it, dealt it,” “he who observed it, served it,” and “the smeller is the ‘feller,” but also to give defensive, proverbial retorts such as, thursby boise ikastola 69 “he who said the rhyme, did the crime,” “the one who said the verse made the atmosphere worse,” or the non-rhyming (but double-entendre) proverb, “a fox smells his own hole first.” children are also quick to offer proverbial scatological folk wisdom associated with flatulence and feces as well, such as: “first comes the poop; then comes the soup” which connotes that stomach gas and pain is a sign of impending diarrhea — it should also be noted that “turtle soup” has previously served as a euphemism for diarrhea in american slang: a fact that contributed to its decline as a popular dish in southern indiana in recent decades (bronner 2008, 20). other proverbs support jones’ (1913) belief that there are important unconscious associations between body functions with similar or interconnected sensory outputs, as observed in “why fart and waste it when you can burp and taste it?” (leary 1977, 60). latrinalia it should be noted that fartlore is not limited to verbal or performative genres, as seen in the pervasiveness of latrinalia.18 undeniably, there is an historical precedent of scatological humor that incorporates flatulence, such as the “here i sit” pattern, observed by alan dundes (1968): “here i sit broken hearted/ tried to shit and only farted” (99) or “here i sit in silent bliss/ listening to the trickling piss/ now and then a fart is heard/ calling to the coming turd” (100). in my own ethnographical collection of latrinalia, i have observed that the many of the old patterns are still present, as seen with: “here i sit among the vapors/ cleaned the weed but forgot the papers,”19 which is reminiscent of “here i sit in stinking vapor/ some sonuvabitch stole the toilet paper” (1968, 99). the obvious difference here is that my new example of latrinalia references the use of marijuana as opposed to a focused lamentation on the fecal situation. dundes argues that “the psychological motivation for writing latrinalia is related to an infantile desire to play with feces and to artistically smear it around” (1968, 104). as i have previously noted, the same can be said of fartlore, which combines the infantile desire to play with feces with the desire for challenging social restraints through symbolic smearing in verbal or physical play frames.20 folk speech and slang the folklore of flatulence has also encouraged the negative associations of the word “fart” to be adopted into compound neologistic terms for certain behaviors,21 including “old fart” to describe an unhip individual that is typically seen as over-the-hill, “fart-knocker” to describe someone who is rude, or a “fartmeister” to describe someone who has mastered the “art of farting.” perhaps the most recognizable impact of fartlore on folk speech comes in the form of folk annotations about the different “types” of farts, like the “crop-duster,” which is a left-behind, lingering fart whose owner immediately leaves the area where he or she farted so as not to be blamed; the “firecracker,” which is a fart composed of several short, but loud expulsions of gas in quick succession that makes a distinctive ratta-tat sound; the “queef,” which is a somewhat mythologized boise ikastola thursby 70 “vaginal fart”22 that is said to emit a sound similar to an anal fart and can only be “made by girls”23; and the ever-popular “silent but deadly” or “sbd” for flatulence that does not make a sound during its passing, but still manages to stink.24 sifting through the gas: distinguishing characteristics and motivations in dissecting these examples of fartlore, one might ask: what are the differences between adolescent and children’s responses to the genre? david hufford notes that “obscene material is of great interest to adolescents and forms a very significant part of their repertoires” (1970, 55). as evidenced by many of the examples i have discussed, such as in the game of “doorknob” or in homophobic joke narratives, a substantial portion of adolescent fartlore is either physically brutish or indirectly sexual in its nature. this suggests that adolescent fartlore aims to confirm the maturation process through a more adult-like repertoire of prose while compensating for the social anxieties and insecurities that often accompany the adolescent experience. one of the first surveys of adolescent folklore as a distinctive genre came from martha dirks, who in her 1963 essay, “teen-age folklore from kansas,” distinguishes four main genres of folklore commonly associated with the age group: humor, slang, customs/beliefs, and verse/song. indeed, the period of adolescence overlaps with the cultural expression of the preceding and succeeding periods of life, and consequently adolescents “unconsciously retain (or consciously mock) elements of the folklore which played such an important role in their childhood years … [but] many cycles of childhood games or customs disappear completely as youngsters move on to new interests” (samuelson 1991, 18; see also meley 1991). much of children’s fartlore is related to playing or navigating the social pressures for maintaining control over their bodily functions and urges. hence, fartlore in childhood often incorporates an awareness of these social pressures by mocking the flatulence taboo through symbolic interaction, and thus reinforces cultural expectations of proper behavior. since many children learn bodily control in the public school setting where toilet practices and their mastery are enforced and socialized as a necessity, they are more reflexively aware of these expectations through perpetual group feedback and encouragement. when this does not take place, as weinberg and williams observe: “attention to a breach of body boundaries … is sought to embarrass the offender and provide amusement to others” (2005, 318-19). in other words, fartlore in childhood helps to underscore the importance of bodily control and reinforce social norms and control expected of their age and gender groups. the celebration or revulsion of flatulence in child and adolescent culture demarcates much more than folk perceptions about anal productions; it symbolizes and reinforces the expectations of gender roles and helps to frame societal definitions of masculinity and femininity. males that emit perfumed scents may be chastised, and as largey and watson acknowledge, “many males of the labor class associate the odor of cologne on a male with effeminacy” (1972, 1023). undoubtedly, the open enjoyment and playful manipulation of flatulence tends to be seen as a predominantly male behavior, and the great majority of thursby boise ikastola 71 performative or interactive fartlore is collected from males (ackerly 2007, 213),25 but what about females? elizabeth tucker (2009) has shown that females are not opposed to partaking in risky or taboo behavior, and other scholars have collected numerous examples of subversive folklore performed and transmitted by females (knapp and knapp 1976; legman 1968; opie and opie 1953; sherman and weisskopf 1995). we of course know that women flatulate too, despite that they are underrepresented in fartlore collections (admittedly including this one), which suggests either a genuine lack of female participation or an overtaking of the genre by males. sociologists weinberg and williams (2005) posit that women are much more likely than men to have heightened concern over controlling evidence of their anal productions given their physical idealization. they offer that for males, bodily grossness may be valued for its opposition to the manners that femininity is thought to imply. the delight taken in physical behaviors like burping can indicate men’s disdain for what they perceive as feminine. some men may adopt this form of embodiment as an expression of their power over women as they deliberately breach the [fecal] habitus. such “strategic embarrassment” is also used to socially control other men who are seen to be straying from masculine ideals (weinberg and williams 2005, 317). in other words, fartlore is mostly performed by males because it helps to reinforce social and cultural expectations of “manly behavior” (see bronner 2005).26 conversely, the expectations of females are elevated and hyper-sexualized, which discourages deviance from behaviors that would indicate otherwise. gershon legman posits that jokes about farting “must also be an evasive form of scatological abuse of women, since a large proportion of these are particularly concerned with the embarrassment of women” (1968, 858). however, fartlore that is not performed — that is, fartlore unrelated to the actual passing of flatulence — does include female participation, as the biting, gender-charged bit of female fartlore “girls pass notes; boys pass gas” suggests.27 still, fartlore tends to be a male-dominated genre, and with bodily humor, “the longer the relationship, the more … [routinized] the experience of other’s bodily functions” becomes in peer groups (weinberg and williams 2005, 329). one’s level of comfort with flatulence or other anal productions is considerably smaller before such routinization takes place amongst his network of friends or playmates. by embracing “gross” bodily functions as a weapon or tool of play, males are able to hold additional power over their peers — especially females — and reaffirm their social status and experiment with genders’ social hierarchies. perhaps, then, a “lingering” question might be: why is fartlore particularly important in childhood and adolescence? after all, adults are more than capable of participating in flatulence humor or games. the folklore of flatulence in childhood and adolescence is special because all adults pass through childhood and adolescence, where they acquire knowledge and experience with the genre. the social world of pre-adulthood encourages peer interaction and the boise ikastola thursby 72 experimentation with group dynamics; however, as people tend to get older, their relationships become more dyadic, familial, or introverted, and consequently the performance of fartlore is not only unexpected in social settings, but truly uncommon. nevertheless, the impact of folklore and knowledge of the taboos impressed upon pre-adults carries into the consciousness of their adult selves, which serves to cyclically reinforce expectations of bodily control in future generations, and continues to control the existing definitions of behavioral ideals and social constructions of maturity. accordingly, studies of fartlore and subversive topics should begin before adulthood in order to fully understand its context. psychoanalytic and folkloristic considerations flatulence is not exclusively regulated by social pressures; there are biological and psychological factors that influence the creation and dissemination of fartlore as well. the psychoanalytical approach to fartlore might suggest that the anxiety over flatulence is due to the deep-rooted psychological shame felt for deriving pleasure from our anal productions during our development.28 by making a sociallyunacceptable desire (such as the wish to play with one’s anus through flatulence) into a symbolically pleasurable act through fartlore, children and adolescents subconsciously satisfy their infantile attraction to their anal productions and help to stabilize their transition into adulthood through play. according to the father of psychoanalysis, sigmund freud (1905a), children pass through several psychosexual stages of development: the oral stage (0-1 years), during which a child’s primary source of pleasure is derived from sensations in and around the mouth; the anal stage (age 1-3), which revolves around the process of toilet training and marks the period where the child begins to negotiate control over their own urges and behaviors, especially those related to the expulsion of waste; and the phallic stage (age 4-6) which marks a period of infatuation with the genitals (see freud 1924). the initial stages of psychosexual development are then followed by a latency period (where sexual urges remain dormant from age 7 until puberty) and the genital stage (from puberty into adulthood), in which the child regains an interest in pleasure derived from the genitals and seeks to facilitate normal relationships with others. freud suggests that the inability for a child to successfully pass through these stages of psychosexual developmental will result in social and psychological turmoil later in life as represented by their anal-repulsive (disorderly and unpredictable) or analretentive (regimented and obsessive) personalities (see also brown 1959; freud 1913; jones 1913, 413-37). the residual impact of the anal stage (or anal-erotic stage) is psychologically central to the production and dissemination of fartlore later in life; as norman o. brown remarks, “some of the most important categories of social behavior (play, gift, property, weapon) originate in the anal stage of infantile sexuality” (1959, 191). during the anal stage, especially during toilet training, children learn that their ability to produce and subsequently maintain control over their bodily waste has symbolic power; withholding their feces can draw the ire of their parents while expulsion of their excrement can result in praise. as a result, children attach thursby boise ikastola 73 symbolic importance to their anal productions and interpret defecation and contact with their feces as being physically or sexually pleasurable; additionally, they see their feces as their own creations and interpret them as gifts (jones 1913, 424; ferenczi 1913, 325).29 it stands to reason that farting may subconsciously connote failure, as stool is solid and considered an accomplishment when “successfully” passed into a designated receptacle, especially during toilet training.30 the psychological process of sublimation occurs toward the end of the anal stage when the child’s pleasurable response and attachment to anal production is transferred to interactions with new symbols that resemble the physical composition of feces, such as mud, clay, or sand; this develops into a desire to play with small, hard objects like marbles, buttons, and stones, and eventually, small coins (jones 1913, 425-27). thus, the transference that occurs during sublimation may appear in the form of an adult’s desire to acquire material possessions such as property or money since they can be symbolically analogous to excrement and help to satisfy the person’s repressed anal-erotic desires (carroll 1987, 491; jones 1913, 427).31 therefore, an adult’s infatuation with money and material objects is a result of the fact that they chose “the love of their parents over the pleasures of [feces, and in] the absence of affection, [an individual will] turn to their sublimated anal desires in hopes of recovering the gratification they traded for parental approval” (praeger 2007, 114; see also ferenczi 1914). freud notes that in “the whole mental domain of the psychology of the neurosis, the sexual still includes the excrementitious, and it is understood in the old, infantile sense,” meaning that the adult’s repressed attraction to anal pleasure still remains even if they are not cognitively aware (1905a, 140). thus, the homophobic narratives that i reported herein project the adolescent’s own subconscious anxieties about the anus as a receptacle of pleasure. by othering homosexuals, the male informant not only is able to save face in his social network (and actually obtain higher status by symbolically acting “more manly” through the performative dismissal of perceivedeffeminate behavior), but also able through rhetorical commentary to tacitly dismiss his own shame for his infantile attraction to anal-eroticism. some psychoanalysts believe that a child’s transition from the oral stage into the anal stage imprints a symbolic correlation between the mouth and anus. this may be observed in the neologism for farting, “to clear one’s throat,” which suggests a peripheral awareness of the functional similarities between the mouth (used for things “going in”) and the anus (used for things “going out”). freudian disciple ernest jones posits that flatulence has important unconscious associations with other occurrences that have similar sensory attributes, such as breath and speech, which (like flatulence) also expel air and have olfactory or auditory markers that must be controlled by the individual; from a sociological standpoint, this is supported by the contention that “moral symbolism relevant to interaction is expressed in terms of olfactory imagery” (largey and watson 1972, 1021). for jones, these “important unconscious associations” explain society’s reverence for good dental hygiene and the desire for pleasantly scented breath: because bad breath attracts ridicule by peers if deemed malodorous in the same way that flatulence might. additionally, these unconscious associations account for the strong emphasis placed on the learning of proper grammar and syntax throughout boise ikastola thursby 74 a child’s tenure at public school, where uncontrolled speech impediments could garner teasing from peers in the same way that gratuitous flatulence would (jones 1913, 435). the merger of unconscious awareness and social pressures about the body leads to the complex hybridization of folk knowledge in its disseminated state, folklore. the awareness of similarities between oral and anal functions as posited by jones — subconscious or not — appears to be responsible for the evolution of the word “cheek” in contemporary slang as a neologism for the buttocks; as the double meaning of this essay’s title suggests, a widespread acceptance of this symbolic correlation exists.32 when used as a noun in conventional english, “cheek” usually refers to a part of the face near the mouth; as a verb, “cheek” can describe the behavior of someone who exhibits impudence. this is not the only case in folklore where the functions of the anus become blurred with the perception of other objects; some folk narratives seem to corroborate jones’ observations about the symbolic associations between functionallyor visuallysimilar objects and the anal region.33 a representative example from folklore can be found in simon j. bronner’s reportage of a humorous narrative in which a fat woman consumes large quantities of grapes, goes to sleep with an upset stomach facing the wrong direction in bed, and subsequently has her flatulence mistaken as bad breath by her husband (1981, 107-08). as the story continues, the husband becomes enraged that his sleeping wife — who he does not know is actually lying upside-down in bed (with her buttocks near his face) and cannot hear him — refuses to oblige his demand for her to face the other direction; the husband threatens to “slap [her] goddamn eyeballs out,” and after several unheeded warnings, he hits her so hard that one of the grapes she ate flies out of her anus and lands on him. he thinks that he has actually knocked out one of his wife’s eyeballs; in a fit of worry he leans forward in the dark and unknowingly kisses her buttocks, shortly thereafter quipping, “whooo, baby, you be in bad shape because your jaws — you must be got the mumps” (108). the tale of grapes that are mistaken for eyeballs and buttocks that are mistaken for lumpy jaws suggests that folklore can assist a storyteller in encoding his awareness or anxieties about parts or functions of the body through symbolic objects or anecdotes, a claim that has also been supported in photocopy-lore traditions (dundes and pagter 1978, 1987). this suggests that there is compatibility between the psychoanalytic and folkloristic approaches to the study of scatological themes (see bronner 2007b; dundes 1987, 3-46). flatulence has made cameos in numerous urban legends, and not just ones about artists who place paint in their rectums and create “fart art” (dawson 1998, 155). elizabeth tucker references the popular college legend about a student’s encounter with laxative-laced campus grub and the gaseous consequences thereafter, and notes that such a tale represents fartlore “at its most extreme: both humbling and hilarious,” and adds that those who hear the legend “can only hope they will continue to be the ones who laugh, not victims of such embarrassing discomfort” (tucker 2005, 104-05). another popular urban legend from photocopylore as well as oral tradition is “the surpriser surprised,” in which a man is blindfolded by his wife on his birthday and must sit alone, waiting alone in thursby boise ikastola 75 anticipation of his birthday surprise, while she answers a phone call in the other room. feeling the beans he had for lunch rumble in his stomach, he decides to let out a few juicy farts in her absence. when she returns, she removes his blindfold to reveal that he is seated at a table of his friends, family, and colleagues. as it turns out, his birthday surprise is in fact a surprise party thrown by his wife … and he has just gassed his guests (dundes and pagter 1978, 98-99; see also jansen 1979).34 folklore serves as a means to project one’s anxieties, attitudes, or beliefs, and one of the most reflexive means of such expression comes from the sharing of narratives. without a doubt, the appearance of flatulence in urban legends suggests at least some level of awareness about the fear of its occurrence in social settings and the potential consequences it would render for one’s reputation. folklorists have often shied away from subjects of controversial scope, but as fartlore shows, there is merit in analyzing the unsavory components of society. fartlore, folkloristics, and the study of the subversive under every rock of subversive folklore lies a meaning that waits to be discovered and a causation that requires explanation. in his classic study of latrinalia, alan dundes remarks that despite the widespread abundance of “shithouse poetry” and its demonstrably traditional structure, “one looks in vain for extended collections of published texts and for any rational discussion of them or the practice of writing them” (1968, 91). such a statement could easily be adapted to discuss the dearth of modern research collections encompassing the intersection of folklore, flatulence, and scatology. michael owen jones points out that the research of folklorists “usually centers on celebration, festive events, and the positive associations … [with] ethnic or regional identity” (2000, 53).35 this narrow-sighted approach has been a longstanding problem within the discipline.36 in truth, folkloristics has a history of taking a reserved approach to the study of contentious subject matters. a key example may be found in the motif-index of folk literature (1932-36 and 1955-58),37 in which stith thompson makes a point to state that the categorization of motifs regarding erotic or scatological humor was unnecessary for the purposes of his index. regarding x700-799, “humor concerning sex,” thompson explains that thousands of obscene motifs in which there is no point except the obscenity itself might logically come at this point, but they are entirely beyond the scope of the present work. they work a literature to themselves, with its own periodicals and collections. in view of the possibility that it might become desirable to classify these motifs and place them within the present index, space has been left … for such motifs (1960, vol. 5, 514). thompson left x700-799 blank purportedly for the sake of good taste and for the preservation of his volume’s academic integrity. in reality, however, thompson knew better than to exclude such a fertile source of folklore, especially given boise ikastola thursby 76 its ubiquity. instead, risqué tales with themes of eroticism or scatology were inconspicuously wedged between broader themes so as not to raise alarm, including such entries as “illicit sexual relations” (t400), “humor of discomfiture” (x0-99), and “clever verbal retorts” (j1250) among them (legman 1964, 455).38 according to gershon legman, thompson’s rejection of “obscene jokes with moral horror at x700, while bringing them back in disguise at dozens of other numbers, makes clear one of the deepest deficiencies of any classification scheme: the inevitable subjectiveness of approach by the indexer” (1964, 455). measuring the appropriateness of a subject is fine, but as dundes notes, just because a topic is judged to be insulting or crude does not suffice as “an intellectually valid reason not to publish a well-researched paper or monograph” (2005, 404). of course, the motif-index is not the first (or last) case of an academic discipline catering to political correctness, but in the case of folkloristics — a supposed champion of interdisciplinarity and a highly reflexive subject area — why is this so? why is it considered professionally risky to talk about feces, flatulence, or anal-eroticism, even if presented in a thoughtful and deliberate manner? to be sure, the study of fartlore may strike some as an intellectually devoid or outrageously tasteless endeavor, despite the fact that there is a small, but extant crop of folklore scholarship that demonstrates the value of examining “unpretty” folklore, including the conceptualization of scatological themes (bronner 1981, 1985, 2007a, 2009, 56-63; dundes 1968, 1984; legman 1964, 1968, 1975; sherman and weisskoff 1995). we must strive to remember that while folklore can be dark or grotesque, our role as ethnographers is not to judge whether or not a subject matter is too risky to observe or report. instead, we must hold ourselves accountable to our profession and to our subjects by collecting and interpreting data from all aspects of folk culture, including the subversive. only then will we be able to draw adequate conclusions on the nuances of human behavior within their proper contexts. acknowledgements this work is dedicated to the late alan dundes, whose brave scholarship on everything from latrinalia and psychoanalysis to the scholastic boundaries of the folklore discipline has inspired me to continue his legacy of studying underexplored, yet ubiquitous cultural practices that merit scrutiny despite their unconventional nature. i also owe a special debt of gratitude to simon j. bronner for his helpful suggestions, thoughtful critiques, and unwavering enthusiasm for the growth and completion of this essay. i am also grateful to elizabeth tucker for her correspondence, advice, and support as well. for a topic that on the surface tends to raises eyebrows (and nostrils), both bronner and tucker were pillars of support and generously donated their time to me in order to improve the overall quality and scope of this research. thanks are also due to my friends and colleagues at the pennsylvania state university, harrisburg american studies program, who provided helpful suggestions on earlier drafts of this essay: jennifer dutch, spencer lincoln green, nancy jones, matthew lavelle, erica leonard, paul miller, and amy milligan. lastly, i must acknowledge and thank thursby boise ikastola 77 the love of my life (and a real gas!), my fiancée, angelina sanfilippo, who was quick to remind me of the numerous reasons why fartlore is a topic that is long overdue for a serious sniff. notes 1. see the new partridge dictionary of slang and unconventional english (dalzell and victor 2006) or http://onlineslangdictionary.com/thesaurus. 2. see knapp and knapp (1976, 211). 3. fartlore relatively functions alongside or in contrast to other taboo subjects as well. for example, another bodily emission that receives little attention in folkloristic scholarship is boogers and their folkloric byproducts — certainly boogers garner a similar response (regarding the fear of contagion) as flatulence. 4. on a personal note, i left indiana university after my master’s degree for the ph.d. program in american studies at the pennsylvania state university, harrisburg. there, i was met with enthusiasm by my advisors and instructors, who not only enjoyed the sometimes-controversial or unorthodox subjects that interested me, but challenged me to fully explore all of their nooks and crannies. indiana university and other folklore programs should take note that encouragement and support is the only way to promote true progress in our humble discipline. it may sound like sour grapes on the surface, but i assure you that the narrowmindedness i argue combatively against throughout this essay has merit, and folklore programs such as iu should heed the call to welcome the expansion of our discipline’s scope rather than suppress a potentially insightful research project in neglected areas of inquiry for the purposes of maintaining the status quo. 5. see “12-year old boy arrested after deliberately ‘breaking wind’ in class.” this blog rules. 12 jan. 2010. http://www.thisblogrules.com/2010/01/12-year-oldboy-arrested-after.html (accessed 18 april 2010). 6. to draw an historical correlation to fartlore, gershon legman (1968) notes that the “blaming of the fart on domestic animals is standard, and evidently ancient,” citing examples as far back as 1654 (859). 7. for example, greek physician hippocrates believed that all diseases could be attributed to built-up gases in the internal organs, stating that “it is best for flatulence to pass without noise and breaking than to be intercepted and accumulated internally” (nibbelink 2008, 83) and greek philosopher and mathematician pythagoras forbade the consumption of beans among his disciples (5). roman emperor claudius (10 b.c.–a.d. 54) considered passing a law that legalized farting at banquets “out of concern for people’s health” (83). flatulence was a familiar motif in medieval christianity and storytelling (allen 1997), and reformer martin luther preached that the devil could not stand the smell of rotten odors and suggested that any mortal man could beat him by baring their rear and farting directly into satan’s nostrils should he appear (dawson 1998, 90) — as jim dawson writes, “the word pumpernickel comes from ‘devil’s fart’ in german. pumpern means ‘to fart’ and nickel is a ‘devil’ or ‘goblin,’” and “the idea … was that dark, heavy pumpernickel bread could ‘produce outbursts of flatulence as powerful as those of the devil himself’” (1998, 91). in many early boise ikastola thursby 78 tales of fartlore, it was believed that the devil produced flammable flatulence. flatulence sporadically appeared in social customs and literature by the middle ages. in 16th century france, farting was used as a “ritualized signal for the advent of spring” through the utterance of the “great fart of dehibernation” (bailey 1996, 51). for an in-depth overview of the history and role of flatulence in the middle ages, see allen (2007). literature often incorporated flatulence or scatological themes. german literature and customs have long incorporated scatological themes (dundes 1984; rollfinke and rollfinke 1986; pilipp 1997), but by no means represent the only nationality that robustly engaged in the dissemination of fartlore. english author and poet geoffrey chaucer made flatulence a lingering part of several of his famed stories, including the canterbury tales (see hasenfratz 1996); irish satirist jonathan swift, author of gulliver’s travels, was criticized by some of his contemporaries for overusing flatulence as a humorous ploy in his works; american author and literary icon mark twain published “1601” in 1880 (anonymously until 1906, mind you), which features a fictional dialogue about flatulence between several historical figures. in 1781, benjamin franklin wrote a letter to the royal academy of brussels in which he challenged their scientists to create a drug that would “render the natural discharges of wind from our bodies not only inoffensive, but agreeable as perfumes” and gushed about the pleasure that would befall society if everyone could freely express their “scentiments” without embarrassment (rabkin and silver 1991, 128-29). the french entertainer joseph pujol, better known as le pétomane, made a career as a professional “flatulist” and toured the world for over twenty years, headlining at the moulin rouge numerous times (allen 2007; bart 1995; nibbelink 2008; rabkin and silverman 1991). 8. nevertheless, it bears noting that the knapps most certainly broke ground in proposing fartlore as a worthwhile category of children’s folklore. 9. for example, one might say that something “stinks like shit” to express a malodorous scent. 10. to this point, a telling statistic is that on a nine item “disgust scale” administered by sociological researchers, the highest ranking item was “you see a bowel movement left unflushed in a public toilet” (rozin et al. 1993, 585). 11. see sklar (1994) and young (1994) for an overview of bodylore and its relationship to the interpretation of the self in society. 12. i realize that this decision may disappoint some readers. for those that this is the case, i recommend legman (1968: 858-65) whose collection contains ample annotation and interpretation. for less-analytical, but more descriptive collections of fartlore, see knapp and knapp (1976, 211-16) or sherman and weisskopf (1995, 55-58). 13. throughout my fieldwork (including the cross-referencing of other scholars’ work), i did not see any reportage on females playing this game, which is why i occasionally use masculine modifiers in my description of this game. no sexism is intended. 14. for an example of sexual and aggressive folklore that occasionally incorporates flatulence within the narrative structure, see bronner (1981, 91-109, thursby boise ikastola 79 114-15n5). for commentary on the historical assumption of humor as being sexual and aggressive, see oring (1987, 277). 15. one joke that i collected followed the common question-answer/ riddle formula to pose a homophobic joke, q: how do you seat four gay guys on one barstool? a: turn it upside down. another example, though less homophobic, is nevertheless “anal-oriented” and includes wordplay, q: what does star trek and toilet paper have in common? a: they both circle around uranus looking for klingons! 16. the opies report the use of “pull my finger” — which is usually the impetus for a prank in which pulling the peer’s finger “releases” a fart — as a component of a joke stanza collected from schoolchildren (1959, 61). this may suggest a correlation. 17. while the sneeze correlation to flatulence is relevant, so too are the connections between the flatulence taboo and more acceptable but nonetheless restricted actions such as belching/ burping, hiccupping, or nose-dripping/ blowing one’s nose in an inappropriate setting. all of these emissions and bodily functions have been folklorized due to their audible and visual components, but are clearly seen as more acceptable — perhaps because they are derived from the mouth instead of the anus. 18. “latrinalia” is more-commonly known as bathroom graffiti today to nonfolklorists. 19. collected march 22, 2010 in new london, pa. also seen on the wall was a limerick: when i get up to wipe my ass, i like to pass a little gas/ it clears my hole and dries the bowl/ and shows i got a lotta class. how cheeky! 20. taking a psychoanalytic approach, simon j. bronner (2009, 56-63) hypothesizes that the internet may serve as a virtual play frame for adolescents to symbolically “smear” one another from a sitting position. 21. urbandictionary.com hosts many of these annotations and operates with a folk-moderated wiki interface. unlike the average dictionary, urbandictionary. com celebrates and even encourages subversive and shocking definitions of folk neologisms. the posted definitions are then allotted a “thumbs up-thumbs down” rating system to allow site visitors to symbolically voice their approval or disapproval of a submitted description for all to see. 22. according to the infantile cloaca theory of psychoanalysis, “the female genitals and anus are conceived as a single opening … and only later is it discovered that this region of the body contains two separate cavities and openings” (legman 1968, 329). this may account for the emergence of the “queef” designation as a “vaginal fart.” girls also refer to “period farts” as an excuse for flatulence during menstruation, again connoting the greater perception of inappropriateness for females to engage or acknowledge flatulence. 23. when i asked a small group of boys in their early adolescence if girls farted, one responded jokingly: “no, but they queef instead,” which demonstrates the gendered othering of the opposite sex by a male informant as a means to distance themselves from their own urges or desires. 24. i also collected a rhyming variation of the “silent but deadly” annotation as “silent but violent.” boise ikastola thursby 80 25. if you want proof that flatulence is promoted as a “manly behavior,” look no further than bobby mercer’s how do you light a fart?: and 150 other essential things every guy should know about science (2009), which submits a feminized presentation of science through the examination of supposedly masculine subjects such as belching, farting, and defecation. these “manly” acts are framed as topics that not only should be of interest to men, but information that they “should know about.” 26. indeed, fartlore is perceived as being manly because it is aggressive, attention-getting, and dirty. 27. for additional reference to women’s interaction with scatological humor relating to flatulence, see legman (1968, 860). 28. certainly, this interpretation of human behavior has its share of detractors; in fact, one might even argue that psychoanalysis has more critics today than it does supporters due to its controversial suppositions. that said, a freudian might argue in response that the vehement resistance to interpretations found in psychoanalysis underscore the individual’s strong desire to ignore their repressed infantile desires out of shame … but i digress! as with any scholarship or theoretical approach, the success of an essay should rest on the ability of the researcher to effectively collect, annotate, and present evidence on their subject, whereupon the strength of their findings should be determined by readers on a case-by-case basis — and only after reading and reflecting upon the interpretations therein. the incorporation of psychoanalysis into the interpretations of folklore and allied fields should be held to the same standard of suspended judgment. after all, when we stop to consider the fact that fartlore comes from “talking out our asses” so to speak, even the skeptics must acknowledge that a psychoanalytic approach offers plausible explanations to the origins of scatological folklore in society. see dundes (1987, 3-46) for an overview of the psychoanalytic approach and correlation to folklore. one of alan dundes’ greatest contributions to folkloristics is, in fact, is his development of the psychoanalytic method for interpreting folklore. for an excellent historical and contextual overview of dundes’ contributions to folkloristics, as well as his psychoanalytic perspectives and argumentation, see bronner (2007b). those interested in scatological folklore will find particular value in the section dubbed by bronner as “theses on feces” (352-81). 29. for more contemporary applications of this concept, see dundes (1968, 101-04); bronner (2009, 56-63). 30. parents will often encourage their child to try and “make a poopie” if they hear them farting. this reinforces the idea that defecating is the positive outcome of properly dealing with bowel pressures. recall the example of latrinalia that ends with “tried to shit, but only farted” — again, even in folklore, an awareness of the perception of failure due to the absence of fecal production is present. 31. as simon bronner pointed out to me during an emailed correspondence, freud is often misunderstood as always equating the symbol of money to excrement; however, this is not accurate. freud did tend to universalize the symbolic response, but anthropological psychoanalysts such as alan dundes (1968, 1984; 1987) and michael carroll (1987) considered cultural factors such thursby boise ikastola 81 as the intensity of toilet training in a certain country as contextual factors in distinguishing the correlation. 32. if readers need further convincing, the new partridge dictionary of slang and unconventional english confirms that “cheek” has been popularly adapted to be used in reference to buttocks (dalzell and victor 2006, 378). see also legman (1968, 814-21) for a discussion of how the buttocks have been incorporated into other neologisms or scatological humor out of concerns for social taboos. 33. see leary (1977) on “bullshitting” as a form of narrative gesturing. 34. similar tales have also surfaced in the collections of brunvand (1981, 2002) and legman (1968, 861). 35. for additional insight on the tendency for folkloristics to avoid conflict, see bronner (1998). 36. again, see my own personal story in note 4 for additional support to this claim. 37. see also frank hoffman’s motif index of anglo-american erotica, which does some include some flatulence-related material, but is predominantly phallocentric. 38. in other motif collections, flatulence and scatological themes are moreopenly identifiable. for example, hoffman (1973) identifies and indexes “humor concerning defecation and breaking wind,” as tale-type x716. simon j. bronner also notes that terrence leslie hansen’s the types of the folktale in cuba, puerto rico, the dominican republic, and spanish south america (berkeley and los angeles: university of california press, 1957) includes tale type 1459, “girlfriend is very beautiful but cannot control flatulence. friend asks her to dance. as soon as she begins to dance, the whistle blows. everybody looks for the fire.” (bronner 1981, 114-15n5). works cited ackerly, janice. 2007. the subversive world of new zealand children’s playground rhymes. journal of folklore research 44(2/3): 205-25. allen, valerie. 2007. on farting: language and laughter in the middle ages. new york: palgrave macmillan. alvarez, w.c. 1942. what causes flatulence? journal of the american medical association 120: 21. bailey, peter. 1996. breaking the sound barrier: a historian listens to noise. body society 2: 49-66. bart, benjamin. 1995. the history of farting. philadelphia, pa: trans-atlantic publications. bascom, william. 1954. four functions of folklore. journal of american folklore 67: 333-49. bourke, john g. 1891. the scatologic rites of all nations. new york: william and morrow. brill, a.a. 1932. the sense of smell in the neuroses and psychoses. psychoanalytic quarterly vol. 1: 7-42. boise ikastola thursby 82 bronner, simon j. 1981. saturday night in greenville: an interracial tale-and-music session in context. folklore forum 14(2): 85-120. _______. 1985. what’s grosser than gross? new sick joke cycles. midwestern journal of language and lore 11: 39-49. _______. 1988. american children’s folklore. atlanta, ga: august house publishing. _______. 1998. following tradition: folklore in the discourse of american culture. logan: utah state university press. _______, ed. 2005. manly traditions: the folk roots of american masculinities. bloomington: indiana university press. _______. 2007a. analyzing the ethnic self: the hinkel dreck theme in pennsylvania-german folk narrative. columbia journal of american studies 8: 20-54. _______, ed. 2007b. the meaning of folklore: the analytical essays of alan dundes. logan: utah state university press. _______. 2008. killing tradition: inside hunting and animal rights controversies. lexington: university press of kentucky. _______. 2009. digitizing and virtualizing folklore. in folklore and the internet: vernacular expression in a digital world, ed. trevor j. blank, 21-66. logan: utah state university press. brown, norman o. 1959. life against death: the psychoanalytical meaning of history. middletown, ct: wesleyan university press. brunvand, jan harold. 1981. the vanishing hitchhiker: american urban legends and their meanings. new york: w.w. norton & co. _______. 2002. encyclopedia of urban legends. new york: w.w. norton & co. carroll, michael p. 1987. praying the rosary: the anal-erotic origins of a popular catholic devotion. journal for the scientific study of religion 26(4): 486-98. dalzell, tom and terry victor. 2006. the new partridge dictionary of slang and unconventional english, 9th edition. new york: routledge press. dawson, jim. 1998. who cut the cheese? a cultural history of the fart. berkeley, ca: ten speed press. ________. 2006. blame it on the dog: a modern history of the fart. berkeley, ca: ten speed press. dirks, martha. 1963. teen-age folklore from kansas. western folklore 22(2): 89102. douglas, mary. 2002 [1966]. purity and danger: an analysis of concepts of pollution and taboo. new york: routledge. drobnick, jim, ed. 2006. the smell culture reader. new york: berg. dundes, alan. 1968. here i sit — a study of american latrinalia. papers of the kroeber anthropological society 34: 91-105. ________. 1984. life is like a chicken coop ladder. a portrait of german culture through folklore. new york: columbia university press. ________. 1987. parsing through customs: essays by a freudian folklorist. madison: university of wisconsin press. ________. 2005. folkloristics in the twenty-first century. journal of american folklore 118(470): 385-408. thursby boise ikastola 83 dundes, alan, and carl r. pagter. 1978. work hard and you shall be rewarded: urban folklore from the paperwork empire. bloomington: indiana university press. ________. 1987. when you’re up to your ass in alligators: more urban folklore from the paperwork empire. detroit: wayne state university press. ellis, bill. 2001. a model for collecting and interpreting world trade center disaster jokes. new directions in folklore. 5 october. https://scholarworks. iu.edu/dspace/handle/2022/3876/ (accessed april 4, 2010). ferenczi, sandor. 1913. further contributions to the theory and technique of psychoanalysis. new york: ford press. ________. 1956 [1914]. the ontogenesis of the interest in money. in sex in psychoanalysis, ed. sandor ferenczi, 269-79. new york: dover publications. freud, sigmund. 1976 [1905a]. three essays on the theory of sexuality. new york: basic books. ________. 1913. foreword. in the scatological rites of all nations, ed. john g. bourke. new york: william and morrow. ________. 1924. the passing of the oedipus complex. international journal of psycho-analysis 5: 419-24. ________. 1932. the acquisition and control of fire. in the standard edition of the complete psychological works of sigmund freud, volume xxii (19321936): new introductory lectures on psycho-analysis and other works, 183194. london: hogath press and institute for psychoanalysis. ________. 2007 [1905b]. wit and its relation to the unconscious, trans. a. a. brill. new york. gaignebet, claude. 1974. le folklore obscène des enfants [the obscene folklore of children]. paris, france: g.-p. maisonneuve et larose. goffman, erving. 1967. interaction ritual: essays on face-to-face behavior. garden city, ny: anchor books. hasenfratz, robert. 1996. the science of flatulence: possible sources for the “summoner’s tale.” the chaucer review 30(3): 241-61. hoffman, frank. 1973. analytical survey of anglo-american traditional erotica. bowling green, oh: popular press. hufford, david j. 1970. editor’s preface. keystone folklore quarterly 15: 55-58. inglis, david. 2000. a sociological history of excretory experience: defacatory manners and toiletry technologies. lewistown, ny: the edwin mellen press. jansen, william hugh. 1979. the surpriser surprised: a modern legend. in readings in american folklore, ed. jan harold brunvand, 61-90.. new york: w.w. norton & co. originally printed in folklore forum 6: 1-24. jones, ernest. 1948 [1913]. essays in applied psycho-analysis. boston: beacon press. jones, michael owen. 2000. what’s disgusting, why, and what does it matter? journal of folklore research 37(1): 53-71. kotzwinkle, william and glenn murray. 2001. walter, the farting dog. berkeley, ca: frog books. knapp, mary and herbert knapp. 1976. one potato, two potato: the folklore of american children. new york: w.w. norton & co. boise ikastola thursby 84 largey, gale peter and david rodney watson. 1972. the sociology of odors. american journal of sociology 77(6): 1021-34. leary, james p. 1977. white guys’ stories of the night street. journal of the folklore institute 14(1/2): 59-71. legman, gershon. 1964. the horn book: studies in erotic folklore and bibliography. new york: university books. ______. 1982 [1968]. no laughing matter: an analysis of sexual humor. volumes i and 2. bloomington: indiana university press. ______. 2006 [1975]. rationale of the dirty joke: an analysis of sexual humor. new york: simon and schuster. levine, lawrence w. 1988. highbrow/ lowbrow: the emergence of cultural hierarchy in america. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. lytle, donald. 2003. play and educational theory and practice. santa barbara, ca: praeger publishers. mechling, jay. 2004. on my honor: boy scouts and the making of american youth. chicago: university of chicago press. meley, patricia m. 1991. adolescent legend trips as teenage cultural response: a study of lore in context. children’s folklore review 14: 5-24. mercer, bobby. 2009. how do you light a fart?: and 150 other essential things every guy should know about science. cincinnati, oh: adams media. mills, kelly. 2008. what a relief: school did not ban farting. strollerderby: the mother of all blogs. 8 february. http://www.babble.com/cs/blogs/ strollerderby/archive/2008/02/08/what-a-relief-school-did-not-ban-farting. aspx (accessed april 17, 2010). nibbelink, don d. 2008. fearsome folklore of farting. berkeley, ca: frog books. opie, iona and peter opie. 2001 [1959]. the lore and language of schoolchildren. new york: new york review of books. orientalia, acta. 2008. abode of the soul of humans, animals and objects in mongolian folk belief. akadémiai kiadó 4(3): 467-75. oring, elliot. 1976. three functions of folklore: traditional functionalism as explanation in folkloristics. journal of american studies 89: 67-80. ______. 1987. jokes and the discourse on disaster. journal of american folklore 100(397): 276-86. pilipp, frank. 1997. scatological reality and humor in martin walser’s “the inner man.” south atlantic review 62(1): 65-78. praeger, dave. 2007. poop culture: how america is shaped by its grossest national product. port townsend, wa: feral house. rabkin, eric s. and eugene silverman. 1991. it’s a gas: a study of flatulence. columbus, oh: xenos books. rollfinke, dieter and jacqueline. 1986. the call of human nature: the role of scatology in modern german literature. amherst: university of massachusetts press. rozin, paul, jonathan haidt, and clark r. mccauley. 1993. disgust. in, eds., handbook of emotions, ed. michael lewis and jeannette m. haviland, 57594. new york: the guildford press. thursby boise ikastola 85 samuelson, sue. 1995. a review of distinctive adolescent genres. children’s folklore review 17(2): 13-31. sherman, josepha and t.k.f. weisskoff. 1995. greasy grimy gopher’s guts: the subversive folklore of childhood. atlanta, ga: august house publishing. sidoli, mara. 1996. farting as a defence against unspeakable dread. journal of analytical psychology 41: 165-78. sklar, deidre. 1994. can bodylore be brought to its senses? journal of american folklore 107(423): 9-22. smyth, willie. 1986. challenger jokes and the humor of disaster. western folklore 45(4): 243-60. sutton-smith, brian, jay mechling, thomas w. johnson, and felicia r. mcmahon, eds. 1999. children’s folklore: a source book. logan: utah state university press. thompson, stith. 1960 [1932-36; 1955-58]. the motif-index of folk literature. bloomington: indiana university press. tucker, elizabeth. 2007. campus legends: a handbook. westport, ct: greenwood press. _______. 2009. “go to bed, now you’re dead”: suffocation songs and breath control games.” children’s folklore review 31: 45-57. weinberg, martin s. and colin j. williams. 2005. fecal matters: habitus, embodiments, and deviance. social problems 52(3): 315-36. young, katharine. 1994. whose body? an introduction to bodylore, journal of american folklore 107(423): 3-8. 87 book reviews pleasures and perils: girls’ sexuality in a caribbean consumer culture. by debra curtis. [the rutgers series in childhood studies]. (new brunswick, nj.: rutgers university press, 2009. pp. vii-222, 4 black and white photographs, notes, index.) tracy carpenter pleasures and perils is an ethnography of adolescent sexuality, globalization and consumer culture on nevis, a small caribbean island. in this study, curtis highlights the fluidity and complexity of adolescent sexuality as influenced by globalization and localized cultural norms. the notion of commodity erotics in nevis — the conflation of sexual practices and commodity desire — renders a continuum that ranges from the exchange of sex to meet the family’s basic needs, to sex for personal consumption. commodity erotics also measure the sexual value of commodities, like sexy lingerie, designer clothing and jewelry, which produce sexual desirability. curtis’s study of nevis offers a snapshot of globalization by focusing on popular culture influences on conceptions of adolescent sexuality in a society that has undergone rapid socio-economic and technological changes over the past two decades. the first islands in the caribbean to be colonized by europeans, the federation of st. kitts and nevis achieved full independence in 1983. the islands were established as major sugar producers until the industry was dismantled in 2005. the growth of tourism and offshore financing necessitated advancements in infrastructure and increased access to technology and electronic goods, including televisions, cable, video, and the internet. curtis asserts that prior to the emancipation of slaves in 1834, the plantation culture generated a permissive sexual system, which was later challenged by protestant missionaries. according to curtis, ideological tensions between traditional sexual systems and protestant morality have been compounded by the influx of global popular culture and shaped sexual subjectivities. curtis, a cultural anthropologist, conducted fieldwork in a nevisian village over six months in 2003. personal history interviews, focus groups and surveys assessed sexual practices, leisure activities, and consumerism. she observed public health centers and analyzed music videos from black entertainment television (bet), imported movies and television shows, local radio programs, soca, reggae, hip hop music, and sex education materials. curtis also incorporated coming-of-age stories with young nevisian women as a counterpoint to the teenage girls’ reported sexual practices, reproducing their words in the nevisian dialect throughout the text. the author highlights the multidimensionality of sexuality in nevis by drawing attention to conflicting religious, traditional, and global discourses. the majority of nevisians regularly attend church and participate in religious activities, while book reviews 88 teenage girls have unlimited access to television and the internet at home. curtis states that marriage is not a common practice in nevis and that sexual exclusivity is rare. she suggests that living arrangements like single parent homes, commonlaw marriages, and visiting marriages (in which the spouses live in separate households and visit each other) contradict a fundamental christian discourse that espouses sexual virtue, corporeal control and chastity. while older nevisians denounce global influences, the government has imported american sexual education programs to address teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases in a society that does not openly discuss sex and stigmatizes girls’ use of condoms. curtis asserts that various global imports have influenced female codification. teenage girls’ identification with the imported images and lyrics from music videos, fashion magazines and sexual scripts — like materialism and masculinity — expressed in hip hop and caribbean music, translates into female desire for sexual pleasure and commodities in exchange for sex. the consideration of female pleasure contradicts the prevalence of female sexual pain resulting from the widespread threat of sexual crimes that goes unaddressed by law enforcement, legal and medical authorities. this pervasive threat in women’s everyday experiences and the desire for sexual agency may underlie girls’ explicit requests for commodities and cash in exchange for sex or families’ accepting cash settlements rather than prosecuting rapists. according to curtis, women’s traditional use of sex to meet their basic household needs set a precedent for contemporary teenage girls’ exchanging of sex for personal effects, such as car rides, compact discs, jewelry, and lingerie. the interaction between commodities and female pleasure amidst tradition, religion and globalization reveal the complex nature of sexual subjectivity, which is equally determined by social regulation and self-construction, and highlights malleability of subject formation. the examination of sexuality and economics among marginalized women is complicated by issues of representation and the limits of cultural relativism. the ethnography runs the risk of reproducing historical stereotypes of sexual pathology and fetishizing nevisian girls. despite her focus on globalization, the author isolates nevis from a global context, which at times makes the girls’ behavior appear bizarre and pathological. overall, this ethnography of nevis’s explosive economic, technological, and social growth offers a valuable assessment of relationships between globalization and sexual discourse, global scripts and teenage behavior. additionally, it offers a multidimensional perspective on the construction of sexual subjectivity, as it relates to culture, poverty and power that is useful to readers interested in caribbean cultural studies, popular culture, sexuality studies, policy and public health. curtis’s interdisciplinary approach illustrates why considerations of culture and social change are fundamental to effective public policy and public health programs. book reviews 89 consuming agency in fairy tales, childlore, and folkliterature. by susan honeyman. (new york: 2010. pp. vii – 230, illustrations, preface, acknowledgements, introduction, notes, bibliography, index.) brandi j. venable readers will recognize some of the content in consuming agency in fairy tales, childlore, and folkliterature as a re-visitation of older works by susan honeyman, re-printed here as part of a more cohesive text. the book functions collectively as a statement about “the agency of young subjects through material relations” (5), or, how food is used to subjugate children. the socio-historical analysis and emphasis on the relationship between childhood and material objects (toys and food) in the fairy tales, lore, and literature presented in this book are restricted geographically to the united states. the discussion begins historically with the rise of consumer capitalism starting in the mid-19th century and continuing throughout the 20th century. with food as the thematic thread throughout the book, many of the chapters are playfully organized around a single tasty treat: gingerbread/ honeycakes, candy, molasses, and spinach. according to honeyman, these sweet temptations have a corrosive effect on young people’s agency as presented in the texts she analyzes, often favoring — and thus encouraging — children to adopt roles as objects, not subjects. writing from the perspective of child-rights activism, honeyman skillfully applies interdisciplinary methods to familiar texts (the wizard of oz and the velveteen rabbit, for example) in order to make a powerful argument about the manipulative nature of consumption for children. each chapter furnishes its own argument, addressing a specific topic concerning the relationship between childhood and consumption. the first chapter documents the marginalization of children with the rise of consumer culture. referencing tales like pinocchio, honeyman focuses on puppetry and its implication for childhood agency. next, she explores the temptation of food itself, and the socializing effect it has on children, analyzing such well-known texts as “hansel and gretel” and charlie and the chocolate factory. halloween rituals and candy companies occupy the middle of the book, where the author demonstrates how childhood resistance is pacified by adults. in later chapters, the author covers gastronomic utopias to determine how food fantasies are used to control the hungry, and also highlights the historical progression of popeye, his connection with spinach, and the equation of spinach with power. honeyman also uses this space to address class bias in u.s. nutritional reforms. in conclusion, she contends that hunger allows for the body to be exploited. the pervasive struggle highlighted throughout this analysis of children’s tales and lore is one against hegemonic control, and honeyman argues that, for children, this occurs through bodily hunger and temptation, encompassed in the lure of food. in her introduction, honeyman states that, “much of popular culture tends to be ignored in folklore scholarship,” but contends that many popular forms (such as the comic book) are aware of, and incorporate, folklore into their works (10). her book acts as a vehicle for bridging distinct disciplinary categories, arguing that the issue of childhood agency and consumption is pertinent not just to one field of book reviews 90 study, but to many. indeed, she makes a lofty attempt to tackle several key issues surrounding this topic, and the reader may find her/himself wishing the chapters were longer and referenced more texts. however, even if the argument is restricted by page numbers, the book should incite discussion across academic disciplines, bringing together folklorists and child-rights activists, cultural studies and children’s literature scholars. for this reason, the book is invaluable to anyone interested in childhood studies, no matter what their academic or professional angle. overall, the book serves as an extensive study of childhood agency through food lore. while folklorists and cultural studies scholars may recognize references to jay mechling and clifford geertz, and to roland barthes and antonio gramsci, respectively, the book is also pertinent to child-rights activists. honeyman, an associate professor of english and a cultural studies scholar, does not claim to be a strict folklorist, but she does argue for the importance of folklore to a variety of disciplines, including popular culture and cultural studies more generally. folklorists hoping for an ethnographic approach to childhood studies should consult another resource; those more inclined toward textual analysis will enjoy honeyman’s decadent assortment of fairy tales, lore, and literature references. because of its interdisciplinary nature, academics and professionals in the fields of folklore, childhood studies, children’s literature, fairy tale studies, and cultural studies should find significant the arguments made in this book, relevant to their specific discipline. consuming agency is particularly useful to the student seeking to make connections across these fields. children’s folklore: a handbook. by elizabeth tucker. (westport, ct: 2008. pp. 1-164, preface, introduction, glossary, bibliography, web resources, index.) michele d. castleman elizabeth tucker’s children’s folklore: a handbook (2009) is an introductory guide to the “traditional knowledge shared by a group of two or more children, usually without the involvement of adults” (p. 1). the handbook is a comprehensive survey that considers both historical approaches and recent developments in the study of children’s folklore. according to tucker, its purpose is to “provide an overview of children’s folklore since the late 1800s” within the major genres (p.vii). she defines and provides examples of riddles, jokes, rhymes, taunts, songs, cheers, games, pranks, narratives, rituals and material culture. the vast majority of the folktales incorporated in the survey are from english-speaking countries, although occasional indo-european lore and personal narratives are included as well. tucker generally provides the context for each sample — the time and place it was recorded, the age of the children involved, and the source where it appears — and a few brief analytical statements. tucker notes that her handbook emphasizes “nature lore and imaginative, dangerous, and sexually oriented games” more than previous surveys have (p. 2). she regularly interprets the case studies for their sexual content or for their implications about gender, race and power relations, as well as for other matters of cultural significance. book reviews 91 tucker’s discussions of dirty jokes, boy/girl games, and her attention to routines of victimization and to online forums for the transmission of children’s folklore make this a noteworthy handbook. she also includes helpful references that could initiate more extensive research on the part of the reader. some of the most common citations are to the works of brian sutton-smith, iona and peter opie, william wells newell and some other recognizable names in the field. in addition, the use of internet-derived children’s folklore material as well as the inclusion of a list of web resources in the appendix emphasizes emerging trends and avenues of research. the handbook suggests further sources for investigation, including youtube.com videos, movies and children’s books. in chapter two: definitions and classifications, tucker’s exploration of the terms and categories of children’s folklore are usually accompanied by a brief listing of examples of each tale-type or game. these descriptions could be overwhelming if the reader is not already familiar with the subject. for example, tucker mentions william wells newell’s study of “call-ball” and describes it as resembling “the contemporary game of spud” (p. 34), which may not be familiar to all readers. in addition, some of the broader definitions to key terms like “childhood” and “folklore” could be explored in greater depth. one of the potential difficulties with the handbook is the separation between the definitions and classifications (chapter two) and the examples and texts (chapter three) sections. the division between the definitions and the detailed case studies is inconvenient when examining ethnic jokes as well as other topics and genres included in both chapters, since the reader must flip back and forth between them to understand the items in their full analytic and ethnographic context. readers could be better served if the definition and examples were paired together in a single chapter, as it would aid them in distinguishing among the categories of children’s folklore. in the scholarship and approaches section (chapter four), tucker describes past children’s folklore research and lists potential lenses for future research, including the perspectives of performance, psychoanalysis, gender studies, spatial analysis, the supernatural, violence studies and cross-cultural research. she highlights sutton-smith’s seven rhetorics of fate, power, communal identity, etc. as “possible directions for a new science of play for our current era” (p. 104). despite this, the handbook lacks information on ethnographic methods in children’s folklore research. in its place, the contexts section (chapter five) lists autobiographies, children’s literature, film, television, toys, games and dolls as recommended media for exploring children’s folklore without presenting the reader with rigorous methodologies for data collection among children and youth. as such, this presentation of sources would be beneficial to new folklore students who are not ready to go out in the field or who have limited time to analyze children’s folklore texts. children’s folklore: a handbook provides a strong introduction to types of, and studies about, children’s folklore. tucker’s attention to sexuality, violence and to the technological dispersion of children’s folklore makes this a timely text to assign or recommend to novice or undergraduate students interested in the subject. 93 children’s folklore section: 2009 annual meeting the children’s folklore section of the american folklore society met on october 24, 2009 at the boise centre in boise, idaho. priscilla ord opened the meeting at 12:25 p.m. she explained the absence of minutes and noted that there was a problem with our meeting having been placed opposite the fellows’ lunch. this schedule conflict meant that a number of our prominent members could not attend our meeting. we must ask for different timing next year. [editor’s note: we requested and received a time for the section meeting in the fall of 2010 that does not conflict with the fellows’ gathering]. priscilla then gave the section’s financial report. she noted that some items were missing, including bills from children’s folklore review [editor’s note: almost all of the journal’s expenses were covered by binghamton university). irene chagall had requested reimbursement of approximately $25.00 for aesop mailings. money was coming in for memberships and miscellaneous items, including sale of aesop accolade seals. a representative from the university of south dakota press had placed some large orders. there was also a section administrative fee. a question arose whether life memberships were still available. the newell fund benefited from an anonymous gift and an estate bequest. there was no winner of the newell prize this year. in years when there is a winner, that individual receives $100 plus publication in children’s folklore review. there was some discussion of the opie fund. when peter opie died, to avoid taxes his library was sent to the bodleian library at oxford university. we sent $2000 to help with cataloguing. since they had extra funds, they returned our contribution of about $200. there was also some discussion of how to get more people to come to the children’s folklore section meeting at afs. could we plan an “event”: play games and serve ice cream? [editor’s note: such a event has been planned for our meeting in the fall of 2010]. we could also have a silent auction around the theme of children’s folklore. we should give these ideas more thought during the year and come up with suggestions. section members agreed that we should have two panels again for next year; the two we had this year fitted together very well. the editor of children’s folklore review requested a proofreader, and kristi willsey agreed to do the job. thank you, kristi! the meeting was adjourned at 1:26 p.m. submitted by carole carpenter 95 notes and announcements newell prize the children’s folklore section of the american folklore society annually offers the william wells newell prize (which includes a cash award) for the best student essay on a topic in children’s folklore. students must submit their own papers, and published papers are eligible. instructors are asked to encourage students with eligible papers to enter the competition. papers must be typed, double-spaced, and on white paper or a word document. on the first page, include the author’s name, academic address, home address, telephone numbers, and e-mail address. deadline for this coming year’s competition is september 1, 2009. submit papers or write for more information to dr. c.w. sullivan iii, english department, east carolina university, greenville, nc, 27858-4353; electronic submissions should go to sullivanc@ecu.edu. book reviews children’s folklore review is seeking book review submissions for its next issue, to be published in october of 2011. this is an excellent opportunity for graduate students interested in building their writing credentials and demonstrating breadth in folklore, literature, and childhood studies. books are selected for review in children’s folklore review according to their relevance to the field of children’s folklore and their year of publication (within the past two years). if you would like to request a book for review, please contact the book review editor, dana hercbergs (hercbergs@yahoo.com). book reviews should not exceed 750 words. 97 contributors robert baron directs the folk arts program of the new york state council on the arts (nysca) and has served as folklore administrator of the national endowment for the humanities and as a museum educator at the brooklyn museum. his publications include public folklore, edited with nick spitzer, creolization as cultural creativity (ed. with ana cara, to be published in 2011), and a number of articles about black atlantic folklore, the history of folklore studies, public folklore, and museum studies. baron has been a non-resident fellow in the w.e.b. du bois institute for african and african american research at harvard, a fulbright senior specialist in finland and the philippines, and a smithsonian fellow in museum practice. in 2002, he received the benjamin a. botkin award for outstanding achievement in public folklore from the american folklore society. he holds a ph.d. in folklore and folklife from the university of pennsylvania. trevor j. blank, the winner of this year’s william wells newell prize, is a doctoral candidate in the american studies program at the pennsylvania state university, harrisburg. he is the editor of folklore and the internet: vernacular expression in a digital world (logan: utah state university press 2009) and has published numerous articles, reviews, and presentations on a variety of topics about american folklore and folklife. currently, he serves as the editor to the online journal, new directions in folklore. tracy carpenter is affiliated with strayer university. michele d. castleman is a doctoral candidate in the department of teaching and learning, focusing on young adult and children’s literature at the ohio state university. her research explores the re-presentations and significance of the characters of myth in contemporarily-set children’s novels. alisa clapp-itnyre is associate professor of english at indiana university east, richmond, indiana, where she teaches children’s literature, young-adult literature, and various other literature and writing courses. she has served on committees for the children’s literature association and is the executive secretary to the midwest victorian studies association. her publications include angelic airs, subversive songs: music as social discourse in the victorian novel (ohio university press, 2002); articles on tennyson, eliot, and hardy; and various children’s literature articles on the nancy drew series, civil war ya novels, and other subjects. her most recent scholarship is on nineteenth-century children’s hymns. dana hercbergs, the book review editor for children’s folklore review, is a visiting assistant professor in the program for israel studies and the department contributors of anthropology at the university of calgary in canada. her research centers on transnational practices of tourism and migrant communities in israel/palestine and north america. jacqueline thursby is professor of folklore and english at brigham young university. her previous books include mother’s table, father’s chair: cultural narratives of basque american women (utah state university press, 1999). a humanities interdisciplinary scholar, thursby lives in provo, utah, with her husband and two cats, max and molly. brandi j. venable is an m.a. student in the department of popular culture at bowling green state university. she is currently working on her thesis, tentatively titled, “feed me! insatiable children and the monsters who want to devour them: consumption in clive barker’s the thief of always and neil gaiman’s coraline.” kristiana m. willsey, a doctoral candidate at indiana university, is the assistant editor of children’s folklore review. in 2007 she won the william wells newell prize for her essay “the shoebox museum: the aesthetics and organizational concepts of children,” published in volume 30 of children’s folklore review. the singing games of munster children john buckley skipping--a definition skipping is an activity that usually goes on in a group, although it can be done alone. skipping is usually associated with girls, but boys also join in depending on the context and circumstances. a shorter rope can be used if only one person is skipping while a longer rope is used for group skipping. the beat or rhythm of the rhyme dictates the rhythm of the skip or jump. the rhythm or pace of the jump or skip is also influenced by the beat of the rope against the surface of the ground that's being skipped on. this relationship between the rhythm of the rhyme and the turning of the rope is very important because if the coordination between the two is lost, the flow is interrupted causing the rope to be tripped up thereby stopping proceedings. the language of skipping girls have their own terminology associated with skipping. for instance, in cork city, if you are not skipping but instead are turning the rope for those skipping, you are known to be "on the rope." if, while skipping, a girl causes the rope to stop, the term used is that she has "downed the rope." when the suggestion in a group is announced to skip, or to "play skipping," shouts of "begs not on" (again heard by cork children) might be heard, which means that the person doesn't want to be one of the group to turn the rope for the others to skip. there can also be pre-skipping rituals, such as the reciting of a counting-out rhyme or the wrapping of the rope with the bend between the thumb and first finger being one end and just above a bent elbow of one group members being the other end for the rope to be wrapped. the elbow is usually at a 90 degree angle to the rest of the arm below the elbow, and the hand of the person performing this ritual is usually vertically positioned above the elbow. each girl in the group then grabs hold of a piece of the rope and whoever picks the parts of the rope nearest the ends of the rope, have to be "on the rope," that is, have to turn the rope for the rest of the group. classification systems brian sutton-smith and various other scholars have attempted to classify skipping and skipping rhymes either from activities that are carried out while skipping or from the subject matter of the rhymes themselves. singing games buckley sutton-smith, according to abrahams, divides the skipping games into "those in which the turners attempt to trip the jumpers, those skipped through in turn, those calling for special jumping skills, those using multiple ropes, those calling for divination, and those calling for imitation. these are not mutually exclusive categories but simply as a basis of discussion and description" (xx). bruce buckley is another researcher who attempted a classification system, and a simple one at that. in his article, "jump-rope rhymessuggestions for classification and study," he broke skipping down into four categories based on what the jumper does. they are: "plain skipping," where the person skipping just jumps up and down while reciting a rhyme, for example: gypsy, gypsy, caroline, washed her hair in turpentine the turpentine makes it shine, gypsy, gypsy, caroline. (cape clare island, co. cork, ireland. spring 1982) "action skipping," where actions are carried out during the skipping process, as in: all in together, girls. never mind the weather girls. when i count two, tip your shoe. when i count four, tip the floor. when i count six, do some tricks. when i count eight, tip the gate. (run out and tip the gate.) (cork city, ireland, spring 1980) "call in/call out skipping," where a girl is called in to skip with another who then leaves the rope to allow the girl she called in to skip alone. she in turn, calls another in. an example is: vote, vote, vote for devalera. and we call in mary at the door. (mary runs in to skip.) mary is the one we all like the best. and we don't like veronica anymore. (veronica runs out.) (ennis, co. clare, ireland. 1981) 34 buckley singing games bruce buckley's last category is "endurance skipping," where the person's skipping ability is tested in terms of speed and energy. the following is an example: i had a motor bike, no. 48 i went around the c-o-r-n-e-r, (run out, go around one of the turners and back in again.) and never pulled my brake. a policeman caught me, and put me in jail. how many years was i there. 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10, etc. (the rhythm of the rope speeds up to test how long the person can last under pressure.) (cork city, southside. 1981) other researchers have attempted to classify skipping games and rhymes, not from the actions but from the rhymes and their contents. we could look at roger abraham's jump-rope rhymes--dictionary (1969) as a classification system in itself whereby he classifies rhymes in an alphabetical order and thus becomes a great help to those working with this genre of game rhymes. yet another classification system is francelia butler's approach, in which rhymes are differentiated according to the themes of the rhymes. in her work, skipping around the world (1989), she has chapter headings that read as follows: mystery and romance; hope and hopelessness; sex and skipping; protest; political and personal; skipping to silliness; food and feet; pondering death; and rhymes of joy. yet another classification has been done by robert cosbey, all in together girls (1980), in which skipping song-games fall naturally into three categories: (1) where everyone gets a quick turn at skipping, somewhat like the "call in/call out" category of bruce buckley; (2) central character games which tend to be longer and tend to be more favored according to the girls he studied in saskatchewan, canada; these would be rhymes where only one girl is skipping and all the attention is placed on her to see if she performs the actions correctly or how long she can skip in a quick fashion; (3) groupskipping games, where the emphasis is on coordination. two or more persons skipping together is common in this type of skipping, and this group effort can make the process more difficult, 35 singing games buckley simply because there are more people involved and consequently there's more chance for error. the rhyme: all in together girls. never mind the weather girls. when i count your birthday please run out (cork city, northside, spring, 1980) is a typical rhyme for this type of skipping. the collection the following game rhymes were collected between 1979 and 1983, when i lived and worked in cork city. they were collected from girls (mostly) and boys between the ages of 6-12. initially, my collecting was confined to cork city, but later my interest and curiosity grew, and i started collecting in the county of cork and then around munster. in my travels, i visited primary schools where i interviewed children in the classroom and, if the time and weather permitted, i then accompanied the children to the school yard where some of the games were demonstrated. also, i observed children in their "natural" environments, i.e. the street, the terrace, the lane, the road, the estate, the back or front garden, the wood, the playground, the field or whatever kind of space they found themselves in. these different environments threw up different kinds of props and challenges for children to work with, and they manipulated these environments in all kinds of creative ways under their own terms and using their own code of legislation away from adult interference. in my collecting, i used a note book, tape recorder, 35mm camera, and video camera, and during the four years i spent collecting, i amassed a lot of material that includes hundred's of pages of notes, about thirty hours of audio tapes, hundreds of photographs, mostly black and white and some color, and two video tapes of games and rhymes. these games and rhymes are, for the most part, taken for granted by most adults and even considered trivial. but the more i observed children and collected their games and rhymes, the more i realized how important they were from the point of view of learning. some writers have called what children do amongst themselves as the other educational system they have in their lives. they are an example of pure folklore, in that they are passed on from children to children by word of mouth, and in so doing, give games and rhymes generational continuity. the mere fact that children, as a group, tend to be conservative, also makes for traditions to be maintained. but they are also creative and will change a rule or change a word or line of a rhyme to suit the local environment, if they feel it makes 36 buckley singing games sense. and even though these rhymes were collected in munster, it doesn't make them peculiar to the area. the rhymes sung by cork and clonmel children can also have versions heard in chicago or cambridge or the caribbean. they have a far-flung existence, reflecting travel across continents and ocean stretches. a lot of these games go on in groups of two and more, and this allows them to be transmitted to other children, increasing our understanding of the group process, how groups work, who makes the decisions, how they are made and how the rules of the game are worked out. games also teach them about those who lead and who follow, who has power and who doesn't, and what it means to have it, versus not to have it. through games, children also observe how conflicts are resolved and how harmony within the group is important for the game to continue. the need for cooperation is perceived, and the experience of competition is also discovered along with what it's like to manipulate, cheat, get caught and possibly go undetected. a sense of morality is learned, a morality that may not always seem fair, depending on the personalities present. along with learning to listen to the other person's point of view, and from this the idea of compromise and consensus can be appreciated. the joys of winning are savored, and the disappointments of loss are tolerated. physical skills are demonstrated, sometimes bringing the big boys down to size, strategies are refined, and chances taken, that succeed from time to time. the whole area of children's folklore in ireland is an area that is only recently getting the attention it deserves. while one of the biggest folklore collection anywhere in the world is housed in the folklore library at ucd, entitled "the schools collection," carried out in 1937-38, by foresightful folklorists of the time, publications on the subject of children's folklore have been relatively sparse. references to games and rhymes played and sung by irish children have appeared in the work of lady alice gomme that she carried out in the l890s. to assist her in her two part publication, the traditional games of england, scotland and ireland, she had informants in cork, down, dublin, kerry, leitrim and waterford. these 1894 and 1898 works, published by david nutt, london, as part 1 of the dictionary of british folklore (1894), and part 11 in 1898, were later published by dover publications in new york in 1964. the next major work pertaining to ireland was written in wonderful style, in 1949 by leslie daiken, children s games throughout the year, followed some years later by another collection, this time dublin street rhymes, out goes she. little, if nothing, was published until sean o'suilleabhain's, irish wake amusements (1967), translated from the original irish, caitheamh aimsire ar thoraimh (1961), by the author, which dealt with, among other things, dancing, riddling and rhyming, mischief making, and pranks at wakes. some of these activities, no doubt, were also played outside the environment of the "wake" and were probably passed on to or imitated by 37 singing games buckley children. the same author also has a thorough classification of games in, a handbook of irish folklore, published in 1970. eilis brady's excellent book, all in! all in!, a selection of dublin children's traditional street games with rhymes and music, was published in 1975 by the folklore commission at ucd. this was the first serious publication on the study of children's games and rhymes in ireland. in more recent times, bill meek has collected rhymes and songs that appear in his humourous and informative book, moonpenny, published in 1985 by ossian press in cork. in 1986, mercier press in cork published, the irish children s songbook, by carmel o'boyle. this has some children's game rhymes. and in the last couple of years, maurice leyden's fine book, boys and girls come out to play, a collection of irish singing games, has been published by appletree press in belfast. in the irish language, cniogaide cnagaide, rainn traidisiunta do phaisti, written by nicholas williams, was published in 1988 by an clochomar tta i baile atha cliath, and cluichi agus caitheams aimsire, amuigh faoin aer i gconnamara, written by brian mac suibhne was published in 1991 by clo iar-chonnachta. along with these publications, articles on games and rhymes, along with other aspects of children's folklore, have appeared from time to time, both in the irish language and english, in bealoideas, the journal of the folklore of ireland society, ulster folklife, an stoc, the journal of the irish folk song society, irishleabhar na gaeilge, and in articles by connradh na gaeilge, an cumann le bealoideas eireann, and oifig an tsolathair. children's games and rhymes have also been published in other publications by the folklore commission in ucd, such as sean o'connell's book, stories and traditions from iveragh. and, games have also appeared in books on the folklore of a particular county or counties that have been collected by locals in the area aided and advised in their collecting methods by the folklore comission. one such book would be along the black pig’s dyke, folklore from the armagh area. this book also researched the school’s collection, in the folklore archives in ucd, for games and rhymes of the area. autobiographical, biographical and fictional works also have reference to children's games. they include: borstal boy, by brenden behan; teems of times and happy returns, by dominic behan; the green fool, by patrick gallagher; dubliners, by james joyce; knocknagow, by charles j. kickham; beyond the hills: an ulster headmaster remembers, by haughton w. crowe; paddy the cope: an autobiography, by patrick gallagher; and janey mack, me shirt is black, by eamonn mc thomais. 38 buckley singing games the function of games and rhymes in the late 20th century the more i read about and collect children's folklore in general and games and rhymes in particular, the more i realize how important they are on different levels. they are the kinds of activities that are taken for granted by most people and are even considered trivial. but there is more to them that meets the eye. they are a pure folk form. they are not taught or controlled by adults (although some adults try to do so), and they pass freely between children on a street, in a school, in a village, town and city and even hop over borders and bodies of water resulting in rhymes like, "cinderella dressed in yella," being sung by children in bandon, boston and birmingham, with perhaps some slight variation, but with most of the words intact. we live in a world that has rapidly changed and in which more and more technological inventions change our behavior. children now have a much greater variety of things to do, whether they watch tv, play video games, or explore "virtual reality" using cd rom. these new developments are exciting and create all kinds of creative opportunities for children and mankind in general. but questions repeatedly asked by educators, parents, and play scholars are, how do they effect children's ability to interact with other children, how suitable are these inventions to a deepening of our understanding of each other, how do they benefit the notion of community, are children becoming more sedentary and obese, and less active, and what are the implications for how they effect learning, do we in fact know more about knowledge, life, and ourselves as result of modern technology, and will they make us more happy? these are important questions as we learn how to navigate the information superhighway, and deal with the knowledge explosion. cross references cross references have been done in relation to most of the irish publications and articles on the subject of rhymes (in the english language only) over the past one hundred years or so. unfortunately, at this time, it does not include any of the more than 1100 manuscripts that make up the "schools collection" that are housed in the folklore archives in ucd. along with the irish authors on the subject, i have included the two volumes by lady alice gomme, the traditional games of england, ireland, scotland and wales, from the 1890s. this is because of her irish informants from the counties of cork, down, dublin, kerry, leitrim, and waterford, who gave her information on games and rhymes from these areas. i have also included as part of my cross referencing, roger abraham's, dictionary of jump-rope rhymes, published in 1969, and last but certainly not least, 39 singing games buckley i have included two publications by the greatest contributors to the area of children's folklore, iona and peter opie. the publications include, the lore and language of schoolchildren (1959), and the singing game (1985). the cross-referencing is done after the rhyme, or if there are a number of variants, after the final variant. notes to the rhymes notes on each rhyme appear beneath each rhyme, or if there is more than one variant, beneath the first variant. the author's name is mentioned first followed by the year of publication in brackets. then the page number, and when known, the place where the rhyme was collected along with the year or decade it was collected. if there was a different first line collected by someone else but the rest of the rhyme was the same, i have written the first line. conversely, if the first line is the same but the rest of the rhyme is different, i have included the entire rhyme. skipping rhymes the classification system used in this chapter on, "skipping rhymes," was devised by bruce buckley. his article, in the summer 1966 issue of keystone folklore quarterly, "jump-rope rhymes: suggestions for classification and study," as the title suggests, discusses the pros and cons of different classification systems for jump-rope rhymes. while his system is not perfect, it does provide a good working model for the study of jumprope rhymes. his system is broken down into action skipping, plain skipping, run in-run out skipping and endurance skipping. these are the four headings under which i will look at the skipping rhymes of munster children. action skipping in action type skipping, girls carry out different actions while skipping. the words of the rhyme tell the action to be performed. 1. cowboy joe from mexico, hands up, stick 'em up, drop our gun, pick 'em up. cowboy joe from mexico. north, south, east and west, jacobs biscuits are the best. 40 buckley singing games if they're not, send them back, to the north, south, east and west. (miss on "mexico," you walk down to end of road and back up again. miss on "mexico" twice, you're out. miss on "north .......... west," you have to tell which is n,s,e,w. if you don't, you're out.) cork city, northside, (spring 1981). 1a. cowboy joe from mexico, hands up,stick 'em up, drop you guns, pick 'em up. cowboy joe from mexico. north, south, east and west, jacobs biscuits are the best. if they crack, send them back, north, south, east and west. crosshaven, co. cork, presentation convent, (spring 1980). lb. cowboy joseph mexico, hands up, stick them up, drop your guns, pick them up. cork city, st. catherine's school, bishopstown, (spring, 1980). 1c. cowboy joe from mexico. hands up, pick 'em up, drop your guns, pick 'em up. o-ut spells out. (run out.) ennis, co. clare (spring 1981). also used as a "counting out" rhyme, a process for starting a game. this process is known as "abbling" in ennis. 1d. 41 singing games buckley cowboy joe from mexico, lost his knickers in the snow. cowboy joe from mexico, hands up, stick 'em up, drop your guns, and pick 'em up, cowboy joe from mexico. north, south, east and west, jacobs biscuits are the best. if they crack, send them back, to the north, south, east and west. ballintemple area, cork city, (spring, 1980). (abrahams [1969],33, 141; mccaughan [1971-2],20, (belfast); colgan, [1980],20, (lisbum, co. antrim) 2. jelly on the plate, jelly on the plate, going wibbly, wobbly, wibbly, wobbly, jelly on the plate. sausage on the pan, sausage on the pan, twirl (or twist) around, twirl around, sausage on the pan. baby in the cradle, baby in the cradle, ma,ma,ma,ma, baby in the cradle. money on the floor, money on the floor. pick it up, pick it up, money on the floor. tomato on the floor, tomato on the floor, squash it down, squash it down, tomato on the floor. egg on the pan, egg on the pan, twist a loo, twist a loo, egg on the pan. robber in the house, robber in the house, 42 buckley singing games kick 'im out, kick 'im out. robber in the house. sweets on the table, sweets on the table, pick 'em up, pick 'em up. sweets on the table. ennis, co. clare, (spring 1981). (brady [1975], 86; leyden [1993],129; behan [1958], band 3; abrahams [1969],284; mccaughan [1971-2],21) 2a. money on the ground, money on the ground, pick it up, pick it up, money on the ground. jelly on the plate, jelly on the plate, wiggly, woggly, wiggly, woggly, jelly on the plate. cork city, st. catherine's primary school, bishopstown, (spring, 1980). for verse one, girls in mallow, co. cork, ardfert, co. kerry, girls say "wibbly, wobbly." 3. fud judge, call the judge, mammy's havin' a baby, daddy's going crazy, push him down the acrobats, first floor, stop, second floor, turn around, third floor, tip the ground, fourth floor, get out of town. (run out.) tralee, co. kerry, (spring 1981). (abrahams [1969] 148) down the road in killarney, girls sing the following version: 3a. fud judge, call a judge. 43 singing games buckley mammy's got a new born baby judge. she wrapped it up in tissue paper. threw it down the alligator, first floor, stop. second floor, splits. third floor, twist around fourth floor, tip the ground, fifth floor, all out. st. oliver's school. killarney,co kerry, (spring, 1981). 3b rock, rock call the doc! mammy's having a new born baby doc. wrap him up in tissue paper, send it down the alligator, first floor, stop! second floor, splits, third floor, turn around, fourth floor tip the ground, fifth floor, get out of town. limerick city, (spring, 1981). 4. i'm a little girl guide, all dressed in blue. these are the actions i can do. salute to the officer, bow to the queen, run around the corner (run out one side, around a turner and run back in.) and buy an ice cream. ennis, co. clare, (spring, 1981). (abrahams [1969],206; brady [1975],86; mccaughan [1971-72],22) in the glen area of cork city in the spring of 1980, girls sang about a "dolly all dressed in blue" that "can stand up straight, bend one knee, salute to the captain, and bow to the queen." in the mayfield area, "the girl guide is all dressed in "white" and "brown," while in schull, co. cork, it's not a doll at all they sing about, but: 44 buckley singing games 4a. there was a little beet root, dressed in pink. her mammy didn't want it, so she sent it to the ink. the ink didn't like it, so she sent it to the pen. the pen said close your eyes, and count to ten. a different colour again shows up in ennis, co. clare. the colour is green. and instead of a dolly it's a "teddy bear all dressed in green, sent a letter to the queen, the queen didn't like it, so she sent it to the king, the king said close your eyes and count to l6"(with eyes closed). the same rhyme was sung in tipperary town and cork city but a "dolly" instead of a "teddy bear" is mentioned in tipperary town and a "rag doll" enters the rhyme in the north side of cork city, where girls count to 17. in waterford city, the "dollie" is also dressed in green and is "put in a match box, and sent to the queen." while in another waterford city, there's a version that goes: 4b. i have a little teddy bear all dressed in green. these are the actions he must do. stand up straight, bend one knee, salute to the officer and bow to the queen. run around the corner and into a shop(run out and come back) and out i come with my lollypop. waterford city, presentation convent, (spring 1980). 5. banana splits, banana splits, (you have to have the rope between your legs on "splits") banana, banana, banana splits. hoppy splits, hoppy splits, (hop while you skip) hoppy, hoppy, hoppy splits. twirly splits, twirly splits, (twirl while you skip) 45 singing games buckley twirly, twirly, twirly, splits. one eye splits, one eye splits, (close one eye) one eye, one eye, one eye splits. two eyes splits, two eyes splits, (close two eyes) two eyes, two eyes, two eyes split. one arm splits, one arm splits, (one arm behind back) one arm, one arm, one arm splits. two arm splits, two arm splits, (two arms behind back) two arm, two arm, two arm splits. crosshaven, co. cork, (spring, 1981). (abrahams 31) in cork city, south side, girls go "hoppy," "one eye" and "two eyes split." in presentation convent, tralee, girls sang: sa. banana, banana, banana, splits. repeat over and over. (for "splits", you have to have the rope between your legs when you stop. presentation convent, tralee, (spring 1981). 6. not last night but the night before, twenty four robbers came knockin' at the door. as i went down to let them in, this is what the said to me. jason, jason do the splits. jason, jason do the kicks. jason, jason turn around. jason, jason tip the ground. mallow, co. cork, (spring, 1981). over in doneraile, co. cork, i collected in the spring of 1981, the first two lines are the same as mallow but the verse has only two more lines: "i went down to let them in, spanish lady do the splits, kick, turn around, tip the ground." 46 buckley singing games the ardfert, co. kerry version of this rhyme, which i picked up from girls at a boarding school in ring, co. waterford, is much longer and encompasses the rhyme "jelly on the plate" on to the end of it. it goes: 6a. not last night but the night before, twenty five robbers came knockin' at my door. i went outside to let them in, and this is what they said to me. spanish lady turn around, spanish lady tip the ground. spanish lady do the splits. spanish lady show your knee. jelly on the plate, jelly on the plate, wibbly, wobbly, wibbly wobbly jelly on the plate. sausage on the pan, sausage on the pan, turn it over, turn it over sausage on the pan. robbers in the house, robbers in the house, kick them out, kick them out, robbers in the house. in cork city, the home of the irish ballet company in the early 1980s, "ballet dancers," instead of spanish dancers, "do the splits, do the kicks, turn around and tip the ground." (opie [1959], 23, [portsmouth, dundee]; abrahams [1969], 100: for the whole rhyme; abrahams [1969], 180, for "spanish dancers" lines); abrahams & rankin [1980], 134, (counting out rhyme)) 7. money on the ground, money on the ground you've got to pick it up, pick it up. money on the ground. jelly on the plate, jelly on the plate, wiggly, woggly,wigg1y, wogg1y, jelly on the plate. cork city, st. catherine's school, bishopstown, (spring 1980). (abrahams 284; leyden 129) 47 singing games buckley 8. up the missisippi, if you miss a loop you're out. (swing rope high) hop the missisippi, if you miss a loop you're out. (hop on one leg) down the missisippi, i you miss a loop, you're out. (skip low) smoke the missisippi, if you miss a loop you're out. (pretend you're smoking) swim the missisippi, if you miss a loop you're out. (perform swimming strokes) (cork city, blarney st, (spring 1979). in ballintemple, cork city, girls go: "up the mississippi, down and twirl the mississippi." the listowel, co. kerry version collected in spring 1981, is similar to the blarney street version in cork city, in its actions. in the waterford version of the skipping rhyme girls say: 9a down the mississippi where the boat go push. up the mississippi where the boat goes push (as each girl runs in she pushes the girl before her out of the rope on "push," thus also putting the rhyme in the "run in/run out" category of skipping rhymes.) (abrahams 120) in tralee, co. kerry, the version is different again and has the "teddy bear" rhyme tagged on to the end of it. 9b. up the missisippi, where the girls are very pretty, where the boys are very ugly, if you miss a loop you're out. teddy bear, teddy bear, twirl around, 48 buckley singing games teddy bear, teddy bear, tip the ground, teddy bear, teddy bear, say your prayers, teddy bear, teddy bear, go to bed. 10. the teddy bear rhyme is sung by itself in some parts of munster, such as: teddy bear, teddy bear go upstairs. teddy bear, teddy bear say your prayers. teddy bear, teddy bear turn off the light. teddy bear, teddy bear say good night. ennis girls school, co.clare. (daiken [1949], 64; abrahams [1969], 545; brady [1975],84; ni fhloinn [1982],70, [cavan]; macthomais [1982],19, [dublin, 1920'2-30's]; kane [1983],81, [belfast 1910-20]; meek [1985], 38; leyden [1993],131) 10a. teddy bear, teddy bear twirl around. teddy bear, teddy bear tip the ground. teddy bear, teddy bear go upstairs. teddy bear, teddy bear say your prayers. cork city, southside, (1981). 10b. teddy bear, teddy bear turn around. teddy bear, teddy bear touch the ground. teddy bear, teddy bear go upstairs. teddy bear, teddy bear say your prayers. teddy bear, teddy bear turn off the light. teddy bear, teddy bear say good night. cuil aodh national school, co.cork, (spring, 1980). 10c. teddy bear, teddy bear twirl all around. teddy bear, teddy bear tip the ground. teddy bear, teddy bear go upstairs. teddy bear, teddy bear say your prayers. teddy bear, teddy bear turn out the light, 49 singing games buckley teddy bear, teddy bear say good night, teddy bear, teddy bear 1,2,3. tipperary town, (spring, 1981). 10d. teddy bear, teddy bear go upstairs, teddy bear, teddy bear say your prayers, teddy bear, teddy bear turn off the light, teddy bear, teddy bear say good night. clonminch road, ennis, co.clare, (spring, 1981). 11. telly on the telephone, miss a loop you're out. clonmel, co. tipperary, (spring, 1981) (each person skips for the length of the rhyme, then jumps out, to be immediately followed by another person who cannot miss a loop. otherwise she has to take the rope.) (brady 77) 11a. there's somebody on the telephone, calling up maria. (maria jumps in, other person jumps out.) maria is on the telephone, calling up joanne.etc. (joanne jumps in, maria jumps out, without missing a loop.) barrett's terrace, cork city (spring, 1979). 12. christopher, columbus was a mighty man, he sailed to the ocean in a tin can. the waves grew higher and higher and over. (skip higher as the rope is raised) 50 buckley (abrahams 30) (abrahams 53) singing games croom, co. limerick, (spring, 1981). 13. george washington never told a lie. she ran around the corner, and stole a cherry pie. (run out and in again.) his father said for punishment, she has to run to the gate, and be back by ten. tralee, co.kerry, (summer, 1980). 14. charley, charley stole some barley, from outside the baker's shop. the baker came out and gave him a clout, and made poor charley hop all around the baker shop, full stop. (hop on one leg and then suddenly stop rope.) waterfordcity, (spring, 1981). (abrahams 24) 15. bang, bang you're dead, twenty bullets in your head, drop your gun, pick 'em up. bang,bang you're dead. put out your hands for "drop your guns." touch the ground for "pick 'em up." touch the ground for "you're dead." cork city. st catherine's school, bishopstown, spring, 1980). 16. 51 singing games buckley little black doctor, how's your wife? very well thank you, she's alright. she won't eat a biscuit, nor a tube of lipstick. o-u-t spells out. o-v-e-r spells over. u-n-d-e-r spells under. i-n spells in, like a bottle of gin. lady, lady tip the ground, lady, lady twirl around, lady, lady show off your shoe, lady, lady right through a house, a fire, a fire brigade. a woman sat down with a drink and gin. drink and gin was a very nice drink, so out pops you. listowel, co. kerry, (spring, 1980) (brady 77) 17. george washington, went to france. to teach the ladies how to dance. this is how he taught them. ladies, ladies turn around. ladies, ladies tip the ground. ladies, ladies tip you shoe, ladies, ladies that will do! meadowlands estate, tralee, co. kerry, (spring, 1980). (brady 85; meek 9; leyden 115, ball rhyme known as "charlie chaplin went to france" daiken 34, ball rhyme) 18. shirley temple is a star, s-t-a-r. she can do the hokey pokey, she can do the splits, 52 buckley singing games she can turn all around, just like this! mallow, co. cork, (spring, 1981). 19. monday night i'm all alone, tuesday night on the phone, wednesday night i call a friend. i call jacinta. oh, jacinta, pretty, pretty jacinta, all the boys and all the girls, they love jacinta. izzy, busy twirl around,(twirl.) izzy, busy, tip the ground, (tip the ground.) izzy, busy show your shoe. (put one foot out.) izzy, busy i love you. gurranabrather ave, cork city, (summer, 1979). (daiken [1949], 63; brady [1975], 82; macthomais [1982], 79, [dublin 1920's-30's]; opie [1985] 339--4l,circ1e game) 20. piggy on the railway, picking up sticks. along came a driver, and broke piggy's nose. oh said piggy that's not fair, oh, said the driver, i don't care. piggy on one leg, one leg, one leg. (hop on one leg) piggy on two legs, two legs, two legs. piggy on three legs, three legs, three legs (+one hand) piggy on four legs, four legs, four legs. (bend over while skipping so that your two hands touch the ground as you feet touch the ground.) listowel, co. kerry, (spring, 1980). (mac coil and behan, band 1, folkways recording, fw 8501, [1958]; opie [1969],37, (originated around the turn of the century. comes from the old scots ditty "pussy at the fireside suppin' up brose."). opies have six variants "paddy", "piggy," "polly," "peggy," "tommy," and "teddy," meek [1985],87; abrahams [1969], 158; abrahams/rankin [1980], 189, "paddy on 53 singing games buckley the railway, picking up stones./up came the engine and broke pady's bones./ "ah," said paddy, "that's not fair."/ "puff," said the engine, "i don't care.") 21. up the ladder, down the ladder, abc. down the ladder, up the ladder, 123. (skip up and down the rope while skipping. tralee, co. kerry, (spring, 1980). (leyden 136) 22. pineapple stand, pineapple stand, pineapple, pineapple, pineapple stand. (stand on rope at the end of rhyme.) waterford city, (spring, 1981). 23. over the moon, just like a spoon. the moon is light, and i'm so bright. over the moon just like a spoon.(skip up and down the rope.) waterford city, (spring, 1981). 24. all in together girls, never mind the weather girls. when i count two, tip your shoe. when i count four, tip the floor. when i count six, do some tricks. when i count eight, tip the gate. (run out and tip a gate.) cork city, northside, (spring, 1979). (daiken [1949], 71 (great britain); abrahams [1969], 6; ni fhloinn [1982], 70, [cavan]) 25. 54 buckley singing games upsy, downsy, twirl all a roundsy. clap and if you miss a loop you're out. waterford city, (spring, 1980). 26. dr. bannister lost one eye. (close one eye while skipping.) lost two eyes.(close two eyes while skipping.) lost one leg. (skip on one leg.) then one arm. (one hand behind the back.) then drop down dead. (roll out of rope.) waterford city, (spring, 1980). plain skipping plain skipping means that someone skips without any particular actions other than jumping up and down to the rhythm of the rope while singing some rhyme. 27. singing the letters of the alphabet while skipping is a simple form of plain skipping. a,b,c .............x,y,z. x,y,z, sugar in my tea, now i know my a,b,c. will you play with me. cork city, (spring, 1980). (brady (1975),75; leyden (1993), 134; abrahams (1965) 5) the alphabet is also used in a prophetic sense when girls want to find out who their boyfriend might be. whatever letter the rope "downs" on, is the first letter of some boy's name she might know. it also enters the following little rhyme: 28. lemon and lime be on time, 55 singing games 56 buckley start with alphabet a,b,c.... (if you miss, you're "on the rope.") cork city, st. catherine's school, bishopstown, (spring, 1981). 29. skippy, skippy, skippy, the bush kangaroo. skippy, skippy, skippy, the bush kangaroo. (repeat as many times as you want.) cork city. north presentation convent, 2nd class, (spring, 1979). 30. chocolate biscuits down the lane. if you want one spell your name. a-n-g-e-l-a. angela. clonmel, co. tipperary, (spring, 1980). (porcheddu [1992],122-3, counting out rhyme, cork city) 30a. chocolate biscuits down the lane, if you want one spell your name. s-a-m-a-n-t-h-a, samantha. cork city, northside, (spring, 1979). 30b. chocolate biscuits down the lane. if you want one spell your name. s-u-s-a-n-n-e, susanne. cork city, st. catherine's school, bishopstown, (spring, 1979). 31. 1,2,3,4,5, i caught a little fish alive, 6,7,8,9,10. then i let him go again. why did you let him go? because he bit my finger so. buckley singing games which finger did he bite? the little finger on the right. ennis girls primary school, co. clare, (spring, 1980). (abrahams (1969)150-51 32. cinderella bright and yella, went upstairs to kiss a fella, made a mistake and kissed a snake. how many doctors did she meet? 1----------------------------------10. presentation convent, 5th class. tralee, co. kerry, (spring, 1980). (leyden (1993), 132; abrahams (1969), 30; mccaughan [1971-2], 20 ; porcheddu [1992],180, counting out rhyme, cork city) 32a. cinderella, dressed in yella, went to the ball to meet her fella. she made a mistake and kissed a snake. that was the end of cinderella. ennis, co. clare, (spring, 1980). 32b. cinderella, dressed in yella, all dressed up to kiss her fella. by mistake she kissed a snake, how many doctors did she need? (count up to as many as you can, and you miss, the other person is in.) cork city, st. catherine's school, bishopstown, (spring, 1979). 32c. cinderella, dressed in yella. went upstairs to get her umbrella. 57 singing games buckley on her way she met her fella. how many kisses did she give him? 1,2,3, ............. etc. mallow, co. cork, (spring, 1979). 33. johnny in the water, johnny in the sea, johnny broke a window, and he blamed me. 1 told ma, ma told da. johnny got a beating, ha, ha, ha. tralee, co.kerry, (spring, 1980). 33b. i had the german measles, i had them very bad. they put me in warm blanket, and put me in a van, the van was very shakey, i nearly fell out, when i got to hospital, i heard a baby shout, mammy, daddy take me home, from this hospital, from this home. i've been here a week or two, and now i want to be with you. here comes dr. bannister, coming down the banister, half way down he ripped his pants, and now he's doin' the cha, cha, dance. waterford city, (spring, 1980). (opie [1985],455, handclapping rhyme, "i had the scarlet fever," porcheddu [1992] 191, "recited just for fun." cork city.) 34. little willy wagtail, born in a sea shell. christened in a handkerchief, oh willy wagtail. i know a woman whose name is miss, every sunday morning she walks like this. 58 buckley singing games ("block the rope with your foot on 'like this'''10 year old girl who was part of the game.) ennis, co. clare, (spring, 1981). (brady [1975], 74) 35. gypsy, gypsy, gypsy from carrigaline, washed her hair in turpentine. the turpentine made it shine, gypsy, gypsy, gypsy from carrigaline. sacred heart school, glasheen road,cork, (spring 1979) and carrigaline, co.cork, (spring, 1980). (brady 57, [ball rhyme], [dublin]) 35a. gypsy, gypsy, caroline, washed her hair in turpentine, the turpentine makes it shine, gypsy, gypsy, gypsy caroline. cape clare island, co. cork, (spring, 1981). 35b. car, car, caraline, wash her hair in turpentine, the turpentine made it shine, car, car, caraline. ennis girls school, co. clare, (spring, 1980). 36. policeman, policeman don't catch me. for i've got a wife and family. how many children have you got? twenty four and that's a lot. (count to 24.) 59 singing games buckley ennis, co. clare, (spring 1980). (daiken [1949], 69; daiken [1963], 27; brady [1975], 97; behan & maccoll [1958], band 3, folkways 8501; macthomais [1982], 107, (street chant), [dublin 1920's-30's]) 37. mrs. brown went to town, with her knickers hanging down. mrs. green saw the scene, and put it in the magazine. tralee, co. kerry, (spring 1980). (abrahams [1969],130; leyden [1993],132; opie [1985] 441 [handclpping]; brady [1975], 65, [ball rhyme]) 38. seven girls names i do know, wish me luck 'cause here i go. one, angela, two, mary three, stephanie. four, assumpta. five, jacinta, six, helen, seven, ann. (this format is used also as a ball bouncing rhyme.) waterford city, spring (1980). 39. down in the meadow where the grass grows green. a tomcat sat on a sewing machine. the sewing machine sews so fast, so fast it sews the tomcat's ass. ennis girls primary school, co.clare, (spring, 1980). the following rhyme is widespread in cork city and is used for plain skipping, but also has versions that involve endurance skipping (turning the rope very fast). here is a plain skipping version. 60 buckley singing games 40. down in the alley-o, court hand sally-o, see all the girlsio, kissing all the boysio. out comes missio, have you seen my brother-o, oh no missio, she's down in the alley-o. the rip, the rap, the sailor broke his back, slips on a banana skin, and that was that. cork city, the glen area, (spring, 1979). this rhyme might then lead into another rhyme to keep the rhythm going. elsewhere on the northside of cork city, a different version is heard: 40a. down in the alley-o. where they play release-o. see all the boys-e-o. kissing all the girls-e-o, up jumps miss-e-o, have you seen my daughtero, no, no, miss-e-o, she's down in the alley-o. rip, rap, sailor broke his back, slipped on a banana skin that was that. era, but, sure, i must, learn to say my a, b, c . . . z. gurranabrather ave. cork, (spring, 1979) (daiken [1963], 45, macthomais, [1982],144, [dublin 1920's-30's]) 61 singing games buckley in presentation convent, tralee, girls sang this following rhyme, that was learnt in garrettstown, co. cork by one of the girls in 5th class, while she was on holiday. it's a rhyme that was sung on the terrace that i lived on when i was growing up in the 1950s and was still being sung by my nieces in 1979. 40b. down in the alley-o, where they play release-e-o. see all the boys-e-o, kissing all the girls-e-o. up jumped miss-e-o. have you seen my mary-o, no, no miss-e-o, she's down in the alley-o. the rip, the rap, the sailor on the seashore, please play a loop for me. are you comin' , are you comin' , are you comin', to the fair, we went, and we went, but the fair wasn't there. barrett's terrace, cork, (1979) 40c. down in the alley-o courting sally-o. picking up cinders, breaking windows. my mother said to be good, and not to interfere with the gypsies in the wood. farranree, cork city, (spring, 1979). 41. there's a boy over there. and he's winkin' his eye. he tells me that he loves me, but he's telling a lie. his hair is all curly, and his shoes are all shine. he ain't got no money, so he wont be mine. 62 buckley singing games look whose coming down the street, brenda sheehan isn't she sweet. she's been married twice before, and now she's knocking on brendan's door. presentation convent, tralee, co.kerry, (1980). barrett's terrace, cork city, (1950's & 1970s80s.) around gurranabrather avenue on the northside of cork city, the same words to the above rhyme are sung added to by the following lines. 41a. mrs. murphy is brendan coming out? yes my love at half past three. half past three is much too late, so marry me in the morning at half past eight. how many kisses did she give him? 5-10-15-20-25-30 etc. (when you "down" the rope, that's the number of kisses the girl gave.) the next rhyme, from cape clare island, is a combination of "the wind blows high" and "down in the valley where the green grass grows," with a few lines from the song, "i'll tell me ma," thrown in the middle. 42. the rain, the rain, the rain blew high, the rain blew falling from the sky. mary, mary said she'd die, if she didn't get the fella, with the marble eye. he is handsome, he is pretty, he is the man from kerry city, let the girls say what they like, padraigh murphy will have a wife. cape clare island, co. cork, (spring, 1981). (abrahams 209; daiken [1949], 61, belfast and cork; brady [1975], 92; meek [1985], 59; leyden 140; behan, [1958], band 2, folkways 8501; 63 singing games buckley mccaughan, [1971-2], 22; opie [1985],134-6, circle game, macthomais [1982],49, [dublin 1920's-30's]) in ring, co.waterford,version, the rain "came tumbling from the sky," and the fella has a "roman" eye. he comes from any town or city you want, and the rhyme ends as follows: 42a will she marry him? yes/no. (whatever you "down the rope" on) how many children? (count while you skip) what colour dress? (list colours while skipping). ring, co. waterford, (spring 1980). in one tralee, co. kerry, version, it's "the wind" that "blows high," creating, "all the scattering in the sky." the rhyme then resumes as follows: 42b. she is handsome, she is pretty, tell me who she loves? he loves her, he kisses her. oh my darling won't you tell your name to me? while another version from tralee, (spring, 1980) goes as follows: 42c. the wind, the wind, the wind blew high. the wind came rushing from the sky. gay thought she would die, all because of her poor boy. he is handsome, he is pretty, he is from killkenny city. and if you want to know his name, his name is colin costello. do you love him? yes/no. 43. 64 buckley singing games she sells sea shells on the seashore. and the sea shells that she sells, are sea shells no more. crosshaven, co. cork, presentation convent, (spring 1979). (meek [1985], 79) run in/run out skipping rhymes run in/run out rhymes take different forms. a girl might be skipping alone and then calls in a friend to skip with her. or, calling the friend in might be a signal for her to exit the rope at the same time. in some rhymes, a girl might skip for a number of loops, but in other rhymes she will only skip for one loop and be followed by another girl, who only skips for one loop and so on. in this kind of situation, where a girl skips for just one or more loops of the rope, the pattern for running in to skip and running out when it's your time, is that of a figure eight. whatever the situation may be, timing is crucial and if a girl's timing is off, she'll "down" the rope, causing her to "take the rope." also, if she doesn't enter on the right loop, she may also have to "take the rope." the following short rhyme is popular around munster. 44. down the mississippi if you miss a loop you're out. (this line is repeated over and over as one girl jumps in while another is exiting from the other side on "out." cork city, st. catherine's school, bishopstown, (spring, 1980) 44a. down the mississippi where the boats go push. (repeat the line over and over with the girl jumping into the rope pushing the girl skipping out of the rope. waterford city, (spring, 1980). (abrahams [1969],44) 65 singing games buckley 44b. in waterford city, (spring, 1980) also, girls say: up the missisippi where the boats go push. (repeat the line over and over with one girl jumping in and pushing the girl who is skipping, out.) the same procedure goes on in ennis, co. clare (spring, 1980), but the rhyme is different. 44c. down in the meadow where the ghost goes boo. ennis, co. clare, (spring, 1980). 44d. in ennis also, is heard the words: up the mississippi if you miss a loop you're out. (the same procedure is followed, whereby one girl jumps in and the girl before her exits). 45. christopher, columbus was a mighty man, he sailed to the ocean in a tin can. the waves flew higher and higher and over. (skip higher as the rope is raised) croom, co. limerick, (spring, 1980). (abrahams [1969], 30) 45a. christopher, columbus was a mighty man, he sailed to america in a tin can. the wind it blew higher and covered his head. close your eyes and count to ten. limerick city, (spring, 1980). 66 buckley singing games 46. george washington never told a lie. she ran around the corner, and stole a cherry pie. (run out and in again.) his father said for punishment, she has to run to the gate, and be back by ten. tralee, co.kerry, (spring, 1980). (abrahams [1969], 53) 47. vote, vote, vote for de valera, and we call in mary at the door, (mary runs in) mary is the one we all like the best, and we don't like veronica anymore. (veronica runs out) (the rhyme is repeated with mary skipping alone and a new girl is called and mary runs out.) ennis, co. clare, 9spring, 1980). (brady [1975], 80; abrahams [1969], 201; daiken [1949], 69; daiken [1963], 25; behan & maccoll [1958], band 4, folkways 8501; macthomais, [1982], 111, [dublin, 1920's-30's]) in st. patrick's school in mayfield, cork city, collected in the spring of 1979, girls sing "love" instead of "like", otherwise the rhyme is the same. on the northside of cork city also, girls sing the following version: 47a. vote, vote, vote for de valera and we call in michelle at the door if michelle don't come in, there'll be war in spangle hill, and we won't like orla anymore, shut the door. meanwhile over in tralee, co. kerry, girls sing: 67 singing games buckley 47b. vote, vote, vote for devalera, and we call in deirdre, at the door, elaine is the one, who will have a lot of fun, and we won't call her in anymore, shut the door, no.4. 48. i like coffee, i like tea, i like sarah in with me. (sarah runs in) i hate coffee, i hate tea, i hate sarah in with me. (sarah runs out.) croom, co. limerick, (spring, 1980) & sacred heart school, south douglas rd, cork (spring, 1979). (daiken [1949], 33, ball game, [co.antrim] abraham [1969], 85;opie [1985],358; porcheddu [1992], 143, [counting out rhyme], (cork city); leyden [1993],130) in doneraile, co.cork (spring, 1979), the rhyme is extended to go as follows: 48a. i like coffee, i like tea, i like sarah in with me. i don't like coffee, i don't like tea, i don't like sarah in with me. now that she's in, i can't get her out, how many pushes must i give her? l-2-3-4 ........ (until she "downs"), hard or soft? (hard or soft belts to get her out). in ring, co. waterford, after the first two lines, girls sing the alphabet, whatever letter she "downs" on, tells her boyfriend's name. say the rope downs on "p", then the boys name is used as follows: 68 buckley singing games 48b. i like coffee, i like tea, i like michelle in with me. a,b,c, .......... p. peter and me under a tree, will i marry him? yes/no! if the girl "downs" the rope on "yes," it's a way of prophesizing that she will marry him. the opposite also applies. 48c. i like coffee, i like tea. i like sitting on a blackman's knee. cork city, (spring, 1979). 49. as i was in the kitchen, doin' a bit a stitchin', in came a boody man, and i ran out. (run out of rope, next girl runs in.) crosshaven co. cork, (spring, 1979), ennis, co. clare, (spring 1980), cork city, (spring, 1979) (abrahams [1969], 12; daiken [1949], 63 [great britain]; daiken [1963], 33 [dublin]) 49a. as i was in the kitchen, doin' a bit a stitchin' in came a booby man, and i ran out. (you run out then and the other person after you comes in.) 49b. in the southside of cork city, girls use "boogey man," instead of "boody man" and "booby man." 69 singing games buckley 49c. in doneraile, co. cork, there is a combination of two different rhymes. it goes: seashells cockleshells, evy, ivy over. mother in the kitchen, doing a bit of stitchin' . how many stitches did she drop? (count up until you "down" the rope.) in another cork city (spring 1979) version, the following lines opens the verse: bluebells cockidy-shells, evor, ivor overhead. as i was in the kitchen, doin' a bit a stitchin'. in came a boody man, and i ran out. (abrahams [1969],18; brady [1975], 83; ni fhloinn [1982], 70, (cavan) 51. tiger tim, swallowed a pin, that's the end of tiger tim. (run out) cape clare island, co. cork. this rhyme can then lead into another rhyme to keep the flow going. (brady [1975], 65 (ball rhyme)) 51a. on the northside of cork city, the following lines are added to the two lines above: steve mcgarrett, ate a carrot, that's the end of steve mcgarrett. 70 buckley singing games 52. i am a little girl guide all dressed in blue, these are the actions that i do. stand up straight,bend one knee, salute to the captain, and bow to the queen. cork city, st. catherine's primary school, bishopstown (spring, 1979). (daiken [1949], 65; abrahams [1969], 70; mccaughan [1971-2], 22; brady [1975],86) 52a. i am a little rag doll all dressed in green. my mother didn't like me, she gave me to the queen. the queen didn't like me, she gave me to the king, the king said said shut your eyes and count to seventeen. (count up to seventeen with your eyes closed. if you miss before seventeen, you go on the rope turning.) cork city, st.catherine's school, bishopstown (spring 1979). (abrahams [1969], 78; mccaughan [1971-2], 20) 52b. i have a little dolly all dressed in blue. the queen didn't like her, so she sent it to the king, the king said close your eyes, and count to sixteen. ennis, whitehall estate, co. clare, (spring 1980). 52c. i'm a little dutch girl, all dressed in green. these are the actions i must do. salute to my master, bow to my queen, 71 singing games buckley run around the corner, and buy an ice-cream. (run out of rope and back in) how many ice creams did i buy? limerick city, (spring, 1980). 52d. i have a little teddy bear, all dressed in green. these are the actions he must do. stand up straight, bend one knee. salute to the officer, and bow to the queen. run around the corner, (run out of rope and back in.) and into the shop. and out i come with a lollypop. waterford city, (spring 1980). (abraham [1969], 82) 53. i had a little bumper car, no. 48. i went around the corner, and couldn't pull my brakes. c1onmel, co. tipperary, (spring 1981). (abrahams [1969], 80) 53a. bumper car, bumper car, no.48. turn around the corner, (run out and back in.) and pull on the brakes. (stick leg out to stop rope.) ennis, co. clare, (spring 1980). 53b. i had a little bumper car his name is 48. i ran him around the corner, and then i pulled my brakes. (when rope stops, you have to stop with it.) 72 buckley singing games presentation convent, tralee, co. kerry, (spring 1980). 53c. i had a little baby car, no.48. i went around the corner and, (run out and back in.) then i pulled my bakes. (stop the rope with your foot.) waterford city, (spring 1980). 53d. i have a little bubble car, no.48. i go around the c-o-r-n-e-r. (run out and in while you spell 'corner.') cork city, northside, (spring 1979). 53e. bubble car, bubble car, no.28. turn corner, (run out and around one of the girl's turning the rope and back in.) and pull down the brakes. (stop the rope with your leg.) mallow, co. cork, (spring 1979). 53f. i have a little bunny car, no. 48. goes around the corner, (run out and back in.) and then it stops its brakes. (stick out leg to stop rope.) cork city, northside, (spring 1979). 53g. i have a little motor car, no.48 i went around the corner, (run out and back in.) and i had to put on my brakes. (block rope.) a policeman caught me, and put me into jail. how many years was i there? 73 singing games 74 buckley 1,2,3, ................ .30. (if you miss, first off the rope gets to jump.) cork city, southside, (spring 1979) 53h. i have a bobby car, no. 98. i go around the corner, (run out and in.) then i pulling brakes, just like this. (stop rope with leg.) ballintemple, boreenmanna road, cork city, (spring 1979). 53j. bubble car, bubble car, no. 28. turn around the corner, and pull down my brakes. mallow, co. cork, (spring 1979). 53k. i'm a little bumper car, no.48. i went around the corner. i forgot to pull my brakes. my brakes didn't work, i went tumbling down the hill. and into a duck pond, there i stood still. croom, co. limerick, (spring 1980). 53m. i am a little bunny car, no.48. i live around the c-o-r-n-e-r, (run out and in.) pulling my brakes. the brakes didn't work, so i brought her to the g-a-r-a-g-e, (run out and around one of the girl's turning the rope and back in) and then i pulled my brakes. (go out and in again on "brakes." rope must land buckley singing games between legs. if not, repeat the line "so i brought her to the g-a-r-a-g-e, and "pull the brakes again.") crosshaven, co. cork, (spring 1979). 53n. i have a little buggy car, no. 48. i go around the corner, (run out and in.) and then i pull my brakes. glasheen area, cork city, and barrett's terrace, cork city, (spring 1979). mayfield area of cork city is similar except "drive" is used instead of "go." 53p. i had a little buggy car, when i am 64. i go around the c-o-r-n-e-r, and then i pull my brakes. (rope must stop between your legs. if it doesn't, you're out. if it does, you go to the end of the line.) cork city, st. catherine's school, bishopstown, (spring 1979). 53q. i had a little motorbike, it's number was 48. i went around the corner, and forgot to put on the brakes the policeman caught me and put me in jail, how many years was i there? ("start skipping fast and keep trying to skip as long as you can. when he misses, then you go out." fieldnotes-girl playing in the game.) cork city, st. catherine's school, bishopstown, (spring 1979). 54. george washington went around the corner. (run out and in.) 75 singing games buckley and bought a penny pie. he slapped it in the face of his father. and his father said, george do not tell a lie. you were very bold george. don't do it again. you were very bold george, don't do it again. jump out now and leave me alone. (girl jumps out.) george don't do it again. presentation convent, 5th class. tralee, co. kerry, (spring 1980). (abrahams [1969], 53) 54a. little george washington never told a lie. he ran around the corner, (run out around the turner and back in before the next line ends) and stole a cherry pie. how many pies did he steal? (count up to ten.) cork city, southside. st. catherine's school, bishopstown, (spring 1979). 54b. georgie porgy puddingy pie, ran around the corner, (run out and in.) and stole a penny pie. when he went home he told his dad. run around the corner, and be back by 10. (run out and back by 10.) 1 .............. 10. tralee, co. kerry. presentation convent, 5th class, (spring 1980). 55. there is a lady on the mountain, who she is, i do not know? all she wants is gold and silver, and she wants is a fine young man. 76 buckley singing games so i call in my collette dear, (collette runs in.) while i run out to play. (girl runs out.) repeat again. cork city southside, (spring 1979). (gomme [1894], daiken [1949], 75, (circle game); abrahams [1969], 155 [texas 1963]; mccaughan [1971-2], 23, [belfast 1968]; brady [1975],103, circle game, [dublin]; leyden [1993],14) 56. two little dicky birds, sitting on a wall. one named peter, other named paul. flyaway peter, flyaway paul, (run out) come back peter, come back paul. (come back to skip.) ennis, co. clare, (spring 1980). (daiken [1949], 69; abrahams [1969],198; brady [1975],81, [dublin]; leyden [1993],130) 56a. two little dicky birds, sitting on a fence. one named peter, the other named paul. flyaway peter, flyaway paul. (run out) come back peter, come back paul. (come back to skip.) cuil aodh, co. cork, (spring 1980). 57. there's somebody under the bed. i don't know who it is. i got a shock in earnest, and i called joanne in. joanne light the candle, joanne light the gas. run in, run out, there's somebody under the bed. cork city, northside, (spring 1979). 77 singing games buckley (daiken [1949], 63, [great britain]; abrahams [1969], 190-1; brady [1975], 78, [dublin]; leyden [1993],126; macthomais [1982], 63, [dublin 1920s30s] ) 58. susanne on the telephone, calling in georgina. georgina on the telephone, calling in mary. mary on the telephone, calling in sheila. cork city, st. catherine's school, bishopstown, (spring 1979). the girl skipping calls another girl in to skip with her. then the new girl calls in another girl who is next in line to skip with her. as the new girl comes in, a girl is going out the other side of the rope. (brady [1975], 77, [dublin], jinny on the telephone, /miss your loop you're out/ou t spells out. 59. all in together girls, never mind the weather girls, when it is your birthday please jump out, jan. feb ......................... december. is it the first, the second, the third ....... etc. (jump out on the month of your birthday. then, when all the girls have jumped out for their birthday, everyone jumps in again for the days of the month, and jumps back out for the day their birthday falls on. cork city, st. catherine's school, bishopstown, (spring 1979). tra1ee, co.kerry, (spring 1980), limerick city, (spring 1980) waterford city, (spring 1980). (daiken [1949], 71, [great britain]; abrahams [1969],6, [texas]; brady [1975], 95, [dublin]; nifhloinn, [1982], 70, [cavan], from "schools collection," 1937-8 ) 78 buckley singing games 59a. all in together this frosty weather, when i count your birthday the rope must be empty. jan. feb.march ........ dec. monday, tuesday ........ fri. one, one and a half, two, two and a half, three, three and a half. four, four and a half….. five ........ eleven or twelve. ennis girls primary school. co. clare, (spring 1980). endurance skipping endurance skipping means that a test of endurance is put to the person while skipping. this usually involves turning the rope faster than normal to see how fast and how long the person can skip. it's also associated with lines in the rhymes that have a "prophetic" aspect to them, like, "how many children will you have?" also these "prophetic" lines have the tendency to be tagged on at the end of a rhyme, but they can also stand alone as rhymes unto themselves as in the following rhymes, some of which are only one line long. 60. salt, mustard, ginger, cayenne pepper. ennis, co. clare, (spring 1980). (the rope is turned more quickly as the one line verse progresses from salt to pepper. the line is then repeated until the girl skipping' downs' the rope). (gomme [1898], 204, [deptford, england]; o'suilleabhain, [1942], 668,[ireland?]; daiken [1949],63, [great britain]; abrahams [1969], 175, [texas], brady, [1975], 78, [dublin]; kane [1983], 80, skipping & ball rhyme, [belfast]; leyden [1993],126) 79 singing games buckley 61. high, low, jolly, pepper. limerick city, (spring 1980). for "high," the rope is raised off the ground and then turned. the person skipping then has to jump higher when skipping. for "low," she has to skip lower than normal. for "jolly," she twirls around. for "pepper," the rope is turned fast. (abrahams [1969], 63) in another limerick version, the one line goes as follows: 61a. high, low, quick, slow, medium, pepper (fast). all the others are self explanatory. in cork city (spring 1979), the version is more elaborate. 61b. high, low, medium, slow, jolly, rocky, happy, pepper. for "high," you turn the rope high. for "low," you turn the rope low. for "medium," you turn the rope in a "normal" fashion, neither fast nor slow. for "slow," you turn the rope slowly. for "jolly," the rope is "wriggled" and the girl jumping has to jump over it and go down low as she does it. she does it ten times. for "rocky," shake the rope as you are turning it, creating an unevenness as the rope turns. for "happy," you hop over the rope. for "pepper," the rope is turned very fast. (abrahams [1969], 63) 61c. in st. catherine's school in bishopstown, cork, girls sing the same rhyme, but instead of saying "jolly", they say "dolly." for "dolly," you go 80 buckley singing games down low and skip. whatever of these you "down" on, "you have to do ten times with the rope going real fast." (fieldnotes-one of the girl's skipping). in tralee, co. kerry, girls sing: 61d. high, low, medium, walky, talky. the same explanation holds for "high," "low," "medium," as in 61b above. for "walky," the girls turning the rope walk while turning the rope, so that sometimes you might find yourself skipping sideways. for "talky," the girl turning the rope talks to you while you are skipping. they ask you five questions like: where do you live? whose your boyfriend? what's your age? then you turn to the other girl and she asks you more questions. oak park, tralee, co.kerry, (spring 1980). 61e. high, low, jolly, pepper. ennis, co. clare, (spring 1980). 61f. high low, medium, slow. ennis, co. clare, (spring 1980). 62. roundy, suzi, bluebell, pepper. (faster and faster ten times.) if you "down," on "roundy," you twirl around or walk around in circles. for "suzi," you skip for 13 ordinary steps. for "bluebell," jump from side to side over the rope. for "pepper," skip ten times at a fast pace. cork city, southside, (spring 1979). 81 singing games buckley the following rhyme, sung in tra1ee, co. kerry, and has an endurance line at the end that goes, "tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor," during which time the rope is turned fast. 63. mrs. brown she lives by the shore. she's got children three and four. the eldest one is twenty one. and she's going to marry a tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor. mrs. brown: (daiken [1949], 64 [great britian]; abrahams [1969],131; brady [1975],65, [dublin]). tinker, tailor etc: (daiken [1949], 63, [great britian, 68, [dublin]; daiken [1963], 26, [dublin]; brady [1975], 90, [dublin]; leyden [1993], 135) another tra1ee, co. kerry, collected in spring 1980, the version goes as follows: 63a. mrs. brown lived by the shore. she had children two and four. oldest one is twenty four. she's going to marry a tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, rich man, poor man, beggarman, thief. (speed up the rope.) she's going to marry in high heels, low heels, flat heels. is she going to wear rags, cotton, silk, wool? (for the last three lines, the rope is speeded up.) (leyden [1993], 135-6, for the last two lines). sometimes girls in tra1ee, co. kerry sing the following by itself: 63b. who will you marry? tinker, tailor, beggerman, sailor. (whomever you down on, you'll marry). 82 buckley singing games will you be a queen, princess, or a maid? will you wear high heels, low heels, ragged shoes, patched shoes? what will you go to mass in? carriage, car, walk or a horse? then whatever the girl "downed" on, in each line, is called out at the end of the rhyme. presentation convent, tralee.co. kerry, (spring 1980). 63c. another tralee, co. kerry version ends with the following lines: 1,2, tinker, tailor, captain, sailor, lord mayor, general, duke, went to london all dressed in blue. a cork version sung by girls in the northside (cathedral road) is similar to the first tralee version (#63 above) with a few minor changes. 63d. mrs. brown she lives by the shore. she has children three and four. and the eldest one is twenty four, and she's getting married to the boy next door. tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor. (speed up rope.) another cork city version goes as follows: 63d. old misses brown, she lives by the shore. mercy convent primary school, southside, cork city, (spring 1979). in the glen area of cork city, girls sing: 83 singing games buckley 63e. mrs. brown she lives by the shore. she's got children three and four. and the eldest one is twenty four. and she's getting married to the boy next door. sing 1,2,3. tinker, tailor, captain, sailor, (speed up rope.) lord mayor, general, duke, cowboy london dressed in blue. 64. i had a motorbike, no. 48. i went around the corner, (run out and in.) and never pulled my brake. a policeman caught me, and put me in jail. how many years was i there? (the rope speeds up.) cork city, southside, (spring 1979). (abrahams [1969], 80) 65. cinderella, dressed in yella, went downtown to buy an umbrella. on her way she met a fella. how many kisses did she get? 1 10. skip fast. presentation convent, 5th class, tralee, co. kerry, (spring 1980). (abrahams [1969], 30-31; mccaughan [1971-2], 20, [belfast]; leyden [1993],132) 65a. cinderella, dressed in yella, went upstairs to get her umbrella. on her way she met her fella, how many kisses did she get? 5-10-15-20 ............ ! (skip fast.) mallow, co. cork (spring 1979). 84 buckley singing games 65b. cinderellla, dressed in yella, went upstairs to kiss her fella. by mistake she kissed a snake how many kisses did she give him? 1,2,3 ............... etc. (skip faster and faster until you down.) ennis girls school, co. clare, (spring 1980). 66. fire, fire, false alarm, i fell into my boyfriend's arms. how many kisses did he give me? 1,2,3,4, ......... etc. (skip fast.) (if you miss, you go to the end of the line. cork city, southside.st. catherine's school, bishopstown, (spring 1980). (abrahams [1969],49) 67. jelly on the plate, jelly on the plate, wibbly, wobbly, wibbly,wobbly. jelly on the plate. sixpence on the floor, sixpence on the floor, go pick it up, go pick it up. sixpence on the floor. baby in the pram, eating bread and jam. how many slices did she get? 5-10-15-20-25-30 ........... ! (turn the rope fast.) mallow.co cork. (abrahams [1969], 99; brady [1975],86; leyden [1993],129) 85 singing games buckley 67a. jelly on the plate, jelly on the plate, wibbly, wobbly, wibbly wobbly, jelly on the plate. sausage on the pan........ turn it over, turn it over, sausage on the pan. baby on the floor......... pick it up, pick it up, baby on the floor. robber in the house........ kick him out, kick him out, robber in the house. ballytruckle, john's hill, john's park, waterford city. the next rhyme, a divination rhyme, is a combination of two rhymes, "strawberry custard" & "john and mary went for a ride." 68. strawberry custard, cream on top. tell me the name of your sweetheart. a .............................. z. john and mary went for a ride, around the countryside. john asked mary will you be my bride. yes/no. maybe so. (skip fast for last two lines.) listowel, co. kerry. ("strawberry custard etc": gomme 2, [1898],202; opie, [1947],22; daiken [1949],67, [tipperary], 70 [great britian];abrahams [1969], 73, (john and mary etc: abrahams [1969], 99-100, [texas]) 68a. john and joan went for a ride. john asked joan would you be my bride. yes, no, maybe so. 86 buckley singing games how many kisses did he throw? 10,20,30,40 ........................ 100. how many children did he get? were they triplets, twins? what kind of housepalace, cottage, house? will you be a tramp, queen or princess? waterford city. 69. s-h-o-p, s-h-o-p. s-h-o-p, repeat while turning the rope fast. if you "down on" 's', you skip slow. if you down on 'h', you hop on one leg. if you down on 'o', you skip ordinary. if you down on 'p', you skip fast. limerick city. 70. firecracker, firecracker, bumb, bumb, bumb. the boys got the muscles, the teachers got the brains. the girls got the sexy legs, and we won the game. extra, extra, read all about it. we won the game. i give you a nickel, i give you a dime, and i'll bet you, i'll be back in time. (run out and back by a certain time.) croom, co. limerick. works cited abrahams, roger, ed. jump-rope rhymes: a dictionary. austin: university of texas press for the american folklore society, 1969. abrahams, roger. & rankin, lois. editors. counting-out rhymes: a dictionary. austin: university of texas press for the american folklore society, 1980. adams, j.r.r. "children's games in county own a century ago." ulster folklife, 37,1991: 13-21. 87 singing games buckley austin, roger. "playground culture in northern ireland." ulster folklife, 35, 1989: 109-112. brady, eilis. all in! all in! a selection of dublin children 50 traditional street games with rhymes and music. dublin: comhairle bhealoideas eireann, 1975. castleblayney community enterprise. along the black pig’s dyke -folklore from monaghan and south armagh. castleblayney, 1993. colgan, brendan. let’s play: children’s games. belfast: blackstaff press, 1980. daiken, leslie. children’s games throughout the year. london: b.t.batsford ltd, 1949. ______, out goes she: dublin street rhymes. dufour editions, 1965. gomme, alice. the traditional games of england, scotland, and ireland, volume i. 1894. ed. david nutt. london. new york: dover publications, incorporated, 1964. _______, the traditional games of england, scotland, and ireland, volume ii. 1898. ed. david nutt. london. new york: dover publications, incorporated, 1964. kane, alice. songs and sayings of an ulster childhood. ed. edith fowke. dublin: wolfhound press, 1983. leyden, maurice. boys and girls come out to play: a collection of irish singing games. belfast: appletree press, 1993. maccoll, ewan. & behan, dominic. the singing streets: childhood memories of ireland and scotland. sleeve notes by kenneth s.goldstein. folkways records: fw 8501, 1958. macthomais, eamonn. janey mac me shirt is black. dublin: the o'brien press, 1982. mccaughan, michael. '''cinderella dressed in yella': some belfast skipping rhymes." ulster folk museum yearbook, 1971-72. meek, bill. moonpenny: a collection of rhymes, songs and play-verse for and by children gathered in ireland. cork city: ossian publications, 1985. ni fhloinn, bairbre. "the heart of breiffne: the traditions, ballads, legends & folklore from mid-cavan 1978-83." kids' stuff. ed. anna sexton. cumann staire leathratha: 65-88. nic amhlaoibh, brona. "margadh na bpaisti." bealoideas. 1980-81: 59-73. nihil, i. j. "forosa: a study o some children's games." ulster folklife, 12 (1966): 14-17. o'boyle, carmel. cut the loaf: the irish children’s songbook. cork city: the mercier press, 1986. o'conchubhair, padraigh. "children's games from offaly." bealoidas. (1947): 186-200. opie, iona & peter. the lore and language of schoolchildren. oxford: oxford university press, 1959. ______, the singing game. oxford: oxford university press, 1985. porcheddu, annarella. "children's games and rhymes in cork city." diss. university college cork, ireland, 1991. 88 cfr_2004-2005_part10 cfr_2004-2005_part11 cfr_2004-2005_part12 cfr_2004-2005_part13 cfr_2004-2005_part14 cfr_2004-2005_part15 cfr_2004-2005_part16 cfr_2004-2005_part17 cfr_2004-2005_part18 cfr_2004-2005_part19 cfr_2004-2005_part20 cfr_2004-2005_part21 cfr_2004-2005_part22 cfr_2004-2005_part23 cfr_2004-2005_part24 cfr_2004-2005_part25 cfr_2004-2005_part26 cfr_2004-2005_part27 cfr_2004-2005_part28 found photographs and children's folklore jay mechling children's folklorists do not always have the luxury of studying live children. because children live largely in an oral, material, and customary world, leaving little written evidence (aside from the occasional diary or autograph book) of their worldviews, reconstructing the history of the everyday lives of children requires the creative use of what scant evidence we do have of their elusive worlds. folklorists are accustomed to reconstructing the historical cultures of children using written materials, such as autobiographies, diaries, letters, ethnographic accounts dating back to the late 19th century, and other sources largely created by adults. folklorists and historians also have learned to make creative use of the material culture of childhood in reconstructing the everyday lives of past children (e.g., bronner 1999). we necessarily make a great many guesses about what the evidence really means, and we know that in most cases the evidence has gone through a great deal of editing, as adults ultimately are the gatekeepers for what evidence of children's lives survives and what perishes. the rise of photography after its invention in 1839 introduced a new genre of evidence of the everyday lives of people, and children have been the subjects of countless photographs since then. in what follows, i aim to examine what are sometimes called by dealers and collectors "found photographs" in order to discover how these snapshots might be used to help write the history of american children's lives, especially their folk cultures. first, i provide a bit of history of the photography of children and describe in more detail the nature of "found photographs." then i briefly characterize the sorts of questions the folklorist would have about past children's lives, for my aim here is to treat the photographs as true evidence and not merely as pretty pictures accompanying generalizations of the sort we make from other sorts of historical evidence. finally, i offer some close readings of a few representative snapshots i have collected as of this writing. that final section amounts to a test of the proposition that snapshots actually might teach us something new about american children's folklore. children's folklorists share with, historians, sociologists, and anthropologists the desire to understand children's cultures on their own terms, but i believe folklorists are especially inclined to brush aside as best as possible the adult contaminations of our evidence of children's lives. photographs are especially seductive evidence in trying to recreate the autonomous worlds of children, and with proper caution scholars can use photographs to see what might otherwise go unseen. at the same time, photographs seduce us into believing what we are seeing. i provide here found photographs mechling only a beginning for navigating these tough issues of evidence, authority, authenticity, power, and subversion in found photographs of children. photographs of children the earliest photographs of children, given the bulky technology and the long exposure times required by that technology, are usually set in studios. these have some value as historical evidence in that photographic studio portraits borrowed from painted portraits certain conventions, which in the case of children meant that the photographic portraits often include toys and the more formal dress for children. in many cases these probably were toys and other props provided by the photographer, so it is hard to sort out those photographs where a child is holding or otherwise posed with a favorite toy. the clothes in these studio portraits are, one presumes, chosen by the adults and do not necessarily (or likely) represent the everyday dress of children. studio portraits fulfilled the family's need for more formal images, but the 1890s saw an explosion of stereoviews, from commercially produced sets to snapshot-like views taken by those amateurs who could afford a stereoscopic camera and developing. many of these stereoviews are still set in the studio, but george eastman's invention of the gelatin dry plate in 1878 freed the photographer from the constricting limits of the earlier technology and made it possible for the photographer to move outside. most stereoviews were still posed, though collectors find the occasional one-of-a-kind snapshot-like stereoview. there is a very interesting history of adult views of children that could be written using stereoviews as the texts; briefly, we can note that some of these photographs captured some of the folklore and other dimensions of children's everyday lives. frozen in the images of these stereoviews are children's more formal games, such as maypoles and blind man's bluff, and play with toys, but the stereoviews also record more informal play in snow and sand, for example. professional art and commercial photography in the late 19th century and well into the 20th still operated from the romantic era view of the innocent child (higonnet 1998). the adults' romantic view of childhood crept into more documentary views of children's lives. to be sure, a social realist strain of the documentary photography of children-practiced by lewis hine, jacob riis, james agee and others-has had its place up to the present, but in the wake of world war ii many photographers of children seemed to adopt the ideological position so evident in the famous "family of man" exhibit edward steichen created for the museum of modern art in 1955 (see sandeen 1995), namely, that all human beings share a universal human nature and that children everywhere are inherently 8 mechling found photographs innocent. barbara morgan's 1951 photographic essay, summer's children, for example, seems driven by this ideology as she documents kids at summer camp. these two traditions in documentary photography-some showing children innocently at play in middle-class, benign settings and some showing disadvantaged children (still innocent) in some of the most squalid settings-have co-existed for the past seventy-five years or so. some of this documentary and art photography does reveal a bit of children's worlds under their own control. salinger's photo essay of teenagers in their bedrooms, for example, is wonderfully provocative for those scholars interested in the material culture of teens, but salinger's only use of words are the kids' brief self-descriptions; she bypasses the opportunity to analyze the larger meanings of the visual and oral testimony. similarly, lauren greenfield's two color photo essays--fast forward (1997) and girl culture (2002)--give voice to the teens themselves without offering much analysis of what we are to make of these affluent kids and their worlds. the photographer winks knowingly at us, as a sort of postmodern joke between photographer and audience, but also some true affection for the subjects comes through, just as in bruce weber's branded youth: and other stories (1997). weber, like andy warhol before him, straddles the already fuzzy art/commercial photography boundary to offer a photoessay wherein punks and boy scouts seem equally freaky and wherein weber seems to love them all in a warholian, postmodern move that refuses to judge and refuses to make distinctions. all of these photoessays, and more, are produced by professional, adult photographers who aim to say something profound about the lives of children and adolescents in contemporary american culture. these, really, are not the texts for my analysis here, but the whole constellation of photographs of children serve as a contextual background for what does interest me here-namely, the snapshot, the found photograph. snapshots of children george eastman's invention of the gelatin dry plate in 1878 made the true snapshot possible. in 1888 eastman introduced his kodak camera no.1, the first portable camera containing a roll of film that would take one hundred shots developed as 2-1/2 inch round images. the amateur photographer would send the whole camera back to eastman, who developed the roll and sent back the developed prints and the camera loaded with a new roll of film. in 1889, eastman brought out kodak camera no.2, which produced larger (3-1/2 inches diameter), still round prints (king 1964, 6). it was then possible for the amateur photographer to create what came to be called "snapshots," borrowing for photography 9 found photographs mechling a term that described the hunting shot hurriedly taken in the field (kouwenhoven 1982, 161-62). what collectors and dealers call "found photographs" are plentiful and perplexing. these are the snapshots that we find at yard sales, at estate sales, at vintage photography shows, and on the internet in online auctions and on the sites of dealers in vernacular photography. these are orphaned photographs usually tom from their original contexts; they no longer live as texts interacting with human memories. now they are objects for collectors with a variety of tastes and aims. unless there is writing on the back ("real photo" postcards often have a full message and were mailed), a date included as part of the printing process, or some internal clue to place and time, we often are forced to guess where and when the snapshot was taken. these snapshots sometimes are of poor quality, as the amateur misjudges the light and the shadows, blurs the image with the camera or with film too slow to capture a moment in motion, frames the picture oddly, accidentally creates a double exposure, or commits any number of other "errors" that help signal an image as a snapshot (king 1964, 4957). at the same time, these telltale signs of the snapshot also help certify the authenticity of the moment; its spontaneous, unposed, candid, opportunistic qualities help persuade the viewer that the image captures a "true" moment in time and perhaps a "truth" about the subject. a very few scholars have begun the work of using snapshots to write the history of children's lives. the most important to date is thompson and austin's massive 2003 work, america’s children: picturing childhood from early america to the present. using a range of sorts of photographs of children, some by professional photographers but also many "found" snapshots, the authors "read" these photographs as evidence for writing the history of american children's lives. rather than following a simple chronological scheme for organizing the photographs and commentary, the authors present thematic chapters around family life, mobility, community, work, learning, play, and courtship and marriage. there are billions of snapshots of children out there in the world. i have at hand a small sample of these for the analysis i present here, though i have looked at enough snapshots at antique fairs, vintage photography shows, and on the internet to have a firm grasp of what the genre has to offer. my generalizations have to be modest and provisional. there is also a bias in my sample toward snapshots of boys, as this project arose out of my research on the boy scouts and on the larger question of the social construction of masculinity in boys and young men (see mechling 2001). and, of course, the snapshots at hand have survived editing of one sort or another. people have made choices about which snapshots to save and which to discard; dealers select snapshots deemed interesting enough to sell, sometimes poring through hundreds of thousands of snapshots to 10 mechling found photographs yield a few hundred images. and for my own collection i have chosen to buy some images and not others. so there is cultural bias galore in these existing snapshots. still, they have an oddly powerful grip on the collector, as we gaze into the faces of these kids now aged or dead. before examining the genre, we have to acknowledge at the outset that most snapshots of children and youth very likely have been taken by adults. kids have had access to cameras across the 20th century, and doubtless some surviving snapshots have been taken by kids, especially in settings such as schools, playgrounds, summer camps, and neighborhood play spaces. some researchers actually teach children how to use cameras and analyze the sorts of visual conventions and topics the kids adopt in using snapshots to capture their everyday lives and to communicate with other kids and with adults something about their kids' worlds (e.g., ewald 1985, 2000; hubbard 1991, 1994; and padilla 2002). we even have snapshots of kids with cameras, so we know that some images from the past were captured by children and youth. one sort of kid with a camera, of course, is the school yearbook photographer, and yearbook pictures are a surprisingly neglected source of information about the cultures of teens. in the united states, yearbooks tend to capture the worlds of adolescents, generally kids twelve and older, teens in junior high and senior high schools. yearbook photography includes three sorts of photos-posed pictures (individual portraits plus pictures of classes, clubs, sports teams, performing arts groups, formal events, and so on), action shots (e,g, sports), and "candid" snapshots of students in less formal and usually unposed contexts. yearbook photography works under adult supervision and surveillance, usually, so there are several layers of censoring behind each "candid" snapshot published in a yearbook. still, these photographs capture teens in some unguarded moments and, presumably, represent a version of the "story" of going to that school as seen from the students' viewpoint. the historian always hopes that someone "cleaning house" in an organization did not throwaway the invaluable evidence the historian is looking for, and one wonders how many boxes of old yearbook snapshots (or contact sheets of negative strips) are out there in boxes and file cabinets. the folklore historian would be especially interested in the photographs that were not selected for publication, photographs that did not get through the self-censoring and adult censoring processes because they are photos judge inappropriate or even disruptive. the one island in this sea of general neglect of yearbook photographs is a little-known book, school spirit (2003), by pierre huyghe and douglas coupland, who is perhaps the quintessential generation x novelist. in this quirky, but fascinating, book, the authors (compilers, really) use real california high school yearbook pictures and inscriptions to create a quite 11 found photographs mechling open and ambiguous narrative about life for high-schoolers, which is to say that huyghe and coupland provide no meta-narrative of their own other than the order of photographs and handwritten texts from the yearbooks. coupland must have been working on this book at the same time he was writing his novel, hey, nostradamus! a novel (2003), a postmodern fiction telling the story of a columbine-like school shooting. coupland comes no closer than do filmmakers michael moore (bowling for columbine, 2002) and gus van sant (elephant, 2003) in understanding what was going on in the worlds of the perpetrators and victims of the columbine high school massacre and similar shootings, but i think school sprit is an attempt to do visually what coupland attempts to do in his novel. the value in school spirit lies in its suggestion that coded somewhere in high school yearbook pictures are the answers to questions adults have been asking about teenagers for some time now. i am not prepared to explore this lead here and now, but i hope an army of folklorists and historians gets out into the schools to rescue this photographic record from oblivion. returning to the body of snapshots we know are available, what can be said of the found photos with children's lives as the subject? most of these snapshots of kids and teens hold few surprises. setting aside the posed photographs of kids with families, often in front of the family home or car or on a family vacation, the snapshots that capture kids' play and rituals tend to feature familiar scenes. birthday parties, first communion, halloween costumes, playing in the sand at a beach, playing with the electric train under the christmas tree, posing outside with the new bike, and playing with a family pet are common images. yet, among these images are a few that i think can be used as texts for revealing something about children's folklore, and in offering close readings of a few of these i hope to provoke folklorists and historians into making more of found photographs. first, though, i need to inquire what we think we know and don't know about children's folklore, for it would be unanswered questions that would be the only justification for taking found snapshots seriously as historical evidence. what's missing in our knowledge of children's folklore? what do we think we know about american children's folklore? although we have earlier accounts of children's games and play, some of which are still useful today for recognizing the continuities and discontinuities in children's play, i would have to say that the modern (maybe postmodern, a topic for another time) study of american children's folklore began in the mid-l970s, in large part in response to the emergence 12 mechling found photographs of the performance paradigm in folklore studies. (the mid-1970s also saw the emergence of the animal rights movement, and i believe that the two movements are connected, though that also is a topic for another time.) independent initiatives in the university of texas, indiana university, and the university of pennsylvania graduate programs in folklore sent a good many graduate students into the field to study children's folklore in performance, and from then on the study of children's folklore seems to have split into two strands, the one still operating from a text-base approach and the other committed to studying children's performances of folklore in natural contexts. by the mid-1980s that second, ethnographic strand, had also come under the influence of the postmodern approach to ethnography, especially the view that objective, scientific ethnography was not possible. many ethnographers in several disciplines made this "linguistic turn," but the epistemological questions were especially relevant and vexing for those of us who conduct fieldwork-based study of children. children's worlds are inaccessible to us in so many ways that we understand more than most folklorists, i think, the tentative and provisional nature of our generalizations about children. when, in that mid-1980s period of upheaval in the epistemological basis for studying the lives of other people, i came to write a chapter on "children's folklore" for elliott oring's textbook, folk groups and folklore genres (1986), i attempted to generalize about american children's folklore by alerting readers to certain themes in the lore they might observe, themes like power and the child's body as a symbol of the society. i wrote then about some binary tensions in children's folklore--order/disorder, hierarchy/equality, male/female, and dynamism/ conservatism ("newell's paradox," as gary alan fine [1980] named it)and i recommended a batesonian approach to the paradoxes of play in children's folklore (see bateson 1972). i wrote that essay nearly twenty years ago, and in thinking what i might change if i revised that essay today, i would add a much more thorough section on the ways folklore and popular culture continuously fold back upon one another, proving every day the point of newell's paradox-namely, that children's folklore is simultaneously very dynamic in its content and very conservative in its forms. i touched on this point only slightly in the 1986 essay, but i have come to think of this interaction between mass-mediated, commercial, popular culture produced with kids and teens in mind as the consuming audience, on the one hand, and children's and teens' folk cultures on the other as one of the most important set of relationships in understanding children's everyday cultures. commodity culture endlessly appropriates children's folklore and sells the folklore back to the children, but children's folklore endlessly 13 found photographs mechling appropriates popular culture and uses that culture for the children's own motives. several things have changed or, at least, accelerated in american culture since 1986. first, it has become clear that kids and their cultures have become the sites for political battles in the adult "culture wars" (see hunter 1991). second, adult panic over kids' popular culture has led parents, teachers, politicians, and others to blame the violent and sexual content of a great deal of mass media aimed at kids for a range of social evils, including the murder of children by children, teen suicide, gang rapes, and the series of school shootings in the last half of the 1990s and into this century (see the special section on "folklore responds to columbine and adolescence" in the children s folklore review in 2002). third, the mass-mediated cultural products aimed at kids and teens shows signs of belonging to a global, international culture. in the most visible example, manga (graphic novels, comic) and animé (cartoon versions of the manga) created initially for japanese audiences now find voracious consumers among children, teens, and young adults in the united states. what are the implications of the internet and other globalizing forces on the folk cultures of children? so the workings of newell's paradox in the dialectic between children's folk cultures and the mass-mediated, popular, commercial cultural commodities produced for youthful consumers is the first new, real question i expect the found photographs to help illuminate. the second open question in the study of children's folklore has to do with "dark play" (sutton-smith & kelly-byrne 1984) or "dirty play" (fine 1988). both sorts of play challenge adult notions of the innocence of children. "dark play" is the phrase suttonsmith and kelly-byrne use to describe play that relies on some degree of danger or transgression for its pleasure, a form of play more likely found in older children and teens. "dirty play" is fine's phrase for the transgressive play of children, especially if it involves forbidden words and actions. "dark play" and "dirty play" usually take place away from adult surveillance, so we should not have high hopes that snapshots will capture a great deal of such play. polaroid and digital photography bypass many of the possibilities for adult censorship, so it might be that there will be an increasing number of available images recording dark and dirty play. still, existing snapshots point in some interesting ways to transgressive play and traditions, as i shall show. a third sort of question about children's folklore and folklife that snapshots might address has to do with gestural culture and proxemics. moving pictures (film or video) are the best media for capturing how children move their bodies in space, how they position themselves in relation to playmates, how they touch or don't touch other children, and 14 mechling found photographs so on, but still photography can capture some of the ways children use bodies and space, and snapshots of children reach much farther back into history than do home movies and home video. finally, it seems to me that snapshots might help write the history of children's emotional lives. emotions are fundamentally human (probably fundamentally mammalian), but cultures shape human emotions, socializing fear, jealousy, love, anger, sadness, grief, and so on into forms the cultures deem acceptable and minimally likely to disrupt social relations. historian peter n. stearns almost single-handedly created the interdisciplinary field of "the history of emotions," but he and others have relied almost exclusively on written evidence to chronicle the history of the socialization of particular emotions across time and space (e.g., stearns and stearns 1986). the family is the primary setting for the socialization of emotions, the setting where a child learns, for example, how to express or repress anger. children's folk groups certainly must be another site for the socialization of emotions, and it is possible (as is so often the case) that the socialization in the children's group resists and undermines the socialization in the family. in any case, since we have good reasons to believe that facial expressions, gestures, and other visual cues signal a person's emotional condition, we would expect snapshots to provide some sort of evidence of the contexts for the emotional lives of children. some other issues in children's folklore and folklife will arise as i discuss particular images below, but this list of four sorts of questionsabout popular culture, about dark and dirty play, about proxemics, and about the socialization of emotions-helps orient the analysis to come. note that in all four cases we have very little historical evidence reflecting the children's point of view. snapshots might be our only evidence for some insights about children's everyday lives. all of this hope i bear for the usefulness of snapshots for understanding the everyday lives of american children in the past relies upon "reading" the photographs. this matter of "how to read" photographic images is the subject ofa great deal of useful criticism (e.g., chalfen 1975,1987,1991; king 1984; ohm and bell 1975; ibson 2002). when we look at any snapshot, we tend to read meaning into it from the nonverbal clues the image offers. we draw upon our experiences with other images and the history of our interpretive successes and failures-as, for example, when we may have misread a facial expression. these readings of found photographs involve a great deal of speculation, but then (i would argue) so does the folklorist's observation of a live folk performance in context. the inner meanings of the immediate event for the participants are no more accessible to us, really, than are the meanings to the participants of an event photographed a hundred years ago. still, these are not wild guesses but may be reasonable and persuasive interpretations of the 15 found photographs mechling meanings of the event captured in a snapshot. let me illustrate some of the interpretive possibilities with a few select snapshots. children's lives in snapshots up to this point i have laid out some issues we should be on lookout for as we peruse found photographs for evidence of children's everyday folk lives, but rather than organize the remainder of this essay according to these analytical categories, i prefer to work instead from a sample of interesting and provocative snapshots in my collection, always on the lookout for the more theoretical issues i have laid out. when i choose to buy a found photograph, i am drawing upon these issues in finding a photograph "interesting," but i am also open to being surprised by a photograph that taps some issues i had not expected. this is why it is best to begin with some compelling snapshots. the sample photos and the interpretive comments i offer here are illustrative, meant to be suggestive and provocative rather than definitive and comprehensive. with these qualifications in mind, let us look at some actual snapshots. some photographs serve the text-based approach to the history of children's folklore, as in snapshots that capture a traditional game or a calendrical custom, for example. as we gaze at the real photo postcard (fig. 1) of a school playground in 1912, we recognize that the very nature of photography is to capture a brief moment in time, a micro-second slice of the continual flow of everyday life. seeing such photographs adds a visual memory and impact to the historical point that, say, children have played the traditional game of red rover across time and space. now in our mind's eye we can put real faces and settings to a past performance of the game. but the photographs seem poor evidence for a performancebased approach to children's folklore in context. in this real photo postcard, for example, we do not know if the girls chose to play the ring game or were directed to do so by an adult. we do not have the contextual background for this playground scene that linda hughes (1993) had, for example, in her ethnographic study of the game of four square as it was played by the same kids over several months' time. we do not know the players, their relationships, or the other information we would need to answer the characteristic folklorist's question (based on kenneth burke's pentad-see rueckert 1982): who performed what traditional item of folklore, how, for what audience, in what time and place, for what reasons, and what was the outcome? the photograph does suggest some things about gender segregation on the playground and children's clothing for a time period, but that is about the extent of information we're going to glean from this photograph. 16 mechling found photographs but other photographs suggest thicker interpretations might be possible. let me narrow my gaze to snapshots revealing boys' everyday folk lives, with the understanding that we could put the same fine lens on girls' folk cultures and on a mix of the two. masculinity studies generally agree that the social construction of masculinity in cultures across time and space is a fragile project, and that a good many observable features of boys' and men's group cultures arise as adaptive responses to this fragility. for western middle-class cultures like ours, the emotional structure of the nuclear family and the fact that mothers have primary care of young children lead to a developmental circumstance in which boys must separate from the mother and identify masculinity as "not female." one's masculinity must be proven constantly, and cracks in the male façade must be repaired quickly and effectively. this leads to certain features of male friendship group cultures, including stylized aggression, hierarchy, misogyny, the deprecation of men perceived to be too feminine (in some contexts full homophobia), and a tendency to communicate relationships through "doing side-by-side" rather than through speech. there is a "boy code" enforced largely by a shame culture (pollack 1999). i think some snapshots help us see the workings and affective impact of these features of growing up male in the united states. for one thing, unlike formal, posed portraits, snapshots show us the everyday dress of boys and how boys used their clothing and hairstyles to perform masculinity in a particular social, cultural, and historical context. this snapshot of a teenage boy (fig. 2), probably from the 1940s or early 1950s, features the wide-rolled dungaree cuffs necessary for the performance of a "cool" masculinity. the squared body language and the direct stare into the camera by the young man standing in front of the car is aggressive and confrontational, and even his hairstyle connotes challenge. he frames his genitals with two hands, fingers spread for added attention, intensifying this male performance. the automobile in that photograph signals a common convention in american snapshots. americans love their cars, and kids of all ages can be found posing in front of or in the family car. in some cases-this is one, i suppose-the car actually belongs to the teenager. this american infatuation with the automobile-an affection that tells us much about american culture, as lots of scholarship has shown-extends to kids, often photographed playing with cars and trucks or, more interestingly, posed in a commercially produced pedal car or, more interesting still, some version of a home-made car. these snapshots range from the more formal "boxcar derby" cars (fig. 3) to the far more ad hoc constructions from scavenged parts, evidence of a continuing tradition of bricolage among boys. 17 found photographs mechling some snapshots capture kids in the process of making things or even constructing folk playthings (fig. 4). snapshots of kids of both sexes building castles and other forms in sand on the beach (fig. 5) confirm one important point-namely, that kids' folk constructions tend to follow what robert plant armstrong (1981) calls an aesthetic of syndesis rather than the aesthetic of synthesis we are used to in western art. working from a syncretic aesthetic, kids create things through addition and accretion such that creations might never be finished. as kids get older, the great preponderance of snapshots with constructions are of boys. sometimes (figs. 6, 7) the constructions are of materials provided by the commercial culture-another instance of newell's paradox at work-while in other cases the constructions demonstrate the bricolage we see in the folk constructions of playthings, such as this raft (fig. 8). some snapshots provide fascinating, concrete detail to the generalizations we make about boys' friendship groups. for example, some of the photos of boys building things capture the point made by pollack (1999) and others who write about boy cultures that boys often express and experience closeness through engaging in activities "side by side." whereas girls more often favor face-to-face play and come to understand intimacy as requiring face-to-face communication, boys tend to rely upon "doing sideby-side" as an expression of intimacy. some scholars make a sociobiological argument that boys experience face-to-face gazes from other boys as aggressive, as an invitation either to fight or to back down, so that expressions of intimacy between boys generally avoid the face-to face contact. and, as bateson notes, the very act of sharing a frame--such as "we're building this raft together"--communicates to the participants in the frame important things about their relationships. just like the male gaze, male touching must be managed in the friendship group. in general, boys touch each other only in stylized ways, such as playfighting. one of things we see in some snapshots is rough-andtumble play. this 1957 snapshot (fig. 9) of eight early teens boys on what must be a school playground in southern california speaks volumes; the racial mix here--at least black, white, and asian--is unusual for the time period, but the photo also confirms the view that touching between males in american society must be framed very carefully as heterosexual. touching in the frame of some sort of "horseplay," for example, is permissible. in fact, a number of the snapshots in my collection of rough-and-tumble play by boys will not reproduce well here for publication because their blurry focus is a product of a spontaneous action barely caught by the photographer. more problematic than rough touching are the less aggressive ways boys touch each other in snapshots portraying friends in an affectionate embrace (fig. 10). it is interesting that internet auction sellers often insert the phrase "gay interest" in the description of 18 mechling found photographs a snapshot of two boys or men posing with their arms around each other in a clearly affectionate embrace. how to sort out affection between two heterosexual males and between two homosexual males is not easy from the appearance of this touching alone, and heterosexual male friends constantly must construct and maintain a frame that the touching is not sexual while still powerfully emotional. these matters are highly contextual, of course, as conventions of male touching and the meanings of those conventions change over time, across ethnicity and social class, and across social contexts (e.g., all male settings versus mixed groups). john ibson's (2002) study of the changing conventions of such touching in snapshots of men (some of which ibson knew, through their provenance, were of gay men) deals mainly with males college age and older, but if we were to write a similar snapshot history of boys we would find the same ambiguities, albeit with a much larger proportion of the snapshots capturing touching framed as horseplay. many of these points about the ways boys relate to each other physically are made in a photographic album in my possession. an album often provides context and narrative flow missing for a single found photograph. this is an "orphan album" in that the dealer from whom i purchased it on ebay could not provide any information about its provenance. in more than two hundred photos, the album records high country mountain hiking and camping trips stretching from february to september (and maybe beyond) in 1938. the photos for the first three fourths of the album have captions recorded in white ink on the black pages, and it seems clear from the captions for the many mountains and lakes in the photos that these are the cascade mountains of oregon and washington. nine to a dozen boys and young men appear in group photos, sometimes just in pairs, and sometimes doing more than posing-such as cooking, eating, fishing, and swimming. in the posed, group photos these boys and men are hanging on each other just as we see in so many group photos. we also find some horseplay, such as this snapshot (fig. 11) of boys having a playfight with knives, and, late in the album, photos of a group of younger boys swimming and huddling around campfires, spread throughout the album are photos taken during "skinny dipping" swims in the mountain lakes and streams (fig. 12), and the naked bodies remind us that one sort of framed, safe intimacy between boys and men is expressed through casual nudity in each others' presence. i also have in my possession a remarkable set of negatives of a cub scout den and pack (a collection of the smaller dens). the pictures of the pack record a banquet, with each den's boys and his parents sitting together by den. judging from the women's clothing and hairstyles, i would guess that these photos are from the 1940s or early 1950s. the 19 found photographs mechling photos of the pack banquet are not what is so remarkable about the collection, however. dens typically prepare skits for such pack gatherings. (i was a cub scout in the 1950s and my mother was a "den mother," so i know this world.) amongst the pictures of the pack gathering are pictures of these white cub scouts dressed in blackface and white gloves, clearly prepared to perform a minstrelsy skit (fig. 13). we know well the racism embodied in minstrel shows, and we also know well the racially segregated world of the 1940s and 1950s when these cub scouts were growing up. but even this knowledge does not prepare the viewer fifty-some years later for the jolting impact of seeing these eightor nine-year old white boys performing blackface minstrelsy. in this case, no written historical record or testimony can convey the alarming mix of innocence and social evil captured in these photographs, just as some lynching photographs slap us when we see children in the crowd of onlookers laughing, posing, and even gathering souvenirs (allen, als, lewis, and litwack 2003). the lynching photographs seem like "dark play," but can we say the same of the cub scout minstrels? possibly. also in this category of white children dressing up as something they are not are the photographs of kids "playing indian." such snapshots are plentiful, and they reinforce our understanding of the power of such play for white children in the 20th century. adults created youth organizations based on "indian lore" almost as soon as real native americans were no longer a threat (mechling 1980, deloria 1999), but the snapshots show how pervasive was "playing indian" in the informal, folk play of kids (fig. 14). this snapshot (fig. 15) of young kids playing with guns also counts as dark play. i think most adult viewers would have shuddered a bit at this snapshot even before the columbine and other school shootings, but in the post-columbine world, where kids have become demonized and are scrutinized closely to see who is the next sociopath to bring an arsenal to school, it is impossible to view this snapshot without invoking those meanings. in fact, there is good reason to believe that a great deal of "dark play" by kids and teens involves firearms. at the same time, in other contexts snapshots of children holding guns would not be dark play but merely evidence of the socialization of boys and girls into the hunting cultures of their fathers and mothers (mechling 2004). there is no logical place to stop with examples, so let me end with a snapshot showing a moment of hazing (fig. 16). this snapshot from 1941 shows the very public paddling of a fraternity pledge, one assumes, as part of the hazing process for bringing new members into the fraternity. college students are no longer children, in most cases, but children's folklorists easily extend "childhood and adolescence" into the college years because they find so many continuities between adolescent folklore 20 mechling found photographs and college student folklore. in the case of hazing, high school and college fraternities haze pledges as a more formal version of the informal hazing quite common in male friendship groups, where a young man must pass a "test" to show himself worthy of belonging to the group. hazing-which is now generally outlawed by colleges and by the national offices of fraternities, but still practiced nonetheless-has its private moments and its public moments, and both sorts of moments have been captured in snapshots. snapshots capturing public moments of hazing (as in fig. 16) remind us that this was not "dark play" but socially recognized and accepted "fun" for boys of certain ages. in more private contexts away from public scrutiny, humiliation, power, dominance, submission, shame, nudity, and even some homoerotic moments show up in hazing, and a vernacular photographic record of the hazing appears to play an important role in marking the moments and in "remembering" them (an accidentally wonderful word in this context, given the uses of the photographs to rehearse again the conversion of a pledge into a "member" of the group) once the pledge can look back fondly upon hazing as a test passed. the now infamous photographs, made public in the spring of 2004, of the humiliating treatment of iraqi prisoners by american soldiers in the abu gharib prison seem familiar to the folklorist who knows the male folk culture of the military. some commentators have blamed internet sadomasochistic pornography sites as the sources of the visual tableaux that led the american soldiers to pose the iraqi prisoners in certain positions and nude; but any folklorist of male cultures knows it is fraternity and military boot camp hazing, not pornography, that provides the visual commonplaces re-enacted in the prison photos. this is disturbing dark play, but it has a long pedigree. conclusion as these examples demonstrate, found photographs provide a potentially rich body of evidence for writing the history of children's everyday lives, especially their folklore. in the case of boys, the bulk of my examples, the vernacular photographic record is invaluable in reconstructing the rich nonverbal worlds of boys' friendship groups. nearly thirty years ago in a special issue of folklore forum a group of folklorists attempted to alert their colleagues to the value of photographs as evidence of folklore as a form of visual communication (ohm and bell, eds. 1975). 21 found photographs mechling it is time that we return to that invitation and mine this evidence for all it reveals. works cited allen, james, hilton als, john lewis, and leon f. litwack. 2003. without sanctuary: lynching photographs in america. santa fe, nm: twin palms publishers. armstrong, robert plant. 1981. the powers of presence: consciousness. myth, and affecting presence. philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press. bateson, gregory. 1972. "a theory of play and fantasy [1955]." in steps to an ecology of mind: collected essays in anthropology, 177-93. new york: ballantine. bronner, simon j. 1999. "material folk culture of children." in children s folklore: a sourcebook, ed. brian sutton-smith et al., 251-71. logan: utah state university press. ______, ed. 2002. special section on "folklore responds to columbine and adolescence." children s folklore review 24 (1& 2): 7-63. chalfen, richard. 1975. "introduction to the study of non-professional photography as visual communication." in saying cheese: studies in folklore and visual communication, ed. stephen ohm and michael e. bell, 19-25. folklore forum no. 13. bloomington: the folklore institute, indiana university. _______. 1987. snapshot versions of life: explorations of home mode photography. bowling green, oh: the popular press. _______. 1991. turning leaves: the photographic collections of two japanese american families. albuquerque: university of new mexico press. coupland, douglas. 2003. hey, nostradamus! a novel. new york: bloomsbury. deloria, philip j. 1999. playing indian: otherness and authenticity in the assumption of american indian identity. new haven, ct: yale university press. ewald, wendy. 1985. portraits and dreams: photographs and stories by children of the appalachians. new york: writers and readers publishing, inc. _____. 2000. secret games: collaborative works with children 1969-1999. zurich: scalo. fine, gary alan. 1980. "children and their culture: exploring newell's paradox." western folklore 39: 170-83. ______. 1988. "good children and dirty play." play and culture 1:43-56. goffman, erving. 1976. gender advertisements. new york: harper & row. greenfield, lauren. 1997. fast forward: growing up in the shadow of hollywood. ny: knopf. _________. girl culture. 2002. san francisco: chronicle books. higonnet, anne. 1998. pictures of innocence: the history and crisis of ideal childhood. london: thames and hudson. hubbard, jim. 1991. shooting back: a photographic view of life by homeless children. san francisco: chronicle books. _________.1994. shooting backfrom the reservation: a photographic view of life by native american youth. new york: the new press. 22 mechling found photographs hunter, james davison. 1991. culture wars: the struggle to define america. new york: basic books. hughes, linda. 1993. "'you have to do it with style': girls' games and girls' gaming." in feminist theory and the study of folklore, ed. by t. hollis, l. pershing, and m.j. young, 130-48. urbana: university of illinois press. huyghe, pierre, and douglas coupland. 2003. school spirit. paris: encounters. ibson, john. 2002. picturing men. washington, dc: smithsonian institution press. king, graham. 1984. say "cheese"! looking at snapshots in a new way. new york; dodd, mead & co. kouwenhoven, john a. 1982. half a truth is better than none. chicago: university of chicago press. mechling, jay. 1980. '''playing indian' and the search for authenticity in modern white america." in prospects 5: an annual review of american cultural studies, ed. jack salzman, 17-33. new york: burt franklin company. ________.1986. "children's folklore." in folk groups and folklore genres, ed. elliott oring, 91-120. logan: utah state university press. ________. 2001. on my honor: boy scouts and the making of american youth. chicago: university of chicago press. ________. 2004. "picturing hunting." western folklore 63:1/2,51-78. morgan, barbara. 1951. summer s children: a photographic cycle of life at camp. scarsdale, ny: morgan & morgan, publishers. ohm, stephen, and michael e. bell, eds. 1975. saying cheese: studies in folklore and visual communication. folklore forum no. 13. bloomington: folklore institute, indiana university. padilla, ai. 2002. reality from the barrio: the photography and prose of native santa fe youth, from censorship to survival. santa fe, nm: santa fe boys & girls club. pollack, william. 1999. real boys: rescuing our sonsfrom the myths of boyhood. new york: henry holt and company. rueckert, william h. 1982. kenneth burke and the drama of human relations. 2nd., ed; berkeley: university of california press. salinger, adrienne. 1995. my room: teenagers in their bedrooms. san francisco: chronicle books. sandeen, eric. 1995. picturing and exhibition: the family of man and 1950s america. albuquerque: university of new mexico press. stearns, carol zisowitz, and peter n. stearns, 1986. anger: the struggle for emotional control in america s history. chicago: university of chicago press. sutton-smith, brian, and diana kelly-byrne, eds. 1984. the masks of play. west point, ny: leisure press. thompson, kathleen, and hilary mac austin, eds. 2003. america s children: picturing childhoodfrom early america to the present. new york: norton. weber, bruce. 1997. branded youth and other stories. boston: bulfinch/ little,brown. 23 found photographs mechling illustrations fig. 1. 1912 playground fig. 2. teen boy with car and attitude 24 mechling found photographs fig. 3. boy in soap box derby car fig. 4. boys play with legos 25 found photographs mechling fig. 5. sand castles at beach fig. 6. boy with erector set construction 26 mechling found photographs fig. 7. boy with tinker-toy airplane fig. 8. boys on raft t 27 found photographs mechling fig. 9. boys on los angeles playground, 1950s fig. 10. affectionate boys 28 mechling found photographs fig. 11. playfighting with knives (album) fig. 12. skinning dipping (album) 29 found photographs mechling fig. 13. cub scout minstrels fig. 14. boy playing indian 30 mechling found photographs fig. 15. boys with guns fig. 16. fraternity hazing, 1941 31 cfr_2004-2005_part2 cfr_2004-2005_part3 cfr_2004-2005_part4 cfr_2004-2005_part5 cfr_2004-2005_part6 cfr_2004-2005_part7 cfr_2004-2005_part8 cfr_2004-2005_part9 pages from cfr_2004-2005_part10 cfr_2010.pdf book reviews 89 consuming agency in fairy tales, childlore, and folkliterature. by susan honeyman. (new york: 2010. pp. vii – 230, illustrations, preface, acknowledgements, introduction, notes, bibliography, index.) brandi j. venable readers will recognize some of the content in consuming agency in fairy tales, childlore, and folkliterature as a re-visitation of older works by susan honeyman, re-printed here as part of a more cohesive text. the book functions collectively as a statement about “the agency of young subjects through material relations” (5), or, how food is used to subjugate children. the socio-historical analysis and emphasis on the relationship between childhood and material objects (toys and food) in the fairy tales, lore, and literature presented in this book are restricted geographically to the united states. the discussion begins historically with the rise of consumer capitalism starting in the mid-19th century and continuing throughout the 20th century. with food as the thematic thread throughout the book, many of the chapters are playfully organized around a single tasty treat: gingerbread/ honeycakes, candy, molasses, and spinach. according to honeyman, these sweet temptations have a corrosive effect on young people’s agency as presented in the texts she analyzes, often favoring — and thus encouraging — children to adopt roles as objects, not subjects. writing from the perspective of child-rights activism, honeyman skillfully applies interdisciplinary methods to familiar texts (the wizard of oz and the velveteen rabbit, for example) in order to make a powerful argument about the manipulative nature of consumption for children. each chapter furnishes its own argument, addressing a specific topic concerning the relationship between childhood and consumption. the first chapter documents the marginalization of children with the rise of consumer culture. referencing tales like pinocchio, honeyman focuses on puppetry and its implication for childhood agency. next, she explores the temptation of food itself, and the socializing effect it has on children, analyzing such well-known texts as “hansel and gretel” and charlie and the chocolate factory. halloween rituals and candy companies occupy the middle of the book, where the author demonstrates how childhood resistance is pacified by adults. in later chapters, the author covers gastronomic utopias to determine how food fantasies are used to control the hungry, and also highlights the historical progression of popeye, his connection with spinach, and the equation of spinach with power. honeyman also uses this space to address class bias in u.s. nutritional reforms. in conclusion, she contends that hunger allows for the body to be exploited. the pervasive struggle highlighted throughout this analysis of children’s tales and lore is one against hegemonic control, and honeyman argues that, for children, this occurs through bodily hunger and temptation, encompassed in the lure of food. in her introduction, honeyman states that, “much of popular culture tends to be ignored in folklore scholarship,” but contends that many popular forms (such as the comic book) are aware of, and incorporate, folklore into their works (10). her book acts as a vehicle for bridging distinct disciplinary categories, arguing that the issue of childhood agency and consumption is pertinent not just to one field of book reviews 90 study, but to many. indeed, she makes a lofty attempt to tackle several key issues surrounding this topic, and the reader may find her/himself wishing the chapters were longer and referenced more texts. however, even if the argument is restricted by page numbers, the book should incite discussion across academic disciplines, bringing together folklorists and child-rights activists, cultural studies and children’s literature scholars. for this reason, the book is invaluable to anyone interested in childhood studies, no matter what their academic or professional angle. overall, the book serves as an extensive study of childhood agency through food lore. while folklorists and cultural studies scholars may recognize references to jay mechling and clifford geertz, and to roland barthes and antonio gramsci, respectively, the book is also pertinent to child-rights activists. honeyman, an associate professor of english and a cultural studies scholar, does not claim to be a strict folklorist, but she does argue for the importance of folklore to a variety of disciplines, including popular culture and cultural studies more generally. folklorists hoping for an ethnographic approach to childhood studies should consult another resource; those more inclined toward textual analysis will enjoy honeyman’s decadent assortment of fairy tales, lore, and literature references. because of its interdisciplinary nature, academics and professionals in the fields of folklore, childhood studies, children’s literature, fairy tale studies, and cultural studies should find significant the arguments made in this book, relevant to their specific discipline. consuming agency is particularly useful to the student seeking to make connections across these fields. children’s folklore: a handbook. by elizabeth tucker. (westport, ct: 2008. pp. 1-164, preface, introduction, glossary, bibliography, web resources, index.) michele d. castleman elizabeth tucker’s children’s folklore: a handbook (2009) is an introductory guide to the “traditional knowledge shared by a group of two or more children, usually without the involvement of adults” (p. 1). the handbook is a comprehensive survey that considers both historical approaches and recent developments in the study of children’s folklore. according to tucker, its purpose is to “provide an overview of children’s folklore since the late 1800s” within the major genres (p.vii). she defines and provides examples of riddles, jokes, rhymes, taunts, songs, cheers, games, pranks, narratives, rituals and material culture. the vast majority of the folktales incorporated in the survey are from english-speaking countries, although occasional indo-european lore and personal narratives are included as well. tucker generally provides the context for each sample — the time and place it was recorded, the age of the children involved, and the source where it appears — and a few brief analytical statements. tucker notes that her handbook emphasizes “nature lore and imaginative, dangerous, and sexually oriented games” more than previous surveys have (p. 2). she regularly interprets the case studies for their sexual content or for their implications about gender, race and power relations, as well as for other matters of cultural significance. 7 hair today, gone tomorrow: upsherin, alef-bet, and the childhood navigation of jewish gender identity symbol sets amy k. milligan, phd but these hairs, all and singular, radiate into four hundred and ten worlds. (zohar vii:67) in my first semester of my doctoral program, dr. simon j. bronner, my academic idol, agreed to do an independent study course with me on hair. acutely aware that the great folklorist’s time was valuable, i selected charles berg’s the unconscious significance of hair (1951) as our first reading. this seemed fitting, as it was one of the earliest comprehensive hair studies texts. at our first meeting, i sat across from simon in a nervous sweat. what i hadn’t realized was that the book was largely about the phallic motivations of men who shave their heads. simon ran his hand over his shaved head, a twinkle in his eye, and said, “well, where do you want to start?” years later, simon remains my most trusted and cherished mentor, and i am lucky to also count him as a friend. as i have established myself as a bodylorist working in hairlore, simon has been an unwavering voice of support and encouragement, reminding me time and again that if the research isn’t there that i need to write it. as i worked on this essay for this journal commemorating his retirement from teaching—because we all know that it does not mark his retirement from writing—i emailed simon to ask if, in his encyclopedic memory, he could recall any studies mentioning upsherin (a ritual in which an orthodox jewish boy’s hair is cut for the first time at the age of three) that i might be overlooking, as my research was turning up scant results. his response? he encouraged me to get writing. truly, a finer mentor has never been. simon, i continue to learn from and be inspired by you. thank you for believing in me and my crazy hair-brained ideas (and for sharing a mutual love of word play); i can only hope to make you proud and to build my students up as you taught me through your example. in this essay, i introduce the theoretical framework of hairlore, discussing its challenges when applied to the hair of infants and very young children. i contextualize the ritual of upsherin, reviewing its history, describing contemporary applications, and discussing variations of the practice. finally, i offer an analysis of upsherin, considering its role in the shifting relationship between mother and son, as well as in the maintenance of a gendered orthodox symbol set, and discuss the possibility of egalitarian parallels for young girls. i ultimately argue that upsherin is ripe for adaptation by liberal jewish communities in its celebration of jewish core values. hair today, gone tomorrow milligan 8 theoretical basis for childhood hair studies bodylorists and hairlorists tend to focus their attention on the adult body (crane 2000; demello 2000; farrell 2011; grosz 1994; hagen and giuntini 2007; luciano 2002; pitts 2003; thompson 2015; young 1993). in many ways, this makes sense: adults are able to make choices about their self-presentation and engage autonomously with their bodies in ways in which children are unable. attention is also given to teens and young adults, who interact with their bodies as they cultivate their identities, often in contrast to parental wishes, but this consideration tends to have a health and medical scope (montgomery and parks 2001; carroll, riffenburgh, roberts, and myhre 2002; benjamins, risser, cromwell, feldmann, bortot, eissa, and nguyen 2006; silver, silver, siennick, and farkas 2011). other body studies of the pubescent and pre-pubescent body focus on general body image satisfaction (ballentine and ogle 2005; tiggemann and slater 2014; malachowski and myers 2013; coffey, budgeon, and cahill 2016). however, small children and babies also warrant the attention of bodylorists. while their engagement with their bodies is different than that of adults, indeed, it is this very difference that merits consideration. children’s bodies are a canvas for parental or cultural decisions, whereupon they are marked by external factors that exist outside of their control, including body modifications like circumcision, ear piercing, scarification, female genital mutilation, neck or lip expansion, and foot binding (silvester and wilson 2009; rush 2005; fan 1997; skaine 2005). hairlore, a subset of bodylore, considers specifically the role that hair has in the presentation of self (berg 1951; byrd 2002; leach 1958; mccracken 1995; obeyesekere 1984; prince 2010; simon 2001; weitz 2004). the analysis of the hair of infants and children poses three significant hurdles not faced when considering the hair of teens or adults. first, as infants and children grow hair, the rates and ways in which it grows are unpredictable. this seems an obvious truth, but not all small children have hair, and when they do, it is of various lengths and thicknesses. second, baby hair is fine and difficult to style. texturally, baby hair is not like mature hair. as many caregivers1 will attest, at best they can simply attempt to wrangle their small child’s hair into “looking presentable” by slicking it down or using hair accessories to tame it. third, when considering the hair of small children, the analysis does not probe the decisions of children. rather, the hairlore reflects the choices made by caregivers, as they maintain and groom the children’s hair. while it is true that after a certain age small children can voice their opinions about their hair, their corporeal decisions still rest with their caregivers. hair analysis of youth is limited and has concentrated on pubescent or postpubescent youth (mccracken 1995). it is, of course, at this age that young people generally start to make their own decisions about their body, whether it be fashion, hair, or other external manifestations of identity. before puberty, hair is under-analyzed, as it is attributed to marking only young age and, therefore, is not theorized as a conscious manifestation of the self. although this explanation is tempting in its simplicity, the hair of children is fertile ground for the roots of identity. there are multitudes of ways in which our community, ethnic, cultural, and religious identities are worn on our heads beginning at a young age. milligan hair today, gone tomorrow 9 examples of this include the long, unshorn hair of old order anabaptist girls, often worn in braids until it is pinned up under a prayer covering after baptism (reynolds 2001; scott 2008); the uncut and carefully wrapped hair and turban of a sikh child; twists and braids with bright beads worn by african american girls (byrd 2002; leeds craig 2002; prince 2010); a muslim infant’s first haircut on the seventh day of his life; or, as discussed in this essay, the creation of payot (sidelocks or sidecurls worn by jewish men, sometimes also referred to as payos in yiddish) for jewish boys during their upsherin. the changing of hair to mark a life change finds voice in a variety of ways across cultures. examples include amish men growing a beard after marriage (scott 1998); the donning of head coverings after baptism in old order groups (reynolds 2001; scott 2008); orthodox jewish women covering their hair after marriage (milligan 2014a); the creation and maintenance of mystical matted locks (obeyesekere 1984); the shaving of the heads of prisoners (weitz 2004); military recruits getting particular hairstyles after enlisting; or cancer patients shaving their heads prior to chemotherapy. all of these examples demonstrate how hair and its manipulation represent a way of controlling our appearance, especially in times of transition. some hairstyles are attributed especially to young children, including pigtails and bowl-cuts. thickly cut bangs come in and out of fashion for small girls, as has the spiking of little boys’ hair. for babies, the use of large headbands, hats, and even stick-on bows serve as gender identifiers. when young girls do not have long enough hair to put into pigtails or braids, they are marked as female by hair accessories or headwear. young boys often have haircuts that typify their youth, including slightly longer cuts that do not use hair styling techniques like tapering or blending. in recent years, it has also become fashionable to put male babies in baseball caps, fedoras, and other hats as a gender marker. there is historic precedence for the creation of “little adults” in the styling of children (demause 1974; fass 2013; greenleaf 1978). the same can be said for the creation of “little adult” hairstyles. the practical office-friendly bob, for example, has a certain charm on a little girl. likewise, a military style buzz cut is not only practical for little boys, but it is also considered charmingly impish. other adult styles, though, like a french twist for girls or slicked and parted hair for boys, are generally considered too mature for small children. as children transition from infancy to childhood, hair serves as one of the most important signifiers of maturity. small children’s appearances are constantly evolving, whether it is physical growth or eternal signifiers of age like diapers. along with these changes, hair serves an important role in marking the stages of early childhood. at an age where a child is still being bathed by someone else, the maintenance and care of a child’s hair rests with an adult. many caregivers express that they cannot wait for their little girls to have long enough hair to style, creating a bonding ritual and level of intimacy between child and caregiver that extends beyond the shampooing and drying of hair. likewise, caregivers also voice sadness when their children have their first haircut, as it marks the transition between baby and child. similarly, another important rite of passage for children is getting their first school haircut, marking their transition from toddler to school aged hair today, gone tomorrow milligan 10 child, often also coinciding with a child’s ability and responsibility for bathing and dressing herself. the first haircut is a celebrated milestone for many families. the event can happen in the intimate setting of the home or in a barbershop or salon. there are even hairstylists and shops that cater exclusively to children, including offering first haircut experience packages. typically, caregivers will keep a lock of their child’s hair in commemoration of the event. this hair, often a curl, is a different texture and often a different color than the hair an individual will have as an adult, representing the short-lived phase of infancy. likewise, the first haircut also symbolizes independence. although the child is not yet autonomous, the absolute dependency of an infant is replaced by the stubborn independence of a toddler. a baby enters the hair cutting ritual, and she emerges a child. the first haircut milestone is particularly striking in the transformation of young boys. more often than not, young girls have their hair grown long. in doing so, the first haircut is delayed and, even when trimmed, does not dramatically change the overall appearance of the little girl. for young boys, however, the first haircut can drastically alter the way they look. in clipping off the wispy baby hair and shaping the remaining hair into a more mature style, he is transformed from a baby to a child, or, as parents will often exclaim, “he looks like a little man!” the impact of this moment is even more profound when the transformation of the young boy also coincides with an externalization of religious affiliation through the creation of payot and the boy beginning to wear a yarmulke (the traditionally male skullcap worn by jews, also known as a kippah in hebrew) and tzitzit (the knotted ritual fringes traditionally worn by observant jewish men, typically attached to a fourcornered garment), as is experienced during the upsherin ritual. contextualizing upsherin upsherin is commonly practiced only among the most religiously observant2 jewish communities, typically among the hasidic, haredi, and other orthodox communities.3 upsherin, also sometimes transliterated from the yiddish as upsherin, opsherin, or upsherinish, literally means “to shear off” and includes both a haircutting ritual and, as will be discussed, a school initiation. this section begins by offering a brief history of the practice of upsherin followed by a description of the ritual in contemporary practice. finally, it concludes by discussing some of the variations of the practice. not only has upsherin been underanalyzed by scholars—indeed, yoram blau (2003) offers the only other theorized analysis of the ritual—it warrants little mention even in examinations of jewish orthodoxy (diamond 2000; gurock 2009; heilman 1999; heilman 2006; heilman and cohen 1999; landau 1992; mintz 1998; poll 1962). because of this, upsherin is a ritual largely unrecognized outside of the jewish community, unlike circumcision or bar/bat mitzvahs. despite this lack of wider recognition, upsherin is familiar to most contemporary jews, even among more liberal jewish movements who do not engage with the practice. it is difficult to trace the exact origins of upsherin, in part because it encompasses two distinct rites of passage: the physical haircut and the education milligan hair today, gone tomorrow 11 initiation. the haircut alone also amalgamates two distinct practices: the cutting or shaving of the hair and the creation of payot.4 there is historic religious precedence for childhood ritual haircutting, including the hindu and muslim customs of shaving the hair of children. in hindu tradition, the chudakarana (when a child receives his or her first haircut) takes place to remove the birth hair which is associated with past lives, and is, when possible, cast into the holy river ganges. similarly, many muslims shave the heads of infants on the seventh day of life to demonstrate submission to god as part of the aqueeqah ritual, where a sheep is sacrificed in order to ensure the child’s safety from harm (two sheep for a boy and one sheep for a girl). the hair is weighed and an equivalent amount is given to charity. sometimes this hair shaving ritual takes place in conjunction with khitan (circumcision, which can take place up until puberty and often is performed on the seventh day of life or on the seventh birthday). childhood haircutting rituals first were embraced by palestinian jews in the middle ages. the musta’arabi jews were arabic-speaking jews living in the middle east and north africa prior to the expulsion of jews from spain in 1492. after the ladino-speaking jews settled in the same area, they would merge together to form what is now referred to as the sephardic community (referring to jewish communities with roots in spain and north africa, pl. sephardim) (barnett and schwab 1989; dobrinsky 2002). the practices of the musta’arabi jews likely influenced rabbi isaac luria ashkenazi (16th century) in his writings, which ascribe mystical qualities to payot (blau 2003, 185). prior to the 1800s, ritual haircutting remained a sephardic practice. it would not be introduced into ashkenazic (referring to the jewish communities with roots in germany and eastern europe, pl. ashkenazim) practice until the 1800s (ibid.). in contrast, education initiation developed among the ashkenazic community. school or education initiations became prominent in europe during the 12th and 13th centuries, particularly in germany and northern france (ibid., 187). blau contends that the education initiations of young boys were gradually replaced with the bar mitzvah (ibid.), blurring the historical continuity between these medieval school initiations and contemporary. the fact that these two ceremonies evolved independently in different diasporic communities (hair cutting among sephardim and education initiation among ashkenazim) and now have converged into one unique blended ritual indicates that it is only in the last two centuries that upsherin, as is practiced today in conjunction with education initiation, has codified into a modern hybrid jewish ritual. unlike other practices that find their roots in halakha (referring to jewish law, may also be used to refer to individual jewish laws or commandments)—for example, keeping kosher—upsherin and education initiations are part of minhag (modern jewish traditions or customs that have evolved into expected community norms). that is to say, there is no jewish legal imperative for upsherin; rather, it has become an accepted cultural custom such that it has taken on particular significance. contemporary upsherin events are comprised of two rituals: the boy’s haircut (the upsherin itself) followed by the education initiation ceremony. this second ceremony is an extension of the upsherin and does not have a distinct ritual name; however, many refer to it as the alef-bet (the first two letters in the hebrew hair today, gone tomorrow milligan 12 alphabet; the phrase used to refer to the alphabet as a whole) to distinguish this part of the ritual from the hair cutting. this is an important distinction because, although it is common for the two ceremonies to happen together, that is not always the case, as will be discussed later in variations of the practice. in the united states, the upsherin typically takes place in the family home, although it can also occur in the synagogue. the boy’s hair is sometimes adorned with ribbons or pulled into a ponytail, and he enters the ritual space wearing a yarmulke and tzitzit for the first time. depending on the family, the boy may sit by himself or on his father’s lap (or, in rare cases, on the mother’s lap) for his haircut. the forelock is snipped first by the father, symbolizing where the boy will one day lay tefillin (leather boxes holding scripture that are bound to the forehead and left arm). sometimes the honor of the first snip of hair is afforded to a rabbi or a kohen (a member of the priestly tribe (direct patrilineal descent from aaron) who has special duties in the synagogue). this first lock of cut hair is typically preserved, often pressed in a siddur (a jewish prayer book). the boy’s remaining hair is cut, frequently with the mother making the next cut and then by allowing those in attendance to each snip off one lock of hair. in some families, the hair is collected and weighed, and a donation is made in that amount to charity, paralleling the muslim rituals discussed earlier. others will make a donation matching the total number of locks trimmed. some boys are given a tzedakah (charitable giving or donations, considered a moral obligation in jewish practice) box to hold and with each snip will deposit money, usually given to them by each person cutting their hair. families often will select a charity related to education like a yeshiva (an institution of jewish education that focuses on the study of religious texts) or library. although less common, some families additionally donate their son’s hair to be made into a wig for cancer patients, and others choose to hide or bury the hair (pinson 2010, 48). s im o n j . b r o n n e r milligan hair today, gone tomorrow 13 during the upsherin, the hair is carefully cut to ensure that payot remain. at the end of the ritual, some families shave their son’s head, making the payot even more prominent. the child is showered in sweets representing sweetness raining down from angels in heaven. the sweets are distributed to guests in pekalach (small bags of sweets). the tradition of throwing sweets has ashkenazic origins and also appears at other major orthodox male life cycle events, including vach nacht (the night before the circumcision); when a groom is called for aliyah (reciting a blessing over the torah) the sabbath before his wedding; and at bar mitzvahs. in the united states, it is customary for the alef-bet ritual to immediately follow the upsherin. the boy is wrapped in his father’s tallit (the prayer shawl traditionally worn by jewish men, also known as tallis in yiddish), to symbolize purity and to demonstrate the father’s protective role. the boy is carried in his father’s embrace to the teacher. the alef-bet usually occurs in the same location as the upsherin, although sometimes the boy is brought to a yeshiva or synagogue. the boy is placed in the lap of the male teacher or rabbi, and a laminated card or tablet of the hebrew alef-bet is placed in front of him. mimicking the teacher, the child reads each hebrew letter aloud, starting from the beginning to the end, and then again in reverse. the alef-bet tablet from which the child reads is sprinkled with honey, and the boy is encouraged to dip his finger in the honey on each letter and to lick his finger or sometimes even the tablet. in doing so, he is given his first taste of the sweetness of learning. the teacher also recites several textual passages, which the child is encouraged to repeat.5 in some communities, the child is also given a hard-boiled egg with torah verses engraved on it. sometimes a special honey cake, often decorated with a torah verse, is served to the child or to those in attendance. as with any ritual, there are variations of upsherin and alef-bet. each hasidic court, as well as other haredi and orthodox communities, has its own minhag. those cultural variations are compounded by the variations experienced by a multi-national diasporic religious community. blau’s consideration of upsherin, for example, focuses on the experiences of israeli jews (2003). in contrast to american jews, who hold the upsherin on a boy’s third birthday or on lag ba’omer if the boy’s birthday falls during the counting of the omer,6 many israelis deliberately wait until lag ba’omer to cut their sons’ hair so that they can do so in conjunction with a pilgrimage to the tomb of rabbi shimon bar-yohai7 in meron, or, less commonly, in jerusalem at the grave of shimon hatzaddik (ibid., 183-185). in recent years, it has also become popular to conduct upsherin at the western wall. when upsherin is done in this israeli context, its maleness is multiplied. women’s roles are further sidelined while they wait in gender-segregated areas, unable to enter into the ritual space. as such, they peer into the area, often with their view blocked by screens, to see the dancing, celebration, and upsherin. the celebrations at meron are drastically different than the smaller home-based upsherin of the united states because of the large crowds and simultaneous celebration of lag ba’omer. in meron, boys sit on their fathers’ shoulders, swirling hair today, gone tomorrow milligan 14 in a milieu of mystic maleness, and clutching alef-bet flags and bags of sweets (ibid., 184). for the boys who have their first haircuts in meron, school initiation ceremonies are typically delayed and performed at a different time. although the boys symbolically clutch alef-bet flags, the two-fold ceremony is split, sometimes with the alef-bet ritual occurring months later on the first day of school with the entire class and their fathers’ present (ibid., 185-186). similarly, some boys will have a private alef-bet ceremony near their birthday or lag ba’omer and then engage with the ritual again on the first day of school. this difference in practice is undergirded, of course, by the fact that israeli youth engage with hebrew differently than their english and yiddish speaking american counterparts. there are two other ritual variations that are important to note. first, the reason upsherin occurs at the age of three is based on leviticus 19:23, where it is forbidden to eat the fruit of a tree for the first three years. hasidic thought has interpreted this metaphorically to mean that a three-year-old child with uncut hair will grow tall and fruitful, growing in knowledge and goodness as a man (pinson 2010, 3-4). however, some hasidic groups—including skver, chernobyl, and gur—perform upsherin at the age of two. while they are in the minority, they look instead to genesis 21:8, where abraham prepares a great feast for isaac’s birthday. second, among some sephardic communities, upsherin is delayed until the age of five. in this context, the ritual is referred to as chalaka (from the arabic lakya, a haircut). done without a school initiation ritual, the chalaka ritual is a reverse parallel to muslim customs. in this sephardic context, jewish boys are circumcised at eight-days-old and have their hair cut at age five, an inverse mirroring of muslim boys having their hair cut on the seventh day and their circumcision at the age seven. the chalaka is done independently of a school initiation, reflecting the practices of musta’arabi jews and the sephardic communities prior to ashkenazic influence (blau 2003, 1989; pinson 2010, 52). analysis of upsherin this essay contends three primary points of analysis. first, upsherin represents a gendered divide between a young boy and his mother. second, upsherin finds voice as a unique childhood ritual within the jewish male life cycle, gaining importance because of its role in teaching gendered performance through the creation of a specifically orthodox male identity kit. finally, upsherin is without sufficient egalitarian parallel, which will be addressed through a discussion of candle lighting and jewish feminist engagement with upsherin. upsherin marks an important moment in the life of a young orthodox boy in terms of his relationship to his mother. as an infant, the boy was reliant on his mother, either through a literal dependence on breast milk or an intimate reliance on the comfort of a mother figure. his upsherin marks a moment when he is figuratively removed from his mother, transitioning into the maleness of the orthodox jewish world. prior to his upsherin, his mother was primarily responsible for his care, but this ritual marks a transfer of power. the boy will milligan hair today, gone tomorrow 15 now be educated and raised under male leadership (including his father, rabbi, and teachers) and among male peers. blau contends that upsherin functions as a secondary circumcision, whereby the boy is once again physically marked and sanctified as a jew (blau 2003, 187193). unlike his circumcision, at the conclusion of which he is returned to his mother’s care and, as blau aptly notes, is in direct contact with her postpartum “impurities” (ibid., 180), his upsherin marks a point of purity where a boy departs from his mother and enters the world of jewish masculinity. in this way, upsherin is not the first marker of maleness for a jewish boy, as his circumcision represents the first gender affirming ritual in his life, but rather it indicates a new expectation of his navigation of orthodox gender roles. blau’s approach to upsherin considers the anthropological and psychological implications of the ritual with a careful rhetorical eye (for example, the move from milah (circumcision) to milah (the word), offering a compelling rhetorical and anthropological argument for the upsherin representing a secondary circumcision (ibid., 176-183). however, by bringing the tools of folklore to bear on upsherin, the ritual reveals itself to be less about repurification through a secondary circumcision and more about addressing the parental anxieties experienced in the transition of authority from the mother to the father. this is a familiar theme for folklorists, who see ritual often used to ease transition periods and anxieties. likewise, this folkloric understanding of a ritual easing periods of transition is replicated in the other anthropological examples blau identifies in sambia (ibid., 193-198), further strengthening his argument for their parallels. the transition away from mother and into the gendered world of orthodoxy is literally reenacted during the upsherin. the boy appears wearing a yarmulke and tzitzit, both traditionally male garments. it is the father who holds the boy on his lap while hair is being cut and the father who is given the honor of cutting the first lock of hair. in meron, the boys sit on their fathers’ shoulders as they dance on lag ba’omer in a space into which only men may enter. it is the father who wraps the son in his (male-encoded) tallit and carries him to a male rabbi or teacher who guides the boy through his alef-bet. in these ways, the sweetness of the mother’s milk is replaced when the boy is given his first taste of the sweetness of the torah and of orthodox masculinity. contemporary gender theory identifies that gender is performative (leighton 2012; miller 2010; askew 1998; butler 2006). bodylore undergirds this theoretical framework by demonstrating the cultural malleability of gender, especially in how bodies are used in both common and discursive contexts (hollis, pershing, and young 1993; radler 1993). blau contends that upsherin represents the repurification of the young male body by physically marking when a boy begins his journey in learning secondary male identity (blau 2003, 177; see kimmel 2009; goldberg 1987; bronner 2005). in this way, the body of the young boy can be theorized both through gender theory (as he learns the ideals of masculinity within his community) as well as bodylore (as his body is physically modified so that he might engage in this gendered performance). learning and maintaining appropriate gendered performance, then, is central in the upsherin experience. in a religious world where gender roles are distinct and hair today, gone tomorrow milligan 16 specific, this marks the moment when children are guided clearly down different paths. for the young boy, his physical transformation, coupled with his change in dress, indicates his maleness. he will be sent to yeshiva; he will begin to regularly attend synagogue with his father; he will be responsible for upholding certain laws and commandments; and his body will eventually count toward a minyan (the quorum of ten men required for certain religious events or rituals). no longer an infant, he must now learn how to modestly interact with the opposite sex. his upsherin marks the moment when the boy enters the gender-segregated world of orthodoxy and will begin to learn the particular responsibilities of orthodox men. if viewed through a broader lens, upsherin features the performance and maintenance of gender for all participants. the significance of the male body and maleness is highlighted by the centrality of the boy and his father, further underscored by the roles of the male teachers, rabbi, and other men at the scene (including the other fathers, for example, at meron). as such, the centrality of maleness, both within the family and as leaders in the jewish community, is strengthened. the role of women at the upsherin is markedly different. for mothers, as previously mentioned, the ritual signifies the shift of the infant’s care. however, the location of female bodies during the ritual underscores several important aspects of orthodox gender expectations, highlighting the non-central role of women in public religious life. during the upsherin, women are sidelined as observers, particularly when the ritual takes place in locations like meron where women are literally divided from their son and husband by a physical barrier. even in the american context, they are secondary voices to the ritual script, as further demonstrated by their place second in line to cut their son’s hair. in these spaces, young girls are similarly sidelined, reinforcing their non-central role in public religious life. in these ways upsherin functions just as much as a ritual to mark a change for the boy as it does a community ritual, affirming the gendered roles and expectations of orthodox jewish life for all in attendance. upsherin fulfills several of the primary functions of folklore as identified by william bascom (1954). first, it is a pedagogical device to reinforce cultural values, in this case through teaching the young boy. second, it justifies culture, including the rituals, institutions, and practices ascribed to a particular group. this justification of culture is critical in the maintenance of distinct community identity, and the upsherin reinforces orthodox identity for all in attendance. finally, bascom also identifies that folklore is a means of applying social control. this theory can be woven into hairlore through an understanding that loss of hair is often congruent with submission. examples of this include the shaving of gang members’ heads as part of initiation; buzz cutting soldiers’ hair at their enlistment; the shearing of nuns’ hair; the tonsuring of monks’ hair; or the forced shaving of prisoner’s heads. in each of these cases, the loss of hair indicates a literal or symbolic submission to a greater authority or force. upsherin, when viewed through this lens, is an extension of the same theme. not only is the boy literally submitting to his parents’ will, but he is also physically marked as submitting to the greater authority of his orthodox community. milligan hair today, gone tomorrow 17 hair removal, when viewed in this context, is reflective of how hair can be viewed simultaneously as a marker, a symbol, and an object (milligan 2014a, 7-13). blau’s psychological approach alludes to upsherin’s potential symbolic link to charles berg’s work (1951) and the association of shaved male heads and the phallus (blau 2003, 190-191); whereby blau expands on this idea to consider the creation of two phallic payot also to be significant (ibid., 188, 190-191). using a psychoreligious approach (milligan 2014a, 117-128) informed by erich fromm’s distinction between rational and irrational ritual (1950; see reik 1931), it is pertinent to consider the implications of the symbol set and identity kit (goffman 1965) given to the boy during upsherin and how the maintenance and cultivation of these symbols will follow him throughout his maturation both as a man and as a jew. at his upsherin, the boy is given a symbolic identity kit comprised of tzitzit, a yarmulke, his new short hair, and payot styled and shaped in a way that represent his affiliation within orthodoxy. unlike the hidden symbol of his circumcision, this symbol set is carried externally, and his upsherin signifies that he is mature enough to properly engage with the symbols and, as such, begin to navigate both religious and cultural gendered performance. payot, tzitzit, and yarmulkes are symbols of rational daily ritual, not attached to penis envy or outgrowths of religious crises; rather, in line with fromm’s analysis of rational ritual (1922; 1950), they reflect a human need to feel included and rooted in community. externally marking himself as a jewish male creates a space within orthodox life for the young boy, ensuring that he feels attached and rooted in his community. in addition to the symbolic inventory of the body afforded to the boy at his upsherin, he is also taught several hallmarks of jewish practice by engaging with tactile symbols. he learns the sweetness of learning and torah study by dipping his fingers in honey on the alef-bet. he is taught the importance of halakha and completes his first mitzvah (a commandment of divine origin, a good deed) in the creation of payot and by wearing his first tzitzit and yarmulke. likewise, placing money in a tzedakah box for each lock of hair cut is a physical engagement with the virtue of charity. by using tactile symbols in these ways, the lessons of upsherin are tangible for a child. much of what we try to teach children is theoretical—for example, why it is good to be truthful and moral. however, upsherin allows a boy to embody the abstract in a multi-sensory context by using a nuanced symbol set, engaging taste, touch, sight, hearing, and speech. moreover, in line with bascom’s assertion that folklore grows out of our need to validate culture (1954), upsherin engages those attending to also interact with the same symbols. whether or not the child himself remembers his upsherin does not diminish the importance that the ritual has in reinforcing the religious cultural identities of those attending. the ritual highlights central tenets of orthodoxy (gendered roles, learning, charity, family, community) and strengthens community identity by refreshing the boundaries established by orthodox jews to negotiate the pressures of assimilation and diasporic dilution. if upsherin marks one of the ways in which orthodox jews use folklore in the maintenance of community boundaries, it is important to also consider how little girls in this same context are also taught to avoid assimilation and engage hair today, gone tomorrow milligan 18 with gendered symbol sets. within orthodox judaism, the closest female parallel to upsherin is candle lighting. there are three gender-specific commandments for jewish women (lighting sabbath candles [nerot], breaking off a portion of the bread [challah], and sexual purity laws [niddah]). within the orthodox community, it is typically around age three that little girls begin helping to light sabbath candles. nerot is an interesting parallel to upsherin because, although it underscores the gendered divide of the orthodox world, it simultaneously affirms a girl’s maturity and ability to perform jewishness. likewise, through her preparation of the sabbath, the young girl is given her own gender-specific symbol set to learn, helping her to navigate her gender both in the home and in the larger orthodox community. her childhood domestic education enables the girl to mimic her mother, helping her learn the lessons that she will use as a woman who is expected to cultivate a jewish home and raise an orthodox family that will stand strong against pressures of assimilation. when viewed through this lens, upsherin is linked to the beginning of formal jewish education for boys the same way that nerot is linked to domestic learning for girls. despite occurring at roughly the same age, there are several significant differences between upsherin and nerot. although both rituals can take place in the home, only the upsherin is attended by those outside of the immediate family. likewise, although coupled with a physical transformation, upsherin is a onetime event, in contrast to nerot, which occurs weekly. finally, the analogously gendered parent is responsible for the instruction of the ritual and thereafter for the education of that child. in this regard, the little girl never departs from her mother or the home; whereas, the little boy transfers into the care of his father, rabbi, teachers, the yeshiva, and the synagogue. as discussed in this essay, upsherin has found voice almost exclusively within the orthodox community. other gendered lifecycle events, on the other hand, have developed analogous egalitarian rituals and are practiced across judaism (including within conservative, reconstructionist, and reform movements). examples of these rituals include bar and bat mitzvahs, pidyon ha-ben and pidyon ha-bat (redemption of the first born), and bris and bris bat ceremonies (circumcision and baby naming ceremonies). while these egalitarian practices for girls have not gained traction in orthodox circles, they have resonated with non-orthodox jews. similarly, other historically gendered body practices (wearing yarmulkes, tzitzit, and tallisim, or laying tefillin) as well as worship practice (counting men and women for a minyan or allowing women on the bimah [the platform area or altar of a synagogue]), have been adapted by non-orthodox jews. why, then, has upsherin remained largely ignored when other jewish practices have been made egalitarian and adopted by non-orthodox jews? there are three primary reasons why upsherin has not been reconceptualized and implemented outside of orthodoxy. first, the ritual itself creates payot, which mark the child as religiously observant. at the same time, the child is given tzitzit and a yarmulke. for more liberal jews, who themselves do not have payot or wear a yarmulke and tzitzit, the ritual seems decidedly orthodox. second, as minhag, upsherin has gradually increased in popularity among the orthodox community. because of this, there is no familial precedence set in non-orthodox communities. milligan hair today, gone tomorrow 19 unlike a circumcision or a bar/bat mitzvah, there is no external familial impetus to engage with the ritual, making it easy to ascribe solely to the orthodox community, undergirding an “us and them” dynamic. finally, upsherin has strong ties to religious learning, particularly to the hebrew alef-bet. for caregivers who themselves may not read hebrew, this ritual can seem foreign. likewise, the ritual affirms that a child will engage with jewish religious education. because of this, caregivers who intend to send their children to public or non-religious schools may feel like this is an empty promise. even if they intend for their child to attend hebrew school and become a bar/bat mitzvah, if they are a family unlikely to send their child to a jewish day school, this ritual may not resonate with them. within feminist judaism, there are numerous examples of women reclaiming patriarchal practices in rich and meaningful ways, both for themselves and their daughters. whether it is through the reclamation of yarmulkes, tallisim, tefillin, or tzitzit—or historically, in finding voice on the bimah, inclusion in minyanim, or the bat mitzvah—jewish women have been innovative in their transformation of jewish practices (adler 1972; alpert 1998; elper 2003; fishman 1995; heschel 1987; hyman 1995; levitt 1997; milligan 2014b; plaskow 1991; plaskow 1997; ruttenberg 2001). although upsherin has not taken on the same significance for feminist jews as other practices, it has not been entirely ignored. there have been small movements among non-orthodox jewish women to claim upsherin—but in an interesting twist, as a ritual for their daughters. this decision is particularly striking because there has been little non-orthodox movement to engage with upsherin for boys, begging the question, why, as a feminist jew, would you claim the upsherin for your daughter? the practice itself has not been formally well documented, as it remains uncommon and a very grassroots and progressive practice, happening primarily in the home and not in formal jewish settings. the number of “clarifying” responses found online by orthodox rabbis explaining that upsherin is only for boys (with the explanation that payot are only for men and that women get their own hair ritual upon marriage) suggests that an increasing number of individuals are at least asking about the practice for girls, even if they are not enacting the ritual. in personal interactions with women and in reviewing some women’s written reflections on this practice (gechter 2017; cooper 2014), there seem to be two primary motivations. first, there is a desire to mark the transition from baby to child, especially when it comes from a bodily reliance of a baby on the mother (for example, needing breast milk or soothing physical touch like rocking or cradling) to a child’s reliance on a mother for moral and cognitive development. the mothers describe that, like non-jewish mothers, the first haircut is symbolic of this transition from infancy to childhood. however, they have opted to claim the first haircut rite of passage and infuse it with jewishness. as women who are passionate about their own jewish observance and engagement with jewish life, it seems only fitting to take this developmental milestone and view it jewishly. second, and perhaps more importantly, by having an upsherin for their daughters, the mothers acknowledge that this is a moment where they commit themselves to raising a jewish daughter. this is a positive feminist statement, whereby they celebrate the jewish female potential through affirming their hair today, gone tomorrow milligan 20 daughters’ access to progressive and spiritual jewish education. through their daughters’ upsherin, the mothers take on the responsibility for ensuring that their daughters have equal opportunities not only to grow and learn as children and jews, but also to engage in the full spectrum of jewish practice. for their daughters, upsherin teaches the same lessons that orthodox boys glean—a love of learning, the importance of charity, and the embodiment of jewishness. moreover, it also teaches them gendered performance—that they, as female jews, are equal, deserve respect, and can have their voices centered in public jewish practice. upsherin among non-orthodox jews is not necessarily exclusionary of jewish boys, but the feminist application demonstrates a deeply intimate moment between generations of jewish women. as women who are acutely aware of the patriarchy that exists even in liberal judaism, they are reclaiming and reinterpreting a practice to reflect their commitment to raising a daughter who will have equal opportunities afforded to her in celebration of—rather than despite—her female body. although this is as much a political statement as a religious statement, for the mothers, it is reflective of an unwavering commitment to raising their daughters jewishly. conclusion: the potential egalitarian future of upsherin as a ritual, upsherin demonstrates the malleability of jewish folklore and practice. from its blending of sephardic and ashkenazic rites of passage to its implementation in two seemingly conflicting religious contexts, upsherin embodies the potential plurality of the contemporary jewish experience. by taking something as ordinary as a haircut and encoding it with jewishness, upsherin is a moment of ritual sweetness. like the literal honey in which the children dip their fingers, upsherin celebrates familial joy, the children’s growth, and the hope for their future, as jewish adults. although it is easy for liberal jews to dismiss upsherin as part of patriarchal jewish tradition, it is only because the ritual has not yet been reconceptualized in a mainstream egalitarian way. if other life cycle events like circumcisions/baby namings and bar/bat mitzvahs can achieve widespread practice, an egalitarian upsherin has potential for acceptance. like these other events, an egalitarian upsherin focuses on the family, a critical anchor for the maintenance of childhood jewish identity. moreover, upsherin celebrates several central tenets of jewishness: charity, family, community, and education. although the gendered performance roles taught in the orthodox practice of upsherin are unlikely to find voice within more liberal communities, the other commitments are universally shared. as a diasporic culture, one of the hallmarks of american jewishness has been its emphasis on both secular and jewish education. the alef-bet school initiation ceremony could find voice in liberal jewish contexts, especially if it is tied to a celebration of all forms of education. in this way, the ceremony is broad enough to welcome a variety of jewish and secular practices, family structures, and differently abled children, celebrating their collective potential and future. in the same way, although liberal jews are unlikely to create payot for their children or expect them to wear yarmulkes or tzitzit after their upsherin, the practice can be milligan hair today, gone tomorrow 21 adapted to mark the milestone of the first hair cut without engaging these other symbols or where, for example, both boys and girls are given yarmulkes. in a world where much of our focus is external, upsherin reminds us to look inward at what values and principles guide us, especially as we decide the lessons we teach our children. simultaneously, upsherin reinforces cultural and community connections that extend outside of the family, situating both children and their caregivers in relational contexts with others. as families and communities gather together to commemorate this moment of blossoming childhood, they celebrate the infinite promise of a child’s ability to learn, recognizing her as a vessel waiting to be filled with knowledge. upsherin reminds us of the best of our childhoods – that we are loved, that we have wonder and whimsy, and that we should embark upon the sweetness of learning with joy. notes 1. i recognize that not all children have parents or a parent. because of this, i have made the rhetorical decision to refer to the caregivers of a child, allowing for various legal and biological relationships. later, in the discussion of orthodoxy, i utilize the gendered terms of mother and father, reflecting the community norms of the group and ritual. 2. i use observant here to refer to modern orthodox, orthodox, hasidic, ultraorthodox, and haredi jews. in this colloquial usage, it refers to those who would label themselves as “torah observant.” i recognize, though, that this label is problematic for non-orthodox jews who view themselves to be observant and religious, albeit in various ways and levels. 3. throughout this essay i will refer to these groups collectively, either as orthodox or observant jews. when their practices diverge, i parse the group labels accordingly. 4. religious texts offer little historic guidance for when or how payot should be groomed, leaving groups to develop various interpretations of leviticus 19:27, which instructs “you shall not round off the side-growth of your head or destroy the side-growth of your beard.” 5. these include, but are not limited to, deuteronomy 33:4, “moses charged us with the torah as the heritage of the congregation of jacob,” the talmudic phrase “may the torah be my occupation and g-d my aid,” and the shema. 6. hair cutting is not permitted between passover and lag ba’omer, a holiday commemorating the death of rabbi shimon bar yochai and the day when the central mystical text, the zohar, is believed to have been revealed. it is also worth noting that some orthodox jews will refrain from hair cutting until shavuot, extending the prohibition through for the entire counting 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spiritual tattoo a cultural history of tattooing, piercing, scarification, branding, and implants. california: north atlantic books. ruttenberg, danya, editor. 2001. yentl’s revenge: the next wave of jewish feminism. new york: seal press. scott, stephen. 1998. amish wedding and other special occasions of the old order communities. pennsylvania: good books. ———. 2008. why do they dress that way? pennsylvania: good books. silver, eric, stacy rogers silver, sonja siennick, and george farkas. 2011. bodily signs of academic success: an empirical examination of tattoos and grooming. social problems, 58(november): 538-564. silvester, hans, and david h. wilson. 2009. natural fashion tribal decoration from africa. new york, n.y.: thames & hudson. simon, diane. 2001. hair: public, political, extremely personal. new york: st. martin’s press. skaine, rosemarie. 2005. female genital mutilation legal, cultural and medical issues. jefferson, n.c.: mcfarland. thompson, beverly yuen. 2015. covered in ink: tattoos, women, and the politics of the body. new york: nyu press. tiggemann, marika and amy slater. 2014. contemporary girlhood: maternal reports on sexualized behaviour and appearance concerns in 4-10 yearold girls. body image 11(4): 396-403. weitz, rose. 2004. rapunzel’s daughters: what women’s hair tells us about women’s lives. new york: farrar, straus and giroux. young, katharine. 1993. bodylore. tennessee: university of tennessee press. cfr_2017_part2 hair today, gone tomorrow: upsherin, alef-bet, and the childhood navigation of jewish gender identity symbol set amy k. milligan, phd cfr_2017_part3 cfr_2017_part4 cfr_2017_part5 cfr_2017_part6 ocr document children's folklore review volume 26 2003-2004 published by the children's folklore section of the american folklore society with support from the english department at east carolina university contents from the editor ....................................................................... 5 2003 newell prize winner: gender issues in the playground rhymes of new zealand children: 1993-2003. janice ackerley .................................................................... 7 2003 newell prize honorable mention: the ugly duckling, hans christian andersen: a story of transformation anita l. gambos ................................................................... 63 from fairies to famine: how cultural identity is constructed through irish and irish american children's literature karen hill mcnamara ....................................................... 77 review roundup 2003 gail de vos and merle harris ....................................... 91 cfs: 2003 annual meeting ............................................................ 101 notes and announcements ....................................................... 104 about the contributors............................................................. 105 from the editor at this time last year, i was rushing to finish the text for the 25th anniversary children's folklore review so that i could spend march, april, and may researching in australia. i did, had a great time, and mailed out cfr 25 after i returned. i had thought that this year's cfr would come together in a more relaxed environment. however, at this point, laurie and i are rushing to get cfr "mocked up" so that the printer can send a bill to the english department before march 28th; otherwise, the money promised to us will be sent back to the state on that date. if it isn't one thing. . . . speaking of funds and publication, the sharp-eyed readers among you will note that the cover of this volume says only "volume 26"—no issue number. that's because the children's folklore section voted at its annual meeting (see "cfs" 2003 annual meeting") to go to a one volume per year publication schedule. there are two reasons for this. first, we will get "more bang for the bucks" this way, publishing more pages of text in one volume that we would have been able to do in two, all other things being equal. second, we believe the single volume, with its squared back, is a more aesthetically pleasing product. that said, i think we have another fine volume on our hands. janice ackerley's massive 2003 newell prize winning paper, "gender issues in the playground rhymes of new zealand children: 1993-2003," leads off the volume, and for the first time, we have a newell prize honorable mention, anita l. gambos' "the ugly duckling, hans christian andersen: a story of transformation." these two are followed by a paper i heard at the 2003 american conference for irish studies midatlantic regional meeting at the university of maryland, "from fairies to famine: how cultural identity is constructed through irish and irish american children's literature," by karen hill mcnamara. the volume concludes with a "review roundup: 2003" by cfr book review editor gail de vos and her colleague, merle harris, the minutes of the 2003 annual meeting of the children's folklore section, the usual notes and announcements, and about the contributors. as always, send your articles to cfr, tell your libraries to subscribe (still the best deal among academic journals at $10.00/year for usa libraries and $15.00 for non-usa libraries), and see you in salt lake city in october. c.w. sullivan iii gender issues in the playground rhymes of new zealand children: 1993-2003 an analysis of the gender issues embedded within the playground rhymes of new zealand children janice ackerley abstract this research investigated the gender issues embedded within the playground rhymes used by new zealand school children over the last ten years. comparisons were also made between these present-day rhymes and those from historical collections. an inductive approach based on grounded theory was used and identified four main classification groupings related to gender: l. 2. gender based stereotypes, power within both peer groupings and in relation to authority figures, taboo issues including sexual knowledge and references to natural bodily functions and parts, life passages, both traditional and modem day. 3. 4. close analysis and interpretation of the rhymes revealed key themes. links were formed between these themes and current social trends and attitudes. the rhymes used by children were shown to contain hidden transcripts that related to culturally constructed gender issues. at the same time this research presents evidence that important traditional elements of these rhymes were still maintained. the findings of this research project give insight into the oftensubversive world of children's playground culture. the duality of children's playground rhymes was confirmed by this study. children's playground rhymes are contemporary as well as traditional, innovative and conservative, improvised and inherited. children preserve the traditions of the past while still managing to adapt their rhymes to reflect concerns of the present. chapter one introduction background this researcher has been involved in many different levels of education over the last 30 years, including preschool, primary school, high 7 gender issues in the playground rhymes school and adult teaching. the interest in children's folklore, and playground rhymes in particular, arose from work as a student, followed by employment as tutor and course director of one of the compulsory papers of the christchurch college of education's national diploma in children's literature (nz). the patterns of language paper contains a section on children's folklore and involves students in the collection of children's playground rhymes. research questions • what evidence is there of gender related issues in playground rhymes used by new zealand children in the period of 1993 2003? • what comparisons, in relation to gender issues, can be made between current rhymes and past collections? rationale the close examination of the folk rhymes of new zealand children gives an insight into their culture, a world not readily accessible to the casual adult observer. the contention that in this highly media and technological focussed age children have lost the art of playing has been disproved by studies of several researchers (factor, 1988; sutton-smith, 1999; bishop & curtis, 2001; kelsey, 2001). after the initial assumption by the opies (1959) "that children no longer cherished their traditional lore" (5) they concluded their study of 5000 united kingdom school children with the finding that the modern schoolchild, when out of sight and on his own, appears to be rich in language, well-versed in custom, a respecter of details of his own code, and a practising authority on traditional self-amusements. (9) recognition of gender issues, such as gender segregation in play and the identification of different play styles have been the focus of research studies, (factor, 1988;. thorne, 1993; sutton-smith, 1999; hughes, 1999). also consideration of gender issues within the rhymes themselves have been examined to some extent (mcmahon & suttonsmith, 1999; grugeon, 2001; arleo, 2001). analysis and interpretation of the rhymes will establish links between the gender issues contained within the rhymes and the wider society in which they exist. these issues are both culturally constructed and are part of the subversive nature of playground rhymes (grugeon, 1993). the links between tradition and modernity that exist will also be examined with referral to folklore collections of the past. 8 janice ackerley children play for fun. in the process of play, particularly rulegoverned play, children learn and practise skills and test themselves physically, socially and intellectually. the traditional games of the schoolground are as important to children's development as formal lessons in the classroom (factor, 1983, 108). children's play traditions often reveal dimensions of creativity, artistry and complexity in their own right, including carnivalesque, subversive and parodic elements as well as normative ones. (bishop and curtis, 2001, 8) to appreciate the value and importance of children's folklore, adults need to surpass what sutton-smith refers to as the "triviality barrier" (1970) in which the non serious is not necessarily deemed as unimportant. the infant appears to babble for the joy of hearing himself. the child plays for the fun of it. the adults return addictively to their games for the enjoyments they find contained within them. we are saying, that is, that childlore deals not only with a definite series of expressive forms that can be traced throughout human development, but that these forms are normally, in some sense, self-motivating structures. which is after all only what generations of humanists have been saying when they have claimed that poetry, drama and other forms of human expression have their own intrinsic vocabulary and system of internal dynamics which must be understood in their own right before it is possible to study how they can be put to the service of this or that functional end. .. it is true, then, that childlore deals with behaviour that has traditionally been regarded as nonserious, but as this behaviour appears to be a systematic part of the human repertoire, to think, therefore, it is unimportant might be a mistake. (sutton-smith, cited in bishop & curtis, 2001, 7) with the recognised move of children's folklore play from the physical to the more symbolic and verbal (mcmahon & sutton-smith, 1999), this researcher believes that it is important to take a more interpretative approach with collections of children's playground rhymes, in terms of looking beyond the surface of the text. this move from the physical to the verbal can be clearly seen when comparing the collections by knapp & knapp (1976) and bronner (1988) with the earlier collections of newell (1883) and gomme (1894). the nineteenth century collections contain relatively little mention of purely verbal play, 9 gender issues in the pla yground rhymes whilst the later collections have over half the examples given related to verbal or symbolic folklore. this researcher believes that it is important to go beyond the collection of playground rhymes and to interrogate the text, in this instance looking for issues related to gender. mcmahon and sutton-smith (1999) recognised and encouraged a trend towards interpretative research and observation of context, both "historical and situational" (306). this researcher will use a similar approach using a combination of historical and present-day collections. chapter two literature review before considering literature related to the gender issues within playground rhymes, it is necessary to define more precisely the terms such as "children's folklore," "playground rhymes" and "gender issues" used in this study, and also to make a distinction between nursery rhymes and playground rhymes. this literature review will then move to examine historical influences and the research related to gender issues within the playground and within the rhymes themselves. defining the key terms . children's folklore according to bishop and curtis (2001), the term folklore was first used by william thoms, writing under the pseudonym of ambrose merton, in 1846. it referred to the lore of the people and included the traditions of childhood. the recognition of childlore resulted in collections and research by the likes of gomme (1894-98), sutton-smith (1959), the opies (1959), turner, (1969) and knapp (1976). the items of childlore collected were regarded as folkloric because they were passed on by word of mouth and involved informal "watching, listening and copying of others." (bishop & curtis, 2001, 5) the traditional formalised play activities of children, including forms of speech play and verbal art, that are engaged in and maintained by children themselves, within the peer group. familiar genres of children's folklore include riddles, games, jokes, taunts, retorts, hand-claps, counting-out rhymes, catches, ring plays and jump-rope rhymes. it is likewise distinguished from, though it may share items and genres and have other continuities with, adult folklore. (bauman, cited in suttonsmith, 1999, 172) 10 janice ackerley folklore can also include such diverse activities as pranks, fortune telling, secret languages, tall stories, tongue twisters and superstitions. (opie, 1959) folklore may be "contemporary as well as traditional, improvised as well as inherited" (factor, 1988, 8), also innovative and conservative, variable and constrained. (zumwalt, 1999) . playground rhymes a vital and vibrant component of children's folklore is the rhymes that children use in the playground. play rhymes are the rhymes which children use for their games-for skipping, hand-clapping, ball-bouncing, chasing games, for deciding who is to be 'he,' or to establish supremacy, to defend themselves, to express their affection or anger, or simply to amuse themselves and one another. (turner et al, 1978, vii) children's traditional culture is an expression of their own beliefs and values, not isolated from contact with the adult world, but specific to themselves. rhymes and other linguistic play are created and reproduced for children's own purposes, not for those of folklorists, the educational system or publishers. . . . children create and pass on their rhymes for their own enjoyment as they play. they are a living, active art, made by children for their own purposes, their content to be taken in at the children's own level, and that is how they are best understood. (boyes, cited in bishop & curtis, 2001, 8) playground rhymes need to be distinguished from nursery rhymes. the opies (i959) noted not only a difference in cadence and subject matter, but also in the mode of transmission. while the nursery rhymes passes from a mother to another adult to the small child on her knee, the school rhyme circulates simply from child to child, usually outside the home, and beyond the influence of the family circle. by its nature a nursery rhyme is a jingle preserved and propagated not by children but by adults, and in this sense it is an "adult" rhyme. it is a rhyme which is adult approved. the school child's verses are not intended for adult ears. (opie, 1959,21) 11 gender issues in the playground rhymes . gender issues ivy (1994) distinguishes sex from gender by considering that sex is biologically determined and consists of the biological and physical characteristics that make us male and female. gender, however, is more wide ranging, and includes psychological and emotional characteristics, as well as personality, attitudes, beliefs and values. gender is culturally constructed as opposed to being biologically determined. thorne (1993) sees gender as a highly visible source of individual and social identity. gender refers to "cultural and social phenomenadivisions of labour, activity and identity which are associated with but not fully determined by biological sex." (thorne, 1986, i) gender is not a unitary, or 'natural' fact, but takes shape in concrete, historically changing social relationships. (thorne et al., cited in ivy, 1994, 7) according to ivy (1994), children learn gender-related behaviours from their social contacts with their peers, parents and other adults, and they model the actions, thoughts and emotions as they see them. reflections of these observations can be seen in the text of some of the rhymes they use in the playground. introduction children's folklore, under examination here, focuses on the rhymes, chants, insults, taunts, rituals, riddles and parodies that are part of the folkloric traditions of children's play. this type of play has been classified as "verbal play" (bishop & curtis, 200 i, 13), as opposed to physical play and imaginative play. much of this verbal play contains hidden transcripts or underlying issues that are perhaps not immediately obvious as children struggle for mastery and autonomy as a subordinate group. according to grugeon (1993) playground rhymes form part of a subversive counter culture that occupies a different domain from the official school culture. it is the purpose of this literature review and following my research to consider what these hidden transcripts involve, in particular those related to gender issues. every subordinate group creates, out of its ordeal, a "hidden transcript" that represents a critique of power spoken behind the back of the dominant. (mcmahon, cited in sutton-smith, 1997, 115) while the age range of the children most involved in verbal play fits into the area known as middle childhood, "the period between early childhood and puberty" (factor, 1988, 5), the rhymes associated with 12 janice ackerley games "belong almost exclusively to the eight to thirteen-year-old group" (turner et al, 1978, 158). however rhymes of the playground, classified by turner (1978) as "for amusement only" (158), cover a greater age range, extending from five to sixteen years. this section includes parodies as well as the more obscene playground rhymes. primary school playgrounds are the focus of much of this activity, as "playgrounds themselves may be the only school setting in which spontaneous peer interactions are condoned." (borman, 1979,251) historical background as the origins of folklore are firmly grounded in tradition it is important to consider features of the past that may have influenced the folk play of children today. folklore provides "a link with the past but also a vibrant force in the present" (sutton-smith, 1999,27). during the middle ages singing games were part of a courtship ritual for intending partners. by the 1800s these same games had developed into fantasies of marriage, "games of unsophisticated girls who could make their choices among other girls largely without the presence of boys at all" (mcmahon & sutton-smith, 1999, 294). apart from these singing games, boys were involved in a greater variety of traditional game pursuits than girls (sutton-smith, 1981). this is an historical reversal, as today it is the girls who are the chief preservers and initiators of folklore (sutton-smith, 1999). lady gomme (1898) identified gender distinctions that divided the play traditions of children into dramatic play, being the property of girls, and competitive play, the property of boys (turner, 1969). sutton-smith relates this to a significant factor "that girls acquire a consciousness of their future roles earlier than do boys, and that many girls' games act out these roles" (sutton-smith, 1959, 53-54). this consciousness was reflected in the language of the rhymes. in the early 1900s girls, given greater freedom in terms of dress, footwear and in the playground, as well as being unchallenged by organised sports, became the chief participants in, and preservers of folklore (turner, 1969; sutton-smith, 1981; grugeon, 1988; carpenter, 2001). the change also included a movement from static singing games to the more physical skipping, hand clapping, handstand and ball bouncing games for girls. these aerobic games were most often accompanied by rhymes. this resurgence of rhymes, from only two or three rhymes in 1900 to over fifty skipping rhymes identified in the 1950s (sutton-smith, 1981) is partly attributed to the fact that many were now being published in children's magazines and annuals. the general trend away from the physical aspects of folklore play to the more verbal is a result of a number of factors. in a move away from the freedom of the 1950s 1960s, restrictions on children's play and free time increased during the 1970s through to current times. 13 gender issues in the playground rhymes these restrictions can be attributed to a number of factors, including safety issues, increased academic emphasis and an increase in the adult direction of organised sports and after school activities. the shift from physical to verbal play may reflect not only the general cultural changes in the world of adult work, from manual to symbolic, but also changes in the actual freedom that children have to carry out their older traditions of play. (mcmahon & sutton-smith, 1999,299) commercial influences, in terms of modern entertainment and recreation, have also impacted and resulted in a shift from physical to verbal play (sutton-smith, 1981). "perhaps current childhood does indeed occupy more verbal crevices and less obvious physical space than used to be the case." (mcmahon & sutton-smith, 1999) these changing trends can be seen when examining folklore collections of the past. the early collectors were more interested in the continuity of traditions than in looking for any variation or change. "they believed that the games and verbal lore of childhood were relics of adult traditions fallen into disrepair-fallen into the nursery, where they were taken up and tenaciously maintained" (factor, 1988, 11). lady gomme (1894) remarked, children do not invent, but they imitate or mimic very largely, and in many of these games we have, there is little doubt, unconscious folk-dramas of events and customs which were at one time being enacted as a part of the serious concerns of life before the eyes of children many generations ago. (gomme cited in factor, 1988, 12) children's playground rhymes today are both creative and conservative and incorporate references to cultural influences into their rhymes. gender issues within the playground today. recent folklore researchers have recognised that, although essentially traditional, many of the folklore rhymes of recent times are based on dualisms that link the past with the present, tradition with modernity. this influence beyond the traditional is reflected in the comment by mcmahon & sutton-smith, "children's folklore appears in many games to have taken on the character of modern mass-media culture, with its cycles of fashion and popularity" (mcmahon & sutton-smith, 1999,294). 14 15 janice ackerley . gender segregation gender differences can be readily observed in any school playground. historical segregation of play areas still has repercussions in the playgrounds of today and impacts on gender issues within the playground. researchers have found that when given a choice of play associates, children still choose same sex groupings (borman, 1979; factor, 1988; thorne, 1993; boyatzis, 1999). studies have shown that this same sex preference increases with age (martin et al, 1999). peer interactions are segregated from as young as three years of age, and increase through to eleven years (maccoby, 1990). other studies have shown that greater sex integration occurs away from the school playground, in home and community environments (thorne, 1993). mixed gender play has also been found to occur more in schools with a wide social intake or in schools with children from more professional homes (kelsey, 2001). integration is more likely to occur with adult intervention or when adults give attention to gender equity (zhumkhawala, 1997; maccoby, 1990; jaffe, 1998). . different play styles there is an extensive body of literature available describing the gender differences in the play styles of boys and girls (factor, 1988; sutton-smith, 1999; hughes, 1999; boyatzis, 1999). these differences are attributed to social, cultural and possibly biological factors. mechling (2000) recognises the "complex dance between biology and culture in children's lives." feminism expounds the view that all gender is a social construction (thorne, 1993), however there are biological differences that can't be dismissed, based on "different bodies" (mechling, 2000, 1). thorne (1993) expressed objections to the different culture model, in that it "implied that girls and boys are always apart" (90), and did not take into account the cross gender interactions that occur both in and out of school. also she noted that this model "embeds the experiences of dominants and marginalises many other groups and individuals" (90). research has produced evidence of these gender-related differences. considering first the social purposes of play, sutton-smith (1997) saw inclusion and exclusion as power tactics that differentiate girls from boys. "the most important thing about play is to be included and not excluded from the group's activities. much of female play is about the play of exclusion" (103). similarly, james (1993), in her studies of play in great britain, noted the importance for both sexes of developing play skills to avoid being seen as an outsider or different. "for boys this means manipulating the important signifiers of masculinity—'toughness' and 'physical prowess'—in the process of play; for gender issues in the playground rhymes girls it means demonstrating through play the nurturing skills of wives, mothers and managers" (198). differences in play styles show boys to be more physical, more active and more involved in rough and tumble play than girls (thorne, 1993; lewis & phillipsen, 1998; butcher, 1999; vissel, 1993). girls "tend to participate in sedentary games or activities and spend much of their time in socialising activities" (butcher, 1999, 249) and from estonian folklorist, anu vissel (1993), "girls like those games that serve to set off and cultivate deftness, lightness and grace of movement" (1). these differences are correspondingly reflected in use of playground space. in the 1980s grugeon's (2001) research observed "girls seem to be marginalised on the edges of the playground as boys monopolised the centre space to play football" (101). she noted that since then schools have made some effort to make playground space more accessible to all. similar observations were made by lindsay & palmer (1981) and thorne (1993). the former found that it was the younger girls especially who stayed close to the safety and security of the school buildings and looked for adult contact. thorne (1993) also noted that the boys had control of ten times more playground space than the girls, and even then they would still invade the limited play area of the girls. another area of difference in play styles relates to the boys' tendency to emphasise competitiveness as opposed to the girls' desire for cooperation (lindsay & palmer, 1981; thorne, 1993; twarek, 1994; lewis & phillipsen, 1998). "while boys use a rhetoric of contests and teams, girls describe their relations using language which stresses cooperation and 'being nice'" (thorne & luria, 1986, 179). gender issues within playground rhymes. . the power perspective power related aspects are at the centre of much of what children's folklore is about. modem folklore researchers have recognised the need to look beneath the superficially placid surface of children's play to understand how important are the power-related aspects of children's folklore and its formation. . . the dominant theme throughout is that of the power children exercise over each other, and the power they seek in their relationships to adults, mythical or real. (mcmahon & sutton-smith, 1999, 299) the power exercised by children in the area of playground rhymes relates to both that of language and relationships. the ownership children have of playground rhymes allows them to manipulate language for their own purposes, free from adult control. the power within the 16 janice ackerley rhymes themselves relates to control over others, whether this be peers, inter-gender relationships, or adults, authority figures in particular because, ". . . as children compose the most powerless subaltern group, we should expect them to have multiple and complex ways of subverting authority." (mcmahon & sutton-smith, 1999,302) teachers, in particular, are often the subjects of such verbal assaults with parodies such as such favourites as: row, row row your boat, gently down the stream, throw your teacher overboard, and listen to her scream! and pokare, kare, ana, i had a squashed banana, i threw it at the teacher, she said come here. . . a gender based issue arising from such rhymes relates to whether the female teacher is a greater target than her male counterpart, and if so why this would be the case. there is also evidence that many of these rhymes are part of a culture of subversive acts of resistance against both adult authority and at times the other gender (factor, 1988; grugeon, 2001). attempts by school authorities to ban or limit these rhymes, as occurred in australia (factor, 1988, 176) and in britain (grugeon, 2001,101), have only served to drive them underground or make children more cautious with their use when near adults. although close interaction between the sexes is not necessarily a feature of playground activity in the middle years, factor (1988) observed that "rhymes and games are shared throughout the school" (136). she also noted that with the changes in social values and attitudes, evidence of power conflicts between the sexes became obvious in the development of some of the rhymes. the 60s rhyme, girls are weak, chuck 'em in the creek. boys are strong, like king kong. produced many variants from the 70s onwards that reflect this sparring and was possibly influenced by the development of girl power, with the intense "girls can do anything" campaign of the time. 17 gender issues in the playground rhymes boys have the muscles, girls have the brains. boys are the stupidest, and we won the games. (140) grugeon (1993) noted in her collection of rhymes from girls that listening to the words of the songs which accompany these games and watching the actions involved, a robust and challenging tone is apparent-parodying and ridiculing. men and boys are mocked. . . in many versions the boyfriend is thrown around until he loses his underpants. boyfriends have 'pickles' on their nose and are in danger of having their willies drastically shortened and balls caught in barbed wire. (23) grugeon recognised that girls use language, in preference to actual physical aggression, as a peaceful means of retaliation to the provocation of boys. . the rude and crude boys and girls are both actively involved in rhymes that challenge and defy adult standards and conventions. these rhymes give children the opportunity to explore taboo subjects and adult themes within the safe environment of the school playground (grugeon, 1988). there are a variety of terms used by researchers of the past to describe this type of rhyme. the opies (1959, 113-116) used the terms "erotic verse" or "the improper." other terms used include "vulgar rhymes" (turner, 1978, 162), "obscene rhymes" (sutton-smith, 1981, 95), "shockers" (knapp & knapp, (1976, 179-189). lowenstein also made reference to "improper rhymes" and defined them as . . . those rhymes created or circulated by children, which are calculated to shock or disgust the listener, to challenge adult refinement and to show, in the case of jokes about sex, that the child concerned is aware of its mysteries and has penetrated the adult veil of secrecy about sexual matters. (lowenstein, 1974,1) lowenstein's "shocking, shocking, shocking" (1974) exposed a number of children's improper rhymes that were current in australia during the 1960s and 1970s. she found that it was the "good" girls who were the real experts in this area, rather than the "bad" boys. her findings disputed the belief that obscene rhymes were commonly circulated among boys and "not very nice girls" or belonged to the "ogre child" or "delinquent" (opie, 1959, 115-116). also disputed was the finding that 18 janice ackerley these rhymes were more likely to be known by working class children than the sheltered middle class girls, who were in fact the source of much of lowenstein's material (6). similarly, factor (2000) commented that, in my experience there are students at the most expensive private girls' schools who have as extensive a repertoire of vulgar and abusive rituals as the toughest, roughest boys in the working class suburbs of our major cities. (xxii) this contrasted directly with the comments from the previous century by bolton (1888). we take pleasure in stating that in all our oral and written communications with children in every walk of life we have not received a single vulgar rhyme, nor one containing foul language. the nearest approach to an oath is the exclamation 'gracious peter.' (bolton, cited in turner et al, 1978, 158) the opies' (1959) claim likewise that, "genuinely erotic verse, however, is unusual" (115) in children's groups. comments such as these are reflections of the collectors' attitudes and their relationship with the children they were involved with, and also possibly reflect the more restrictive attitudes of that particular era. in more recent years researchers have acknowledged the gendered nature of the content of the rhymes themselves. grugeon (2001) expressed a strong interest in the gendered nature of the content of the singing games played by girls in the first four years at school, in the way these games parody adult norms and behaviour, often dealing with taboo subjects through mocking and subversive texts. (99) rhymes such as the prolific "when susie was a baby" allow young girls to explore the possibilities of adult life and the new roles they will soon be encountering in terms of the passage of life from infancy to death and after (factor, 1988; arleo, 2001). these rhymes allow children a "freedom from customary propriety" (factor, 1988, 174) and to explore issues not available in their non-play lives. sexually suggestive verses have been added and adapted across "social, political, linguistic and geographical barriers" (arleo, 2001, 130). when suzy was a teenager, a teenager, a teenager when suzy was a teenager, she used to go like this: 'ooh, aah, i lost my bra in my boyfriend's car, i don't know where my knickers are. 19 gender issues in the playground rhymes ooh, aah, there they are— hanging in my boyfriend's car. (arleo, 131) grugeon (2001) also examined the use of spice girl songs parodied by young girls and accompanied by explicitly sexual and provocative actions, in terms of the process of media texts being adapted to the playground. such rhymes also demonstrate the ease with which popular culture and mass media can be absorbed into children's play (ackerley, 2002). "the existence of vulgar and obscene children's lore is now recognised as a universal phenomenon. . ." (factor, 1988, 160) the usage of these rhymes gives a certain satisfaction, not only in playful exploration of language, but also in the exploration of adult taboos, and the appearance of "knowing" about such adult matters beyond their current experience. these rhymes give the participant an air of maturity that temporarily disguises the ignorance and inexperience. the children appear to know more than they do. the openness of boys is contrasted with the subversiveness of the girls. thome and luria's (1986) observations of playground behaviour show the boys being more prepared to take risks. both girls and boys know dirty words but flaunting of the words and risking punishment for their use is more frequent in boys' than in girls' groups. dirty talk is a stable part of the repertoire of boys' groups. such talk defines their groups as outside the reach of school discipline (180-81) the more subversive and private nature of the girls' behaviour sees them partaking in "giggling sessions" (183) on carefully guarded topics. . sex role stereotypes children's playground rhymes reflect the division between tradition and modernity, stability and change, the conservative and the innovative. the traditions of the past are preserved even though social changes have taken place. virginia caputo (1990) focuses on the traditional in her studies into children's songs in canadian schools. changes in adult culture, with regard to issues of equality between men and women, the re-evaluation of patriarchal attitudes. . . do not seem to be reflected in children's musical culture as much as one might expect. (4) 20 janice ackerley factor (1988), however, had a greater awareness in the variations in the rhymes reflecting changes in attitudes and societal values. she commented that changes in rhymes over time are a result "of children's acute observation and awareness of shifts in social values, their sharp ear for whatever is new and newsworthy." (142) sutton-smith (1972) also recognised this duality. "in seeking to understand children at play. . . we must hold in mind the dual fact that children are innovative as well as conservative" (65). mary and herbert knapp also stress that "while children are remarkably conservative in preserving their traditions for generations, they are also very flexible in adapting their lore to present concerns" (knapp & knapp, 1976, 14). in response to the publicity about the longevity of women the following rhyme was heard in australian playgrounds: boys are weak, chuck 'em in the creek. girls are stronger, they live longer. (factor, 1988, 141) jorgenson (1980) commented that rhymes such as this, and the susie saga often carry with them partially hidden attitudes, values and feelings which are particularly important to female children in this age group of approximately five to twelve years. at this time in their lives, young girls are beginning to consider the possibilities inherent in adult life and the new roles they will soon be encountering, especially ones such as girl friend, wife and mother. (63) issues arising and methodological considerations. as a result of considering a wide range of research related to children's play and folklore, there are two key issues that emerge. first is the trend of moving away from the consideration and collection of what children play, to the investigation of why and how these folklore traditions are kept alive. the comprehensive collections of the past decades (opie, 1959; opie, 1969; turner, 1969; kelsey, 1962-1990), though still of great value, have given way to greater consideration of the conditions under which such play occurs (thorne, 1993; grugeon, 2001; bishop & curtis, 2001). mcmahon & sutton-smith (1999) have recognised and encouraged a trend towards interpretive research and observations of context, both "historical and situational" (306) with a caution on being over zealous 21 gender issues in the playground rhymes in "reading into children's folklore what simply isn't there" (306). related to the consideration of the situational, is the fact that-the research cited in this review occurs largely in the school playground. gender characteristics may be quite different had more observations been carried out in the neighbourhood or home environments. the social context of such research is of vital importance. limitations of earlier research collections have included the problems of the biases of the collectors and their methods (turner, 1969; grugeon, 1988). turner speculated that early collections such as bolton's (1888) collection of counting out rhymes did not include rude rhymes because the children he collected them from did not "want to offend him" (158). the second issue to be aware of is related to the danger of creating a mind set prior to carrying out research. thorne (1993) warns against the different culture mind set when considering gender issues. if observers concentrate their observations on distinct boy-girl groupings, then results will be different to observations with a focus on interaction between the two groups. thorne (1993) advises starting "with a sense of the whole rather than an assumption of gender as separation and difference" (108). similarly verbal folklore should not be considered as entirely distinct from the adult world, as much of this rhetoric results from observations and mimicry of adults. with a recognised increase in verbal play with age, the boundaries between adult and children's humour are less defined, especially when considering the more vulgar rhymes. so much so that "in their mid teens, it is difficult to divide their rude rhymes and jokes from the adult tradition" (lowenstein, 1974, 1). conclusion this literature review has considered the gender implications embedded in children's playground rhymes. there is a strong historical influence, seen in the physical gender divisions in the playgrounds 1990s and earlier. environmental and social changes from the middle of the 20th century have resulted in a move from physical folklore play to more emphasis on the verbal and symbolic. although girls are shown to be the bearers and preservers of the traditional playground rhymes, inter-gender rivalry can be acted out through playground rhymes. both sexes use rhymes as a vehicle to mock the power of those who have authority over them. the parodying of adult norms of behaviour and the exploration of a variety of possibilities in terms of the passages of life also feature gender, along with sexuality and stereotypes, which are also explored through these rhymes. 22 janice ackerley chapter three methodology introduction there are two parts to this research process. 1. the collection and organisation of the data, and 2. the close examination of the raw data for identification of patterns, themes and issues related to the objectives of this research. . over view of general collection methods folklore has traditionally relied on multiple methodologies. among the most prominent of these techniques are reminiscences, interviews and diaries, surveys and questionnaires, observations and experiments. (fine, 1999, 121) this researcher acknowledges that the multi-method approach produces the most complete range of data, but practicalities such as time constraints, resources and expenses must be taken into consideration. notable researchers in the field of the collection of children's folklore have used a variety of methods depending on the focus of their studies. a combination of reminiscences (oral history) and observations were used by the opies (1959, 1969), sutton-smith (1959, 1981), bronner, (1988), knapp & knapp (1976), factor (1983-1988), turner (1969), and lowenstein (1974). reminiscences have the advantage of being relatively easy to collect and can yield historical or comparative data. however, the material collected is verbal rather than behaviour based and, because it is based on recall, may be subject to inaccuracies. observations have the advantage of occurring in a natural context and may involve video or audio recording. this technique was used by goodwin (1985), hughes (1999), marsh (2001) and beresin (1999) and has the advantage of going beyond the text of the rhyme, capturing the verbal nuances, cadence and rhythm. it also places the folklore in a social setting hughes (1999) combined interviews with observations and focussed on the 'how' of play in observing the social interaction in the midst of playground games, four square in particular, with the contention that "the gaming of the game is as important as the game" (72). she commented that with this research technique the researcher does not know beforehand exactly what the outcomes will be and, therefore, must remain open to all possibilities. marsh (2001) and beresin's (1999) research, using audio-visual techniques, allowed the research to go beyond the text and reveal intricacies of the wider social setting. the trend in recent years has been to conduct research that examines the 23 gender issues in the ?la yground rhymes broader context of the games, but with a narrower focus on a particular games' type; for example, beresin (1999) examined jump rope rhymes, hughes (1999) four square, and marsh (2001) hand clapping games. data source and collection the collection method used for this research project is a result of the researcher's involvement with the national diploma in children's literature (n.z.). students of the patterns of language course (c.l. 713), for which the researcher is currently the course director, were required to collect samples of children's playground rhymes on a standardised form (appendix ii) and submit this to their tutor as a course requirement. the transcript of the rhyme, the place and method of collection, the social context, significant oral features and details relating to gender, culture and the age of the children involved, were all recorded on this form. permission was granted from the centre for children's literature, christchurch college of education, to use this collection for research purposes. the rhymes have been collected since 1993 and have been filed by the researcher on a first line or title basis. the collection at the present time numbers just over 4000 individual items. the rhymes used for analysis by this researcher were rhymes that were current in the last ten years. for the purpose of historical comparisons, however, the researcher will consider rhymes that were recalled by respondents from earlier times, as well as rhymes from the collections of sutton-smith (1959; 1972; 1981); turner (1969; 1978); opie (1959,1969,1985); and factor (1983-1988). advantages and disadvantages of collection method the method of collection used for this research resulted in a wide geographical coverage. this coverage extended throughout new zealand from the top of the north island to the bottom of the south island. a wide range of community types were also covered in the collection, ranging from large multi-cultural city schools to small rural communities. this extent of coverage would have been very difficult and time consuming if observational studies had been carried out by the researcher alone. this method employs a combination of techniques including reminiscences, observations and informal interviews with individuals or groups of children in both school and community settings. the collectors of the rhymes include parents, teachers, librarians, recent graduates, teacher trainees and people in general, who have an interest in children's language and books. using this method of collection minimises possible ethical issues, as the rhymes are recorded anonymously as far as the user is concerned, with the collectors' details recorded only for the purposes of follow up or clarification. collectors, however, must 24 janice ackerley be mindful of the child's privacy and the need to be sensitive to any possible discomfort that may be caused. as adults we are intruders in the child's private world and sensitivity relating to issues of compulsion and authoritarianism should be realised. possible limitations of the collection method would be that the data is verbally based rather than context based. there is only limited consideration of the physical and social aspects of the rhymes, with the focus being on the accurate transcribing of the text of the language used. video or oral tape recordings would allow many other features of the rhymes to be examined, but this would not have produced the quantity and wide range of material and would not be possible within the time frame of this study. this is a haphazard, rather than systematic method of collection. the researcher must also accept that there will be a level of inconsistency with having so many individuals collecting the rhymes. a wide variety of methods were used for this purpose, including direct observations in both the playground and home, recollection interviews and some written responses from students. consideration must also be given to the adult intrusiveness factor, children will only tell us what we think they want to hear. this factor was recognised by turner (1969,158). research method the researcher considered that qualitative research design best suited the mode of analysis needed to meet the objectives of this project. the research design involves an inductive process of moving from specific data to a general theory. researchers adopting a qualitative perspective are more concerned to understand individual's perceptions of the world. they seek insight rather than statistical analysis. (bell, 1993, 5-6) this analysis contrasts with quantitative research methods that rely on deductive thinking, or the process of moving from general theory to specific observations. qualitative research is ideal when working with subjects in social and cultural contexts. the grounded theory approach, linked to qualitative methodology, involves the close inspection and analysis of qualitative data. grounded theory is a qualitative research method that uses a systematic set of procedures to develop an inductively derived theory about a phenomenon. (strauss & corbib, cited in neuman, 1997) 25 gender issues in the playground rhymes this is an inductive method that involves continuous interplay between data and analysis. from the close analysis of the data salient categories and themes should emerge. the stages in moving from the raw data to the development of a grounded theory are as follows: 1. 2. collection of raw data organisation of data, filing, creating a computer data base, sorting larger units of data into smaller ones. perusal. getting overall sense of data, jotting down preliminary interpretations. classification. grouping data into themes. looking for patterns. finding meaning in data. synthesis. integrating and summarising data. offering hypothesis or propositions final report 3. 4. 5. 6. (leedy, p, 2001) the collection of the raw data has already been described in 3.1 above. the organisation of data involved the filing of individual rhyme items as they came to hand on a first line or title basis. the data based sorting involved a spread sheet table organised in terms of type of rhyme and gender usage, that is whether the rhyme was used by male, female or mixed groupings. the eight main categories for the types of rhyme that emerged were skipping, clapping, taunts and teases, parodies, counting out, elastics, crude rhymes and amusement rhymes. this enabled the researcher to become familiar with the wide range of data and also to distinguish between those rhymes which were current and those that were based on historical recall. this information was also valuable when looking at the gender usage of individual rhymes and details of this are included in the appendix of this study. the next stage involved the perusal of the raw material for gender related issues within the rhymes and then looking for patterns and classification groupings related to the selected rhymes. at this stage the researcher looked closely at the text of the rhymes, in an effort to identify possible gender based issues embedded within the rhymes themselves and also to consider possible categories or classification groupings that may be forming. the synthesis process involves close examination of the selected rhymes and additional consultation and comparisons with related collection material, both current and historical. once completed the researcher moves on to presenting the final report. folklorist gary fine (1999) has described three different perspectives in analysing folklore. . thematype, being analysis according to a theme or structure. 26 janice ackerley . ecotype, being analysis according to social environment. . ego type, being analysis of performance. any item of folklore can be analysed from any and all perspectives, although most folklore approaches focus on only one. (fine, 1980, cited in sutton-smith, 1999,47) thematype analysis was the perspective taken with this study. in the final report and discussion, where rhymes have been lengthy or complex, only relevant extracts have been cited. full text of the rhymes and details relating to the context and gender details of the users of the rhymes concerned, are given in detail in the appendix section of this research. chapter four results and discussion introduction the focus of this research is to look beyond the surface features of the text of children's playground rhymes and to explore culturally and socially constructed gender issues embedded within the rhymes. when discussing the ambiguity of children's play fagen (1981) commented that the most irritating feature of play is not the perceptual incoherence, as such, but rather that play taunts us with its inaccessibility. we feel that something is behind it all but we do not know, or have forgotten how to see it. (fagen, cited in suttonsmith, 1997,2) close analysis of the rhymes, revealed the categories and themes as outlined in table 1. it should be noted here that the categories are not all inclusive and the boundaries between them not clearly defined. there may be some overlapping in terms of categories and themes. four main categories emerged on close examination of the content of the rhymes. the categories identified by the researcher were . stereotypes—in relation to how children view and form images of gender . power—in relation to those who control the lives of children and how they control others in their peer grouping and associations with aggression and dominance. . taboo—aspects that are forbidden or not spoken about openly. . life passages—traditional passages through life including rites of passage and future roles that children may anticipate. 27 gender issues in the playground rhymes table 1: categories and themes identified within children's playground rhymes. category themes rhyme examples (first line) stereotypes body image is all important; perpetuation of "good" girl, "bad" boy myth; the formation of gen der role identity is part of growing up. girls are sexy: i'm sexy, i'm cute: oh my gosh! i think i broke a nail: i must increase my bust: i'm a barbie girl: ladies and gentlemen: i'm a little dutch girl: i'm a little angel: down in the meadow: mummy had a baby: here comes the bride. power ridicule of, and resistance against, those who hold power; girls do not have to submit to attempts at male dominance; boys/girls are superior to the opposite sex. joy to the world: on top of spa ghetti: glory halleluiah: po kare kare ana: row, row, row your boat: my boyfriend gave me an apple: under the apple tree: girls are weak: boys are strong. taboo natural bodily functions and parts hold a particular fascination; possession of "adult" sexual knowledge is a status symbol within the peer group; children have a desire to shock and defy adult prohibitions; chil dren's recognition and mockery of different sexual preferences. my boyfriend's name: my friend billy: ellie i, ellie i: nicholas pickolas: cinderella dressed in yella: old king cole: hickory, dickory: roses are red: jack and jill: waltzing matilda: ashes to ashes: a man's occu pation: georgie porgie: little jack horner: i love you. life passages different life stages are a reflection of traditional and contemporary social influ ences; courting rituals and choosing a marriage partner by a divination process; distinct features of the new zealand male culture. when susie was a baby: k.i.s.s.i.n.g: ab.c.d: doh, the stuff that buys me beer: god of nations: sex, drugs and rock and roll: roll your dope: weed is a plant: it's raining: fitz, merts. janice ackerley unless stated otherwise all these rhymes are part of the national folklore collection (n.z.). the full text of each rhyme is recorded in appendix 1. stereotypes the gender related stereotypes identified by the researcher relate to conformity to the "perfect" body image, the "good" girl "bad" boy myth and changing gender roles. . body image conformity the conformity to the image of the "ideal," both for males and females, can be recognised within the context of many of the children's rhymes. girls are sexy, made out of pepsi boys are ugly, made out of rugby. (part of the clapping rhyme beginning "my mother, your mother, lived down the street. . . 80,90 marble street. . . see appendix i). boys have got the muscles, teachers got the brains, girls have got the sexy legs, so they win all the games. i'm sexy, i'm cute, i'm popular to boot. great looking, great hair, the boys will love to stare go, go go touros (this was chanted by both boys and girls while waiting in line for a turn on the flying fox in the junior school playground.) this image, however, is also subject to mockery. these rhymes emerge as a reaction to the extreme pressures exerted by media, to conform the ideal female stereotype. they are usually recited by preadolescent girls and are chanted in a highly exaggerated manner, at the same time taking the opportunity to mock the male, rugby fanatic. oh my gosh! i think i broke a nail. it's totally for sure. i'm gonna need a manicure. the sun up there, is shining on my gorgeous hair. hey, you! go home, 29 gender issues in the playground rhymes i'm talking on my telephone. 23,24, i don't know the stupid score! go, go, fight, fight, gee i hope i look all right! direct references and undermining of pressured advertising campaigns are made in the following rhymes i must, i must increase my bust, cos then, cos then, i will attract men, and get a job, a job, working as a blob at jenny craig, jenny craig, so they can all catch my plague, and get fat, get fat! so what do you think of that! alternative version: (the bigger the better, the tighter the, sweater, the boys depend on us.) and in the parody of the barbie song by the pop group aqua. i'm a barbie girl, in a barbie world, life's fantastic, i'm made out of plastic, i've got rubber hair, purple underwear, i take a shower, every half hour. come on barbie, let's go party.... a more recent addition to rhymes relating to body image relates to the pre and early teen routine of removing bodily hair, in particular the 'adult' process of shaving of the legs. the clapping rhyme beginning "ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls ... " contains the following lines: i went to school, it was pretty cool. i shaved my legs and my face went red. i came back home and my mummy said, naughty, naughty, girl for shaving your legs! alternative version i got back home and my daddy said, you're too young to shave your legs. . . an interesting feature of the alternative version cited here, is that the group chanting this rhyme contained boys as well as girls. the re 30 janice ackerley searcher has assumed that was the reason for the following lines being added: i went upstairs to light the fire, my balls got stuck in the electric fire. i went to the doctor, the doctor said, sorry, mister, but your balls are dead! . the "good" girl, "bad" boy image research by zumwalt (1999) recognised the opposing images of the "ideal" little girl and the "real" little girl as presented in children's playground rhymes. the 'good' or 'ideal' little girl is respectful, predictable, co-operative as shown in the initial part of the skipping rhyme: i'm a little dutch girl dressed in blue these are the things that i must do, bow to the king, curtsey to the queen, show my undies to the rugby team. the final line here introducing us to another side of the "good" girl, the subversive, provocative tease. a similar contradiction can be seen in this rhyme: i'm a little angel, i don't swear, bugger, bugger, bull shit, i don't care! in looking closely at the rhymes the researcher noted that it is the girl that is the tease and the boys often appear as somewhat dull, onedimensional characters. boys, boys are no fun here comes susie with a mini skirt on. she can wobble, she can wibble, she can do the splits. if indeed the boy does make the first move towards the girl, it is the girl that is made to feel the ashamed. down in the meadow where the green grass grows, there sat little mary as sweet as a rose. along came a boy and kissed her on the cheek. shame little mary! 31 gender issues in the playground rhymes who's your little boyfriend? a, b, c, d... . gender-role identity gender-role identity develops predominantly during the period of middle childhood and relates to the way children see themselves relative to male and female traits. these roles can be developed and experimented with, within the bounds of their rhymes and chants, as can be seen in this handclapping rhyme: my mummy had a baby, yummy, yummy. my daddy is a dentist, gummy, gummy. my sister is a show off, honey, honey. my brother is a cowboy, bang, bang, boom, boom. fifty bullets in my head! turn around, touch the ground. freeze! as children love to create chaos and overturn the adult world (suttonsmith, 1999,302), the nonsense element creeps in with: my name is andy pandy, sugar and candy mum's gone crazy, dad's had a baby! do me a favour get lost! a long-standing gender-role stereotype can be seen in the traditional wedding song beginning, here comes the bride. turner (1959) has noted the use of this rhyme in 1930, the opies recorded it in 1959. the more recent rhymes have similarities to the historical versions, with the additional comments about the groom and a bawdy ending. here comes the bride, big, fat and wide. slipped on a banana, went for a ride. turner (1930) here comes the bride, fair, fat and wide, she cannot get in the front door, she has to get in the side. opie (1959) 32 janice ackerle here comes the bride, fair, fat and wide. where is the groom? he's in the bathroom. why is he there? he lost his underwear. great waterfall, he's peeing on the wall. here comes the usher, the old toilet flusher. current she went with romeo. here comes the bride, fat, fair and wide. slipped on a banana skin, and went for a ride. where did she go? she went to mexico. what did she wear? purple underwear. with whom did she go? she went with romeo current power it is in the playground, away from adult influence and control, the children find true power. children's folklore can be considered hypothetically as a series of hidden transcripts of the non-powerful segment of the population known as children. (sutton-smith, 2001, 116). i suggest, along these lines, how we might interpret the rumour, gossip, folktales, gestures, jokes and theatre of the powerless as vehicles by which, among other things, they insinuate a critique of power while hiding behind innocuous understandings of their conduct. . . . together these forms of insubordination might suitably be called the infrapolitics of the powerless. (scott, 1990, xiii) much of children's folklore consists of hidden transcripts. a hidden transcript according to james c. scott (1992) "is a critique of power spoken behind the back of the dominant" (xi). in this case the dominant are the adults, parents and teachers, in the child's world. their rhymes serve as expressions of defiance, as a challenge to the controlling forces in their lives. 33 gender issues in the playground rhymes the messages contained within the rhymes related to power come from both ends of a continuum. at one end we have expressions of extreme violence enacted against the dominating power with examples such as waltzing matilda, on top of spaghetti, po karekare ana and joy to the world. at the other end the researcher has found a subtle undermining in the form of teases, "boys are weak, chuck 'em in the creek" directed at the opposite sex. all these rhymes have a form of power at their base. . ridicule of teachers the dominant authority figure in a child's world, at the age when playground rhymes are most prominent, is the schoolteacher. even though changes to a less authoritarian culture within our schools over the last 30 years have taken place, this change has not been reflected in the text of the rhymes chanted by children today about their teachers. the tradition of undermining the teacher and their associated power still exists. this has been commented on by factor "these rhymes endure despite changes in school climate and ethos in the last 30 years" (1988, 159) and caputo (1990). changes in adult culture with regard to issues of equality between men and women, the re-evaluation of patriarchal attitudes, new ideas about methods of teaching have developed over the last twenty years or more, and so on, do not seem to be reflected in children's singing culture as much as one might expect. (caputo, 1990,4) the key gender issue that this researcher has identified within the selection of rhymes that mock the authority of the teacher, is that just over 90% of the references are to female teachers. of the 62 individual rhymes referring to teachers, 56 made reference to female teachers, 2 to male teachers and 4 were neutral. this can be compared with the past collections of turner (1969; 1978), and opie (1959), where 60% of the references were to female teachers. joy to the world, the teacher's dead. we barbequed her head. what happened to her body? we flushed it down the potty. round and round it goes, round and round it goes. on top of spaghetti, 34 janice ackerley all covered in blood (sand) i shot my poor teacher, with a m 16 slug (grey rubber band) i shot her with pleasure, i shot her with pride, i couldn't have missed her, she was 20 foot wide. i went to her funeral, i went to her grave some people threw flowers, i threw a grenade! glory, glory halleluiah, teacher hit me with a ruler, poked her in the chin, with a rotten mandarin. and her teeth came marching ou-ou-out! row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream, throw your teacher overboard and listen to her scream. ahhhh! po kare, kare ana, i had a rotten banana, i threw it at the teacher, she said, "come here!" i said, "no fear! i'll be back next year, with a bottle of beer!" the dominance of references to female teachers may be because they are seen as "easier" targets for such abuse, but may also simply reflect the male/female teacher proportions in our primary schools today. latest figures from the n.z. ministry of education's 2002 teacher survey reveal that only 13.6% of teachers in primary schools are male. the extreme violence contained within these rhymes would also suggest that while they are serving a purpose of mocking authority, they are not to be taken seriously, although situations in some schools where violent acts against teachers are increasing, may demonstrate otherwise. . overcoming male dominance girls have developed ways of overcoming male dominance in their rhymes. rather than expressing overt aggression, the girls in their rhymes discretely undermine the males by a subtle 'turning of the ta 35 gender issues in the playground rhymes bles." this can be seen in the changes in a rhyme developing from a popular singing game of the past, beginning "my boyfriend gave me an apple, my boyfriend gave me a pear." in the earlier versions of this rhyme the girl is depicted as being manipulated by male suitors. ". . . all the boys are waiting, for to take me out. one will give me an apple, one will give me a pear, one will give me fifty cents, to kiss behind the stair. i'd rather wash the dishes, i'd rather scrub the floor, i don't want an apple, i don't want a pear, i don't want fifty cents to kiss behind the stair. (new york, 1926) the 1975 version contains the lines my mother took my necklace, my father took my dime, my sister took my lover-boy, and gave me frankenstein. he made me dust the windows, he made me scrub the floor, he made me sew his smelly socks, so i kicked him out the door. (opie, 1985) there is a hint of the feisty young girl at the end of this rhyme, but this was only the beginning of the young girls turning the tables on the presumptuous males! the rhymes from the researchers current collection have many more aggressive variations on this theme. my boyfriend gave me an apple, my boyfriend gave me a pear. . . version 1 i made him do the washing, i made him do the floor, i made him clean the baby's bum, in 1994! version 2 i took him to the café, 36 janice ackerley to get some bubblegum, but when he wasn't looking, i shoved it up his bum, i took him back home, to tuck him into bed, but when he wasn't looking, i farted on his head! version 3 i gave him back his apple, i gave him back his pear, i gave him back his kiss on the lips, and threw him down the stairs. i threw him over england, i threw him over france, i threw him over the waikato bridge, and he lost his underpants. . inter-gender teasing playground teasing between the sexes takes the form of playful banter rather than that of the more serious malicious taunts. suttonsmith (1999), makes a distinction between teases and taunts. a taunt is " a malicious verbal expressive activity involving a victim," and a tease is "a verbal expressive activity involving a minimal degree of victimisation, with 'fun' rather than hurt as the motivation" (314). rhymes that are slightly provocative and contain teasing elements include; boys, boys are no fun, here comes susie with a mini skirt on, she can wibble, she can wobble, she can do the splits i bet you five bucks you can't do this. (from apple on a stick) under the apple tree, my boyfriend said to me, kiss me, hug me, tell me that you love me. underneath the apple tree, my boyfriend said to me, get lost! another very common form of inter-gender teasing comes as part of one of the most popular clapping rhymes in this researcher's collection. there were a total of 132 individual entries for this rhyme "under 37 gender issues in the playground rhymes the bambushes." of this total, 128 were collected from girls. the rhyme concludes with a rhyming couplet that always follows the same format, but varies in content; boys are spastic, made out of plastic. boys got to mars, to get fast cars. girls are sexy, made out of pepsi. girls go to mars, to get more bras. boys are rotten, made out of cotton. boys go to jupiter, to get more stupider. the taboo rhymes dealing directly or indirectly with taboo subjects are a prime source of amusement for children. defecation, urination, nudity, the private parts, the sex organs, and the sex act, which, in a civilised society, are kept private, have a fearful fascination for children. (opie, 1993, 15) these rhymes are the property of both boys and girls and involve the mocking of adult values and preoccupations. "these rhymes parody adult norms and behaviour, often dealing with taboo subjects through mocking and subversive texts" (grudgeon, 200 i, 99). . bodily functions and parts one of the key themes related to taboo subjects is the fascination children have with natural bodily functions and parts. an analysis of the researcher's rhymes related to farting or passing wind, shows that boys are involved in the telling of 80% of these rhymes, whereas with the more sexually explicit rhymes the balance is more evenly spread. this matches the findings of other researchers (lowenstein, 1974; factor, 2000). the boys are likely to be more open and direct with their telling of the rhymes while the girls may be more subversive (thorne & luria, 1986). 38 janice ackerley while heeding the warning of mcmahon and sutton-smith (1999, 306), not to read too much into the interpretations of these rhymes, this researcher has noted a comment made by grugeon (2001. p100) on the relationship between the notion of 'swallowing a snake' and the suggestion of pregnancy. on investigating this link further the researcher found many more examples within the current collection that appeared to substantiate this link. grugeon's examples were; and my boyfriend's name is tony he comes from macaroni. . . i jumped in a lake and swallowed a snake and came up with a bellyache. (jessica, bedford, 1979) meet my boyfriend fairycake he gave me a cake and a bellyache. (bedford, 1995) further examples located by this researcher not only further extend the pregnancy premise, but also establish a direct link of the penis with a snake. my friend billy, had a ten foot willy. he showed it to the lady next door. she thought it was a snake, and hit it with a rake, and now it's only five foot four! alternative (i shot it with a sniper 'cos 1 thought it was a viper, and now it's only five foot four!) other current versions collected from new zealand playgrounds that make reference to the snake and the subsequent bellyache include ellie i, ellie i, chickalie, chickalie, went to california, jumped in a lake, swallowed a snake, and came out with a bellyache. and my name is nicholas, picholas, 39 gender issues in the playground rhymes don't be ridiculous, why don't you do me a favour, swim in the lake, swallow a snake, and then come back with a bellyache. and from the rhyme beginning, my boyfriend's name is jackie. he comes from taranaki. . . one day when i went walking, i heard my boyfriend talking, to the prettiest girl with the strawberry curl, and this is what he said ,said, said. i l.o. ve. you—love you, i k.i.s.s. you—kiss you. so i jumped in the lake and swallowed a snake, and then came home with a bellyache. perhaps the most commonly chanted rhyme in this section, with a total of 50 individual recordings (47 collected from girls), is this skipping rhyme, cinderella, dressed in yella, went upstairs to kiss her fella, by mistake, she kissed a snake, and ended up with a bellyache. how many doctors will it take? 1,2,3. . . when searching back through earlier collections the researcher could find little mention of a snake in this context. in examining the cinderella rhymes from the australian children's folklore collection, now stored in museum victoria, this researcher noted that of the 110 cinderella rhymes recorded, only three mentioned a snake and none made reference to a bellyache in connection with the snake. this researcher concluded that the linkage established here is a more recent variation of the skipping rhyme. turner recorded this version dated 1962-1973 melbourne; old king cole had a forty-foot pole, he showed it to the lady next door. she thought it was a snake, and hit it with a rake, and now it's only two foot four. dorothy howard, in her 1968 publication, noted the cinderella version, but according to lowenstein (1974), she completely missed the sexual point. although lowenstein also commented that when she 40 janice ackerley asked her son about this same rhyme he remarked "if children want to be rude, they aren't subtle, they make it obvious" (3). this comment further reinforces the gender differences between boys and girls in such matters, with the boys being more open in their usage of obscene rhymes. . possession of 'adult' sexual knowledge as a status symbol a major preoccupation of children is the acquisition of sexual knowledge, with the culture of childhood allowing them to use the rhymes "to explore dangerous adult themes while remaining children" (grugeon, 2001, 113). through these rhymes children can display an assertion of familiarity of a supposedly adult area of experience. the declaration of "knowing" creates a certain status within the peer group. jokes about sex and reproduction are also a sort of status symbol, indicating to the less sophisticated that the teller is part of an in-group, and knows all adult secrets. (lowenstein, 1974, 1) some of the rhymes are very explicit and directly stated, while others contain a "hidden transcript" of meaning that the tellers may not even be aware of. the more directly explicit rhymes are often formed from parodies, and the effect on the listener is often one of shock, as what is heard may be totally unexpected. for some the thrill is simply in the use of taboo words and the accompanying "shock" factor. examples from the researher's collection include hickory dickory dock, the mouse ran up my frock, it bit my tit and made me spit, hickory dickory dock roses are red, violets are corny when i think of you baby, ohh i get horny. jack and jill went to the dairy, jack pulled out his big and hairy. jill said, "wow what a whopper, lay me down and do me proper. three months later doing well, six months later doing swell, nine months later, snap, crackle, pop. 41 gender issues in the playground rhymes out came a baby with a six foot cock. no, that's not all, no, that's not all, poor little bugger has only one ball! waltzing matilda, who bloody killed her? lying in the grass, with a dagger up her arse. along came granny, chopped off her fanny, took her to the movies, chopped off her boobies, took her to bed and chopped off her head, and that was then end of waltzing matilda. when i die, bury me, hang my nuts (tits) from a cherry tree, when they're ripe, take a bite, don't blame me if you fart all night. and the recitation from a 12 year old boy jack and jill, went up the hill, each with a dollar quarter, jill came down with two dollars fifty, dirty hoe!! and the directly stated rhyme of a group of 9-12 year old males ashes to ashes, dust to dust, if it wasn't for the girls, our balls would rust. the overlapping between the categories can be seen here with the following rhymes that are very explicit, but also follow a pattern similar to the life passage scenario, also giving warnings of the consequences of the acts involved. 1+1 = the fun has just begun in the bedroom, 2+2 = he's up to my shoe in the bedroom, 3+3= he's up to my knee in the bedroom 4+4= he's shut the door in the bedroom, 5+5 = he's fucking me alive in the bedroom, 6+6= he's licking my tits in the bedroom, 7+7 = he's this feels like heaven in the bedroom, 8+8= the doctor's at the gate in the bedroom, 9+9= the twins are doing fine in the bedroom, 42 janice ackerle 10+10= let's do it all again in the bedroom! running down the road, knocking on the door, fuck, dam, son of a bitch, couldn't find a whore. finally found a whore, she was tall and thin, fuck, dam, son of a bitch, couldn't get it in. finally got it in, wiggled it around, fuck, dam, son of a bitch, couldn't get it out. finally got it out, it was red and sore, the moral of the story is, never fuck a whore! the childish fascination with the mysteries of the sexual act can be seen in this sequence of rhymes collected from the 1950s to the present time. this researcher compared the confusions of the past, a man's occupation is to stick his doodle-ation (cock-u-lation) into a women's ventilation, to increase the population, of the younger generation, of the world. melbourne, 1973 (lowenstein), newcastle 1951-55 (turner) the bodgie's occupation is to stick his cockulation up a widgie 's ventilation to increase the population of the coming generation. melbourne, 1962 (turner) with the equally complicated perception of the sexual act of current times; sex is when a guy's communication enters a girl's information, to increase the population, for a younger generation, do you get the information? or do you need a demonstration? 43 gender issues in the playground rhymes it's a man's occupation, to stick his copulation, in a woman's ventilation, to improve the population, of the younger generation. i got this information from the board of education, if you want a demonstration, lie down! the comment from the teller of this rhyme to the collector was, that he had no idea what it really meant but that it sounded rude. this further reinforces the idea that appearance of 'knowledge' is more important than the actuality of knowing. when considering issues relating to sexual preferences, there were only three rhymes the researcher found related to gay and lesbian lifestyles. georgie porgie pudding and pie, kissed the girls and made them cry, when the boys came out to play, he kissed them too, 'cos he was gay. he put in his thumb, and pulled out a bum, and said, "what a gay boy am i! little jack horner, sat in the corner, eating his christmas pie, and the barney, purple dinosaur parody, i love you, you love me, homo-sex-ual-ity people think that we're best friends, but really we are lesbians! these rhymes were all related by children over eleven years of age, and did not appear to be widely recorded. this researcher could not find any such references in collections from the past. life passages . the susie saga sutton-smith (1959) recognised that much of children's folklore is the property of girls and also that girls acquire a consciousness of future roles earlier than boys do. they often act out these roles in their 44 janice ackerle' skipping and clapping games. an internationally used example of this is the enduring susie saga. variants of this rhyme have been collected in australia, britain, cyprus, denmark, france, ireland, israel, south africa, spain and the usa and perhaps elsewhere, in at least five languages: english, danish, french, greek and spanish. (arleo, 1999, 115) the susie rhyme traces the life cycle of a female character from birth, childhood, courtship, marriage, death and the hereafter. the progression through different stages involving various rites of passage is counterbalanced by the mocking laughter and exaggerated actions that accompany each of the levels, undercutting the supposed certainty of life's passage. the playground texts can be seen as part of an ongoing process of interpretations of different domains of discourse which have consistently shifting boundaries. (grugeon, 1999, 114) arleo (1999) examined both the international traditions of the rhyme and the poetic, musical and kinetic features. some of the conclusions relevant to this research were the cultural influences on different variants of the text. he noted, for example, that in only one version of the rhyme (australian) was there any mention of susie taking up a career: "when susie was a teacher, a teacher, a teacher, . . " in examining the rhymes from the museum victoria collection this researcher located references to a teacher, as well as a typist and a stripper. the timing of pregnancy was also interesting, in that two english versions had pregnancy preceding marriage, whereas in the american version pregnancy follows marriage. in the spanish version the rhyme begins at the courtship stage and deals with marital conflict and separation. the death and after-life stages are direct reflections of the particular society's cultural and religious beliefs. the american and danish versions conclude with the central character as a ghost; whereas, the english and danish versions explore themes such as heaven, hell and resurrection (arleo, 1999) factor (1988, 175) comments that the susie game shows "freedom from customary propriety," especially seen in the verse when susie was a teenager, a teenager, a teenager, she went 'ohh ahh i lost my bra, left my knickers in my boyfriend's car! one version from the australian children's folklore collection replaces the reference to 'teenager' with 'stripper. ' the opies noted that 45 gender issues in the playground rhymes this game emerged in the late 1960s from an earlier singing game beginning "when i was a lady" (1985, 458), with possible connections back to the nineteenth century (appendix i). the variations in this researcher's collection are as follows when susie was a baby she went wah, wah wah when susie was a toddler she went scribble, scribble, scribble (wobbly walk action) when susie was a schoolgirl she went miss, miss i can't do this (i want to piss) when susie was a teenager she went "ohh ahh i left my bra (knickers) in my boyfriend's car!" when susie was a mother she went "rock, rock around the clock" (1,2,3,4 chuck the baby out the door) when susie was a grandma she went knit, knit i lost my stitch! (smack, smack, smack) when susie was dead she went—silence. (whoooo..) when susie was a skeleton she went rattle, rattle. (crackle, crackle, creak, creak) when susie was a ghost she went whooo, whoooo. features of note here are that there is no mention of a career for susie. the traditional pathways of the past are followed; however, the suggested actions at the different stages take on a much more bawdy tone than the original versions. the suggestion of violence comes in with the mother wanting to "chuck the baby out the door" and the grandmother's smacking actions. these lines do not appear in any of the other versions from other countries that the researcher located. could this be related in anyway to the fact that new zealand does not have a good record when it comes to child abuse? alternatively, the fact that such cases have been more openly discussed than ever before may also be an influencing factor. a less complicated rhyme following a similar sequence, is the common tease when a boy and girl are seen to "like" each other. jack and jill sitting in a tree, k.i.s.s.i.n.g first comes love, then comes marriage, then comes the baby in the baby carriage. with the modern additions of 46 janice ackerley that's not all now they're drinking alcohol or that's not all baby's playing basketball! or that's not all, 1,2,3, jill ends up on the d.p.b. (domestic purposes benefit for single parents in new zealand) from these present-day examples it can be seen that children are very astute observers of adult's social and cultural practices, and will readily incorporate these observations in their folklore. . divination divination has long been used as a method of predicting life's passages. as far back as 1770s a procedure was described of foretelling a boy's destiny by counting buttons on a waist coat and chanting 'sowja, sailor, tinker, tailor, gentleman, apothecary, plow-boy, thief..." opie (1959, 363). similarly young girls determined the character and station of their future husbands by counting necklace beads. in the 1950s the opies quote a young schoolgirl when you have prunes or something with stones in it at dinner, put the stones at the side of your plate and count them. as you are counting you find out what kind of man you are going to marry by saying, "tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief," and whatever name you stop at you will marry. after doing that you find out what you are going to be married in by saying, "silk, satin, muslin and rags." then you know what kind of house you are going to live in by saying, "big house, small house, pigsty and barn." (opie, 1959,363) skipping rhymes of today serve a similar purpose, with the choice of partner, and other decisions depending on the trip of the rope. the formula usually includes a,b,c,d . . . with bystanders supplying the name of the lucky boy. from there the rhyme follows a pattern, a,b,c,d... will you get married? yes/no what will you wear? wedding dress. bikini, nothing. (bra, undies, wedding gear) 47 gender issues in the playground rhymes what will your boyfriend wear? singlet, undies, tie, wedding gear. where will you get married? church, beach, toilet. (house, pig sty, toilet, church) where will you go on your honey moon? nz, austra lia, usa where will you live? house, pig sty, toilet, church. what will your boyfriend wear? singlet, undies, tie, wedding gear what does he do? tinker, tailor,soldier, sailor, rich man, poor man, beggar man thief will you have babies? yes/no how many children will you have? 1,2,3,4... what will you have? single, twins triplets, quads. will you split up? yes/no turner's (1978) collection in cinderella dressed in yella (18) contains a lengthy version of this rhyme with many different options given, including colour of the house, number of bottles and nappies and the age you will be when you die. turner dates this rhyme from the period 1900-1973 in victoria, australia. the version above, from the researcher's collection, shows a blend of tradition and modernity, with historic reference to 'tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor' alongside the more modem day reference to marital separation and domestic discord. . new zealand male culture most of the rhymes discussed in this section so far relate to the life passages for girls and their future roles as wives and mothers. the rhymes that reveal the life passages of boys focus on the macho male culture, especially in new zealand, in terms of the rugby and beer culture and more recently the experimenting with drugs. the following rhyme was collected from a group of twelve years old boys and reflects the beer drinking culture of adolescence. doh. . . the stuff that buys me beer, ray. . . the bloke that buys me beer, me. . . the guy that drinks me beer, fah. . . a long way to get beer, soh. . . i'll have another beer, lah. . . i'll have another beer, te. . . no thanks, i'm drinking beer, that brings us back to doh, ray, me. . . 48 janice ackerley the drug aspect is also incorporated in the following rhymes: po kare kare ana i was smoking marijuana, i gave it to the teacher, she said, "come here!" i said, "no fear! 1'1l be back next year, with a bottle of beer, to rub in your hair. " sex, drugs, rock and roll speed, weed, birth control, life's a bitch, then you die, fuck the world, let's all get high! weed is a plant that grows in the ground, if god didn't want it, it wouldn't be around. so tell all the people, who don't want to get high, to shut the fuck up, and give it a try. roll, roll, roll your dope, scrunch it at the end, spank it up, and have a smoke, then pass it to a friend. the rugby culture and trans-tasman rivalry is also incorporated in rhymes such as it's raining, it's pouring, the all blacks are scoring. god of nations, in the serum, kick the aussies in the bum. if it hurts, serves them right, blow them up with dynamite! both boys and girls use such rhymes to experience possibilities that the future may hold for them, while maintaining the protection and security of childhood. 49 gender issues in the playground rhymes chapter five conclusion this research has investigated the gender issues within the playground rhymes used by new zealand school children between 1993 and 2003. comparisons were made between present day and historical collections of playground rhymes. through the close examination of collected rhymes the researcher found that various categories and themes emerged. such trends could be related to current cultural developments, while maintaining elements of the traditional from the original version of the rhyme. children, as a relatively powerless group in society, use these rhymes to comment on and experiment with the boundaries of their experiences. the rhymes are often subversive and not always immedi ately obvious to the casual observer. this research explored many of the hidden transcripts contained within these rhymes and concluded that children use these as an important element in their play lives, as well as a means of empowerment and experimentation with language. just as gender itself is socially and culturally determined, so are many of the gender issues contained within the playground rhymes examined here. there is an undenied necessity for continued scholarship and research in the area of children's folklore. since the studies of suttonsmith in the fifties and sixties there has been little research in new zealand in children's folklore play. a recent study, looking mainly at dialectal variation in the playground vocabulary of new zealand children, carried out through the victoria university of wellington by laurie and winifred bauer (2002) has resulted in a collection of children's play rhymes. the christchurch college of education's, national diploma of children's literature (1994) has also resulted in the development of a comprehensive collection of children's playground rhymes. this collection was utilised for the purpose of this study. within new zealand the area for folklore studies is wide open with so many avenues unexplored in terms of the how and why, with much of the raw data now available and still in the process of being collected. a study of the effects of multi-culturalism on children's folklore would be one possibility. the publication of a scholarly collection of playground rhymes similar to that published by turner (1969; 1978) is another area of consideration. it is important that archival collections are maintained. as well as providing valuable insights for the adults that study them, playground rhymes also provide children with a link to the past as well as reflecting the vibrant forces of the present. 50 janice ackerley works cited ackerley, janice. 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"our dreams in action": spirituality and children's play today, in play today in the primary school playground, bishop julia c. & curtis, mavis. national centre for english cultural tradition, university of sheffield. caputo, virginia. (1990). canadian english-language children's songs in toronto schools in canadian journal for traditional music. http://citm.icaap.org/content/i8/vi8art2.html(accessed 18/5/03). curtis, mavis. (200 i). counting in and counting out: who knows what in the playground, in play today in the primary school playground, bishop julia c. & curtis, mavis. national centre for english cultural tradition, university of sheffield. factor, june. (1983). far out, brussel sprout. hodder children's books, aust. 1983. factor, june. (1988). captain cook chased a chook: children's folklore in australia, ringwood australia, penguin. factor, june. (2000). kidspeak: a dictionary of australian children's words, expressions and games, melbourne university press. 51 gender issues in the playground rhymes factor, june. (2001). three myths about children's folklore, in play today in the primary school playground, bishop, julia c. & curtis, mavis. national centre for english cultural tradition, university of sheffield. fine, gary alan. (1980). children's folklore: how it spreads. centre for southern folklore magazine. 3:9 fine, gary alan. (1999). methodological problems of collecting folklore from children, in children's folklore: a source book, brian sutton-smith, utah state university. gomme, alice b.(1894-98). the traditional games of england, scotland and ireland, 2 vols. reprint 1964, new york dover spectacular victorian scholarship. goodwin, marjorie harness (1999). playing to learn, connections. ucla de partment of anthropology, spring. grugeon, elizabeth. 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(1993). childhood identities. self and social relationships in the experience of the child, edinburgh university press, edinburgh, viii. jorgensen, m.g. (1980). an analysis of boy girl relationships portrayed in con temporary jump rope and hand-clapping rhymes. southwest folklore 4(3 4) 63-71. kelsey, nigel. (2001). the nigel kelsey collection of children's folklore, 1962i 990, folklore, london. knapp, m. and h. (1976). one potato, two potato. new york. norton. leedy, p .d. (1997). practical research: planning and design. (6th edn.) co lumbus, ohio, merrill. lewis, tracey e. & phillipsen, lesley, c. (1998). interactions on an elementary school playground: variations by race, gender, group size and playground area, child study journal, vol. 28, iss.4, 309. lindsay, p.l. & palmer, d. (1981). playground game characteristics of bris bane primary school children, australian government publishing service, canberra. lowenstein, wendy. (1974). shocking, shocking, shocking. fish and chip press, australia. 52 janice ackerley mcmahon, felicia r. & sutton-smith, brian. (1999).the past in the present: theoretical directions for children's folklore, children's folklore: a source book. sutton-smith, brian. utah state university. maccoby, e.e. (1990). gender and relationships: a developmental account, american psychologist, 45,513-520. marsh, kathryn. (2001). it's not all black and white: the influence of media, the classroom and immigrant groups on children's playground singing games, in play today in the primary school playground, bishop, julia c. & curtis, mavis. national centre for english cultural tradition, university of sheffield. martin, carol lynn, fabes, richard, a. evans, stephanie, n. & wyman, heidi. (1999). social cognition on the playground: children's beliefs about playing with girls versus boys and their relations to sex segregated play, journal of social and personal relationships, vol. 16, iss. 6, 751. mechling, jay. (2000). children's folklore, children's brains, new directions in folklore 4.2, oct. ministry of education website. www.minedu.govt.nz (accessed 18/6/03). museum victoria. australian children's folklore collection. melbourne, aus tralia. www.museum.vic.govt.au neuman, w. (1997). social research methods: qualitative and quantitative approaches. 3rd ed. allyn & bacon. boston. newell, w.w. 1963 (1883). games and songs of american children. new york. dover. opie, i&p. (1959). the lore and language of school children. oxford, o.u.p. opie, i&p. (1969). children's games in the street and playground, oxford, o.u.p. opie, i. (1985). the singing game. new york. oxford university press. opie, i. (1993). the people in the playground. new york. oxford university press. opie, i& p. (1997). children's games with things. oxford, o.u.p. scott, james c. (1992). domination and the arts of resistance: hidden tran scripts. yale university press. sutton-smith, brian. (1959). games of new zealand school children, califor nia. u.s.a. sutton-smith, brian. (1972). the folkgames of children, american folklore society, university of texas press. sutton-smith, brian. (1981). a history of children's play: the new zealand playground, 1840-1950, university of pennsylvania. sutton-smith, brian. (1997). the ambiguity of play. harvard university press. sutton-smith, brian.( ed.) (1999).children 's folklore. a source book, utah state university press. thorne, barrie & luria, zella. (1986). sexuality and gender in children's daily worlds, social problems, vol. 3, no 33, feb. thorne, barrie. (1993). gender play: boys and girls in school, buckingham, open university press. turner, ian, (ed) (1969). cinderella dressed in yella, heinemann, aust. turner, ian, factor june, & lowenstein, wendy. (1978). cinderella dressed in yella, heinemann educational aust. (2nd edn.). twarek, linda s. & halley george, s. (i 994).gender differences during recess in elementary schools, elementary and childhood education, june 22. 53 gender issues in the playground rhymes vissel, amu. (1993).the traditional and the recent in modern schoolchildren's games: kinetic games (running and jumping games). estonian folklore archives. http://haldjas.folklore.ee/rl/pubte/ee/bif/bif2/anu.html zhumkhawala, sehba. (1997). dolls, trucks and identity, children's advocate, action alliance for children, nov-dec. zumwalt, rosemary levy. (1999). the complexity of children's folklore, in children's folklore: a source book, brian sutton-smith, utah state uni versity. 54 janice ackerley appendex i: fuji-text of rhymes used in research page no. rhyme text of most commonly recorded version girls boys both total 11 row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream, throw your teacher overboard, and listen to her scream 18 10 16 44 11 po kare kare ana, i had a squashed banana, i threw it at the teacher, alternative she said, "come here!" (it hit her in the eye i said, "no fear, she said, "wah, wah, i'll be back in a year, i lost my bra, with a bottle of beer, and i don't know where to wash my hair my knickers are!'') 11 5 2 18 11, 32 girls are weak. chuck 'em in the creek. boys are strong, like king kong. boys play rugby, to get more ugly, girls take showers, to get more powers. (girls go to the gym to get more slim) boys are spastic, made out of plastic) girls are sexy, made out of pepsi boys are rotten, made out of cotton. 15 0 0 15 13 14, 40 when susie was a baby, a baby, a baby when susie was a baby she went wah,wah wah when susie was a toddler she went scribble, scribble, scribble (wobbly walk action) when susie was a schoolgirl she went miss, miss i can't do this (i want to piss) when susie was a teenager she went "ohh ahh i left my bra (knickers) in my boy friend's car'" when susie was a mother she went "rock. rock around the clock" (1,2,3,4 chuck the baby out the door) when susie was a grandma she went knit, knit i lost my stitch! (smack, smack, smack) when susie was dead she went –silence. (whooooo..) when susie was a skeleton she went rattle, rattle. (crackle, crackle, creak, creak) when susie was a ghost she went whooo, whoooo 13 0 2 15 23 my mother, your mother 33 3 3 39 55 gender issues in the playground rhymes lived down the street, 18,19 marble street, and every time they had a fight, this is what she told me girls go to mars, to get more bras, boys go to rugby, to get more ugly (and other variations). 23 i'm sexy, i'm cute, i'm popular to boot. great looking, great hair, the boys will love to stare go, go go touros 1 0 0 1 24 oh my gosh' i think i broke a nail. it's totally for sure. i'm gonna need a manicure. the sun up there, is shining on my gorgeous hair. hey, you! go home, i'm talking on my telephone. 23,24, i don't know the stupid score! go, go, fight, fight, gee i hope i look all right! 2 0 0 2 24 i must, i must increase my bust, cos then, cos then, i will attract men, and get a job, a job, working as a blob, at jenny craig, jenny craig, so they can all catch my plague, and get fat, get fat! so what do you think of that' 1 0 0 1 24 i'm a barbie girl, in a barbie world, life's fantastic, i'm made out of plastic, i've got rubber hair, purple underwear, i take a shower, every half hour, come on barbie, let's go party, comee on barbie, lets go party, no way, no way! 1 0 0 1 24 25 ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, goota re bub, she bub, she bub, i went upstairs to comb my hair, i went back down and the boogie man was there. i went to school and it was pretty cool. i shaved my legs and my face went red. i carne back home and my mummy said, " naughty, naughty girl for shaving your legs. i went upstairs to light the fire, mv balls got stuck in the electric wire. 4 1 1 6 56 janice ackerley i went to the doctor, the doctor said, "i'm sorry mister, but your balls are dead!" turn around, turn around, touch the ground, freeze! 25 i'm a little dutch girl (girl guide)dressed in blue these are the things that i must do, bow to the king, curtsey to the queen. show my undies to the rugby team. 6 0 2 8 25 i'm a little angel, i don't swear, bugger, bugger, bull shit, i don't care! 2 0 0 2 26 apple on a stick. makes me sick. makes my heart beat two forty six, not because you're dirty, not because you're clean, just because you kissed a boy, behind a magazine, boys, boys are no fun, here comes susie with a mini skirt on, she can wibble, she can wobble, she can do the splits, but i bet you five bucks she can't do this ! 8 0 0 8 26 down in the meadow, where the green grass grows, there sat little mary as sweet as a rose, along came a boy, and kissed her on the cheek. shame little mary! who's your little boyfriend? a.b.c.d...? 1 0 0 1 26 mummy had a baby, yummy, yummy. daddy is a dentist, gummy, gummy. my sister is a show off, honey, honey. my brother is a cowboy, bang, bang, boom, boom. fifty bullets in my head, turn around, turn around, touch the ground freeze! 1 0 0 1 26 my name is andy pandy, sugar and candy mum's gone crazy, dad's had a baby! do me a favour get lost! 1 0 0 1 27 here comes the bride... (many variants of this rhyme) 5 1 5 11 29 joy to the world, the teacher's dead 6 3 3 12 57 gender issues in the playground rhymes we barbequed her head. what happened to her body? we flushed it down the potty. round and round it goes. round and round it goes. 29 on top of spaghetti, all covered in sand, i shot my poor teacher, with a grey rubber band, i shot her with pleasure, i shot her with pride. i couldn't have missed her. she was 40 foot wide. i went to her funeral, i went to her grave, some people threw flowers, i threw a gre nade. her coffin went up, her coffin went down. her coffin went splat, all over the ground. i looked in her coffin, she still wasn't dead, so i got my bazooka, and shot off her head. (her head went flying, up into the sky, then the all blacks kicked it, and scored a great try) 7 7 7 21 29 glory, glory halleluiah teacher hit me with a ruler. poked her in the chin, with a rotten mandarin. and her teeth came marchin" ou-ou-out. 1 0 2 3 31 my boyfriend gave me an apple, my boyfriend gave me a pear. my boyfriend gave me a kiss on the lips. and threw me down the stairs. i gave him back his apple, i gave him back his pear, i gave him back his kiss on the lips. and threw him down the stairs... (many variations to the ending) 25 0 5 30 31 32 underneath the apple tree. my boyfriend said to me "kiss me, hug me, tell me that you love me" underneath the apple tree, my boyfriend said to me, "get lost!" 6 0 2 8 33 billy, had a ten foot willy. he showed it to the lady next door. she thought it was a snake. and hit it with a rake, and now it's only five foot four 0 2 0 2 34 ellie i, ellie i. chickalie. chickalie, 1 0 0 1 58 janice ackerley went to california, jumped in a lake, swallowed a snake, and came out with a bellyache. 34 my name is nicholas, picholas, don't be ridiculous, why don't you do me a favour, swim in the lake, swallow a snake, and then come back with a bellyache 8 1 1 10 34 cinderella, dressed in yella, went upstairs to kiss her fella, made a mistake, and kissed a mistake, then came back with a bellyache. how many doctors did it take? 1,2,3,4...? (on the way her panties busted, how many people were disgusted? 1,2,3,4...?) 47 3 50 34 my boyfriend's name is jackie, he comes from taranaki, with a pimple on his nose, and big long toes, and this is how my story goes, one day when i went walking, 1 heard my boyfriend talking, to the prettiest girl with the strawberry curl, and this is what he said ,said, said. i l..o.v.e. you -love you, i k..i.s.s. you kiss you. so i jumped in the lake and swallowed a snake, and then came home with a belyache. 10 0 2 12 35 hickory, dickory dock… (many variants of this rhyme) 1 7 2 10 36 roses are red... (many variants of this rhyme) 13 16 10 39 36 jack and jill... (many variants of this rhyme) 10 9 7 26 36 waltzing matilda, who bloody killed her? lying in the grass, with a dagger up her arse. along came granny, chopped off her fanny, took her to the movies, chopped off her boo bies, took her to bed and chopped off her head, and that was then end of waltzing matilda. 4 4 8 16 36 ashes to ashes, dust to dust, if it wasn’t for the girls, our balls would rust. 0 2 0 2 36 when 1 die, bury me, hag! my nuts (tits) from a cherry tree, 1 2 0 3 59 gender issues in the playground rhymes when they're ripe, take a bite, don't blame me if you fart all night. 37 1+1 the fun has just begun in the bedroom, 2+2 he's up to my shoe in the bedroom, 3+3 he's up to my knee in the bedroom 4+4 he's shut the door in the bedroom, 5 +5 he's fucking me alive in the bedroom, 6+6 he's licking my tits in the bedroom, 7+7 he's this feels like heaven in the bed room, 8+8 the doctor's at the gate in the bedroom, 9+9 the twins are doing fine in the bedroom, 10+10 let's do it all again in the bedroom 1 0 0 1 37 running down the road, knocking on the door, fuck, dam, son of a bitch, couldn't find a whore. finally found a whore, she was tall and thin, fuck, dam, son of a bitch, couldn't get it in. finally got it in, wiggled it around, fuck, dam, son of a bitch, couldn't get it out. finally got it out, it was red and sore, the moral of the story is, never fuck a whore! 0 1 0 1 38 georgie porgie... (many variants of this rhvme) 6 3 3 12 38 little jack horner... (many variants of this rhvme) 2 1 1 4 38 1 love you, you love me, homo-sex-ual-ity people think that we're best friends, but really we are lesbians. (other variants related to barney the purple dinosaur) 2 1 3 6 41 x and y sitting in a tree, k.i.s.s.i.n.g. first comes love, then comes marriage, then comes the baby in the baby carriage. 28 6 14 48 42 a.b.c.d. (divination) will you get married? yes/no what will you wear? (many variations in responses throughout rest of this rhyme) what will your boyfriend wear? where will you get married? where will you go on your honeymoon? where will you live? what will vour boyfriend wear? 54 0 12 66 60 janice ackerley what does he do? will you have babies? yes/no how many children will you have? 1,2,3,4. what will you have? single, twins triplets, quads. willyvou split up? yes/no 43 doh... the stuff that buys me beer, ray… the bloke that buys me beer, me... the guy that drinks me beer, fah... a long way to get beer, soh... i'll have another beer, lah... i'll have another beer, te?... no thanks, i'm drinking beer, that brings us back to doh, ray, me... 0 1 0 1 43 po kare, kare, ana, i was smoking marijuana.. 0 2 0 2 43 sex, drugs, rock and roll, weed, speed, birth control. life's a bitch and then you die, fuck the world, let's all get high. 0 1 0 1 43 roll, roll, roll your dope, scrunch it at the end, spank it up, and have a smoke, and pass it to a friend. 0 6 1 7 43 weed is a plant, that grows in the ground, if god didn't want it, it wouldn't be around. so tell all the people, who don't want to get high. to shut the fuck up, and give it a try. 0 1 0 1 44 it's raining, it's pouring, the all blacks are scoring. 0 1 0 1 44 god of nations, in the serum, kick the aussies up the bum. if it hurts, serves them right, blow them up with dynamite! 0 2 0 2 44 fitz, mers, cullen, bull, if you support the aussies, you're a bloody fool! 0 1 0 1 356 103 114 573 6] janice ackerley appendix 2 1. when i was a lady when i was a lady, a lady, a lady— when i was a lady, oh! then, oh! then, oh! then, it was hey oh! this way, this way, this way; it was hey oh! this way, oh! then, oh! then, oh! then. when i got married, got married, got married—[etc.] when i got a baby, a baby, a baby—[etc.] when my baby cried, cried, cried—[etc.] when my baby died, died, died—[etc.] when i had a bustle, a bustle, a bustle—[etc.] when my bustle fell, fell, fell—[etc.] acknowledgements i wish to thank the following for their assistance with the completion of this study: sue clancy of charles sturt university whose guidance was invaluable in focussing me on the requirements of this study. john mckenzie, director of the children's literature centre at the christchurch college of education, whose foresight in the establishment of the national diploma in children's literature introduced me to the fascinating world of children's folklore. his permission was also granted, on behalf of the christchurch college of education, to use the vital resource of the new zealand children's folklore collection, so essential to this study. moya mcfadzean, from museum victoria, melbourne, australia, for providing me with rhymes from the australian children's folklore collection. dr. derek syme (ashburton college) and my colleagues at ashburton college and especially to my family for providing the support and encouragement all the way along this journey. 62 the ugly duckling, hans christian anderson: a story of transformation anita l. gambos introduction the ugly duckling is a small story that offers universal hope to the disenfranchised. here, a misfit, rejected by family and society, makes the microcosmic journey of all who seek self-actualization. in fairy tales and the art of subversion, jack zipes notes in his chapter, "hans christian andersen and the discourse of the dominated": (the ugly ducking) has generally been interpreted as a parable of andersen's own success story because the naturally gifted underdog survives a period of "ugliness" to reveal its innate beauty. (87) therefore, to understand the significance of the transformation, from ugly to beautiful, it is important to view the passage against the backdrop of andersen's life. andersen's life influences hans christian andersen was clearly a product of the nineteenth century, a period of broad-sweeping changes in both world and national views, when tenets of biology, eugenics and race became subjects of public discourse. andersen was born to poverty in 1805 in the old provincial danish town of odense. the son of a cobbler who loved books and taught himself and his son to read, andersen grew up hearing his father say that he (the father) was of aristocratic origin. andersen's mother worked as a washerwoman; she was uneducated and superstitious, but introduced andersen to folklore. he was also greatly influenced by his grandmother, a grounds person at odense hospital, a local workhouse. andersen spent a great deal of time there listening to elderly, female inmates who repeated old stories and the traditional folk tales of denmark. these made a deep and lasting impression. andersen was a poor student and received little education. he spent much of his time alone writing short plays and dreaming of becoming an actor. encouraged by his parents, he composed his own fairy tales and arranged puppet shows. andersen was fortunate to live in one of the few towns outside of copenhagen that housed a public theater. he often accompanied his father to the town's playhouse. the ugly duckling when he was 11, andersen's life was seriously disrupted when his father died, and the family became even more destitute. he was forced to go to work. for a short time, he apprenticed to a weaver and a tailor, and also worked at a tobacco factory. at the age of 14, he fled to copenhagen to find his way in the theater. during his first years in copenhagen, andersen fought to gain a toehold in the theater as a ballet dancer, actor and singer. eventually, he succeeded in becoming associated with the royal theater, but had to leave it when his voice began to change. one of the directors of the royal theater, an influential government official, jonas collins, provided andersen the means to be educated and eventually gain admission to copenhagen university. these educational experiences broadened andersen's perspective and put him in touch with the dramatic social changes of his day. zipes notes: throughout the western world, a more solidified bourgeois public sphere was establishing itself and replacing feudal systems, as was clearly the case in denmark. (76) it might be said that andersen in his subsequent life became living proof of the social mobility made possible by the bourgeois democracy that arose after the signing of denmark's constitution in 1849. after his school years, copenhagen at last came to mean something positive for andersen, and he began his writing in earnest. the university of southern denmark's center on hans christian andersen notes on its website: here the proletarian andersen acquired the culture and education associated with bourgeois circles in the golden age that encompassed the last years of absolute monarchy. . . . andersen' s entire production of tales is, as it were, suspended between these two poles. . . having broken with his family and social class, but not yet a member of the moneyed class, andersen understood that he could realize his potential and gain greater social standing only through the world of art, the only outlet the times provided. the center's web site also remarks: here, too, he came to know both the bourgeois upper class of the capital and the very lowest stratum of its proletariat. he came to know the fight for survival at the subsistence level and the bitterness of being a supplicant dependent on the good will of others. 64 anita gambos it is zipes' s opinion that this duality produced deep self-doubts in andersen that impelled him to constantly reprove his value. . . . to show his aptitude and disposition were noble and that he belonged to the elect. this is apparent in the referential system built into most of his tales which are discourses on the dominated. (79) his friends were patrons rather than intimates, and his constant sense of indebtedness to them weighed heavily and perpetuated his isolation. throughout his life, from his own perspective and despite his fame as a writer, andersen was the dominated subject within the dominant social circles. andersen never felt himself to be fully accepted by any group. he lived as an outsider, a loner, unable to enjoy the deep attachments and obvious social identification that a wife and family would have bestowed. perhaps it is for this reason that he began to travel extensively. he considered germany to be his second home but was also comfortable in italy. his journeying paved the way for international literary fame as his first work published in 1829 described his trek from holmens canal to the east point of amager, a fantastic tale set in the style of german romantic writers. the work was well received. andersen was considered to be the most widely traveled danish writer of his day. he spent over nine years of his life outside denmark. andersen's literary fame grew rapidly from the mid-1830s when his novels became widely accepted in germany. however, from 1839 onwards, it was his fairy tales that earned him acclaim until his death in 1875. imbedded in the straightforward narrative easily understood by children are subtler and deeper meanings to which adults respond. it is to these symbols and meanings that attention is next turned. understanding tale symbolism and meaning the oxford english dictionary defines symbol as something that stands for, represents or denotes something else; a material object representing or taken to represent something immaterial or abstract, as a being, idea, quality or condition. meaning is defined as that which is intended to be or actually is expressed or indicated; the intent, the spirit. archeologists, seeking to discover historic and cultural meaning from artifacts, offer an evolution of symbolic capacity. the auckland center for the arts notes that our physical and mental capacity for symbolic thought and its representation in language is the result of evolution. the ability to reason, plan and communicate in symbols sets us 65 the ugly duckling apart from other animals. this generates our culture capacity. therefore, the ability to derive symbolic meaning from tales helps preserve and expand the cultural underpinnings that link us all. this is one of storytelling's most important functions. on an individual level, different cognitive maps guide personal actions. people sense/sample the world and then interpret! give meaning to, according to these cognitive maps. just as language has an internal organization called grammar, cognitive maps are given organization and structure through sets of related symbols and meaning. folk tales, fairy tales, myths, lore, are the organizing principles of cognitive maps. therefore, through either the collective or the individual pathways, the symbolism of tales helps to organize the internal operating systems both for culture in general and for its singular components. thus, the auckland center proposes that "approaches that look at symbols and meaning may generate coherence and sense." in interpretation of fairy tales, marie louise von franz speaks to four basic cognitive maps for those interpreting fairy tales. actually you can interpret a fairy tale with any of the four functions of consciousness. the thinking type will point out the structure and the way in which all the motifs connect. the feeling type will put them into value order (a hierarchy of values) which is also completely rational. with the feeling function, a good and complete fairy tale interpretation can be made. the sensation type will just look at the symbols and amplify them. the intuitive will see the whole package (of fairy tale) in its oneness, so to speak; he will be most gifted in showing that the whole fairy tale is not a discursive story but is really one message split up into many facets. (24) the cognitive map of this report will follow an intuitive interpretation of the major symbols and meaning of the ugly duckling. symbolic analysis of the ugly duckling from the very first paragraph, story symbols that evoke multiple meanings are plentiful. the opening paragraph that describes the long golden days of summer, sweet air, tall com and freshly-cut hay leads the reader to a pastoral/earth setting, a time of fullness and ripening, a time of maturation after quickening. but, beyond the open sunlight, there are the shaded deeps (cool lakes of the unconscious where new life can be born.) near the lake shore, storks (symbols of fertility and birth) wade. birds (symbols of freedom that fly with new hopes and dreams of the future) chatter overhead. even the manmade objects like the old mansion surrounded by a 66 anita gambos moat are contained and defined by the watery unconscious. along the stone walls of the mansion, "huge burdock plants with leaves as big as platters grow thick and tall. beneath their leaves it was like a secret room." (it is interesting to note that burdock leaves are usually heartshaped near the bottom of the plant and egg-shaped at the top.) in this womb-like place, recreating the ancient mysteries, the mother duck waits for her eggs to hatch, each egg enfolding its own primeval, cosmic universe. after the ducklings begin to hatch, "the mother let them look as much as they liked, for green is good for the eyes." (through the connection with the green, fertile earth, all living things are made whole, and life is supported.) the mother duck must still sit on the nest to hatch the last and largest egg. an older duck (crone/elder/shaman) cautions the mother duck that the egg could be a turkey egg (note the quality of trickster), clearly inferior in the animal hierarchy. the mother duck was encouraged to make sure that the product of this larger egg could swim (navigate the world emotionally.) when the ugly duckling hatched, he (advisedly a "he" in this case) was gray, not a golden yellow like the other ducklings. this gray duckling was suspect, "in the gray zone," not fully accepted, but not yet rejected, while the yellow ducklings, the color of sun and summer and life, were perceived as the "real ducklings." after a swim in the moat (a journey of initiation), the mother duck cautions the ducklings to beware of the "mean old cat" living the barnyard. the cat can represent the feminine aspect of the personality, the unexplored unconscious. it is interesting to note that after the ducklings had proven themselves by performing in the moat (masculine activity), they were now being cautioned to pay attention to the feminine principle, the aspect of being. they could even find it to be dangerous. the exhortation to pay attention to appearances is primary. the mother duck equates her worth to the perceived value that others place on her "well bred" ducklings and, commensurately, on her success as a mother. she instructs them to keep their toes turned out properly (be outward turning and explore.) particularly evocative is her social instruction to bow to the respected older female duck who is of chinese heritage (ancient wis dom). she is also addressed as "your grace," a designation of nobility. she notes that the older duck has a bit of red cloth on her leg so that everyone would "take notice of her and treat her with respect." red is the color of blood, of kinship and, in some cultures, of initiation. (the ducklings were to be presented to their new tribe.) more directly, in the chinese culture, red is the color of good fortune and abundance. (by honoring the duck of greater social standing, honor and riches might also be conferred on the mother duck and her ducklings.) 67 the ugly duckling it was the old duck who commented on what a nice family the mother duckling had, but notably excluded the ugly duckling from this evaluation. she even went so far as to say "too bad you can't start over again with him." (abundance will not come to the ugly ducking in his current form.) on that first day, the barnyard animals' abuse of the ugly ducking began. (the barnyard can be equated to the town square, the gathering place of the lower classes where justice was dispensed.) though the cat never made an appearance, the chickens and ducklings shouted that "the cat should grab you," an indication that they wanted some super natural force to intervene in the destruction/transformation of the ugly duckling. early one morning (at the beginning of his quest), the ugly duckling ran away. almost immediately, he encountered animals in the wild and assumed they ran/flew away because he was so ugly. the cognitive map he carried had to be tested in the wild (the subconscious) to gain the truth of his own inner map. thus, he began a hero's journey, with the hero's task of encountering and overcoming his demons. he first met wild birds who flew away. (his hopes, his dreams had changed.) next, he met wild ducks who thought him strange and, curiously, said that he could remain in the marsh as long as he didn't marry into their family. (this is the psychological distancing device used to guard and protect the status quo and keep the tribe intact.) one morning, he met a pair of young, wild geese who invited him to join them on their side of the marsh. they acknowledged his ugliness (differences), but were willing to include him in their community. (through younger, less stultified beings, the order of the status quo begins to weaken, and messages from the unconscious arise. hints are given to what is possible.) unfortunately, just as the clues are evidenced, a hunter shoots the wild geese as they fly from the rushes. (so, too, are many new ideas gunned down aggressively when they land in the sights of the guns of established thinking and tried-and-true systems like the proverbial "old boys network. ") it was when a huge dog, "its eyes gleaming horribly," came upon the ugly duckling, pushing his dog's nose right into the duckling's face, then departing, that the ugly duckling decided to leave the swamp. (in ancient babylon, the goddess of fate is represented by a dog, and often, gods accompanying traveling goddesses took the forms of dogs. the dog is a sign of protection and power.) it is interesting that it was the appearance of a dog that precipitated the ugly duckling's hurrying out of relatively known safety to the truly unknown. having left the marsh (the world in-between the solid land and the watery depths), the ugly duckling came to a "sad-looking little farmhouse" which housed an old woman, a cat and a hen. not seeing well, the old woman thought that the duckling was a hen and put him on a 68 anita gambos nest in hope of his laying eggs. (many will not see who we really are.) after a period of time, "the duckling sat in the comer feeling very, very sad. (his feelings began to match the sad environment.) thoughts of fresh air and sunshine came to his mind, and he was filled with an extraordinary longing to swim" (to return to his true nature). when he expressed his desire to the hen and cat, they were scornful. they encouraged him to be grateful for "a warm room and pleasant company." but the ugly duckling left the sure comforts of the poor farmhouse (where he would have been safe but unrealized), and set out on his own path. (the hero could not be seduced from his quest.) he came to a beautiful pond (an enclosed pool of emotional content, where he could explore his identity). he tried swimming near the other ducks, but they turned away. (the journey to self-realization is a solitary one.) winter (the period of frozen time and inward space, the dark night of the soul) was coming. a raven (the prophetic bird of death) squawked. (our hero was about to go through the transformative death to self.) one evening, he saw a flock of swans fly overhead, and though he did not know their identity, he called out to them and felt strangely excited. (his intuition and his instincts were waking up, and he was beginning to know himself differently.) his voice was so loud and so shrill it frightened him. (he was afraid of embracing this new voice/identity that was emerging.) then he dived down to the bottom of the pond (the unconscious) and "when he came up again, he was even more excited than before." (he was willing to engage deeply for only a moment, but a moment was enough to fire his imagination and keep him alive during the upcoming wintry trial. it gave him a hint to his most secret, and his truest identity.) winter came. "the duckling had to swim round and round in the water to keep it from freezing right up. but every night the pool in which he swam grew smaller and smaller." (self-actualization is not gained through a mental process. though our minds go "round and round," transformation happens only when the circuitous thoughts get smaller and smaller, as we tire of the mind's game and let it stop.) "at last he froze fast into the pond. " (we surrender to our fate, the outward, seemingly constricting construct arising from our deepest unconscious.) it was a peasant (someone of the land) who found the duckling, "broke up the ice with his wooden clog" (a strong, sturdy shoe indicating that the duckling was headed in a new direction) and carried the little ducking home to his wife (the feminine principle accessed fully only when we allow ourselves to be carried along.) the peasant's children who wanted to play with him made the ugly duckling "afraid they might hurt him and he fluttered away." (though not necessarily malignant, we tend to be afraid of the primal, previously-unknown forces that present themselves and flee from them emo 69 the ugly duckling tionally lest we be harmed.) the duckling flew into the milk (the substance of creation,) butter (a source of richness and abundance,) and flour (a distillation of earth energy.) finally, he darted out of the open door (means of escape from our darkest parts) and "lay exhausted in the new-fallen snow." (having courage to face his inner genius which is just as frightening as facing the demons, the duckling comes to the neutral place of inner stasis where transformation happens.) he drags himself to the reeds at the edge of the frozen pond (suspended between two worlds where his mind no longer works) and survives the winter. when spring came (the time of rebirth, renewal and igniting of the light), the ducking "woke to find the sky bright and the larks (harbingers of new life) singing." he found that his wings were stronger and carried him swiftly away. (he objectified this new found strength not yet realizing that it was a part of him.) the duckling found himself in a large garden (a place of spiritual growth and healing; renewal of energy and focus) where "apple trees blossomed (death and rebirth, the fruit of the tree of life) and sweetsmelling lilacs (rich, perfumed, sensory conveyors of new life and tantalizing possibilities) dangle their long branches over the waters of a lake." (larger that his former pond, the ugly duckling now claims a larger space for himself.) "right ahead of him, out of the leafy shadows, came three beautiful white swans." (emerging from the unconscious into the light of day, the duckling sees his desire embodied.) he felt a strange sadness (mourning and letting go of the hero's journey space) and determined to be with them "even though they will peck me to death because i am so ugly." though he feared personal harm and rejection (as he was living in his old paradigm), he preferred death to winter's isolation or a return to is former life. (once there is transformation, there is no turning back.) when the duckling bowed his head to the water, he saw his reflection (the outward manifestation of the inner transformation that had taken place during the solitary winter). for the first time, he was then able to see himself for who he truly had become. "it did not matter that he was born in a duck's nest. he was hatched from a swan's egg!" this time, he did not go round and round in his head in fruitless mental exercise. instead, "the three lovely swans circled round and round and stroked him gently with their beaks." (he made the transition from his head to his heart. for this he was rewarded.) some little children (reflection of his newly-found ego; he was not afraid of them as he was the peasant's children) came into the garden (the protected space) and threw bits of bread (the foundational nourishment of life). note that three ingredients that previously he had fled from in fear—milk, butter and flour—now, in the fire of his transfor 70 anita gambos mation, had become bread, something that could sustain him). the outer response (to his inward self acceptance) came from the smallest child. "look! a new swan! the new one is the prettiest one of all." the old swans (those who had made a similar journey) bowed their heads in agreement. (instead of his bowing his head to the old barnyard duck, these elegant creatures were now bowing to him.) "this made the duckling feel quite shy, and he tucked his head under his wing. (initially, we are not always comfortable with the changes that transformation brings and sometimes "hide out. ") "his heart filled with joy, and he ruffled his feathers and raised his slender neck, for he had never dreamed of so much happiness when he was an ugly duckling." (having once been bitten in the neck by the chickens, and receiving the necessary wound that initiated the quest, the duckling now stretches his elegant neck and claims his new swan self identity. the hero's journey is ended. ) autobiographical parallels to andersen's life andersen fled from his home to escape poverty and social status. though born in the slums, andersen always believed himself to be misplaced, an unacknowledged aristocrat, a beautiful swan. he suffered at the hands of the "barnyard animals," those lesser childhood beings who wounded him by their taunts about his appearance and his mannerisms. though the trappings changed, and he was later adopted by the wealthy collin family, andersen was always out to prove to others (and to remind himself) that he really had the right, despite his poor birth circumstances, to "live in the large garden" of his life. he always wanted "the little people" to exclaim at his talent and honor him for his aristocratic spirit. there is little mention made of andersen's mother in his many biographical sketches, though his father and grandmother play prominently. in the tale, the mother duckling is resigned to his oddness and gives the duckling a brief chance to fit into the family. but, she quickly aligns with public opinion when family and neighbors turn against the ugly duckling. though not explicitly stated, one wonders how much of this treatment is autobiographical as well. andersen's family and friends could not have been happy to have been so deliberately left behind. the tale even describes the ugly duckling's family as "cruel." the poultry yard scene is interesting. clearly, the mother duck sees herself and her family as more distinguished than the chickens, roosters and geese, but not as distinguished as the elder china duck. andersen shows his bias here for hierarchy the titled, the pedigreed, qualities that he obviously lacks. zipes notes: 7i the ugly duckling a dominated voice of his narration does not condemn his former social class, rather andersen loses contact with it by denying the rebellious urges of his class within himself and making compromises that affirmed the rightful domination of the middle class ethic. . . . (andersen) rarely suggested alternatives or rebellion (in his tales.) rather, he placed safety before idealism and chose moral compromise over moral outrage, individual comfort and achievement over collective struggle and united goals. he aimed for identification with the power establishment that humiliates subjects rather than opposition to autocracy to put an end to exploitation through power. (83 & 84) andersen was not particularly interested in changing the system, but in changing himself to fit into the system. this is further evidenced in the instructions that the mother duck gives before the first barnyard foray when she tells her ducklings that the world is a place of squabbling and snapping. she implies that it is necessary to accept the world the way it is. the goal is not to try to change the world, but to hurry past any frays that are encountered and survive by looking good. going out into the world and meeting with other creatures who rejected the ugly duckling, who tried to use him, or who offered him help have probable parallels to andersen's international travels. in seeking out the literati of his time, andersen seemed to be seeking out "those of his own kind." he did not return to his birth home, but, instead, searched for outward validation of self-worth. like the ugly duckling, andersen was slow to see himself as a member of the company of swans. the ending of the ugly duckling is like anderson's cry for the world's accreditation. he wants endless confirmation that despite his poor beginnings, he had become a true swanand not just a beautiful swan, but the best of them all. the story of the ugly duckling viewed from the perspective of andersen's life is a tale of one who achieved his dream, but who then spent a lifetime trying to believe it. transformation themes in the ugly duckling the number three is frequently repeated in the story. the duckling left the protection of the marsh on the third day. three dwelled in the small farmhouse (old woman, cat and hen). the duckling flew in a panic into three household ingredients (milk, butter and flour). some character identification can be made with the maiden/mother/crone, the triple goddess archetype, as the reader watches the duckling from hatching to maturity. after the winter, the ugly duckling was surrounded by three swans. his transformation occurred in the third season. three is the number of completion, of perfection, the number of 72 anita gambos integrated divinity. three also mirrors the death-resurrection cycle found in many religions and traditions. it is also embodied in the three alchemical phases of transformation where the crude prima material is transformed into gold. von franz describes the three-fold alchemical process as progressing through the negredo, the latin word for the blackness of the material when subjected to fire; the albedo, the white substance which becomes silver when washed, and the rubedo (the red) which through further heating turns into gold. the albedo signifies the individual's first clear awareness of the unconscious... it means the cool, detached attitude, a stage where things look remote and vague, as though seen in the moonlight. in the albedo, therefore, it is said that the feminine and the moon are ruling. it also means a receptive attitude towards the unconscious. "washing off is the ordeal of coming to terms with the shadow; whereas the former stage, the negredo marks the first terrible facing of the shadow which is torture, and should be followed by working on and differentiating one's inferior side. the alchemists call this "the hard work." with the progress of the albedo, the main stream is relieved. then simple heating changes the albedo into the rubedo, which is ruled by the sun and heralds a new state of consciousness. (117) in the ugly duckling, the negredo is the period during the darkness of the marsh and the subsequent "walkabout" of experience. the albedo is the time of frozen white winter, and the rubedo is the rush of blood, the emergence of sun in the return of spring, the season of transformation. finally, in a psychiatric study of myths and fairy tales, julius heuscher notes: it is admittedly an oversimplification to reduce the basic challenge to our evolution to three stages: one, progressive feeling of loss of unity with our (spiritual) origins; two, gaining awareness of our identity in the course of contact with the material world; and three, eventual synthesis on a higher plane. (95) these three stages are congruent with the alchemical motif already described. 73 the ugly duckling role of the mother/stepmother figure in the ugly duckling jacqueline schectman, in the stepmother in fairy tales, makes interesting observations pertinent to the role of the tale duckling. the stepmother. . . is emblematic of whole family systems gone awry in the face of inevitable growth and change. to know the stepmother. . . is to understand her in the context of relationship and the stages of her family life. (100) the mother duck is rust introduced when she is nesting, waiting for her eggs to hatch. "she had been sitting a long time, or so it seemed to her, and she missed the company of all the other ducks." after the other eggs hatched, she realized that the biggest one of all still remained unhatched. she complains that she is "so tired of waiting," but settles to do just that. the mother duckling seems content in her nesting until an elder duck raises doubts about the real nature of the large egg. the mother duck's response is, "but i've already waited so long. i may as well wait a little longer," reflecting the mother duck's concern about her time investment, but not necessarily about her duckling. when the first ducklings hatch, she quacks at them for maternal identification, and they respond with the predictable peeps. however, when the ugly duckling finally hatches, she "just looked at him" wondering about his true identity. her first thought is, "into the water he'll go, even if have to push him in myself." from the very beginning, the mother duckling was worried about how the ugly duckling would reflect on her. during the first swim, when she saw how well the ugly duckling "uses his legs and how straight he holds himself," she concluded that "he is my own child after all, and really not so ugly when you look at him properly." though not indicative of unconditional love, the mother duck evidences at least some maternal acceptance. before the ducklings enter the barnyard, the mother duck explains how to look good and behave correctly so that they are considered to be a fine, well-bred family, and she, then, is deemed to be a good mother. soon after they enter, the ugly duckling is attacked by the chickens. the mother duck cries, "leave him alone! he's doing no harm." she even defends him to the old china duck, "he is good tempered and he swims as well as the others. and i am sure he will turn out all right." andersen states ominously, "but that was only the first day." afterwards, the ugly duckling's troubles grew until even his own brothers and sisters chased him and made fun of him. at this point, "the mother duck looked at him sadly and wished he were far away." that is the last the reader hears of the mother duck as she is not mentioned after the ugly duckling runs away. one can only hope in 74 anita gambos schectman's words that . . . in becoming who they truly are, her (stepmother's) children bring a necessary healing to the home. (101) in the drama of the gifted child: the search for the true self, alice miller explores in detail the mother-child dynamic. in treating children, she states: if we start from the premise that a person's whole development (and his balance, which is based on it) is dependent on the way his mother experienced his expression of needs and sensations during his first days and weeks of life, then we must assume that it is here that the beginning of a later tragedy might be set. if a mother cannot take pleasure in her child as he is but must have him behave in a particular way, then the first value selection takes place for the child. now "good" is differentiated from "bad," "nice" from nasty," and "right" from "wrong." against this background will follow all his further valuations of himself. (italics are alice miller's) (85) given that the ugly duckling is a semi-autobiographical tale and so few facts are available about his mother, the conclusions are obvious. that is why the ugly duckling's flight from the barnyard and subsequent solitary winter were so critical. as miller states, his plight is no doubt the result of social pressures, but these do not have their effect on his psyche through abstract knowledge; they are firmly anchored in his earliest affective experience with his mother. thus his problems cannot be solved with words, but only through experience-not merely corrective experiences as an adult but, above all, through a conscious experience of his early fear of his beloved mother's contempt and his subsequent feelings of indignation and sadness. (104) mothers who derive their own value and self-worth by vicariously living their children's lives can create real tragedies. these women, having never received nurturance from their own mothers, create another generation of emotionally-truncated individuals, another tragic reenactment of lack and isolation. until the gifted child, the true swan, takes the first step out of the barnyard and into the marsh to begin the hero's journey of transformation, nothing changes for the individual or for the mother. miller notes, 75 the ugly duckling in order to become whole we must try, in a long process, to discover our own personal truth, a truth that may cause pain before giving us a new sphere of freedom. we choose instead to content ourselves with intellectual "wisdom," we will remain in the sphere of illusion and self-deception. (i) conclusion the ugly duckling is a tale for all persons, a tale for those who wish to dive deeply into the realm of the unconscious. it is a story of transformation, of liberation, of rebirth. written by a man caught between two worlds, two times, it reveals valuable insights for this time, this history. life is the hero's journey. it's time to stop blaming our mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, life in general. transformation is a choice. works cited heuscher, julius. a psychiatric study of myths and fairy tales. springfield, il: charles c. thomas, 1974. miller, alice. the drama of the gifted child: the search for the true self new york, ny: perseus, 1997 revised edition. oxford english dictionary. oxford, england: oxford up, 2002. schectman, jacqueline. the stepmother in fairy tales. boston, ma: sigo, 1993. von franz, marie louise. interpretation of fairy tales. dallas, tx: spring publications, 1970. zipes, jack. fairy tales and the art of subversion. london, england: methuen., 1988. university of southern denmark, website of the center of hans christian an dersen, "short biography." http://www.andersen.sdu.dk/liv/minibio/ in dex_e.html 76 from fairies to famine: how cultural identity is constructed through irish and irish american children's literature karen hill mcnamara wee, magical fairies and cheeky, green leprechauns searching for enormous pots of gold jumped off the pages of my childhood books and into my consciousness of what defines "irishness." the stereotypical stories routinely reflected light-hearted, slightly daft irish characters who were carefree and often getting into mischief. contemporary irish and irish american narratives have moved beyond my childhood "shamrockery" reading to richer and more developed texts. this essay considers how cultural identity is conveyed in these works. children are extremely impressionable, and what they read impacts the way they view the world. children's literature is a powerful vehicle for delivering cultural awareness and national identity. the plots and themes act as a "cultural barometer," measuring trends in society. children's literature provides a sense of nationality and helps define the character of the people it portrays. much has been researched on the role of narrative in the development of a reader's historical understanding, and authorities are clear about its value in children's social and intellectual development. a short history of irish children's literature irish themes have been featured in scores of juvenile works both inside and outside of ireland. indeed, it is quite possible that more "irish" children's stories have been written by american than irish authors. one reason may be demographics, as the ancestral homeland of nearly onefifth of all americans is ireland, and according to 1990 census figures, there are eight times as many people of irish ancestry living in america as there are residents in ireland today. another consideration is market size, as the united states publishes over 5000 children's stories annually, compared with fewer than 200 in ireland. curiously, despite ireland's prolific and long literary history, children's literature in ireland is a relatively recent phenomenon. prior to the 1980s, "with a population small in number and with a weak economy, there was simply no market for children's books in ireland," observed children's literature scholar emer sullivan (6). irish author tony hickey provided a personal example of how limited the production of children's stories in ireland was during this time. during our interview from fairies to famine in dublin, hickey lamented: "when my book, matchless mice, came out in 1980, i was amazed to discover that it was the only children's book published in the republic that year!" the majority of irish children's writers had regularly turned to the united states or england to be published, and these books had to fulfill "foreign expectations" with regard to plot, theme, and characterization. "overseas publishers tend to want only their notions of irishness, the land of the leprechauns" (sullivan 6). hence, irish children's stories were trapped in oldfashioned stereotypes, which some bemoan as "stage irish." today, there is what many call a "flowering" of irish children's literature. irish children's author siobhan parkinson explained this new phenomenon in horn book magazine: the success in recent years of irish children's publishing is due partly to the efforts of the publishers and writers them selves, partly to the arts council and other government sup port (royalties for creative artists are tax-tree), and largely to the growth in both the irish economy and the irish sense of self-esteem, particularly in cultural issues. (i75) one of the most popular literary genres published for children in ireland is historical fiction. celia keenan analyzed this recent trend in her article, "reflecting a new confidence: irish historical fiction for children. " the historical novel has a particular importance in colonial and post-colonial cultures when people need to explain who they are and why their plight is so painful. but the enormous growth of historical fiction for children in ireland would seem to me to reflect a new confidence in irish society, emanating from widespread popular belief that if we understand the past we might behave better in the future. (369) fictional novels set in the past tend to focus on the human side of history and give young readers a sense of how life was lived. a watershed in modem irish history is the great irish famine of the midnineteenth century. literature for children presenting this calamitous time illustrates how stories impact the way children view their cultural identity and heritage. is the great irish famine a significant event? in 1845, there were more than eight million people in ireland, the vast majority of native irish subsisting almost entirely on potatoes. this 78 karen hill mcnamara dependence on the potato had devastating consequences when a catastrophic blight destroyed much of the potato harvests of 1845, 1846, 1848 and 1849. over this period, an estimated one to one and a half million people died of starvation and disease, and another two million were forced to emigrate to new worlds, mainly to the united states, britain, canada and australia. irish famine historian and scholar christine kinealy described the great famine as "one of the most lethal famines in modem history, accounting for a loss of 25 percent of the population in ireland over a period of six years" (2). in fact, one hundred and fifty-eight years have passed since the start of the great famine, and yet ireland's population has never recovered. ireland remains the only country in europe today with a population smaller than it was in 1845. while historians, economists, sociologists, educators, journalists and politicians have debated the varied and controversial causes for the irish famine, all agree that it is a defining event in irish history. the consequences of the great famine changed more than the course of irish history; the resulting irish diaspora affected the shape of world history, especially that of america. there are nearly one hundred million people around the globe who claim some irish ancestry and over fifty-two million of these are americans, many of who are in the united states today as a result of the famine ("irish identity"). the impact of the great famine is critical to understanding modem irish and american history. history and literature despite the significance of the great famine, it has inspired relatively little fictional writing, especially in the domain of juvenile literature. the absence of children's novels in ireland that sought to educate young people about the great famine and its ramifications is ironic, for ireland is a nation passionate about history with a world-renowned literary reputation. recently, many scholars have been addressing this "silence" that seems to have surrounded the famine. the pathos of suffering and the psychological legacy of diaspora associated with the catastrophe appear to have had long-term consequences on the psyches of irish and irish emigrants. the children's novelists i interviewed spoke vehemently about the silence and the famine's effect on irish culture. shame and survival guilt are at the core of this issue. feelings of deep shame that are associated with being perceived as passive victims, or feelings of guilt that are associated with being perceived as ruthless survivors, have contributed to the sounds of silence. i believe 79 from fairies to famine that this mentality influenced children's authors and publishers, resulting in a paucity of books available on the topic for children. since the commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the irish famine in the mid-1990s, the topic has received a dramatic increase in media, literary, and scholarly attention. school systems, reacting to this new public awareness, have started addressing the great famine, and today it is taught in every school district in ireland and is included in many american school curriculums as well. this change has also been reflected in children's literature, as authors from around the world have finally begun producing quality children's literature that depicts this historic and traumatic event. children's writers have imaginatively represented the irish famine, bringing the event to life in a way that traditional textbooks cannot. young people, rarely represented in history books, are the main protagonists in juvenile fiction. famine novels help young readers understand the greatest crisis in irish history by personifying it through fictional characters that they can connect and identify with, thus making the history of the famine feel real to them. christine kinealy acknowledged that "the impetus to remember the famine was often strongest outside of ireland," and the chronology of the publication dates of children's famine books is a perfect exam ple of this (2). the very first children's famine story, the search of mary katherine mulloy, was written by an american author in 1974. it is interesting to note that the first eight books were all published in the united states. the next nationality to explore the subject was, remarkably, the british, with michael morpurgo's twist of gold (1983). the irish themselves did not address the great famine in children's literature until 1990, 140 years after the catastrophe, when marita conlon-mckenna wrote under the hawthorn tree. the book surprised irish publishers by becoming the most commercially successful irish novel for children, winning countless international awards and resulting in two sequels. today, it is on the national curriculum and read by every irish primary student. this groundbreaking narrative marked the beginning of the irish exploring the subject for its young people. historical novels portraying the great famine to children and adolescents tend to follow predictable plot patterns. generally, there is a reliance on two traditional conventions. the first is the quest, which is to survive the famine, and the second is the initiation into adulthood, demonstrated by emigrating from ireland. while some novels present the famine from a slightly non-traditional angle and may insert unique twists and turns into the narrative, overall there is a remarkable consistency in the way the catastrophe is portrayed. 80 karen hill mcnamara basic plot formula "as they drew near the lane they noticed a strange smell, a smell of something rank and putrid" (lally 12). the typical story opens up with the stench of the rotting potatoes in the field of a small farm, the desperate attempts to salvage any unspoiled potatoes, and the ultimate resignation that blight has occurred. the reader vicariously witnesses the vast hunger the young girl and her family experience as they seek to survive. most tales contain the historically accurate portrayal of the cruelty meted out to the peasants by the merciless and predatory landlords. eviction scenes show the suffering and deprivation of thousands who were callously evicted from their homes by english soldiers. inevitability, each story includes the tumbling of a poor widow's cottage. with their homes demolished, leaving the main character and her family destitute, the quest for food and work begins. there are depictions of wretched laborers working for a pittance and the contemptuous export of corn and cattle from ireland while the poor starve. workhouses feature in these accounts, usually as places to be dreaded and feared. but sometimes the family is reduced to entering them, resulting in disease and disastrous consequences. death is omnipresent. these are not cheery tales, as they deal with cruelty and hardship, and are heart wrenching at times. the young hero often loses her parents and a baby sister to famine fever. yet, despite how desperate the situation may appear during the plot, the key to survival is usually found in the predictable escape from ireland. there is the journey to the docks, usually on foot, where the protagonist has a series of encounters with the starving along the road. the initiation into adulthood is now unfolding. eventually the young woman reaches the docks and makes the horrendous passage to north america in a "coffin ship." graphic descriptions of the crowded, stench-filled pit of steerage where she comes face to face with illness and death are common. in fact, the plots are somewhat repetitive with the central character always befriending another family, an older passenger always dying of fever and being cast overboard, and the typical storm at sea. sometimes the story concludes with the arrival into america and the passage into adulthood is completed. these narratives offer the irish immigrant a fresh start, and the story is able to conclude on a happy or at least hopeful note. sequels, all set in america, follow five of these novels. when emigration happens early in the story line, the plot formula continues to be predictable. the protagonist typically battles discrimination, struggles with prejudice, and encounters signs that say, "no irish need apply." eventually these tenacious young women find work as domestic servants in new york or are employed by the textile mills 81 from fairies to famine in massachusetts. generally these books also end happily. often the central character raises the passage money for the rest of her family to come over and has fallen in love in her new homeland. emigration, commonly employed by novelists because the famine resulted in massive migration, also provides these despairing tales with an optimistic and promising ending. of course, not all of the famine novels end happily. the children never locate their missing parents in under the hawthorn tree (1990), mary dies of cholera in the epilogue in so far from home (1997), and in across the sea from galway (1975), the ship crashes along the coast and nearly everyone onboard perishes. yet, most children's books prescribe a happy ending, or at least conclude with a message of hope. heroic characters these are survival stories. the resourcefulness and inner courage necessitated in escaping starvation and fever under horrendous circumstances lie at the center of these novels. while the body of adult famine literature is often told as one of passive victimization or as one of resistance, children's famine literature centers on the will to survive incredible hardships. the main characters are consistently courageous, spirited, quick-witted, and independent. determined to create new and better worlds for themselves, these young heroes learn to endure and to seize every chance for survival. it is my argument that the traits and qualities of these protagonists represent "irishness" to readers. take, for example, american susan campbell bartoletti's black potatoes, which was awarded the coveted robert f. sibert award for the most distinguished informational book for children published in 2001. this 160-page text examines the events of the famine and the experiences of ordinary people living in that time. i met and interviewed bartoletti, and she told me how she intentionally avoided highlighting the victimization and instead focused on heroism. she went on to say, "what are the heroic acts? if we look at searching in fields for turnip tops and edible weeds, that is a heroic act. yes, you are a victim, but you are also a hero because you are struggling to survive and help your family survive." this attitude is a familiar one, and several of the authors i interviewed have noted the desire to present heroism. when i spoke with marita conlon-mckenna in dublin, she expressed a view similar to bartoletti's, noting that the central theme in under the hawthorn tree (1990) is that these children have made up their minds to survive. "they're not going to be beaten; they're not going to lie down and die," mckenna told me. a passage from the novel illustrates this theme: 82 karen hill mcnamara michael and eily decided that they must get peggy and themselves strong enough again for the rest of the journey. it was their only chance. the next few days were spent hunting for food. they had to keep the fire going also. they had finished the blood. michael went searching at night and had been lucky enough to catch a rat and a hedgehog. they had lost their squeamishness by now and knew that all that mattered was their survival. nettles were plentiful, and every ripened berry was also picked. (133) novels about the great famine allow readers to vicariously experience the devastating effects that famine, poverty, and homelessness can have on people, and provide an understanding of human resilience. children, who are beginning to form their own values and principles, can learn from the bravery and hope of the protagonists who persevered against the odds. i believe these stories allow young readers today to relate to these irish protagonists as heroes, thus counteracting potential guilt and shame that may have plagued the generations before them. why didn't the irish just fish? consider this personal memory relating to this guilt and shame theme that i am trying to convey. i have vague recollections of my social studies teacher remarking how it was ludicrous the irish never fished the seas, implying that they were responsible for starving. this sentiment is not unique, and some of my american contemporaries had similar recollections that the irish were too lazy, too stupid to save themselves. "it is difficult at first to understand why the irish people, thousands of whom lived near the coast, did not fish," cecil woodham smith acknowledged in the groundbreaking text, the great hunger: ireland 1845-1849 (1962), the first mainstream factual account on the irish famine (298). certainly it is unflattering for a nation to perceive itself as passive victims. contemporary irish children's literature has changed this misconception. imbedded in numerous narratives are the various reasons explaining why ireland, an island surrounded by water, failed to take advantage of its maritime wealth. novels such as under the hawthorn tree (1990) and twist of gold (1983) educate children by portraying their characters taking risks by fishing illegally. american author, eileen carbonneau, informs her readers about the laws in ireland during the 1840s in her young adult romance novel, rachel lemoyne (1998). 83 from fairies to famine rachel observes the manor home as a "place of crystal chandeliers, oil paintings, majestic trees, and a trout-filled river in which the poor might be killed for fishing" (65). the disparity between the english landlords and the irish peasants are clearly shown. the hungry wind (1997), by irish author soinbhe lally, also reveals the hardships endured during the great famine: each day the women and girls went to the rocks to gather seaweed and shellfish. at one end of the strand there were stretches of muddy sand, encrusted with acres of mussels, but they were not allowed to pick those. for fear that hunger would tempt them the landlords agent, mister hamilton, sent his men to warn tenants, that the mussel beds were not included in their shore rights. (14) consider the most popular children's irish famine novel in north america, nory ryan's song (2000). written by american patricia reilly giff, a descendant of famine immigrants, this ala notable book has been widely distributed in the united states and has sold numerous copies. giff, winner of two newbery honor awards, has recently written a sequel, maggie's door (2003). in giff's first famine story, twelveyear-old nory and her family live along the west coast of ireland, and her neighbors fish for a living. disaster hits when their landlord, lord cunningham, confiscates their currach: the currach was gone too, gone to pay for the mallons' rent from last year. gone, not even for cunningham to use. "what would he want with the sea, and the cold, and the aching hard work?" liam had said. "what would he want with the danger?" devlin (the landlord's agent) had locked it up with chains on the pier in the harbor. it would be there, with the tar on the canvas drying and cracking, until great holes appeared and the currach wasted away. it wouldn't be the first time. there were others there, waiting for the owners to pay the rent they owed and get them back, but that never happened. (69) a passage from the fantasy novel, knockabeg: a famine tale (2001), written by irish american mary e. lyons, echoes this theme as well. "the shillings go to lord armitage shank for his bloody rent! many families have even sold their hide canoes and fishing nets to pay the fee" (5). 84 karen hill mcnamara these examples certainly do not correlate laziness with irishness. instead, the books educate young readers by illustrating the varied and complex circumstances surrounding the fishing problem, such as fishermen being forced to sell their gear to buy food for their families and fishing rights belonging to the english landlords. shame, that may have been associated with passive victimization, has now been replaced by an accurate historical understanding of this issue. children's literature of the irish famine, non-existent during my childhood, sheds a new light on complicated issues and educates children by weaving historical information throughout the narrative. "he took the soup" many may recall the phrase, "he took the soup," or the insulting term, "souper." these expressions are still heard today and were coined during the irish famine when anti-catholic zealots would provide free soup to the destitute villagers if they first agreed to renounce their religion. so strong was the catholic faith in ireland during this time that some irish starved to death rather than convert to protestantism. those that did turn apostate and partake in the soup were called soupers, a disdainful stigma that often marked their families for generations. "souperism," the nickname for this proselytization aspect of evangelical protestant missions, it is more frequent in famine folklore than in historical research. while souperism did occur, it was uncommon. however, it created tremendous tension where it did exist, resulting in long lasting and bitter memories that have been passed down from generation to generation. though not a universal motif in the children's irish famine narratives, souperism is mentioned in several works. interestingly, the reaction by the main characters is usually one of ambivalence, and vague attention is given to the religious pressure. for example, in under the hawthorn tree (1990), eily, michael, and peggy sleep outside a soup kitchen in order to be the first in line the next day. "during the night an old man shook them and told them to be on their way, as the heathens would try to convert them in the morning and if they took another mug of soup they may as well take the queen's shilling. the children were puzzled, but simply ignored him" (81-82). the children were offered stew the following day and were not asked to renounce their faith. certainly no guilt or shame is associated with the old man's remark, and the story moves forward without additional comment. souperism is also mentioned in passing in canadian james heneghan's the grave (2000), a time-slip novel for young adolescents. 85 from fairies to famine the teenage protagonist, tom mullen, is also confused when he is labeled as a souper. we joined a lineup for soup and had to take it inside and listen to a sermon from a bad-tempered minister named nangle who went on and on about popery and sin and other stuff i didn't understand. as we came out, a bunch of old biddies were standing in the street yelling at us, calling us soupers. i was too tired to ask hannah what the fuss was about. (103) tom appears too famished and fatigued to be concerned about derogatory comments from onlookers, and no conversion of faith in exchange for food occurs in the novel. in mary-anne's famine (1994), written by irish author colette mccormack, the soup kitchens are accepted, and the local priest even encourages his parishioners to partake in the charity. mary-anne records in her journal: the soup kitchens are near us and we must make use of them. father o'rourke tells us never to mind that the people who give out the soup are not of our religion, to live is the important thing. some people turn from being catholics so they will get more soup and other help. we drink the soup but it is not very good. (16-17) in red bird of ireland (1983), by american sondra gordon langford, aderyn hears about the evangelical protestants second hand, and the story line is sympathetic to the famine victims who succumb to souperism: "we saw something else by the wharf, father domhnaill," said seamas. "there was a little house from which some well-dressed people were offering soup to the poor who stood around. there were many poor and hungry, but on one would eat. a man told me that, in order to get that soup, you have to blaspheme the blessed virgin and the holy catholic church. can that be true?" "i'm afraid so," said uncle domhnaill. "i've been told, by priest and others, that there is food being given out, all over ireland, to those who will abjure their catholic faith. some poor souls are so hungry that they do turn from their faith in order to get some food. those who do so are well 86 karen hill mcnamara cared for, afterward. i don't judge a starving person who does what he feels he must in order to stay alive, or keep his family alive. i pray for him. god in heaven will be his judge, not i." (147-148) collectively, there is a lack of any serious religious tension in children's literature of the famine, and it is interesting to note that souperism is not referenced again during the narratives. these passages show compassion to the starving people who took the soup. the characters are not ostracized or made to feel blameworthy in any way. although the practice of souperism was not widespread, where it did occur it still remains an emotive part of the oral culture of the famine, and guilt and anger are still in the mindset of some irish and irish americans today. children's literature, however, appears to playa pivotal role in dissipating this souperism friction. perhaps a more confident irish identity results from this new understanding and awareness. the protagonists, with whom the young readers identify, are heroes, surviving by any means they can, whether it is accepting soup from people of a different religion, fishing illegally on the landlord's land, or emigrating from their homeland. conclusions historical fiction presenting the great famine provides a nexus between the past and the present, educating children about this consequential historical event, while revealing the unspoken significance the irish famine has in their current lives. it is important for children to remember that the horrific extremes of famine and poverty during the 1840s are still prevalent in many parts of the world, and refugees come to ireland and america to escape these conditions. it is vital that irish and irish americans make the connection that their ancestors shared the plight of these people today. quality historical fiction can provide young readers with a sense of continuity in time and history and an awareness of their roots that encourage appreciation for where they came from and where they are going. as a young american child in the 1960s, my exposure to literary irish characters was limited to the stupid housewife, mrs. callahan, in richard and phyllis atwater's classic book, mr. popper's penguins, or the portly policeman, michael, and his boss, clancy, in make way for ducklings, robert mccloskey's caldecott award winning book (savage 37). my understanding of irishness was limited to lucky charms cereal, "kiss me i'm irish" buttons, and wearing green on st. patrick's day. these outdated clichés are being replaced with modem and more 87 from fairies to famine accurate definitions of irish culture through children's literature of the great famine. carefree peasants catching leprechauns are now superseded by courageous children combating illness, starvation, eviction and emigration. consider twelve year old eily, the eldest of the o'driscoll children in under the hawthorn tree. this character grows in strength and courage as she assumes the responsibility for her younger siblings after her mother has left. eily's bold determination and resourcefulness are clearly shown as she struggles to find food to live another day and keep her siblings alive. she demonstrates maturity and ingenuity as she nurses her sister, peggy, who is stricken with famine fever, and her brother, michael, who is suffering from an infectious wound. in the middle of the novel when hunger and homelessness becomes overwhelming, peggy muses "are we in hell?" and eily responds, "no, just a place destroyed. come on, we'll move through this as quick as we can" (108). eily's indomitable spirit transcends this time of misery as she endeavors to survive. "i wanted to make sure the children were intelligent and resourceful," conlon-mckenna explained during our interview. creating characters that were models for her own children, conlon-mckenna made the o'driscolls different from her own childhood reading. she lamented that very few books in the past portrayed irish children as clever or thinking for themselves. "they were nice kids. kind, but dull. not smart. no bright sparks." as a child, conlon-mckenna emulated laura ingalls and heidi instead of identifying with irish characters. "it's a strange thing, really, but when i read other children's books from other countries i would say, 'i wish i could be her.'" conlon-mckenna's sentiments were echoed by other authors i interviewed. many writers for children purposely depicted confident and positive irish characters in their famine narratives. the protagonists remained strong throughout the story line by enduring emigration from ireland and battling bigotry and intolerance in america. these attributes are rooted in historical fact as hasia diner described in her scholarly text erin's daughters in america (1983). her research revealed that thousands of irish woman were able to utilize ambition, energy, and ability that would otherwise have remained stifled by the effects of the great famine. diner describes these educational and occupational successes and emphasizes that the qualities that enabled many irish to prosper can be found in ireland's cultural traditions. the personality traits that diner articulates are repeated in the central characters of children's fiction of the famine. themes of resiliency, gallantry, love, and loyalty, commonly portrayed in famine novels, are interpreted by youngsters as typically irish. young readers, who often 8 8 karen hill mcnamara identify with the child characters in the story line, relate to the perseverance of these protagonists and believe that they also can successfully learn to handle difficult situations. reading about the great famine in fictional novels gives irish and irish american children a new cultural identity and a deeper meaning regarding their ancestral homeland. in ireland, as in all countries, literature is the mirror in which the events of a nation's history are reflected. whether examining historical fiction, or the many other literary genres, a study of children's literature may be regarded as a study of a country and its people. authors of irish children's stories play an important role in the developing and nurturing of a distinctive irish identity. the absorption of cultural knowledge from early childhood through young adult reading is particularly acute. the characters in irish children's stories have developed from the weak and stereotypical images represented in my childhood reading, to the fresh, appealing, and strong-willed heroes portrayed in contemporary irish stories that my children are reading today. the story lines have matured from traditional folktales to modem and expressive narratives. this encouraging and accelerating change over the last few decades is an indication of how irish and irish american society and cultural identity has also evolved. works cited bartoletti, susan campbell. black potatoes. boston: houghton, 2001. _______. personal interview. 13 june 2002. bolton, carole. the search of mary katherine mulloy. new york: thomas nelson, 1974. charbonneau, eileen. rachel le moyne. new york: tom doherty associates, 1998. conlon-mckenna, marita. personal interview. 21 august 2001. ______. under the hawthorn tree. new york: holiday house, 1990. denenberg, barry. so far from home: the diary of mary driscoll, an irish mill girl (dear america). new york: scholastic, 1997. diner, hasia r. erin's daughters in america. baltimore: johns hopkins up, 1983. fisher, leonard everett. across the sea from galway. new york: four winds, 1975. giff, patricia reilly. nary ryan's song. new yark: delacorte, 2000. heneghan, james. the grave. new york: frances foster books, 2000. hickey, tony. personal interview. 24 august 2001. "irish identity," http://www.hoganstand.com/general/identitv/. internet ac cessed 24 february 2003. keenan, celia. "reflecting a new confidence: irish historical fiction for children" the lion and the unicorn 21.3 (1997): 369-78. 89 from fairies to famine kinealy, christine. a death-dealing famine: the great hunger in ireland. london: pluto press, 1997. lally, soinbhe. the hungry wind. dublin: poolbeg press, 1997. langford, sondra gordon. red bird of ireland. new york: atheneum, 1983. lyons, mary e. knockabeg: a famine tale. boston: houghton, 2001. mccormack, colette. mary-anne 's famine. cork: attic press, 1994. morpurgo, michael. twist of gold. london: kaye and ward, 1983. o'sullivan, emer. "ireland and the world of children's books." children's books in ireland (1998)16: 6-7. parkinson, siobhan. "a view from the other island: children's books in ire land." the horn book magazine, march/april2001: 173-78. savage, john f. "ireland and the irish in american children's literature," children's books in ireland, 18 (spring 1998): 36-37. woodham-smith, cecil. the great hunger: ireland 1845-1849. london: pen guin, 1962. 90 review roundup 2003 gail de vos merle harris this collective descriptive review essay encapsulates all of the remaining titles that i received for reviewing in this journal in 2003. as you will see, two major publishers of storytelling and folklore material have been strong submitters to your review columnist. storyteller merle harris and myself divided up the titles for review and i have arranged them, for the most part, by publisher and series. world folklore series published by libraries unlimited. the world folklore series is aimed at school librarians and teachers, but much of the text is accessible to older students. the series not only contain folktales, but also brief histories as well as information on the role of folklore and storytelling in the various regions and is a wonderful introduction to new stories and a better understanding of distant countries and their peoples. the series could be made more inviting for children by improving the book cover design. with the exception of the cover of when night falls! the series look more like textbooks than the storybooks they truly are. all volumes contain line drawings and colour photographs. thematic indices in all the books would also be appreciated. the following volumes are only a few of the titles from this ongoing series which both of us were quite impressed with the presentation, background information and rhythm of the tales. folktales from greece: a treasury of delights. mitakidou, soula, anthony l. manna, and melpomeni kanatsouli. illustrated by anastasia valavanidou and photography by georgios katsagelos, 2002. 1 56308 908 4 from the mango tree and other folktales from nepal. shrestha, kavita ram and sarah lamstein, 1997. 1 56308 378 7 gadi mirrabooka: australian aboriginal tales from the dreaming. retold by pauline e. mcleod, francis firebrace jones and june e. barker. edited by helen f. mckay, 2001. 1 56308 923 8. jasmine and coconuts: south indian tales. spagnoli, cathy and pa ramasivam samanna. illustrated by paramasivam samanna. 1999. 1 56308 576 3. tales from the heart of the balkans. marshall, bonnie c. edited by vasa d. mihailovich, 2001. 1 56308 870 3. review roundup 2003 the celtic breeze: stories of the otherworld from scotland, ireland and wales. mcneil, heather. illustrated by nancy chien-eriksen. 2001. 1 56308 778 2. when night falls, kric! krac! haitian folktales. louis, liliane ner ette, edited by fred hay, 1999. 1 563089 579 8. folktales from greece: a treasury of delights was the result of meeting with manna, visiting from america, and mitakidou when they were both doing research in the same greek pre-school where the oral tradition was alive and well. the introduction offers a brief historical background of the area, and explanation of the function and classification of greek tales, information on the art of greek storytelling and the selection criteria for the tales in the book. the twenty tales are divided into five sections: supernatural beings, tales of transformation, clever folk, stories with strong morals, and humorous stories. each section begins with an introduction about these tales and comprehensive notes follow each story. this is a strong collection, beautifully translated and containing stories that are suitable for all ages. there are good references and a useful index but pronunciation guides for some of the names would have been helpful. as with the other volumes in this series, from the mango tree and other folktales from nepal starts with a brief introduction to nepal—its history, religion, people and daily life. lamstein points out that it is the first collection of nepalese folktales published in north america. the fifteen folktales, collected and translated by kavita ram shrestha, are stories of royalty, the common people and pour quoi tales of the origins of lakes and caves in nepal. there is a combination of gentleness, humility and humour in these stories which should appeal to adults and children alike. the final story in the collection has been written out in the nepalese script. the end matter includes a glossary of terms and a bibliography. the introduction to gadi mirrabooka states that this is the first collection of stories from the dreamtime of the australian aboriginals told by aboriginal storyteller custodians. the informative introduction explains the importance of these stories to the culture and belief system of the traditional audience as well as the concept of the dreamtime. material in the first sections of the books looks at the physical landscape, the flora, the fauna and the aboriginal people of the land and includes historical and contemporary background information. the thirty-three short tales, the majority of which are pour quoi tales, are told in various localities within the australian continent. back matter includes a glossary, a bibliography and information about the three storytellers and editor of this volume. this volume puts these tales in their proper content and allows the non-aboriginal storyteller/reader a strong glimpse into this ancient culture. 92 gail de vos and merle harris in jasmine and coconuts: south indian tales, spagnoli and samanna write of a region and people they know well. their exploration of this area includes a brief history of the four southern states, as well as an overview of religions, arts, crafts and daily life. the authors also explain the differences in telling styles in south india covering the many facets of storytelling: language, gesture, pronunciation, music and much more. the forty-two tales are divided into seven themes consistent with south indian values, such as "value of simplicity, problem of greed" and "respect for family and elders," and, where necessary, explanatory notes precede the story. the stories are wide ranging from ancient to modern, from folklore to true stories, and all of them have a strong oral rhythm to them. the appendix covers festivals, resources, pen pals and websites, and a glossary. as well there are sources for the stories, bibliographies for both adults and children, an index and thematic index. this book is a real treasure trove a delight for the ears and the eyes. tales from the heart of the balkans is the most diverse of all the collections reviewed. the book covers five independent countries: croatia, slovenia, bosnia and herzegovina, yugoslavia and macedonia. the introduction includes a concise but good history of the region, with an overview of oral literature and its importance, as well as some of the problems associated with translating stories from three official languages and their many dialects. the thirty-three tales are divided into myths and legends, animal tales, fairy tales and tales of everyday life. all the regions are represented in all the stories and the retellings should work well whether they are read aloud or told to the students, or used for independent reading. a glossary and pronunciation guide and a good index round off a book that is a great introduction to a diverse region and its stories. in her search for her celtic roots, author heather mcneil travels to the country of her ancestors. the celtic breeze briefly introduces this region and its people, tales and songs before retelling fifteen traditional tales, many accompanied by related ballads and their musical notation. faery folk of the earth, of the water, and their interaction with ghosts and music are the focus of this collection. each tale is put in context by the author. the back matter includes a brief inventory of items offering protection from the faery folk, a glossary, bibliography and a recommended reading list as well as an index. in liliane louis's introduction to when night falls, kric! krac! haitian folktales she uses stories to give what she calls "an overview of the beautiful and mysterious land." together with hay's introduction, readers learn about haiti's geography and history as well as the importance of voodoo and magic to the haitian people. the twenty eight stories are divided into six sections: that stupid bouki, stepmother can never be real mother, animal stories, kings and princes, 93 review roundup 2003 unpleasant encounters and stories of love and courtship. there is a gentle reminder before the stories begin about the importance of prereading because several stories in this book reflect the harsh realities of life in a culture different from that of our readers. there are, however, stories for everyone from young children to adults in these tales which louis has both heard and told over the years. she also includes some of her favourite recipes. a much needed glossary, good index and coloured photographs round out this collection which will have many calling out "kric" and waiting for the "krac" to get story time going. titles from august house a prolific producer of books of storytelling material and folktales for adults and children, august house offers various series and collections for use in schools, libraries and by storytellers of all ages. the titles that reached your book reviewer's desk revealed a great diversity in the types of materials that they publish. the books of nine lives series bv pleasant despain all nine volumes of this series, written by pleasant despain and illustrated by don bell, are aimed at young tellers. these tales were originally published in "pleasant journeys," a weekly newspaper column in the seattle times between 1977 and 1978 and were reprinted several times in book form before they appeared in this most recent transformation. i have only two volumes in hand (volume 2: tales of nonsense & tomfoolery (2001) and volume 3: tales of wisdom and justice (2001)) but they all have the same format. each slim volume begins with an introduction of the theme, nine or ten tales from diverse cultures, simply written and accompanied with a full-page line drawing, and adequate source notes with a brief commentary for each of the tales. i have used these books very successfully with elementary school students coming to the art of storytelling for the fust time. not only are these tales writing succinctly, the students are not intimidated by the size of the books themselves the other titles in the series are: volume 1: tales of tricksters volume 4: tales of heroes volume 5: tales of holidays volume 6: tales of insects volume 7: tales of enchantment volume 8: tales to frighten and delight volume 9: tales of cats 94 gail de vos and merle harris world tales series by martha hamilton and mitch weiss how and why stories: world tales kids can read and tell. hamilton, martha and mitch weiss. 1999.0 87483 561 5. noodlehead stories: world tales kids can read and tell. hamilton, martha and mitch weiss, 2000. 0 87483 585 2. through the grapevine: world tales kids can read and tell. hamilton, martha and mitch weiss, 2001. 0 87483 624 7 martha hamilton and mitch weiss, also known as beauty and the beast, have been telling stories and teaching storytelling to children and adults for over twenty years. their first book children tell stories: a teaching guide (richard c. owen, 1990) is a classic. their first collection of stories for children to tell is stories in my pocket: tales kids can read and tell (fulcrum, 1996) was a huge hit with students and teachers alike. we have used and recommended these books in workshops for both children and adults. these three collections are aimed at children, full of wonderful suggestions on how they can become storytellers in their own unique way, but they are equally as useful to all beginning storytellers each collection has an introduction to the type of stories in the compilation and a world map showing where the stories come from. the stories are one to two pages, retold simply but effectively with a black and white illustration for each story followed by brief "about the story" which discuss the origin of each story and "tips for telling" which cover gestures, body language and use of voice. following the stories there is a chapter "general tips for telling stories" which covers choosing, learning and telling stories and throughout the authors emphasise that the tips are suggestions only and should be used to help tellers find their voices when telling the stories. back matter includes an activities chapter for children who want to make up their own stories and an appendix of sources where children can find other versions of these stories. there are twenty-five stories in how and why stories which answer many questions such as "why the sun comes up when rooster crows," "where all stories come from" and "how owl got his feathers." in the "activities" section the authors make suggestions for original pourquoi stories, using the library to see if there are. stories unique to regions and also provide a bibliography of scientific explanations for some of the stories. children love stories where they can laugh out loud and noodlehead stories delivers twenty-three hilarious stories. the authors warn against using derogatory terms and point out that the joy in these stories is "laughing at the noodlehead in all of us. a bibliography of literary noodlehead stories is included. through the grape 95 review roundup 2003 vine includes thirty-one tales that have been passed down through the years (or grapevine), from mouth to ear to electronic transmission. other august house offerings czanota. lorna macdonald.medieval tales that kids can read & tell. 2000. 0 87483 589 5. despain, pleasant.sweet land of story: thirty-six american tales to tell, 2000. 0 87483 600 x. macdonald, margaret read. the parent's guide to storytelling: how to make up new stories and retell old favorites. 2nd edition, 2001. 0 87483 618 2. macdonald, margaret read shake-it-up tales! stories to sing, dance, drum and act out.. 2000, 0 87483 570 4. mcbride-smith, barbara. tell it together: foolproof scripts for story theatre. 2001. 0 87483 650 6. each of the fifteen classic legends in medieval tales is simply and briefly told to be accessible for young tellers. the tales are placed in context with a very concise history of the story and precise tips for the telling of the tale. the legendary characters in these tales include william tell, robert bruce, robin hood, joan of arc, the knights of the roundtable, duke lech of poland, beowulf, roland, saladin, alexander the great, eleanor of aquitaine and boudicca. back matter includes information on the role of the medieval storyteller, additional pointers for telling the tales, and a bibliography instead of source notes. the stories themselves are extremely short and are attractive to children beginning their storytelling endeavours. despain's collection of american tales is a treat for those who wish to get a sense of the united states through its regional tales. while some of the tales are folktales, many of them are tales of the folk, gathered by the author from tellers living in the various regions. the collection, divided up by regions, includes ghost tales, hero tales, tall tales, and a few tales from the native people. entertaining and informative source notes conclude the collection. both of margaret read macdonald's volumes follow her wellestablished formula for presenting stories for retelling. the stories are printed in sound bites for ease of reading and learning and include notes on telling the tales and relevant background notes on when to tell and why to tell stories. shake-it-up tales! offers information on playing with stories, using chants, songs, motions and sound effects, as well as stories which encompass a more dramatic flair using multiple tellers and audience participation, besides the twenty tales in this collection, macdonald includes an extensive list of resources and guides for each 96 gail de v as and merle harris of the elements of story she discusses. an added benefit of this collection is the introduction of little known folktales from around the world. story theatre is the focus of tell it together. after a brief discussion about story theatre, mcbride-smith provides tested scripts for seven classic myths, nine folktales and seven literary offerings adapted with permission from the various publishers. the scripts call for five to fifteen cast members and are designed for middle school students although many are appropriate for use with older teens. one of the strengths of this compilation is that the story scripts can be told by one voice, making it a valuable addition to any variety of collected works. folktale collections from other publishers congdon, kristin g. uncle monday and other florida tales. illustrated by kitty kitson petterson. jackson: university press of mississippi, 2001, 1 57806 385 x. dorson, mercedes, and jeanne wilmot. tales from the rain forest. hopewell, nj: the ecco press, 1997,0 88001567 5. hazell, rebecca. the barefoot book of heroic children. illustrated by helen cann. new york, ny: barefoot books, 2000, i 9 0228 323 6. ryan, patrick. shakespeare's storybook: folktales that inspired the bard. illustrated by james mayhew. new york, ny: barefoot books, 2001. 1 84148 307 9 spagnoli, cathy. terrific trickster tales from asia. fort atkinson, wi: alleyside press, 2001, 1 57950 045 5. spencer, ann. song of the sea: myths, tales and folklore. illustrated by mark lang. toronto: tundra books, 2001, 0 88776 487 8. a collection of the diverse cultures that comprise the state of florida, uncle monday presents tales of magic, humor, adventure and creation. the introduction discusses the origin of the stories of and the tradition of storytelling within the state. each story is accompanied by a reflection to that guides the reader to a deeper understanding of the issues, historical context and contemporary relevance of the tale. the fifty tales are arranged according to their overall focus: pour quoi tales; people with special powers; food, friends and family; unusual places, spaces and events; and ghosts and the supernatural. the back matter includes endnotes for the descriptive material, source notes, a glossary and bibliography. an accessible and enjoyable collection. tales from the rain forest begins with a brief introduction to the amazon basin, the amerindian culture, and the flora and fauna of the area. the importance of the oral tradition among the various tribes is also discussed. paintings and etchings from early explorations to the amazon accompany each tale. dorson (who grew up in brazil) and 97 review roundup 2003 wilmot acknowledge that the material available to them was so abundant that they chose to concentrate on myths of origins as being most engaging for young listeners. the book ends with a glossary of amerindian and portuguese words as well as bibliographies. the ten myths and legends explain the origin of humans, rain and thunder, birds, water lilies, fire and other wonders. each story is followed by brief cultural comments. the stories (translated from portuguese) allow the reader a glimpse of a mysterious and rich relationship between humans and their environment, and leave her or him with a desire for more of these stories. rebecca hazell has chosen to write biographies for twelve young people from around the world who exemplify bravery and determination. some of the names and their stories are well known, while others are not so well known. in the introduction, hazell explains what makes a person heroic and how she is presenting their stories in the first person. each biography is written in three parts beginning with a 'you are here" setting in which the place and time and a brief history is given, followed by the child telling the story in the first person, and then a summary of his/her accomplishments. i wanted to like the book but found the format frustrating and false. the "first person" voice did not ring true for me and travelling back and forward in time did not work. the book would have far more impact if the children's stories were in more traditional biography format. in his introduction to shakespeare's storybook, patrick ryan points out that in all probability shakespeare had listened to stories all his life and "read everything he could lay his hands on" and so knew which stories his audiences would enjoy and wrote to please them. ryan presents the seven stories he feels inspired shakespeare to write the taming of the shrew, romeo and juliet, the merchant of venice, as you like it, hamlet, king lear and the winter's tale. an essay in which ryan talks about the themes, characters and sources shakespeare might have used for the play precedes each folktale. he also brings in snippets relating to shakespeare and his family. each essay is accompanied by small illustrations of the characters and a border introducing elements and words from the play. mayhew's full-page watercolour illustrations accompanying each story are dreamy and theatrical. this book is a great introduction to children who have never seen a shakespeare play, and at the same time offers much to those who have already been introduced divided into three major sections, the collection, terrific trickster tales from asia, acquaints the north american reader with asian tricksters. spagnoli first introduces trickster tales and how to get ready to tell them, pointing out that "everyone loves a trickster, except the one being tricked!" her instructions are excellent and should encourage would-be storytellers to relax and enjoy themselves. twenty-five dis 98 gail de vos and merle harris tinctive trickster tales comprise the second section of the book. they have universal appeal and there is a brief explanation of the origin of each tale, telling tips, resources and follow-up activities for each story. part three "more ideas and resources" encourages the reader to explore the world of storytelling beyond the trickster tales. highly recommended. poetry, historical accounts, superstitions, folktales and ballads from around the world and featuring the folk that live beneath or sail upon the waters, song of the sea evokes the watery spirits and adventures of a distant time. the collection seems aimed at a young audience and while it includes a bibliography, it does not include any source notes for the wealth of information contained within its covers. picture book titles: hallworth, grace. sing me a story: song-and-dance tales from the caribbean. illustrated by john clementson. [little folk] little rock: august house, 2002. 0 87483 672 7. macdonald, margaret read. fat cat: a danish folktale retold. illustrated by julie paschkis. [little folk] little rock: august house, 2001. 0 87483 616 6. mora, pat. the race of toad and deer. illustrated by domi. toronto: groundwood books, 2001, 0 88899 434 6. five traditional stories from jamaica, haiti, and trinidad and tobago are playfully retold in sing me a story. musical notation and dancing instructions, where applicable, accompany each tale which jumps right out of the brilliant pages. folk art illustrations create a frame around each tale to produce this small collection of delightful tales. fat cat is a combined retelling of the traditional norwegian tale of the fat cat and a czechoslovakian tale, "kuratko the terrible," that was a long established element in storyteller margaret read macdonald's repertoire. cat and mouse are friends and when the greedy cat not only gulps everyone in sight including his friend and roommate, mouse, something has to be done. mouse to the rescue and cat no longer is a fat hungry cat but a fancy one as well. folk art illustrations dance across the pages of this colourful and rollicking version. great source notes! pat mora has provided an adaptation of the mayan variant of the fable of the "hedgehog and the hare" in which cooperation in the race aids victory in the race of toad and deer. the story was told to the author by a mason and scholar in guatemala. the text is reminiscent of the chatter of the jungle and is highly complemented with the rich col 99 review roundup 2003 ours and shapes of the illustrations by artist domi of oaxaca, mexico. a treat to the ears and eyes. 100 american folklore society children's folklore section meeting albuquerque, nm 10 october 2003 minutes president sean galvin called the meeting to order at noon in enchantment e of the hyatt regency hotel, albuquerque, nm. a quorum was present. minutes of the rochester, ny, meeting were approved as published in the children's folklore review, volume 25, numbers 1 and 2. reports princilla ord, although not able to attend the meeting, sent in the following report on the following funds: the opie fund, $2951,21; the lifetime membership fund, $680.73; the newell prize fund, $8075.18; and the general fund, $2381.40. c. w. sullivan iii, children's folklore review editor, reported that the english department at east carolina university continues to support the journal at the rate of $2000.00 per year. this amount covers almost all of the printing but none of the mailing. last year's cfr cost $2476.00 for printing and mailing. the department also supplies a graduate assistant to the journal for 10 hours per week. awards sullivan reported that the newell prize this year would be awarded to janice ackerley for "gender issues in the playground rhymes of new zealand children: 1992-2003" and that there was a newell prize honorable mention this year, anita l. gambos' "the ugly duckling, hans christian andersen: a story of transformation." sullivan expects both essays will be published in the next children's folklore review. bill ellis reported that there were two aesop award winners this year: horse hooves and chicken feet: mexican folktales. selected by neil philip. illustrated by jacqueline mair. new york: clarion, 2003. cfs meeting minutes mightier than the sword: world folktales for strong boys. collected and told by jane yolen. illustrated by raul colón. san diego: sliver whistle/ harcourt, 2003. there were six aesop accolade books this year: invisible kingdoms: jewish tales of angels, spirits, and demons. retold by howard schwartz. illustrated by stephen fieser. new york: harper collins, 2003 nelson mandela's favorite african folktales. written and illustrated by diverse hands. new york: norton, 2002. pajaro verde: the green bird. joe haynes. illustrated by antonio castro. ei paso, tx: cinco puntos, 2002. somethingfor nothing. ann redisch stampler. illustrated by jacqueline m. cohen. new york: clarion, 2003. the sun, the rain, and the apple seed: a novel of johnny appleseed's life. lynda durrant. new york: clarion, 2003. yonder mountain: a cherokee legend. told by robert h. bushyhead. written by kay thorpe bannon. illustrated by kristina rodana. new york: cavendish, 2002. neither an opie prize nor a lifetime achievement award was given out this year. there was a question about who in the children's folklore section should be the contact person for the various awards, and it was decided that margaret read macdonald would be the contact person for the aesop awards, carole h. carpenter for the opie prize, and c.w. sullivan iii for the newell prize. old business the problem of the meeting time was discussed again, and sean galvin agreed to look for a meeting time in less conflict with other meetings that members wished or needed to attend. due to printing costs and other factors, the membership decided that the children's folklore review should become an annual volume. this will not only give us more total pages for the same price, but a more aesthetically pleasing product as well. 102 cfs meeting minutes new business the problem of people wishing to join the section without joining the american folklore society was discussed. at this point, subscribers can still get the journal without joining the afs. the amount the american folklore society charges the section to administer its funds, 12%, was discussed, and the president was charged with investigating this situation. the membership voted to sell aesop award and accolade stickers to publishers and to allow publishers to imprint the insignia themselves on the covers of award winners. the established rate will be $100.00 for 500 labels. the membership voted that the section write letters to the dean of arts and sciences and the chair of the english department at east carolina university complimenting sullivan on his job as cfr editor and thanking the university for its continued support. the meeting was adjourned at 1:30 pm. respectfully submitted, c.w. sullivan iii secretary pro tem 103 notes and announcements newell prize announcement the children's folklore section of the american folklore society annually offers the ww newell prize (which includes a cash award) for the best student essay on a topic in children's folklore. students must submit their own papers, and published papers are eligible. instructors are asked to encourage students with eligible papers to enter the competition. papers must be typed, double-space, and on white paper. on the first page include the author's name, academic address, home address, email address, and telephone number. deadline for each year's competition is september 1st. submit papers or write for more information: dr. cw sullivan iii, english department, east carolina university, greenville, north carolina 27858-4353. temple university press announces the publication of yo' mama! new raps, toasts, dozens, jokes and children's rhymes from urban black america, onwuchekwa jemie, editor. for free pages from the introduction, go to www.temple.edu/tempress/chapters/1 452_chl.pdf .for additional information, go to www.temple.edu/ tempress/titles/l453 reg.html dr. june factor, editor, announces that the bi-annual australian journal of children's folklore, play & folklore, is now available at www.museum.vic.gov.au/playfolklore. she also welcomes contributions for future issues. 104 http://www.temple.edu/tempress/chapters/1 contributors janice ackerley is a reading development teacher at ashburton college, new zealand, and a distance education tutor for national diploma in children's literature (christchurch college of education). her interest in children's folklore, playground rhymes in particular, developed from an ever-expanding collection of play ground rhymes gathered from throughout new zealand as part of the patterns of language course. her final papers in her med (children's literature) focused on gender differences (published in the australian journal play and folklore, number 44) and gender issues arising from close examination of children's playground rhymes. anita l. gambos is a consultant, educator, and public speaker. she taught at both the high school and college levels before transitioning to a corporate career in financial services. for over 25 years, anita was the executive officer heading corporate marketing, executive development, human resources, and employee relations functions. most recently, she was chief learning officer of a global fortune 100 company. she is currently president of the interplay group, inc. (www.theinterplaygroup.com), a consulting firm specializing in transformational change for both companies and individuals. anita is also a student of the storytelling program at dominican university, san rafael, ca. gail de vos is a storyteller, author of seven books on storytelling and folklore, and book review editor for children's folklore review. she is an adjunct professor for the school of library and information services at the university of alberta in edmonton, alberta, canada, where she teaches courses on storytelling, children's literature, and comic books and graphic novels. she was resident storyteller at fort edmonton park, bringing history alive through stories for over thirteen years and is the coordinator of the annual storytelling festival held at the park each labour day weekend. merle harris has always been fascinated by stories. she is a freelance storyteller and has been a facilitator/trainer for the parentchild mother goose program since 1994. she has told stories in schools, libraries, seniors homes, women and juvenile detention centers, on the radio and at festivals across canada, and was resident storyteller at fort edmonton park. she is co-author with gail 105 contributors de vos and celia barker lottridge of telling tales: storytelling in the family (university of alberta press). karen hill mcnamara holds a doctorate of letters from drew university in madison, new jersey. she graduated with distinction in 2003, and her doctoral dissertation, "telling bridget's tale of hunger: children's literature of the great irish famine," won the university prize. her annotated bibliography of children's famine literature was published in foilsiu (2003), an interdisciplinary journal of irish studies. she has presented fourteen papers on irish/american children's and young adult literature at national and international conferences. she is scheduled to teach in the caspersen school of graduate studies at drew university. 106 stereotypes taboo my boyfriend said to me so tell all the people, who don't want to get you're a bloody fool! ocr document childhood narrated and negotiated: children's, parents' and teachers' views on childhood bjørg kjær in this paper i shall demonstrate how different approaches to childhood interact with the childhood narratives of children, parents, and school teachers. childhood is narrated and constructed by different agents. in pierre bourdieu-terms we have a field of agents, discussing the definition of the child. in this discussion, professionals have striven to achieve orthodoxy, i.e. the privilege of being experts whose utterances have more power than those of others. the danish context in the nordic countries and especially in denmark, childhood has become extremely institutionalized and professionalized during the last thirty years. today we have a large labor market related to children, and childraising has become a matter for professionals as well as parents. most danish children attend daycare within their first year of living as 90% of all mothers are in the labor market. so the concept of the child is a very important category which functions as an archimedic point in the process of defining specific professional groups as well as parenthood in general. the public debate has frequently returned to the question of who should influence and leave their mark on children. in the seventies, there was a moral panic about indoctrination of school-children, which created a taboo in relation to the role of professional upbringers. they were expected to be teaching "facts" and useful competences like reading, writing, calculating, etc. but it was also expected that teachers would train children's independence and improve their abilities to participate in a democratic society; at least this is an implicit formulation in the text of the school legislation. so, as a teacher, one must both teach "facts" and "attitudes." 35 kjær the questions of what are "facts" and what are "attitudes" has been rather obscure in the public debate, and the demand for neutrality has forced teachers to emphasize and make visible their teaching, and play down their personal opinions and values, even though the latter is an important part of teaching democracy. methods in this context i have studied how children, parents and teachers tell childhood. i have done so partly by means of interviews and partly by fieldwork. the former i rather prefer to call conversations or dialogues with people. the latter i would call folkloristic fieldwork, i.e. on the basis of my cultural competence i get into dialogues and interactions with adults and children. being a part of the danish culture myself, i have striven for no kind of neutrality. rather, i have sought to expose the context-bound dynamics of communication in relation to children and their upbringing. i have been faced with the well-known dilemma of not being able to ask the informants about what i wanted to know because i wanted to obtain materials which would provide more than just examples of what i could think of in advance. so, instead of making questionnaires, i spoke with the informants about themes in relation to my interests. we spoke about children and adults, about play and school, about toys and joys, about the past, present, and future. i also spoke with the children and interacted with them in different ways, and i spent time with them, just observing. and those observations included adults interacting with children. i see this fieldwork partly as a way of producing social reality by means of my person and partly as a way of observing (this) social reality. the teachers on the basis of sandra dolby stahl's study of personal narratives, i have interpreted the dialogues between me and the informants (kjær 1997) in relation to communication strategies 36 childhood narrated and negotiated and the use of style and narrative sequences of different kinds. in short, teachers tell in generalized terms, they express themselves as having official capacities as experts with authority deriving from their training. they tell no personal narratives, but many "scientific truths" about children's nature. but they do not just hide behind authority. they also express very deep personal involvement in their work. in this personal involvement they make use of their childhood memories in two ways: 1) they tell pupils about their own childhood experiences in order to establish a close relationship with them, and 2) they refer to their own childhoods to aid in evaluating contemporary children's competences, needs, and possibilities. i shall give an example to illustrate the type of dilemma that teachers have to deal with. this teacher tells about the teacher-pupil relationship. per: "there has to be a fundamental joint trust, namely, that both of us are basically fond of each other. and i don't say 'respect' one another. i say: are fond of each other." bjørg: "what then if you're not fond of somebody? did you ever experience that?" per: "no. there's no reason not to be fond of them. what reason would that be?" bjørg: "maybe you are just not fond of some people." per: "yes, but i feel differently. and i know that i do. otherwise i couldn't be a teacher. my task. . . is to see that there is a person who needs knowledge. and i must give knowledge to that human being. because if i don't do that, i've let him or her down." this teacher expresses deep devotion and personal involvement in order to explain his obligations towards the children. it is a contemporary version of a classic nineteenth-century con 37 per: "and by the way, i get paid for it." kjær cept of devotion. this concept is closely connected with the very shaping of the professional teacher, who emerged as a skilled person in this historical period. this devotion is about morality, affection, and openness in relation to any human being that walks through the door of the classroom. this very sentence i just quoted, "because if i don't do that, then i've let him or her down," is a strong statement of human commitment. but it ends in a totally different style, like this: this illustrates the tension between, on the one hand, the teacher's selfimage based on devotion, and, on the other hand, external demands for professional capacity to act in standardized and predictable ways in order to be fair to all children and trustworthy to the surroundings. this tension demands devotion and personal commitment from the teacher-but at the same time it taboos the limits of such a deep personal involvement. so the teacher has to say that his disliking a pupil is not a possibility. we have two lines of argumentation: 1) the personally committed and emotionally expressed way of telling, and 2) the professionally distanced and intellectually expressed way of telling. and these two lines of argumentation never meet. the teachers jump abruptly from one to the other. in this movement between the discourses, the image of childhood functions as a legitimizer and explanation. as a teacher, one is supposed to love all children because they are assumed to be alike-i.e. childish. on the other had, because children are alike, one can generalize in scientific ways about them. the parents parents tell childhood in very personal ways. this is in complete accord with their culturally-defined roles as intimately related to and attached to their children. they would be bad parents if they spoke otherwise. they tell many personal narratives and identify strongly with their sons and daughters as they recollect their own childhood experiences. but the picture is 38 childhood narrated and negotiated quite ambiguous because the parents also use scientific concepts and knowledge when narrating their children. all of the parents use developmental psychology to explain and describe children in general and their own children in particular. when the offspring are discussed, parents mention, for instance, the importance of play and sport activities for children's mental and intellectual development, implicitly drawing on psychological research showing a connection between the two. the swedish ethnologist karl-olov arnstberg (1987) describes how psychology as a scholarly discipline has led to the growth of a popular psychology living side by side with authorized psychology. according to arnstberg, psychology offers personally based causal explanations which appear to be universal and place the individual in a larger context without deindividualizing him or her. this is why scientific psychology is used in everyday life. the conceptualization of childhood gives the personal interpretations a touch of science. especially in this field of childhood and child raising, the question of right and wrong is attached to scientific results. so these parents' interpretations of children are marked by the scientifically legitimated discourse of public professional childcare. today, most parents are in contact with daycare institutions very early in their parental career, as part of child raising is moved from a private to a public space when the child is about one year old. ideals, norms, dreams, and hopes, which can differ a lot, are narrated and negotiated in an arena where the intimacy of the family must communicate with professional competence. the reference to developmental psychology makes the parents' argumentation appear scientific in a way that signifies their mastery of the prestigious codes concerning children and their development. this style of well-informedness aims at mastering the professional code in order to make it possible for the parents to express their own opinions. the parents do not necessarily take over scientific frames of reference uncritically. rather, they create a tradition of parenthood and childhood on the basis of a scientific discourse. they use this scientific discourse in refiguring their own wishes, norms, and morals in much the same way as they use their childhood memories. 39 kjær the children i am going to introduce you to three boys in a kindergarten. they are best friends, sometimes referred to as "the three musketeers"—just to give you some idea of the character of their friendship. for about two years, these boys have been busy telling and playing endless spiderman stories. they go on for hours, days, and weeks. conscientiously they have been doing their "homework" as they have watched the spiderman tv show every friday afternoon. they have made their parents videotape the shows, they have invited each other home to watch the tapes, and they have rehearsed and discussed conflicts and characters in the show. the teachers do not think spiderman is in good taste. they consider it to be of poor quality and violent, primitively repeating a stereotyped dichotomy between good and evil. the boys use spiderman in at least three ways: 1. it keeps the adults at a distance, whereby the boys gain complete control. here it is of great help that teachers loathe spiderman! 2. it serves as a good source for the creativity of the boys, as the characters are used, transformed, discussed, and elaborated in narratives and play. 3. it forms a critique of cultural notions in the adult world. the boys use spiderman to insist on the existence of good and evil—and they insist on the importance of their own judgments, which are far from stereotyped. let me elaborate a bit on the last point. in contemporary denmark, the dichotomy of good and evil is, in a way, non-existent. to be more precise: it has been transformed into a dichotomy of good and sick (or good and pathological) (d. frykman 1993). this dichotomy of good and sick is a contemporary way of conceptualizing human suffering by relating to evil not as an explanation, as in premodern or religious contexts, but as some 40 childhood narrated and negotiated thing that has to be explained. in this process of explaining evil, professional caregivers, teachers, social workers, etc. play an important role. a child cannot be just evil, bad, unpleasant or disagreeable. the badness of the child has to be explained in terms of external influences such as events, which have made a healthy, normal child turn into a pathological one. this process of making evil dissolve into social, psychological, and societal circumstances is practiced by professional upbringers of all kinds and has become part of danish common sense, a "truth" taken for granted. but by using spiderman characters in playing and telling, these boys insist on the existence of evil. the pedagogues cannot accept such a standpoint since their professional identity is closely linked to the explanation of evil in order to make it disappear and make the malfunctioning child normal again. in these three different ways of narrating and defining childhood we can see that all of them implicitly or explicitly relate to the private-professional dichotomy, and negotiate the appropriate frame of reference. to my mind the different, distinct adult modes of telling the child must be understood together as a whole. the messages of private and professional utterances are important to understand some basic cultural notions in contemporary denmark. i consider this tension between modes of utterances to be a reflection of an ideology of social life. it is an ideology which connects professional competence to both authority and morality. the greater the professional competence, the greater the authority and moral habitus. that which is formed as rational, scientific, neutral truths are as a matter of fact utterances about morals, attitudes, and values. actually, the study of children's expressions is an eye-opener in pointing to these truths for what they are: cultural notions about the nature of children. works cited arnstberg, karl-olav, ed. bläckfisken. om tillvarons tolkning, sunt förnuft och psykologins utbredning. 1987. baurdieu, pierre. distinktionen. 1986 trans. of la distinction. paris: ed 41 kjær de minuit, 1979. ______. "nägra egenskaper hos fälten." 1990 trans. of "quelques proprietes des champs. "questions de sociologie. 1980. frykman, jonas. "beroendets mörka sida. ondska i en social kontext." ondskans etnografi. eds. lena gerholm and tomas gerholm. stockholm, 1993. kjær, bjørg. "childhood narrated, privately and professionally." arv, nordic yearbook of folklore. ed. ulrika wolf-knuts. the royal adolphus academy, upsala. stockholm: almquist & wiksell, 1997. 42 93 finding new monsters in old places: a review of the works of simon j. bronner through an age-intersectional lens cory thomas hutcheson in the fall of 2015, midwestern folklore: journal of the hoosier folklore society published a collection of essays by students from simon j. bronner’s graduate course on the folklore of aging and the life cycle. i was fortunate enough to be among those students selected to contribute to the issue, which featured essays on mormon baptism, life-cycle board games, and quilting traditions. my piece discussed the phenomenon of father-child “horror play,” in which the adult pretends to be a monster in pursuit of the child or children. in his introduction to the issue, bronner said “the subject of aging has been approached mostly by categorizing folklore under the heading of an age group, especially children or senior adults, rather than analyzed as a human-cultural developmental process in which folklore plays an instrumental role” (bronner 2015:3). dr. bronner is, of course, being a bit modest in his assertion that aging has mostly been seen as a taxonomic activity rather than a scholarly pursuit of process. in fact, he has published copiously on exactly that process over the years. even his landmark 1988 work, american children’s folklore, turns to questions of linear and cyclical development in the aging stages of young people. bronner’s encouragement has led many of his students—several of whom appear in this volume—to engage with the aging process ethnographically, symbolically, functionally, and folklorically to determine how people create meaning out of the dynamic temporal structure of their lives. his work has covered aging from many angles, including two which became central to my study of father-child play: the role of “horror” in childhood (and adult) development and the intersectionality of age-related lore among generations. as bronner passes his own life-cycle milestone and retires from the legacy program he founded at penn state harrisburg, we, as folklorists, would do well to take stock of his influence and re-interrogate his work in light of our own scholarship (and vice versa) to discover the vast territory he has already mapped and the many lands he is leaving us to explore. my most natural point of departure is bronner’s chapter in american children’s folklore (1988:143-60) on supernatural tales and legends, given my previous focus on the monstrous. as a way of marking children’s evolving maturity, bronner locates the transmission of folk narratives involving ghosts, witches, monsters, and other malevolent forces in the spaces between children. even in his introduction to the chapter, however, bronner points out that “[p]arents, camp counselors, and babysitters have helped to stock the children’s world with stories in order to warn them about potential dangers and to exert some control over their wanderings” (143). why are adults and, more importantly, teenagers and young adults, interested in scaring children in this way? a functionalist interpretation could situate these stories as educational, guarding the well-being and safety of the child by providing supernatural forces of discipline in the form of ogres and bogeymen finding new monsters in old places hutcheson 94 (bascom 1954). bronner’s interpretive framework suggests such a reading, although it does not make that analysis definitive. bronner specifically devotes a portion of his supernatural chapter to the discussion of “horror legends of killers and cars,” although even in tales more generically labeled as “ghost stories,” automobiles make repeated appearances: “this man and lady were riding down the street, and they had a car wreck in this one place…” “the street in front of a school had been covered with tar and cement…one gloomy, muddy day, a man was carelessly driving down this road…” “one day a little boy was playing near the street. he was sitting on the curb near a car. the little boy was playing with something he found in the street and did not hear a lady get in the car…” [all italics mine] children emphasize cars, bronner demonstrates, because of the association of automobiles with “maturity and arrival into society,” but their lore also warns of the “dangers” posed by that change (147). similarly, the impetus to work for money and join adult society informs legends of babysitters, who, being left alone, fall prey to killers and monsters. camp counselors share traditional tales that mingle humor and horror in an environment “[a]way from the restrictions of parents and teachers” where children “far [outnumber] counselors” and “feel a streak of independence and mischief” (152). given the deep anxieties children may feel about their growing self-reliance and maturity, supernatural legends do manifest a degree of what longtime bronner-friend and associate alan dundes labels “projection” in folklore. dundes perceives as the transference of an unconscious and symbolic understanding of the world to external actions, beliefs, narratives, and behaviors in a way that characterizes supernatural legends as functional projections of fear and externalizations of powerful internal anxieties rooted in the life cycle process. children, through projection, face their fears. what, then, are those who disseminate the tales to younger children getting out of the exchange? is this merely a case of deploying the monstrous to keep children from wandering away from camp or into the street? approaching bronner’s research with an eye towards generational intersectionality might tell us a bit more about the motivations of the tellers. in my paper on father-child monster play, i drew upon psychoanalytic interpretations of fairy tales by sheldon cashdan, who asserts that “fairy tales are not for children, do not teach moral lessons, and…[point] to a psychodrama of anxieties played out in narration” (hutcheson 2015:40). cashdan is overzealous and ignores the intersectional ways in which children can make meaning out of hearing fairy tales while adults simultaneously make meaning out of telling them, but he does raise the question of adult use of folklore. cashdan believes that adults see the deployment of folklore as primarily educative, a narrative performance that reinforces the values teachers and parents wish to see develop in their children, hutcheson finding new monsters in old places 95 as well as a social control to outline taboo behaviors (cashdan 1999:15). cashdan emphasizes that children experience lore on a psychological level despite the best intentions of adults, of course, but fails to give enough psychological agency to grown-ups who engage with children through fairy tales, urban legends, and monstrous performances. when adults, here construed as anyone aged above their mid-teens, share lore, they do so expecting a response from their listeners. the negotiation between audience and performer has been well-explored by others (bauman 1974; dundes 1980; toelkein 1996; blank 2009), but many explorations of lore transmission frame the exchange as a two-way dynamic. bronner has addressed the inadequacy of that transmission model recently by emphasizing the ways traditional expression operates at, what he terms, a “purposeful activity with a repeatable, multi-layered message that can be called phemic” as opposed to a more functionally, “phatic” expression (bronner 2016). when camp counselors transmit lore, for example, the children who hear the tale are certainly a target audience, but so are the other counselors listening. a parent engaging a child in a ghost story may be performing both as an “adult” and as a “husband” or “friend’s dad” at the same time, creating multivalent channels of communication that situate the narrative transmitter as a person belonging to myriad life-cycle stages simultaneously. the children hearing the tale validate the challenges of those who have passed through young adulthood with their awed or stricken responses. similarly, bronner’s 2012 campus traditions contains a chapter on supernatural legends and horrors in the lives of young adults, presumably many of whom have already experienced these stories at earlier stages in their lives, but who now begin circulating urban legends and terror tales anew. these students, according to bronner, are explicitly acting out phemic meaning, fulfilling “a need to adjust to this [college] environment by connecting themselves to those who have come before” (277). the performative nature of the tales, which often reframe the unfamiliar and temporary home of the campus in terms similar to previously encountered environments such as the childhood home or summer camp bonfire, offers those who tell and hear a way to interact with their new peers in a particular life-cycle phase—“college kids”—while synchronously linking to their own experiences of childhood. most potently, they synchronously experience a narrative and performance in which the campus itself plays a role, and all students who have engaged in the practice of sharing the legends associated with the school are brought into harmony. the multifaceted, multivalent expression of supernatural tales demonstrates that tales are not affixed to a single life-stage, but form the reusable material of an extended lifetime of folk practice. one of the clearest examples of intersectionally phemic folklore in action is the belsnickel, a holiday guising figure found in pennsylvania german culture primarily. several scholars have investigated the symbolism and social role of the belsnickel, most notably richard bauman (1972), alfred shoemaker (1954, 1999), and susan g. davis (1992). the belsnickel is a thickly fur-clad fellow, often with a mask or soot-smeared face to hide his identity. he visits nearby homes and farms, where he is welcomed by parents into the family home and proceeds to cut capers and play the bombastic fool. at some point, his attention turns to the children, whom he quizzes about their behavior over the previous months. he finding new monsters in old places hutcheson 96 uncannily seems to know all the wrongs they think they have kept hidden, and his fearsome demeanor cows them into promises of better obedience in the future. with a flourish, he scatters treats about the floor and then playfully whips or raps their knuckles as they grab for them. soon, he is gone, often with a bit of cake or a draught of ale to warm him on his journey. under the mask and furs, however, was a person—a local boy in his late teens or early twenties, usually unmarried, who knew his community very well. bauman identified the belsnickel performer exactly in terms of his adolescence: [b]elsnickling…was thought of as an activity predominantly for the older boys and young unmarried men of the community…the youngest belsnickles [sic] were fifteen or sixteen years old, with the majority around eighteen to twenty-one and the oldest between twenty-five and thirty…[t]he age of belsnickling was a socially transitional one, between childhood and full adulthood; boys began working for a living around sixteen, but did not conventionally marry or leave their parents’ households till their early twenties. (bauman 1972:232) bauman, along with others like shoemaker (1999) and davis (1992), point towards the liminal nature of the belsnickel in every rural community in which he is found. he is a figure neither fully adult nor fully child. he occupies the period of misrule and topsy-turvy in the closing of the year. why did neighborhood lads take on the belsnickel role? shoemaker and bauman both identify a transgressive function which fell within acceptable community parameters. in short, the belsnickel boy could play the fool and act upon his aggressions without fear of reprisal, so long as he did not overstep the bounds of the role—he could not do serious harm to the children, for example, and often households with very small youngsters would be bypassed on the belsnickel’s rounds. one component has been underemphasized in previous accounts of the singular, domestic belsnickel visit, however. the belsnickel boy certainly underwent his rite of passage, being both isolated and reintegrated into the community as noted in previous scholarship. we can also ask what function the belsnickel’s visit played for the larger community. in many accounts of the belsnickel, we do not have the memories of those performing the role to rely upon nearly so much as we have the memories of those visited by the belsnickel. visits such as these were remembered fondly long after the lone belsnickel receded from the scene. several remembrances note the mixture of fear and pleasure the belsnickel’s visit provided. the belsnickel, as a lord of misrule, was a creature both fearsome and benevolent, and as such would have embodied the experience of the new world for many first and second generation immigrant families. boys taking on the role of the belsnickel represented an important concept to the community: they had passed the dependence and dangers of childhood and were nearing an age of majority, in which they would be expected to provide for others. here we have the phemic folklore operating in a multivalent fashion in both performed time and the practiced time of memory. teenage and young adult boys performed hutcheson finding new monsters in old places 97 for the children, yes, but also for the parents, other boys in their peer group, the communities around them, and for themselves. they inhabited a folk practice that brought circles of time into overlapping conjunction, and those points of conjunction then became the basis for new memorate transmission later in the lives of those visited by the belsnickel. perhaps not surprisingly, bronner has also written extensively about the traditions of the pennsylvania germans, including an article on folk speech and humor (2011) and 2017’s pennsylvania germans: an interpretive encyclopedia, which he co-edited with joshua r. brown, although he has not written at any length on the belsnickel to date, despite the figure’s clear articulation of his phemic principle. what has all of this to do with the fathers chasing their children around a room, roaring like a dinosaur? in writing my own assessment of “horror play” among father and their children, i chose to de-emphasize the children’s experience and instead incorporate the much less richly explored perspective of the fathers who engaged in such play. the dynamics of parental-child relationships are complicated and tricky, a web of multiple meanings that can represent simultaneously constructive and destructive principles at play in cultural formation. bronner has also noted that intergenerational web and its influences in his work on the african american storytelling traditions within the powell family (2011). his detailed ethnographic work with eugene powell and his son, ernest, demonstrated the continued practice of storytelling within the family and the personal emphasis on differentiation for ernest. the son did not wish to be his father or to tell his father’s stories, but he did wish to do as his father had done. when ernest told stories, he told them for his audience and filled them with a level of violence beyond anything in his father’s tales, but he also performed for his father as a tradition-bearer. bronner decoded a level of tension between father and son, noting that “eugene’s insecurity spilled over into his relationship with ernest. eugene saw much of himself in his son…eugene worried about his control over ernest” (bronner 2011:261). eugene was telling his stories in the same way a father might pretend to be godzilla or a zombie for a five-year-old. he entertained his audience but simultaneously accommodated his own anxieties about his role in his child’s life and, crucially, in his own life. eugene and ernest powell occupy different “stages” of life but also reflect the stages of one another’s lives through the sustained practice of storytelling. the materials which simon j. bronner has gathered through his prolific corpus of work on american folklore continue to provide much to think about. his recent concentration on a “practice theory” of folklore offers new insights into materials he has compiled over a lifetime. similarly, as we develop our own insights and ideas with relation to new material, bronner’s work provides a bank of comparative fodder rich with potential for close reading and reinterpretation. my own work with the intersectional father-child “horror play” dynamic, which was supported from its inception to publication by bronner, represents only the smallest fragment of possible interpretive lenses that might be applied to concepts of phemic folklore. here, bronner has remained ahead of the game, and provided scholars with new terminology and frameworks to apply to their findings. bronner’s earlier work, such as american children’s folklore, demonstrate finding new monsters in old places hutcheson 98 significant opportunities for review and rediscovery. his proclivity for production has cast a wide net, and we are certainly indebted to him for what he has given us so far. yet his work also demonstrates a notable “lack,” if i may co-opt dundes’ term from game morphology and apply it here. he leaves us much yet to do in the form of a lifetime of work that can still benefit from attentive reinterpretation. is he then playing a game across time, whose object is an “elimination” of his “lack” through our own diligent scholarship? if so, that would be very much the playful and phemic bronner, acting the part of mischievous child as he crosses the threshold of retirement. works cited bascom, william r. 1954. four functions of folklore. the journal of american folklore. 67(266): 333-49. bauman, richard. 1972. belsnickling in a nova scotia island community. western folklore 31(4): 229-43. bronner, simon j. 1988. american children’s folklore: a book of rhymes, games, jokes, stories, secret languages, beliefs, and camp legends for parents, grandparents, teachers, counselors, and all adults who were once children. little rock: august house. ———, ed. 2005. manly traditions: the folk roots of american masculinities. bloomington: indiana univ. press. ———. 2011. explaining traditions: folk behavior in modern culture. lexington: univ. of kentucky press. ———. 2012. campus traditions: folklore from the old-time college to the modern mega-university. jackson: university press of mississippi. ———. 2015. foreword: folklore for the ages. midwestern folklore: journal of the hoosier folklore society. 41(2): 3-8. ———. 2016. toward a definition of folklore in practice. cultural analysis 15(1). bronner, simon j., and joshua r. brown, eds. 2017. pennsylvania germans: an interpretive encyclopedia. baltimore: johns hopkins univ. press. cashdan, sheldon. 1999. the witch must die: the hidden meaning of fairy tales. new york: basic books. davis, susan g. 1992. “making night hideous”: christmas revelry and public order in nineteenth-century philadelphia. american quarterly 34(2): 185-99. dundes, alan. 1980. interpreting folklore. bloomington: indiana univ. press. hutcheson, cory thomas. 2015. domesticating the ogre: horror play and fatherhood. midwestern folklore: journal of the hoosier folklore society 41(2): 39-49. shoemaker, alfred. 1999. christmas in pennsylvania. mechanicsburg, pa: stackpole books. cfr_2017_part22 finding new monsters in old places: a review of the works of simon j. bronner through an age-intersectional lens cory thomas hutcheson cfr_2017_part23 ocr document children's folklore review volume 24 numbers 1 and 2 2002 published by the children's folklore section of the american folklore society with support from the english department at east carolina university contents from the editor ..............................................................................5 the 2000 afs columbine panel introduction: folklore responds to columbine and adolescence simon j. bronner ..... …………………………………………………...7 hitler's birthday: rumor-panics in the wake of the columbine shootings bill ellis ................................................................................................. 21 the war on youth: a modern oedipal tragedy joann conrad ....... …………………………………………..33 "everybody is their enemy": goths, spooky kids, and the american school shooting panic allen berres ....................................................... ………………..43 a fear of adolescent cruising: adult reactions to a tradition that won't go away charlie mccormick .................................................................................... 55 2001 newell prize paper redwood grove: youth culture within a group home jesse gelwicks ....……………………………………………… 65 cfs: 2001 annual meeting………………………………………..88 notes and announcements…………………………………….90 about the contributors………………………………………..92 on the cover: reproduction of the cover of w.w. newell's games and songs of american children. from the editor at the 2000 american folklore society meetings in columbus, ohio, the children's folklore section sponsored a session entitled "the monstrous child: folklore responds to columbine and adolescence." the panel was chaired by simon j. bronner, and papers were presented by bill ellis, joann conrad, allen berres, and charlie mccormick. in spite of the 8:15 am hour, the session was standing room only. this double issue of the children’s folklore review presents those papers with an introduction written by simon j. bronner especially for this publication. the executive board of the children's folklore section felt it was important to present the panel as a whole and authorized the presentation of them in volume 24, numbers 1 and 2, as a single publication. in a way that no one in the popular media has been able to do, the authors of these essays examine the traditional and popular culture elements pertaining to adolescence and the columbine shootings and shed a good deal of light on a difficult subject. we are sure you will find these essays fascinating. in addition, this volume contains the 2001 newell prize winning paper by jesse gelwicks, a student of jay mechling's, the minutes of the annual meeting, and the usual notes and announcements. c.w. sullivan iii the 2000 afs columbine panel intorduction: folklore responds to columbine and adolescence simon j. bronner it may surprise you to know that this issue on adolescent folklore is a first. its special claim is being a thematic set of essays focusing on adolescence as a social category of folkloric production by teenagers and for folkloric response by adults and children. this is not to say that folklorists have not been listening to teenagers since adolescence became known as a prominent life stage in the twentieth century. especially in american colleges, folklorists fill archives with collections by and from adolescents, but they have rarely used these materials for a focused inquiry into the age. at the same time that some of the best known american folklore genres, such as contemporary legends and initiation rituals, derived largely from teenagers, it may be argued that, overall, age as a social category of folkloric production has been slow to be recognized, and adolescence as a vague period between childhood and adulthood has been given even less. to drive the point home, one can note that standard reference works in the field such as the standard dictionary of folklore, mythology, and legend (ed. maria leach, funk and wagnalls, 1949), american folklore: an encyclopedia (ed. jan harold brunvand, garland, 1996), folklore: an encyclopedia of beliefs, customs, tales, music and art (ed. thomas a. green, abc-clio, 1997), a dictionary of english folklore (ed. jacqueline simpson and steve roud, oxford, 2000), and penguin dictionary of american folklore (by harry oster and alan axelrod, penguin, 2000) lack entries for adolescence. this omission is compounded by folkloristic neglect of perspectives from psychological and human development or family and youth studies, with which studies of adolescence abound. indeed, such perspectives, associated with sociological and psychological disciplines, have not been commonly incorporated into culture studies; although, family and youth is one of the pillars of folklore's "social contexts." and why should such perspectives be incorporated into culture studies? the contributors to this issue may answer that inquiry into the ways that cultural expectations of age are formed suggests perspectives on aging. within folklore studies, the field of children's folklore has been a location for observation of the cultural adaptation to aging. if the argument is made that folklore is a force in everyday life, then aging as a process all humans endure should be fundamental to bronner the expression of folklore. further, if the argument is made that folklore persists in the modern world because it serves social and psychological functions for us as individuals and members of groups and society, then age relative to family and community raises many of the questions for which we seek answers of adjustment. in childhood above other ages, folklorists recognize rapid social change leading to cultural production as individuals age and form identities. therefore the folklore in childhood that forms to communicate within a large semiliterate, age-stratified group is a conspicuous cultural marker. folklorists are hardly alone in seeing the social connections that result from separation of children into school grades and affiliation with families. still, they may be drawn to cultural differences by race, ethnicity, and gender precisely because they stand out physically before the ordinariness of age. they may also be lured to the analysis of texts categorized into genres or the context of region before age, because of the artistic composition inherent in folklore. then came the tragedy at columbine high school in 1999 and a cascade of commentaries in the popular press on the troubled and at times menacing teen as a problem of age. looking for explanation, early reports speculated that the tragedy was racially motivated, but interviews with participants revealed that scenario to be unlikely. turning to questions of what was occurring culturally, and emotionally, for the pair of killers at their age, commentators tended to exaggerate the exotic life of the american teen with folkloric overtones-rumors, legends, beliefs, rituals, pranks, cults, and dress. writers separated the innocent child from the menacing teen, since the assumption could often be heard that the troubled youths were "normal," happy children until they entered the dark door of adolescence. in the movie planet of the apes released in 2001, an ape warns a parent thinking of adopting a youthful human pet, "be sure to get rid of it before puberty; one thing you don't want in your house is a human teenager." implicit in such popular texts is a search for an explanation for the violence, rebellion, and alienation that seemed to be in the chemical mix of adolescence and, in the case of school shootings, were thought to have fired affected teens to the point of combustion. the kind of folklore reported in the popular press through the spate of school shootings during the 1990s stressed the adolescent search, assumed to be characteristic of the age, for eerie supernatural realms, bizarre bonding rituals, and sexual adventures. journalists voyeuristically documented shocking signifiers of identity in dress, hair, body-piercing, music, and tattooing, and a subversive development of alternative or countermainstream lifestyles (including formation of 8 folklore responds to columbine and adolescence gangs and even attraction to satanic and diabolical cults). for some, these are signs of a culture in decline, and folklore as a repository for anti-social values. for others, it shows a cultural creativity that comes with recognition of adolescence as an increasingly differentiated social movement at the heart of a vibrant popular culture. to be sure, it was not uncommon for published ethnographies and filmed documentaries to show high school culture to be essentially conservative, with revival of civic rituals of conformity and class loyalty surrounding football games, graduations, and proms. statistics kept on juvenile crime showed a decline in assaults and violence during the 1990s, and yet opinion polls revealed a popular perception that youth violence is spreading and juveniles are increasingly considered dangerous and feared. "teen violence, school violence, and gangs" consistently shows up as a significant problem "facing the united states" in public opinion polls. when a national sample of americans was asked shortly before columbine by the public agenda foundation for the "first thing that comes to your mind" to describe teenagers, the largest percentage, 27 percent, replied "generally negative comments." the next largest group was "disrespectful/rude/lacking manners" at 12 percent followed by "rebellious/uncontrollable/ wild" at 10 percent (roper center, 1999). and one thing for sure, they thought that teens faced more problems than they did (80 percent). a different survey organization asked parents of teenagers shortly after columbine, "what is the most important problem facing people their age," and the leading answer was "social pressures (popularity and 'fitting in'), at 29 percent; "crime and violence" was at 8 percent (roper center, 1999). especially indicative of this view is the answer with folkloristic implications to the question, "if your teen had to choose between fitting in with friends or becoming outstanding in some way, which would your teen choose?" the survey sponsor was surprised by the high number of americans who replied "fitting in" (43 percent), and yet that observation leads to consideration of the intensity of the social groupings in adolescence that often rely on expressions of folklore for a sense of identity. against the background of such social surveys, folklore can be seen being "expressive" for teenagers and "attitudinal" for adults. consider these examples of folklore of (production), and about (response), school shootings. -october 1,1997, pearl, mississippi. at the june 1998 trial for luke woodham, 16, charged with entering his high school with a rifle under his trench coat and killing two students and wounding seven oth 9 bronner ers, he testifies that he was influenced by a group of youths calling itself "the kroth." the youths engaged in violent role-playing games and conjured spells against their enemies. -april 28, 1998, pomona, california. two boys, 14 and 17, are shot to death at an elementary school playground after a fight escalates between two rival "party crews," which stage parties with music and disc jockeys. a 13-year-old boy, whose name is withheld by authorities, is taken into custody and charged as a minor. -april 20, 2000, columbine, colorado. reports on the lifestyles of eric harris and dylan klebold who murdered 12 classmates and a teacher before shooting themselves speculate on the planning of the assault to commemorate adolf hitler's 110th birthday. they are connected to a group called the "trench coat mafia," described by columnist joe conason as "young alienated wannabes." their preoccupation with "industrial" music, the columnist asserts, "suggests the possible influence of a fascistic youth subculture that has inspired horrific violence elsewhere." -november 25,2001, new bedford, massachusetts. police arrest eric mckeehan, 17, and two 15-year-olds whose names were withheld because of their age, for conspiring to commit a columbine-style attack on the high school. the boston globe quoted eric mckeehan's mother, as saying her son was not guilty. ms. st. hilaire, 52, said her son had been in rebellion since the sudden death of his father in september and had started wearing dark clothes and a mohawk hairstyle and piercing various parts of his body. the new york times on november 27 quoted parents of the three boys portraying the group as "harmless teenagers, somewhat troubled perhaps, but not capable of the violence they were accused of plotting." added to the above suggestions of youth forming "esoteric" or subcultural folklife, are examples of "exoteric" adult lore about the shooters circulating on the internet and through faxes: 1999. one of the boys who murdered his classmates in littleton prepared by designing new computer games levels that resembled his school and peopling them with representations of his classmates (declared "false" on the urban legends reference pages at http:// www.snopes2.com) 1999. chain letters are circulating with the text, "this forward is dedicated to all of the students of littleton, colorado. for every person this forward is sent to the city of denver, colorado will give .25 cents to the town of littleton. now this may not seem like much to you, but as soon as this gets around it all starts to add up. please. if you just take the time to send this it will help the victims of the terrible incident that happened today. send this to as many people you can and start building a new hope for the students." (declared a 10 folklore responds to columbine and adolescence hoax, on urban legends and folklore page at http:// urban legends.about. com/librarv /blchain4 .htm) 1999. chain letters are circulating with the text, "as of right now, there are 25 confirmed dead children and faculty and over 30 critically injured in yet another (high) school shooting spree. i'm asking you, as fellow members and friends to please pray and keep in your hearts these poor families of the victims." (declared of questionable origin on urban legends and folklore page at http://urbanlegends.about.com/librarv /blchain2.htm) probably the first folkloristic commentary on columbine was published in the new york folklore society newsletter by steven zeitlin in the fall/winter 1999 issue. zeitlin, co-author of the book city play (rutgers university press, 1990) and giving a voice to sorrow (perigree, 2001), warned against over-reacting to violent fantasies expressed in folklore such as "i met her in the attic with a semiautomatic" by thinking of them as confirmations of the violent intent of youth. he worried that "in the wake of columbine, many teachers and administrators have tried to squelch children's fantasies." he drew attention to the shooters' creation of "adolescent folklore": they proclaimed death to all enemies, dressed in black, formed a club, hosted a web site, devised a suicide pact, even adopted a catchy name, the now infamous "trench coat mafia"—and projected it on to reality." but despite spotlighting the folkloric aspects of a public issue, zeitlin still casts his net widely over "american children's folklore" and treats these teens in a cast of "schoolchildren." bill ellis in his book aliens, ghosts, and cults (university press of mississippi, 2001) also warned of public over-reaction to "rumor-panics," often connecting teenagers to the threat of, or the attraction to, devil worshipers. documenting oral reports in may 1987 in lansford, pennsylvania, that a satanic cult planned shooting students attending a high school prom, ellis focused on the event's multiple meanings for (production) and about (response) adolescents. for some adolescents, making such a prom deadly may have heightened its status as a rite of passage, making their attendance doubly a proof of their adult status. the participants may not have been simply adolescents dabbling in the occult; the lansford death threats, police later discovered, were written by a parent who had grudges against administrators and used the cult stories as an opportunity for revenge. for some school administrators, turning the prom into a show of force may have been a way of assuring edgy parents that they were, after all, in control of their children. . . . finally, 11 bronner for a few participants, the event may have been seen as a hoax proving that adolescent "quasi-satanic" rebellion was justified, since grown-ups are prone to hysterical delusions and really do not understand what [musician] ozzy osbourne is all about. hence the event carries the seeds of future panics, and indeed, as we will see, the same material was recycled in the area in 1996, with similar results. (218) implicit in these interpretations is the treatment of adolescence as a special age because it is a cultural "coming of age." that "coming" could suggest a development as much onslaught as transition. it implies a vulnerability of a young initiate leaving childhood, and the threat of new virile power confronting adulthood. by relativizing the subject of adolescence in other cultures, margaret mead in her classic study coming of age in samoa (1928) tried to show that adolescence need not be as troubled as it was in america. her observations for the cultural expectations of the 1920s still echoes in reports after the school shootings of the 1990s: "adolescence was characterised as the period in which idealism flowered and rebellion against authority waxed strong, a period during which difficulties and conflicts were absolutely inevitable" (1). her relation of her experience in samoa to the united states in the 1920s, however, differed in two respects from the concerns raised during the 1990s. one is that she admired the casual parental atmosphere that she thought led to an easy transition into adulthood. many reports took the shootings of the 1990s to show the failure of permissive parenting. second, she highlighted the experience of girls, not only because she thought that as a woman investigator she could be more intimate with her girl subjects, but also because she considered them more vulnerable as well as under-studied. in light of the reports of the 1990s that shooters were almost all boys, attention shifted to struggles of male identity in formation. boys, once thought more in control of their situation than girls, suddenly appeared at risk, and much of their plight seemed cultural. in a postfeminist world, they could be seen questioning the proper expressions of various masculinities in american society. as a coming of age, adolescence intensely involved folklore because it appeared to be a liminal state in need of ritual clarification. in michael moffatt's coming of age in new jersey (rutgers university press, 1989), he found college students segregated by age particularly affected not only because of their "coming" stage of life, but also because of their transition between the "school life" they viewed as juvenile and the real world of the future. much of the ritual clarification they sought concerned new social affiliations and sexual awaken 12 folklore responds to columbine and adolescence ing. in folklorists reports of legends, rituals, pranks, and jokes as the common expressive genres of "coming of age" implied ritual components to claim new group identity apart from family, a departure from childhood, and an anticipation of the power of adulthood. the kinds of questions asked of teenage folklore become revised when challenged by the events of columbine. instead of concerns for narrative competency and genre definition found in many legend collections from the 1960s to the 1980s, approaches are possible that address perceptions of teenage angst as well as menace. a reinterpretation of cultural collections along some of the theoretical lines found below inform, or misinform, "the restlessness of youth" (mead): 1. disease theory. adolescence is an incurable or unpredictable pathology. hormones rage, and strange bodily outbreaks of body piercing, satanic expression, and hair coloring are symptomatic of a problem outside of the individual's control. in much of the folklore stemming from this disease, there can be demonstrations of strength and bravado, and occasionally violence. there is the observation that the condition may be unrelated to the person's identity before or after adolescence, and indeed, these symptoms are something that individuals "get over." and some adults may consider "quarantining" as a response. although the root cause of the disease is debatable, one common culprit is puberty, which is often assumed to be coming too early, or problems arise for individuals when it comes too late. 2. psychoanalytical/anxiety theory. adolescence is a period fraught with anxiety, and may be the time filled with the most conflict between individual desires and societal taboos. anxieties of repressed sexuality, conflicts of identities (sexual and social), guilt over separation from parents (and occasionally attraction to parents), and issues of peer conformity and adjustment. folklore is particularly used in adolescence as a fictive plane to symbolically confront or resolve various anxieties and adapt to psychological conflicts. indeed, psychoanalytical interpretations have arguably been applied to adolescent legends and rituals more than they have to the traditions of other age groups because of the perception that anxieties especially need expression and resolution during adolescence. although related to the disease theory, anxiety theory posits a psychological rather than pathological response to the age. 3. organizational theory. with the onset of adolescence, individuals gravitate to one another, and in that formation, create subversive, destructive organizations adults may think of as pernicious "gangs," and many teenagers view as identity-marking "cliques." there is the implication that these formations undermine the traditional val 13 bronner ues imparted through family and community. another ramification is that these groups naturally compete for dominance rather than moving toward consensus. alternative explanations for shooters are that they either fall outside these formations and become dangerous because of their alienation, or they come from one of these groups seeking to eliminate others. 4. societal theory. adolescents suffer from lack of parental attention or inability to properly raise children, which results in asocial or amoral behavior. teachers and school administrators as surrogates of society may also be responsible because they do not respond to the needs of teenagers or continue to treat them as children rather than take them seriously as young adults. an explanation for shooters according to this theory is that they seek revenge against parents and teachers because of their treatment. there is also the implication that the new society that adolescents dwell in is a mass society, reinforced by the growing size of consolidated schools. individuals may feel increasingly lost within this mass culture. 5. mental states theory. this concept points to the rebellion of adolescence that results from states of boredom or alienation common to the growing number of teenagers growing up in suburbia. although depictions of "juvenile delinquents" of the 1950s were set in the inner cities, and a number of gang violence scares of the 1990s were also placed in the inner cities, shockwaves of concern could be felt because of the location of teen violence in suburban environments assumed to be healthy. some explanations for trouble in suburbia include a need for "action" in a dulling environment, some form of special middle-class paranoia, increase of recreational drug use, and the unnatural extension of childhood in high school and even through college. this view often comes with a questioning of the effects of affluence and materialism on creating a civil society among teenagers. 6. hegemonic theory. popular culture receives blame for spreading messages of violence and revulsion in this theory. it also may be credited for creating new subcultures revolving around fads and alternative lifestyles. campaigns against violent or sexually explicit song lyrics, videos, magazines, and movies are based on the special reception that teenagers have for the extreme limits of popular culture. teens are seen as dupes of corporate marketing of material settings of malls, shocking fashions, and rousing concerts. they are victims of cultural hegemony spread over adolescence by profit-hungry, amoral capitalists who seem insensitive to the destructive results of their marketing. 7. moralistic theory. a different take on the messages of violence and revulsion encouraged in popular culture which result in formation 14 folklore responds to columbine and adolescence of new adolescent folk cultures comes from a theory of moral decline. in the historical decline of structures of "traditional values," the theory holds, centers of moral education such as families, schools, and churches have lost their grip on teenagers, and there is a growing acceptance of once unacceptable behaviors. instead of a value placed on following authority and the lessons of a previous generation, there is an attraction to defying authority or standing alone often in anti-social ways. some will blame the decline on breakdowns in the loss of community, the breakdown of the traditional family, the rise of selfish individualism, or post-modern cynicism of organized religion. 8. regional/environmental theory. from american studies, there are ideas of some regional or community environments that encourage aggressive forms of adolescence. one can hear references to the violent legacy of the south, for example, or the "hunting heritage" of pennsylvania and the upper midwest, and the "gun culture" of the west. as teen shootings were reported in all corners of the united states, this theory was increasingly challenged, but questioning still occurred about the connection of the regional background of teenagers to their cultural behavior. 9. emergence theory. performance theory suggests that adolescence is a particularly ripe age for emergence of new cultural forms. the desire to differentiate from other teens in school with whom adolescents are segregated, perhaps the need to symbolically express identities or confront suppressed desires and anxieties, the need for attention-often revealed in shocking or creative ways-and to structure experience around novelty and fashion lead to a constant renewal of cultural creativity. in this view, the formation of new cultural groups such as goths and wiccans, often with reference to tradition, is a natural and healthy process, but individuals who turn the emergent performance into sociopathic spectacle show the risk inherent in an open society. then there is the theoretical question of when adolescence begins and ends as a distinct physiological or cultural period. popularly, adolescence is thought of as the teen years, or physiologically as a period between puberty and physical maturity. one cultural marker is the sharp break between a sense of adolescent production, or cultural creativity, and adult response indicated in a survey conducted by american demographics/harris interactive (december 2001, 10). it asked a sample of americans to associate visible tattoos or body piercings with certain characteristics. the survey was driven by the observation that young adults are the most active body artists, and demographic factors of race, gender, and ethnicity are not as much predictors of who is likely to have such work as age. 15 bronner percent of adults who associate the following terms with visible tattoos or body piercing, by age characteristic 18-24 25-29 30-39 40-49 rebellious 63 49 71 68 experimental 57 59 53 50 immature 29 32 45 47 freakish 29 34 37 32 alternative 58 77 42 41 artistic 53 34 29 23 normal 46 19 20 19 stylish 29 25 13 16 fun 34 27 15 10 gay 12 10 16 9 sexy 22 25 12 12 tough 8 10 9 7 one way to read these responses is the large change among age groups as to the issue of whether the behavior is "normal." the response for the group in their late twenties to the one from the late teens to early twenties dropped 27 percent. this response suggests a perception of some customs as normative for adolescents. note, for instance, the rise of the perception of the custom as immature from 29 percent among the group in their late teens to early twenties to 45 percent among the group in the early thirties. the group in its early thirties also felt more strongly than the group in its late twenties that the behavior was "rebellious." in this regard, one wishes that the survey had also asked about the characteristic of "adolescent," to see if there is a correlation between a perception of rebellion and adolescence. one of the traits one has to notice in the above survey is that the youngest group felt much more artistic than the group in the late twenties. one has to question the largest change in viewpoint concerning "alternative" from the group in its late twenties to the group in the early thirties. this response might suggest that the group in the thirties associated the distinction of the body markings with adolescence while a considerable portion of the group in the late twenties considered the markings still an option or choice that could be "sexy," "fun," or "stylish," rather than a sign of a younger age. but the answers to "immature" and "artistic" beg the question of traditions associated with a period we might designate as adolescent. from there we might question how "adoles 16 folklore responds to columbine and adolescence cent" becomes not only a marker of age, but an adjective for kinds of behavior and customs. so we are left again to ask about folklore as an expression of age. i could argue that folklorists have to get over their sense of surprise at adolescent folklore before confronting theoretical questions of age. in folkloristic literature, authors frequently express surprise that recognition to adolescent folklore came so late, and further, they express astonishment that adolescents produce as much material for folklorists as they do. the surprise in the former stems from the admission that many folklorists are teachers of adolescents, and yet have not adequately examined them as a folk group. the shock in the latter probably owes to the perception that adolescents discard the rhymes, songs, and tales abundantly collected among pre-pubescent children. what is not anticipated are the new materials generated in the form of legends, jokes, speech, and rituals. and what is generally not interpreted are the ties of this material to a sense of cultural disconnection. oriented as they are to finding continuities, historical and social, folklorists are challenged by adolescent material to explain the cultural emergence, and frequent social fragmentation, common among teenagers. the late folklorist sue samuelson expressed amazement in her review of adolescent folklore published in 1995 that the first american study to consider adolescent folklore separately from childhood was martha dirks' "teen-age folklore from kansas," appearing in western folklore in 1963. dirks' point was to show that teenagers, often dismissed as tradition-bearers, had a formidable repertory of humor, slang, customs, and songs. her survey sought to find continuities of this material with other traditions, but lacked a developmental approach. even before dirks' survey, groundbreaking studies by brian sutton-smith sought connections between distinctive genres of adolescence and the developmental needs of the age. his "the kissing games of adolescents in ohio," first appearing in the journal midwest folklore (1959), posed the question of the social and psychological function of such games in the post-pubescent sexual development of teenagers during the 1950s. other "adolescent" genres receiving this treatment included drinking games (see monique young's 1981 m.a. thesis at the university of california, berkeley), graffiti (see peter peretti, richard carter, and betty mcclinton, "graffiti and adolescent personality" in adolescence 1977, and susan gelman's "toward a study of postal graffiti: text and context in an adolescent girls' genre" in western folklore 1978), scary and sexual legends (see gary alan fine and bruce noel johnson, "the promiscuous cheerleader: 17 bronner an adolescent male belief legend" in western folklore 1980, and sue samuelson, "the white witch: an analysis of an adolescent legend" in indiana folklore 1979), legend trips (see patricia meley, "adolescent legend trips as teenage cultural response," children’s folklore review 1991), gross jokes (see simon bronner, "what's grosser than gross?" in midwestern journal of language and folklore 1985), ritual insults (see millicent ayoub and stephen a. barnett, " ritualized verbal insult in white high school culture," journal of american folklore 1965), ritual and play (see michael licht, "some automotive play activities of suburban teenagers," new york folklore quarterly 1974), and material culture (see ariane sains, "the latest teen rage? embroidery" children’s folklore review 1990). it is not coincidental that the word "rage" frequently enters into the rhetoric of these works, both to reflect the quick circulation of material among adolescents and the trope of aggression in adolescent folklore. there is a decided emphasis in these previous studies on defining the limits of adolescent genres and documenting characteristics of folkloric performance, but interpretations of social and psychological function can lead to more developmental approaches. kenneth a. thigpen in his extensive survey, "adolescent legends in brown county" (indiana folklore 1971) for example, declares his textual purpose of "a survey of legend content of a segment of a community," but concludes with a developmental observation of the "basic adolescent need for adventurous involvement." what he means by this is a distinctive theme of using legends in adolescence for tests of daring designed to show maturity. he noted a sense of danger, a simultaneous attraction to and revulsion by death, and a building on tensions between teenagers and adults that is inherent in these adventures. although he did not comprehend the full implications of folklore representing subgroups, or friendship cliques, of teenagers, he offered balance to the stereotypical view of the menacing teen. one group he called "middle american" is characterized as "highly individualistic; politically, religiously, and socially conservative; rebellious against authority as it pertains to them individually, but not opposed to the concept of the present system; preferring alcoholic stimulation, particularly beer and liquor, as symbols of maturity and substances of experimentation and titillation" (209). the other he called "counter-culture: communal in social orientation (especially within the peer group); politically apathetic, though leaning toward liberalism; religiously apathetic, though tending to substitute ideas associated with the occult for traditional religious concepts; preferring non-alcoholic drugs (except for wine) such as marijuana, as symbols of maturity and substances for experimentation and titillation" (209). 18 folklore responds to columbine and adolescence in light of columbine, the adolescent social landscape appears more complex and ideas of adolescent imagination more challenging. one needs to account for previously unheard of groups such as "the trench coat mafia," as well as more widely spread labels of goths, raves, skinheads, jocks, and wiccans. the commentary on school shootings was as much a cultural critique of adolescence and its baffling social landscape as it was a political concern for school violence. folklorists as cultural professionals frequently working with teenagers began reviewing their positions. the children's folklore section of the american folklore society opened discussion on the folkloristic response to columbine at its meeting in 1999 and invited participants to share research that would shed light on the traditions of teens in modern society. the hope was to promote more studies that would offer folkloristic views on the publicized problems of teenagers and schools. the gathered panelists in 2000 spoke to a standing-room only crowd, and the heated discussion inspired this publication to continue the initiative for folkloristic inquiry into adolescent traditions-both dangerous and benign. children’s folklore review, as a location for this folklore first, is appropriate because of its inclusion of developmental approaches to age-related folklore in its illustrious publishing run, but the essayists hope that other journals will subsequently take up the theme. the theme intentionally goes beyond columbine and the issue of school violence to the cultural worlds of adolescence today. it has to integrate the folk culture that adolescents construct for themselves and the popular belief that adults express about naturally rebellious or violent youth. the essayists tackle the interconnections of identities that adolescents pursue and the threatened feelings about those identities that popular culture perpetuates. bill ellis, for example, considers the significance of "hitler's birthday" as an occasion for the rumors of school violence that circulated. joann conrad deals with the cultural implications of political reactions to violent youth in california. responding to the public perception of the danger of "goth" identity among school shooters, allen berres separates the esoteric lore of goth identity that adolescents commonly practice and the exoteric beliefs about goths in popular culture. charlie mccormick reminds readers in his essay on "cruising" about precedents for the kind of discourse on the menacing adolescent encountered in school violence discourse. this issue's theme of "folklore that responds to columbine and adolescence" is therefore both in the form of practice traditionalized by adolescents and narrative or belief expressed by 19 bronner adults. as evidence for a developmental study of culture and a reflection on folkloristic purpose, it reveals the coming of age. pennsylvania state university middletown, pennsylvania works cited ellis, bill. aliens, ghosts, and cults. jackson: up of mississippi, 2001. mead, margaret. coming of age in samoa: a psychological study of primi tive youth for western civilization. 1928. new york: american museum of natural history reprint, 1973. public agenda foundation. "kids these days '99: what americans think about the next generation survey." roper center at university of connecticut public opinion online. accession number 0328701. 3 may 1999. thigpen, kenneth a. "adolescent legends in brown county." indiana folk lore 4 (1971): 141-215. whelan, david. "ink me, stud: tattoos and piercings decorate 15 percent of american bodies, but even more still disapprove of them." american demographics (december 200 i), 9-11. zetlin, steve. "bang, bang, you're dead: the play paradox." new york folk lore society newsletter (fall/winter 1999). see http://www.nyfolklore .org/pubs/news/nlfw99/bang.html 20 hitler's birthday: rumor-panics in the wake of the columbine shootings bill ellis on april 20, 1999, two students, eric harris and dylan klebold, came to columbine high school in littleton, colorado, armed with a variety of weapons and thirty homemade bombs. there they opened fire randomly, killing thirteen people before turning the guns on themselves. the date was the hundred-and-tenth anniversary of adolf hitler's birthday, and police later found a handwritten diary showing that the attack was planned with this date in mind. the two youths were notorious at the school as being members of a misfit group that called itself the "trench coat mafia" because they allegedly came to school wearing black clothing and sunglasses. (emergencynet news, 1999). rumor panics immediately broke out in many other high schools, nationwide, on subsequent dates that were also said to be "hitler's birthday" or some such occasion for mayhem. by april 29, the emergency response and research institute reported that its watch center had been inundated with reports of scares coming from all parts of the united states and canada. such cases were especially prevalent in eastern pennsylvania, where at least 52 threats in 22 counties were reported to the err! watch center. an informal poll of my students documented such scares in easton, pocono mountain, wilkes-barre, hazleton, berwick, bloomsburg, mountaintop, and allentown. while the details of the rumors varied, in general they claimed that a group of students intended to come to school and open fire on students or detonate bombs. in many cases, a "hit list" of students to be assassinated was said to exist. in fact, nothing unusual occurred at any location, but here as nationwide the panic was used to justify tough new restrictions or harsh penalties laid out to students found responsible for some infraction at the time. the area had also been affected by rumor panics during the late 1980s and early 1990s. previously, i have described events that were eerily similar, as they occurred in three local high schools in the spring of 1987. in this case, a "satanic cult" was said to have encouraged a local teenager to commit suicide. as their next act, they were rumored to be prepared to attend their high school's prom and commit a massacre there. an intense panic occurred, in the course of which two reputedly "weird" students were physically beaten by a mob, and unusual security measures, including the installment of metal detectors at the prom location, were instituted. one view of these panics, i noted then, was in terms of "hysteria" or "collective delusion," a rather deterministic approach that assumed that rumors provoke a contagious, illogical response from a group. using con ellis cepts drawn from veronique campion-vincent (1988) and joel best (1989), i argued instead that such events were logically based on narrative themes existing, often unexpressed, in the worldviews of those involved. they are, i suggested, a means of telling a story in a structured format through real-life action rather than through oral narration. first, some social unrest or crisis must be present as an underlying cause. a "triggering event" dramatizes this unrest in an "exceptional and traumatic" way, and a following period of collective action embodies the community's reaction to the threat. this leads to a "showdown," or climactic moment in which the legend is "fulfilled." when such legend-derived panics occur, participants can adopt one of several stereotypical roles, and all such activities constitute a performance of the legend through ostension, or the patterning of real-life actions on a shared narrative model.l in the case of the 1987 prom-panic, i noted that the underlying stresses behind the panic were based on widespread assumptions that satan was a real and influential supernatural force in the world and also that teenagers, in increasing numbers, were practicing satanism. hence when a real suicide occurred, it was logical that these beliefs would form the structure of the collective action that occurred in response. in fact, in 1996, another teenage suicide in the wilkes-barre area provoked another similar panic at wyoming valley west high school. this event led to public meetings, circulation of the usual danger signs of satan ism, and a special workshop for local police on the threat of cults, held at the local penn state branch campus (aliens, ghosts, and cults 238-40). more disturbingly, on april 24, 1998, a 14-year-old boy did come to a prom in edinboro, pennsylvania, and opened fire, wounding two students and killing the teacher who was the event's organizer and chaperone. questioned afterwards, he said only that he had intended to make the dance "memorable." sociologist jeffrey victor has viewed such rumor panics as part of a moral crusade set in action by. interest groups with an ultra-conservative, often evangelical agenda. this approach is certainly valid and helps explain why certain themes (such as alleged satanic symbols in graffiti) appear repeatedly in the information circulated during such panics. however, the wyoming valley west scare was unusual in focusing on satanism. a few years earlier, the jim thorpe area junior high school, in a more rural area south of wilkes-barre, experienced an intense panic based on a rumor that "the kkk and skinheads" were planning to commit a massacre. according to one student, it was surprising that the rumor reached the intensity that it did, because the school was mostly white, and no friction between them and the minorities who attended had been felt. nevertheless, when a "suspicious van" was seen parked outside the school, tensions grew to the point that students began bringing weapons to school 22 hitler's birthday for self-protection, they claimed. "teachers attempted to comfort students," the student recalled, "counseling was offered, and local police patrolled the hallways, to insure safety." while many students disregarded the story, he added, "others were in a state of shock and fear, some were even crying." it took some two weeks for the affair and the community to settle down. a similar panic, complete with suspicious van, occurred in the south london suburbs in 1989. this scare focused on a gang called "the chelsea smilers," and officials blamed it not on satanism but rather on violence inspired by fierce loyalty to football clubs (roud, 1989). since such panics have continued to occur, even after the satanism scare died down, they probably are not caused by evangelical interest groups, though these factions can and do exploit them for their own purposes. rather, it seems likely that rumor panics, like other kinds of narrative, have a structure and rule system of their own. set on foot by existing stresses in the community, they express and incorporate these stresses in narrative logic. satanism and ready access to guns have been blamed as causes for real-life massacres and the rumor panics that mimic them. but the content of such rumor-panics suggests that the core issue, as defined by the participants themselves, is the unresolved "jock/head" conflict as it has developed in american high schools. this paper will examine details from a number of these 1999 panics to study them as an emergent form of folk narrative. the gruesome details of the columbine massacre created stress that the panics dissipated in an essentially therapeutic fashion. they involved a complex interplay of ostensive actions modeled after existing traditions. many of these acts of ostension—perpetrating hoaxes and making bomb threats—were criminal in nature, but they did not involve violence, and the ordeals they gave rise to cleared the air and made most parties feel as though they had defeated any similar threat. however, as i argued ten years ago, rumor panics may communicate the seeds of the violence that they warn against. as folklorists, we need to be concerned about whether some forms of folk narrative might contribute to the social problems that give rise to them. the rumor panic took a number of forms when it occurred in north eastern pennsylvania. at hazleton area high school, "the rumor began . . . that it was adolf hitler's birthday and that this is the way they [the killers] were going to celebrate it. the shootings were supposed to occur during the lunch period." one version had it that "supposedly there was going to be a bomb set off at 12:15 the one day, and someone was also supposed to open up fire and shoot people." another added, "everyone at my school didn't want to go to school on hitler's birthday because they were afraid someone is going to come and start shooting." at another 23 ellis local school, "the rumor was that two students much like the two that killed others were planning to bomb our school." as with the 1987 panic, school proms were frequently mentioned as "showdown" dates. at nearby berwick area high school, "rumor had it that on may 4th someone was going to open fire in the school." another student recalled, "there was a rumor that at our prom a group of younger students were going to shoot and kill all the senior football players and cheerleaders. there was supposed to be a list with all the names on it." similarly, at crestwood high school, a story held that "after the columbine shootings that this one kid. . . made a hit list and was supposed to kill the certain few people whose name was on the list at the prom." in the pittsburgh area, a similar rumor emerged, claiming that a bomb would be detonated at the prom at highlands high school. tensions increased when police arrived at the school on a routine drug search, locked students in classrooms and opened lockers. a school spokesperson emphasized that the prom would be more secure than ever, with security guards present to guard locked doors and, if necessary, use hand-held metal detectors. but students responded with skepticism and fear (everett). at easton area high school, the date was an annual school-pride celebration called eahs day, during which a school king and queen would be chosen in a mass assembly. the morning of the event, the school received a bomb threat, stating "that since everyone in the school would be in the same place at the same time, they [the caller and his friends] would go on a shooting rampage and then set bombs off." at most locations, students and school officials reacted with concern. at hazleton, the panic affected the entire district, and "the principal made announcements during the entire week of school that the students have nothing to worry about because the school is a very safe place and they have security walking around the hallways." coughlin high school, in wilkesbarre, escaped the bomb threats that affected local schools. but in a variation on the "satanic graffiti" theme, students came to school one day to find "dwbs" spray painted on the walls. "nobody was sure exactly what it meant," a student said, "but it was rumored that the letters stood for 'die wilkes-barre students.''' at other locations, though, students engaged in a more disturbing form of ostension, calling in bomb threats and leaving death threats and even fabricated "hit lists" where they could be found. in response, school officials found students bringing weapons to school-knives, bb guns, and the sort-for self defense. at pocono mountain high school, for instance, "the rumor that circulated. . . was [that] on . . . hitler's birthday a handful of people picked out and put on a "hit-list" would be killed." these death threats tended to target "'jocks," especially at berwick, whose foot 24 hitler's birthday ball team has won several regional and statewide championships. one of the members of the team recalled, "none of us . . . really cared that much but some of the cheerleaders where worried about it." he added, "also, many of the faculty were worried about it. they were worried because we already did have a lot of bomb threats and they thought that maybe this would be real." at allentown central catholic, another school with a highly visible athletics program, a list appeared of "football players, cheerleaders, and band members that people wanted to kill." a student recalled, "myself and a lot of my friends were on the list." likewise, at crestwood, a student was found with a similar prom hit list. no actual incidents occurred in any of these cases. most students claimed that they personally were not affected by the scare. a wilkes-barre student said, "most people, including me, really didn't take this too seriously. . . . school went on as usual that day and nothing happened. it was apparently just more people trying to copy what went on at columbine." but he noted that "there were some who were a little worried about it." another said, somewhat cynically, "i wasn't on the [hit] list anyway so i didn't care." nevertheless, at all locations many students stayed away from school on "hitler's birthday." at hazleton, less than half the students showed up on that day, and when the school bell rang at 12:15, the predicted time of the massacre, one student recalled seeing one of his classmates dash for cover. at berwick, the rumor caused a community-wide uproar, with both parents and students expressing concern. on the day of the prediction, over half the students in all grades, including elementary school, stayed away. the school also considered canceling the prom, but relented when seniors objected. bomb threats also were called in to pocono mountain, saying that explosives had been planted on school buses. a tennis match had to be cancelled because experts had not had time to inspect the bus needed to transport the team. on easton's "eahs day," an elaborate rumor emerged that the public assembly was to be bombed. a student observed that as soon as students heard the rumor, they began to leave, group by group, and when the king and queen were crowned, only about a hundred of the school's three thousand students and faculty chose to attend. at another high school, the rumor circulated about two disaffected students who were said to be planning a columbine-style bombing and massacre. on the predicted day, a bomb threat was in fact phoned in, supposedly from these two (who later turned out to be innocent). nothing happened, but a witness recalled, "what i remember the most was the scared little face of the students in the middle school. after the bomb scare many of them went home because they were so scared." 25 ellis in most schools, the panic led to shortand long-range consequences. the hazleton area schools imposed a set of new rules, the requirement of transparent or at least translucent book bags being the most visible. the new rule was imposed virtually overnight, forcing parents to travel to nearby cities to get legal book-bags when stocks in hazleton disappeared quickly. in berwick, students were subject to searches when they arrived at school, and there and in wilkes-barre, police were permanently assigned to patrol school entrances. students found responsible for writing false "hit lists" or calling in bomb threats were frequently given unusually harsh punishments. in the case of a crestwood student who fabricated a prom hit list, a classmate noted that "normally nothing would have been done about it, but it was right after the columbine shootings and so they gave him a three-day suspension." ironically, though, the punishment was light enough that the student actually showed up later at the prom. a somewhat more severe penalty went to another student who was counting down the days until he saw limp bizkit (his favorite band) in concert. one day he came to school with a note on his shirt saying "3 more days!!!" in the midst of all the panic, he was falsely accused of being the kid that was making all the threats, and they interpreted the note as "3 more days until everyone dies in the school." he was suspended for 10 days. at hazleton and at allentown central, students were expelled for bomb threats, and at a nearby new jersey school two students were given a month's jail sentence for making such a threat. such actions were not uncommon nationwide. in chicago, metal detectors were installed at the entrances of public schools in the wake of an incident in which a 15-year-old was caught trying to smuggle a gun into school. at the indiana school for the deaf in indianapolis, fifth-graders were seen standing up in a cafeteria, pointing their fingers like guns, while one reportedly signed "i'm going to kill you." the group was suspended for five days under a new "zero tolerance" policy forbidding jokes about the incident. in several areas, black trenchcoats were outlawed, and the state of delaware instituted a new policy under which teens making threatening statements were forced to undergo psychological evaluation and kept under detention until their parents could come and pick them up (emergencynet news, 1999). another immediate reaction to the panics was renewed agitation in the area to have religious statements placed in public schools. attempts to institute public prayer, in some form, have regularly been blocked by courts. 26 hitler's birthday but the martyrdom story of cassie bernal gave local ministers renewed incentive to push for posting a copy of the ten commandments in public schools. the rationale, as one lutheran pastor told his congregation, was that if god were kept out of schools by law, then inevitably satan would enter in. this move linked the panic to many of the mythological concepts present in this area, which had motivated earlier rumor panics. but this development, as i suggested earlier, was probably an effort by religious groups to exploit public concern, in much the same way as political leaders used the event to advance gun control legislation. a closer look at the incidents suggests that neither god nor guns were central to the narratives being told. in my study of the 1987 prom-panic, i noted that so-called "satanic" activities were best seen in terms of a traditional "jock" (athletic-oriented) versus "head" (alcohol/drug-oriented) rivalry. typically, "jocks" identified themselves with "all-american" crew cuts and clothing with patriotic symbols, while "heads" preferred a disheveled look, complemented by t-shirts with heavy metal or allegedly satanic symbols (aliens, ghosts, and cults 211). kathleen lowney, in her own study of teen satanism, also noted that a self-defined "satanic" group in georgia likewise defined its identity in opposition to groups that had gained approval from adults by participation in athletics or academics. in the case of the columbine tragedy, and the rumor panic reactions it provoked, it seems clear that the main underlying stress was unresolved tension between such factions. such an antagonism was clearly present in the notes left behind by harris and klebold, which included phrases such as "we want to be different, we want to be strange and we don't want jocks or other people putting us down. . . we're going to punish you" (emergencynet news, 1999). and the same tension has regularly emerged in other panics, where students who dressed in modes officially defined as "satanic" were subjected to official harassment. in the 1996 wilkes-barre satanism panic, a 15-year-old girl was expelled from high school when, after two teens committed suicide, she came to school wearing a black outfit. it was intended as a protest against the current fad of wearing pricey clothes from the gap, she explained, and her mother backed her claim that she was in no way involved with the occult. "i searched her room," the mother added (aliens, ghosts, and cults 239). in the wake of publicity over the columbine shootings, many nonconforming high school students reported similar official persecutions. jon katz, an online supporter of free speech rights, received hundreds of messages from self-described "oddballs" who had suffered from similar acts of intolerance. one student from a southeastern high school described how a social studies teacher had initiated a discussion in class. the student said 27 ellis that, while he could not condone the killings, he understood the feelings of the killers: "because day after day, slight after slight, exclusion after exclusion, you can learn how to hate." this discussion had an unexpected result: after the class, i was called to the principal's office and told that i had to agree to undergo five sessions of counseling or be expelled from school, as i had expressed "sympathy" with the killers in colorado, and the school had to be able to explain itself in "acted out." in other words, for speaking freely. . . i was not only branded a weird geek, but a potential killer. that will sure help deal with violence in america. (katz) another student, an enthusiast of online video games, was banned from the internet in the wake of columbine and referred to a school guidance counselor, who told the student that this was a chance to "re-invent" himself, to "mainstream." "this whole colorado thing," the student commented, "it's given them an excuse to do more of what started this trouble in the first place-to make individuals and different people feel like even bigger freaks." "this is a whole new level of exclusion," a role-playing game enthusiast from new york city agreed, "another excuse for the preppies of the universe to put down and isolate people like me" (katz1999). again, this was no new reaction. after the local media had exploited the "satanic" element of the 1996 wilkes-barre panic, an anonymous caller left this message on the paper's "say so" machine: you people are missing the mark once again, and making it harder and harder for young people to get help with the real issues they face. this sensationalizing is turning young people against each other in fear. it breeds paranoia, it stereotypes them, and it dilutes the real issues. . . . this amounts to using them and adding to their confusion about who to trust. think about it. ("satanic déjà vu" 8) in fact, an especially unsettling element of rumor panics is the way in which they actually polarize existing conflicts between the two groups. in the 1996 satanism panic, for instance, other students who regularly dressed in black received anonymous letters with messages such as "die, freaks!" in 1999, this conflict emerged most dramatically at central columbia high school in bloomsburg, pennsylvania, where students had to deal with a double shock.3 on april 19, they learned that a popular student, j. p. cleaver, had been killed instantly in a head-on collision with a drunk driver. as usual, the event was marked with a moment of silence and the posting of memorial ribbons in j. p.'s honor. but the following days brought the effects of the columbine tragedy, and the two reinforced each other to pro 28 hitler's birthday duce an intense panic. the trigger event was an effort by two students to enact a similar tribute in honor of the two columbine assailants: two days after the shooting became news, they came to school in black trenchcoats, playing allegedly "satanic" music on their car stereo. they had been at odds with "the militia," a group of athletics-oriented students that j.p. had belonged to, and the actions of the two provoked a series of confrontations with the dead student's friends, male and female. rumors soon emerged that the two planned to murder members of the militia, and the school was thrown into what one participant called "a state of total lockdown," with students' jackets and book-bags regularly searched for deadly weapons. as happened in the 1987 hazleton panic, official sanctions were supported by vigilante justice. three weeks later, a group of militia supporters, who had been trailing the two "freaks," set an ambush for them on their way home from work. the two were seriously beaten and kicked, one suffering a broken jaw and ribs, the other, a concussion. in retaliation, the two students pressed charges against their attackers. but when one of them put up photographs of their assailants and their friends up on his website, labeled "wanted, dead or alive," police interpreted it as a death threat. instead of prosecuting those who attacked them, authorities ordered the two committed to a local hospital for psychiatric treatment. even with the "freaks" temporarily out of school, rumors still circulated that one of them was intending to show up "with a bomb strapped to his back and was waiting until everyone was leaving school to set it off." the standoff continued until the end of the school year, with militia posses escorting the threatened students to and from school and work and shadowing the two oddballs. such, sadly, was the conclusion of many such reactions to the columbine shootings. rather than dealing directly with the tensions that underlie such acts of violence, both official and unofficial actions drove existing factions further apart in a way that may sow the seeds of further massacres. given the widespread nature of rumor panics and the way they adhere to a stereotyped narrative form, school massacres may in fact be best understood as a traditional means of performing these legends. for this reason, folklorists are socially responsible for recognizing the traditional elements in such violent actions and for connecting them to the less violent but still sociopathic elements in rumor panics that end in acts of hate and non-lethal violence. as free speech activist jon katz has stressed: people who are different are reviled as geeks, nerds, dorks. the lucky ones are excluded, the unfortunates are harassed, humiliated, sometimes 29 ellis assaulted literally as well as socially. odd values-unthinking school spirit, proms, jocks-are exalted, while the best values-free thinking, nonconformity, curiosity-are ridiculed. maybe the one positive legacy the trenchcoat mafia left was to ensure that this message got heard, by a society that seems desperate not to hear it. it is unfortunate that, given the political weakness and internal divisions of the folklore community, the people whose messages we should be hearing and interpreting for our culture largely remain unheard, except through bombs, bullets, and the distorting medium of the popular press. the central columbia panic, as ugly as it became, suggests another possible direction. while teachers and administrators, reportedly, were clueless as to how to resolve the matter, meredith, a classmate of the feuding groups thought up a way of providing closure. in addition to j. p. 's death, sadly, a young girl had also passed away during her senior year, and meredith suggested that both seniors could be quietly honored during the graduation ceremony. a local stationery store donated a box of stickers to the school, butterflies to honor the girl, harley-davidson logos to honor j. p. the latter symbol was an ingenious choice, as the logo could allude both to outdoor activities practiced by the militia and to the motorcycle as a symbol of adolescent rebellion. in any case, the entire class, including the two freaks, graduated wearing both symbols. "i was totally shocked to the [the two] wearing them on their caps," a participant later commented to meredith, adding, "i didn't know if it was a peace offering or just a fluke. . . . you would think that they would have just chosen not to do that." "i guess so," meredith replied, "but then again it was our only way of incorporating them into the ceremony." thankfully, cases like the columbine massacre and the "memorable" edinboro prom remain the exception rather than the rule. in many places and in many traditional ways students find ways of working through panics without resorting to violence. as folklorists we could find ways of looking positively at the rumor panics that provide one of the inspirations for such tragedies. there are models of ordeals that provide closure by incorporating all factions into a newly found sense of community, the experience that victor turner (1977) called communitas. in any case, if we ourselves wish to be more than the oddball faction of academia, we need to be aware of the ways in which our scholarly craft can contribute to understanding the social implications of emergent events such as these. penn state hazelton 30 hitler's birthday notes 1. this paper was initially presented at the 1989 afs meeting in 1989 and published as ellis 1990. a revised version appears in ellis 2001 : 199-219. 2. baptistfire: the cassie bernall story http://www.baptistfire.com/ articles/other/cassie.shtml is a useful compilation of reactions, both skeptical and religious, to this story. a book, she said yes, was written by cassie's mother misty bernall and has also been highly promoted in religious circles. see http://www.cassiebernall.org/ 3. details on this panic come from a collection project written in april 2000 by jess shuman, a freshman at penn state hazleton, who was a close friend of many of the participants in this affair. my thanks to her for allowing me to use this material. works cited best, joel. "bad guys and random violence: folklore and media constructions of contemporary deviance." contemporary legend 1(1991): 107-21. campion-vincent, veronique. "complots et avertissements: legendes urbaines dans la ville." revue francaise de sociologie 30(1989): 91-105. ellis, bill. aliens, ghosts, and cults: legends we live. jackson: up of mississippi, 2001 ______. "death by folklore: ostension, contemporary legend, and murder." western folklore 48 (1989): 201-220. ______. "the devil-worshippers at the prom: rumor-panic as therapeutic magic." western folklore 49 (1990): 27-49. ______. "satanic deja vu in northeastern pennsylvania." foaftale news 40-41 (1996): 4-8. emergencynet news. "summary of real-time reports concerning a shooting at the columbine high school in littleton, colorado—04/20/99 to 05/01/99" (1999). available http://www.emergency.com/1999/col-shothtm . everett, wynne. "school officials: enough is enough." [pittsburgh, pa] valley news dispatch. 7 may 1999. available: http://tribune-review.comlnews/valldisp/0507safe.html. katz, jon. "other side of littleton story: anti-oddball hysteria" free: the freedom forum online. 26 april 1999. available http:// www.freedomforum.org/technology/1999/4/26katz.asp. lowney, kathleen. "teenage satanism as oppositional youth culture." journal of contemporary ethnography 23 (1995): 453-84. roud, steve. 'chelsea smilers: interim report on a gang-violence rumor." foaftalenews 15 (september 1989): 1-2. "students arrested amid rumors". the [sharon, pa] herald. 29 april 1989. available http://www.sharon-herald.com/local news/recentnews/9904/ ln042999b.html. turner, victor. "liminality and communitas. "in his the ritual process: structure and anti-structure. ithaca, n.y.: cornell up, 1977.94-130. 31 ellis victor, jeffrey a. "a rumor-panic about a dangerous satanic cult in western new york." new york folklore 15 (1989): 23-49. ______. "satanic cult legends as contemporary legend." western folklore 49 1990): 51-82. 32 the war on youth: a modern oedipal tragedy joann conrad the janus-faced angelic/monstrous child is deeply etched onto the popular imagination. adult attitudes towards children can be typified as ambivalentswinging between the dual images of the threatened child and the threatening child which mirror a fear/fantasy complex and which manifest in a confused and contradictory array of imagery, ideology, and policy. literally emblematic poster children for the missing children's movement allow for a public show of concern and elicit calls for child protection which bolster america's self-image as caring and child-friendly, while the public voting record shows a steady tendency to gut the very social programs that would ensure the well being of millions of (faceless) children. positive images of childhood and youth today appear stable, in fact, only in the imaginary past. there, good kids, nostalgic simulacra of now-aging baby boomers, live relatively uncomplicated and safe lives in the good old days that never were; the promise of the future insured by the uncontested adult-controlled social order. the conceptual category of "adolescence" or "youth" as a differentiated age group, one which is governed by special rules, restrictions, and protection, only fully emerged in the u.s. public imagination in the postwwii period, when the economic and ideological requirements of peace time demanded a longer period of "immaturity," fostering more dependency, leisure, and consumerism—an about-face reversal of the practice of determining young males to be psychologically mature to satisfy the demands of war time conscription (enright 541-59). adolescence thus constituted the third leg of the triangulated american nuclear family— "purified of toxins [and] fully adapted to the requirements of discipline within an advanced capitalist system" (ivy 97). adolescence, however was an inherently volatile, fertile, and ambiguous site-the source of adult fascination and emulation as well as fear. the boundaries of adolescence were also flexible and permeable, difficult to fix and maintain. if, in this period, we can say that adolescence represented an extension of the privileged space of childhood, with a few additional freedoms, the concept a "juvenile criminal justice system" also provided for a legal and vernacular space for "wayward" youth that sought to protect them from the adult judicial and penal systems. but the very articulation of the category of "juvenile delinquent" provided the basis for an official discourse on youth as potentially falling into the category of deviant which was threatening to the institution of the american family. public imagery reflected a dual epistemology in which youths within the normative sphere were extended the same privilege as their younger siblings, while both children and youth outside this racially and class-segregated sphere were consistently denied access to the protected space of childhood. policy responses to this dual system hinged on the concept of "containment"—the increased control, management, observation, and restriction of movement of all youth—in the maintenance of the separate normative and pathological spheres. real-life children and youth today don't "conform to the imperatives of adults and mainstream culture," and have become "alien and sometimes hazardous in the public eye" (giroux 13), embodiments of a racial, economic, social, and cultural future which appears threatening and foreign to many adults. in the past two decades, significant demographic shifts and economic restructuring have signalled a crisis in our collective understanding of youth—the "face" of the future is increasingly multicultural, and children, once thought of as economic assets are now seen more as liabilities or as competitors for an ever-shrinking resource pool. this paper is about the ideological response to this crisis—those mediated and narrated reconfigurations of the adult-youth relationship which can be seen as recuperative strategies which encompass all youth into the potential pathological sphere. in addition, this paper seeks to investigate the convergence of public perception, ideology, media, and politics which has emerged as a generalized and naturalized discourse on youth, and which is manifest in the educational and criminal justice systems. the paper is based on the premise that contemporary popular representations of youth are a dominant form of cultural politics which reinforce the normalization of certain adult-based violent behavior as they demonize and commoditize youth, validating the claim that those relegated to childhood and adolescence –disenfranchised minors—are consistently denied voice and power in contemporary american culture. on april 20, 1999, two students from columbine high school in littleton, colorado, opened fire on their school mates, killing 15 people (including themselves) and wounding 23 others. this, the deadliest school massacre in u.s. history, coming at the end of a series of similar-appearing school shootings beginning in october 1997, has been portrayed as the watershed mark for american youth. events and policy implementation are conceptualized as being "pre-" or "post-columbine." we are now in the postcolumbine age-a new era of "killer kids" and "zero tolerance" where a generalized "columbine effect" determines school policy.l but this kind of rhetoric suggests a causality inherent in the event itself. rather, i would like to suggest that the event makes the story but the story conceptualizes the event (oring). in other words, the meaning that accrues around the event is dependent on the particular representation of it. representations of columbine, thus, constitute the event, and the ways in which we make this event meaningful, the ways in which it is narrativized and represented, conrad 34 the war on youth are dependent on an already in-place communicative system, a set of culturally agreed-upon signifying practices. additionally, the consumers of such images are implicated in the production of meaning, and this shared cultural map pre-exists in an ideological and discursive field which is hospitable to a particular representation of these school shootings. in this ideological field, contemporary youth have been collectively demonized, with individual instances of violent behavior generalized and presented as trends or epidemics. this growing "epidemic" of juvenile lawlessness, addiction to violence, drug abuse, and general monstrousness has been presented by politicians, lawmakers, and news media, and has sedimented into public consciousness—into the stories we tell and the ways in which we order reality. these stories have helped to construct a generation of deviants through what foucault has called a "literature of criminality," affirming that an "ever-present [juvenile] criminality is a constant menace to the social body as a whole" (foucault 142). more and more teenagers, acting individually or in gangs, are running amuck. -. . . juvenile crime appears to be more widespread and vicious than ever before. adolescents have always been violence prone, but there are horrendous crimes being committed by even younger adults. the teen crime wave flows across all races, class and lifestyles (toufexis 52), -crime may be down, but juvenile crime is way up (alter 30). juvenile offenses have soared since the mid-1980s, while adult violent crime rates have remained fairly steady (us news and world report 29). in the last three and one-half years, the crime rate is down, but the violence among young people under eighteen is up (males 82). this public belief in the growing problem of violent youth, which is disproportionate to current statistical information,2 and which is, furthermore, in contrast to most adults' actual experiences, should be seen as what lawrence grossberg calls an "affective epidemic;" a fetishized site, disconnected and disproportionate to its actual worth, ideological in intent, and fed by the "daily economy of saturated panics" (acland 284). since 1997, the highly-exposed and repetitively-aired school shootings in more suburban, or rural, middle-class white schools have been conflated with the already-existing category of the inner-city gang in a perverse affirmative action which criminalizes all youth. the serialized, repetitive 35 conrad presentations of this violence in the news imply that it is "routine," ubiquitous, and is occurring at younger and younger ages. pathologizing and marginalizing such youth by means of psychological analyses and after-thefact profiling and typologizing transforms individuals into "types," their behavior into "patterns," obscuring the common social and cultural milieu in which these events not only arise, but in which they become newsworthy, and denying the fact that violence is "jointly constructed through the interaction of agent and institution, individual and society" (devine 3). we need to read these moves to fix the meaning of youth as ideological, but we also need to understand the processes by which these cultural constructs have become so natural, so commonsensical in popular perception. the narratives which organize our everyday experiences are increasingly being guided by the visual logic of mass media. that is, visual pop culture regulates "conventional" meanings and social practices. thus visual imagery, and the visual logic of commercial media which relies on shallow but repetitive impact which is "cognitively diminished but emotionally charged," provides the basis for our cognitive and narrative categories. we need to interrogate the repetitive, serialized images of school shootings, particularly of columbine—how do these images, embedded in periodic news stories that revisit the sites, tend to attenuate affective response while they build consensus through volume, through constant repetition? the naturalization of such ideological and cultural constructions of youth tend to carry over into policy when the organization of reality that is increasingly structured according to a mediated logic carries over into other areas of public life, notably the educational and criminal justice systems. the representation and popular perception of children and youth as "out of control" and antagonistic toward, if not dangerous to, adults and adult privilege is politically potent, and has spawned a host of mean-spirited, ideologically conservative, racist and ageist policies and pedagogies that are far ranging in scope, but singular in purpose—the repression and restriction of youth. the public perception that youth generally constitute a threat to society has resulted in predictable "solutions" that are increasingly punitive,3 and which call for greater restrictions and surveillance of all kids, such as the imposition of curfews and the use of metal detectors and surveillance cameras in schools, the early identification of "problem kids," and their subsequent institutionalized removal from the social sphere, either through the use of psychotropic drugs or through incarceration—"zero tolerance no nonsense tough love." the latest of these "solutions" is california's proposition 21. 36 the war on youth on march 7, 2000, californians voted 62% to 38% in favor of proposition 21, known as the "youth crime initiative," or "gang violence and juvenile crime prevention act," but perceptively dubbed the "war on youth" by its opponents, most of whom were under-age teens of color. riding the crest of the public panic about "killer kids" that was spectacularly brought to prominence by school shootings such as columbine, this redundant, punitive initiative targets youth—particularly loosely-defined "gangs" lowering the age at which youths accused of serious offenses would automatically be tried and sentenced as adults to 14,4 and the age at which they could be incarcerated in adult prisons to 16, while it stiffens many of the penalties for crimes committed by gang members, although the definition of "gang" is nefariously vague and racist in implementation. prop 21 effectively rolls back a 100-year-old juvenile criminal justice code that sought to protect and rehabilitate children and youths more than it sought punishment or retribution, and more generally follows a growing california tendency of building prisons while gutting the educational system, so that today there are more youths in the penal system than there are attending the university of california. the rhetoric surrounding the initiative is generally presented in terms of "us versus them," those with power versus those without, and adults against youth. former california governor, pete wilson, who sponsored prop 21, spoke to voters' visceral fears of "kids gone bad," and framed the initiative in clearly generational (and false) terms, saying: "while adult crime has been falling dramatically, the same cannot be said for youth violence and gang violence" (ellis b4). prop 21, and its run-away support by voters, is the latest in a series of measures that are fed by special interests and by fear mongering, but that also gain strength and credibility, in part, by tapping into a pre-existing cultural landscape of sedimented folklore, belief, and popularized psychology which aggregate around the intergenerational strife narrative—oedipus. the oedipal complex was primary to freud and his "family romance," and freud, and a vernacularized freudian psychology, has been thoroughly imbricated into popular american consciousness in the second half of the 20th century. accordingly, oedipus has become, according to marina warner, a "dominant tale in our time" (warner 68). the privileging of this tale, and the subsequent silencing of others that place more emphasis on murderous, cannibalistic, and rapacious fathers, and the dominance of the freudian reading of the oedipal tale itself, which obscures the original crime of oedipus's father laius, is a master plot of the late 19th and 20th century, and is echoed in contemporary "get tough" policies toward youth. we have to reintegrate this master plot of the symbolic imagination into the cultural and ideological context out of which it emerged. the 37 conrad oedipal complex as a by-now naturalized psychoanalytic construct is historically situated within the discourses of modern capitalism, and in this sense, the oedipus complex is the "figurehead of imperialism" (foucault xx), one of the most persuasive agents in the modern micro-physics of power. seen in this light, we can begin to divest the oedipus tale of its individualistic family romance status and read it as a metaphor for society. freudians and folklorists alike become complicit in their unquestioned reaffirmation of the patriarchal privilege in their embrace of this tale and its normalizing interpretation which are reinscribed in the legal, social, and political complex that emerged in the early modern period which naturalized paternal authority, infantilized citizenship, and bifurcated the concept of the child, who could be either incorporated or incarcerated in the maintenance of patriarchal privilege. today's rhetoric in support of measures such as prop 21 seemingly upholds such a freudian oedipal logic and is also putatively defensive: protecting us from "the most violent juvenile criminals and gang offenders" (california voter 48), justifying the escalation of draconian measures directed against youth. the classic oedipus begins with a prophecy, as do contemporary narratives which flow from our oracle, the media, and from our prophets, the "experts." according to time's cover article on "teen age time bombs," they are just four, five and six years old right now, but already they are making criminologists nervous [. . .]. by the year 2005 they will be teenagers—[. . .] "temporary sociopaths—impulsive and immature," in the words of northeastern u. criminologist james alan fox. (zoglin) similarly, under the headline "the coming mayhem," la times editor richard rodriguez echoes oedipus's banishment in his demands to incarcerate contemporary youth: . . . a growing population of teenage boys will mean an increase in murders, rapes, and muggings. a new type of criminal is emerging. . . remorseless, vacant-eyed, sullen-and very young. . . we are entering a stephen king novel. we are entering an america where adults are afraid of children. where children rule the streets. where adults cower at the approaching tiny figure on the sidewalk ahead," (rodgriguez 36) vladimir propp's observation that the oedipal "prophecy does not determine the outcome; rather the outcome determines the prophecy" (propp 83) perhaps illuminates a paternal animus that is occulted in the dominant freudian oedipal interpretation. the naturalized status of the oedipal complex in modern discourses has, in fact, reaffirmed this animus 38 the war on youth by only focusing on some aspects of the oedipal plot and rejecting or ignoring others. this is the tyranny of oedipus in which analysis is prior to data. the current focus on a generation of killer kids likewise tends to ignore obvious contemporary statistics to the contrary: not only are many more adults killed by other adults than by children each year, but more children are killed by adults than adults by children and youth in any given time periodincluding the 2,000 to 3,000 children and youths reported murdered by their own parents every year (males 99). couple this with staggering figures of child poverty, neglect, and abuse, along with the systematic abandonment of children in both the social and educational systems, and the case for paternal animus becomes fairly persuasive. clearly there is a generational tragedy, but its story is just as clearly topsy-turvy. the stories we tell and the narrative paradigms we use to construct them both derive and shape perceptions about our relationships as human beings, and "reality" is constituted and acted upon according to such conceptual and narrative models. contemporary representations simultaneously project youth as the object of adult violence and rage, the object of adult moralistic antiviolence campaigns (violently implemented), and the object of adult desires. in our contemporary narratives about collective fears of monstrous youth, and the affective crisis that these narratives have engendered, what we can see are the machinations of hegemony (acland 19), in a recuperative narrative strategy. like the family romance, "family values," that thin smokescreen for a conservative economic drive in which "capital has taken upon itself the relations of alliance and filiation (deleuze and guattari 263)," is more appropriately seen as an adult fantasy which has "exonerated the real exterior family of any wrongs. . .[by] posit[ing] autonomous repression [as] independent of social repression. . ." abandoning the child in order to "substitute the individual fantasy that makes the real parents into so many innocents or even victims (deleuze and guattari 270)." notes 1. see for example: "the columbine effect: 'zero tolerance' sounds like a good way to treat violence in our schools. but does it go too far?" time v154, n23 (dee 6, 1999):51+. 2. in an article in the san francisco chronicle dated oct. 18, 1999, entitled "arrests for juvenile crimes drop across nation," (a2), fbi "figures" are reported to indicate that "juvenile arrests for serious and violent crimes fell nearly 11 percent from 1997 to 1998." 39 conrad 3. for example the "juvenile superpredator incapacitation act," which passed in the house of representatives on may 8, 1997. by a vote of 286 to 132 and which was supported by president clinton. rep. bill mccollum (r) florida sponsored the punitive bill by stating, ". . . there's so many new and increasing and alarming numbers on violent crime among teenagers. . . we need to provide a change, a repair in a broken juvenile justice system in this nation we have one out of every five violent crimes in america being committed by those under 18 years of age..." [not mentioning that 4 out of 5 are therefore over 18, but are not also a superpredator age group]. 4. in california, prior to prop 21, it was legally possible to try a 14-year-old as an adult, but on a judge's recommendation, whereas after prop. 21 this is at the recommendation of prosecutors. works cited acland, charles r. youth, murder, spectacle. boulder, co: westview press, 1995. alter, jonathan. newsweek (28 april 1997): 30. "argument in favor of proposition 21." california voter information guide for primary (7 march 2000):48. clinton, bill. speech. 11 june 1996. albuquerque, nm. deleuze, gilles, and felix guattari. anti-oedipus: capitalism and schizophrenia. minneapolis: u of minnesota p, 1983. devine, john. "violence; the latest curricular speciality." hfg review 2.1 (1997). from «www.hfg.orglhtml/pages/devine.htm» enright, robert d., victor m. levy, jr., deborah harris, and daniel k. lapsley. "do economic conditions influence how theorists view adolescents?" journal of youth and adolescence 16.6 (1987): 541-59. ellis, john. "wilson seeks stiffer juvenile terms." the fresno bee: metro (4 february 2000): b4. foucault, michel. "the dangerous individual." in michel foucault: politics, phi losophy, culture. trans. alan sheridan. new york: routledge, 1988. 121-51. ______. "introduction." anti-oedipus: capitalism and schizophrenia. xx. giroux, henry. fugitive cultures: race, violence, and youth. new york: routledge, 1996. ivy, marilyn. "have you seen me?" in children and the politics of culture. ed sharon stephens. princeton: princeton up, 1995. 79-104. oring, elliott. "legend, truth, news." southern folklore (1998): 163-77. males, mike. framing youth. monroe, me: common courage, 1999. propp, valdimir. "oedipus in the light of folklore." in oedipus: a folklore casebook. eds. alan dundes and lowell edmunds. madison: u of wisconsin p, 1995.76-121. rodriguez, richard. "the coming mayhem." los angeles times (21 janu ary 1996). quoted in mike males, framing youth, 36. toufexis, anastasia. "our violent kids." time (12 june 1989): 52ff. us news & world report (25 march 1996): 29. 40 the war on youth warner, marina. no go the bogeyman. new york: farrar, straus, and giroux, 1999. zoglin, richard. "now for the bad news: a teenage time bomb." time (15 january 1996). from: «www.time.com/time/magazine/...e/1996/dom/ 960115/cover.teens.html» 41 "everybody is their enemy": goths, spooky kids, and the american school shooting panic allen berres one of the earliest details to leak out about eric harris and dylan klebold following their horrifying shooting spree at columbine high school was that they were supposedly members of a clique that called itself "the trench coat mafia." this name was readily snapped up by the journalists covering the story, and by the evening following the shootings, numerous news organizations were running pieces about this group in an attempt to shed greater light on the reasons why harris and klebold killed thirteen people and themselves. although the trench coat mafia clique was confined to columbine high school, journalists quickly pointed out many supposed links between this clique and two larger music fan cultures whose members occasionally wear black trench coats that are found in almost every american high school: goths and marilyn manson fans. a wave of anti-goth, anti-marilyn manson sentiment immediately followed this over-hasty association, motivated by the overwhelming fear that any member of these black-clad legions could turn out to be the next school shooter. the label "goth" (an abbreviation of "gothic") was adopted by a culture of music fans that started in the late 70s and early 80s as an offshoot of punk. goths are fans of a variety of generally gloomy bands, including the sisters of mercy, bauhaus, siouxsie and the banshees, and the cure. they are also known for favoring black clothing, ranging from lacy gowns to biker jackets to band t-shirts. one of the bands that is occasionally included in the list of goth musical acts is a band named marilyn manson. marilyn manson is led by a front man of the same name, an ohio native originally named brian warner. manson has received more radio and mtv exposure in the 90s than any other goth-associated act, and as such he has spawned a horde of young devotees who are not yet aware of the wider range of gothic music. manson fans, sometimes called spooky kids after the original name of the band, marilyn manson and the spooky kids, also often wear black. some goths are marilyn manson fans (this researcher included), but many goths despise manson for his popularity, and many young manson fans will stop listening to manson and follow some other musical fad in a year or so without ever expanding their tastes to other goth musicians. in fact, as of the publication of this paper marilyn manson's status as the bad boy of mtv seems to have been usurped by the rapper eminem; manson's third album, released in 2000, produced only two mtv berres broadcast videos; the first video was only in rotation for a few weeks, and the second has been nearly invisible. although the trench coat mafia apparently included some students who were marilyn manson fans, klebold and harris were fringe members of the group at best. according to dave cullen of salon.com, they did not like manson's music or image, and there has been absolutely no credible evidence to the contrary (cullen 4). there is also no evidence that they were members of the goth scene; the closest connection is that the two were fans of industrial music, a genre that has a lot of fan crossover with goths, especially the german bands kmfdm and rammstein. it has been cynically noted by many commentators (including marilyn manson himself) that mr. manson (and, by extension, the goth scene that he is often wrongly equated with) became the center of the post-littleton controversy only because of his previously established controversial reputation (he was a favorite target of former vice-presidential candidate joe lieberman and his conservative cohort william bennett) and the extensive conservative christian protests against his concerts. these later revelations, however, were no help in preventing the anti-goth media panic over the days immediately following the shootings. two news articles which were published on april 21, 1999, initiated the association of the trench coat mafia with goth culture. one, "'trench coat' mafia spun dark fantasy," appeared the washington post and was written by marc fisher it maintained that the shooters who turned columbine high school into an unspeakable landscape of carnage yesterday were members of a small clique of outcasts who always wore black trench coats and spent their entire adolescence deep inside the morose subculture of gothic fantasy. (fisher 1) fisher goes on to explain that black trench coats are a consistent theme in the gothic subculture that has attracted many teenagers to the poetry, music, and costumes of a scene that ranges from benign fantasy to violent reality. inspired by fantasy games such as dungeons and dragons, gothic has become a fascination of many american high schoolers, some of whom simply dress and paint their fingernails black while others immerse themselves in a pseudo-medieval world of dark images. (fisher 1) we can see a number of propositions here that remained prominent throughout the post-columbine goth panic: 1) all goths are teenagers, 2) all goths are prone to confusing fantasy and reality, and 3) their immersion in dark images has a strong potential to lead goths to participation in murder 44 everybody is their enemy sprees. fisher, apparently inspired by reports of the killers' fascination with german fascism, also associates goths with neo-nazis, noting that "yesterday [the 20th] was hitler's birthday, an occasion for demonstrations, mock funerals, and other macabre celebrations among both neo-nazis and parts of the gothic scene" (fisher 1). in my six years of involvement in goth culture, i have never heard anything about hitler's birthday celebrations; where mr. fisher got his information is anybody's guess, as he does not cite a source, the second article, "opinions run gamut on suspects among neighbors, friends," by jim hughes, is from the denver post. hughes states that a classmate of the boys said klebold adopted the "goth" –short for gothic—appearance in the past year, wearing black clothing and growing out his once-short hair. the "goth" scene draws from satanic worship and medieval europe [sic] barbarism. (hughes 17) in hughes' article we see the first post-columbine association of goths (and klebold and harris) with satanism. this accusation had an extremely long life prior to columbine; it is primarily due to the fact that goths wear black clothing, which is also supposedly the favored color of witches and satanists. while there are satanist goths and gothic satanists, the two identities are by no means synonymous. hughes also seems to confuse our modern goths with goths, such as the ostrogoths or visigoths, the tribes of barbarians active at the time of the fall of rome (for a full discussion of the evolution of the modern use of "gothic," ask any scholar familiar with the development of the gothic novel). in any event, hughes' picture of the latest barbarians at our gates associates goths with violence, ignorance, and, in a vein followed by many other commentators, the fall of civilization. a third news article completed the foundation of the anti-goth narrative; it was a segment on the television news show 20/20, broadcast on the evening of the 21st. this segment, rich in marilyn manson concert footage, featured a police officer from the denver police department named steve rickard. the segment introduces rickard as follows: . . . for the last seven years, steve rickard of the denver police department gang unit has been trying to spread the word of how the so-called gothic movement has helped fuel a new kind of teenage gang white suburban gangs built around a fascination with the grotesque and with death. (ross) brian ross, the segment's reporter, claims that "there have been a series 45 berres of violent episodes around the country linked to teenagers who call themselves goths" (ross). rickard portrays goths as a new, even scarier form of gang: with traditional gangs, their enemies are pretty well-defined. with suburban groups, their enemies are not defined. i think everybody is their enemy. . . . anybody who would gel in their way, i think they would potentially kill. (ross) in this scheme, the goth is even scarier than the usual (ethnic) gang member in that they could attack and kill anyone, presumably even white kids who are apparently minding their own business. in an apparent attempt to be fair, ross states that "for most goths, it's just an act, but apparently not for all" (ross), and rickard notes that "all gothic young people are not the same. there's the gothic scene where kids are just dressing the part, listening to the music" (ross). "just an act" and "just dressing the part" imply that the goth identity is essentially a violent one or that the goth is intentionally dressing to intimidate or threaten outsiders. according to this logic, dressing like a goth or listening to gothic music and then not engaging in violent or hateful behavior is thus a shallow act, devoid of its original meaning: a goth is either a murderer or a poseur. on the april 22, the denver post ran an article documenting various threats made against goths in the denver area. the article features a doctoral student at the university of denver, derek sweet, who is quoted as stating that his research on goths indicates they're not violent. they're not racist. they're not into this whole hate mentality. . . . these are not people who are out looking for trouble. they're just looking for a place to hang out and have fun. . . . but now this group is really scared. and they are angry that they're being alienated and attacked once more just for being different. (briggs and greene 11) although most of the article defends goths from the threats being made against them, the article ends, however, on a much more sinister note, quoting yvonne peterson, a san antonio nurse: "i don't think the gothic movement created this situation at the school. but. i do think that the gothic movement can give teachers in the future some tips. these kids are in trouble. . . . they're looking for attention" (briggs and greene 11). in other words, even if goths aren't murderous, they are mentally ill and a threat to themselves. the strongest example of this anti-goth attitude can be found in articles consulting or written by anti-satanist carl raschke immediately fol 46 everybody is their enemy lowing the shooting. with only the sketchy information about klebold and harris that was available following the first few days of media coverage, raschke concludes the klebold and harris were part of the youth satanist movement that he has been writing about since the early nineties. in an editorial piece he wrote, published in the rocky mountain news on april 25, raschke maintains that the columbine attack was "carefully planned and superbly executed terrorist violence" and goes on to explain that these types of disquieting adolescents have been a routine item in suburban high schools and urban dance clubs since the early 1980s. they have gone by diverse and sundry names punkers, stoners, metalheads, skinheads, headbangers and, now, "goths." they are the minions of a flourishing youth anti-culture, which from year to year, concert to concert and album to album finds novel and creative ways of celebrating the emblems of apocalyptic violence and trashing minimal standards of human decency. they think of it as fashion, if not "art." "revolutionary" art. they aim to frighten and to shock. (raschke 1b) in raschke's view, goths and marilyn manson fans set out to "frighten and shock" the moral and decent world, and as such they are terrorists just as much as klebold and harris were terrorists; he bitterly claims that columbine administrators ignored the "obvious" threat posed by the trench coat mafia because had they acted, "they would be branded by various educated apologists for teenage excess as too authoritarian and intolerant of those who opt for 'alternative lifestyles'" (raschke 1b). it is not too difficult to see raschke's plan for preventing future school shootings in this complaint: make the "misfits" conform to mainstream conceptions of normalcy. they are not protected by free speech or any other protections because they are supposedly using their freedoms only to oppress, threaten, and harass normal people. showing sympathy towards goths or excusing them as troubled or mentally ill just perpetuates the problem; raschke declares that we are so mesmerized by the saccharine rhetoric of the "human services" professions, which has convinced us there is always an excuse for someone's outrageous criminal behavior, that we can't imagine a set of circumstances when someone is self-conscious about what they are doing and, as saint paul once put it, without excuse. (raschke 1b) in this scheme, even those whom ross and his informant rickard would regard as harmless poseurs or yvonne peterson would classify as mentally ill and needing therapy are an "anti-culture," deadly threats to social order and civilization itself. 47 berres a plausible explanation for the widespread insistence on goths as a convenient explanation for the school shooting crisis is offered by robert snyder in an essay for anthropology news: the typical narrative for suburban teens might thus go as follows. one should grow up to be a good student, athletic, monetarily care free (in a dual income household), religious and bound [or college. suburban, middle-class teenage "massacre" does not fit the traditional narrative that has been socialized into north american society. the littleton massacre is a prime example of media attention to an event that does not follow a "traditional" social narrative. . . . high tech video games, sci-fi movies and goth subculture are created as the primary social pressures that corrupt middleclass suburban teenagers. (snyder ii) this "corruption through invasion" metaphor is prominent in carl raschke's work, but there are other examples as well. in june 1999, the conservative publication the new american ran an article referring to "manson's anti-hero acolytes harris and klebold," describing marilyn manson as "an androgynous creature who works at being as repulsive as possible (and succeeds wildly!) [parenthetical aside in original]" whose '''music' revels in nihilistic rebellion, rage, alienation, death, and despair" (jasper). the article goes on to comment that "the columbine killers and their fellow teen sociopaths imbibed deeply of the toxic waste that courses through the culture of death now engulfing our whole society"; this "toxic waste" has filled "the god-shaped vacuum" created by "the militant secularists of academe, the decadent culture vultures of hollywood, and the left-wing activists in the courts and legislatures" (jasper). manson, at the head of a phantom army of drooling, psychotic fans, serves here as a powerful symbol of an invading force that is the ultimate cause of everything that is wrong with the united states. another call for action against the goth menace is she said yes, the story of the supposed martyrdom of cassie bernall, one of klebold and harris' victims, as written by her mother, misty bernall. it was widely believed following the shooting that one of the shooters had approached cassie and asked her if she believed in god; she was said to have said yes, and that is when she was killed. the way misty tells it, cassie was a basically good child until she fell in with an ill-behaved, black-wearing, pink-haired friend named mona (a psuedonym) in her early high school years. one of the key signs that misty and her husband, brad, focused on as an indication of trouble was the music that cassie and mona were listening to: i don't know exactly when it was, but at some point brad began examining some of cassie's music and realized that it wasn't "just" entertain 48 everybody is their enemy ment. despite the innocuous covers, the lyrics themselves often carried an unmistakable message. (bernall 45) misty then includes a brief sample of lyrics from one of marilyn manson's songs, claiming that the group was "a favorite of the two boys at columbine who killed [cassie]." the quoted song is "get your gunn," the two n's on "gunn" referring to a murdered abortion doctor, david gunn (manson). misty misquotes the song's lyrics, however, transforming the song's refrain from "get your gunn" (as indicated clearly in the album's liner notes and on any internet listing of the song's lyrics) to "get your gun" (berna1l45). with a slight misrepresentation of its lyrics, the song is transformed from an ironic commentary on a murder committed by pro-life zealots into an apparent endorsement of gun violence. the possibility that cassie and mona posed an immanent danger to brad and misty's lives is confirmed for misty when she discovers a series of letters from mona that cassie was hiding in her room: there was endless talk about the "sexiness" of black clothes and makeup, the "fun" of contraband alcohol, marijuana, and self-mutilation, and the adventures of a classmate whose girlfriend went to "this satanic church, cult thing where you have to drink a kitten's blood to get in." several of the letters advised cassie to do away with us and thus solve her innumerable problems. one ended, "kill your parents! murder is the answer to all of your problems. make those scumbags pay for your suffering. love you, me." (bernall 38-9) misty and brad see these letters as a sure sign that cassie is up to no good, and they report the children to the police. at a meeting with a police detective and the bernalls, mona's parents don't see what the big problem is. misty reports that mona's mother "could not understand why we had the need to bring [the letters] to the attention of the law, or to involve her husband in the matter," but that thankfully the detective and the investigator took the situation as seriously as we did, and supported our desire for a restraining order to bar mona from further contact from cassie. among other things, the sheriff told mona's parents that the letters were the worst he had seen during more than a decade in juvenile crime, and he warned them that if mona had had any sort of prior record, she would have been called before a judge. still they showed no surprise or remorse. (bernall 52-3) the narrative we see developing here is one insisting on parental authority, specifically that misty and brad bernall were right in splitting up mona and cassie's friendship. mona's parents are presented as gullible, over 49 berres indulgent monsters; misty reports that she was traumatized by their behavior, claiming i can still feel their cold, level stares. nor will i forget how mona's mother walked her back to their car after our meeting, rubbing her shoulder and reassuring her, as if to say "oh, honey, it's okay, the bernalls are just mean people." (bernall 52) the proof that the bernalls acted appropriately comes in the actions of other black-clad trouble children. although mona is never referred to again after her exorcism from cassie's life, misty mentions a case in 1997 when a fourteen-year-old from a nearby suburb "said he was going to kill his parents" and then subsequently stabbed his father the next day. misty notes that "after the stabbing, satanic carvings and other goth trappings were discovered in the boy's bedroom" (bernall 61). she maintains that "in a time when supposedly peaceful middle-class suburbs like ours are breeding children capable of such things, you begin to realize that talk is never just talk" (bernal1 61). the ultimate proof that the bernalls acted in cassie's best interests is that cassie was a devout, genuine born-again christian by the time she was killed at columbine high school by the very type of black-wearing, marilyn manson-listening, murderous freaks that she could have ended up being. this is demonstrated when misty sympathizes with the klebolds and harrises after she receives an apology letter from the klebolds: even if cassie were still alive, we would be able to understand their hurt and humiliation. before she changed directions, we agonized over her in the same way the parents of her killer surely agonize over him now. and even if we could never compare the weight of our separate griefs, we have at least one comfort: the knowledge that our daughter died nobly. what balm do they have? (bernall13l) misty bernall's message to parents is that they must intervene when children rebel; even a minor rebellion or demonstration of a warning sign can have life or death consequences. the overt anti-goth panic has largely disappeared now, more than two years after the columbine shootings. a series of pro(or at least not anti-) goth news articles that followed the anti-goth articles discussed here was partially responsible for the shift, and it didn't hurt matters that the media, for the most part, decided that the gun control issue was going to be their primary target issue. with this is mind, however, the image of the immanent threat posed by the gothic rebel child still retains its power in the discussion of school safety. a particularly vivid example appeared in april 50 everybody is their enemy 2001 in an ap article by dan elliott, "columbine killers icons to some." although most of the article discusses klebold and harris's appeal to generic "angry, disaffected youth," james gerbarino, author of lost boys: why our sons turn violent and how we can save them is quoted as saying, thirty-five years ago, if a kid walked into your school with body piercing and black makeup, almost certainly somebody would say, "we've got to find out what's troubling this kid. . . . adolescent culture has taken on this foray into the dark side. for troubled kids, this feeds their trouble. (elliott) here we see the use of the goth as a potent visual metaphor; even though neither klebold or harris, or any other school shooter to date, fit the description above, the personal style of the goth is still specifically invoked as a symbol of sociological and psychological dysfunction and, simultaneously, as a sort of supernatural evil, as using the phrase "the dark side" inevitably conjures up both darth vader of the star wars trilogy and legends of satanic worship. with the latest bout of school shootings following the shooting at santee high school in california, however, most of the media's focus has shifted to a call for greater surveillance to spot potential troublemakers. a series of researchers have tried to create a typical profile of the school shooter, much in the same way that profiling is used to pursue serial killers. these profilers, especially profilers working for the secret service and fbi, appear to be very careful about dismantling certain stereotypes about serial killers, among them the anti-goth concerns discussed here. for example, a paper written jointly by members of the secret service and the department of education for a 2001 issue of psychology in the schools states: decision makers who rely on characteristics that appear to be more typical or representative of the category, to determine whether an object belongs in that category, may inadvertently render faulty decisions. . . . for example, a school administrator who believes she should be concerned about a particular student because the student wears a black trench coat similar to the ones worn by the shooters at columbine high school would be relying inappropriately on such information to determine risk. (reddy et. al. 163) while this article points out that while a student's making threats should be taken seriously, it also maintains that a student making a threat is not always going to become a school shooter (reddy, et. al. 168). since 51 berres the santee shooting, however, threats issued by students are popularly believed to be an accurate indicator of potential trouble. an ap article written by greg toppo, for example, ends with the following passage: john kotnour, a police officer with the overland park, kan., police department, works in shawnee mission south high school. he said his job often makes him feel like "a small-town sheriff." the most effective deterrent to school violence, he said, is a staff that makes students feel comfortable sharing their fears. "most of the people here at south don't want the liability of letting a rumor go unchecked," he said. among the most important conversations he has with students and teachers, he said, are those that begin with these five words: "this may be nothing, but. . ." [ellipses in original]. (toppo) among school administrators and local law enforcement, the fear of being held legally responsible for a school shooting because a threat was not taken seriously is very strong, and also very understandable, given the lawsuits filed after the columbine shooting against columbine high school and the jefferson county sheriff. in such an environment of fear, the caution advised by the federal authorities is likely to be abandoned in the same way that local authorities ignored national, official skepticism regarding satanic crime in the 1980s and 1990s (as documented in jeffrey victor's satanic panic, among other sources). as such, i am reluctant to declare the goth panic dead; as demonstrated by the previous examples, the anti-goth panic immediately following the littleton shooting is probably best understood as part of a larger move to cement parental control over adolescents and over society in general. it is likely that as long as there are goths, anti-goth sentiment will continue. ohio state university works cited bemall, misty. she said yes: the unlikely martyrdom of cassie bernall. farmington, pa: plough publishing house, 1999. briggs, bill, and susan greene. "suspects embraced world of darkness: com fortable suburbs harbor troubled teens." the denver post. april 22, 1999, a-11. cullen, dave. "inside the columbine high investigation." <http://www.salon.com/ news/feature/1999/09/23/columbine/index.html> (march 16,2000). elliott, dan. "columbine killers icons to some." associated press. april 16, 2001. fisher, marc. "trench coat mafia spun dark fantasy." the washington post. april 21, 1999: a-1. 52 everybody is their enemy hughes, jim. "opinions run gamut on suspects among neighbors, friends." the denver post. april 21, 1999: a-17. jasper, william f. "lessons from columbine high." the new american. <http:/ /www.thenewamerican.com/tna/1999/06-07-99/vol5no12_lessons.htm> (december 8,1999). manson, marilyn. "columbine: whose fault is it?" rolling stone. <http:// rollingstone.tunes.com/sections/new> (august 31, 1999). raschke, carl. "the ultimate outrage as our shock tolerance rises, disaffected youth raise the stakes." the rocky mountain news. april 25, 1999: lb. reddy, marisa, et. al. "evaluating risk for targeted violence in schools: compar ing risk assessment, threat assessment, and other approaches." psycho-l ogy in the schools 38.2 (2001): 157-172. ross, brian. "the goth phenomenon" from 20/20, wednesday, april 21, 1999. <http://www.abcnews.go.com/onair/2020/transcripts/2020_ 990421_shootings_goth_trans.html> (april 24, 1999). snyder, robert. "consider the littleton narrative" anthropology news 41:2, february 2000: 11-12. toppo, greg. "schools tighten security, open ears." associated press. march 13,2001. 53 a fear of adolescent cruising: adult reactions to a tradition that won't go away charlie mccormick growing up in snyder, texas, my friends and i spent our friday and saturday nights cruising—what we referred to as "making the drag." we drove down college avenue-snyder's main strip, turning around in the bar-h-bar parking lot on one end of our circuit and at the sonic drive-in on the other end. were i able to go back and interview myself as i was then, i think i would describe those hours i spent on the drag as being "really cool." whatever the phrase lacks in articulateness, its connotation is unmistakable. cruising was important to me. it was important for lots of reasons but especially because of how it changed me: it made me feel tougher while i was out there commanding a few thousand pounds of metal to drive me around; it made me feel older than my years sneaking smokes and sipping beer from a can; it made me feel like i had sexual potential as me and my car full of male friends imagined—incorrectly as it turned out that the young women out cruising found us desirable and sexy; and it made me feel connected to something larger than myself since i knew from hearing them recount their own experiences on college avenue that my older sisters, cousins, and parents had made the drag when they were in high school. "really cool," indeed. these days, my interests in cruising are much less experiential than they are intellectual, but i still find cruising "pretty cool." apparently, some towns and cities across the u.s. do too since cruising remains as traditional today as it has been for the last fifty years in these places. i have been surprised, however, to find that in an increasing majority of locales around the nation, this folk performance has come to be regarded by many adults as the scourge of their community.1 i explain these differing adult perceptions of adolescent cruising by arguing that as adolescent cruising-one of the traditional and informal performances of white middleclass adolescents due to its socialization and enculturation potential (mccormick)-became appropriated by those outside the target audience (i.e. ethnic minorities and those presumed to be in the lower class) its legitimacy was attacked. therefore, when cruising the mall emerged as a new means of facilitating socio-cultural reproduction among middle-class adolescents, many communities had voices calling for the criminalization of the performance and its performers. ultimately, then, these differing perceptions of adolescent cruising—as traditional activity and as criminal activity—have much less to do with the performance's changing nature and much more to do with the fear of middle-class adults that they will be mccormick unable to make the adolescents for which they are responsible grow up to be middle-class adults. in explanation of this position, let me briefly sketch the relevant datain this case a sequence of events which traces the development of adolescent cruising on the strip—on which i base my argument.2 cruising's golden days began in the mid-1950s due—in large part-to the entertainment industry's strategic use of the hot rod culture as a marketing tool. a flood of movies like rebel without a cause, drag strip girl, hot rod gang, and ghost of drag strip hollow; songs like i get around, little old lady from pasadena, little deuce coupe, and mustang sally; and even texts like the hot rod happy comic strips all exploited the taboo of the hot rod culture in the hopes of attracting a newly emerging and potentially powerful market segment: baby boom teenagers. in doing so, the idea of a tripartite performance of adolescents, automobiles, and commercial strip was aggressively marketed to these teenagers. it became so attractive, in fact, that by the mid-1960s adolescent cruising on the commercial strip had become an increasingly traditional way for adolescents to spend some of their non-institutional time. by about 1975 (though i don't mean for any of these dates to be precise, they're meant to be touchstones which give the historical sequence a rough placement in time3), adolescent cruising on the commercial strip began to be transformed. the oil embargo and the rise of the regional shopping mall were two economic reasons for this transformation, but social and cultural forces—which i will address momentarily—were also at work. by 1985, the future of adolescent cruising on the commercial strip was no longer just in jeopardy, it was being actively dismantled in newspapers and local political meetings around the nation. none of this is to say that cruising is dead or dying, because it certainly isn't. in fact, adolescent cruising was reborn in the shopping mall. interestingly, cruising the mall seems to have followed the same sort of development as cruising on the commercial strip. it was accepted by the middle-class—if not eagerly than at least willing—as an appropriate way and place for their teens to hang out, it was traditionalized, and very recently, cruising the mall has begun to show signs of having its legitimacy challenged by voices in the local community. given this data, adolescent cruising on the strip appears to have devolved unidirectionally through time. in fact, letters, editorials, and articles in newspapers from around the country seem to indicate that, in today's performance of adolescent cruising on the commercial strip, kids hurt each other—even kill each other—and property is damaged. the seemingly levelheaded response to these charges would be to keep adolescent cruising from occurring. but the level-headedness of this response can be challenged by correlating the perception of cruising's increasingly dark 56 a fear of adolescent cruising menace with its shifting demographics: from a performance which was controlled primarily by white, middle-class adolescents to a performance which is increasingly being adopted by those outside the white middleclass. examining cruising's receptions in their historical context suggests that as adolescent cruising becomes increasingly performed by those outside the white middle-class, the white middle-class apparently finds adolescent cruising less effective at reproducing its target population, and it therefore has no reason to perpetuate the performance. make no mistake, i understand that it seems like i am, at best, making an argument that is purely academic or, at worst, naive. cruising, after all, has been and is the venue for fearful activities: assault, rape, homicide, drug abuse, and property damage. this is all well documented (if, i believe, exaggerated in terms of its epidemic proportions and endemic nature). but my reading of the performance suggests that cruising has always had the specter of menace hovering around it.4 the significance of this menacewhether it is seen as pranksterism or as criminal—i believe, is contingent on whether or not the performance is perceived as achieving its reproductive potential. in paul lyons' book, class of '66, the perception of white, middle-class adolescent menace as pranksterism in a white, middle-class town in new jersey is evident. he reports these memories from a middle-age, middle-class informant: ".we hung the assistant principal in effigy the first week he was at school. . . . he was a real nice guy, mr. turner; it was just that we disliked the idea of having an assistant principal. about two weeks after he arrived, we passed the word that we were packing guns, and within two or three days, they did a complete search of the whole school building—we didn't have any guns." dave, roaring with laughter, tells of boyish pranks: "we did a mock shooting on the steps of the local diner. davy hunter had a '57 chevy; he pulled up in front of the diner and got out, and we had these cap guns, but they were real loud; [davy] pulled it out, pulled up in front of the diner, shot this guy on the steps, ketchup packets all over, picked him up off the steps—this was saturday night, busiest night of the week," he interjects, "threw him in the trunk of this car, and sped off. . . we drove [the cops] crazy." (46) even more relevant to my argument, howard and barbara myerhoff reported on the way in which the menace of adolescent cruising—menace as pranksterism—was handled by the authorities in early 1960s california. they wrote that [t]here is a mischievous, often amusing overtone to all these incidents; they are not the kind likely to be malicious or violent. rather, they are 57 mccormick spontaneous and gratuitous, proving nothing but providing "kicks." an incident was observed in which a boy was picked up for drinking and curfew violation. in the patrol car he expressed his concern lest the occasion jeopardize his chances for entering college. the officer, who had until that point been rather surly, hastened to reassure the boy that such a possibility was quite unlikely, and implied that nothing would come of the visit to the station. (285-86) in these examples, the menace of adolescents—while frustrating to adults— is finally laughable—even capable of evoking nostalgic remembrance sometime later—because it appears to be developmental: it was simply what kids did when growing up. therefore, adolescent menace was considered pranksterism rather than criminal behavior. today, however, cruising and the menace which surrounds it is not viewed as pranksterism; instead, it is perceived as a much darker and more dangerous sort of threat. adolescent cruising on salt lake city's state street provides an example of adolescent cruising having its menace transformed into criminal behavior. reporter rebecca walsh described the cruising on state street in 1999 as a night club on asphalt. site of a mating dance of sorts, punctuated by stops for drinks at the chevron, where tailing is flirting, and two drivers exchanging phone numbers can reduce traffic to gridlock. it's a social, at times violent, tradition salt lake city police want to end. using two murders in two years as a catalyst, city police claim cruising state has spun out of control. decades of harmless fun has taken on a sinister cast. ("tracking taillights . . . ") shortly after her report, the salt lake city city council passed a ban on cruising state street (egan 1999: online). reading the newspaper accounts leading up to, during, and following the elimination of adolescent cruising on state street, it becomes clear that the cruising menace which was once pranksterism had become criminalized. assistant police chief roy wasden described his changing perception of the activity like this: "[cruising has] changed a lot in 25 years. . . . there's just a lot more of everything: more traffic, more weapons, more violence" (walsh, "tracking taillights. . . "). salt lake city resident don steiner, in his public forum letter in the salt lake tribune, supported this position as well. he asserts that state street cruising "was not american graffiti, where cute little kids honk at each other for attention; it had become a continual crime scene on weekends. i applaud salt lake city for its efforts to make state street once again safe 58 a fear of adolescent cruising for all citizens" (steiner). because of cruising's transformation into a criminal menace, it seemed self-evident that the performance had to be abolished. therefore, when salt lake city decriminalized many traffic violations, it left cruising state street—along with drunken driving, excessive speeding, and reckless driving—"a more serious criminal offense" (kennedy). the logic of cruising's criminalization, however, has been challenged by individuals who fear that criminalizing cruising only appears to be an appropriate response to cruising's menace. in salt lake city, it was among others—aclu legal director stephen clark who urged city council members to proceed cautiously with criminalizing cruising. he argued, "i'm very concerned about how the cruising ordinance will be implemented and enforced. it's one more opportunity for people who are marginalized in our community to be targeted and harassed" (walsh "new slc law . . . "). and in denver, for instance, it was hispanic voices who noted in an article in la voz that "[ w]hat the media failed to see, but what was clearly evident to anyone on federal [street] over the weekend, was in its so-called "random" stopping of vehicles, the dpd [denver police department] systematically pulled over and impounded vehicles driven by people who were young and brown or who displayed mexican flags. anglos drove by untouched" ("crusade for justice. . . "). these voices of dissent argue that it seems to be part of human nature to fear that which is different and that is what is driving the criminalization of cruising. researcher doreen massey concurs with the general principle: "attempts to forbid behaviour which is different have always been part of the armoury of those who insist on establishing their own behaviour as 'normal' and 'natural', and therefore by some leap of logic to be conformed to by everyone" (127). the implication would be, then, that if cruising's performers were homogeneous they would not elicit the same sort of fear that a heterogeneous group of cruising performers would. according to this reasoning, cruising should have been much more homogenous when its menace evoked, at best, frustration than it is now when its menace evokes fear. james bradley's 1971 master's thesis in sociology on a relatively unthreatening performance of adolescent cruising in san leandro, california, seems to confirm this condition. in san leandro, for instance, there were "few mexican-americans" (51) and no blacks (49-50) who cruised. in other words, a lack of difference correlated with a lack of threatening menace. according to this theory, then, as cruising becomes a more diverse activity (as it had on salt lake city's state street), fears would begin to surface. tim lucas unpacks the process through which the white middle-class fear of cruising becomes a public policy which criminalizes cruising. first, he argues, the word "gang" becomes confused 59 mccormick with "race" (146-47). next, the media creates a moral panic around "gangs" (that is, "minority youth") so as to titillate an audience which assumes it is being informed (152). finally, lucas argues that this moral panic leads to the "terrifying visions of white suburbanites. . . of the migration of drive-byshooting gangbangers in south-central (la) to the more prosperous (white) peripheral neighbourhoods" (152). to stop this migration, cruising becomes outlawed. compelling as this explanation of the adult fear of cruising which is characterized by its difference is at first glance, cruising seems less about the performance of difference than it is about different people coming together to perform the same thing. in fact, cruising is arguably much more about assimilation than differentiation. certainly, there are good reasons for those adolescents outside the white middle-class to want to participate not only in cruising but in all sorts of middle-class leisure activities. as regina austin argues in an article on governmental restraints on black leisure in southern california law review, the appropriation of middle-class leisure spaces and practices results in the creation of "real and symbolic capital" by those nonmiddle-class adolescents who appropriate them. but assuming assimilation is trying to be achieved, the question remains why adults—and white, middle-class adults in particular—would criminalize cruising if difference was not heightened but diminished during the performance. barbara ehrenreich suggests an answer when she argues that the middle-class (she claims an interest in the "professional" middle-class alone, but i think her argument applies to a greater or a lesser extent to the middleclass generally) is not concerned with those who are different per se but about losing its own status. she writes that the middleclass is "insecure and deeply anxious. . . . it is afraid, like any class below the most securely wealthy, of misfortunes that might lead to a downward slide. . . . whether the middle class looks down towards the realm of less, or up toward the realm of more, there is the fear, always, of falling" (15). if cruising is one of the traditional mechanisms for reproducing middle-class behaviors and values, then when this mechanism runs the risk of becoming either "clogged" by too many users or too effective at moving others into the middle-class (which results in either kicking others out or limiting the participation of all those involved), the mechanism itself comes under attack. don merten offers a brilliant case study of how this process is initiated when a burnout becomes a cheerleader. he argues that having a burnout as a cheerleader was so problematic. . . . [because] it violated an implicit assumption that the hierarchies of status categories and activities were congruent. but at a far more fundamental level, sta 60 a fear of adolescent cruising tus categories and activities not only identified types of people but also separated types of people. since status categories and activities were expected to be hierarchically congruent, people who were near the bottom of the status hierarchy were not supposed to be in high-prestige activities. having a burnout as a cheerleader was not just an isolated violation of this expectation but rather, like a taboo violation, threatened the integrity of these two categorical systems and their assumed congruence. . . . in other words, if a burnout could be a cheerleader, was there any limit as to what could happen; were any expectations valid? (65) likewise, when cruising became perceived as inefficiently socializing and enculturating middle-class adolescents, it became feared, criminalized, and dismantled. still, though, the need to socialize and enculturate middle-class adolescents remained; therefore, new mechanisms were constructed to achieve these ends. enter cruising the shopping mall, a landscape which serves as an escape from and defense against intrusions from outsiders—just as the commercial strip once did. i suspect that the recent challenge to cruising the mall's legitimacy as a middle-class leisure activity is a result of middleclass fears over the efficacy of the performance's ability to reproduce middle-class values and behaviors within the target population. given what i've learned about adolescent cruising, i don't think this will be the blow that finally destroys the performance. as much as middle-class adults fear cruising's menace, they also seem to fear the loss of its reproductive potential. cruising, after all, changes people. i know that from personal experience. this is precisely why middle-class adults have a love/hate relationship with the performance. and because of the power in this traditional performance, people change cruising. cabrini college radnor, pennsylvania notes 1. for example, i was surprised to find that in abilene, texas—my fieldsite— cruising has begun to come under attack. this, in fact, was what originally caused me to look to other attacks on cruising around the nation so as to understand the motivations for this attack. 2. this is not to suggest that cruising exists as some sort of transcendent, universal (or national) tradition. rather, adolescent cruising is always localized from popular culture representations even as these localizations build the popular culture representations. this does not, however, preclude me from making general statements about the phenomenon. 3. for example, in my fieldsite of abilene, texas, it is only now—in the late 1990s—that this transformation to the tradition of adolescent cruising is becom 61 mccormick ing manifest in the local government as it considers whether to enact adolescent curfews on the weekend. 4. this inherent menace is a result, at least in part, of the inherent menace in adolescent themselves. as ambiguous figures, adolescents pose a threat to the normative order, and their activities—however tame they may actually be—have at least the specter of this menace hovering around them. works cited austin, regina. "'not just for the fun of it!' governmental restraints on black leisure, social inequality, and privatization of public space." southern cali fornia law review 71 (1998): available lexis-nexis. bradley, james p. cruising the strip: a report on youth. thesis for m.a. in soci ology at california state college, hayward (1971). "crusade for justice angered by actions of denver police." la voz may 14: 6, available northern light's special collection, 1997 egan, rick. "welcome to s.l., and no, you can't." the salt lake tribune june 1999, b1, available tribune archive online. ehrenreich, barbara. fear of falling: the inner life of the middle class. new york: harperperennial, 1990. kennedy, kelly. "gotten a routine traffic ticket? you're no longer a criminal in slc." the salt lake tribune (final) nov. 12 1999: b5. available tribune archive online. lucas, tim. "youth gangs and moral panics in santa cruz, california." in cool places: geographies of youth cultures, eds. tracey skelton and gill valen tine. new york: routledge, 1998. 145-60. lyons, paul. class of '66: living in suburban middle america. philadelphia: temple up, 1994. massey, doreen. "the spatial construction of youth cultures." in cool places: geographies of youth cultures, eds. tracey skelton and gill valentine. new york: routledge., 1998. 121-29. mccormick, charlie. "the origins of adolescent cruising: reconciling popular belief and local history." journal of the american studies association of texas 31 (2000): 64-81. merten, don e. "burnout as cheerleader: the cultural basis for prestige and privi lege in junior high school." anthropology & education quarterly 27.1 (1996): 51-70. myerhoff, howard l., and barbara g. myerhoff. "field observations of middle class 'gangs.'" in juvenile delinquency: a book of readings, 2nd edition. ed. rose giallombardo. new york: john wiley and sons, 1972.279-89. steiner, don. public forum letter: "cruising law needed." the salt lake tribune (final) july 14, 1999: a12. available tribune archive. walsh, rebecca. "new slc law brings tradition of cruising to a screeching halt." the salt lake tribune june 9, 1999: di. available tribune archive. 62 a fear of adolescent cruising ______. "tracking taillights on state street, cops to discontinue thrill seekers on the prowl, cruising state street now discouraged." the salt lake tribune may 23. 1999: c1. available tribune archive. 63 redwood grove: youth culture in a group home jesse gelwicks on a shady street in a california central valley college town stands a tan and brown two-story house. out in front of the carport rises a low basketball hoop; beside it lies a square of scruffy grass. scattered around the house are the signs of children: a basketball, a bicycle helmet, some candy wrappers and a well-worn skateboard. two boys aggressively bounce a ball back and forth while two others stand nearby. the ball skids past the legs of one boy, causing a boy in line to shout, "he's smokin' your butt like cheese macaroni," which sends all but one of the boys into shrieks of laughter. the first boy in line replaces the boy who missed the ball and the game continues. unlike similar driveway games going on around the neighborhood, this game is not played in front of a family home. these boys, whose names i have changed to protect their anonymity, live in a group home i will call redwood grove. from fall of 1999 through the spring of 2000, i worked part-time at redwood grove. the following summer i increased my hours to full-time. as a staff member i cooked and served the boys meals, helped them with their homework, read to them, took them to the park, and played with them. i also enforced rules, gave "time-outs," and occasionally restrained them. my role as researcher was secondary to my role as a caretaker; therefore, i could not be a completely neutral observer. most likely i could never escape the relationship of staff to ward. on the other hand, the boys knew i cared for them, and they grew to trust me. i was a part of the staff/ ward hierarchy; however, my familiarity with the boys enabled me to see their everyday lives and behavior, as opposed to the behavior the boys presented to visitors. this ethnography examines the seven boys who lived in the group home over the course of eleven months (during which time one boy left and another filled his slot). the number of participants in the study limits my ability to make major generalizations about children's lives in group homes. on the other hand, the small number of subjects allowed for informal and formal interviews and in-depth observations over the course of a year. my study builds on previous studies and research on children in institutions by psychologists and folklorists (see, for example: polsky, cohen and eilersten, horan, and mechling). in this paper, after a brief introduction to the group home and the rules and structure that govern it, i discuss the way behavior is charted and the way the staff imposes hierarchy. i then show that the boys in the group home constitute a folk group that creates a social hierarchy of its own in opposition to the one created and maintained by the staff. then i gelwicks explore the various ways the boys construct frames and how their framed relationships create and maintain a social hierarchy. following that section, i present two folk performances—storytelling and teasing—that the boys use for maintaining their hierarchy. then i present two examples of the staff's influence on the folk culture. in the second half of the paper i present a photography project in which i gave the boys the assignment of taking photographs of their important material possessions. i detail the process of taking the photographs and then situate the boys' photographs and perceptions of their material culture in the context of the group home culture and hierarchy. this is a case study of male preadolescent and early adolescent folk culture. perhaps because these boys live in a group home and must cope with an unusual, stressful living situation, they employ an intensified version of the ways children use folklore. part of the lesson here is that boys sometimes try to use folklore and it fails. those areas of failure are instructive. by looking at the successes and failures, adults have the opportunity to monitor the feelings and tensions the boys cannot express explicitly. adults can learn about how boys see and react to the world around them and how that affects their male friendship group hierarchies. redwood grove redwood grove is one of two houses run by a small nonprofit organization that operates group homes for children between the ages of eight and thirteen. the six boys at redwood grove were placed there by the california juvenile court because their parents used drugs or because the boys were abusive sexually, physically, or emotionally (the abuse often accompanies the drug use). some of the boys were born with drugs in their systems. f our of them took daily behavior modifying medication. all were first put into foster care, which did not last because of behavior problems. the facility was designed as a level 11 group home. the level of the group home indicates the degree of supervision and structure provided for the children-the levels range from 8 to 15, with the highest being the most heavily structured and supervised. this group home aims to put structure into the boys' lives by regulating their behavior, providing constant supervision, making sure they have regular meals and snacks, and giving them group and individual counseling, all within a safe and supportive environment. while psychologists such as william pollack believe that many boys experience premature separation from their mothers, the boys at redwood 66 redwood grove: youth culture in a group home grove are the extreme cases; their emotional deficits are much greater than normal. the group home staff assists in repairing self-esteem and selfconfidence. they attempt to curb the negative behaviors and self-hate, but because the group home is an institution with paid employees, not surrogate mothers, the boys must learn on their own as well. one way the boys deal with their past and present situations is through their folklore. from the games they play with each other and staff, to social hierarchies they create, to stories they tell about each other and staff, they are learning to cope with the psychological and social stresses in their lives. redwood grove is similar to what erving goffman labels a "total institution," except that the boys are not completely shut off from the wider society. they go to public school, occasionally participate in city sports or recreation programs, and (depending on their behavior) go out in the town to buy toys, visit friends, or play in the park. apart from school, all outside activities are opportunities that they must earn based on their behavior. most of the time the boys are at redwood grove interacting with redwood grove staff and residents. each day is tightly structured, "with one activity leading at a prearranged time into the next, the whole sequence of activities being imposed from above by a system of explicit formal rulings and a body of officials" (goffman 6). the activities, from the type of education to counseling to daily interactions, are designed to meet behavior modification goals set for the boys. weekdays during the school year are the most heavily structured days. from the moment the staff wakes them, the boys follow a tightly scheduled routine posted in the hallway, including school, daily chores, tutoring, meals and bedtimes. they earn free time in the afternoon if they finish their homework. if they have been behaving well, they can play outside. after dinner, they have free time until it is time to take a shower and go to bed. bedtime is determined by their level on the behavior chart. those who are behaving well that week stay up later and, consequently, earn more free time. before coming to redwood grove the boys had little structure or stability in their lives, while at the same time they had limited control over their lives. in some cases they took care of younger siblings. in the group home, they have both structure and stability, but almost no control. "children are an underclass perpetually in the one-down power position" and "nowhere is this more true than in the residential institutions established for children" (mechling 273). staff create and enforce the rules that the wards live by. the boys act out and rebel against the rules and the staff react accordingly. 67 gelwicks points and privileges a central element in molding the boys' behavior is a behavior chart on which the staff keep track of the boys' privileges and the amount of supervision they require. at any time upon entering redwood grove, staff can immediately determine each boy's behavior by consulting the chart in the dining room. the boys' initials are printed in erasable pen next to their step and level, which correspond to certain privileges; the three most important deal with supervision, video game time, and bedtime. the chart was devised as a series of incentives to entice the boys to try to follow the rules. the boys can move up or down the chart each day depending on their behavior. the staff record how they behave on a point sheet. the boys' behavior is constantly scrutinized. almost everything they do, from peer interaction, to following directions, to going to bed on time, has a corresponding point value. if they do their daily chores, they earn three points. if they make their beds, they earn one point. if they have good peer interactions during dinner, they earn four points. when they go to school, they turn in a behavior log to the teacher, who fills out points, grading them on their school work, homework, classroom behavior, and recess behavior. if they talk back to staff or will not follow directions, they cannot earn all their points. the boys are often scattered across the behavior chart, although they more regularly tend to occupy the bottom half. occasionally, one boy will be a level or two above the rest and enjoying privileges and freedom the others are not. at other times, the boys are grouped together closely. the disparity between the boys' levels and privileges creates a hierarchy in the group. this staff-monitored hierarchy competes with another hierarchy, created by the boys, which is based on power rather than good behavior. just because a boy behaves well does not mean that he has much influence over the other boys; in fact, they often resent his superior position. the boys' social hierarchy works counter to the staff-monitored hierarchy, minimizing the privilege of a high position on the behavior chart. the group can exclude a boy high on the behavior chart or induce him to misbehave in hopes that he will be caught and brought down with the rest of the group. while the boys' hierarchy does not directly break the rules, it is part of what mechling describes as the "folk offensive in the political struggle over 'whose institution is this, anyway?"'(mechling 276). the social hierarchy created by the boys structures the group home culture and frames the social interaction between boys. the boys develop the frames in their everyday interactions, such as playing games, arguing, sharing, teasing, excluding and including others. their tacit understanding of frames and the manipulation of frames cannot be underestimated. while 68 redwood grove: youth culture in a group home they may not be able to articulate the behavior, they understand the subtle nuances and body language that send the metamessages such as "this is play" and "this is a competition that looks like play." pogo and creating frames one afternoon jerod, age twelve, and i were outside playing pogo, the boys' version of the classic schoolyard game two-square. although the structure of the game was traditional, the boys' names for certain hits and rule variations identified pogo as their own folkgame. after two games, jerod asked if i wanted to keep score. keeping score was a common device the boys used to transform a simple two-square game into a more complicated and competitive game in which each time one person got the other "out" they won a point. they played either to a set number or until one finally gave up. the boys could only keep score when nobody stood in line; otherwise, the line rotated in with each "out." during the first game, jerod "played on" for my benefit when i made a mistake, and in return i "played on" for his, thus establishing the frame of a friendly game. i tried to continue that frame by "playing on" some of his questionable "scizzards," the boys' name for a fast and low hit that almost skids across the ground. he did the same for me. at the same time we were playing hard, "scizzarding" and "babying," a common name for the smallest hits, all over the court. our play established that, although this was a friendly game frame, it was also competitive. i won a couple of games and got ahead of jerod. as our scores reached the "teens" (near game's end), jerod stayed just two behind me. i tried to tone down my playing a bit, but he would not let me lose enough for him to catch up. we both played hard, but we also made stupid mistakes to let the other win. we played "the twenties" harder, and finally, jerod pulled ahead when i said i would play only three more games. i realized jerod planned out the whole game. jerod had let me win before, but never as cleverly as this. i thought i was playing in a particular frame that we had both established, but really jerod was creating that frame and manipulating it as we played. he was playing this game to keep me playing as long as i would. he manipulated me through the frame, just as a con artist might hustle a sucker; only instead of money, all jerod wanted was one-on-one attention. boys often connect with others through actions such as initiating a game with a boy with whom they want to become friends (pollack 182). jerod sought connection with the other boys and staff through pogo. for a period of eight to nine months the boys played pogo more than any other 69 gelwicks game in the house. jerod often initiated those games, asking another boy or staff to come outside with him after he finished his homework. pogo provided a medium for interaction. jake, age eleven, approached pogo differently than jerod. jake was extremely competitive. jerod, who loved to play pogo, would often try to adapt to whomever he was playing—to play at the same level of competitiveness. one afternoon jake and jerod were playing pogo and jake took more advantage of the rules concerning lines, "do-overs" and interference than did jerod. jake was quick to point out when jerod's hit was out of bounds, and jerod was willing to go along with that. jerod did not mention when a ball should have been called "interference" or "out back boundary" or "liner" or any of the other ways the boys identified when they should "redo" the point. jake manipulated the frame so that he was winning. jerod manipulated the frame so jake continued to play; jerod's desire for connection superseded his desire to win. play involves a negotiation of frames, and games can be personal or impersonal, depending on the frame the players establish. in some cases, the play frame extends beyond the single game and is reflective of the players' relationship. in the example above, the game was situated in the middle of a restructuring of the boys' social hierarchy. jake was vying for the opening position at the top the hierarchy as joshua, age thirteen, was leaving. jerod, who was older than jake, did not make any strong attempts at that position. similar to the way he played pogo, jerod took a less competitive approach to the social hierarchy. through pogo, jerod developed methods of interaction he could use outside of the folkgame. symbolic violence: joshua and thomas the boys maintained and challenged their socially constructed hierarchy every day in the way they interacted with each other. in turn, the hierarchy framed their interactions. as they stayed within the frames created by the hierarchy or reinforced those frames, the hierarchy's structure strengthened. in the following examples, the boys construct and maintain those frames through a series of interactions. one friday, all the boys, except for thomas, age eleven, who was staying at the house due to his poor behavior, were in the van about to go to their weekly counseling group for victims. before the van could pull out of the driveway, thomas ran out to the van to try to join the group. thomas and joshua started exchanging words. joshua, who was sitting in the front seat, lunged through the window with his fists clenched and screamed at thomas that he was going to "kick his ass." joshua knew that 70 redwood grove: youth culture in a group home he could not attack thomas (the car door was in the way), but he could make a dramatic display by lunging out of the open window at thomas yelling and waving his fists. joshua displayed his power and potential for violence in front of the other boys without risking much. he would lose peer interaction points and perhaps drop a level for threatening behavior, but he did not actually make contact with thomas. joshua was playing the role of the "tough guy" without actually having to prove it, a behavior characteristic of what pollack describes as the "mask" of masculinity. joshua's stylized performance of aggression may actually be "an invisible shield, a persona to show the outside world a feigned self confidence and bravado, and to hide the shame he felt at his feelings of vulnerability, powerlessness and isolation."(pollack 5). joshua's display left the other boys to decide whether it was a bluff or he actually was that mean and vicious. joshua framed the boys' relationship with him in terms of his own projected violence, thereby taking the dominant role in their future interactions. this frame would help joshua maintain his position at the top of the social hierarchy, rewarding him for his masculine image. thomas and francisco the week following joshua's display of aggression, another incident of symbolic violence took place. on the way to group, thomas, who was having yet another horrible day, provoked francisco, age 10, into exchanging rapid insults. before the van had left the home block, the name-calling had escalated to the point where thomas was lunging at francisco, who was sitting in the seat in front of him. i was sitting next to thomas, so i easily held him back, just as the car door had held back joshua. the previous week's events made an impression on thomas. he tried to recreate the dangerous and powerful image that joshua had created without actual physical violence, just as joshua had done. thomas followed the same pattern by choosing a target lower on the social hierarchy than he and by choosing a time when he would be held back from actually making contact. the stylized symbolic violence by joshua and thomas sent a message to the other boys about potential actual violence, as well as a message about the structure of the social hierarchy. joshua demonstrated symbolic violence as an effective means of displaying power. when thomas copied joshua's behavior he did not move up the social hierarchy as much as reinforce people's existing positions within the social hierarchy. he solidi 71 gelwicks fied his position over francisco as well as reinforcing joshua's behavior and position. maintaining the hierarchy: thomas and the old cereal one of the various ways of maintaining position in the social hierarchy at redwood grove was teasing. the teasing was structured around the boys' fears, which were translated into negative attributes that induced shame, the fundamental control mechanism boys use to create and maintain their group culture (pollack 33). insults about being gay, feminine, weak, contaminated, dirty, different, or without friends, were rooted in the boys' fears about sexuality, masculinity, safety, inclusion, protection, love, and the shame of being identified as having any negative or unmasculine characteristics. a reoccurring theme in their teasing was centered on the boys' fear of dirt and of being contaminated by their food. this particular fear of contamination manifested itself in two ways at the group home. first, the boys were uncertain of the purity of their food. they rarely saw it prepared, and they were not given a choice about what they would like to eat. they were also uncertain about what it would do to them. they had only a vague understanding of the cause and effect of eating spoiled food. second, the boys used that uncertainty to control. they exercised control by not eating foods they felt were spoiled. the control exercised by one boy upon another, exemplified in their teasing, is a form of social exclusion. the next few examples trace a particular tease from its possible conception and show how that tease was modified over time and became absorbed into the boys' folklore. one morning, when thomas was on the highest level and also the last to the breakfast table, he poured himself some cereal that was past its expiration date, which he did not notice. the other boys had already seen the date and avoided the cereal. they waited until thomas had taken a bite and then chimed in together about how he had eaten old rotten cereal. they went on and on. "moldy cereal! how could you eat that?" thomas left the table crying and would not eat breakfast. for the rest of the day, the boys continued to tease thomas, their teasing ranging from overt to more cryptic forms in which the boys would merely mention a single word that referred to the morning's events. they inserted the words "cereal," "mold," and "rotten" at the end of sentences, or they just casually said the word alone. the boys manipulated and advanced the tease so that it was only apparent to those in the group. a staff 72 redwood grove: youth culture in a group home person arriving for the afternoon shift might not pick up anything until thomas reacted to the teasing. only through close observation of the boys' behavior could a staff member recognize the teasing. the tease ostracized thomas from the group and in doing so united the group against him. while the group as a whole, all six boys, may not have grown stronger, the group of five did. despite any previous conflicts, they connected by ostracizing one. they could all agree that he was not worthy of being part of the group because the old cereal contaminated him. they were also united by level. thomas was higher on the behavior chart than everyone else. he was at the top of the adult-regulated hierarchy. the group reminded him that he was not better than the rest. while he might be at the top the hierarchy on the behavior chart, he was, at least for that situation, at the bottom of the folk social hierarchy. as teases, such as the thomas cereal tease, lasted beyond the incident and beyond the day of the incident, they entered the group folklore. like a story that everyone in the group knew, the cereal tease became a tease that everyone knew, remembered, and reacted to. as long as they used some version of the tease, it stayed alive. because everyone knew it and because it had already been encoded on the first day, it was easy to maintain. when the boys teased thomas about the old cereal, they did not need to recite the whole tale, just enough for thomas to know what they were teasing him about. thomas and the napkin a perfect example of how this encoded tease was carried on happened when the boys were eating dinner a few weeks after the initial event. joshua and bobby, age 10, were both on the lowest level of privileges and seated on the perimeter of the room, while francisco, jerod and thomas were eating at the table. thomas asked for the salt. joshua and bobby chimed in asking for some too. a staff member gave the salt to thomas and asked him to pass it on to them when he was finished. he walked over and handed it to bobby. instead of just taking it from thomas, bobby held a napkin so as not to touch the saltshaker. jerod and joshua erupted into laughter, and thomas ran crying out of the room. the effects of the napkin tease were the same as the initial event: thomas left the room crying. but the actual teasing was limited to a simple action rather than a barrage of remarks. the tease was just as powerful even though it was simplified. thomas later explained what happened. the teasing had begun earlier in the week when joshua started acting as if thomas were contaminated, and he would not touch objects thomas had touched. bobby only partici 73 gelwicks pated in the teasing for the first time at that meal. at some point the boys had made a big deal about thomas and his contamination, so much so that they only had to act out part of it—the napkin grab and the laughter—to send thomas into tears. the napkin incident was not completely a direct result of the cereal incident. once the cereal incident became encoded and became part of their folklore and folk culture, the boys mixed that event with other similar events. the events previous to the cereal incident laid the foundation for the cereal tease to be as powerful as it was. the cereal may not have been the beginning of the tease, but the spoiled cereal theme became part of an ongoing and developing folklore about contamination and thomas. joshua and storytelling around the same time, a story emerged that joshua told. it may have been told before or may have been created on the spot for the particular situation. its validity is uncertain. joshua recalled how thomas had been forced to dig in the trash by an older boy when thomas had first moved in. joshua described thomas's action with disgust and contempt. as he told it, the other boys began to remember the incident and some tried to add details, but joshua kept control of the story, repeating or dismissing what they added. even bobby, who had not been there, thought he remembered the event. joshua told the story to illustrate thomas's contamination. the story was characteristic of other folklore that had grown out of past events at redwood grove. joshua told the most stories or, rather, the most successful stories. he was the oldest and had been at redwood grove the longest. he was also at the top of the group hierarchy. his perspective could not be disputed. often the stories were exclusive. they were a roll call of who was there, unifying and empowering those included, a reward for their time spent at redwood grove. thus, when bobby remembered the event, he was ridiculed because he was not there and therefore not part of the group that could remind thomas, though he could still laugh at thomas's behavior. the stories would often go back to a time when a few of the boys were not there yet, such as the time one of the old residents threw a bike on the roof or when all the residents were on the highest level on the behavior chart at one point the previous summer. the bike incident would be recalled to make comparisons to current behavior, to show that although francisco punched and hit staff, his behavior was not nearly as bad as the behavior of previous boys. the "high-point-in-behavior" story would 74 redwood grove: youth culture in a group home be recalled when they were dealing with difficult times on the behavior chart during school. and, of course, there were stories used to tease. the stories served joshua well, reminding the other boys that he was on top in size, age, and time served, and that those could not be challenged. when joshua left, storytelling, for the most part, died. jake tried to revive it to help maintain his position at the top of the group hierarchy. while jake was the strongest, he was not the oldest, and he had only come a month before thomas, so his exclusive stories were limited. he never developed his storytelling skills, so he resorted to other methods. creating new ways to tease while the boys were dealing with each other and their social organization, they also had to deal with the staff, who were constantly observing and intervening. the boys' teasing and storytelling had to work around the staff. teasing in general was not condoned and usually punished, but impossible to stop. when the staff picked up on teasing, the teasers were given appropriate punishments, often separation for a short period of time. staff would also try to squelch continual teases such as the cereal tease and negative storytelling, both of which were virtually outlawed by increasing the penalties for whoever repeated them. limited by his lack of storytelling ability and outlawed forms of teasing, jake created a new form of teasing. one day at the table during afternoon snack, jake began quizzing the other boys in spelling or mathematics. he aggressively questioned thomas, and brought thomas down, as he stumbled over the answers. the other boys were questioned as well. as they struggled to come up with answers, jake positioned himself at the top of the hierarchy. at the time, jerod and francisco were both at the bottom of the behavior chart and were not allowed to interact with the group, which was fortunate for jake, since they were two of the smarter boys and jerod was a grade ahead of jake. the second time jake tried quizzing the boys, jerod was able to participate and jake's questioning was less effective because jerod knew the answers. the new approach stood out in contrast to other forms of teasing because it positioned one boy more or less opposed to the rest of the boys. a less powerful boy could have the group turn on him, ostracizing him from them. as it was, jake manipulated the situation to put others down and build himself up by comparison. although he was neither the oldest nor (probably) the smartest, he was able to make himself seem the smartest by not allowing himself to be questioned. as long as he controlled the questions, he always had the right answer. 75 gelwicks unequal power relationships: "steve" folklore the fears the boys dealt with ranged from abstract—such as abandonment—to the immediate fears about particular people and places. the way the boys dealt with unequal power relationships was similar to the way they dealt with fear; they incorporated it into their folk culture. the following example illustrates how the boys of redwood grove integrated a power conflict with a staff member into their joking and teasing. one staff member, steve, had a very confrontational manner. he constantly displayed his power over the boys by the way he told them to do their chores and pick up their things, bossing them around rather than asking. he made extra rules, like not letting boys on the lowest behavior levels change the television channel. steve induced fear in the boys, not by hurting them, but by wielding his authority punitively. if they came in conflict with him, they received harsh consequences, often the extreme consequence for the behavior. steve got results, but at the expense of shoving the boys' powerlessness in their faces. the boys dealt with steve by incorporating him into their vernacular folklore. the boys talked about steve when he was not around. his name was used most commonly as an insult, aimed at each other as well as a staff member. for instance, one boy would tell the other that he was "as fat as steve" when they commented on how much they were eating, which was a comical insult most often heard around the table at meals. an awkward movement, like hitting a ball poorly, was mocked by saying the person hit the ball so badly, he hit it "like steve." the boys diminished steve's power by making him the object of their jokes and insults. steve was a negative figure that the boys could agree on. when he was on his shift, they might obey his orders, but when he was not around, he was mocked. while the boys complained when other strict staff came on shift, the other staff were not ridiculed the way steve was. ridiculing steve, the boys felt powerful. like all children in institutions, the boys at redwood grove were able to find power in seemingly powerless situations. they found satisfaction in distorting the adult authority. where there was little power available to them, they invented new forms, such as when jake asked a few of the boys seemingly legitimate questions in math and spelling, knowing they wouldn't be able to answer them. he might have been attempting to recreate the power relationship he felt between the teacher and student. storytelling and teasing are time-honored ways children establish a social hierarchy outside adult control. the power of them is heightened in a group home setting where the boys spend almost all their time together and have so few other possibilities for participating in alternative social hierarchies. 76 redwood grove: youth culture in a group home behind the boys' hurtful teasing, i believe, is their anxiety about the behavior-chart hierarchy. the behavior chart draws attention to the boys' positions in relation to one another, creating a competitive atmosphere that promotes social ranking. they react to the behavior-chart hierarchy established by the adults, and in an attempt to undermine it, they create a new social organization in its image. rather than the boy at the top being rewarded by his peers for his good behavior, the rest of the group punishes him. he is also encouraged to play the role of the victim, for if he stands up for himself, responding with anger or aggression towards the teasing, he risks dropping on the behavior chart. adults can intervene and impose control based on behavior charts and points, but the social hierarchy framed by the boys is also a very powerful force in shaping the children's experiences. material culture in a group home along with the social frames that regulate the boys' experience is the material setting that is the background for their interactions. from the house they live in to the coveted gameboy games in their toy chests, their material environment effects their social culture and hierarchies. when i first entered the group home, i began to make a list of what seemed to be the important items in the boys lives: the round red rubber ball, video games, bicycles with shocks, pokémon paraphernalia, batteries, and other items that could be borrowed or traded. the most easily identifiable items of importance were those in highest demand. the importance of personal items of comfort and pleasure, such as teddy bears and worn action figures, were harder to judge since they were largely ignored by all the boys except the owner. as i became aware of their material culture at redwood grove, i sought to answer the question posed by jon wagner in a recent edition of the journal visual sociology, namely, "what aspects of their own material and social circumstances do kids notice and why?" for a researcher to answer that question, he or she must feel confident in having a child's perspective. to feel confident i had the perspective of the boys in the group home, i relied on three methods of obtaining information: observation, interviews, and photography. the boys' photography allowed me to see through their eyes, and the interviews gave the boys an opportunity to explain what they saw. the object of my project was to have the boys record the toys, memorabilia, gifts, and mementos that were important using their own camera. rather than observe what toys were played with the most, what objects 77 gelwicks were the most treasured and valued, i placed the decisions into the hands of the children. i built upon the questions raised and approaches taken by photographers jim hubbard, lauren greenfield (see levin), marjorie faulstich orellana, wendy ewald, and the young photographers they worked with. these professional photographers sought to empower youth by giving them control of the camera to capture their world on film and speak to people through their photographs. osofu washington, a young photographer who worked with greenfield on picture la, said "if people can understand our landmarks, they can see things from our point of view" (levin 4). the premise of my photography project was based on washington's words. by following the steps of seeing the photograph and understanding the photograph, then hopefully it is possible to see things from the child's perspective. the boys at redwood grove faced specific restrictions, which set the parameters of the photography project. they faced behavior-level restrictions, such as limitations on where they could go, what items were available to them, and when they could take the photographs. items left with their parents were unobtainable, as well as items confiscated by staff. the boys on the lowest behavior level had most of their toys confiscated. some of the boys could not leave the house or the yard. they were also limited to thirty-six photographs. the boys may have also decided not to take some pictures because they would be sharing these photographs with other people. they may have selected their photographs to suit what they thought their audience might want to see. they may have been ashamed to identify belongings that they felt were not masculine enough, even though those items were important to them, similar to the way the boys in pollack's study felt ashamed of expressing emotions and feelings they felt were feminine. i explained the project to the boys in short information sessions right before giving them the disposable cameras. they were told to focus on "stuff," not people, but they could include people as they saw fit. i asked them to take photographs of the things that they felt were important to them. they were given no extra supervision when they used the cameras and possibly even a little more freedom by the staff. when they completed their roll of film, they returned the cameras to me, and i took the film in to be developed. before i brought the photographs back to the boys, i went through them and made a list of the photographs. once i had gone over their pictures a couple of times and made myself familiar with them, i went back to redwood grove and interviewed the boys as we looked over their pictures. the interviews were taped and then transcribed. after the interviews, the boys were given their photographs in a flipbook to keep. i 78 redwood grove: youth culture in a group home followed up on the project by checking to see how they manipulated their booklets. taking the photographs on the day the boys received the cameras, they came into the office in twos. jake and bobby came first. they listened to the directions and expectations, and then i asked a couple of different times and in a couple of different ways if they understood. i could see their ears turned off as their minds started racing with ideas of what they would photograph. when they saw the cameras, they became restless and fidgety, their eyes darting about excitedly; their complete attention was on the yellow cardboard camera in my hand. they immediately wanted to touch the cameras, fool with them, and begin taking pictures. their reaction was similar to the reaction hubbard (shooting back) received when he worked with children at a shelter. they also wanted to know if they would get to keep the cameras and were disappointed when they heard the cameras were disposable. as i explained how to use the flash, they were bouncing in their seats, anxious to leave the office and take pictures. finally, i opened the door and they ran out clicking and winding through the hallway. nicholas, age 8, and thomas came in next. nicholas, who had already seen jake and bobby run out with cameras, was anxious to get his. thomas came into the office immediately exclaiming that he had not done anything wrong. obviously, sitting in the office with a staff member created a certain frame for the situation, possibly augmenting the boys' anxiousness to leave and take pictures. nicholas and thomas were just as excited as bobby and jake. the boys did not want to listen to any directions. the power they would have with the camera seemed intoxicating. unfortunately, jerod and francisco were not on high enough levels to receive cameras; both were at the bottom of the behavior chart. it took jerod two days to move up to a high enough level to receive a camera. unlike the other boys, jerod was much calmer and did not bounce around, and he asked questions. jerod's approach may be reflective of his age and maturity or the diminished excitement of the group now that most had completed their roll of film. it took francisco two weeks before he raised himself from the bottom level and could participate in the project. unlike jerod, francisco wore his excitement on his face; his eyes and his grin widened when he saw the camera. the first four boys finished within the day, three within the first one to two hours, one within the first half-hour. when francisco finally received 79 gelwicks his camera, he finished it within the day, probably within a couple of hours judging from the photographs he took. when i picked up jerod's roll, five days after i initially gave it to him, he still had a couple of pictures left, which he promptly took. the younger boys finished their rolls of film more quickly than the older boys. nicholas, the youngest, finished his first. jerod, the oldest, finished last. what led the boys to take their photographs so quickly? jake's roll in particular captured a stream of consciousness perspective, as if the viewer of his photographs was looking through his eyes for five minutes. the boys' excitement and desire surrounding the taking of photographs took on an almost libidinal quality—the instant gratification of taking a photograph, each one exciting and satisfying in its own right. rather than seeming in competition with one another, the boys seemed to feed off each other's energy. after taking a photograph of the toys on his dresser, nicholas raced outside to the bike rack, on the way snapping a photograph of francisco posing holding a pokemon. the desire to snap off as many pictures as possible may also be linked to the uncertainty the boys felt about how long they would have the cameras. if they dropped to the bottom of the behavior chart, the cameras, along with their other toys, could be taken away. if they shot quickly, there would be nothing left for staff to confiscate. unlike the other boys, jerod may have savored the experience, or he simply was not caught up in the excitement and forgot about the last few pictures. during the interviews, which i did individually, a couple of the boys behaved differently than usual two of them used sweet baby voices and attitudes while answering the questions. they all demonstrated their best behavior, although bobby became a little silly during parts of his interview. their behavior may reflect their enjoyment of one-on-one attention from a staff member as well as feeling safe from ridicule from others when they were explaining their photographs. in addition, they knew an unknown outside audience would see and hear the results of the project, and they wanted to display their best behavior. analyzing and interviewing not surprisingly, none of the boys followed the directions completely. rather than a collection of photographs of toys and other items the boys' treasured, their photographs ranged from a dead rat to another boy's "special friends" (adults from the community who act as personal mentors), from pictures of other boys to pictures' of their toys, from the staff at 80 redwood grove: youth culture in a group home redwood grove to redwood grove itself. surprisingly, the photographs that proved the most descriptive about the boys' material culture, their social culture, and their experience at redwood grove were the photographs that fell outside the originally stated guidelines. nicholas took twelve pictures of other people's stuff, their toys, their rooms, and their posters. while some of the pictures included those boys who owned the stuff, making it unclear as to the focus of the picture, the pictures were still of items that did not belong to nicholas. it is possible that nicholas was merely taking photographs of his environment—the other boys and their stuff are major parts of that environment—but the interview revealed possibly another motivation. when asked why jake's red version pokémon gameboy game was important to him, nicholas answered, "because it is very important to me and i'll probably get it. . . for my birthday," which was untrue. nicholas's statement translates to "i want it." besides the red pokémon game's being a highly valued item in the house, jake first took nicholas under his wing when nicholas moved in, letting him play his pokémon games and gameboys whenever nicholas wanted. for nicholas, the game may have had a double importance; it is fun to play, everyone likes playing it, and it also symbolizes his friendship or at least connection with jake, the most powerful boy in the house. nicholas similarly describes a photograph of thomas's radio. "i took a picture of that because i want that." he nodded when asked if he wanted francisco and nathaniel's bikes. this theme continued as he talked about and explained the rest of his photographs. real insight came when he was explaining a photograph he took of some of bobby's toys on bobby's dresser. while listing the items in the photograph, he ended the list by saying "i want deodorant" and when asked, "you don't get deodorant?" he responded by blurting "yes, i will!" while obviously nicholas misunderstood the question, his outburst reveals his desire for deodorant goes beyond material desire. the deodorant represents more than just another boy's object. nicholas is the youngest in the house. he is smallest, the last to arrive, and at the bottom of the social hierarchy. the deodorant represents growing up and becoming bigger like jake and jerod, who are entering puberty. deodorant represents one of the signs that he is bigger, older, and more powerful. boys towards the top of the hierarchy wear deodorant. the boys took over forty percent of their photographs of people. those pictures fall into three categories: those of themselves, those of other boys in the house, and those of adults such as staff and special friends. the two boys who took the most pictures of other boys in the house were nicholas and thomas. eighteen out of twenty-four of thomas's photographs were 81 gelwicks photographs of people, and eleven of those eighteen included other boys. nine of nicholas's photographs were of people, and six of those were of the other boys. the rest of the boys only took one picture with other boys in it. jake represents the other end of the spectrum; he took only one photograph of other boys out of eleven that were of people. the two boys lowest on the hierarchy took the most pictures of the boys, and the highest on the hierarchy took the least. jake may not have felt like he had to "suck up" or even show that he liked the other boys because he was at the top. he may not have even thought to take pictures of them, although that is unlikely since they all were clamoring to be photographed. it did not matter if they liked him. he was the strongest and the toughest. nicholas and thomas, on the other hand, were not particularly tough or strong, and both were struggling to move up the social hierarchy. nicholas and thomas may have been trying to build connections with jake and the other boys by demonstrating their friendship. they may also have admired the other boys and wanted the power they had. thomas devoted two of his photographs to jake and jake's special friends, and then just jake's special friends alone. while jake may be important to thomas, jake's special friends are not. they do not spend much time around redwood grove playing with the other boys; instead, they take jake out somewhere, to their house or the movies. unless thomas enjoyed jake's absence, the special friends had no relationship to thomas. in the interview, thomas could not articulate why he took the photograph beyond saying "jake's special friends are important because they're someone. . . [and] every living thing is important." thomas did not even have a reason why they are special to him. why would thomas take the photographs? thomas has his own special friends. in fact, he has the most special friends of any of the boys in the house. jake and his special friends may be thomas's picture of the relationship between a boy and his special friends, a type of relationship that thomas valued. jake's special friends represent thomas's special friends. he could have waited until later that week to take a picture of his special friends, but decided not to wait. on the other hand, thomas's photographs may be similar to nicholas's photograph of jake's gameboy game; thomas may have been trying to please jake. none of the boys took photographs of traditional folk toys or toys of their own creation besides bobby's photograph of his rock collection and francisco's photograph of a feather. either they did not value the folk toys they played with, or they thought the toys were inappropriate. as simon bronner notes in his article recalling his own favorite folk toy, the gropper, "for several years, gropper held an honored place among my other toys-cars, teddy bears, blocks, and soldiers-but at some point i 82 redwood grove: youth culture in a group home became self-conscious and a bit embarrassed about my fantasy and discarded gropper, bag and baggage" (251). the boys may simply have been ashamed of their folk toys, too ashamed to show anyone. bronner explains, "yet often such creativity eludes the watchful eye of the parent, no less the curator or ethnographer. the child commonly keeps the creation private" (251). the boys may also have been taking photographs of items that they thought the ethnographer would want to see. the boys play with their own creations, often alterations of massproduced toys, such as action figures without an arm or a head. bronner explains the importance of that type of folk toy—"such experiences emphasized their control, their personalizing of things around them" (264). the boys also reused broken toys as if they were brand new-transformational toys, as bronner would call them. they are also observed playing with creations of the imagination, such as in the sandbox or turning a stump into an action figure's hideout. these acts of autonomy may not be shared easily. children's folk culture may be too private. the boys have very little autonomy in the group home setting and may seek to create separate environments in their own imagination, environments that may be shared with another boy or kept completely to themselves. although the group home at times seems to be overflowing with people, there are times when the boys are expected to play by themselves, especially if they are acting out and their toys have been confiscated and their socializing limited. if any boys were ashamed of the things that were important to them, they might not have taken a photograph of it to avoid ridicule. pollack identifies a rigid "boy code" that leads boys of all ages to hold back emotions and behaviors for fear of acting feminine (21). while the boys own stuffed animals and other toys that could reveal tenderness, thoughtfulness and creativity, they might not feel comfortable sharing that side because they feel that those items and emotions make them appear weak. they are afraid of others' ridicule. thomas had a pile of teddy bears on his bed most of the time, but they were only included in a larger picture of his room. those teddy bears might not have been masculine enough to be the focus of a picture. they might be very important to him, but he could not reveal that importance to the other boys. one photographic subject most of the boys were not afraid to take a picture of was themselves. everyone except jerod took a picture or had a picture taken of him. jake, bobby, thomas, and francisco had multiple pictures of themselves. hubbard provides insight into children's photographs of themselves. "on more than one occasion we have found that these kids carry the photographs of themselves every day to show others. though they didn't take the pictures, the photographs are important none 83 gelwicks theless. they proclaim: 'here i am, i am real, i am of value' to the rest of the world"(shooting back from the reservation xiii). although the children hubbard writes of are native american, it is not a stretch to apply their feelings to the group-home boys. in many ways the two groups are very similar. all the boys at redwood grove come from environments and life circumstances that destroy children's self esteem. when they enter the group home, staff try to continually remind them of their worth, to build them up from their negative self-images. the boys have pictures of their families or members of their families to remind them. those photographs are treasured because in some cases those are the only connections they have. people in photographs are important, and the pictures the boys took of themselves are their way of reaffirming their importance. one continual theme throughout the interviews with the boys was how, practical the object was. for example, jerod described his photographs of the house, "the house, so we have a place to live in," and the washing machine, "the washing machine is important 'cause otherwise we couldn't wash our clothes and they would be stinky." francisco also focused on the practicality of things, such as the bus; "i took a picture of the bus because it is kind of important. so if we didn't have a car we could go on the bus" and one of the staff's cars, "i took a picture of andre's car cause, well, so we can move around quickly and so we don't have to walk or ride the bus and without the bus we would have to walk." this method of describing objects reflects the lack of importance of the object outside of its practical role. the practical descriptions continued when the boys talked about their pokémon toys and cards. jerod, as well as the other boys, were very involved with the collecting of pokémon cards. jerod took five pictures of his cards, but none of them was of a specific card. when asked why he liked them he answered, "cause i like to trade' em." he identified their importance as social. they provided entertainment in trading and prestige in having particular cards, but the particular card did not matter. his attitude was similar to francisco's description of a photograph of jerod's pokémon toys. francisco's description parallels jerod's perspective on pokémon; "these two are charzards and blastoids in jerod's room 'cause i really like pokémon." when i asked "are those toys important to you?" he answered, "the pokémon, not the toys. i don't really care about them." to francisco the symbol of pokémon was important. pokémon affected the power relations within the house as well as at school, as having cards and games provided prestige to the owner. 84 redwood grove: youth culture in a group home after the interviews the photography project was not finished when i gave the boys their flipbooks with their pictures inside. bobby, who had the least amount of pictures turn out, filled his book with other photographs that he had. at first he was a little bashful when i asked him to show his book, possibly since he thought i might be offended that he had removed all of the pictures i had developed for him. he explained who everyone in the pictures was and included a short anecdote with a couple of them. all the photographs bobby added were of his family. a week later bobby had removed almost all of the photographs he had taken and replaced them with all the photographs he already owned. though he did not need the space, he may have been ashamed of his photography skills since he was unhappy with the way his photographs turned out, many of them dark and blurry. of course it also could have been that the photographs he just took were not as important as those of his family. nicholas also added to his flipbook, placing his polaroid of himself on santa's knee at the back of his book. when jake, the last boy interviewed, finished with the interview, he asked in as sweet a voice as i had ever heard him use if he could add pictures to his album. the photographs of the important material culture and the books i gave them were becoming material culture. the boys did not demonstrate an overwhelming desire for material possessions. the important material items in their lives were physical links between themselves and others, symbolic of the connection they shared. material items were also described in practical terms—cupboards holding the snacks or pokémon to be traded. the boys' lack of consuming commodity goods reflects their relationship to material culture. outside the occasional pack of pokémon cards, the boys bought very little. they did not have much disposable income, and they had very few opportunities to spend the little they had. also, the uncertainty that surrounded their lives included uncertainty about how long they would possess a toy. the toys they had when they lived at home were gone. the toys they had at the group home were regularly confiscated, creating an uncertainty that may have decreased the desire for material possessions. conclusion this is a case study of the folk culture of preadolescent and early adolescent boys living in a total institution. although these boys live in an 85 gelwicks unusual setting, they use the same-but more intensified versions of strategies boys employ in resolving their social and psychological tensions. their folklore develops around common childhood experiences, such as when they created the game pogo, and also around their need to deal with specific group home situations, such as when they used steve's name as an insult in response to his inappropriate use of power. the folklore sometimes creates the solution, as when the boys use a game frame to establish contact with a staff person or another boy, and the folklore is sometimes the problem, as in teasing. a game frame enables jerod to establish meaningful relationships when his primary relationships have been damaged or destroyed, and the experience of connecting and creating those connections is empowering. teasing as folklore goes beyond playfulness and allows the boys to subvert the intent of the behavior-chart hierarchy established by the staff. the amount of energy and creativity that goes into teasing reveals the importance of this form of expression to the boys. the boys' photographs of their material culture reveal a continual focus on each other and each other's possessions. certainly, the other boys and their toys are a significant part of the material setting of the group home for each boy, but the items the boys value are also symbolic. they can be symbols of friendship or connection to a more powerful boy. in other instances, the important material items themselves symbolize age and power, as with the deodorant. studies of children's folklore such as this one can be instructive to adults working in children's institutions, revealing unintended consequences and the success (or failure) of strategies for modifying and shaping behavior. attempting to see the world through children's eyes enables adults to examine the role of friendship groups, teasing, and playing beyond whether the behavior is obedient or disruptive. having an awareness of the anxieties children experience, such as in response to the adult imposed behavior chart hierarchy, may lead adults to reevaluate and redesign the structure of children's institutions. note i would especially like to thank the boys of the redwood grove for their participation, energy, and hope, and professor jay mechling for his continued guidance and support. works cited bronner, simon j. "material folk culture of children." in children s folklore: a 86 redwood grove: youth culture in a group home source book. ed. brian sutton-smith, et al. logan: utah state up, 1999. 251-71. cohen, david, and john eilersten. "folklore and folklife in a juvenile correc tions institution." western folklore 44 (1985): 1-22. ewald, wendy. portraits and dreams: photographs and stories by children of the appalachians. london: writers and readers publishing, 1985. goffman, erving. asylums: essays on the social situation of mental patients and other inmates. new york: anchor press, 1959. horan, robert. "the semiotics of play fighting at a residential treatment cen ter." adolescent psychiatry 15 (1988): 367-81. hubbard, jim. shooting back: a photographic view of life by homeless chil dren. san francisco: chronicle books, 1999. ______. shooting back from the reservation: a photographic view of life by native american youth. new york: new press, 1999. levin, jeffery, ed. picture la: landmarks of a new generation. los angeles, ca: the getty conservation institute, 1994. mechling, jay. "children's folklore in residential institutions: summer camps, boarding schools, hospitals, and custodial facilities." in children’s folklore: a source book. ed. brian sutton-smith et al. logan: utah state university press, 1999. 273-91. orellana, marjorie faulstich. "space and place in an urban landscape: learning from children's views of their social worlds." visual sociology 14 (1999): 73-89. pollack, william. real boys: rescuing our sons from the myths of boyhood. new york: random house, 1988. polsky, howard w. cottage six: the social system of delinquent boys in resi dential treatment. new york: russell sage foundation, 1962. wagner, jon. "editor's introduction." visual sociology 14 (1999): 3-5. 87 cfs: 2001 annual meeting president joann conrad called the breakfast meeting to order at 7:05 am in the prudhoe bay room of the anchorage hilton hotel, anchorage, alaska. a quorum was present. minutes of the columbus meeting were approved as published in the children's folklore review, volume 23, number 2, spring 2001. reports there was only one submission for the opie prize. the executive committee deemed it best to withhold the awarding of the prize for this year. we really need to solicit more submissions in the future. the aesop prize committee (b. ellis, j. houpt, j. conrad) reviewed a short list of nominations. the aesop prize winners were: fiesta femenina: celebrating women in mexican folktales retold by mary-joan gerson, illustrated by maya christina gonzalez, barefoot books, 2001. marela the clever retold by margaret read macdonald, illustrated by tim coffey, albert whitman and company, 2001. the aesop accolade went to: daisy the doll by michael mendearis and angela shelf mendearis, painting by larry johnson, family heritage books, vermont folklife center, 2000. chip sullivan reported on the journal: a. multiple copies of the journal known as the "hertiage collection" have been sent to libraries. b. north carolina has been giving us $2500 per year, but this amount will be cut back to $2,000 per annum due to increasing budget con straints. c. perhaps it may be advantageous to go from 2 issues per year to one larger volume. we should also plan putting together a special anniversary issue to commemorate our 25th year. d. an index for our 25 years would also be appropriate for consider ation. 88 joe edgette reported the balance in our general fund is $3,522.40. the newell prize balance is $7,789.86; the opie prize at $2,846.93. the cost of the breakfast this year came to $100 which the membership voted be paid from the section's general fund. we should also consider using the breakfast meeting as a recruiting tool. new business potential topics for a children's panel for next year were suggested: a. games and analysis b. imagery of children -"rock, scissors, paper" next year jacqueline thursby will be the section's president. joe edgette announced that he will be stepping down as secretary/treasurer effective with next year's meeting. margaret macdonald was elected unanimously as a member to the aesop award committee. the meeting was adjourned at 8:05 am. respectfully submitted, j. joseph edgette secretary 89 notes and announcements the children's folklore section of the american folklore society annually offers the w.w. newell prize (which includes a cash award) for the best student essay on a topic in children's folklore. students must submit their own papers, and published papers are eligible. instructors are asked to encourage students with eligible papers to enter the competition. papers must be typed, double-space, and on white paper. on the first page include the author's name, academic address, home address, and telephone numbers. deadline for each year's competition is september 1st. submit papers or write for more information: dr. c. w. sullivan iii, english department, east carolina university, greenville, nc 27858-4353. the xv international sociological association's world congress of sociology will be held in brisbane, australia, 7-13 july 2002. the isa research committee on sociology of childhood has organized 11 sessions on various aspects of the sociology and culture of childhood. for further information, contact rc53 programme coordinator leena alanen, university of jyvaskyla, finland. e-mail: lalanen@edu.jvu.fi information about the conference, "designing modern childhoods: landscapes, buildings, and material culture," is now available at the following website: http://www.hum.sdu.dk/proiekter/ipfu/designing-childhoods/. the conference will be held at the university of california at berkley, 2-3 may 2002. sheffield university press announces the publication of scared of the kids? curfews, crime and the regulation of young people (isbn 0 86339 929 0), an examination of the lives of and relationships between young people an adults within communities today. a key question the author addresses is, "how should those of us working in the community deal with the levels of fear and insecurity that exists between the generations?" telephone: 0114-225-4702. fax: 0114-225-4478. e-mail: shupress@shu.ac.uk blackwell publishers announces the publication of a history of childhood: children and childhood in the west from medieval to modern times by colin heywood. the aim of this book is to place the history of children and childhood firmly in its social and cultural context. the author explores the changing experiences and perceptions of childhood from the early middle ages to the beginning of the twentieth century. 90 the childe website, which is the culmination of the european commission funded childe project has now been launched. the site contains, among other things, a searchable library of over 1,000 digitised images from the project partners collections of historic children's books. the site can be viewed at www.bookchilde.org. london play's website is now available at http://www.londonplay.org.uk. though london focused, the website extends across geographical boundaries. the australian children's folklore collection, now a part of the museum victoria, is available at http://www.museum.vic.gov.au/ and when the site is open, type in australian children's folklore in the search box on the lefthand side. three sites are listed; the third gives an information sheet about the acfc. barbara boock announces that deutsches volksliedarchiv-arbeitsstelle für internationale volksliedforschung plans to publish materials from the collection of children's songs in the german folksong archives. there is a page at the website showing part of the titles in the planned bibliography; the address is: www.ruf.uni-freiburg.de/liedarchiv. if you click on "archiv" you find on the page in blue, "kinderlied," if you click there, you will get the children's songs page. there is an actualized bibliography on children's play, games, and toys in north africa and the sahara available in english and french on the following website: http://www.hh.se/ide/ncfl/publications.html. laurie bauer, professor of linguistics at victoria university of wellington announces that the "three-year project undertaken by laurie and winifred bauer from the school of linguistics and applied language study at victoria university of wellington, new zealand, has just come to an end. the purpose of the project was to find out whether there were different dialects discernible in primary school playgrounds in different parts of new zealand. in brief, the research showed that there are three main dialect areas, and a great deal of social variation was also demonstrated. as a byproduct of the research, quite a lot of material was gathered about children's games and chants. a website has been established with almost 1200 pages of working documents. . . and . . . a list of paper publications which have resulted from the projects. the address is: http://www.vuw.ac.nz/lals/lip." 91 about the contributors alan berres is a phd student in english at ohio state university. he specializes in contemporary legend and belief studies, particularly those legends and rumors dealing with satanism, role-playing games, or gothic culture. he has also conducted fieldwork in the columbus bdsm community. his dissertation, dealing with the columbine shooting from the perspective of social drama, should be finished by fall 2003. simon bronner is interim director of the school of humanities and distinguished university professor of american studies and folklore at penn state harrisburg. he is the author is many books on american folklore and cultural history, including titles on youth culture such as american children’s folklore and piled higher and deeper: the folklore of student life. he is past president of the children's folklore section of the american folklore society and current president of the mid-atlantic american studies association. he was elected to the folklore fellows of the american folklore society and now serves on the executive board of the society. he is the editor of the material worlds series for the university press of kentucky and the pennsylvania german history and culture series for penn state press. joann conrad is a folklorist and self-styled cultural critic who teaches in the bay area and is on leave for the spring of 2002. she has published on the intersection of the category of childhood and folklore in several articles and is currently researching racist representations in ordinary objects and racist ideologies in american culture. she is also the current president of the children's folklore section of the american folklore society. bill ellis is associate professor of english and american studies at penn state hazleton. he is the author of raising the devil: satanism, new religions, and the media and aliens, ghosts, and cults: legends we live. he has served as president of the children's folklore section and the folk narrative section of the american folklore society. jesse gelwicks graduated with honors from the university of california, davis, with a bachelor's degree in american studies. he currently teaches at a minimum-security correctional institution for young men. he will attend george washington university in the fall in pursuit of a master's degree in american studies. 92 charlie mccormick is assistant professor of english and communication at cabrini college in radnor, pennsylvania. he studies unofficial and informal youth culture (with a particular interest in leisure and recreation) as well as rites of passage in the contemporary world. he is currently completing a book-length manuscript on adolescent cruising on the commercial strip. 93 cfr_2009_r4.indb children’s folklore review volume 31 2008–2009 published by the children’s folklore section of the american folklore society with support from the dean’s office of harpur college at binghamton university. cfr_2009_r4.indb 1 10/25/09 6:19:13 pm contents from the editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 fathers and sons: rethinking the bar mitzvah as an american rite of passage simon j. bronner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 children of the holocaust: common games, play, and pastimes in uncommon times priscilla ord . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 “go to bed, now you’re dead”: suffocation songs and breath control games elizabeth tucker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 the karma of violence glen retief . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 children’s oral poetry: identity and obscenity c.w. sullivan iii . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 kid culture: neighborhood exploration through enrichment clusters kathryn a. mccormick . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 book reviews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 children’s folklore section: 2008 annual meeting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 notes and announcements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 cfr_2009_r4.indb 3 10/25/09 6:19:14 pm from the editor elizabeth tucker as i finish editing volume 31 of children’s folklore review, i want to thank several important people. c.w. sullivan iii, editor of the journal for thirty years, has kindly served as associate editor for this issue; his help has been greatly appreciated. i have also appreciated the wise counsel of our editorial board: priscilla ord, jay mechling, and simon j. bronner. dana hercbergs, our new book review editor, has done a superb job of soliciting and editing reviews, and i am delighted that we have this new section. kathy buchta has done excellent work with our layout and design, and sheridan press has printed the journal beautifully. the generous support of donald nieman, dean of harpur college at binghamton university, has made our whole publication process possible. i am very grateful for dean nieman’s help. our second binghamton university issue covers a broad range of subjects, with emphasis on children’s and adolescents’ creativity, boundary exploration, and rites of passage. simon j. bronner’s “fathers and sons: rethinking the bar mitzvah as an american rite of passage” closely examines the symbolism of the bar mitzvah ritual, finding that it resolves father/son conflicts. the last part of bronner’s article shows how children compete with their parents for ownership of their bar mitzvah celebrations, adding creative touches such as skateboard centerpieces. priscilla ord’s “children of the holocaust” also analyzes children’s creativity, tracing the persistence of children’s games, play, and pastimes in literary works about the holocaust. my own essay, “’go to bed, now you’re dead’: suffocation songs and breath control games,” explores a difficult subject that has seldom been studied by folklorists. while suffocation songs seem light-hearted and amusing, breath control games have resulted in deaths and serious injuries. another painful subject, bullying, provides the focus for glen retief’s “the karma of violence.” c.w. sullivan iii’s “children’s oral poetry: identity and obscenity” offers a very interesting overview of the development of children’s rhymes from the 1950s to more recent times. and kathryn a. mccormick’s “kid culture: neighborhood exploration through enrichment clusters” gives us a glimpse of a very successful elementary-school field project that helps children discover the traditions of their home neighborhoods. this year, the executive board of the children’s folklore section hopes to put children’s folklore review on the internet. we are exploring various ways to achieve that purpose and will discuss the subject at the annual meeting of the american folklore society in boise, idaho. comments and suggestions from all readers are welcome! please feel free to e-mail me at any time (ltucker@binghamton.edu). if you would like to suggest a book for review, please e-mail our book review editor, dana hercbergs (hercberg@sas.upenn.edu). thanks very much for your support of children’s folklore review. cfr_2009_r4.indb 5 10/25/09 6:19:14 pm 7 fathers and sons: rethinking the bar mitzvah as an american rite of passage simon j. bronner the bar mitzvah draws popular as well as folkloristic attention because it is one of the few publicly recognized american rituals for entering adolescence. popularly categorized as a jewish folk tradition, the bar mitzvah is hardly a private affair; it is recognized, if not participated in, throughout the general population of north america as a result of being featured in popular films, television shows, and novels. some of the notice for the bar mitzvah owes to depictions in the media of material excess. additionally, the bar mitzvah raises a social psychological question of the relatively early coming of age at thirteen years old. the age is perceived as early in a modern american society characterized by an extended childhood and adolescence before adulthood. elaborating on this critical coming-of-age issue, i propose that the folk sources of the bar mitzvah reveal a symbolism that suggests the ceremony acts to resolve father-son conflicts. further, in the american context both non-jews and jews have heightened the ceremony’s importance because the event represents public displays of, or compensations for, uncertain masculine status. problem statement and background: the folk and popular logic of bar mitzvah the bar mitzvah is the coming-of-age ritual that everyone knows, in image if not in practice. if one has never attended the event, he or she probably has been exposed to it in popular television and film. jonathan and judith pearl, discussing media portrayals of jewish themes in the chosen image (1999), claim that “of all the jewish rites of passage depicted on popular tv, none has received more attention than the bar mitzvah” (pearl and pearl 1999, 16). since their book has come out, the bar mitzvah has been dramatized, or spoofed, in popular movies such as glow ropes: the rise and fall of a bar mitzvah emcee (2005), keeping up with the steins (2006), sixty six (2006) knocked up (2007), and two lovers (2008), and television series such as entourage (2005), sex and the city (2000), frasier (2002), the simpsons (2003), unfabulous (2005), and naked brothers band (2008). it has been the butt of many jokes and cartoons among jews and non-jews alike, many of which concern the apparently young age, 13, when the boy is pronounced to be entering manhood or which question the jewish boy’s claim to manliness. in the naked brothers band episode “the bar mitzvah,” for example, wordplay is evident when a parent commands the bar mitzvah boy to join his friends with the yiddish word gey meaning “go,” but the americanized boy understands the word as questioning his masculinity for acting “gay.” related to this humor in a surfeit of comic graphics and mocking photographs is the common theme of discomfort for the boy in the fabled misfitting bar mitzvah suit. the humor depends on the perception that the jewish boy is uncomfortable in, or not ready for, the commanding pose of an adult suit. cfr_2009_r4.indb 7 10/25/09 6:19:14 pm fathers and sons bronner 8 the kind of bar mitzvah commanding popular culture attention is likely of non-pietistic jews, often called liberal or assimilated. in such satirical portrayals, viewers become aware of anxieties, not just for the bar mitzvah boy’s relation to his faith or ethnicity, but also for the modern consumer society of which he is a part. depictions of the bar mitzvah in popular culture focus primarily on the party because of the broader societal interest in modern materialism, or parental indulgence, that it raises, but contextualizing the celebration within traditional practices and symbols for the bar mitzvah boy leading up to, and during, the event sheds light on the inherited, and invented, meanings for the bar mitzvah. to get at these meanings, i will examine more closely the folk cultural aspects of the event to explain its growing appeal since the mid-twentieth century. the folk cultural source of the bar mitzvah appears rooted in synagogue practice. along these lines, jewish parents will probably voice the attitude that the bar mitzvah is the most self-conscious expression of jewishness in one’s life and understand that it signifies entrance into what is known as religious majority: the ability associated with jewish maturity to participate in a minyan (quorum of 10 for prayer), fast, and read from torah. orthodox jews may more clearly recognize the obligations it represents to judaism to put on tallit (prayer shawl) and tefillin (phylacteries), but the bar mitzvah in orthodox communities does not have the conspicuous consumer display that it does among liberal jews. for many jews, it signals a finality rather than a transition to another stage; it is an end rather than a beginning of religious participation. ivan marcus writing on the jewish life cycle observes that the bar mitzvah “can be seen as a finishing rite for many young jewish adolescents. it moves the child from judaism into the larger world possibly without any additional traditional jewish rites until death, if then” (2004, 123). that a traditional ceremony would contribute to discontinuity rather than the continuity expected of rites of passage has not only been a concern of historians and ethnographers. american rabbis since the early twentieth century have complained about the use of the bar mitzvah to conclude synagogue attendance. rabbinical philosopher mordecai kaplan during the 1930s, for example, in his incisive tome judaism as a civilization: toward a reconstruction of american-jewish life (1934) criticized the “spiritual chaos” caused by “so casual a contact with jewish knowledge” in short-lived attendance at a hebrew school before the bar mitzvah (kaplan 1994, 58). although acknowledging that the jewish educational focus on preparing for the bar mitzvah kept youth in jewish schools, he advocated for a reorientation to signal entrance into a new stage of life or developing a life-long commitment to judaism (kaplan 1994, 5859). a later popularly known rabbi, joseph telushkin, renewed the complaint in jewish literacy (1991) by stating, “while the bar mitzvah is intended to mark the beginning of a jewish boy’s adulthood, for non-orthodox jews it frequently signifies the end of his jewish education” (1991, 612). surveys by jewish organizations of their youth members verify that children perceive the bar mitzvah to be a conclusion to education rather than a transition to another stage. barry a. kosmin found, for instance, for the bar/bat mitzvah that less than a quarter of conservative hebrew school students showed a high score on their plans for attending synagogue monthly or more after the bar/bat cfr_2009_r4.indb 8 10/25/09 6:19:14 pm bronner fathers and sons 9 mitzvah (2002, 263). despite the intentions of this minority, actual attendance was even lower, and this disengagement is typically blamed on teens focusing on secular high school studies and extracurricular activities with the support of their parents (leneman 1993, 17-19; sidlofsky 1993, 302). a higher percentage of boys go through a bar mitzvah than girls for the bat mitzvah, and the boys report feeling pressure more intensely to disengage from religious activities in favor of weekend sports and social activities. of the b’nai mitzvah students, girls having gone through bat mitzvah were more likely to volunteer in the jewish community and attributed more importance to being jewish than did the bar mitzvah boys (kosmin 2002, 253). although civic leaders often point to the structure of american hebrew school education for the rise of the bar mitzvah, rabbis and educators alike insist that jewish education is geared toward wider goals and the bar mitzvah ceremony involves an important (and to some the most important) secular component. in light of the disappointing effects of the bar mitzvah on religious maintenance and coming of age transition, the most common alternative explanation is family socialization and community networking it provides (davis 1995, 2003; kennedy 2005; schoenfeld 1993b). kosmin’s statistics lead him to consider the familial bonding of the bar mitzvah in light of the uncertainty of holding a jewish wedding in the life cycle of the boy for the continued appeal of the bar mitzvah, despite criticisms of the bar mitzvah by rabbis for undermining their religious purpose and by civic leaders for being too materialistic and competitive. basing his view on the observation that “for many couples it is the first major family and social event since their own wedding,” kosmin hypothesizes that the bar mitzvah is a developmental milestone for the parents who “must present themselves publicly in relation to their religious tradition to the most significant people in their lives–their family, colleagues, and social network” (2000, 236). there is merit in this argument because of the background of social and economic anxieties for many liberal jews of on the one hand, appearing integrated into the larger society, and on the other, of validating their commitment to jewish identity among members of their religious group. yet a closer look at the ceremony reveals that the ritual portions of the bar mitzvah feature the relationship of the father and son, rather than the whole family. related to the question of the bar mitzvah’s modern appeal is its historical trajectory since the early twentieth century. although popular culture may present the bar mitzvah as an ancient jewish rite, its tradition is of relatively recent origin. many scholarly observers have editorialized that its rise among the people of the book is remarkable considering there is no mention of the ritual in its sacred texts of torah or talmud. the term bar mitzvah, or son of the commandment, appears in the talmud (bm 96a) for a person subject to law, but it does not appear in reference to assuming religious obligations before the fifteenth century (chill 1979, 315). the scholarly consensus is that as a ceremony it dates to local medieval german practices which diffused to eastern europe, but there it did not gain the elevated or standardized status now given it in western europe and america (abrahams 1958, 32; marcus 1996, 119-26; marcus 2004, 82-123; pollack 1971, 59-62). cfr_2009_r4.indb 9 10/25/09 6:19:14 pm fathers and sons bronner 10 the key components of the derashah, or interpretive speech, and examination drew significant notice in eighteenth century italy, and it may be from there that the ritual made some inroads into north african jewry (goldberg 2003, 90-91; ouaknin and ménager 2005, 335-39). yet in the substantial jewish communities of yemen it did not develop at all (ouaknin and ménager 2005, 342-43). it is also noteworthy that in north africa, religious majority could be reached any time the boy was ready, and among indian jews it occurred around five years old (goldberg 2003, 92). the historical explanation of a german-italian influence is often accompanied by speculation on the rise of the bar mitzvah rituals as local imitations of christian confirmation practices, whether out of interests of assimilation or modernization (marcus 2004, 109-13; schauss 1950, 120-21). well into the twentieth century, judaism’s rabbinical annals observed that the bar mitzvah was a fading tradition or one that the rabbis should eradicate because it challenged elite notions of judaism (silverman, morris 1932, 329-31). a leading authority for orthodox jewry in north america, rabbi moshe feinstein (18951986), for example, publicly declared, “if i had the power, i would abolish the bar mitzvah ceremony in this country…it is well known that it has brought no one closer to study or observance” (sherwin 1990, 150). for notable modern jewish historians such as jenna weissman joselit, the triumph of the bar mitzvah over this rabbinical resistance is the example par excellence of a singular american culture within the wider jewish world. it demonstrates the ascendancy in the united states of the creative, upwardly aspiring folk interested in accommodating modernity over the elite hegemony of the ancients in the stodgy synagogue (joselit 1994, 89-118). sociological and psychological inquiries have underscored the way the bar mitzvah involves the family and could be used therapeutically to link generations and create community (davis 1995, 2003; kennedy 2005; schoenfeld 1993b). certainly the bar mitzvah can take on a different character depending on the family dynamic, but the unanswered question remains after examining these findings about the centrality of the father-son relationship despite growing egalitarianism and feminization in judaism. the sociopsychological interpretations positing a social bonding function are not that much different from the folk view that the bar mitzvah is something that each family wants to make its own while still showing fidelity to tradition. logically, the bonding is a consequence rather than a source of the ceremony.1 this folk view has been contrasted, particularly in religious literature, with elite pressures of rabbinical leaders to maintain the bar mitzvah’s synagogue function of encouraging participation in the minyan (kosmin 2002, 239-41; liebman 1973; schoenfeld 1993a). the implication of the functionalist analysis is that the bar mitzvah persists because it provides benefits to participants, but the bar mitzvah has raised conflicts in the jewish community and surveys affirm the tremendous pressures that preparation for the event raises. folklorists and ethnologists for their part have emphasized the expressive ritual components of the bar mitzvah as a jewish version of global pubertal ceremonies. the bar mitzvah is cited most commonly in folkloristic textbooks and reference works as a prominent coming-of-age “rite of passage” evident in western industrialized countries (haskell 1996, 410; mckeeverfurst 1992, 29; smith, robert 1972, 165; spiro 1977). folklorists and ethnologists cfr_2009_r4.indb 10 10/25/09 6:19:15 pm bronner fathers and sons 11 are eager to include this example probably because few public coming-of-age rituals exist in america and europe to compare to the anthropological haul of so-called primitive puberty initiations that draw attention to themselves as exotic, sexually tinged practices of public transition to adulthood (raphael 1988; spiro 1977). the bar mitzvah lacks this sexual undertone, it seems, but it burst on the american scene at a time when industrialized countries were extending childhood and becoming aware of adolescence as a distinct stage of life (russ 1993). this coincidence is apparent in the connection of the bar mitzvah to rites of passage although a correlation cannot be established because of its pre-modern existence. the bar mitzvah conceptualized as a rite of passage shows folk tradition to be socially functional, presumably needed to mark passage from childhood into adulthood. jewish educator jack d. spiro summarizes this view when he states, “the process itself may consume most of childhood, but the initiation rite is a form of ‘cultural compression,’ when all that is learned is compressed in the rituals. the compression itself focuses on the new roles that must be assumed by the initiate as he enters into the realm of manhood” (spiro 1977, 394). for spiro, this process is common among rites of all societies, but what is distinctive in jewish culture is “the high degree of emphasis on learning, the paramountcy of knowledge and understanding” (1977, 399). thus manhood is attained along with jewish identity, he concludes, through the rite of passage, although he has difficulty reconciling the “long, arduous intellectual process” of preparation with the relatively short “transition” phase on the big day. a logical problem with the demarcation line for jewish male passage is the fixed age of thirteen years old. biblical sources, for instance, cite twenty as a legal adult age and do not prescribe rituals for puberty. one can join the minyan without being bar mitzvah and could celebrate bar mitzvah at other ages and localities. jewish folklorist hayyim schauss hypothesizes that thirteen became ritually significant not because of a developmental stage it marked but because “thirteen was a sacred number among the jews in ancient times” (schauss 1950, 113). he speculates that the designation of twenty for maturity was a later development, “when a more advanced legal system was in force among jews” (schauss 1950, 113). if a sacred number was applied, however, it would probably be eighteen after the mystical numerological equivalent of chai (consisting of the hebrew letters of het and yod) for “living” (indeed, at bar mitzvahs today, common cash gifts are denominations of eighteen to signify good luck). and in fact, rabbi stuart rosenberg (1923-1990), spiritual leader of canada’s jews, writing in the influential journal religious education on the “right age for bar mitzvah” advocates for reforming the bar mitzvah tradition by holding it for boys at the age of eighteen (rosenberg 1965). other liberal rabbis in the twentieth century tried to replace the bar mitzvah with a confirmation ceremony at fifteen or sixteen, to keep children in jewish education longer and to align it with an age perceived to be more of a coming-of-age period (as in the popular girls’ celebration of “sweet sixteen”), but the efforts have been largely unsuccessful (joselit 1994, 105-30). looking to ancient sources for the entrenchment of thirteen in the jewish ritual cycle, folklorist theodor gaster was concerned that correlation was difficult because neither a pubertal or sacramental rite appears at thirteen in sacred texts. cfr_2009_r4.indb 11 10/25/09 6:19:15 pm fathers and sons bronner 12 its cultural significance, he offered, was in being the traditional age for marriage in the ancient near east (1980, 68). the mishnah, however, gives the expected age for marriage as eighteen, preceded by stages of study beginning “at five years the age is reached for scripture, at ten for the study of mishna, at thirteen for the fulfilment of the commandments, at fifteen for the study of the talmud, at eighteen for marriage, at twenty for seeking at livelihood....” (pirkei avot 5:25; see hertz 1945, 101-3). in this interpretation, thirteen is the appropriate age for understanding and enacting commandments in an educational life cycle, even though various rabbinical authorities have countered that it is too young (rosenberg 1965). rather than viewing a religious significance to the bar mitzvah because of the sacredness of the number, gaster observed that the bar mitzvah is a custom without meaning; he thought of it in the modern era as an occasion for a party without spiritual or developmental importance. reflecting a common rabbinical attitude of “elite” judaism, gaster in his influential survey of jewish folklife disparaged the bar mitzvah by concluding, “it confers nothing, imparts nothing, creates nothing; it merely celebrates” (gaster 1980, 67). “merely celebrates”? what about bar mitzvah as rite of passage? ivan marcus hypothesizes that “in recent times, as jews sought to mark the life cycle in ritual ways even in lives not otherwise filled with torah observance, the bar mitzvah emerged as a rite of passage from jewish childhood into adolescence and acculturation into the larger secular world, especially in american or israeli life” (2003, 123). the reference to “rite of passage” declares its function of moving from one stage to another thought to be universally containing a structure of separation, transition, and incorporation by french folklorist arnold van gennep in 1908. it should be pointed out that although van gennep as a scholar of religion knew about the bar mitzvah, the event is totally absent from his foundational book rites de passage, and in texts such as gaster’s and the encyclopedia judaica it is labeled a ceremony that is not about transition to adulthood as much as either a celebration of the conclusion of hebrew education or a display of commitment to judaism (gaster 1980, 66-77; kaplan and roth 1972). for psychologist jacob arlow the bar mitzvah also has educational more than developmental significance. he calls it an “ordeal by recitation,” linking it to nineteenth-century educational tests establishing the authority of the patriarchal synagogue (1951, 357). spiro agrees, pointing out, “the boy is on trial, perhaps not the kind of trial involved in walking over hot coals. but it is an intellectual trial, no less traumatizing as he stands before relatives and authorities to demonstrate his skill, ability, and knowledge of torah and jewish law. ‘it is, in essence, an academic degree’” (1977, 397). ivan marcus observes that “there is a culmination in the bar mitzvah as well as a celebration of youth. it often is the end of a jewish child’s formal jewish schooling, his or her graduation” (2004, 122). anthropologist harvey goldberg in his comparative survey of jewish rituals surmises that this association with examination and graduation is grounded in the bar mitzvah’s evolution out of an educational context. in his view, the bar mitzvah displaced the common ritual of entering religious education with one to mark its end. part of the rationale is that the transition of thirteen is one from elementary school to higher education of betha-midrash. cfr_2009_r4.indb 12 10/25/09 6:19:15 pm bronner fathers and sons 13 part of the problem with the bar mitzvah as a rite of passage is how van gennep’s structural order for moving from one stage to another of separation, transition, and incorporation applies to the event. one would expect much transition in a coming-of-age practice, but the bar mitzvah involves an inordinately long preparation time, typically starting as early as three years old. the bar mitzvah is not separated during the event and is not presented as liminal. the bar mitzvah’s central task is to read a torah portion and provide a speech rather than engaging in an initiatory act with male elders. as an incorporation, as sociologist judith davis noted, it struggles to mark a change in status or passage to another stage. adult privileges outside of congregational life are not granted, and for most children, it is something that parents plan for them. it is therefore in practice a milestone rather than an initiation. i contend that meanings exist often outside the awareness of the participants that contributed to its spread in folk judaism since the mid-twentieth century in western europe and america. my evidence comes from participation in a number of ceremonies, symbolic reading of liturgical texts, a survey of former b’nai mitzvah, and a content analysis of derashah, the interpretive bar mitzvah speeches the boys make. using developmental psychology and historical context in the midtwentieth-century crisis of masculinity, i will provide a folkloristic explanation of why the bar mitzvah rose to its present status. i look at it as an invented milestone tradition that has dealt with father-son conflicts as the boy deals with the uncertain status of his masculinity in a wider modern context. identification: preparation, fasting, separation, and recitation let me review the components of the bar mitzvah. most jewish educators and synagogue administrators encourage participation in hebrew school beginning with the aleph grade coinciding with kindergarten age as preparation for bar mitzvah by being able to read and chant biblical hebrew, recite prayers, and participate in congregational life. the bar mitzvah is treated as a culmination of one’s education demonstrated by reading from the torah and a speech. in the days before the bar mitzvah, no special events are planned, although in some communities, the boy may wear tefillin all day, get his hair cut or shaved off, or fast. the ritual fast for the boy usually occurs on the yom kippur before his bar mitzvah, and it is distinguished from the fasting he may do with adults afterward by lasting until chatzot (midday as defined by halakhah or practical jewish law). rather than being prescribed in torah, the transitional fast for the boy before his bar mitzvah on the day of atonement arose apparently as a folk custom in the modern period.2 it may be based on the examples of the father’s obligations to train a jewish child mentioned in the talmud, which include partial fasting on yom kippur after the age of nine years old (shulem and koenigsberg 2007). yet halakhah calls for fasting as a commandment after the bar mitzvah, with special reference to the symbolism of pubic hair growth for maturity: “a boy of thirteen and one day who have brought forth two hairs” is considered adult “with regard to all of the commandments and must complete the fast as an obligation from cfr_2009_r4.indb 13 10/25/09 6:19:15 pm fathers and sons bronner 14 the torah, but if they have not brought forth two hairs then they are regarded as minors and complete the fast as a rabbinical obligation only” (krieger 2006). the significance of the occasion of yom kippur for the fast on special occasions is that it symbolizes a death and rebirth, divesting the individual of his or her previous life (linke 1999, 149). the fast and wearing the white robe traditionally donned on yom kippur and burial at the end of life will be reenacted, for example, on the wedding day along with the same confessional prayers that are said on the holiday and at a death bed. the process therefore ritually confronts mortality, which, according to clinical psychologist stuart linke, “returns us to our core values and enables us to perceive ourselves more deeply” (1999, 149). on its surface, the ritual fast before bar mitzvah appears to be preparation for the obligations that the boy will accrue after reaching the age of religious majority. although fasting on yom kippur marks adult practice, the suffering it brings, even for the outcome of atonement, hardly could be considered a motivator to push on with the home stretch of bar mitzvah preparations, unless it is intentionally uncomfortable to metaphorically focus the bar mitzvah as an “ordeal,” as psychologist jacob arlow points out (1951, 357). if so, then it is a risky metaphor of pain and hunger to impose, if as arlow argues, the period before the bar mitzvah “becomes the occasion for rebellion against the parents. the boy, for various reasons, may refuse to participate in the entire process and figure 1. sephardic bar mitzvah ceremony, brooklyn, new york, 1998. photograph by simon j. bronner. cfr_2009_r4.indb 14 10/25/09 6:19:16 pm bronner fathers and sons 15 may repudiate his parents’ authority as represented by the need to go through the bar mitzvah initiation” (1951, 356). but a symbolic rationale outside of the awareness of the participants may be at work to explain why it is important in the custom (apparently in defiance of halakhic authority) to fast rather than other mitzvot the boy will practice after turning thirteen. one possible connection in religious scholarship is that the sacrifice of fasting is accepted as a purificatory rite and declaration of faith because it is followed by a joyous feast (farrell 1985). on the high holy day of yom kippur, fasting after the new year is followed by an occasion for a social “breaking the fast,” as it is called in north american locales. occurring during the first jewish month of tishrei (from the root for “beginning”), the purificatory fast marks a fresh start in the ritual year. is the comparison being made between the enforced fast before the bar mitzvah, then, and the bar mitzvah in which the immaturity and irresponsibility of childhood are ritually replaced with adult religious obligations, and encouraged by the festive meal? if so, the comparison seems strained between the deprivation of food in fasting and the central recitation and discourse at the bar mitzvah ceremony. both actions do have something in common, however, in their arousal of parental attention, and this clue may lead to an explanation of the tradition. my argument hinges on the symbolism of fasting in many religious contexts as the maternal provision of food pointed out by theorists of ritual (dundes 2002; farrell 1985, 254). anthropologist eileen farrell, for example, suggests that fasting representing birth or infancy in ritual time “evokes the most primitive wish-fulfillment of all, the moment when the hungry infant regains its mother’s breast” (1985, 254). it is symbolically consistent, therefore, that fasting as a reminder of infantile dependence on the mother’s sustenance is accompanied by prohibitions on adult male activities of shaving and “seminal pollution” (trachtenberg 1979, 212). with fasting often occurring during periods of mourning, representing, according to theodor gaster, “the state of suspended animation which ensues at the end of a life lease” (1961, 29), it offers a separation from the mother that allows transition and growth. in other words, a previous state or life is being let go and a new one is being embraced. as with other symbolic practices, oral activity is associated with maternal attributes (such as the jewish folk term mameloshn for “mother tongue” or folk language) that leads to patriarchal reading or codification (such as pirkei avot, literally “chapters of the fathers or patriarchs,” or idiomatically as “ethics of the fathers,” which is a significant tractate of the mishnah composed by male rabbis). at yom kippur and other religious occasions where a connection to god is being made, part of that transition is making a transfer from the physical dependence on the mother to spiritual guidance from the father (see smith, w. robertson 1907, 51-53). worshippers in the traditional jewish liturgy thus speak of god in the central prayer of the amida as “our god and god of our fathers, the god of abraham, the god of isaac and the god of jacob.” even with revision of liturgies to reflect egalitarianism, the principle holds, as articulated by folklorist alan dundes, that “if an infant associates feeling hunger pangs with the coming of an adult parent or parent-surrogate, then the adult who wants a deity to approach must clearly make himself hungry. moreover, the hungrier he is, the more likely it is that the parent-deity will approach” (2002, 9), and that parent as authority will cfr_2009_r4.indb 15 10/25/09 6:19:16 pm fathers and sons bronner 16 likely be patriarchal. many midrashic legends underscore the idea that matriarchal intervention brings the patriarchal god closer. a popular narrated example is of the jewish matriarch rachel, frequently depicted as the compassionate mother weeping for her captured children, who the midrash recounts arising from her grave and imploring god’s clemency for the israelites driven into captivity. rachel points out her self-abnegation and thereupon god promises her the restoration of israel (rothkoff 1972, 1489). she also shows up in modern wartime legends protecting israeli male soldiers from terrorist harm in campaigns outside their borders (wagner 2009). in line with the symbolism of fasting as separation from the mother to invite the father-deity, the spread of the pre-bar-mitzvah fast begins to make sense. a question that is often posed about the bar mitzvah is how it acts as a coming-ofage ritual if the mother associated with childhood is absent from the supposed rite of passage. the answer is that the separation occurs before the ceremony beginning with the ritual fast, and the transition from physical dependence to spiritual awareness continues into the ritualized haircut and acquisition of tefillin. the task of the ceremony on the big day then becomes through reading and discourse to accentuate the role of the father-deity. still remaining to be resolved is the relationship of the familial father who had been an authority over as well as provider for the boy. it appears that the rabbi and cantor can act as spiritual surrogates for the father who allow the boy to separate from familial paternity. still complicating this ritualistic scenario connected to traditional cognitive categories held in judaism is modern awareness of changing gender roles, especially in relation to the boy’s understanding of “becoming a man,” where intellect in the jewish ceremony rather than bodily strength is being used as a ritual measure of masculinity. the ceremony begins with the boy going to the bimah (reader’s stand) to recite standard blessings over the torah that would be heard on any occasion the torah is read. according to spiro’s ethnography of the event, “the boy separates himself from his mother, from his childhood, as he walks to the altar of the synagogue,” where he is “wrapped in his ‘tallit’ and surrounded by the males who will read with him” (1977, 398). traditionally, women do not wear a tallit and do not participate on the bimah. the mother is a spectator while the father takes a prominent position at the platform with his son. unlike preparations for other readings of the torah, the father recites a short prayer, barukh shepetarani meonsho shel zeh, after the son’s conclusion of the second blessing. this blessing is unique to the bar mitzvah; it is not said for the daughter at the bat mitzvah. the translation is “blessed be he, who has now rid (or freed) me from the responsibility or punishment for this one.” rabbinical literature suggests two interpretations from the source of the benediction in the midrash (a compilation of commentaries on the hebrew bible) commenting on the phrase, “and the boys grew up’ (gen. 25:27). one is that the father was punished when his son sinned, for he failed to raise him properly, and the other is that the son was punished for the sins of his father (nulman 1993, 91-92). whichever interpretation one argues, the common thread is that the opening of the ceremony is thematized in relation to a father-son conflict. unlike other blessings, the name of god is cfr_2009_r4.indb 16 10/25/09 6:19:16 pm bronner fathers and sons 17 omitted from the prayer and the hebrew word patoor, meaning to exempt or rid, conveys a negative connotation of vexation (arlow 1951, 357).3 with this connotation, jewish historian cecil roth contends, the father’s prayer declaring his freedom from responsibility for the boy “was considered an integral part of the celebration, hardly less than the boy’s own participation in the service” (roth 1955, 18; emphasis added). the conflict resolution in the ceremony is for father and son to part ways, and at that moment the boy’s teacher steps in to guide the boy in the reading, either the prophetic portion of the week (haftarah) or an entire biblical portion–the sidrah. indeed, the father will often stand off at a distance at that point. afterward the boy presents a speech that interprets a point of jewish law or interprets the weekly torah portion (parshah). the speech is a narrative that typically follows a tripartite structure: (1) a standard opening of “today i am a man,” followed by an expression of gratitude to parents, especially the father, for having raised and educated the boy; (2) reference to biblical sources (a favorite in recorded speeches is the sacrifice of isaac by his father) followed by its application to his own conduct or the society; and (3) a promise of allegiance to the jewish community, often accompanied with acknowledgment of the role of the religious leaders who helped him to become bar mitzvah (glazer 1928; gruberger 1993; katz 1931). at the conclusion of the speech, it is now common among both ashkenazic and sephardic services for children in the audience to throw candies at the boy. after the service, the parents host a seudah mitzvah (festive meal celebrating a commandment), and this has expanded into the bar mitzvah party often held in a rented hall. despite harsh criticisms of the party such as that voiced by rabbi abraham chill, “the contemporary custom of celebrating the bar mitzvah with lavish and ostentatious parties has no basis in jewish tradition and it is in fact contrary to the spirit if not the letter of jewish law and morality,” the secular celebration has grown and featured various themes geared to the boy’s worldly interests (chill 1993, 317). the party has become tightly controlled by party planners, but an expectation among the bar mitzvah boy’s male friends is that some pranking or even hazing will occur to torment the center of attention and provide a test of his toughness. this might include giving the bar mitzvah boy a “wedgie” (lifting his underwear so as to grip his genitals or get stuck between the buttocks) and doctoring his food and drink. the boys may sit with the bar mitzvah on a dais, and frequently they initiate lifting the bar mitzvah on a chair in imitation of a wedding custom for the bride and groom. more sedate and official is the ritual lighting of candles by family members during the party. among the sephardim, the donning of tefillin or phylacteries is featured in bar mitzvah practices, and families may hold a separate celebration before the bar mitzvah called yom tefillin. the tefillin are two cubical leather containers with attached leather straps. one is worn on the head (shel rosh) while the other is on the arm (shel yad); the thongs for shel yad are wrapped seven times around the arm while the straps on shel rosh hang loosely behind the head and shoulders like hair strands. the cases hold parchments with four biblical passages, expressing four basic jewish precepts–the law of tefillin, recognition of god’s kingship, the unity of the creator, and the exodus from egypt (roth 1955, 23). betrothal cfr_2009_r4.indb 17 10/25/09 6:19:16 pm fathers and sons bronner 18 is symbolized in the arm thong which is wound three times around the middle finger while reciting “and i will betroth thee unto me forever; yea, i will betroth thee unto me in righteousness, and in judgment and in lovingkindness, and in mercy. i will even betroth thee unto me in faithfulness; and thou shalt know the lord” (hosea 2, 21-22). in keeping with the laying on of tefillin as a male rite, the exodus story encased in the tefillin (exodus 13:1-10, 11-16) opens with the commandment to consecrate to god “every firstborn male” and relates the promise of a “land flowing with milk and honey” promised to “your forefathers” (exodus 13: 1, 5). indeed, the text signals a transference from a submissive state of slavery under pharaoh in egypt to a liberation with the guidance of moses to the promised land. the bearded rabbi in the ceremony takes on the role of teacher moses guiding his flock to be independent (moses does not enter the land of israel). the ceremony for yom tefillin also brings out patriarchal symbolism between father and rabbi in their ritual placement of the tefillin or phylacteries on the boy before he does it himself. typically, the father puts one of the cases on the boy’s head, representing his education for which he was responsible, and the rabbi works the other case on the child’s arm, representing his action (roth 1955, 22). the boy may give a speech then as well as on the sabbath, and the boy is blessed aloud by the congregation. a ritual practice that appears to reinforce the transition from father to teacher as patriarch is the boy walking around the assembly with his new decorated tefillin bag into which congregants would drop silver coins, which are then presented as a gift to the bar mitzvah boy’s teacher (roth 1955, 22). figure 2. bar mitzvah boy with tefillin accompanied by father and teachers, brooklyn, new york, 2008. photograph by ronnie habbaz, courtesy of ronald and adi cohen. cfr_2009_r4.indb 18 10/25/09 6:19:16 pm bronner fathers and sons 19 the mother is involved usually in making arrangements for the event, and a modern tradition has been for her to weave or present a tallit to the bar mitzvah boy. the significance of the tallit is that after his thirteenth birthday, it can be worn on the sabbath in prayer and thus represents his reaching religious majority. it is customary to have a formal photo portrait taken of the bar mitzvah boy in his tallit as a keepsake to distribute. the mother’s role is what judith davis (1995) calls the traditional balabosta, translated from the yiddish as the woman of the house with the implication that she has a managerial role to compensate for her exclusion from the ceremony. her management has extended to responsibility for the boy’s jewish education, although the bar mitzvah ceremony conveys the frequent fiction that the father has been overseeing the boy’s religious training (see gordon 1959, 58-59). nonetheless, at the bar mitzvah the father takes center stage with his son, until he is moved aside by the supervising rabbi and cantor. annotation: relation of the bar mitzvah to circumcision, haircutting, wedding, and examination in its structure and symbolism, the bar mitzvah can be compared to four separate traditions: bris (yiddish; brit milah in hebrew) or circumcision, upsherin (yiddish) or the ritual first haircut, the jewish wedding, and the final examination or dissertation. the comparison to the bris comes up in the discourse of the bar mitzvah because of its coincidence with the boy’s birthday, which raises images of circumcision. typical is a memoir i collected showing that the bar mitzvah was narrated in relation to the bris: i was constantly reminded that the bar mitzvah was the biggest event in my life after my bris. since the bar mitzvah came around my birthday, my mother brought up her memories of the bris and how much i’ve grown. she’s always sentimental, you know. my father would make a bad joke about it would be just as painful besides telling me that another thing that’s the same is that everyone will want to hold me. i did think it was funny when he said they’re not talking about my pecker when they say, “my how you’ve grown.” more official charting of the jewish boy’s milestones typically involves the bar mitzvah’s relation to ritual circumcision. roth in the mid-twentieth century, for example, declares, “in the traditional jewish scheme, there were three great festive occasions in a boy’s life. there was the eighth day after his birth, when he was introduced into the covenant of abraham. there was the day when he was first initiated to study, being taken to synagogue, blessed by the rabbi, and given honey to lick from a slate on which letters of the hebrew alphabet were written, as a token that the torah should be sweet to his mouth all the days of his life. and there was the day when he was first considered legally bound to fulfill the obligations of jewish law and practice, and could be regarded as a bar mitzvah, a ‘child of precepts’” (1955, 15). with the decline of honey licking to mark the cfr_2009_r4.indb 19 10/25/09 6:19:17 pm fathers and sons bronner 20 start of study among modern liberal jews, more attention has been focused on the continuity in the jewish life cycle from circumcision to bar mitzvah. like the bris, the bar mitzvah is represented as an induction into faith and is prescribed in intervals of time: 8 days for the bris and 13 years for the bar mitzvah. the bris also centrally involves the father-son relationship, for the father gives the child to the mohel (jewish ritual specialist in circumcision) who circumcises the child. several college students who gave me memoirs of their bar mitzvah mentioned that references to the bris were made in pranking by the boy’s friends. connections were made to binding and cutting in the bar mitzvah suit and ritual haircut, often accompanied by checking whether the boy has pubic hair despite the “damage” done by the circumcision. jewish advisers marc-alain ouaknin and françoise-anne ménager connect the haircutting to the importance of manhood to a haircutting ritual (upsherin in yiddish and chalakah in hebrew) that many orthodox communities observe for the three-year old boys (2005, 46-48). an educational connection exists because the child is expected for the first time to go to school, where he will learn to read hebrew. they find similarities between the attention in the haircutting ritual and bar mitzvah (they could extend this comparison to the bris) to the trauma of loss and its provision of healing with cultural identity. both rituals also are replete with reminders of masculinity. the haircut distinguishes the boy from the long hair of the girl. according to ouaknin and ménager, the immersion into books is symbolically consistent with the gendering of cutting rituals: “he goes from the maternal language, which is oral, to the paternal language, which is written. hebrew also links writing to the paternal language in an extraordinary way. the word ‘alphabet’–aleph-bet in hebrew–is pronounced av and means ‘father’” (2005, 48). further underscoring study as intellectual gain to compensate for physical loss is a traditional gift in both rituals of a honey cake or sweets shaped like letters (ouaknin and ménager 2005, 48). in circumcision, haircutting, and bar mitzvah rituals, the boy acquires a new ceremonial garment. in the haircutting the boy gains a small tallit to wear as an undergarment known as tzitzit (based on the commandment in torah to wear fringes at the corners of garments and also meaning “hair”; see ezekiel 8:3). tzitzit or braided fringes are attached to the boy’s tallit and are often used in the service to touch the torah as it is carried around the synagogue. in addition to the larger tallit conspicuously worn over the shoulders at prayer, the tefillin adds long strips of leather on the arm and head. the boy usually receives the gift of tefillin before the tallit; a common time to present the phylacteries is 30 days before the bar mitzvah. this period is related to a monthly cycle in the jewish lunar calendar and is commonly associated with a mourning period of shloshim (from the hebrew for “thirty.”). a mourning period is simulated for the passing of youth, and as in the ritual guidelines after burial, hair of the family mourners cannot be cut until after the mourning period (usually just before the bar mitzvah). “laying tefillin,” as the act is called involves a form of binding because leather cases attached to the leather straps contain torah passages. one that is especially conspicuous is on the forehead with straps hanging down over the shoulders in the manner of hair. rabbis teaching the laying of tefillin cfr_2009_r4.indb 20 10/25/09 6:19:17 pm bronner fathers and sons 21 will comment on the placement on head and arms as committing intellect and body to fulfillment of commandments. but there is also an important connection to the father-son relationship. the four passages from the torah on the tefillin parchments are teachings the father will address to the child and relate to communicative skills: veamarta for you will say, veshinaneta vedibarta for you will repeat and you will speak, velimadeta for you will teach (ouaknin and ménager 2005, 161-62). both tefillin and tzitzit are symbolically cut to show completion by going over the head and removing them after prayer (ouaknin and ménager 2005, 50). a ceremonial connection to the circumcision at the bar mitzvah is the wimpel (from the german wimpel for “flag” or “sash”), a decorated cloth on figure 3. bar mitzvah studio portrait, new york city, 1961. figure 4. judy goldberg holding a wimpel she made for a bris/bar mitzvah, harrisburg, pennsylvania, 2009. photograph by simon j. bronner. cfr_2009_r4.indb 21 10/25/09 6:19:17 pm fathers and sons bronner 22 which the boy is circumcised and later used as a sash to bind the sefer torah.4 it might be part of a custom at the age of three when the boy is toilet trained. the father gets an aliyah (invitation to the altar) and brings his boy with him to the bimah to wrap the wimpel around the torah. thought to be of german origin like the bar mitzvah, the decorated wimpel gains significance because it is was used to swaddle the baby boy at his brit milah and represents the covenant with a patriarchal figure, as the hebrew blessing recited by the father reminds the gathered group: “praised by thou, o lord our god, king of the universe, who has sanctified us by thy commandments, and hast bidden us to make him enter into the covenant of abraham our father.” the group responds, “as he has entered into the covenant, so may he be introduced to the study of torah, to the wedding canopy, and to good deeds.” based on this text, wimpels are inscribed in hebrew with the following message underscoring the patriarchal line: “(name of child, called) son of (name of father) born under a good constellation on (day of week, date, month, year) may he (or may the lord let him) grow to torah, marriage, and good deeds.” an artist may illuminate the text with related depictions of a jewish wedding under the traditional canopy (huppah); masculine animals such as the lion of judah, eagles, and leopards5; and a boy holding up a torah commonly interpreted as a bar mitzvah scene (eis 1979, 32; kirshenblatt-gimblett 1977, 1819). one way that the bar mitzvah is thematized in the father-son relationship is in the transfer of the wimpel. after the circumcision, the wimpel belongs to the father, but after the bar mitzvah, possession transfers to the son. bar mitzvah (exemplifying the commandment at the bris to “grow to torah”) and wedding are connected in the custom of giving the groom an aliyah the week before his wedding to re-enact the call to the bimah at his bar mitzvah. in a sign of readiness for marriage, the groom often donates his wimpel to his synagogue before the wedding. the covering of the huppah is frequently composed of the boy’s bar mitzvah tallit, and the bride will replace it with a larger tallit she has woven or purchased for the groom (marcus 2003. 117). the transfer of the tallit (at a critical part of the ceremony, bride and groom are both covered by the tallit to symbolize their unity) and the circling of the bride around the groom indicates readiness for sexual relations. practices at the bar mitzvah suggest the metaphor of the wedding is used to represent sexual displacement by immersion in books rather than sexual awakening. when the boy is called to the bimah at the barmitzvah he is identified as the “bar mitzvah groom” and the torah is the bride to which he is bound. according to arlow’s description, wedding and bar mitzvah are joined in the recitation, because “throughout his recitation the initiate is observed intently as a young man on trial undergoing a very difficult examination. a sense of compassionate participation grips the audience, especially the boy’s mother” (arlow 1951, 357). the anticipation can be related to anxiety over sexually consummating a marriage; in this case the enactment is displacing the sexuality with potency in touching the torah with a yad, a metal extension in the shape of a finger, and the oral recitation. in the tefillin ceremony described previously, the boy places the shel yad on the arm and wraps straps that extend from it around the middle finger while saying verses referring to betrothal. although thirteen seems young to invoke the metaphor of marriage, ouaknin and ménager find cfr_2009_r4.indb 22 10/25/09 6:19:18 pm bronner fathers and sons 23 evidence for its enactment as compensation for sexually “losing a part of oneself through the body” (2005, 46). they argue that “boys lose sperm (wet dreams and first masturbation)” at ages that “correspond closely to the time that the losses described above are first sustained” (2005, 46). further, the ejaculatory praxis of throwing candies at the bar mitzvah boy resembles the showering of the bride and groom after a wedding. arguably, access to torah is unconsciously equated with access to a woman which the father already possesses. arlow hypothesized that organizing the ordeal as an examination is symbolically important because, in his words, “failing an examination, together with the humiliation which the student experiences, is often unconsciously equated with being castrated,” and from clinical cases, he argued that examiners are identified with the father image of the oedipal phase (arlow 1951, 365). to be sure, the bar mitzvah boy is expected to pass the examination by his male elders, but more than any other theme, memoirs mention performance anxiety about successfully completing the reading and speech under the watchful eye of teacher and father. the chanting for the reading is done by rote, and it is all the more challenging because of the absence of vowel aids to pronunciation. as ouaknin and ménager point out, “this means that to learn it, one has to accept being part of a tradition. one cannot learn this vowel-less text on one’s own, even if one reads and speaks hebrew fluently” (2005, 63). the process of tradition they are referring to involves an oral “handing down” of performative practices from male elder to the boy. in this way, the connotation of identity formation at the bar mitzvah is prominent because more than a text is being chanted; tradition as a sustaining process for the group is being enacted–and honored. a lesson of the boy’s ordeal is that being part of the tradition is difficult and is administered by the synagogue patriarchy rather than the familial one. the following narratives collected from young men who had experienced their bar mitzvah five to eight years before bear out these pervasive themes of performance anxiety and participation in tradition at the bar mitzvah: i was nervous beyond words. the cantor tried to calm me by telling me it was my special day, but that made me only feel worse. i felt that all eyes were on me and i could never be ready in time. i felt that my voice was going to crack at any moment. it’s different from show and tell in school, because it was so formal and when i was reading, i was dwarfed by these older men who i thought were breathing down my neck. i think my mother worried about everyone coming and that the party would go well. it was my father who sweated the synagogue part, and i sweated the more he did, even though he didn’t have to say much. that suit bothered me and my friends teased me about my get-up. older relatives told me they remembered my father’s bar mitzvah that was so wonderful and i felt that i had to live up to that. i think that’s why i pushed to read faster than i should have. i don’t think my sister had as hard a time at her bat mitzvah. there was totally more pressure on me. cfr_2009_r4.indb 23 10/25/09 6:19:18 pm fathers and sons bronner 24 i dropped everything as the time got closer so i could concentrate. i would have loved to have postponed it but that date was set. i was into sports and let that slide for the bar mitzvah. the rabbi told me that i would have the support of family to get me through, but i didn’t know half these people. i felt that i was singing for strangers, which made me nervous. i think it was definitely worth it after everything, but i was a wreck before. the tone of these narratives is borne out by kosmin’s survey, which showed that 51 percent of parents reported that the bar mitzvah dominated the life of the family during the year of preparation, but 97 percent still felt that the bar mitzvah “was worth the time and trouble involved” (2002, 235-236). despite complaints that the bar mitzvah was time consuming and “nerve-racking,” only one percent of the b’nai mitzvah wrote that it “was not worth the time it took” (2002, 235). the bar mitzvah treats learning as a masculine attribute because of command of the torah associated with male leadership and the association of the bearded rabbi with an especially learned man at a time when the boy is concerned with the growth of pubic and facial hair as a sign of masculinity. these images are reinforced by cake-toppers (a cake in the form of a torah is commonly reported), a host of figurines often given as gifts that depict the tallit-covered, hairless boy at the torah or bimah under the tutelage of a bearded religious figure.6 arlow, however, did not believe the bar mitzvah was effective in resolving oedipal conflicts because of the time lag between sexual maturity and heterosexuality sanctioned by modern society. he suggested that as a result of the failure of the ceremony to ritualize puberty the bar mitzvah boy chooses a number of psychological strategies, including channeling sexual and aggressive energies into study, rejecting the father by renewed submission to an exalted father image of god, or cessation of religious adherence to either join or rebel against his biological father (arlow 1951, 364-68). although there is a symbolic replacement of the father in the bar mitzvah, the separation from, and competition for, the mother characteristic of pubertal rituals is not as apparent. what is manifested more than sexual competition is the celebration of the child’s precociousness evident in command of the “ordeal by examination.” instead of independence to another stage, the bar mitzvah presents a paradoxical combination of separation and connection. the reading declares an early autonomy from education even as it joins the individual to a patrilineal tradition. the boy is not integrated into the community as much as he is forced to become self-aware of his own development and aspirations. following the symbolic communication of the circumcision (brit milah is literally the “covenant of the word”) of which he was unaware, and possibly the upsherin at which he begins immersion in the alphabet, the bar mitzvah shows his readiness for the world by a performance that draws attention to itself for what ouaknin and ménager call “creative combinations and recombinations of letters and words” challenging the linear structure of storytelling (2005, 63). the boy becomes conscious of the attainment of skills that will carry him into adulthood. rabbis hope that the ancient source of the texts will remind him to commit to the cfr_2009_r4.indb 24 10/25/09 6:19:18 pm bronner fathers and sons 25 synagogue, but the praxis of his “reading in bursts” (words bursting out into letters or into groups of letters, making other words and coming together into a new order) and exemption of his father allows him to detach (ouaknin and ménager 2005, 62-63). analysis and explanation: historical and social contexts for jewish manly display if the bar mitzvah is not effective as a sacramental or pubertal rite, its value as an ethnic commitment is questionable because of the decline of jewish involvement after the event. if it is not particularly useful for coming of age or revitalizing jewish identity, and parents complain of its exorbitant expense and material excess, then what explains its spreading popularity during the twentieth century? the joselit thesis that it became entrenched as a life cycle celebration in which the family’s economic success could be displayed and ethnic identity unhinged from synagogue life in the post-immigrant generation does not readily apply to a different set of social and historical circumstances for jewish parents with only faint memories of the ghetto experience. and if there are traces of this motivation of status anxiety still apparent in the suburban conspicuous consumption evident in popular-culture portrayals such as keeping up with the steins and entourage, then why did the synagogue component not disappear, particularly since prominent american rabbis held a negative or ambivalent attitude toward the bar mitzvah? the psychosexual connections of circumcision, examination, and wedding are strong in the ceremony, suggesting a developmental explanation, but is the ceremony working to resolve oedipal conflicts, considering that the mother plays a peripheral role by most accounts and the separation that occurs is from the father rather than from the mother as described in other coming-of-age processes? with the rush to find a source in antiquity for the age of thirteen as a jewish ritual age, it appears that being forgotten is its modern symbolism as the first year of adolescence, or the teen years. the twentieth century, especially the years after world war ii, was marked by the rise of teenagers as a separate, often troubled or rebellious age and marketing target. many factors went into the creation of adolescence particularly within north america and western europe, including the end of child labor and the rise of the high school in attendance as well as status within popular culture. wrapped up in the emerging image of the teen in the modern context of compensating for a lack of the provider role is the tough guy image of the adolescent relying on strength, competitiveness, and aggressive heterosexuality in preparation for economic and social independence. this was coupled with the feminized, constricted, suited father of the 1950s vividly spread in iconic images such as the rebellious teen’s father wearing an apron in rebel without a cause (1955) and the domestication of the father-businessman in the man in the gray flannel suit (1956) (see cross 2008, 95; see also cohan 1997; gilbert 2005; gordon 1959, 57-64; osgerby 2001; young and young 2004, 30, 184-86). against this background of changing views of age-based masculinity, the jewish emphasis on learning as the basis of masculine identity caused conflicts with the dominant society, at least if the goal was to integrate into society. the cfr_2009_r4.indb 25 10/25/09 6:19:18 pm fathers and sons bronner 26 jewish body, as sander gilman has pointed out in his study of the european sources for this conflict, was defined as unsuited for military or strenuous work (gilman 1991; see also konner 2009, 144-53). jews were known for brains rather than brawn (gilman 1996). during the 1950s, jews were notably absent from many cultural displays of teen masculine power including music, motors, sports, and dance (kimmel 1996, 277-78). in folk humor, jews were smart but weak, and many jokes about the bar mitzvah boy underscored his inadequacy as a sexualized man (ouaknin and ménager 2005, 55). if that pressure to show manly traits came from outside of the jewish community at a time when the bonds of the community began to unravel, from within the community, egalitarian ideas about the bat mitzvah began to take hold in conservative and reform wings of judaism. the time of maturation for girls was defined a year earlier than the boys, adding insult to injury, even though her ceremony was not thematized with any declaration of “today, i am a woman.” in the background of the jewish boy’s maturation is the growth of the image through popular sources of the overprotective mother who inhibits the jewish boy’s maturity and stays with him through adulthood (antler 2007). one should also not underestimate the psychological impact of jewish circumcision as another internal conflict among jews because of the implication that it diminishes sexual aggressiveness and masculine identity (glick 2005; mark 2003; silverman, eric 2006). looking historically at bar mitzvah announcements, the theme of the bar mitzvah began to change from a subdued family ceremony of joining congregational life to the public celebration of manhood during the 1950s. it first becomes a theme of television sitcoms in the 1960s, usually representing a jewish boy’s anxiety about either going through the “ordeal by examination” or having missed an opportunity to have one (pearl and pearl 1999). many of the parties had as themes the interests of the boy, such as music, sports, and motors rather than religious subjects, and these interests along with displays of economic power were significant for culturally connecting to a normative, if not precocious hypermasculinity. for example, i asked boys who had gone through the bar mitzvah how they arrived at the themes for their post-ceremony parties. as the following narratives attest, it was a decision that they felt strongly they wanted to control. if i left it to my parents, i’m sure they would have rented a boring hall and made it look like their wedding. i wanted a teen party and i wanted it to be cool. i was into cars and skateboards, so i got them to put it in an auto museum, which none of my buddies had done, and the centerpieces were dudes on skateboards. i told them that i would do all the traditional stuff for the synagogue if i could have the party that wouldn’t embarrass me. my parents did ask me for ideas about the party, and i’m glad they did. i was worried that they would want too much of a family affair. the ceremony followed the law, and i wanted the party to be something that would be mine. i wanted to let go and impress my cfr_2009_r4.indb 26 10/25/09 6:19:18 pm bronner fathers and sons 27 friends. it had to be about sports to save face after all the stuff i took about going through bar mitzvah lessons. there weren’t too many jewish signs, although my parents did want the candle lighting for the relatives. but i had a rock band, so the kids could get into it. more than a celebration of the completion of the bar mitzvah, the party allowed the boys to show their connection to normative culture, especially to masculine pursuits of sports, recreation, and music. this was especially important because the boys recognized that for the most part, their mothers made the arrangements for the party. with demonstrations of masculinity and maturity being important at the party, the ceremony is remembered in relation to the father’s role. the components of the synagogue ceremony emphasizing the boy taking the father’s role and the rise in status of the recitation as an “ordeal” were adapted into the declaration, “today, i am a man.” considering the praxis of the bar mitzvah, one might easily construe this declaration as “today, i am the father”–and i am better than he was. competition for ownership of the event is evident in the idea that the successful bar mitzvah reflects on the status of the father, as shown especially in keeping up with the steins, in which the materialism of the party conveys the father’s male provider role coming into conflict with the boy’s identity formation. figure 5. skateboarder centerpiece at bar mitzvah held in auto museum, hershey, pennsylvania, 2006. photograph by simon j. bronner. cfr_2009_r4.indb 27 10/25/09 6:19:19 pm fathers and sons bronner 28 the early age at which the bar mitzvah occurred added to the ceremony’s appeal for announcing the jewish boy’s claim to manliness if not legal maturity. into the twenty-first century under the influence of the women’s movement, questions of the proper masculine role taken by jewish boys increased. reports in books such as jew-jitsu: the hebrew hands of fury by rabbi daniel eliezer and paul kupperberg (2008) along with satirical movies such as the hebrew hammer (2004) expressed a confusion about whether the answer to these questions would be to embrace knowledge as a source of social power or a sign of diminished masculinity. i contend that the bar mitzvah gained importance therefore in what increasingly became seen as the most important phase of modern life and for a group that felt the most conflict in its definition of masculinity. despite theodor gaster’s avowal that the bar mitzvah imparts nothing, i find that its symbolism of circumcision, examination, and wedding is joined to modern meanings of masculine maturity. it is imperfect as a ritual of religious commitment, to be sure, but it has persisted and even spread in the modern context, not because of its signal of religious majority or adult obligations, but its negotiation of adolescence for an ethnic group uncertain in american popular culture of its masculine identity and patriarchal continuity. implication: feminization and the ritual burden of the bar mitzvah having made this argument for linking the rise of the bar mitzvah to a crisis of masculinity for assimilating jews within north america, i see signs today that it is likely to enter a new phase as an invented tradition. some of the connections to masculinity, for instance, are undermined as the synagogue goes through what has been heralded as feminization, including female rabbis and cantors leading the bar mitzvah (goldstein 1991; marder 1996; seidman 1997). mothers are taking more of a role, and for my memoir writers concerned for their masculine image, that caused more, rather than less, distress. one compensation that several writers mentioned was taking more control of the party, infusing it with masculine themes and holding it at auto museums, ski slopes, or sports stadiums. or the party exuded a sense of coolness in representation of a modern fashion and electronics rather than the process of tradition evoking continuity with jewish identity. one bar mitzvah adviser touched a nerve by showing parents how to highlight their son’s hip individuality in step with high style rather than collective tradition associated with sameness by offering mitzvah chic, subtitled, “how to host a meaningful, fun, drop-dead gorgeous bar or bat mitzvah” (greenberg 2006). some families view holding a bar mitzvah in israel as a sign of religious devotion, but rather than departing from tradition, it fits into the trope of announcing masculine attributes at a young age because of the image of israelis as tough jews. a common post-ceremony activity, for example, is to go to masada, the historic site where a small number of rebellious jews held off legions of the roman empire. many of the boys show their vigor by climbing up a steep path to the plateau 1,300 feet high. in addition to this bar mitzvah trip, others show a variety of creative ways to engage the boy with a strenuous and memorable experience. as the boys seek to declare their own identity, the fathers cfr_2009_r4.indb 28 10/25/09 6:19:19 pm bronner fathers and sons 29 are frequently involved as the son’s pal engaged equally in sports and music, rather than speaking as the authoritarian voice of the elders or sages (see cross 2008). if the above argument holds up, then as the popular perception of jewish masculinity changes to the point where it joins normative muscular manliness, then the bar mitzvah will carry less of a ritual burden to show the development of the boy’s mettle as well as his mind (see brod 1988, 2004; bronner 2005, 34-36). the bar mitzvah is the tradition everyone thinks they know from popular culture as a sign of excess of mass culture generally, although assigned to jews, but its folk cultural practice reveals an uneasy father-son relationship in a society that creates conflicts for the boy between brains and brawn as he declares at the age of thirteen, “today, i am a man.” notes 1. for the logical problem of social functionalism analyzing consequences rather than causes, see oring 1976; bronner 1986, 74-88; bronner 2006. 2. evidence for the yom kippur fast before the bar mitzvah as a folk custom is found in discussion groups such as imamother: connecting jewish mothers (www. imamother.com). the question of whether to allow children to fast frequently comes up. among orthodox members, there is reference made to “the three fasts” (out of seven jewish fast days) which are ritually done by the bar-mitzvah-to-be: yom kippur (day of atonement, usually occurring in september or october), tisha b’av (usually held in july or august remembering the tragedies of the jewish people), and ta’anit bechorim (the fast of the firstborn commemorating the saving of the firstborn in egypt from plague, observed the day before passover in march or april). on september 10, 2008, for instance, “1st” from israel posted this query, “i am looking for the reason/source behind the custom of the fasting the 3 fasts before bar or bat mitzvah. do only people from certain backgrounds do this, where does this custom come from? is there a basis for it? i always learned that children under bar/bat mitzvah age should not fast the whole day. once they are at the age of chinuch, they can be encouraged to fast for a few hours in the morning (and at night 9 av and yom kippur). and then that when they do eat, it should only be what is necessary, not indulging on junk food and continuous snack.” i recorded seven replies, none of which proposed any textual sources, and rabbis who were cited in the thread were mixed on whether to follow the custom. shalhevet from israel wrote on the same day, “our rov says not to do it,” whereas chossidmom replied on october 2, 2008, that “my son who will be bar mitzvah a couple of weeks after succos should fast this yom kippur, according to the rav,” even though he “says it’s a bunch of baloney...he said there is absolutely no source for this.” the other replies referred to doing it although they did not know the rationale: “we did–but i have no idea why” (greenfire, september 10, 2008); “my father holds by it. he told me the reason but of course i forgot” (flowerpower, september 10, 2008); “i never heard of 3 fasts before, but one i did. my parents always said to fast one fast before also only if you can” (cuteson, september 10, 2008); “i did, as a kid! i grew up in a modern orthodox community, and my whole circle of firends were really machmir on that one. (then again, we made fasting cfr_2009_r4.indb 29 10/25/09 6:19:19 pm fathers and sons bronner 30 into a competition–‘how long did you fast?’ ‘what did you break your fast on,’ etc…) (shininglight, october 2, 2008). 3. the rhetorical use of patoor in regard to release from manly obligation is still apparent in modern hebrew where it refers to an exemption from military duty. 4. ruth eis (1979) states that although the sashes are referred to as “torah binders” in english, “the correct name is wimpel (f.), an old german word for cloth or veil, related to the middle high german bewimpfen, to cover, to conceal. typically, they are made from the cloth which covers the new-born male during the circumcision ceremony (11). 5. ellen frankel and betsy platkin teutsch in the encyclopedia of jewish symbols (1992) trace the frequent presence of lions, leopards, eagles, and deer in ceremonial jewish objects to the mishnah (pirke avot 5:23) which commands, “be as strong as a leopard, as light as an eagle, as swift as a deer, as brave as a lion to do the will of your father in heaven” (40). 6. see, for example, the cake toppers at the website magic mud (www. magicmud.com/judaic a shots.htm) accessed december 28, 2008. it offers personalized bar mitzvah cake toppers and figurines at the bimah. another site shows a figurine with the bearded rabbi overlooking the bar mitzvah boy, entitled “bar mitzvah–father and son figurine” promoted by liorel art from israel: stores. ebay.com/art_from_israel_figureines-sculptures_woqqfsubz2100394. works cited abrahams, israel. 1958. jewish life in the middle ages. new york: meridian books. antler, joyce. 2007. you never call! you never write! a history of the jewish mother. new york: oxford university press. arlow, jacob. 1951. a psychoanalytic study of a religious initiation rite: bar mitzvah. in the psychoanalytic study of the child, volume vi, ed. ruth eissler, anna freud, heinz hartmann, and ernst kris, 353-74. new york : international universities press. bronner, simon j. 1986. american folklore studies: an intellectual history. lawrence: university press of kansas. ______. 2006. folk logic: interpretation and explanation in folkloristics. western folklore 65: 401-34. chill, abraham. 1979. the minhagim: the customs and ceremonies of judaism, their origins and rationale. new york: sepher-hermon press. cross, gary. 2008. men to boys: the making of modern immaturity. new york: columbia university press. cohan, steven. 1997. masked men: masculinity and the movies in the fifties. bloomington: indiana university press. davis, judith. 1995. the bar mitzvah balabusta: the mother’s role in the family’s rite of passage. in active voices: women in jewish culture, ed. maurie sacks, 125-41. urbana: university of illinois press. ______. 2002. the psychoanalytic study of religious custom and belief: ritual fasting, self-mutilation, and the deus otiosus. in bloody mary in the mirror: cfr_2009_r4.indb 30 10/25/09 6:19:19 pm bronner fathers and sons 31 essays in psychoanalytic folkloristics, by alan dundes, 3-15. jackson: university press of mississippi. eis, ruth. 1979. torah binders of the judah l. magnes museum. berkeley: judah l. magnes memorial museum. eliezer, rabbi daniel, and paul kupperberg. 2008. jew-jitsu: the hebrew hands of fury. new york: citadel press. farrell, eileen. 1985. the poetics of renunciation: form and content in ritual fasting. journal of psychoanalytic anthropology 8: 249-64. frankel, ellen, and betsy platkin teutsch. 1992. the encyclopedia of jewish symbols. northvale, nj: jason aronson. gaster, theodor h. 1961. thespis: ritual, myth, and drama in the ancient near east. garden city, ny: doubleday. ______. 1980. the holy and the profane: the evolution of jewish folkways. new york: william morrow. gilbert, james. 2005. men in the middle: searching for masculinity in the 1950s. chicago: university of chicago press. gilman, sander. 1991. the jew’s body. new york: routledge. ______. 1996. smart jews: the construction of the image of jewish superior intelligence. lincoln: university of nebraska press. glazer, rabbi simon. 1928. the bar-mitzvah pulpit: sermonettes for bar-mitzvah boys and others. new york: hebrew publishing. glick, leonard b. 2005. marked in your flesh: circumcision from ancient judea to modern america. new york: oxford university press. goldberg, harvey e. 2003. jewish passages: cycles of jewish life. berkeley: university of california press. goldstein, elyse. 1991. seek her out: a textual approach to the study of women and judaism. new york: ktav. gordon, albert i. 1959. jews in suburbia. boston: beacon press. greenberg, gail anthony. 2006. mitzvah chic: how to host a meaningful, fun, drop-dead gorgeous bar or bat mitzvah. new york: simon & schuster. gruberger, risa. 1993. a mini-course on writing a drash. in bar/bat mitzvah education: a sourcebook, ed. helen leneman, 281-87. springfield, n.j.: a.r.e. publishing. haskell, guy h. 1996. jewish americans. 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explanation in folkloristics. journal of american folklore 89: 67-80 osgerby, bill. 2001. playboys in paradise: masculinity, youth and leisure-style in modern america. oxford, england: berg. ouaknin, marc-alain, and françoise-anne ménager. 2005. bar mitzvah: a guide to spiritual growth. new york: assouline. pearl, jonathan, and judith pearl. 1999. the chosen image: television’s portrayal of jewish themes and characters. jefferson, nc: mcfarland. pollack, herman. 1971. jewish folkways in germanic lands (1648-1806): studies in aspects of daily life. cambridge: m.i.t. press. cfr_2009_r4.indb 32 10/25/09 6:19:20 pm bronner fathers and sons 33 raphael, ray. 1988. the men from the boys: rites of passage in male america. lincoln: university of nebraska press. rosenberg, stuart e. 1965. the right age for bar mitzvah. religious education 60: 298-300. roth, cecil. 1955. bar mitzvah: its history and its associations. in bar mitzvah illustrated, ed. abraham i. katsh, 15-22. new york: shengold. 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[1939] 1979. jewish magic and superstition: a study in folk religion. new york: atheneum. van gennep, arnold. 1960. the rites of passage. trans. monika b. vizedom and gabrielle l. caffee. chicago: university of chicago press. cfr_2009_r4.indb 33 10/25/09 6:19:20 pm fathers and sons bronner 34 wagner, matthew. 2009. soldiers turn to secret weapon: jewish spirituality. jerusalem post. 14 january. http://www.jpost.com/servlet/satellite?cid=12318 66577142&pagename=jpost%2fjparticle%2fshowfull (accessed february 9, 2009). young, william k., with nancy k. young. 2004. the 1950s. westport, ct: greenwood. cfr_2009_r4.indb 34 10/25/09 6:19:20 pm 35 children of the holocaust: common games, play, and pastimes in uncommon times priscilla ord several years ago when i was living in farmville, virginia, and teaching at longwood college, now longwood university, i was involved in an adult bible study class, composed of college professors and other, well-educated professionals who lived there. one evening, for some reason, the topic of the holocaust came up. i cannot remember why we strayed off the subject we were studying, how we arrived at that one, or even what was being said about it until one woman said, “i wonder why almost none of the survivors have ever written about how they managed to survive.” others mentioned that, because those who would have survived were getting on in years, one would expect more of what they were calling survival literature to have been written. i was stunned because i had read numerous books on the subject, almost all of them first-hand accounts from the lives of the authors themselves, and then it struck me. i was, at the time, teaching children’s literature, and i worked in a children’s bookstore on the weekends. all of the books, but one, that i had read and, in fact, owned had been, thanks to an eye for marketing, published as children’s books. those who wrote them had been children and had written about the experiences they had had as children when they lived through and ultimately, sometimes by extraordinary means, survived those awful years of the late 1930’s and early 1940’s in various countries in europe. the one notable exception is in the mouth of the wolf (1983) by rose zar, which is well worth reading. at nineteen rose, ruszka guterman, was urged by her father to save herself by hiding “in the mouth of the wolf.” traveling alone with false papers under the name of wanda gajda, she escaped from the piotrkow ghetto, dug ditches for the german army, and worked as a laundress, a cleaning woman, a nurse’s aide, and ultimately, as the war ended, a housekeeper for an ss officer, even traveling with the man’s wife when she returned to germany for the birth of her second child. at our next meeting, i brought several bins of the books that i owned to share with those who were interested. even i had to admit, however, that the books for children and young adults had only been written somewhat recently. why was it that they waited for so long? perhaps doris orgel, whose book the devil in vienna (1978) gave me the idea for this paper, explains it best: i knew i needed to write it. why did i keep putting it off? wonder about that reminded me of friends i had in high school—close friends, all refugees like me. we talked endlessly about any subject, except one: where we’d come from, what happened there, and how we got out (in my case nearly not!). cfr_2009_r4.indb 35 10/25/09 6:19:20 pm children of the holocaust ord 36 the deepest reason for our friendship was the background we shared. yet talking about it was taboo. we were probably scared, even though our lives in europe were behind us. i know i had fears locked up inside—fears all the scarier because they were vague, dating back to vienna and things i’d only dimly understood. most of all, we wanted to be popular, do well, and have fun, like everybody else. we pushed aside what made us different, and told ourselves it didn’t matter. we were americans now. so for many years, i did not write this book. belatedly, after writing other books, and visiting austria twice as a tourist, with my american husband and kids, i pulled my head out of the sand and faced the truth: what happened when the devil came to vienna mattered very much to me. i started doing historical research. then i interviewed my parents and everyone else i knew who had experienced that time in austria. finally, i was ready to write about what living under nazism was like. it happened a long time ago, but it still matters. i hope it makes readers ask themselves: “if someone like hitler came to power here and now, how would i feel? what would i think and do?” (242-43). hearing the words children and holocaust, one’s thoughts are almost immediately and invariably drawn to those children who did not survive, particularly to the plight of anne frank and her family. there were, however, many who did survive, and the autobiographical and biographical stories of their survival, published predominantly as children’s or young adult fiction because the protagonist is a child or young adult, although the content is far from fiction, provide interesting and poignant insights of their lives in the most difficult of times. the details of how these young people managed to escape, not only from occupied cities and countries but also the work details and concentration camps, were provided safe passage on the kindertransports, were hidden, sometimes for years, by sympathetic friends or neighbors, were taken in by religious organizations for “safe keeping,” were able to pass as non-jewish, or endured the camps until liberation are only part of their stories. they were, after all, children, and, as such, when possible, they participated in common games, play, and pastimes. somewhat ironically, when one considers the subject matter, a number of these accounts appear in books whose titles refer to children’s games or practices or, in one case, a children’s song. among these are hide and seek (1991) by ida vos, translated by terese edelstein and inez smith; touch wood: a girlhood in occupied france (1988) by renee roth-hano; tug of war (1989) by joan lingard; cfr_2009_r4.indb 36 10/25/09 6:19:20 pm ord children of the holocaust 37 and dancing on the bridge of avignon (1995), also by ida vos, taken from the french children’s song “sur le pont d’avignon”: sur le pont d’avignon l’on y danse, l’on y danse. sur le pont d’avignon l’on y danse tout en rond. on the bridge of avignon, they are dancing, they are dancing. on the bridge of avignon, they are dancing in a ring. in hide and seek, based on her family’s life, ida vos relates how, as an eightyear-old jewish girl living in holland, she cannot understand why there are restrictions on her all of a sudden. she has to go to a different school and wear a gold star on her sleeve, she cannot sit on certain benches in the park, and when a group of jewish children are taken away, she and her family go into hiding. renee roth-hano, writing in touch wood, tells her story and that of her family, who, living in occupied france, flee their home in alsace and live a precarious existence in paris until renee and her sister escape to the shelter of a catholic school in normandy. one finds that not all of the children who were affected by the events of the holocaust and world war ii were jewish. joan lingard, for example, writes about her husband and his family and follows the ordeal of fourteen-year-old twins astra and hugo petersons, as members of the family flee their native latvia in late 1944 before the advancing russian armies and find themselves homeless refugees in war-torn germany. these stories and others provide amazing insight into how their authors, or the author’s subjects, lived, played, and survived the holocaust. based on his own childhood, uri orlev writes in the island on bird street (1984) of alex who, alone at eleven except for a pet white mouse named snow, struggles to survive in a nearly deserted, bombed-out polish ghetto. waiting for his father to return after his being taken to a work camp, he lives by his wits and hides from the nazis in an abandoned house. “for as long as we’d been living in the ghetto, we children from bird street had gone to number 78 to play hide-andseek and all kinds of ‘secret’ war games” (26). in run, boy, run (2003), another book by orlev, there are at least two examples of children being able to play games by making do with available materials. eight-year-old srulik frydman finds himself on his own when the rest of his family is killed following their escape from the ghetto and takes the polish name jurek staniak. he goes from village to village seeking refuge and sometimes lives with a band of boys in the forest. in one place a woman takes him in who needs someone to lead the cows and the sheep to pasture. there he meets a girl who takes her family’s two cows to pasture and teaches him to play jacks with stones: after they ate, marisza led him to the footpath that ran between the meadow and the wheat field. they sat on the hard earth and she taught him to play jacks with stones. she was awfully good at it. cfr_2009_r4.indb 37 10/25/09 6:19:21 pm children of the holocaust ord 38 “it’s a girl’s game,” she said. “but what do you care?” srulik tried flipping the stones in the air and catching them like marisza. it was hard (58). in another village, taken in by a christian family, srulik plays soccer with some boys in the village. the boys, however, lack an actual ball but had made one from rags: jurek excelled at rag-ball soccer, … there were also spitting and peeing contests. spitting was no problem. in peeing, though, he had to be careful not to let no one see that he was circumcised. fortunately, everyone was looking at where the pee landed. and at running jurek was the champion. no one was faster (79). run, boy, run is the fourth of uri orlev’s books about children in or suffering the effects of the holocaust to win the prestigious mildred l. batchelder award. this award, given each year by the american library association, honors the most outstanding children’s book originally published in a foreign language, translated into english, and published in the united states. his others of equal merit are the island on bird street (1984), the man from the other side (1991), and the lady with the hat (1995), which won the award in 1985, 1992, and 1996, respectively. it is in the devil in vienna (1978) by doris orgel that i found, perhaps, more examples of folk games and folklore than in others of these books. orgel writes of inge dornenwald, who is jewish and is based in part on her sister and partly on herself. inge and her best friend lieselotte, a roman catholic and daughter of an ss officer, play heaven and hell, a game similar to hopscotch, which she occasionally plays with evi, a younger child who lives upstairs. it may be inferred from what she writes that the game is usually played with another. the game is mentioned more than once. anyway, she wanted to play heaven and hell. she always does, she’s at that age. “all right.” i got my coat. i checked to see if lieselotte’s lucky pebble was in the pocket. it was. we went down to the courtyard. the little bit of snow had melted. the ground was dry enough. evi had chalk and drew the boxes. heaven is where you rest. hell is when you miss… lieselotte never used to miss, except when a dog came anywhere near. then her pebble would land in the wrong box, or she’d lose her balance, almost on purpose, so she could pet it (orgel 43-44). cfr_2009_r4.indb 38 10/25/09 6:19:21 pm ord children of the holocaust 39 a bit later in the book: i happened to have a piece of chalk in my pocket. i stooped down, drew a line, just to test if the pavement was dry. and before i knew it, i’d drawn a whole set of heaven and hell boxes. the pebble happened to be still in my pocket, from playing with evi yesterday. quickly i threw it into box one, skipped to there, picket it up; into box two; and so on. i felt a little foolish playing alone. but i’d already decided that if i got through all the boxes without missing, the wonderful something would all the more certainly happen. i was up to box eight, usually a lucky one for me, when i heard footsteps down the stairs, looked around—and missed. … interference, it doesn’t count, i tried to think, but that was stupid. i quit… (60). in attempting to determine the actual, graphic pattern for this particular game, i came across the following, which may link this version of the game to the cult of mithra: in the mithriac mysteries, adepts finally reached an eighth portal, the gate of light, where they stood naked, divested of all material qualities and ready to be reborn in the spiritual world. … it may be that a children’s game something like hopscotch contains a dim memory of this mystery cult, which came to germany and britain along with roman soldiers: in this game (which is still played), one leaps through a ladder-like figure drawn on the ground, and the last station in the eighth square is variously called heaven or hell (schimmel 1993, 143). inge’s uncle herbert on one occasion said, “’teu, teu, teu,’ … and knocked three times on wood—that’s a joking thing one does to keep the devil away” (orgel 1978, 36). this practice is used in much the same way today to keep the opposite of what has been verbally expressed from happening, but according to folklorist stephen roud, it may actually be a transfer from children’s games of tag where one is free or safe if touching wood. there is also a reference to the pastime or game of ball where one throws a ball against a wall and performs various routines, including clapping hands and turning around before catching it again. after lieselotte and her family move to munich, inge goes to her old house in an attempt to learn of her address from the janitor, herr magrutsch, and remembers, “…, he used to yell at us for playing ball against the side of the house …” (orgel 1978, 37). the two girls become “blood sisters,” based on something lieselotte has learned from a book, beneath distant skies, that belongs to her brother heinz: cfr_2009_r4.indb 39 10/25/09 6:19:21 pm children of the holocaust ord 40 “now let’s drink blood brotherhood,” said lieselotte. i’d never heard of that. but i wanted to. she took down a bottle of cooking wine. she poured a little into a glass. “we need a needle.” she went to get one. “now we prick our fingers.” “how do you know?” “i read it in a book heinz has. want to be first?” “no, you.” she stuck the needle in her finger. she didn’t even wince. she squeezed two drops of her blood into the wine. i pricked my finger. i didn’t wince either. i squeezed my blood in. we stirred up the wine with the blood. “now we link arms,” lieslelotte lifted the glass. “now we drink blood brotherhood.” “shouldn’t that be blood sisterhood?” “i don’t know. heinz says there’s no such thing. but you’re right. if we drink blood sisterhood, then there will be such a thing. let’s” (orgel 1978, 28). when lieselotte and her family are preparing to leave vienna for germany, she gives inge heinz’s book, where she reads: then trapper charlie unsheathed his trusty hunting knife and pricked his finger with it; the noble apache, swift eagle, unflinchingly did likewise; whereupon they mingled their blood in a cup of firewater, linked arms, raised the cup to their lips and drank. thus it came to pass that these two, though from worlds apart, became blood brothers. and blood brothers they remained unto their dying days (orgel 1978, 51). liesellotte then signs her letters to inge, “much b. s. l.,” for much blood sister love.” there is also mention of that favorite childhood prank of ringing someone’s doorbell and then running before the homeowner is able to answer. one day cfr_2009_r4.indb 40 10/25/09 6:19:21 pm ord children of the holocaust 41 at the skating rink, seeing someone who looks like heinz, and believing that lieselotte and her family have returned to vienna, inge goes to their old home and rings the bell. when she hears a dog bark that could not have been theirs, she runs before anyone can answer the door: by the time someone opened the door, i was already down on the first floor. “you wait, next time i’ll catch you,” a man’s voice shouted. he thought it was children playing the old game ring a doorbell and run. (orgel 1978, 65) it appears that anyone seeing a bride’s dress, not merely the groom seeing the bride, before the wedding would bring bad luck. mitzi, the dornenwalds’ maid, was planning to marry, and inge, who would soon be leaving with her family for yugoslavia, wanted to see her dress. “are you crazy? don’t you know that’s bad luck?” (orgel 1978, 106) these are but a few of the wealth of childhood memories that one might find in reading the books of and about those who survived the holocaust as children and have somewhat recently written about them or told their stories to others who have written them for them. this paper, which is a portion of a larger work in progress based on the books for children and young adults about these survivors and exactly how they survived, hopes to serve as a record of their activities and, where possible, an analysis of the games, play, and pastimes in which they participated. works cited lingard, joan. 1989. tug of war. new york: dutton. orgel, doris. 1978. the devil in vienna. new york: the dial press. orlev, uri. 1984. the island on bird street. tr. hillel halkin. boston: houghton mifflin company. ______. 1991. the man from the other side. tr. hillel halkin. boston: houghton mifflin company. ______. 1995. the lady with the hat. tr. hillel halkin. boston: houghton mifflin company. ______. 2003. run, boy, run. tr. hillel halkin. boston: houghton mifflin company. roth-hano, renee. 1988. touch wood. new york: four winds press. roud, steve. 2004. a pocket guide to superstitions of the british isles. london: penguin. schimmel, annemarie. 1993. the mystery of numbers. oxford: oxford university press. vos, ida. 1991. hide and seek. boston: tr. terese edelstein and inez smith. boston: houghton mifflin company. cfr_2009_r4.indb 41 10/25/09 6:19:21 pm children of the holocaust ord 42 ______. 1993. anna is still here. tr. terese edelstein and inez smith. boston: houghton mifflin company. ______. 1995. dancing on the bridge of avignon. tr. terese edelstein and inez smith. boston: houghton mifflin company. annotated bibliography lingard, joan. 1989. tug of war. new york: dutton. this book follows the ordeal of fourteen-year-old twins astra and hugo petersons, as they and their family flee their native latvia before the advancing russian armies in late 1944 and find themselves homeless refugees in a war-torn germany. orgel, doris. 1978. the devil in vienna. new york: the dial press. this novel is about two best friends in pre-world war ii austria—one whose father is a nazi ss officer and the other who is jewish—and has surprising truths to tell about individual acts of bravery and love in the face of mass betrayal. orlev, uri. 1984. the island on bird street. tr. hillel halkin. boston: houghton mifflin company. based on the author’s childhood, this is the story of a young jewish boy’s struggle to survive in a bombed-out polish village during the second world war. eleven-year-old alex has to live by his wits as he hides from the nazis, searches for his father, and tries to find a way to safety and freedom. ______. 1995. the lady with the hat. tr. hillel halkin. boston: houghton mifflin company. seventeen-year-old yulek is the only member of his family to survive life in the concentration camps of the holocaust. he moves to palestine, where he meets theresa, a jewish girl saved from the nazis by catholic nuns. meanwhile, an elegant lady in england has seen a photograph of yulek in the paper and recognizes him at once. she is yulek’s aunt--long estranged from her family when she married a christian and moved to britain. as yulek and theresa try to determine their places in the postwar world, the aunt begins her efforts to be reunited with yulek. ______. 1991. the man from the other side. tr. hillel halkin. boston: houghton mifflin company. like many poles, fourteen-year-old marek shares a prejudice against jews, but that does not stop him from helping his stepfather smuggle goods to the jews trapped in the ghetto. stunned to find that his own father was jewish, marek feels compelled to act, helping jozek, a jewish medical student, escape, learning to love jozek as a father. ______. 2003. run, boy, run. tr. hillel halkin. boston: houghton mifflin company. this novel tells the true story of srulik frydman, an eight-year-old jewish orphan living on his own in poland during the time of the holocaust. cfr_2009_r4.indb 42 10/25/09 6:19:21 pm ord children of the holocaust 43 roth-hano, renee. 1988. touch wood. new york: four winds press. in this autobiographical novel set in nazi-occupied france, renee, a young jewish girl, and her family flee their home in alsace and live a precarious existence in paris until renee and her sister escape to the shelter of a catholic school in normandy. vos, ida. 1991. hide and seek. tr. terese edelstein and inez smith. boston: houghton mifflin company. eight-year-old rachel hartog, a jewish girl living in holland, can’t understand why there are restrictions on jews all of a sudden--she must go to a different school, she must wear a gold star on her sleeve, she can’t sit in certain benches in the park--and when a group of jewish children are taken away, she and her family go into hiding. separated from her parents, she has to change her name and move from family to family, constantly in dread of discovery. rachel describes the horror of those years, how she lived in fear, couldn’t speak to anybody, and wondered whether she would ever see her family again ______. 1993. anna is still here. tr. terese edelstein and inez smith. boston: houghton mifflin company. thirteen-year-old anna, a jewish girl, has recently been reunited with her parents after hiding from the nazis for three years. being free is not as easy as anna thought--she’s troubled by nightmares, finds it difficult to speak after being silent for three years, and knows that her parents are hiding what they went through during those terrible years. anna finds she can only open up to mrs. neumann, a fellow survivor who is hoping to be reunited with her daughter, who she believes must still be alive. anna also finds that, although the war is over, the feelings of anti-semitism are still present. ______. 1995. dancing on the bridge of avingnon. tr. terese edelstein and inez smith. boston: houghton mifflin company. relates the experiences of a young jewish girl and her family during the nazi occupation of the netherlands. zar, rose. 1983. in the mouth of the wolf. philadelphia: the jewish publication society of america, 5743. ruszka guterman, at age eighteen, knows that to be a jew in poland in 1942 is a death warrant. her father knows this too, and convinces ruska and her brother benek to flee the ghetto and try to find safe haven in one of the larger cities in poland. luckily, ruszka has learned that to show fear is to give herself away. bold, brash, and defiant, ruszka becomes wanda gajda, working for an ss kommandant, and remains safe in the mouth of the wolf. cfr_2009_r4.indb 43 10/25/09 6:19:21 pm 45 “go to bed, now you’re dead”: suffocation songs and breath control games elizabeth tucker when i was growing up in washington, d.c. in the late 1950s, my best friend karen taught me some new games and songs. during the winter when we were nine years old, she showed me a game that she enjoyed playing with her younger brother geoffrey. “he’s really good at the game of smother,” karen told me. “come see!” following her into her brother’s bedroom, i heard a faint voice from the bottom of a pile of quilts. “more, more!” the voice called. karen and i ran from room to room, pulling blankets off beds and piling them on top of geoffrey. finally he shouted, “let me out!” and we removed the pile of sweltering bedcovers. none of us told our parents what we had been doing. a year later karen taught me a song called “suffocation,” sung to the tune of the french “alouette”: suffocation, easy suffocation. suffocation, easy way to die. first you get a plastic bag, then you put it on your head. go to bed, now you’re dead. oh, oh, oh, oh. we thought this song was hilarious. our mothers had warned us against putting plastic bags on our heads, so this song about defying such warnings appealed to us. we sang the song for a while, until other topical songs took its place in our singing repertoire. almost twenty years after karen and i learned the above version of the popular “suffocation” song, mary and herbert knapp included a very similar text in their one potato, two potato: the secret education of american children (1976, 253). in 1995 josepha sherman and t.k. f. weisskopf published four variants of the song, identifying them as parodies of the remco company’s game fascination. noting that the concept of suicide is “all too intriguing to children and teenagers, most commonly the latter” (1995, 71), sherman and weisskopf document the “suffocation” song’s circulation in the united states through the early 1970s and its popularity at american summer camps. among the methods of self-strangulation that these songs describe are “a big, brown rope” and “a rubber hose,” as well as plastic and rubber bags (71-72). whether or not youngsters had been familiar with these suicide methods before learning the verses, they certainly knew about them afterwards. this “suffocation” song has been documented well by folklorists of childhood, but games involving breath control have not. iona and peter opie’s “daring games” chapter of children’s games in street and playground includes a thought-provoking discussion of hanging and fainting games, with emphasis on the dangling man cfr_2009_r4.indb 45 10/25/09 6:19:22 pm “go to bed, now you’re dead” tucker 46 game in which a child hangs above the ground with a roller-towel twisted around his or her neck (1969, 273). with characteristic insight, the opies explain that games of this kind emerge in cyclical “crazes,” sometimes causing injury and death of children. they describe one such craze in 1961 and another in 1966. quoting boys’ confident assertion to their primary school’s headmaster, “we can make a boy faint for a minute, sir,” they note children’s pride in mastering a risky new game (274). during the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, more information about breath control games has become available. it has gradually become clear that young people’s activities range from risky pursuits such as the smother game i once played with my best friend and her brother to very dangerous choking games played in groups or alone. accounts of children’s group games have tended to stress the brevity of such experimentations. in the fall of 2007, fellow folklorist bill ellis sent me a long e-mail about levitation games that i quoted in my recent article “levitation revisited” (2007-2008). the message’s last line was “[levitation] was one of those things, like ‘knocking yourself out’ by hyperventilating that went the rounds of preadolescent kids like wildfire, then next week was gone.” experimentation with breath control usually ends quickly, but sometimes it leads to permanent damage or loss of life. although a short period of hyperventilation may seem relatively safe, all games that suppress normal breathing involve risk. in children’s folklore: a handbook, i include a description of the game hangman, collected from a nine-year-old boy in binghamton, new york in 1987. according to his description, “we take a rope, and it gots a hole in it, and you put it around their head. we close it as tight as we can and see who can choke himself the longest” (2008, 79). this description haunts me. how many young people have risked their lives by playing such a game? because breath control games belong to the childhood underground, it has not been easy for adults to understand the games’ extent and meaning, but the internet has greatly increased adults’ and children’s understanding of the games’ dangers. warnings against breath control games have circulated actively on the internet during the past five years. in this essay i examine relevant studies by folklorists, psychologists, anthropologists, and specialists in other fields. i also consider portrayals of breath control games on the internet that have significantly influenced public perception. after presenting some recent examples of games gathered from young adults, i draw a few conclusions and raise questions for future study. when i began my research on this subject, i asked my son, a young adult, what he knew about breath control games. “a lot of my friends played choking games in middle school,” he told me, “but i didn’t play myself.” i was not surprised that he and his friends had not brought this subject up before. like karen, geoffrey, and me, they had known what kind of information belonged to the childhood and adolescent underground. origins and explanations although the origins of children’s breath control games are unclear, it seems likely that such games began through imitation of adults’ activities. in children’s games cfr_2009_r4.indb 46 10/25/09 6:19:22 pm tucker “go to bed, now you’re dead” 47 of street and playground, the opies trace children’s imitative game-playing back to ancient rome, when boys played the roles of judges and other officials; the opies also mention sixteenth-century flemish children’s imitation of christenings, weddings, and religious processions (330-31). as michel foucault explains in discipline and punish: the birth of the prison (1977), public executions in premodern europe restored the sovereign’s authority through spectacles open to all viewers. crowds at these public events often expressed derision and sympathy for the criminal in a rowdy way. hangings, conducted on easily visible scaffolds, drew large crowds of adults and children (cooper 1974, 13-18). the horror, excitement, and fascination inspired by public hangings probably encouraged children to create their own hanging games. we know some details about an eighteenth-century hanging game played by boys in melton ross, a village in england, through a local legend published in the first issue of notes and queries in 1849. in this legend, three or four boys “[are] playing at hanging, and seeing who [can] hang the longest in a tree.” as one boy adjusts the noose around his neck, the devil in the form of a three-legged hare distracts the boy’s friends, who run away and do not return until after his death. afterwards, a gallows goes up on the site of the boy’s demise (ashliman 2000). today melton ross includes this legend in summaries of its history on the internet (“north lincolnshire” 2006). in the nineteenthand early twentieth-century american west, public hangings generated excitement for young and older people.1 memories of these public hangings persist through some western towns’ continuing recognition of a “hanging tree” in the center of town. in goliad, texas, for example, a hanging tree outside the town’s courthouse reminds residents of the many public hangings that took place between 1846 and 1870. in shelby county, texas, a young boy helped a mob hang a suspected criminal from a hanging tree (“famous texas trees” 2005). houston, columbus, and other municipalities in texas also take pride in their centrally located hanging trees, which serve as focal points of local history. although i have found no narratives about games played in american hanging trees, i believe that often-told stories about these living reminders of hangings have made young people more aware of events that have troubled and excited members of their community.2 in 2004, children’s imitation of the hanging of dhananjoy chatterjee in india resulted in two deaths and a near-fatality. a fourteen-year-old boy died after hanging himself with a rope attached to a ceiling fan; a twelve-year-old girl died after demonstrating the execution to her younger sibling; and a ten-year-old boy almost died after he and his friends took the roles of chatterjee and his hangman, doctor, and prison warden (“brutalization effect” 2009). the third case, which fortunately resulted in no deaths, demonstrates children’s enjoyment of impromptu multi-role dramas. we might wonder why all of these children engaged in similar imitative play soon after chatterjee’s hanging. the answer seems to be that this execution, the first in india since 1995, received a great deal of public attention. chaterjee’s hanging occurred as the result of a rape/murder of a girl in 1990, so it is not surprising that children felt fascinated and horrified by the details of his execution. cfr_2009_r4.indb 47 10/25/09 6:19:22 pm “go to bed, now you’re dead” tucker 48 besides imitation and excitement, pursuit of pleasure explains the development of breath control games. getting a “rush” or a “high” from choking increases young people’s interest in playing dangerous games of this kind. after oxygen deprivation, the brain responds to normal airflow with a euphoric sensation (“unintentional strangulation deaths” 2008), although other effects may be alarming (ullrich, bergin and goodkin 2008). frank dattilio’s study “the versatile effects of breath-holding” (2006) asks whether breath holding alleviates anxiety and makes people feel better. young people who have told me about their own breath control experiments have tended to emphasize pleasure and entertainment. one of my recent interviewees, a twenty-four-year-old male student who watched friends play pass out in middle school, told me, “what you do is, you put your hands around somebody’s throat and then push their chest in. they get a rush, pass out and wake up. it’s a funny thing to do.” in this interview and others, the word “rush” has repeatedly came up. clearly, feeling euphoric makes this game attractive to young people, as does the intriguing strangeness of the breath control process. forensic pathologists, psychologists, and anthropologists have documented the quest for pleasurable sensations that has motivated some hangings. the term “autoerotic asphyxiation” (called “aea” by specialists) means self-strangulation for the purpose of erotic pleasure. children, adolescents, and adults have pursued this solitary process, which differs from group games without a specific sexual orientation. a 2006 study by anny sauvageau and stéphanie racette, “autoerotic deaths in the literature from 1954 to 2004: a review,” identifies the age range of aea practitioners as 9-77. since this study analyzes 408 deaths reported in 57 articles, it covers a wide range of situations resulting in the same tragic outcome. sometimes it is difficult to know whether or not young people have intended to commit suicide. careful studies such as the one by sauvageau and racette have made it somewhat easier to distinguish between dangerous game-playing and deliberate self-destruction. psychologists and psychoanalysts have raised interesting questions about breath control. e.c. schneider’s “observations on holding the breath” (1930) suggests that will power, not physiology, determines how long a person can hold his or her breath. psychoanalytic studies of autoerotic asphyxiation have found that breath control results from regressive and masochistic fantasies. j.m. johnstone’s, a.c. hunt’s, and e. milford ward’s “plastic-bag asphyxia in adults” (1960) interprets the use of a plastic bag in asphyxiation as a symbolic attempt to return to the womb. robert r. hazelwood, park elliott dietz, and ann wolbert burgess, authors of autoerotic fatalities (1983), find that the need for oxygen deprivation has a strong connection to masochistic fantasies and sexual arousal through risk-taking. similarly, edward saunders’ “life threatening autoerotic behavior: a challenge for sex educators and therapists” (1989) emphasizes the prominence of risk-taking and thrill-seeking. saunders suggests that castration anxiety and masturbation guilt account for autoerotic behavior. these psychoanalytic treatises and others have raised thought-provoking points that deserve further consideration. besides pursuit of pleasure, excitement, and risk, a search for understanding accounts for young people’s motivation for playing breath control games. cfr_2009_r4.indb 48 10/25/09 6:19:22 pm tucker “go to bed, now you’re dead” 49 according to jean piaget’s stages of cognitive development, children in the concrete operational stage (ages 7-11) build concepts based on trial and error, while adolescents in the formal operational stage develop more abstract and logical thought (2001). legend specialists have documented children’s and adolescents’ efforts to understand death by telling stories and taking trips to places associated with death and dying. according to linda dégh, author of legend and belief, “most of the adolescent legends are quest stories” (2001, 253). some of these quest stories describe attempts to communicate with dangerous spirits, as in janet langlois’s essay “’mary whales, i believe in you’: myth and ritual subdued” (1978). numerous studies of legend trips, including bill ellis’s “legend-tripping in ohio: a behavioral study” (1982-83) and my own chapter on legend trips in haunted halls (2007, 182-210), have demonstrated young people’s eagerness to probe the borderline between life and death. learning how breathing works and what happens when breathing stops constitutes a significant quest for understanding. simon j. bronner suggested in a recent e-mail message that adolescents’ questioning of life may include wondering “whether breath as life can be controlled” (2009). his suggestion rings true. since living requires breathing, it makes sense that young people ask what will happen when breathing changes or stops.3 this question makes breath control games part of a larger search for understanding of life and death. studies of breath control games played by groups of children have been less common than studies of solitary autoerotic asphyxiation by children, adolescents, and adults. the earliest anthropological essay, a.w. stearns’ “cases of probable suicide in young persons without obvious motivation” (1953), observes that eskimo [inuit] children hang themselves in games that involve sexual stimulation. psychologist h.l.p. resnik explains in his essay “erotized repetitive hangings: a form of self-destructive behavior” (1972) that children of shoshone-bannock indians play suffocation games; this generalized statement does not seem persuasive. a more convincing, detailed observation of a hanging game played by a group of boys appears in decoccola and king’s the incredible eskimo: life among the barren land eskimo (1986). decoccola and king describe what happens when most of the boys playing the game get distracted and run away; with no friend nearby to help, the boy with the rope around his neck chokes to death. this sad account makes the reader wonder how many other boys died in similar circumstances. stories told by british boarding school students show that hanging and fainting games have flourished in school settings since the 1950s; these games seem to have entertained boarding school students for quite a long time. like levitation, which an informant of iona and peter opie learned at boarding school in bath in the 1940s (1959: 309), hanging and fainting games give students an intriguing alternative to games organized by adults. journalist jack o’sullivan describes variants of fainting games played by male and female boarding school students from the 1950s to the end of the twentieth century in his essay “so you still want to send the kids to boarding school?” (1999). he identifies three kinds of games: breath-holding games that involve bending the knees, hugging games, and strangulation games involving a cord. cfr_2009_r4.indb 49 10/25/09 6:19:22 pm “go to bed, now you’re dead” tucker 50 tragically, a game of the third kind resulted in the death of nicholas taylor at eton in february of 1999. this well-publicized death increased parents’ and teachers’ awareness of the games’ dangers. since the turn of the twenty-first century, authors have given more attention to young people’s breath control games. forensic specialists sergey sheleg and edwin ehrlich have written a very informative study, autoerotic asphyxiation: forensic, medical and social aspects (2006). their chapter devoted to “aea and adolescents” includes detailed descriptions of children’s and adolescents’ efforts “to induce unconsciousness in various ways to gain approval of their peers, without apparent sexual intentions” (93). sheleg and ehrlich note that games involving a “bear hug” replicate the valsalva maneuver (vm), weight lifters’ breathholding and abdominal muscle-squeezing to improve their ability to lift heavy weights (93). this similarity suggests that children and adolescents may have imitated weight lifters in developing hugging games. there have also been a number of books for parents of children and adolescents. dr. lisa boesky’s when to worry: how to tell if your teen needs help—and what to do (2007) offers parents practical advice about young people’s experimentation with drugs, choking games, and other challenges. similarly, moira mccarthy’s the everything guide to raising adolescent girls (2008). tells parents about breath control games played in groups. these books and others sold at commercial bookstores and on the internet have given parents much useful information. educational websites twenty-first-century websites have significantly heightened public awareness of breath control games. youtube, the video-sharing website that went online in 2005, has made it possible for children and adolescents to post their own videos, including graphic enactments of life-threatening games. grieving parents of children and adolescents who died playing these games have opposed posting such videos to encourage others to play and have created educational websites. as a result of their work, many educational websites currently offer help for young people and their parents on youtube. one of the most influential websites of this kind, “chokinggame.net (passout, fainting, blackout, space monkey),” comes from the db foundation, founded by kate b. leonardi in january of 2006. leonardi’s eleven year old son, dylan, died in october of 2005. her activism in helping other parents become aware of breath control games’ dangers has been recognized by the new york times and the today show (forsloff 2009). it is noteworthy that leonardi’s website lists multiple folk synonyms for “the choking game” in its title: “passout, fainting, blackout, space monkey.” while these are some of the most widespread names, there are many others, including “gasp game,” “the scarf game,” “suffocation roulette,” “american dream,” “california dreaming,” “purple dragon,” “purple hazing,” “flatlining,” and “the tingling game.” as in the drug culture, a multiplicity of names makes it harder for parents to understand what their children are doing. now that leonardi’s cfr_2009_r4.indb 50 10/25/09 6:19:23 pm tucker “go to bed, now you’re dead” 51 website and others list many of the names, parents and educators can better identify this part of the childhood and adolescent underground. according to “chokinggame.net,” 148 young people were seriously injured or died after playing suffocation games from 1974 to 2004; 96 were seriously injured or died in 2005, 117 in 2006, 63 in 2007, 50 in 2008, and 25 in the first half of 2009. these figures show an encouraging downturn in the yearly total of deaths, but the website’s list of victims reminds readers how important it is to be vigilant. this same list of victims is printed on the backs of “choking game awareness” t-shirts, which visitors to the website can purchase. memorial websites dedicated to young people who died playing breath control games provide heart-rending evidence of the games’ lethal impact. most of these websites, lovingly created by grieving parents, contain warnings, folk terms for the games, details about the tragic loss, and links to other websites and newspaper articles, as well as tributes to the lost child. nicholas serna’s memorial website, for example, includes photographs, music, and strongly worded warnings. the “bio” section explains that nicholas learned to play a choking game at summer camp before his death at the age of sixteen in arizona in 2005. a photograph shows nicholas passing out during a game at camp. as of august 6, 2009, 15,929 people had visited nicholas’s site. another moving memorial website is “still loving my gabriel” (2005). gabriel harry mordecai, aged thirteen, died in 2005 in paradise, california after playing a choking game. gabriel’s twin, samuel, found his brother lying unconscious with a noose around his neck. admitting that he had played the same choking game about five times, samuel explained that a friend from another town had taught him and his brother how to play. trying to describe how the choking game felt, samuel said, “it’s like a dream world, kind of, and then you wake up.” usually, adults would not hear such explanations of a game’s transmission and appeal. after a suffocation game tragedy, however, parents may put the story of events that preceded their child’s death up on the web in an attempt to prevent similar tragic losses. sometimes news of a game-playing fatality elicits reminiscences from adults. after gabriel mordecai’s death, his mother, sarah pacatte, received mail from people who had played suffocation games, including a woman who had played one in 1939. pacatte herself remembered playing the game but not liking it. having learned about the game through personal experience, she understood its dangers and warned her twins not to play. unfortunately, only one of the twins stopped playing (warner 2005). one of the most informative and emotionally wrenching websites devoted to choking game prevention is “g.a.s.p.: games adolescents shouldn’t play” (2008). this website’s video begins and ends with the “911” emergency call that samuel mordecai made after discovering his brother’s body. samuel’s heartbroken crying and desperate appeal to the operator, combined with visual images of his home, give the video a painfully intense impact. the narrator explains the deadly effects of oxygen deprivation with the help of an anatomical diagram. he states that between 250 and 1,000 people die from suffocation games each year but that “many [of these deaths from game-playing] are reported as suicides.” designed cfr_2009_r4.indb 51 10/25/09 6:19:23 pm “go to bed, now you’re dead” tucker 52 to stop high school students from playing choking games, this video seems very effective. some parents’ blogs have also warned others about swimming pool games that involve breath control. catherine holecko’s “family fitness blog,” for example, describes “see how long you can hold your breath” games played in bathtubs and pools (2009). holecko notes that some swimming pools have banned such games because of the risk of drowning. “mama lisa’s world blog,” by lisa yannucci, presents swimming pool games in a more positive way; one of her commentators calls the canadian pool game hen rooster chicken duck “a great game for kids as it gets them to hold their breath and put their heads under the water” (2009). this blog-based dialogue has raised parents’ consciousness of pool games’ perils. folklorists have documented the traditionality of children’s pool games (knapp and knapp 1976, 52; bronner 1988, 179; tucker 2008, 74) but have not emphasized these games’ risks. in a recent e-mail message, simon j. bronner told me that his students have played both “tame” and “extreme” versions of the traditional pool hide-and-seek game marco polo; in extreme versions, “the ‘it’ is supposed to hold his or her breath for extended portions of time” (2009). twentyfirst-century children’s love of “extreme sports” seems to be raising the risk level of pool games. recent game descriptions during the fall of 2008, i asked the students in my children’s folklore class at binghamton university what they knew about breath control games.4 of the 51 students in the class, aged 19-24, only four seemed completely unfamiliar with such game-playing traditions. one male and one female student remembered taking leadership roles in games as young teenagers because of their expertise in passing out. the other students had participated briefly, watched friends play, or heard friends talk about games. none of them knew of injuries or deaths from breath control games in their own communities. as a result of our class discussions, several students asked friends to give them information about breath control game experiences. one male student, alan, told me about “the couch game,” played by a small group of boys during sleepovers. to take one member of the group by surprise, the other boys would suddenly catch him between the mattresses of their fold-out couch. trapped between the two mattresses and caught inside the couch’s heavy metal frame, the hapless boy would try to stay inside as long as possible. anyone who begged for a quick release earned the hated nickname “baby.” before tiring of the game, the boys held competitions and praised the ones who could last the longest with little air to breathe. in this way they tested their bravery and endurance. fortunately no one got injured during the long game-playing sessions, about which their parents knew nothing. another male student, phil, described learning the choking game space monkey at summer camp, then teaching it to his friends. his memories of the game follow: cfr_2009_r4.indb 52 10/25/09 6:19:23 pm tucker “go to bed, now you’re dead” 53 my camp friends had instructed me to take ten deep breaths and hold the last one in, while one friend would push on either side of my larynx until, to my surprise, i fell asleep. i went into the game with honest expectations and had no idea that i would be experiencing such a rare sensation, which is only usually obtained right before/ during sleep. i woke up confused, disoriented, and on the ground. when i finally realized what had happened, it was such a thrill that i immediately started laughing, right along with my cackling friends. i thought the game was great. i had no qualms in doing it over and over—i didn’t consider the physical harm i could have been doing to myself. phil’s statement offers valuable insight into this choking game’s appeal. even though the game makes players feel “confused” and “disoriented,” it takes them by surprise and makes them laugh. like many other young players, phil did not stop to consider the possibility of harm. besides providing these interesting details about the game’s appeal, phil explained that space monkey made his friends “babble and talk like babies.” he and his friends videotaped each other acting strangely while unconscious, laughing when anyone did something especially odd. these filming sessions lasted until one of the boys accidentally fell through a large piece of glass, cutting himself. suddenly, the game stopped seeming harmless and funny. the boys never played it again. one other description came from my female student marie, who had interviewed her friend emily. during high school, emily had enjoyed playing a version of the passing out game that involved taking turns while sitting in a circle. her description follows: we were on vacation with another family, and they had two boys and the older boy had played it with his friends before, and he’s the one who introduced it to us. he’s such a bad influence…you’d have one person sitting down and another person get down behind them on their knees, and what they would do is they would kind of put you in a headlock. you weren’t supposed to breathe, so they just put you in a headlock in case you started to breathe. they’d put their elbow by your windpipe, and once you went limp, they would let go…we were bored and the older kid said that people do all kinds of crazy things when they were unconscious and that it was funny, so we were just looking for a source of entertainment. emily’s graphic description of the passing out game sounds frightening.5 “were you ever scared?” her friend marie asked while conducting the interview. emily replied, “yes, i was. you kind of just got the black spots around you and then you don’t remember anything after that. i don’t know. all i remember is waking up and people laughing at me.” cfr_2009_r4.indb 53 10/25/09 6:19:23 pm “go to bed, now you’re dead” tucker 54 after her interview with emily, marie commented, “after being forced into a risky situation, you get to sit back and enjoy the humor of seeing others lose control. thus, to be in this state of control, you also need to be put under control as well.” this insightful observation helps us understand how the more complex breath control games work. although the excitement of discovering unconsciousness partially explains the game’s dynamics, an exchange of power keeps the process moving. players voluntarily submit themselves to friends’ control and possible mockery so that they can enjoy exerting the same power themselves. watching friends do “all kinds of crazy things” seems so rewarding that giving up control does not seem as difficult as it might under other circumstances. conclusions and questions writing this essay has made me draw upon several roles from the past and present: nine-year-old game-player, ten-year-old singer, professional folklorist, and parent. memories of childhood game-playing have helped me understand how easily children and teenagers take risks; my academic training has given me a methodology, and my experience as a parent has made me grieve for parents who have lost their children. knowing that any parent could experience a loss of this kind, i have felt acutely aware of the importance of studying breath control games. folklorists of childhood usually try to maintain objectivity, but in this case, the need to protect young people from danger seems more important than maintaining a professional distance. i am glad to express the hope that children’s breath control games will stop endangering lives. can we, however, expect children and adolescents to stop teaching each other popular, long established games because of adults’ warnings? one of the greatest pleasures of playing dangerous games has been rejection of adult authority, so it seems unlikely that kids will stop playing breath control games just because their parents and teachers worry about their safety. game-playing traditions tend to keep going, and kids’ belief in their own strength makes them resist warnings. although recent breath control game death totals have shown some improvement, deaths and serious injuries still occur. why do children and adolescents have such a strong desire to experiment with unconsciousness? some players’ explanations show that they find unconsciousness to be exciting and compelling. pushing each other to the brink of a seductive dream world, they probe boundaries between conscious and unconscious awareness and between life and death. this kind of boundary probing seems to facilitate passage from youth to adulthood. by losing consciousness in a risky way, young people prove their bravery and readiness for more complex challenges. building upon the literature that psychologists, anthropologists, and forensic specialists have generated, folklorists can contribute to the ongoing dialogue about breath control games. depth psychology offers one possible approach. having applied jungian theory to late adolescents’ ghost stories (2005 and 2007, 94-114), i see potential for analysis of children’s and adolescents’ encounters with their own negative, death-seeking “shadow sides” through breath control games. folklorists who study group dynamics should find some of these games’ focus on rolecfr_2009_r4.indb 54 10/25/09 6:19:23 pm tucker “go to bed, now you’re dead” 55 playing and control-taking to be worth exploring. other approaches can also lead researchers in productive directions. there is much research to do and many questions to answer. amid restrictions on research with human subjects, can one ask children about this sensitive subject? how have choking games developed in korea, australia, pakistan, and other nations in which they have become popular? and how does gender influence the playing of these games? these questions and others need answers. i hope to read new studies of breath control games by folklorists of childhood in the years ahead. notes this essay is dedicated to the memory of gabriel mordecai, nicholas serna, chelsea lynn dunn, jason linkins, and other young people who died after playing choking games. i want to thank simon j. bronner, janet langlois, c.w. sullivan iii, and geoffrey gould for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of the essay. 1. public hangings have also occurred in other parts of the united states and in the american colonies; among the most notorious hangings are those that took place in salem, massachusetts during the witchcraft trials of 1692. 2. the american tourist industry has also done its part to preserve memories of hangings. while visiting the wild wild west casino in atlantic city, new jersey in the summer of 2009, i noticed a sign on the casino’s wall: “hangings on tuesdays.” 3. the film flatliners (1990) portrays young medical students’ experiments with induction of near-death, causing terrifying consequences. while this is a commercial film designed for entertainment, it mirrors young people’s quest for understanding very well. 4. to maintain confidentiality, all students who participated in our class’s dialogue and marie’s interviewee are identified with pseudonyms. 5. an interesting article that explores the connection between breath holding and fright is “piracetam in severe breath holding spells” by matloob azam, nasera bhatti, and naheed shahab (2008). works cited ashliman, d.l. 2000. the hanging game: folktales of aarne-thompson type 1066. http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/type1066.html (accessed august 2, 2009). azam, matloob, nasera bhatti, and naheed shahab. 2008. piracetam in severe breath holding spells. international journal of psychiatry in medicine 38: 195-201. boesky, lisa. 2007. when to worry: how to tell if your teen needs help—and what to do. saranac lake, new york: amacom books. bronner, simon j. 1988. american children’s folklore. little rock: august house. ______. 2009. e-mail communication. 14 august. cfr_2009_r4.indb 55 10/25/09 6:19:23 pm “go to bed, now you’re dead” tucker 56 brutalization effect: children die imitating recent execution in india. 2009. death penalty information center. http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article. php?did=2118 (accessed august 10, 2009). cooper, david d. 1974. the lesson of the scaffold: the public execution controversy in victorian england. athens: ohio university press. dattilio, frank. 2006. the versatile effects of breath-holding. archives of psychiatry and psychotherapy 8: 41-46. decoccola, r. and king, p. 1986. the incredible eskimo: life among the barren land eskimo. surrey, british columbia: hancock house. dégh, linda. 2001. legend and belief. bloomington: indiana university press. ellis, bill. 1982-83. legend-tripping in ohio: a behavioral study. in papers in comparative studies, vol. 2, ed. daniel barnes, rosemary o. joyce, and steven swann jones, 61-73. columbus, oh: center for comparative studies in the humanities. ______. 2007. e-mail communication. 8 june. famous trees of texas. 2005. http://famoustreesoftexas.tamu.edu/default.aspx (accessed august 12, 2009). flatliners. 1990. twentieth century fox. forsloff, carol. 2009. grieving parents warn others of ‘choking game.’ digital journal. 25 apr. 2009. http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/271516. foucault, michel. 1977. discipline and punish: the birth of the prison. new york: pantheon books. g.a.s.p.: games adolescents shouldn’t play. 2008. http://www.stop-the-choking. game.com/en/flash_vid.html (accessed july 30, 2009). hazelwood, robert r., park elliott dietz, and ann wolbert burgess. 1983. autoerotic fatalities. lexington: lexington books. holecko, catherine. 2009. catherine’s family fitness blog. 2 june. about.com: family fitness. 2 june. http://familyfitness.about.com/b/2009/06/02/don’thold-your-breath.htm (accessed august 29, 2009). johnstone, j.m., a.c. hunt and e. milford ward. 1960. plastic-bag asphyxia in adults. british medical journal 2 (5214): 1714-15. knapp, mary and herbert. 1976. one potato, two potato: the secret education of american children. new york: norton. langlois, janet. 1978. “mary whales, i believe in you”: myth and ritual subdued. indiana folklore 11: 5-33.6 leonardi, kate b. 2009. chokinggame.net (passout, fainting, blackout, space monkey). http://chokinggame.net (accessed august 4, 2009). mccarthy, moira. 2008. the everything guide to raising adolescent girls: an essential guide to bringing up happy, healthful girls in today’s world. cincinnati: adams media. nicholas andres’ serna. 2005. http://www.nickserna.com (accessed august 6, 2009). north lincolnshire council—melton ross local history pack. 2006. north lincolnshire online. http://www.northlincs.gov.uk/northlincs/leisure/ libraries/localstudies/localhistorypacks/meltonross.htm (accessed august 23, 2009). cfr_2009_r4.indb 56 10/25/09 6:19:23 pm tucker “go to bed, now you’re dead” 57 opie, iona and peter. 1969. children’s games in street and playground. new york: oxford university press. ______. 1959. lore and language of schoolchildren. new york: oxford university press. o’sullivan, jack. 1999. so you still want to send the kids to boarding school? the independent. 18 march. http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/ so-you-still-want-to-send-the-kids-to-boarding-school-1081328.html (accessed august 9, 2009). piaget, jean. 2001. the language and thought of the child. new york: routledge. resnik, h.l.p. 1972. erotized repetitive hangings: a form of self-destructive behavior. american journal of psychotherapy 26:1: 4-21. saunders, edward. 1989. life threatening autoerotic behavior: a challenge for sex educators and therapists. journal of sex education and therapy 15: 82-91. sauvageau, anny, and stéphanie racette. 2006. autoerotic deaths in the literature from 1954 to 2004: a review. journal of forensic science 51 (1): 140-46. schneider, e.c. 1930. observations on holding the breath. american journal of physiology 94: 464-70. sheleg, sergey, and edwin ehrlich. 2006. autoerotic asphyxiation. tucson: wheatmark. sherman, josepha, and t.k.f. weisskopf. 1995. greasy grimy gopher guts: the subversive folklore of childhood. little rock: august house. stearns, a.w. 1953. cases of probable suicide in young persons without obvious motivation. journal of the maine medical association 44: 16. still loving my gabriel. 2005. http://www.stilllovingmygabriel.com (accessed august 7, 2009). tucker, elizabeth. 2005. ghosts in mirrors: reflections of the self. journal of american folklore 118 (468): 186-203. ______. 2007. haunted halls: ghostlore of american college campuses. jackson: university press of mississippi. ______. 2007-2008. levitation revisited. children’s folklore review 30: 47-60. ______. 2008. children’s folklore: a handbook. westport, connecticut: greenwood press. ulrich, nicole j., ann m. bergin, and howard p. goodkin. 2008. the choking game: self-induced hypoxia presenting as recurrent seizurelike events. epilepsy and behavior 12: 486-88. unintentional strangulation deaths from the “choking game” among youths aged 6-19 years—united states, 1995-2007. 2008. morbidity and mortality weekly report. 15 february. http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ mm5706a1.htm (accessed august 12, 2009). warner, paul m. 2005. “choking game” claims life of one california teenager. canyon news. 7 august. http://www.canyon-news.com/artman/publish/ article_3310.php (accessed august 7, 2009). yannucci, lisa. 2009. mama lisa’s world blog. 19 july. http://www.mamalisa.com/ blog/pool-games-and-chants (accessed august 30, 2009). cfr_2009_r4.indb 57 10/25/09 6:19:24 pm 59 the karma of violence glen retief when i was twelve years old and skinny as a grasslands cheetah, my parents sent me away to boarding-school. they had no choice in the matter. we lived in a staff village in a game park more than an hour away from the nearest secondary school, so boarding-school was both an unavoidable and unremarkable rite of passage for all of those entering standard six (eighth grade). one baking hot, glaring monday afternoon in january 1983, the day before the start of the school year, they drove me to nelspruit, a shady farming town on the main road between johannesburg and mozambique. here, they dropped me at a complex of red brick buildings in a newly-built first-floor dormitory still smelling of concrete dust, builders’ tape and paint, and lined with metal lockers and identical blue-andwhite-quilted beds. it didn’t take me very long to get into trouble at my new school. that very first afternoon, after the parents had left, all of us had to stand, according to boardingschool tradition, in the downstairs showers and wait for our two seventeen-yearold dormitory prefects to finish soaping and rinsing themselves. after a minute or two one of them, a skinny blond muscular boy named john, with bright red acne all over his face, announced an initiation ritual which involved dropping our towels, placing our hands on our heads, and singing an athletics song while jumping up and down in the nude. at some point he caught me looking at his groin. “you,” he said, beckoning me to come to the front. he asked my name, then told me to bend over. from somewhere he produced a cricket bat. he proceeded to give me six hard strokes on my bum. i remember that he put tremendous force into them, swinging back on his strokes so that the cracks echoed through that stark concrete bathroom. i also recall that the burning on my buttocks was absolutely extraordinary, a fierce, searing agony that caused my throat to harden and my eyes to mist up. i was terrified. bile rose in my mouth. it was tough to breathe. “let that be a lesson to you, standard six,” he said when he was finished. “we are fighting a war in this country, and there isn’t any room here for queers and weaklings.” he actually used those words—queers; weaklings. after my whipping i had to ask martin, the skinny freckled boy who slept in the bed opposite mine, to explain to me what queers were; when he told me there were men in the world who lived together and had intercourse, at first i refused to believe him. “it’s true,” martin said, “and john thinks you’re one.” and so many other boys all agreed that martin was right, that in the end i had to bow to their superior numbers. unfortunately, that was just the beginning of it. over the next ten months, and especially during the first three of them, when john lived in the standard six dormitory with us, i, along with to varying extents the other standard sixes in the dormitory, would, in the name of “initiation,” face an avalanche of sexual violence and torture. i would be given hidings with a cricket bat for walking past candy cfr_2009_r4.indb 59 10/25/09 6:19:24 pm the karma of violence retief 60 wrappers lying on the floor or not greeting a matric (twelfth-grader) energetically enough when i saw him. i would receive electric shocks to my genitalia and be beaten with pillowslips full of athletics spikes; for laughs i would be made to pretend that my penis was a drill bit and i had to plow through the concrete floor into the building foundations. i would have my food and snacks confiscated from me; on an afternoon when the temperature in the shade was more than a hundred degrees, i would be confined to my bed under a pile of blankets, with the rest of the standard sixes forbidden from bringing me water. by the end of that calendar year – easily the worst year of my life to date, and certainly my closest brush with the kind of oppression that society usually metes out to those on its furthest margins—i would be gaunt and skeletal as a stray dog; so petrified, fragile and shell-shocked that i would spend afternoons hidden away in the toilets, lying with my head on my hands and listening to the water drip into the septic tank; and touched, for the first time in my life, with a kind of existential sadness that has never quite left me, a sense that something was fundamentally out-of-kilter both with myself and the larger world, and that whatever this thing was, it wouldn’t be easy to restore to balance again or put right. these memories are hard to summon up in the daylight. they lurk, somewhere in the shadows of my mind, as much a part of me as the freckles on my arms or the oval-shaped birthmark on my left thigh, but in some mysterious way they also seem separate from me, disassociated film clippings of things that happened to someone else. on rose-tinted south florida mornings, when i drive to the private high school where i teach, and i see the tranquil school buildings surrounded by the banyans and poinsettias, the lawns and sports fields and neat little wooden benches where the students sit at break and eat their sandwiches, the thought that crosses my mind is: none of that was real. all of that porn-flick, abu ghraib-style stuff was just a bad dream. in my daily sequence of high school english classes, there is little to remind me of my past. at this school, which is attended mostly by the ultra-wealthy sons and daughters of investment bankers and mogul land developers, a strict anti-bullying policy makes even the slightest suggestion of physical violence or intimidation punishable by detention, suspension, or expulsion. all over campus, rectangular brass and steel plaques remind students of their contractual obligation to report all instances of hostile teasing to the administration. according to my tenth and eleventh graders, students here settle their differences either through conversation or through threats, humorous or actual, to contact their fathers’ hot-shot lawyers. “if one student really bullied another here, there’d be a lawsuit before you could dial 911,” they tell me, and i believe them, these fresh-faced, optimistic ruling-class denizens of the world’s richest and most powerful country. there are times, watching my students, that i pity them for living such sheltered lives. the gleaming suvs bringing them to school seem obscenely far from the barefoot african children who trudged to school near where i grew up. (“don’t forget how much harder the black people have it,” the teachers said whenever we complained about our own rough boarding school, and of course, in a sense cfr_2009_r4.indb 60 10/25/09 6:19:24 pm retief the karma of violence 61 they were right). the case management meetings called for every flunked test or irritable outburst by a student in math class, where a thoughtful, sympathetic school counselor suggests anger management strategies or procrastination-beating mental tricks—these seem from a different universe than our mock hangings in school bathrooms, where once my friend andre involuntarily stained the wood of an improvised gallows with his urine. (“disgusting! phew!” said the seniors when he did this, and they, too, were in a sense correct). i look at my american students in their polo shirts, wedged between their counselors, homeroom advisors, parents, teachers, and administrators, and i think: i’m happy you’re so spoiled, even though you don’t have a clue. but then, after the school day, superciliousness gives way to envy—a blind rage at them and their lucky country, accompanying me on the i-95 highway past the billboards and the palm trees. this, in turn, later decomposes in its constituent elements: a naked pain as i sit in front of the television, and unadulterated abandonment plaguing me as i try to do my grading. a hole throbbing in my chest, right above my diaphragm. a cold terror in my hands, spreading over my body. and i ask myself yet again: why was there no one? why did no teacher take the trouble to notice what was happening, all of those years ago, in bathrooms with doors left unlocked and open, in dormitories with glass windows open to the clouds and birds? why did no one snap abu ghraib-style pictures of our grinning and jaunty tormentors—cause a local scandal? at that year’s final honors assembly, when john received the award for community service and moral leadership for making sandwiches for the neighboring old age home – everyone in the audience rising to applaud, john standing in the amber-colored spotlight, smiling his awshucks grin, holding up his trophy for the school photographer—why did no one heckle him from the back rows? a memory: late afternoon, perhaps a week or so after the beating in the shower room. the sun is a luminous blood-red, the color of the hostel bricks. i stand at a wooden door, the entrance to the apartment of the teacher-on-duty. the teacher answers it, a ruddy-faced man with ginger hair and thick, stocky arms full of blonde hairs. i try to explain to him that john has been beating me several times a day ever since i arrived, for everything from walking past an empty coke bottle left on the landing to not folding the corners of my bed hospital-style. in my mouth these jumbled complaints transmute into a mangled story about how i need to cover my textbooks and john won’t let me do this during study hall because he wants all the standard sixes to go to a dance the next evening. sometime during this jeremiad i begin to sob and ask if i can call my parents from his phone. the teacher touches me on the arm, firmly but not unkindly. “you tell john i say he needs to let you cover your textbooks,” he says. “be strong now. you’ll be ok, i promise you.” why does he never mention this incident to me again? or here is another one: another late afternoon, just before sunset, the quality of light heavy-red and golden. i am in my parents’ car driving back to the game reserve, the first weekend i have been permitted to go back home—along with the other boarders, i am required to stay in the hostel and cheer at sports events when the school is playing one of our neighbors. i have contacted my parents several cfr_2009_r4.indb 61 10/25/09 6:19:24 pm the karma of violence retief 62 times since the abuse began, mostly from my aunt’s office in the newsroom of a community newspaper across the street: i have been stealing away, unseen, after lunch, and spending entire afternoons sitting on piles of phone books and stacks of returned tabloids. my father shifts the vehicle into third gear to go up a hill. then he sighs, a sigh deeper than any i have heard him issue before, a moan that seems pregnant with a grief that is far beyond my twelve-year-old comprehension. “the thing is, it’s not true, glen,” he says. “i know it isn’t. you’re not a sissy or a nancy boy, or another of the other things they’re calling you. this is what makes this all so unfair.” perhaps the tremble that starts on his lip also indicates that he is angry with them; his shoulders and neck tense up. is he also annoyed at me? he says: “some of these young guys just act like walking penises.” i don’t understand what he means. he says: “this does happen to everyone, you know.” he never, to my recollection, articulates the sentiment that in retrospect i so long to hear from him, the words that will touch my inner ache: the fact that this is happening is a moral abomination, and i will do everything, i mean everything, my son, to protect you from it. or here, at last, is the most painful memory. it is late one afternoon at school— i think the afternoon after john made me lie under a pile of blankets. somehow i have made my way to the top of the school, to the fourth storey of the building we called the east wing, with the view over rolling green hills covered with citrus orchards and the ribbon of tarred road leading to johannesburg. i can see the little toy houses where my grandparents live, on an orange farm ten minutes’ drive away: these are the grandparents whom i have begged my parents to let me live with, but they have refused. i lean over the railing, the top half of my body precipitously hanging above the hard ground. death’s release exerts a strong attraction. i pray: “please, if i jump now, lord jesus, send your angels and carry me over there, to granny and grandpa, and make it so that i don’t have to come back here.” but there are no angels, at least none that i believe in enough to risk my fate. i do not jump. a significant part of my adult life has been spent trying to come to terms with these experiences. “i am a survivor of torture,” i have said to myself, by way of trying to force myself to take my own victimization seriously. but the words survivor and torture stick in the throat like fruit pits; they clang hollow and untrue, sound to me like self-pity and dramatization. i long to spit them away from me – even though, reading through the incidents listed in reports by human rights watch and amnesty international it is hard to see how the actions of john and his friends back in 1983 could not at some level have qualified as war crimes. denial is complex and multi-faceted, universal, pernicious. to confront it means not just to challenge the multiple lies and half-truths embedded in the self, but also to face loved ones and personal anchors, family and friends, the communities that provide structure and identity. until age twenty-four, when i first arrived in new york city as an immigrant and expatriate, i truly had no idea there was even anything strange in the story cfr_2009_r4.indb 62 10/25/09 6:19:24 pm retief the karma of violence 63 of my early adolescence. all of my life i had simply thought of myself as unlucky for having been hit “harder” than the average standard six, because of being visibly homosexual. being stripped naked, though, and forced to enter a pillow slip lined with menthol muscle relaxant; being punched and clobbered and called names; dealing with jokes and high jinks, a little telephone-crank “cock-shock” machine here and some humorous armpit hair-burning over there: all of this i took for granted as a regular part of growing up. when, after three months of john’s depredations, my parents managed to persuade the school authorities to transfer him to another passage—an action they took without telling me, for fear i would give away the secret and become more of a target—the abuses continued, albeit at a reduced intensity, and in fact they persisted throughout high school. my father was not wrong in telling me these things happened to “everyone.” a 2001 report of the south african human rights commission, authorized by the new democratic parliament, found that such abuses were widespread and accepted in schools “within an institutional culture of authoritarianism and bullying.”1 it took several years and the utterly anguished, horrified expressions on the faces of friends of several different nationalities—american, swiss, spanish, brazilian and chinese—for me to realize that, say, having one’s head shoved in a tiny wooden mailbox while being caned with a three-foot hockey stick was not a universal coming-of-age ritual. even then, i was reluctant to acknowledge that my childhood wasn’t “normal,” “happy” and “safe.” it is no exaggeration to state that it is those moments sitting around in brooklyn brownstone apartments watching faces crumple into utter bewilderment at the descriptions of my childhood and adolescence that i felt the first serious stirrings to provide a fiction and nonfiction of witness; to share with the wider world my story and its implications. in talking to my family over the years, and in sharing my published memoirs and personal essays, it has been hard to share this newfound international perspective. my parents tend to be sympathetic, yet guarded. “we did the best we can,” says my father. “in those days, that’s the way things were done.” it is all but impossible to communicate frankly with my former teachers who still live and work in the town where i grew up. recently, when i suggested to one of my old math instructors that school discipline may have been cruel in the old days, she proceeded to regale me with a diatribe about how, under democracy, academic standards have collapsed and the blacks have brought drugs, laziness, and knife fights into previous citadels of order. “yours was the last generation,” she tells me, “to be educated in safety.” at the political level, the denial of the abuse of young white male preadolescents under apartheid is a glaring absence in the national discourse about reconciliation, healing, and the building of the so-called “rainbow nation.” existing narratives of the apartheid era rely heavily on notions of white aggression and black victimhood. to some extent feminists have succeeded in adding to the mix concepts of male belligerence and female injury. entirely missing from this world view is any sense of white males themselves as dual victims and perpetrators, stuck in a perverse, topsy-turvy karma of oppression—not being subjected to the ills that they inflicted on others, as in the hindu cosmology, but cfr_2009_r4.indb 63 10/25/09 6:19:25 pm the karma of violence retief 64 rather treating others they way they were once treated, and thus perpetuating the cycle ad nauseum. and yet in the universe of apartheid, this is exactly what happened. at countless institutions like my boarding school, spread across the african veld like red-brick blisters, boys without hair on their bodies became, for a time, honorary black south africans. as the years went by, these boys, with all the verve of understudies stepping into stage roles, went on to bully the juniors under them, shouting orders to polish shoes or make beds, walloping them in the kidneys when they took too long to bring back coca-cola from the corner store. when the time came for these seventeen-year-olds to be conscripted into the south african defence force, the roles flipped once more. this time, they were made to do push-ups over mud puddles until their arms collapsed, or run miles with backpacks on their shoulders, or perhaps even have sexual intercourse with female prostitutes to prove their masculinity. according to at least one postapartheid human rights study, if they showed signs of gentleness or effeminacy they were made to endure punishments including electric shock treatment and having their genitalia rubbed with shoe polish and inspected by whole platoons.2 in white male south african society, the final step on this ladder of suffering and oppression was to become a soldier or officer entrusted with the task of maintaining white supremacy. according to the report of desmond tutu’s truth and reconciliation commission, here there were few limits on the exercise of brute power. herero and ovambo women on the namibian border were beaten and gang-raped. captured guerilla fighters got fried alive on the engines of armored cars. at the higher levels of military command, white men who looked and spoke just like john and his friends gave orders for the engineering of civil wars and famines that would claim millions of lives. like so many mad kurtzes, many white men seemed to lose all sense of themselves in those days, to become intoxicated with power and cruelty, and to have no qualms about destroying individuals, families, and nations. by time it all came to an end, the damage done, both to south africa and its neighbors—the child soldiers with their legs blown up, the families left abandoned and destitute—simply beggared the human imagination. perhaps i was either too gentle or too tough a soul to succumb to the karma of violence. perhaps it was simply that as a gay man i was a natural misfit in my own society, with no hope, under apartheid, of ever being comfortable in the laager, the circle of wagons drawn against indigenous africans. perhaps, back in those humid summer days when john was standing over my bed, with his smell of clearasil facewash and his ironed black boxer shorts, trying to plant in me the spiritual kernel of what he was—perhaps on one of those, another seed managed to blow into my soul, much as, even on the hottest afternoons in the dormitory, a breath of honeysuckle would come in through the open windows. grace, divine or otherwise, is inevitably mysterious. when i myself reached standard ten, i never participated in the torture of the younger boys. i never punched them full-force in the chest or struck them with cfr_2009_r4.indb 64 10/25/09 6:19:25 pm retief the karma of violence 65 canes and athletics spikes; i never seized them, thrust them up into corners, and threatened to bash out all the teeth in their mouths. but i cannot claim to be a hero. i never reported or spoke out against any abuse or bullying. i never looked at the juniors while they were being tormented, never offered them as much as a commiserating shake of the head. on one occasion, so as not to appear a weakling in front of my peers, i did make a standard seven in my passage bend over for being disrespectful to me, and i hit him as hard as i could with a cricket bat, until he begged me to stop. i remember that when i was done i threw up in the passage toilets. i never joined the south african defence force. at age nineteen, a student at the university of cape town, i joined the end conscription campaign and declared that i was a conscientious objector, that i would not fight for white supremacy. along with many thousands of white men of my generation, i decided simply to ignore the call-up papers, not to show up at one of those train or bus stations where we were supposed to shave our heads, heave our duffel bags onto our shoulders, and be transformed into killers. the penalties for refusing military service were six years’ prison, if they caught you. by that time, though, the laws had become virtually unenforceable. i have said that the karma of violence was repetitious and unchanging, but that is not strictly true. by the time i reached matric, the so-called initiation rituals in my school were already markedly reduced in intensity, and soon after that, under the leadership of a new school principal, they were forbidden. after the transition to democracy in 1994, all forms of corporal punishment and bullying were outlawed. the rest of the story of the south african transformation is well-known. today, the liveliest wars fought are on the soccer fields, cricket pitches, and rugby stadiums. as i write these words, summer has once again descended on miami. days so scalding that when i leave the air conditioning it feels like i have stepped into a furnace give way to cool, fresh evenings lit up by thunderstorms. the poinciana trees are all in red, fiery bloom; my students are on summer vacation. before leaving, one of my favorite students, who plans to one day become a memoirist herself, ran up to me early one morning and told me that she had not only managed, with the help of a peer counselor, to defuse a bullying situation between an older boy and a younger one, but that she had joined the local amnesty international club, and would be working next year to secure the release of political prisoners in guantanamo, havana, mexico, and the middle east. she was so exuberant and happy; her arms wheeled as she talked about going to washington, d.c.; her mouth opened wide as she laughed about the fun she was going to have in chiapas. you, too, i thought, are going to be a witness. and this time, instead of provoking jealousy, her open, innocent face, so full of youthful happiness, gave me hope. cfr_2009_r4.indb 65 10/25/09 6:19:25 pm the karma of violence retief 66 notes an earlier version of “the karma of violence” appeared in hotel amerika. 1. see south african human rights commission 2001. 2. for examples of such violations within the sadf, see van zyl, mikki, et al. 1999. works cited south african human rights commission. 2001. report into initiation practices at educational institutions and a preliminary report on cultural initiations. cape town: sahrc, october. van zyl, mikki, et al. 1999. the aversion project: human rights abuses of gays and lesbians in the sadf by health workers during the apartheid era. simply said and done: cape town. cfr_2009_r4.indb 66 10/25/09 6:19:25 pm 67 children’s oral poetry: identity and obscenity1 c.w. sullivan iii i offered this paper for publication not so much for any original insights present but as it may be (or may not be!) an example of how to take children’s folklore scholarship into other venues—in this case, children’s literature, at a conference where this was the only children’s folklore paper. introduction we were all children once, and according to children’s folklorist jay mechling, that might pose a problem for collectors of children’s folklore. in an essay entitled “children’s folklore,” in elliott oring’s collection, folk groups and folklore genres, mechling begins his argument by saying, “the white, male folklorist recognizes that he will never really know what it means to be a black woman, but we all think we know what it means to be a child” (1986, 91). but our knowledge of what it means to be a child is filtered through a lens that is thick with the years that have passed since we were children, years during which we have forgotten or glossed over much, years during which selective memory has compressed some experiences and expanded others, years during which we have developed our own “presumptions and emotional responses” to the very subject that we think we are treating objectively (91). in fact, some adults, when confronted with certain materials collected by children’s folklorists, deny the reality of those materials or, worse, accuse folklorists of unethical behavior. i, as editor of children’s folklore review, was accused of providing children with obscene materials when i published a series of articles by sociologist gary alan fine on pre-adolescent male slang. my accuser, a local high school principal, neither recognized that the publication was for adults, not children, nor remembered that children of that age, especially perhaps boys, were capable of such language. thanks to an understanding department chair and dean who defended me and the journal, i suffered no professional ill effects from the situation and cfr has continued on as a successful and, i hope, a wellrepescted journal of children’s folklore research. other scholars have not been so fortunate. an australian collector photographing girls’ playground games took a picture of girls flipping up their dresses and showing their undergarments as such an action was described in the rhyme they were chanting: flintstones, flintstones, yabba, yabba, doo! (repeat) fred does the bow, wilma does the curtsy, pebbles shows her knickers, and we all go “wow!” cfr_2009_r4.indb 67 10/25/09 6:19:25 pm children’s oral poetry sullivan 68 his dissemination of these photographs caused him to be arrested and suspended from his university position for distributing child pornography. the case dragged on for six months or so until it came before an understanding magistrate who threw it out of court (australian children’s folklore newsletter 1994, 1). neither of these cases is about the children, but both illustrate adults’ misperceptions about childhood, adults projections of their own attitudes onto what they see happening on the baseball field or the playground. these projections arise for at least two reasons. one one hand, as mechling recounts, our imagination is still dominated by “[e]nlightenment and romantic era portraits of the child,” by our “american commonsense understanding of childhood…[as] a period of separation, protection, preparation, and innocence,” and by the “various schools of child psychology” that are all “bound by cultural assumptions and biases” (93). on the other hand, it seems to me that the american (if not western) process of “growing up” encourages us to leave childhood behind. how often are children told “act your age,” “don’t be a baby,” and “you’re too old for that”? children are told, with regard to rivalry with younger siblings, “you should know better; you’re older.” some growing up, “act like a lady” and “big boys don’t cry,” is gender coded. this attitude is nothing new, as an often-quoted, ancient passage indicates: “when i was a child, i spake as a child, i understood as a child, i thought as a child; but when i became a man, i put away childish things” (1 corinthians 13:11). the solution, mechling argues, is for the folklorist to “approach the child’s folk group assuming very little” (93). one of the definitions of a folk group is that it operates on a very “high context” level; that is, things happen in the group that outsiders would not understand without explanation. this is especially true of folk speech; within a folk group there are words and phrases that members of the group will share with each other and understand that outsiders would need explained—if, in fact, members of the group were willing to share such words and phrases with outsiders. mechling continues his argument by suggesting a solution: “the folklorist [should take] an approach that views children’s folk cultures as if they were fully complex, developed, and autonomous. this ‘as if’ assumption means that we approach children’s folk cultures just as we would any unfamiliar culture” (93). to rephrase mechling, then, one might say, “the adult folklorist recognizes that he or she no longer really knows what it means to be a child and approaches the collection of children’s folklore as one would apporoach the collecting of folklore from any group of which he or she is not a member.” what i would like to present here, then, is a look a children’s oral poetry as the creation of a culture significantly different from the adult culture around it and examine the ways in which the members of this culture use poetic forms to create, first, an identity separate from the adult culture and, second, especially through the medium of obscenity, an identity in opposition to the adult culture. cfr_2009_r4.indb 68 10/25/09 6:19:25 pm sullivan children’s oral poetry 69 identity much of what i wish to say about identity in general has been said before, but i hope to be able to add something to the discussion. in american children’s folklore, simon bronner asserts that the division between adult authority and the children under adult control is reflected in children’s folklore in general: “for children, we must remember, do not simply ape the mores of adults. they want to declare their own identity, and lore is their protected expression of cultural connection to one another” (1988, 29).2 bronner continues, “besides rebelling against adult norms, children’s folklore reflects children’s concerns about their rapid growth, the appropriate responses to adult society, and traditional roles and values in a nation being modernized” (31). oral poetry, whether handed down traditionally to deal with recurring situations or created and circulated in response to contemporary cultural stimuli, forms a very large part of younger children’s folklore. children use traditional rhymnes in what iona and peter opie, in the lore and language of schoolchildren, call “oral legislation” (1959, 121-153); that is, they use rhymes in the way older children and adults use books of rules. countingout rhymes, for example, such as “eenie, meenie, miney, moe” or “one potato, two potato,” are considered unbiased ways of selecting the first “it” in a game, the sacrificial person who has to be “it” without having been caught.3 game or play rhymes are not always legislation, but they do structure children’s activities; examples include game rhyme “the farmer in the dell,” hand-clapping rhyme “i’m a pretty little dutch girl,” ball-bouncing rhyme “my name is alice,” and the largest category of all, jump-rope rhymes “cinderella dressed in yellow,” “teddy bear, teddy bear, turn around,” and “policeman, policeman do your duty.” such rhymes have been circulated by children for generations as they organized their own play, without direct adult supervision, long before they were whisked off to such regulated activities as adult-organized football or baseball leagues, boy scouts, or girl guides. in addition to regulating their own games, children have a series of rhymes that attempt to enforce conformity. children have their own ideas, independent of (but to some extent derived from) the adult culture that surrounds them, and they have rhymes which make fun of or insult transgressors within the group. overweight children hear “fatty, fatty, two-by-four,” a child hastily dressed might hear, “i see london, i see france / i see [name]’s underpants,” informers to authorities hear, “tattletale, tattletale, / hanging on the bull’s tale,” liars hear “liar, liar, pants on fire,” and, of course, immature or sensitive children hear, “cry, baby cry, stick your finger in your eye.” there are many more such rhymes, and the point is that they are circulated by children, not taught by adults, and address what the child’s folk group considers proper or, more to the point, improper behavior. on a slightly more complex level, and more obviously influenced by the adult community, perhaps especially by the family, are rhymes that insult people outside the child’s immediate peer and age group. the opies, collecting in the 1950s, included the following rhymes in a chapter entitled “partisanship.” some rhymes have historical origins: cfr_2009_r4.indb 69 10/25/09 6:19:25 pm children’s oral poetry sullivan 70 the irishmen ran down the hill, the englishmen ran after, and many a pat got a bullet in his back at the battle of boy’an water. (1959, 343). other kinds of partisanship can be directly religious. protestants may say, “catholic, catholic, ring the bell, / when you die you’ll go to hell” and be answered by the catholics, “protestant, protestant, quack, quack, quack, / go to the devil and never come back” (344). still other rhymes can be political, this one based on an oscar meyer bologna commercial jingle: my peanut has a first name it’s j-i-m-m-y my peanut has a second name it’s c-a-r-t-r [sic] oh, i hate to see him every day and if you ask me why i’ll say ’cause jimmy carter has a way of messing up the u-s-a (sullivan 1980, 9). what are serious matters to adults—war, religion, and politics—become fodder for children creating parodies of that adult seriousness. there are also national and ethnic attitudes in some children’s rhymes. when i was young, we caught “a nigger by the toe,” although later and more sensitive versions of “eenie, meenie, miney, moe” change “nigger” to “tiger.” in one potato, two potato: the folklore of american children, herbert and mary knapp, collecting collecting and publishing some twenty years after the opies,4 include, in addition to political rhymes, what i would call derisive rhymes about africanamericans, asian-americans, jews, and “polacks”5 (1976, 190-206). one that the knapps collected covers several bases: franklin said to eleanor, “eleanor, how are you?” eleanor said to franklin, “i’ve got some advice for you. roses are red, violets are blue, you kiss the niggers, i’ll kiss the jews, and we’ll stay in the white house as long as we choose.” (1976, 201). rather than reinforcing internal conformity, these rhymes solidify the folk group’s identity in opposition to what anthropologists and sociologists, as well as folklorists, would call “the other”; i.e., those people who are obviously and demonstrably not “us.” cfr_2009_r4.indb 70 10/25/09 6:19:26 pm sullivan children’s oral poetry 71 another way in which children assert their own identity is through parody. this seems to me a more subtle kind of partisanship or derision in which children take what is presented to them by the adult culture and parody it; that is, they take something serious and change it to make it humorous. bronner suggests that “children are fond of parodying the standard and familiar, especially when in the process of doing so they can establish that they have a world of their own making” (1988, 77). nothing is out of bounds as far as children are concerned. they will parody religious materials from evening-meal grace, “good bread, good meat, / good god, let’s eat” to evening prayers, “now i lay me down to sleep, / a bag of peanuts at my feet,” to christmas carols, “joy to the world, the school burned down.” school is a particular target; “the battle hymn of the republic” becomes “mine eyes have seen the glory of the burning of the school” and in a parody of “on top of old smokey,” we hear “i shot my poor teacher / with a forty-four gun.” commerical jingles, too, are prime targets: “macdonald’s is your kind of place, / they throw french fries in your face,” “pepsi cola hits the spot, / smells like vinegar, tastes like snot,” or “sani-flush, sani-flush, / cleans your teeth without a brush.” and there are many more parodies of this sort. while most parodies serve to establish children’s identity as separate from the adult world, some parodies indicate different levels within children’s folk culture.6 by parodying the theme song from the television show, barney and friends, older children can indicate that they have outgrown a program directed at the very young viewer. in “‘i hate you, you hate me’; children’s responses to barney the dinosaur,” elizabeth tucker, while also acknowledging timely references to topics like the aids epidemic, asserts this very point. the original theme song, which begins “i love you, you love me,” becomes in parody versions: i hate you, you hate me. let’s go out and kill barney and a shot rang out and barney hit the floor no more purple dinosaur (1999, 28). and as judy mckinty points out, there are similar songs about the teletubbies set to the barney tune: i hate po, po hates me, we’re not a happy family, with a dagger in his back and a bullet in his head, uh-oh laa laa, dipsy’s dead (2000, 49). the older child’s execution of barney or one of the teletubbies signals his or her rejection of that earlier stage of life and is part of the putting behind of childish things i spoke of earlier. by far, the most popular area of parody is the nursery rhyme. nursery rhymes are among the earliest rhymes to which children are exposed, the earliest rhymes they learn themselves, and the earliest rhymes they parody. moreover, the cfr_2009_r4.indb 71 10/25/09 6:19:26 pm children’s oral poetry sullivan 72 parodies show both the separation from the adult world and the development of the child within his or her folk group. the earliest of these, that is, those said by the youngest children, are usually innocent. mary had a little lamb, it was a greedy glutton, she fed it on ice cream all day, and now it’s frozen mutton (opie 1959, 90). and one of my favorites: mary had a little lamb, her father shot it dead, now mary takes her lamb to school, between two hunks of bread. but as children get a bit older, the parodies become somewhat more daring: mary had a little lamb she tied it to a heater every time it turned around it burned its little peter. (bronner 1988, 80). and then more sexually suggestive and linguistically complex: mary had a little lamb, and, boy, was the doctor surprised. and: mary had a little lamb, she also had a bear; i’ve often seen her little lamb, but i’ve never seen her bear [bare]. what is true of the “mary had a little lamb” parodies is also true of other nursery rhymes. parodies tell what jack burned when he jumped over the candle stick, what jack and jill were really doing up on that hill, what happened to mother hubbard when she went to get her dog a bone from the cupboard, how having so many children affected the old woman who lived in the shoe, and what jack horner was eating in the corner—just to name some of the most popular. obscenity7 this obviously brings us to the r-rated section of the performance. children’s rude or off-color or obscene humor (let’s just settle on “obscene” as the cover term) cfr_2009_r4.indb 72 10/25/09 6:19:26 pm sullivan children’s oral poetry 73 has been a problem for folklorists for some time. on one hand, as iona opie has testified (see note #4), publishers would not accept such materials in the 1950s. by the time of the knapps’ one potato, two potato in 1976, things had changed, and materials that could not have been published in the 1950s could be published. when simon bronner published american children’s folklore, in 1988, it seems as of anything was allowed. however, the opies said, “genuinely erotic verse…is unusual” (1959, 95), and the knapps echoed that sentiment, “little erotic verse shows up in grade school” (1976, 85); however, as the knapps admitted on the very next page (86), it wasn’t easy, and was sometimes impossible, for adults to convince children to tell them such materials—and for obvious reasons. as the knapps suggest and bronner’s examples reinforce, such erotic materials become plentiful among junior high school age children. as with the “mary had a little lamb” parodies, children’s obscene humor is developmental within the folk group; that is, as the children get older, their obscene verse changes. the first subject of such verse is feces. one of the first insults a child learns is to call someone else a “doo doo head,” and there is an attendant verse, “nanny, nanny boo boo / stick your head in doo doo.” the very first obscene verse i learned from an older boy in the neighborhood was: 1944 the monkey climbed the door the door split the monkey shit 1944 why this made me laugh heartily, i now have no idea. a rhyme reported by the knapps may illustrate its age with a reference to a chain-pull toilet, “push the button, pull the chain, / out comes a little black choo-choo train” (1976, 62). bronner includes the night was dark the sky was blue down the alley a shit wagon flew a bump was hit a scream was heard a man was killed by a flying turd and remarks that “these rhymes comment on children’s growing understanding of taboos on certain images and words” (1988, 81). they are also opportunities for children to engage in what mechling might call “obscene play” or “forbidden play” (1986, 94), a kind of play which is their own and in which they engage in direct opposition to the attitudes of the adult folk group. and feces is just the beginning. cfr_2009_r4.indb 73 10/25/09 6:19:26 pm children’s oral poetry sullivan 74 in addition to feces, there is a general interest in all eliminatory and excretory functions. a rhyme in which the reciter points to the general areas of chest, crotch, and buttocks creates interesting food metaphors: milkly milky, lemonade, around the corner, hot dogs made. as the title of donna lanclos’ article “bare bums and wee chimneys,” indicates, there is a great deal of children’s lore—rhymes, jokes, sayings, and songs—about those two areas of the body. in addition, underwear, which covers those body parts, is another topic of more than passing interest to children, and in addition to the “i see london, i see france” admonitory rhyme, there are others; and most of the rhymes in this category involve someone’s having lost his or her underwear. one such rhyme begins: tarzan, tarzan, through the air tarzan lost his underwear tarzan say, “me don’t care— jane make me another pair” (bronner 1988, 78). in that rhyme and its many variations, jane, boy, and cheetah are also naked. these rhymes about body parts and underwear, as well as the jokes and songs and sayings about them, allow children to engage in some forbidden language play, and because adults would find at least some of that language play objectionable, the children have, once again, delineated and taken possession of something that is not only their own but in opposition to adult norms. from a focus on body parts and their excretory and eliminatory functions, it is probably not a huge step to focus on body parts and their reproductive functions. the information children have about sex and reproduction is often incomplete, hazy, and/or erroneous; but as soon as they are aware that babies come from women’s bodies, their lore begins to reflect this. the knapps report the following recitation by a ten-year-old boy: “now i lay her on the bed, / i pray to god i’ll use my head” (1976, 172), both a parody of “now i lay me down to sleep” as well as a rather vague rhyme about sexual activity. more familiar, but no less vague, is a parody of “my bonnie lies over the ocean”: my bonnie lies over the ocean my bonnie lies over the sea, my daddy lies over my mommy, and that’s how they got little me. (knapp 1976, 185). about a variation of the song, bronner reports the person from whom the song was collected learned it in second or third grade; he comments, “within the apparent innocence of this ditty, the singer is declaring her astute awareness cfr_2009_r4.indb 74 10/25/09 6:19:26 pm sullivan children’s oral poetry 75 of sexual knowledge supposedly kept hidden from children” (1988, 218, n.22). children’s questions about where babies come from show that they are, indeed, interested in the subject, and the rhymes, songs, jokes, and sayings indicate not only a sort of innocent knowledge, but also a willingness to know and share whatever information they have. while it may be obvious that children know what they are talking about in the immediately previous examples of innocent sexual rhymes, it may be that they are saying more than they know in others. according to roger abrahams (1969, 3132), the single most popular jump-rope rhyme is: cinderella dressed in yellow went upstairs to kiss a fellow made a mistake and kissed a snake how many doctors did it take? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5…(bronner 1988, 70). in a variant reported by the knapps, cinderella “came downstairs with a bellyache” between “kissed a snake” and “how many doctors did it take?” (1976, 125). mechling argues: one way to account for the popularity of this rhyme is to see in it a disguised discussion of sex and pregnancy. the rhyme begins innocently enough with a fairytale character, probably known to children through the disney film and storybooks. but the cinderella story itself is about the sexual awakening of a young woman. in the jump-rope rhyme, the young woman goes upstairs to kiss her boyfriend, but she kisses a “snake” instead, and one way to interpret the meaning of “kissing a snake” is in sexual symbolic terms. in the child’s vague understanding of reproduction and the difference between the womb and the stomach, sexual contact could result in a “stomach ache”—that is, pregnancy (1986, 101). the “bellyache” figures in numerous hand-clapping, jump-rope, and other game rhymes; and it is important to note that these are girls’ game rhymes, making the sexual interpretation even more convincing.8 conclusions where does one draw the line? i do not mean with children; this is their material, and forbidding it to them would be as successful as king canute’s fabled attempt to halt the incoming tide. i do not mean in this presentation, although i will admit a certain trepidation in presenting increasingly obscene materials (as well as some cfr_2009_r4.indb 75 10/25/09 6:19:26 pm children’s oral poetry sullivan 76 i have already presented) to such an august gathering as this. no, i mean where do we draw the line between children’s and adolescents’ folklore? folklorists often talk about age-group folklore (brunvand 1998, 54-56), and that almost works here, ending childhood at 12 and beginning adolescence at 13, but some children learn things sooner and others later. perhaps it might be better to look at intent. i mentioned earlier the opies’ and the knapps’ comments that little erotic verse exists at the grade-school level. it does exist at the junior-high and high-school levels, where it is recited or told perhaps expressly for its erotic value (the basic knowledge of sex and sexuality being fairly well understood by the tellers at that age). in other words, the intent of the adolescent teller is different from the intent of the child teller. the adolescent teller intends to be erotic; the child teller, generally, does not. on the first level, “identity,” the child tellers are creating and passing on verses that are their own, outside of and sometimes in opposition to what they hear from and see in the adult community; and it is difficult to tell just how important it is for those who are essentially powerless to have something of their own, something that they can control. on the second level, “obscenity,” the child tellers are also asserting their independence from the adult culture, especially with the verses about bodily functions and the like; but they are also beginning to show an awareness of, in their own language, direct and metaphorical, that most secret of all adult knowledge, the knowledge of sexuality. but the child’s intent, whatever else it is, is not to be erotic. we will read our children poems from a child’s garden of verses, when we were very young, and now we are six, and our children will love those books and poems, but when they are on their own, on the playground or in the woods, it is more likely that they will be reciting some of the materials, or variations thereof, mentioned above. and this is as it should be; they are entitled to their own poetry and to their identity as children as they express it in that poetry. notes 1. a shorter version of this article was originally presented at the “poetry and childhood conference and exhibition” sponsored by cambridge university and the british library, london, 20-21 april 2009, and will be published in a volume of selected papers from the conference. 2. by “protected,” i assume that bronner means that children protect their lore from adults, not that someone else is protecting the children. 3. examples, unless otherwise noted, are from my own experiences or collections. 4. the publication date is important. iona opie has since said to me in private conversation that oxford university press would not publish some of the ruder materials that she and peter collected. 5. polack jokes, of course, are not really about polish people but are actually an iteration of the numbskull jokes that have circulated about various groups with ethnic and religious labels suitable to the time. cfr_2009_r4.indb 76 10/25/09 6:19:27 pm sullivan children’s oral poetry 77 6. see donna m. lanclos’ “bare bums and wee chimneys” for an extended discussion of defining lines between children and adults. 7. i am omitting the larger category of what simon bronner (1988, 81-82) calls gross rhymes, as violence and other subjects of gross rhymes are not generally considered “rude” or “obscene.” 8. prior to the twentieth century, boys may have participated in what are now considered girls’ games. for a discussion of gender and hopscotch, see derek van rheenan, “boys who play hopscotch: the historical divide of a gendered space” 1998. works cited australian children’s folklore newsletter. 1994. 26 (august): 1-2. abrahams, roger, ed. 1969. jump rope rhymes: a dictionary. austin: university of texas press, bronner, simon j. 1988. american children’s folklore. little rock: august house. brunvand, jan h. 1998. the study of american folklore. 4th ed. new york: norton. fine, gary alan. 1979-1981.pre-adolescent male slang, i-vii. children’s folklore newsletter ii.1, ii.2, iii.1, iii.3, iv.1, iv.2, and iv.3 (fall -winter). knapp, herbert, and mary knapp. 1976. one potato, two potato: the folklore of american children. new york: norton. lanclos, donna m. 2000. bare bums and wee chimneys: rudeness and defining the line between child and adult. children’s folklore review 22.2 (spring): 7-48. mckinty, judy. 2000. e-contributions. children’s folklore review 22.2: 49. mechling, jay. 1986. children’s folklore.. in folk groups and folklore genres, ed. elliott oring. logan: utah state university press, 91-120. opie, peter, and iona opie. 1959. the lore and language of schoolchildren. london: oxford university press. sullivan, c.w. iii. 1980. peanuts and baloney. center for southern folklore 3.1 (winter): 9. tucker, elizabeth. 1999. “i hate you, you hate me”: children’s responses to barney the dinosaur. children’s folklore review 22.1 (fall): 25-33. van rheenan, derek. 1998. boys who play hopscotch: the historical divide of a gendered space. children’s folklore review 21.1 (fall): 5-34. cfr_2009_r4.indb 77 10/25/09 6:19:27 pm 79 kid culture: neighborhood exploration through enrichment clusters kathryn a. mccormick public school calendars of cultural and historical events are a resource for those who want to view cultural exchange at work. urban environments give students the opportunity to understand folklore through connecting to their neighborhood and describing their experiences. a 2007 enrichment project at p.s. 261 in brooklyn, new york introduced local lore and solicited students’ responses to literature, visual presentations, and neighborhood walks in a study of their own neighborhood. students were encouraged to record with all of their senses, cognitive mapping, interviewing, photographing, diagramming, and planning food tasting to relate their experiences in their neighborhoods. how to get famous in brooklyn was used as an inspirational piece of literature to tap students’ knowledge and awareness of places in their neighborhoods. third grade students in the enrichment cluster project had done neighborhood study in grade 1 and the bridge study in grade 2 and so were quite aware of the working environment of their world. daily travel to school by walking and taking subways, buses and cars provides various levels of awareness and involvement, as does experiencing playgrounds, games, parks, favorite stores and restaurants, gathering places, places they go with parents, street memorials, funeral traditions, and even lost or changing places. the book the heroic adventures of the john j. harvey was used to stimulate conversation about transportation, and harbor life in new york city. students created a model of new york harbor, the working home of the historic fireboat that was activated as an evacuation boat on 9/11. the book emphasizes the working fireboat’s value as a survivor of an earlier time on new york harbor. students appreciate the will of restorers to keep the boat as well as the heroic use of it for a present day event. social outcomes visual presentations of street memorials stimulated conversations about death, remembering loved ones, accidents, and funerary practices in families and communities in the city. students adopted the appropriate moods for these presentations. in fact, the social outcomes of local lore were many, reflecting the importance of recognizing the value children give to their own experiences. students demonstrated pride in discovering their culture and sharing other students’ cultures. students shared their interests and concerns about their community, their play spaces, and their safety and illustrated neighborhood planning strategies to implement model neighborhoods. their sense of belonging was enhanced because they researched and presented material on their own culture, traditions, customs and choices within their living environment. play was affirmed and cfr_2009_r4.indb 79 10/25/09 6:19:27 pm kid culture mccormick 80 categorized as “just fun,” and serious play as an interesting means to understand and communicate “kid” culture. lastly, students became skilled fieldworkers and evaluators of their own lore. what teachers learned students were less interested in the monuments and museums of brooklyn than the everyday life within their neighborhood. their stories were travel narratives of “spatial practice,” as in asim and eli’s model of their favorite park before the renovation planned by the parks department. they related exactly which activity took place in each space of the park, taking ownership of the space. other students showed their skills as keen observers and recorders of physical space, showing how changes to that space impact their daily experiences. emeka and friends demonstrated the use of space where they played games before and during the renovation of their school playground. although they spoke nostalgically about the loss of particular corners of the schoolyard, they pointed out new small spaces which they had adopted for their games during the playground renovation. students recognize ‘folk’ culture and the dynamic clustering of culture as a concept of generative life in the city. they are receptors and communicators of culture, enthusiastic about learning and sharing their own customs. ali and raymond’s model of ‘life on the block’ related what michel de certeau refers to as “spatial narratives…narrated adventures, producing geographies of actions” signaling where they observe their own culture being transmitted, where they shop, eat and spend time with relatives in the middle eastern stores and restaurants on atlantic avenue (1984, 115-16). students are receptors and transmitters of lore involved in making themselves “famous in brooklyn,” as the book how to get famous in brooklyn suggests. participation in activities and festivals in their neighborhoods as well as daily travel and use of the neighborhood roots students actively in their environment. they proudly display a sense of ownership, enthusiasm and confidence in knowing their own displays of culture. in addition, students utilize their own cultural codes and ‘kidspeak’ for their neighborhood and playground. these codes are not necessarily understood or used by adults, and that may be the point; students like to own their place in their local environment. works cited de certeau, michel. 1984. the practice of everyday life. los angeles: university of california press. hest, amy. 1995. how to get famous in brooklyn. new york: simon and schuster. kalman, maira. 2002. the heroic adventures of the john j. harvey. new york: putnam juvenile. cfr_2009_r4.indb 80 10/25/09 6:19:27 pm 81 book reviews designing modern childhoods: history, space, and the material culture of children. by marta gutman and ning de coninck-smith, eds. (new brunswick, n.j.: rutgers university press, 2008. pp. vii + 346, introduction, photographs, epilogue, index.) catharina i. kessler designing modern childhoods is a collection of fifteen illustrated essays that draw from a vast variety of sources, accompanied by a foreword by paula s. fass and an epilogue by social and cultural historian john r. gillis. marta gutman is an associate professor in the school of architecture, urban design and landscape architecture at the city college of new york, and ning de conninck-smith is an associate professor in the department of educational sociology at the school of education at aarhus university in denmark. the book is partly a result of an international, multidisciplinary conference organized by the two at the university of california, berkeley in 2002 and assembles contributions from architectural historians, social historians, social scientists, and architects. the essays are grouped into four parts: ‘child saving and the design of modern childhoods’; ‘the choreography of education and play’; ‘space, power and inequality in modern childhoods’; and ‘consumption, commodification, and the media: material culture and contemporary childhoods.’ drawing on data from the usa, canada, new zealand, south africa, europe, turkey, senegal and indonesia from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the collection covers a broad spectrum of landscapes and time periods. the essays are framed by the thesis “that spaces and settings made for children are pivotal to the construction of modernity in global society” (2). the first two sections of the book are mainly historical and discuss and challenge the concept of the “islanding of children,” described by gutman and de conninck-smith in the introduction as “the specialization of space and material culture” (5) designed by adults for children, thus systematically separating the lives of the two groups by relegating children to the home (as in the paper by annmarie adams and peter gossage), schools (anne-marie châtelet, zeynep kezer, kristin juul), special children’s hospitals (david c. sloane), playgrounds and special parks (roy kozlovsky, anéne cusins-lewer and julia gately), and summer camps (abigail a. van slyck). an essay by annmarie adams and peter gossage on “sick children and the thresholds of domesticity” sits well in this volume and highlights the large “extent of healthcare practices that took place beyond the thresholds of the bedroom and the home” of canadian families of the victorian era (77). the authors ask to reconsider notions of the passive child in their analysis of letters written by members of john william dawson’s family, culled from the mcgill university archives. adams and gossage show cfr_2009_r4.indb 81 10/25/09 6:19:27 pm book reviews 82 how dawson’s healthy teenage daughter manages the everyday affairs of her sick siblings while her mother is away, actively reordering the domestic spaces, opening windows to provide them with fresh air, and reporting back to her mother about her activities, in which she is aided by a close network of relatives and other families (70). the study challenges historians’ suggestion that in the past, sick children of middle-class canadian families were tended by mothers before being admitted to hospital, isolated from other families or outside institutions. rather, it argues that sick children inspired travel and connection beyond the home. the second half of the collection is mostly ethnographic, focusing on the historical present of childhood with one section on power and inequality, and another on consumption, commodification and the media. the chapters in this section complement the first, historically-oriented portion of the volume in positioning children as actors in their own right. they highlight children’s strategies of using, co-creating and influencing spaces of the house and backyard (rebecca ginsburg), street (harriot beazley) and school (mary s. hoffschwelle), or their use of material goods and associated cultural practices such as presents (alison j. clarke), mcdonald’s happy meals (helene brembeck), snowboards (olav christensen) and anime media (mizuko ito). the insightful essay by architectural historian rebecca ginsburg on “the view from the back step,” set in the context of south african apartheid, draws attention to the tight nexus of dominant social values and spatial order by examining how white children learned about apartheid by observing and partaking in its racial geography. through the analysis of interviews with white people who were children in the 1960s and 1970s and former african servants from the same period, ginsburg traces the relationships of white children and their black nannies, who used to live in huts in their backyard. the authors show how their understanding of racial hierarchies led many children to change their views of these maids from integral figures to peripheral ones, while others defied their parents’ expectations by regularly venturing into the backyards and spending time with their nannies. the chapter provides a nuanced view of children’s varied responses and actions in a social world where behaviour appears to be spatially restricted. overall, the volume is a good example of comparative, multidisciplinary childhood studies, demonstrating especially the importance of material culture to, and the impact of design on, children’s lived experience. the broadly conceptualized book appears to be very useful for classroom instruction in folklore, childhood studies, architecture and history, as it introduces readers to a wide-range of topics as well as to different forms of data and analysis, making it a valuable source for any instructor willing to contextualize the special scientific and theoretical backgrounds of the different chapters. cfr_2009_r4.indb 82 10/25/09 6:19:27 pm book reviews 83 from nursery rhymes to nationhood: children’s literature and the construction of canadian identity. by elizabeth a. galway. (new york and london: routledge, 2008. pp. 1 + 196, notes, selected bibliography, index.) jon d. lee focusing on children’s literature from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, from nursery rhymes to nationhood provides scholars of folklore, literature and history with a much-needed text that examines the role children’s literature played in forming canadian national identity. as a whole, the book is well-written and free of academic jargon, and galway, using 115 primary sources (i.e. 19th and 20th century children’s literature) and at least twice as many secondary sources (largely contemporary academic texts from various disciplines, including history and english), details well the many themes and ideals that permeated children’s literature in this formative era. galway argues that literature provides a source for ongoing contemplation of identity and that children’s literature plays a crucial role in their own understanding of belonging and difference. she examines how the books and stories of the age dealt with questions of loyalty, differing in their opinions about whether canadians should remain faithful to the british empire, show greater political and cultural alignment with the united states, or attempt to establish themselves as independent of both. next, galway demonstrates how, on the basis of these three alternatives, authors proposed varying ideas for how to best construct a national identity, some attempting to do so on “a racial or ethnic basis” that placed dividers among anglophones, francophones, and first nations people and others adopting a “biracial, bilingual system” free of hierarchies (175). finally, she establishes that the literature was also attempting to formulate national values like pacifism, environmental concern and freedom, around which canadian citizens could unite. as galway proves, the problems associated with the struggle between belonging and differentiation are numerous and varied. some of these problems were overt, such as questions relating to which country canadians should remain loyal, or indecision concerning how “indians” should be represented in stories— as “noble savages,” as unmitigated protagonists, or (as was unfortunately less common) as equals. paraphrasing canadian children’s literature critic roderick mcgillis, galway notes that the treatment of first nations people functioned “as a means of negotiating the boundary between ‘self’ and ‘other,’” a debate that helped structure “who and what the canadian identity should represent” (114). another debated issue was the fact that much of the children’s literature available at the time was published not in canada, but in britain or the united states, and was often written by citizens of those countries. as post-confederation canada struggled to form a national identity separate from that of england, children’s literature increasingly featured canadian, english, and american children interacting, with canadian children having to instruct or rescue their foreign friends. for example, in the captain of the club, a novel from 1889 that galway references frequently, the author presents canadian children cfr_2009_r4.indb 83 10/25/09 6:19:28 pm book reviews 84 as “physically superior to their american counterparts” at canoeing (68) and instinctively aware of landscape as “a source of pride” (159) as they teach their friends about the benefits of interacting positively with nature. galway makes a valuable contribution to the study of children’s literature as a source of debates on identity and nation-building. as she traces these arguments galway maintains an intelligent, objective, and insightful commentary. the scholarship is impressive for its coherent synthesis of a wide scope of data, resulting in a text that should be easily accessible to undergraduates. indeed, a class on children’s literature in canada would be remiss not to assign this as a textbook, so valuable are the ideas presented here. the book is not without its small faults, however, and there are some sections where data could have been better organized. for instance, page twelve of the introduction lists the assassination of louis real, the boer war of 1899, and the 1903 alaska boundary question as important historical points in the development of children’s literature. however, these events receive no elaboration until pages thirty-eight, forty-six, and fifty-five, respectively, and there is no notice in the introduction that these elaborations are forthcoming. it would be easy for readers—especially if they are unfamiliar with this era of canadian history—to glean from such an introduction that the book assumes a far greater comprehension than it actually does. still, such faults are relatively minor, and are few in number. overall, the text is exceedingly well-organized and lucid. though the book focuses only on canadian children’s literature of a specific period, it should be required reading for students of any aspect of children’s literature, regardless of concentration. the lessons learned in these pages about the importance of literature for national identity would be well emphasized in other works, and galway provides an excellent and attentionworthy method of analysis and discussion. the book is a wonderful and valuable contribution to the field. haunted halls: ghostlore of american college campuses. by elizabeth tucker. (jackson: university press of mississippi, 2007. pp. vii + 241, illustrations, references, index.) jodi mcdavid haunted halls is a unique approach to the somewhat familiar subject matter of campus legends. elizabeth tucker, a professor of english at binghamton university, comes to this material through an interesting set of circumstances; she has been faculty master of a residential community on the binghamton campus for a number of years. her experience as a folklorist and residence coordinator creates a unique viewpoint for this readable and academically grounded book. haunted halls straddles the line between legend collection and analytic text quite well, providing tale type and motif index references for many of the narratives. the chapters all stand well on their own, due in part to some of their previous lives as articles which have been edited for the current publication. four chapters draw on articles which were published elsewhere. tucker links legends thematically across campuses, for example, finding “wailing women” at a variety cfr_2009_r4.indb 84 10/25/09 6:19:28 pm book reviews 85 of institutions. other chapters include discussions of topics such as legend quests, encounters with ghosts, evidence of them, and ghostly lovers (jilted, waiting and so on). a variety of campuses are surveyed: tucker conducts interviews and searches university and folklore archives to provide a well-rounded selection of legends from at least fifty universities and colleges. types of ghosts are compared to those found at other institutions, and a typology of sorts is exposed through the subject matter of each chapter (although the author herself may not suggest this) with ghosts under the categories of “desperate lovers” found at a variety of colleges. chapter seven, “spectral indians,” goes beyond campus legends to discuss legends told by non-indians and to analyse these types of legends and their function. this chapter would lend itself well to american studies courses, as well as to a discussion of the concepts of emic and etic folklore that are frequently discussed in introductory folklore courses. one issue of concern for some readers may be the use of psychoanalytic theory and jungian approaches. this mode of analysis is limited to chapter four, “troubling encounters,” where tucker cites several academics who have used jungian approaches, for example, in studying bloody mary. in some ways, the use of psychoanalytic theory can be limiting, but it is necessary in a literary review of previous work by folklorists in the area of “adolescent legends.” the use of fieldwork methods which are conducive to the collection of narratives within this age group (approximately aged 17-25) is indeed a contribution to the field. student culture maintains a highly oral component even as students employ a variety of social networking sites and digital communication media. throughout the text, tucker cites legends culled through oral sources as well as those documented via instant messaging and email, a very useful means of collection for the age group that forms the crux of the study. as an instructor, i was delighted to see tucker use these forms as she provides a wonderful example of how they can be studied academically. i can see positive implications for using this book in teaching courses in american studies, children’s folklore, narrative, legends and so on. the book could be used in whole or in part for teaching, although the subject matter of some chapters (rape, murder and suicide) may not be suitable for a high school curriculum. those wishing to use it at this level—to spur creative writing or encourage discussion about legends—may find some chapters to their liking. overall, the book provides interesting approaches to some compelling subject matter, and several pages of my copy are marked for future reflection, citation and exploration. cfr_2009_r4.indb 85 10/25/09 6:19:28 pm 87 children’s folklore section: 2008 annual meeting the children’s folklore section of the american folklore society met on october 23, 2008 at the hyatt regency hotel in louisville, kentucky. john mcdowell, the section’s president, called the meeting to order, and those present introduced themselves. secretary’s report: the minutes of the 2007 section meeting in québec were distributed and approved. editor’s report: elizabeth tucker reported that volume 30 of the children’s folklore review will be complete and in the mail soon. c.w. sullivan iii, editor of the journal for thirty years, co-edited this thirtieth volume. binghamton university has provided generous financial support for the publication and mailing of one issue per year. information about the 2008 aesop award winners, taken from the children’s folklore section website, follows: 2008 aesop prize ain’t nothing but a man: my quest to find the real john henry. scott reynolds nelson, with marc aronson. national geographic, 2008. scott nelson’s outstanding work is a meticulously documented historiography of his lengthy search to find the historical roots of the legend of john henry, rather than a retelling of the well-known story and song. derived from his academic book for adults, steel drivin’ man: john henry and the untold story of an american legend (oxford university press, 2006), his research has been recast, with the assistance of marc aronson, as non-fiction for a younger audience, heavily illustrated with period photographs of railroad history. the research on the origin of the legendary figure is fascinating, while the work also provides insight into what it means to be a historian or a folklorist. nelson stresses the open-ended nature of history as process, not simply an endless account of facts and dates. in examining the historical process, he demonstrates the role that research into folklore can play in revealing previously unwritten history. nelson is not the first to ask whether there was an actual historical figure behind the well-documented song recounting an epic battle between man and machine, in which a steel-driving man outperformed a steam drill, but died as a result of the contest. however, he has unearthed new evidence and presents it persuasively to suggest that there was a real john william henry, incarcerated in the virginia penitentiary in 1866 at the age of 19, who was one of over 300 african-american prisoners who died as a result of being contracted out to work on the c&o railway. he includes an intriguing picture , taken in 1863, of a young black man named john henry who worked in the union army’s 3rd army corps in virginia, but he acknowledges that he can not prove that this is the same man. cfr_2009_r4.indb 87 10/25/09 6:19:28 pm cfs: 2008 annual meeting 88 the aesop committee’s comments note that “by exposing the racial complications of the story, [nelson] provides insight not only into the history of one song, but also into the complex relationship of history, race, and folk memory.” aronson’s afterword, “how to be a historian,” extends the importance of the story to young readers by emphasizing ways that they themselves can participate in the historical process. 2008 aesop accolades dance in a buffalo skull. told by zitkala-ša. illustrated by s. d. nelson. prairie tales series, no. 2. south dakota state historical society press, 2007. s. d. nelson’s stunning illustrations bring new life to the language used by zitkalaša (gertrude simmons bonnin) when in 1901 she retold a story she heard as a child on the yankton sioux indian reservation. in this small-format picture book, the breathtaking artwork by nelson, a member of the standing rock sioux tribe, heightens the suspense of this tale of night on the prairie, as happy mice feast and dance inside a buffalo skull, heedless of danger, while a wildcat silently creeps close, attracted by their merriment. the sensory imagery is rich, drawing out the sights and sounds of the prairie. zitkala-ša’s powerful storytelling makes this an excellent choice for reading aloud. zitkala-ša, herself lakota, born in 1876 on the yankton sioux indian reservation in south dakota, served as a bridge between the tribal people of her birthplace and the white society that educated her in a quaker mission boarding school, earlham college, and the new england conservatory for music. as a writer, political activist, and musician, she sought to convey for a white audience, the traditions, values, and worth of her indian heritage. this voice from the past is still strong today as her love for the teaching tale she learned from the elders shines through in this story. one aesop committee member commented, “for someone writing a hundred years ago as an indigenous author, trying to present her culture to an outsider audience, i think she did an incredible job and i love the way nelson’s illustrations enhance the language for a modern audience and make it clear how well-done her telling really is.” the work of the south dakota historical society press, in its ongoing efforts to reflect the rich and varied history of south dakota and to preserve its colorful culture and heritage, merits recognition. the adventures of molly whuppie and other appalachian folktales. anne shelby. illustrated by paula mcardle. university of north carolina press, 2007. storyteller anne shelby’s updated appalachian sensibility brings a charming twist to a collection of stories based on traditional tale types. the dynamic storytelling voice has the ring of folk wisdom, with a flair for the fun in the familiar. heroine molly whuppie encounters witches, giants, an ogre who refuses to do housework, unwanted boyfriends, and a spectrum of puzzling predicaments. this clever and cfr_2009_r4.indb 88 10/25/09 6:19:28 pm cfs: 2008 annual meeting 89 courageous girl manages to circumvent catastrophe with a potent combination of nerve, trickery, and plain old luck. other characters include molly’s sisters poll and betts, the famous appalachian hero jack (rescued more than once by molly herself), and three cornbread-baking mice. in looking for stories with a strong woman or girl character, shelby brings together the british molly whuppie with the appalachian munciemeg or mutsmag. she also borrows some stories more commonly associated with jack or the less well-known appalachian male merrywise. whimsical illustrations complement the witty delivery and enliven the text. shelby is frank about the liberties she has taken in bringing a modern sensibility to her adaptations, but she carefully notes her sources and acknowledges the changes she has made. while she sometimes transforms male characters to female, she also brings existing women characters to the forefront, as in her version of “raglif jaglif tartliff pole,” in which the often anonymous giant’s daughter who saves jack’s life is transformed into an appalachian molly. she notes her driving criteria: “i had to have some evidence of the story’s having been told in the appalachian region, and i had to like it.” the aesop committee especially commends “the care with which she preserves unique cultural expressions that give her stories such a strong flavor of appalachian language;” a language she herself grew up with in eastern kentucky in the 1950s. this collection is sure to appeal to readers, young and old alike. opie prize report: there was no opie prize nomination this year. carole carpenter (york university, carolec@yorku.ca) chairs this committee. children’s folklore section sessions: the section sponsored one panel, “youth, ritual, and play,” at the afs meeting in louisville. participants were: elizabeth tucker, chair elizabeth tucker (binghamton university) “levitation revisited” simon j. bronner (pennsylvania state university) “fathers and sons: rethinking the meaning of the bar mitzvah” priscilla a. ord (mcdaniel college) “children of the holocaust: common games, play, and pastimes in uncommon times” bill ellis (pennsylvania state university), discussant we had a lively discussion of ways to make information about children’s folklore scholarship more readily available. it seems particularly important to explore ways to put back issues of children’s folklore review on the internet. with section members’ approval, john mcdowell and elizabeth tucker will investigate some possibilities for the future. at the end of the meeting, we gave prizes to winners of our children’s folklore section raffle. prizes included a complete set of back issues of children’s folklore review and a folkloric barbie doll. cfr_2009_r4.indb 89 10/25/09 6:19:28 pm 91 notes and announcements newell prize the children’s folklore section of the american folklore society annually offers the william wells newell prize (which includes a cash award) for the best student essay on a topic in children’s folklore. students must submit their own papers, and published papers are eligible. instructors are asked to encourage students with eligible papers to enter the competition. papers must be typed, double-spaced, and on white paper or a word document. on the first page, include the author’s name, academic address, home address, telephone numbers, and e-mail address. deadline for this coming year’s competition is september 1, 2009. submit papers or write for more information to dr. c.w. sullivan iii, english department, east carolina university, greenville, nc, 27858-4353; electronic submissions should go to sullivanc@ecu.edu. book reviews children’s folklore review is seeking book review submissions for its next issue, to be published in october of 2010. this is an excellent opportunity for graduate students interested in building their writing credentials and demonstrating breadth in folklore, literature, and childhood studies. books are selected for review in children’s folklore review according to their relevance to the field of children’s folklore and their year of publication (within the past two years). if you would like to request a book for review, please contact the book review editor, dana hercbergs (hercberg@sas.upenn.edu). book reviews should not exceed 750 words. cfr_2009_r4.indb 91 10/25/09 6:19:29 pm 93 contributors simon j. bronner is distinguished university professor of american studies and folklore and director of the doctoral program in american studies at the pennsylvania state university, harrisburg. he is the author or editor of over 25 books, including american children’s folklore (awarded the opie prize for outstanding book on children’s folklore), piled higher and deeper: the folklore of student life, and the encyclopedia of american folklife (4 volumes, awarded an editor’s choice award). formerly president of the children’s folklore section of the american folklore society, he also serves on the editorial boards of the american journal of play, folklore historian, folklife, and children’s folklore review. dana hercbergs is a doctoral candidate in folklore and folklife at the university of pennsylvania and a visiting assistant professor of judaic studies at siegal college in cleveland, ohio. her dissertation focuses on palestinians’ and israelis’ narratives about growing up in jerusalem throughout the last sixty years. her research and teaching interests include jewish and arab relations and identities, children’s folklore, memory and narrative, and healing traditions. catharina kessler studied cultural anthropology, media and communication studies and english at the georg-august-university in göttingen, germany and folklore at the university of california, berkeley. she has completed her ma thesis on the jokes of children and teenagers and currently works on the interdisciplinary research project “school culture,” in which cultural anthropologists and educational scientists seek to develop a comprehensive concept of school culture based on ethnographic research at two gymnasien [german secondary schools]. jon d. lee received his ph.d. in folklore from memorial university of newfoundland in 2009. he divides his time between folklore and creative writing, and is currently working on a second book of poetry, as well as an academic text on the role of narratives in disease outbreaks. he currently lives in boston, massachusetts, and teaches literature at various universities. kathryn mccormick is a guidance counselor and independent folklorist who has used folklore in guidance and education in brooklyn schools. utilizing skills learned from the folklore department at ucla and from nyu’s department of performance studies, she has designed enrichment and guidance projects linking the child with family, neighborhood and the larger community, often with cognitive mapping and child-centered narratives. jodi mcdavid is a doctoral candidate at memorial university of newfoundland, researching counter-clerical narratives in atlantic canada. her folklore ma thesis, also from mun, is titled “‘we’re dirty sons of bitches’: residence rites of passage cfr_2009_r4.indb 93 10/25/09 6:19:29 pm contributors 94 at a small maritime university.” mcdavid works at cape breton university, teaching atlantic canadian folklore, urban legend and custom. she is also a researcher at the centre for cape breton studies. priscilla a. ord lives in westminster, maryland, where she is an adjunct lecturer in english at her alma mater, mcdaniel college, formerly western maryland college, which was founded in 1867 as the first co-educational college south of the masondixon line and is now recognized as one of the forty “colleges that change lives.” she holds a ba in english education from western maryland college and an am in linguistics from the university of pennsylvania and has taught english at the secondary level and english, children’s literature, and linguistics at several colleges and universities. glen retief’s memoir about growing up gay and white in south africa, the jack bank, is forthcoming in 2010. his writing has appeared in numerous journals here and abroad, including virginia quarterly review, the massachusetts review, and the flagship south african journal new contrast. he teaches creative nonfiction at susquehanna university. c.w. sullivan iii, the associate editor of children’s folklore review, is harriot college of arts and sciences distinguished professor at east carolina university and is a full member of the welsh academy. his major publications include welsh celtic myth in modern fantasy, the mabinogi: a book of essays, fenian diary: denis b. cashman on board the hougoumont, 1867-1868, six other books, and a variety of articles on mythology, folklore, fantasy, and science fiction. he edited children’s folklore review for thirty years and is currently the editor of the e-journal celtic cultural studies. elizabeth tucker, the editor of children’s folklore review, is professor of english at binghamton university. her areas of interest include the folklore of children and college students, legends, and folklore of the supernatural. she has published three books, of which the most recent is children’s folklore: a handbook (2008), and various articles, book chapters, memoir pieces, and poems. she is the editor of the international society for contemporary legend research’s e-newsletter, foaftale news, and an editorial board member of voices: the journal of new york folklore. cfr_2009_r4.indb 94 10/25/09 6:19:29 pm 45 genetic bubble wrap karin phillips when considering my own childhood, it becomes apparent that i simply was not a risk taker. in fact, the most dangerous game i ever participated in was sled riding in my neighborhood. the hill was steep and there was a building to be avoided at the bottom but there isn’t any way i can squeeze it under the heading of dangerous games. luckily, i married an adrenaline-driven daredevil. his childhood stories quite literally make my jaw drop and his antics over the last couple of summers of high school unmistakably flash “dangerous game” in brilliant neon. the summer following tenth grade, my husband scott and some of his friends from school would ride their bikes near where they lived. “it started in chenango bridge,” he explained. the boys would take turns jumping into the chenango river from a rope swing hanging from a tree limb on shore. “it was exciting,” he said. “we didn’t even think about getting hurt. it was just fun and a good way to cool off.” this relatively mild level of risk-taking carried them through that summer and into the next. toward the middle of the summer following eleventh grade, the same boys heard about a rope swing into “boland’s pond” from some older kids. this location was a little further down the river. boland’s was a topsoil company and the land around their business was a stone quarry. they would excavate the soil, essentially creating gravel pits. one of the largest pits was filled with water that seeped from the river. at the edge of this pit was a tall tree, conveniently outfitted with a rope swing. the boys would take a running start and jump into the standing water from the bank. “it was about a ten to twelve foot drop before you hit the water,” according to scott. the boys were undaunted. “this was even more exciting. the jump was better with more distance from the bank. it was great!” he enthused. it’s significant to note that these summer rituals were deeply rooted in the childhood underground, as none of the boys’ parents had any awareness of this activity. it’s also interesting that part of the appeal of these activities was defying the murky legends of injury or even death surrounding them. “you’d hear that so and so had broken his leg or even his neck,” scott said. as the boys got older, the level of danger in this particular game was amplified. by the end of the summer before their senior year, scott and his friends moved their sport to the bridge between boland’s pond and chenango valley high school. they would climb out on the steel beams under the bridge and drop approximately 25 feet into the river below. they would “preventatively” scan the river for potential dangers like logs or other debris. they made sure the surface looked clear, ignoring the potential threats below. this overconfidence and oblivion regarding real hazards is addressed in children’s folklore: a handbook, “dangerous games let children prove their courage and skill. insulated by the assurance of youth, players may not hesitate to jump into a game that looks risky” (tucker 2008, 36). scott and his friends quite literally jumped into their dangerous cfr_2011_r.indb 45 10/31/11 8:57:38 am genetic bubble wrap phillips 46 game without a lot of consideration for the possible consequences. “i felt a little risk, sure, but what i really felt was freedom. i didn’t feel scared,” scott shared. the pinnacle of the boys’ jumping adventures and, ironically, the coup de grâce took place the summer after their graduation from high school. at this point the boys were no longer confined to the area reachable by bikes. they had motorcycles and cars to facilitate broadening the range of their fun. they spent the summer exploring various gorges in ithaca, new york. one favored location had a rope swing that hung from a tree on a large cliff. “i felt a little trepidation,” scott said. “i never went first. i had to swim downstream and climb all the way back up. it took quite a bit of time.” one hot day that summer a lot of kids were gathered at this location. “it was a party spot,” scott explained. they heard some kids talking about the “devil’s punchbowl.” they followed some people there. “we followed these railroad tracks, walking along the top of a ravine. as we got closer i could hear a lot of activity. there were about twenty people in a little gathering spot. beyond that spot was a narrow path to the edge of a sheer cliff. it looked like a punchbowl,” scott remembered. scott also remembered the awe he felt at the height of the overhang some of the kids were jumping off of. “it was at least two telephone poles high,” he said. he and his friends received instructions from the “veteran” jumpers. scott watched two of his friends jump ahead of him. “i was very reluctant,” he admitted. “still, all eyes were on me and i felt that peer pressure. it was intense. i followed the directions i was given, pointed my toes, crossed my arms and jumped. the water was unbelievably cold. the impact jammed my knees up and almost into my face. my tailbone hurt so bad that i had trouble moving my legs to swim back. i swam with my arms.” the myriad ways in which this story could have ended tragically didn’t hit my husband until he was safely out of the water and experiencing a painful motorcycle ride home. “we really pushed it to the limit that day,” he acknowledged. “i knew how stupid it was. when it sunk in, i felt duped by my friends. i felt like i had cheated death. i learned to trust myself more.” when i hear the details of this dangerous game i wince. as the mother of three boys possessing their father’s thrill-seeking dna, i shudder at the thought of the games they have yet to invent or participate in. i can only hope that my prudent dna will temper their play, at least a little. work cited tucker, elizabeth. 2008. children’s folklore: a handbook. westport: greenwood press. cfr_2011_r.indb 46 10/31/11 8:57:38 am ocr document riddle use and comprehension in irish school-aged children: a developmental study sara staunton i would like to gratefully acknowledge the help i received from the following people in completing this project: my supervisor, dr. jeffrey kallen for his constant patience, advice and encouragement. the teachers, parents and children who participated in this study. my friends and family who assisted in the completion of this project. introduction 1.1 introduction whilst language development can be described as a lifelong process (obler, 1985, cited in nippold, 1988a), the greatest part of this development occurs during the childhood years. the task of acquiring his or her native language, with which the child is faced from birth, would appear to be a formidable one. however, the evidence that children rise to this challenge with fascination and delight is be found in the numerous kinds of lore which have been collected from children over the past few centuries (crossley-holland, 1982; opie and opie, 1959). included amongst these are the rhymes, riddles, jokes and songs which children relish in sharing amongst themselves, and which are reported to remain almost unchanged when passed from generation to generation (opie and opie, 1959). the forms of folklore which are characteristic of the early childhood years, such as the nursery rhyme and fairy tale, are readily shared between adult and child (mcdowell, 1979). however, schoolchildren's lore (including riddles, jokes and songs) differs from early lore in that its content typically remains 'partly inaccessible to adults' (mcdowell, 1979: 2). it therefore serves an important social function for children, helping to mark them apart from adults as a social group in their own right. forms of lore such as riddles and jokes are of additional interest to linguists as they frequently involve the use of what is termed 'figurative language' (rice and kemper, 1984). the ability to fully comprehend and make use of figurative language is reported to emerge only in the later years of childhood (nippold, 1988a; rice and kemper, 1984; winner, 1988). staunton 1.2 riddles the 'true' riddle can be defined as follows (opie and opie, 1959: 74), 'a composition in which some creature or object is described in an intentionally obscure manner; the solution fitting all the characteristics of the description in the question, and usually resolving a paradox '. opie and opie (1959), who carried out an extensive study of the lore of schoolchildren during the 1950s, state that many of the riddles used by children in this century are actually 300 years old. the observation that the form of these riddles changes little when passed from generation to generation, is illustrated in the following 'cryptic description' of a maid milking a cow which was posed by a 9-year-old child in dublin in the 1950s (opie and opie, 1959: 76): ink ank under a bank ten drawing four, the same riddle was recorded in a collection in 1631 in the following form (in a book of merrie riddles, 1631, no. 59, cited in opie and opie, 1959, 76): clinke, clanke under a banke ten above foure and neere the stanke. although little is known about the exact cultural origins of riddles (green and pepicello, 1984) it is known that their use is by no means restricted to the younger members of society. there is evidence that people of diverse cultures have engaged in riddling for many hundreds of years (crossley-holland, 1982). indeed, riddles are a feature of the rituals of a number of cultures, marking periods of transition in life such as baptism, marriage and death (handleman, 1996). the riddle can be described as consisting of two connected parts, the riddle image and its answer (kangas maranda, 1971, cited in lieber, 1976). the riddle image can take a number of forms, although in english it usually takes the question form of the language (kallen, 1981). cohen (1996) points out that a riddle im 8 riddle use and comprehension age in the form of a question has a very different function to that of a genuine question. a question form is ordinarily used to obtain information which the questionner is seeking. a riddler, however, is already 'in possession of some information which he manipulates the addressee into seeking' through the use of the riddle image (cohen, 1996: 295). although in the past the emphasis amongst those studying riddles was on the analysis of the riddle image, kallen and eastman (1979: 426) state that 'researchers have now begun to consider the answer to a riddle to be of equal importance to its question'. they refer to the observation by maranda (1971) that the influence which the riddle answer has on the riddle image can be seen in the features of style used in the image, such as the use of rhyme or alliteration. sources of ambiguity the special relationship which exists between the riddle image and its answer has been described by scott (1965, cited in kallen, 1981:3) as a 'partially obscured semantic fit' between the two parts of the riddle. whilst one answer may appear obvious on hearing the riddle image, the true answer is obscured in the riddle image through the use of a 'block element'. the definition of a block element given by mcdowell (1979: 18) is 'that deliberate grain of confusion or ambiguity' which is contained within the riddle image. green and pepicello (1984) give a detailed account of the types of strategy which are used to provide a 'block element' in riddles. they state that the ambiguity in the riddle image may be either grammaticallyor metaphorically-based. the latter riddling strategy is more typical of 'true' riddles and will be described in more detail in section 1.2.2. block elements which are of the grammatical variety consist of words or phrases which possess more than one underlying form but have the same surface form. grammatical ambiguity may occur at the phonological, morphological or syntactic levels of the language (green and pepicello, 1984). green and pepicello (1984: 198) conclude from an examination of the work of hockett (1970) that the grammatical strategies which are used in many riddles originate as 'accidents of speech', which are found to be amusing and are later utilised in a riddle form they cite the riddle (193), 9 staunton what’s the difference between a stag fleeing from hunters and a midget witch? one is a hunted stag, the other is a stunted hag, as an example of the speech error of metathesis used as a riddle strategy. green and pepicello (1984: 194-97) also give examples of riddles which make use of the three different types of grammatical ambiguity. at the phonological level of the language, the most commonly used riddle strategy is that of simple lexical ambiguity, whereby a single phonetic string can be said to have two unrelated meanings. an example of such a riddle is, 'what turns but never moves? milk', other examples of riddle strategies at the phonological level include the use of metathesis (referred to above) and the use of minimal pairs, as in the riddle, what’s the difference between a baby and a coat? one you were, the other you wear. at the morphological level, the riddle strategies include the use of homophony between the past participle morpheme of a verb and another word, such as in the well-known riddle, 'what’s black and white and read (red) all over? a newspaper', other strategies at this level include the use of ambiguity between a morpheme and a whole word (e.g. 'what bow can you never tie? a rainbow'), the deliberate confusion of an independent word with a bound morpheme, or a 'pseudomorphological' type of strategy, whereby a whole word (e.g. 'key') is deliberately confused with a phonological string (' -key') which is not actually a morpheme, as in the riddle, 'what's the key to a good dinner? a turkey', riddle strategies employed at the syntactic level of the grammar include an ambiguity of phrase structure, where a surface sequence of words can be syntactically analysed in more than one way, such as in the riddle, 'how is a duck like and icicle? both grow down '. the riddle, 'what do you call a man who marries another man? a minister', involves a 'transformational' riddle strategy, whereby 'two different underlying structures have an identical surface form as a result of their syntactic derivations' (green and pepeicello, 1984: 195). another syntactic strategy plays upon the literal and figurative interpretations of an idiom, such as, 'what goes most against a farmer's grain? his reaper'. a 10 riddle use and comprehension final strategy involves a mixture of devices, such as in the riddle, 'why can you not starve to death in the desert? because of the sandwiches (sand which is) there, ' which involves homophony between a morphemic construction (the plural form of 'sandwich') and another syntactic interpretation ('sand which is'). 1.2.1 metaphor metaphor is not only important as a device providing the ambiguity necessary to many 'true' riddles, it has also been studied in its own right as an important example of the' nonliteral' use of language (rice and kemper, 1984). metaphor is defined by franklin and barten (1988: 299) as 'a use of language in which a term (or phrase) customarily applied in one domain is transported across conventional category boundaries and applied in another'. in order to comprehend nonliteral uses of language (such as metaphors and idioms) the listener must be able to go beyond the surface meaning of an utterance and determine what is referred to as the 'speaker meaning' (searle, 1979). this is the meaning which the speaker wishes to convey through the use of the utterance. in the case of nonliteral uses of language, this will always be different to the surface form of the words uttered by the speaker. lakoff and johnson (1980) give a detailed account of the many ways in which metaphor is used in everyday conversation. they are of the view that some metaphoric expressions have become such an everyday part of language use that speakers of a language may not even be aware that they are using metaphor. for example, we talk of arguments as 'wars' or of time being 'in flight'. not only is metaphor an important feature of language use, it therefore structures the way in which we think and act from day to day. the distinction can be made between literal and figurative metaphors (lakoffand johnson, 1980). literal (or frozen) metaphors, such as those mentioned above, are those that can be seen as 'dead'. they have been assimilated into the language through overuse and have therefore lost their 'metaphoricity' (winner, 1998: 17). figurative or novel metaphors, on the other hand, are those which can be seen as 'alive' as they are creative and serve to illustrate new ideas. richards (1936, cited in kittay, 1987) described all metaphors 11 staunton as having both a topic and a vehicle which are linked by a common ground. the topic is what the metaphor is about (i.e. the subject of the metaphor). the vehicle is the means through which the speaker can refer back to the topic. the ground is made up of the properties which link the topic and vehicle. an example used to illustrate these elements is shakespeare's copula metaphor, 'juliet is the sun' (skinner, 1957, cited in billow, 1977: 84). the topic of this metaphor is 'juliet' and the vehicle is 'the sun'. the ground is composed of the aspects of the sun, such as its warmth and brilliance, which are shared by both juliet and the sun. types of similarity there are a number of types of ground (similarity) on which a metaphor can be based (winner, 1988). the distinction can be made between sensory and nonsensory kinds of similarity between the topic and the vehicle. sensory metaphors are those based on similarities of 'shape, sound, colour, motion, texture, smell or some combination of these' (winner, 1988: 64). for example, a similarity of colour is involved in the sensory metaphor, 'the bird was a rainbow flying in the sky '(nippold, leonard and kail, 1984: 198). nonsensory metaphors are grounded in the types of similarity which are not directly perceived by our senses. this similarity may be of a relational or a psychological-physical nature. metaphors based on a relational type of similarity link the topic to its vehicle due to a similarity in the way in which the two items function. an example is the likening of the human brain to a computer. the suggestion here is that the brain processes information in the same way a computer does (winner, 1988). other metaphors in use in everyday language, such as the notions of time 'flying' or ideas 'blossoming' (lakoff and johnson, 1980), involve similar types of ground. psychological-physical metaphors are usually based on a similarity between 'sensory attributes of a physical object. . . and psychological, nonsensory attributes of a person' (winner, 1988: 67). included here are dual-function terms, such as 'warm', 'sweet' or 'soft' which can be used to describe the physical attributes of objects or the personality traits of people (asch and nerlove, 1960, cited in billow, 1975). asch (1958, cited in billow, 1977: 85) gives 12 riddle use and comprehension the example of the adjective 'hard', which could be applied in a physical sense to a piece of furniture or in a psychological sense to a person. when used to describe a table, the term 'hard' means that the table is resistant to change when physically pushed or pressed. to describe a person as 'hard' might imply that he or she is unlikely to yield to pressure from others. the psychological application of the term is therefore linked to its physical sense, through the notion of an entity resisting change when force is applied. asch (1955, 1958, cited in billow, 1977) also reports that historically unrelated languages have been found to contain the same metaphoric descriptions of personality traits, indicating that this is not an arbitrary phenomenon. 1.2.2 metaphoric riddles good riddles do, in general, provide us with satisfactory metaphor: for metaphors imply riddles and therefore a good riddle can furnish a good metaphor. (aristotle, trans. rhys roberts, cited in hackiyan, 1966: 2) a 'true' riddle can be said to involve a metaphoric comparison between two entities which is obscured in some way so as to puzzle the riddlee. a theorist who has contributed greatly to the study of such riddles is elli köngäs maranda (1971: 196) who states that the metaphors involved in riddles 'are conditional metaphors, and the riddle image states the condition under which the metaphor holds true'. one-half of the metaphoric comparison is therefore revealed in the riddle image (along with information which obscures the answer) and the task for the riddlee is to complete the metaphor, thereby answering the riddle (green and pepicello, 1984). based on her analysis of finnish riddles, köngäs maranda (1971: 198-99) concludes that the metaphoric riddle comprises five basic elements. an example used to illustrate these elements is the finnish riddle, 'one pig, two snouts', to which the answer is 'a plough' (referring to the traditional finnish 'fork plough' which has two prongs or 'snouts'). the first element of the riddle is labelled the' signans' or given term of the metaphor (in this case, 'a pig'). secondly, there is a constant premise (similar to the 'ground' 13 staunton of the metaphor described by richards (1936, cited in kittay, 1987) which is true for both the signans, and the the 'signatum'(riddle answer). in this case, the constant premise is that both a pig and a plough can have snouts. the third element is the hidden variable which is never mentioned in the riddle (e.g. that a pig can only have one snout, not two) but which indicates to the riddlee that something which is stated in the riddle image needs to be resolved. the fourth element is the given variable of the riddle (e.g. that two snouts are involved) which is described as 'the condition under which the metaphor holds true' (köngäs maranda, 1971: 199). finally, the other hidden term is the riddle answer or 'signatum' which the riddlee is seeking. köngäs maranda (1971) also observes from her study of finnish riddles that riddles create a surprise by combining elements from categories or 'sets' which are normally seen as being opposites. köngäs maranda found in her analysis of seventy-two riddles that the most commonly occurring contrast between the categories was that of the set of animate entities versus the set of inanimate entities. within these two sets, almost half the riddles involved a juxtaposition between human objects and cultural objects. about a quarter of the riddles involved the contrast between human beings and wild plants. only a few riddles contained reference to supernatural entities such as god or to abstract concepts such as number and colour. metaphoric or 'true' riddles might thus be said to play on listener's ability to view two entities as being equivalent (on a sensory level) due to their shared characteristics, despite the basic knowledge on an idealogical level that the two things are not the same and in fact belong to different classes (e.g. animate things versus inanimate things) (kallen and eastman, 1979). types of riddle metaphor a distinction can be made between riddles which make use of ‘frozen’ metaphors for their ambiguity and those which involve the generation of a novel metaphorical comparison (mcdowell, 1979: 95). the term ‘conventional polysemy’ is used to describe metaphors which are present in everyday language use (i.e. frozen metaphors). conventional polysemy occurs where the two mean 14 riddle use and comprehension ings of a particular phonetic string are thought of as being related, through a metaphorical comparison (e.g. the leg of a person and the 'leg' of a table). the speakers of the language intuitively consider the two uses of the word the be related, whether or not this is historically the case (mcdowell, 1979). mcdowell (1979: 98) cites other examples of riddles which require the literal interpretation of 'dead' or frozen metaphors which have been assimilated into the language. for example, the riddle 'why did the boy throw his clock out the window?' (to see time fly), involves the literal interpretation of the well-known metaphor of time being in fight. a similar type of riddle involves what mcdowell (1979: 97) describes as the' resurrection of automatized language' through the use of fragments of imaginary conversations between usually inanimate objects. these riddles take the form 'what did the x say to the y?' (mcdowell, 1979: 97), such as in the riddles 'what did the rug say to the floor?' (i've got you covered) or 'what did the big telephone say to the little telephone? ' (you're too young to be engaged). the ambiguity involved in each of these riddles revolves around the two senses of a particular word or phrases, in this case the two senses of the words 'cover' and the phrase 'to be engaged'. in addition to the use of metaphors already sanctioned in the language, riddles can involve the strategy termed 'radical' or novel polysemy. radical polysemy, as described by mcdowell (1979), involves the use of a metaphorical comparison between two things, which has not already been assimilated into the language. the most common example is the use of metaphor to remark on the similarity between the sensory (physical) features of two items. the two items may have little in common other. than their appearance, 'but these incongruities are momentarily held in abeyance while the common features are held in focus'(mcdowell, 1979: 101). radical polysemy was the strategy used in many of the riddles in the sample analysed by köngäs maranda (1971). as mentioned earlier, she too commented on the fact that the items compared were from vastly different categories or sets. mcdowell (1979) notes that the main types of comparison in use in his sample of children's riddles are those of culture versus nature (e.g. a cherry compared to police car lights), animate versus inanimate entities (e.g. an old lady compared to a candle), mankind versus other 15 staunton forms of life, and finally, cultural artifacts compared with each other. 1.2.3 solving riddles there is some debate regarding the processes involved in the solving of 'true' riddles and in the selection of 'acceptable' answers. kaivolabregenhøj (1996:30) in a discussion based on finnish riddles, suggests that riddles in which the riddle image is 'semantically vague' can sometimes be solved by guess-work, as there are a greater number of possible answers which fit. the degree of validity of suitable but unexpected answers seems to depend, however, on the judgement of the particular riddler and on the customs of the culture in which the riddling session is taking place. kallen and eastman (1979: 418), for example, conclude from their study of swahili riddles that such riddles are solved through the use of 'symbolic activity' and interaction between the parties involved, rather than a process of reflection and analysis by the riddlee. köngäs maranda (1971, cited in kaivola-bregenhøj, 1996) remarks that there is a tendency amongst riddlers of accepting only their original, preferred answer and rejecting other suitable answers. kaivola-bregenhøj (1996:32) concludes that in a riddling session the riddler and riddlee take two different approaches to the solving of a riddle. the riddlee uses the process of 'creative guessing' in order to select a suitable answer to the riddle. the answer which the riddler has in mind, however, is founded on 'a conventional interpretation of the image that does not tolerate any variation' . whilst the validity of a particular answer may vary depending on the cultural context of the riddling session or the judgement of the riddler, it would appear that there are a number of conditions which the answer to a true riddle must fulfill. it has been remarked that a riddle answer must complete the condition described as a 'partially obscured semantic fit' which exists between the riddle image and its answer (scott, 1965, cited in kallen, 1981: 4). in order to satisfy this condition, the riddle answer must share enough features with the riddle image for them to be seen as equivalent within the context of the riddle (through the use of metaphor). 16 riddle use and comprehension however, the riddle answer must also fulfill the requirement of being significantly different in nature from that of the image, so that the semantic fit between the two of them is sufficiently obscured. the work of elli köngäs maranda (1971) revealed that there are certain semantic groupings which are traditionally more likely than others to be linked in the metaphors involved in true riddles. as observed from her study of finnish riddles, true riddles generally involve the juxtaposition of opposites (köngäs maranda, 1971). the item which appears to be described in the riddle image typically belongs to an opposite semantic category or 'set' to that of the riddle answer. aitchison (1994: 150) also comments that in a good metaphor, 'the subject of the metaphor is compared to something which is quite different from itself, in the sense of coming from a different semantic field'. thus, the first criteria which a riddle answer might be required to meet is that of belonging to a semantic category which is opposite to that of the riddle image. secondly, the notion put forward by rosch (1975), that some members of a category are considered more 'prototypical' examples of category members than others, might also be borne in mind when judging the degree of obscurity of fit between the riddle image and a possible answer. a riddle answer, one might assume, should be a prototypical example of a member of a category opposite to that item in the riddle image, if the riddlee is to be given the chance to 'solve' the riddle on the first hearing. a third and essential feature of the riddle metaphor is that the item named the riddle answer must have characteristics in common with the item mentioned in the riddle image. aitchison (1994: 150) remarks that although the items compared 'must not share major characteristics, they must share' some'. she states that good metaphors typically involve a comparison based on a minor, but 'fairly obvious' characteristic. this third condition, along with those mentioned above, must be fulfilled therefore, if a particular answer is to be judged as completing the riddle. 1.3 children's riddling the most comprehensive developmental account of children's riddling in the literature is that given by john holmes mcdowell (1979). mcdowell conducted a detailed analysis of the riddles 17 staunton collected from a sample of fifty working class, chicano children and twenty-five anglo, middle class children living in austin, texas, during the 1970s. the children ranged in age from 4 up to 11 years, though mcdowell's analysis focuses mainly on the riddles used by children between the ages of 5 and 8 years. mcdowell (1979: 31) uses the term 'interrogative ludic routine' to label all playful linguistic sequences (such as riddles) which involve an inversion of the everyday speech act of interrogation. he reserves the terms 'riddle' or 'riddle proper' to refer only to interrogative ludic routines which contain an identifiable block element. mcdowell found from the analysis of his corpus of riddles that there is a distinct developmental pattern in the kinds of ludic routines which children use. the riddling of children of 4and 5-years-of-age is characterised by the use of what sutton-smith (1976, cited in mcdowell, 1979: 32-33) labels 'preriddles', as children frequently do not yet show awareness of the relationship between the question and answer of the riddle. children of this age tend either to reproduce a riddle which they have heard elsewhere, without actually comprehending it, or they 'create puzzling questions and give them arbitrary answers'. another feature which is characteristic of the riddling of children at this age (and which is a feature of riddling at all ages) is the use of interrogative ludic routines which contain no block element and which are 'not intended to confuse' (mcdowell, 1979: 34). these early routines are labelled 'descriptive routines' as the riddle image typically involves a description of one or more attributes of an object. examples of such routines used by the chicano children include (mcdowell, 1979: 35): what has five sides and lives in the sea? a starfish. what’s square and gots a point at the top? a house. whilst most descriptive routines are based on the physical characteristics of objects, they can also involve the themes of instrumentality (e.g. 'what do you need feet for? to walk') or causation ('how come a rabbit goes into a hole? cause she eats a lot of carrots '). by the age of six years, children have begun to use the 'riddle 18 riddle use and comprehension proper', whilst still using a large number of descriptive routines. the riddle proper differs from the descriptive routine in that it contains a source of ambiguity (the block element) and its purpose is to trick or confuse, rather than help the riddlee, in finding the answer. the riddle strategies used at this stage are primarily homophony (described earlier) and anomaly, which is the strategy at work in a riddle such as, 'what goes up and never comes down? your age '. mcdowell (1979: 106) states that riddles involving anomaly serve to challenge everyday states of affairs which we have taken for granted (such as the laws of gravity, in the riddle above). by seven years of age, children have become more adept at the use of the riddle proper. there is a strong preference for the use of riddles involving all types of linguistic ambiguity amongst children of this age. there is also a marked increase in the use of riddles involving the polysemies (metaphor) at this stage. anomaly riddles involving the theme of fantasy, such as those involving the generation of 'unnatural facts', are present at this age (e.g. 'what’s big and red and eats rocks? a big, red rockeater', mcdowell, 1979: 253). however, riddles involving 'real world' anomaly are equally popular with this age group. the repertoire of 8-year-old children consists mainly of the riddle proper. mcdowell (1979: 208) reports that by this age 'the riddler's progress appears to be virtually complete', with a more sophisticated execution of riddling routines. the items featured in the descriptive routines of children of this age tend to be more exotic than before. whilst children in this age group still use riddles involving linguistic ambiguity, there is an overall decrease in their use of homophony as a block element. they also favour the use of anomaly riddles with a 'real world' theme. mcdowell remarks that children's interest in riddling levels off during the ninth and tenth years, and seems to be diverted to other performance genres at this stage. types of riddle structure in addition to identifying the types of riddle strategy which were used by the children, mcdowell found that the riddles in his sample were structured in five different ways. over two-thirds of the 19 staunton riddles (and descriptive routines) in mcdowell's sample involved the construction devices of attribution, causality and instrumentality. riddles based on attribution, involve the use of many simple descriptive units, which mcdowell (1979: 65) describes as being 'stacked'. examples from his study include the following: what is white on the outside and green on the inside and hops? frog sandwich. what’s big and red and eats rocks? a big, red rockeater. riddles associated with causality usually take the form of a question and answer sequence involving 'why' and 'because'. examples given by mcdowell (1979: 66) include: why do birds fly south? cause it's too far to walk. why did the man take hay to bed? to feed the nightmares. a less frequent structure used in mcdowell's sample is that of instrumentality, such as in the riddle, 'how do you keep a skunk from smelling? hold his nose '. the two other riddle structures which were used in the study take the form, 'what did the x say to the y?' and 'what kind of x is a p '. in the former riddle structure, inanimate objects are 'endowed with speech' (mcdowell, 1979: 67) and the two possible meanings of a well-known figure of speech are exploited. a well-known example is the riddle involving an imaginary conversation between two chimney pots, 'what did the big chimney say to the little chimney? you're too young to smoke '. finally, riddles based on the structure, 'what kind of x is a y? ' appear classificatory in nature. yet they frequently involve the use of conventional polysemy, whereby a dead metaphor must again be resuscitated in order to solve the riddle, as in the example, 'what kind of head grows in the garden? a head of lettuce' (mcdowell, 1979: 68). 1.3.1 children's comprehension of riddles the development of the ability to comprehend riddles has been investigated by a small number of researchers (fowles and glanz, 1977; prentice and fathman, 1975; shultz, 1974). most of the 20 riddle use and comprehension available research has examined the comprehension of joking riddles which make use of the types of grammatical ambiguity outlined by green and pepicello (1984). the development of the comprehension of 'true' riddles has not specifically been examined, although the study by fowles and glanz (1977) did include some riddles involving the use of metaphoric language as a source of ambiguity. the development of comprehension of metaphor outside of a riddling context has also been examined by researchers and the findings of these studies will be described in section 1.4. fowles and glanz (1977) examined the comprehension (and appreciation) of riddles in a group of fourteen children, aged between 6 and 9 years (grades 1 to 3 at school). the children were presented with a series of riddles and were asked to retell and explain each of them. these riddles mainly involved the use of grammatical ambiguity as a block element. 'true' riddles were not specifically included, although some of the riddles contained terms which had both a literal and metaphorical meaning. on examination of the results, fowles and glanz (1977) report that the children in the 7-8 year age group performed better than those in the age groups above (8-9 years) and below them (6-7 years). although they found that the level of comprehension was not closely related to age, the researchers report that riddle comprehension was related to reading ability (as rated by teachers) in each of the age groups. fowles and glanz (1977) also remark from their results that the riddles which the children found most difficult to comprehend were those which contained more advanced vocabulary and those containing abstract or metaphorical language. riddles in which the two possible interpretations of the ambiguous terms were both concrete were found to be easier to comprehend. familiarity with the riddles themselves facilitated retelling of the riddles but did not necessarily aid comprehension of them. the researchers state that the influence of factors which are thought to affect ease of comprehension (such as the use of metaphorical meaning as opposed to more concrete meaning) is in need of further investigation, 'using riddles chosen specifically to exemplify these polarities' (fowles and glanz, 1977: 450). in a similar study, shultz (1974) investigated the comprehen 21 staunton sion of riddles in a group of thirty children in the 6-, 8-, 10and 12-year age groups. an explanation task was again used to examine the children's comprehension of grammatically-based riddles. comprehension of the riddles was found to increase steadily with age. the 6-year-olds had particular difficulty explaining the two possible interpretations of the ambiguity in the riddles. they were judged to have comprehended just under a quarter of the riddles, with the 8-year-olds comprehending twice this number. the level of comprehension increased to just under twothirds of the riddles amongst the 10-year-olds and the 12-year-olds performed slightly better again. prentice and fathman (1975) also used an explanation task to investigate the comprehension of joking riddles in a group of forty-eight boys and girls aged 6, 8 and 10 years. three types of riddles were included in the study, namely those with a theme of aggression, those with a caring or nurturing theme and those with a neutral content. the influence on comprehension of different types of linguistic ambiguity was not examined. prentice and fathman report that riddle comprehension was found to increase almost linearly with increasing age. no major differences in comprehension of the different riddle types was found between boys and girls. overall, comprehension of the riddles was also found to be significantly related to intelligence. a vocabulary test had been used to rate intelligence, however, which in itself is a verbal task and does not examine other cognitive abilities. the older children in the study showed greater comprehension of the riddles with an aggressive or nurturant content than the younger group. the researchers suggest that this may be due either to an increased ability to cope with riddles with an affective content as the child matures or to a difference in the cognitive demands of the different riddle types. 1.4 development of the use of metaphor traditionally, the study of metaphor was confined to the domains of philosophy and literature (winner, 1988). research into children's ability to use and understand metaphor has only come about in essence in the past thirty years, with increased interest in the topic among those working in the fields of linguistics and cog 22 riddle use and comprehension nitive psychology. there is some debate as to when children actually begin to use metaphor in their speech. it has been widely observed that as preschool children develop language, the phenomenon of overextension of words occurs (bee, 1992). it is thought that children apply a word too broadly because they have not yet learned the correct name for a particular concept. clark (1973) gives the example of the word 'ball' being extended to label other similarly shaped objects such as apples, doorknobs and balloons. winner (1988: 90) points out that 'overextensions, like metaphors, are based on similarity, and hence like metaphors, offer clues to how easily children classify the world'. it has been argued that some overextensions may in fact be metaphors (billow, 1981). winner (1988) is of the view that while children may overextend words as they lack the correct name for an object, the use of metaphor serves a very different function. a child who is using metaphor might already know the name of the object, but is using a metaphoric name in order to remark on a similarity which he has noticed. few studies have examined children's early use of metaphor, but those by winner (1979) and winner, mccarthy, kleinman and gardner (1979, cited in winner, 1988) concluded that two kinds of metaphor are characteristic of the speech of young children. the earliest emerging metaphors appear to be those involving the renaming of an object in the context of symbolic play. these renamings are usually based on the actions which an object displays, or on the function of the object (e.g. the child featured in the first study put his foot inside a wastebasket and said 'boot'). sensory metaphors are reported to be the second form to develop and occur where the child notices a physical similarity between two objects (usually their shape), without using them in pretend play (winner, 1979). winner (1979) also remarks that the metaphors used by preschool children are less sophisticated than those of adults or older children in that they consist solely of the renaming of physical objects and are uttered only in the immediate presence of those objects. the renamings are also based on a sensory (physical) or functional similarity which the child has noticed, rather than using the more abstract types of comparison typical of adult metaphors. 23 staunton development of metaphor in school-aged children: a number of studies (billow, 1981; gardner, kircher, winner and perkins, 1975; pollio and pollio, 1974), have suggested that the incidence of children's spontaneous use of metaphor decreases sharply during the school years. the reasons for this may include the fact that, as they grow older, children are less likely to engage in the kinds of activities (such as symbolic play) which stimulate the use of spontaneous metaphor (billow, 1981). furthermore, it has been noted that between the ages of eight and ten years, a literal or 'conventional' stage occurs in children's use of metaphor (winner, 1988). during this stage, children become far less likely to use metaphor themselves, and may even be resistant to its use. gardner, kircher, winner and perkins (1975: 128) found that given a choice of endings for a sentence such as 'he looked as gigantic as...', children in this age group chose unimaginative, conventional endings above all other types of ending. they rejected novel endings (which were preferred by adolescents and adults in the study), insisting for example, that the term 'loud' could not be applied to a colour. winner (1988) reports that this concern with convention is also reflected in the drawings of children of this age. other research has suggested that the ability to use metaphor continues to develop during the school years, but that the type of writing tasks typically used in school do not encourage children to make creative use of metaphor. pollio and pollio (1974) examined the metaphoric productions of a group of children aged between the ages of eight and eleven years on a story-writing task. the children's use of both novel and frozen (or 'dead') metaphors decreased as their class level in school increased. however, the researchers later presented the same group of children with a structured comparison task, whereby the children were asked to verbalise the similarities between pairs of unrelated items (e.g. 'can and box'). overall, the children used a greater proportion of novel than frozen metaphors on this task, and their production of both types of metaphor increased (rather than decreased) with their class level. the findings of this study suggest that children in the eight to eleven age group continue to develop the ability to use metaphor, but that in completing school tasks they are increas 24 riddle use and comprehension ingly concerned about attaining good marks and so 'are less likely to 'rock the boat' by using words in unconventional or nonliteral ways' (nippold, 1988b: 189). 1.4.1 development of comprehension of metaphor there is controversy as to the age at which children first exhibit the ability to comprehend metaphor (winner, 1988). however, most researchers agree that as children get older, their comprehension of metaphors increases. early research into children's comprehension of metaphor was based on the 'cognitive prerequisite theory' of development (e.g. billow, 1975; cometa and eson, 1978; smith, 1976). according to this view, the attainment of the piagetian stage of formal operational thought is necessary before comprehension of forms of figurative language can occur (piaget, 1926, cited in kamhi and friemoth lee, 1988). thinking during the formal operational stage (which begins at about twelve years) is characterised by a move' away from the reality of the physical data of the senses towards an anticipation of abstract 'potential' properties of the environment' (smith, 1976: 242) . it was hypothesized that full comprehension of metaphor would not be possible prior to the emergence of this type of abstract thinking. metaphor comprehension, according to this theory, would therefore be expected to emerge during the late childhood and early adolescent years. the findings of the studies by billow (1975), cometa and eson (1978) and smith (1976), which examined children's comprehension of metaphor in relation to their piagetian stages of development, did not support the cognitive prerequisite hypothesis. the children in smith's (1976) study, for example, were shown to have an understanding of metaphor before they had reached the formal operational stage of thinking. in addition, a number of studies have reported the finding that even preschool children show a basic understanding of metaphor when simplified testing procedures and age-appropriate materials are used (gardner, 1974; gentner, 1977; vosniadou, ortony, renolds and wilson, 1984; winner, 1979). nippold (1988b) reports that although there may be some relationship between cognitive development and metaphor comprehension, no specific pre-requisites for metaphor comprehension 25 have been identified and the cognitive pre-requisite hypothesis is no longer generally accepted as a theory of metaphor comprehension. staunton the language experience hypothesis a theory which has been more widely adopted is the 'language experience hypothesis', which was proposed by ortony, turner and larson-shapiro (1985). according to this view, the ability to comprehend and use figurative language develops gradually through meaningful exposure to this type of language. as they grow older, children have more exposure to figurative language in both its spoken and written forms, in a variety of contexts. they also have more opportunity to test out their understanding through their own use of such language (nippold, taylor and baker, 1996). the finding of a number of studies that the depth of comprehension of metaphor increases as children grow older might be explained by this theory (asch and nerlove, 1960, cited in billow, 1977; gentner and stuart, 1983, cited in winner, 1988; pollio and pickens, 1980; pollio and pollio, 1979; winner, rosenthiel and gardner, 1976). another implication of the language experience theory is that metaphors which occur more often in the language (i.e. frozen rather than novel metaphors) should be easier for children to comprehend than those which have less frequent usage. this notion was explored in studies by pollio and pollio (1979) and pollio and pickens (1980), involving children between the ages of 8 and 17 years. both studies reported greater comprehension of the frozen than the novel metaphors at every age level, with comprehension of both types of metaphor increasing steadily as the children got older. in addition to the novelty of the metaphorical expression, researchers have examined the influence on children's comprehension of factors such as the type of task used to measure comprehension, the type of metaphoric similarity involved and the complexity of the syntactic form of the metaphor. the findings of research into these aspects will be described in the next sections. 26 riddle use and comprehension 1.4.2 measurement of comprehension winner (1988: 45) concludes from a review of studies into metaphor comprehension that the method used to measure comprehension, 'dramatically affects the level of comprehension revealed'. the contradictory findings of various studies as to when metaphor comprehension emerges have been attributed in large part to the differences in the demands of the tasks used. the two tasks which are most frequently used to assess metaphor comprehension are multiple choice measures (e.g. gardner, 1974; nippold, leonard and kail, 1984) and explanation or paraphrasing tasks (e.g. asch and nerlove, 1960, cited in billow, 1977; smith, 1976; winner, rosenthiel and gardner, 1976). multiple-choice tasks require children to choose from a set of possible meanings or pictures showing the meanings of the metaphors presented. however, these tasks may either underor overestimate children's comprehension of the metaphors, depending on the type and range of options presented (winner, 1988). tasks in which children are asked to paraphrase metaphors offer insight into the degree and nature of their understanding (nippold and rudzinski, 1993). the possibility of over-estimating a child's level of comprehension is also greatly diminished. such tasks have also been criticised, however, due to the metalinguistic demands involved (vosniadou, 1987). the finding of some studies that metaphor comprehension only emerges in late childhood might therefore be attributed to the significant meta1inguistic demands of the tasks used (e.g. billow, 1975; cometa and eson, 1978; smith, 1976). a study by gardner (1974) compared the performance of children aged between 3 and 11 years on a multiple-choice picture task and an explanation task. the level of accuracy using the receptive condition was found to be greater than with the paraphrasing task. similarly, a study by winner, rosenthiel and gardner (1976) involved the use of a paraphrasing measure and a written multiple-choice task. children who had difficulty paraphrasing the metaphors were often found to have performed well on the multiple-choice measure. pollio and pickens (1980) reported parallel findings in their study. in evaluating and comparing the findings of various studies, it is therefore essential that the demands of the measures used be taken into account. 27 staunton 1.4.3 types of similarity a factor which is thought to have a large influence on children's comprehension of metaphor is the type of similarity on which the metaphor is based. winner (1988) cites the findings of (unpublished) studies by gentner and stuart (1983), mendelsohn, gardner and winner (1981) and shantiris (1983), that nonsensory metaphors pose more difficulty for younger children than those grounded in sensory similarity. in the study by shantiris, children of different ages were presented with a series of sensory metaphors, nonsensory metaphors and anomalies. the children were asked to decide whether statements such as, 'eyes are marbles' (74) made sense, thereby indicating comprehension of the grounds. at all ages, children found psychologicalphysical metaphors the most difficult type to comprehend. however, relational metaphors proved no more difficult than sensory metaphors for any age group. a different finding regarding relational metaphors was reported by gentner and stuart, whose study involved children aged 5-6 years and 9-10 years. metaphors based on a sensory similarity (e.g. 'a cloud is like a marshmallow') and relational similarity (e.g. 'tree bark is like skin' [p. 74]) were presented to the children. when asked to explain the sensory metaphors, children aged 5-6 years performed as well as the older children. they had considerable difficulty explaining the metaphors grounded in a relational type of similarity. mendelsohn et al. (1981, cited in winner, 1988) used a multiplechoice task to probe for comprehension of sensory and nonsensory metaphors in children aged 6 years and above. children of all ages were found to have more difficulty with metaphors grounded in relational or psychological-physical similarity than those involving sensory grounds. a study by nippold, leonard and kail (1984) contradicted this finding in relation to psychological-physical metaphors, however. their study involved children aged 7 and 9 years who were again presented with a multiple-choice task. they reported no difference in the ease of understanding between sensory and psychological-physical metaphors. kogan, connor, gross and fava (1980, cited in winner, 1988) reported similar findings when a basic picture matching task, with minimal linguistic demands was used. 28 riddle use and comprehension literal interpretation of nonsensory metaphor studies where explanation tasks are used offer insight into the nature of younger children's interpretation of nonsensory metaphor. the finding that younger children tend to interpret nonsensory metaphors in a literal (physical) sense has been commonly reported. an early study by asch and nerlove (1960, cited in billow, 1977) investigated the comprehension of dual-function terms such as 'hard', 'sweet' and 'warm' in children aged between 3 and 12 years. whilst the preschool children comprehended the dual-function adjectives in reference to physical objects, they showed no understanding that people could also be described in this way. the 5and 6-year-olds in the study understood that the adjectives could be applied to people, but only in a physical sense (e.g. 'cold' people were understood to be people who were not warmly dressed). only between the ages of 7 and 10 years did the children show awareness that the terms could be applied in a psychological sense to people. and only the 11and 12-year-olds (who understood the metaphors with a level of 96% accuracy) were consistently able to verbalise the metaphorical fink between the two senses of the terms. a study by winner, rosenthiel and gardner (1976) also involved the presentation of dual-function terms, but in predicative metaphors. they report that 30% of 8-year-olds and 48% of 10year-olds were able to explain the psychological meaning of the terms. prior to this, the children tended to interpret the metaphors literally (e.g. the description of a prison guard as a 'hard rock' was interpreted as meaning that he had hard, tough muscles). the finding that nonsensory similarity seems to pose more difficulty for children was explained by keil (1979, 1985, cited in winner, 1988) in terms of a lack of 'domain knowledge'. the term 'domain' is used here to refer to the categories by which humans beings organise their world (such as furniture, modes of transport or personality traits). 'domain knowledge' therefore refers to the knowledge which a child has about the properties and functions of things within a particular domain and about the boundaries of that domain. keil was of the view that in order for a child to comprehend a metaphor, he or she must be not only be familiar with the referents of the topic and vehicle, but must also have knowl 29 staunton edge of the two domains to which the topic and vehicle belong. keil's hypothesis that knowledge of the world increases as children get older was supported by the findings of the study by gentner and stuart (1983, cited in winner, 1988) mentioned earlier. prior to the presentation of the metaphor task used in their study, gentner and stuart asked each child to describe the items mentioned in the metaphors (e.g. tree bark, skin etc.). the list of properties which the children gave for each item was found to increase considerably with age. the results of keil's own study (1985, cited in winner, 1988: 8283), which involved children between 5 and 9 years of age, suggest that metaphor comprehension 'emerges on a domain-by-domain basis'. once the children understood a metaphor involving items from the two domains, such as the properties of plants applied to ideas (e.g. 'the idea bloomed'), they also showed understanding of most other metaphors involving items from those domains. 1.4.5 syntactic form a small number of studies have investigated the influence on comprehension of the syntactic form of a metaphor (nippold, leonard and kail, 1984; renolds and ortony, 1980; winner, engel and gardner, 1980). the study by nippold, leonard and kail (1984) involved children aged 7 and 9 years. equal numbers of predicative metaphors (involving only one topic and one vehicle) and proportional metaphors were presented to the children. proportional metaphors contain two topics and two vehicles and involve the use of analogy at an underlying level (e.g. 'the bird's nest was a piggybank that had no coins' [p. 198]). the researchers found that the children had more difficulty understanding the proportional metaphors than the predicative ones. the 9-year-olds also displayed a greater level of comprehension that than the 7-yearold children. an earlier study by winner, engel and gardner (1980) (involving children aged 6, 7 and 9 years) compared ease of comprehension of five different syntactic presentations of metaphor. the researchers had firstly hypothesised that the rewriting of a predicate metaphors in the form of a simile (a comparison involving the 30 riddle use and comprehension term 'like') would facilitate comprehension, by highlighting that a comparison was being used. secondly, a similar prediction was made in relation to topicless metaphors (in which the vehicle is stated but the topic is only implied). topicless metaphors were rewritten both in the from of an explicit analogy (e.g. 'a picture frame surrounds a picture and ________ surrounds a field' [p. 26]) and in the form of a question (which the researchers labelled a 'riddle', e.g. 'what is like a picture frame but surrounds a field?' [26]). the study found that the original and simile versions of the predicative metaphors were equally difficult for the children to comprehend. the analogy forms of the topicless metaphors were also no more accessible to the children than their original forms. however, the 'riddle' forms were found to be easier to comprehend than the topicless metaphors. the predicative metaphors were also more difficult to comprehend than the topicless metaphors. a study by renolds and ortony (1980), involving a more naturalistic task, similarly reported no difference in the ease of comprehension between predicative metaphors and similes. whilst it can therefore be concluded that syntactic form may have some influence on the degree of comprehension of metaphor, further research is needed to determine the exact nature of this relationship. 1.5 researcher's questions to date, there is only a small body of research covering the development of riddling skills in children. few studies have documented the development of riddle use and it would appear that none of the available studies have examined children's ability to answer riddles. the research into riddle comprehension has mainly involved the use of grammatically-based joking riddles, as opposed to metaphorically-based, 'true riddles'. these are all areas, therefore, which are in need of further investigation. most of the studies which have examined children's comprehension and use of riddles and metaphors have reported no significant difference in the performance of boys and girls in these areas. the use of both quantitative and qualitative types of comparison might therefore be useful in revealing any subtle differences in the performance of the two groups. 31 1) are there developmental patterns in the types of answer which children give to metaphoric riddle questions? staunton after reviewing the literature, the following questions were posed by the researcher in order to explore the development of metaphoric riddling in irish school-aged children: 2) does the ability to comprehend metaphoric riddles (i.e. riddle question and answer sequences) improve with age? 3) is there a developmental pattern in the types of riddles which children use? 4) are there differences in the developmental patterns displayed by boys and girls in riddle comprehension and use? methodology 2.1 purpose the purposes of this study were 1) to investigate the riddle-answering skills of irish schoolaged children 2) to investigate the development of comprehension of metaphoric riddles in irish school-aged children 3) to investigate the effect of different types of metaphoric similarity on comprehension 4) to investigate the development of children's own use of riddles 5) to investigate the effect of gender differences on the results of the study. 32 riddle use and comprehension 2.2 design a linguistic approach was used in the research study, incorporating elements of an experimental design. 2.3 preliminary procedure selection of metaphor-based riddles twelve riddles which involve the use of metaphor (see appendix 1) were chosen from a wide selection of popular children's riddle and joke books. table 1: criteria in selecting riddles the riddles chosen ·involved the use of metaphor to provide either ambiguity in either the 'question' or 'answer' of the riddle. ·occurred frequently in the riddle and joke books and were therefore more likely to be familiar to the children. ·included six riddles involving the use of metaphor based on sensory grounds and six involving nonsensory grounds. ·involved a simple 'question and answer' format. construction of probe ouestions questions to be used in order to test for comprehension of the twelve metaphor-based riddles were constructed. the use of these questions was based on the assumption that children who had fully understood a metaphoric riddle would be able to state the similarities or 'ground' which formed the basis for that metaphor. for example, the metaphoric riddle, 'what has legs but cannot walk? (a table) ' is based on a shared physical characteristic which has been noticed between a table and a human being (or animal). the ground in the case of this metaphor is the notion that a table and a 33 staunton human being both have legs. the probe questions which were constructed to test for comprehension of the riddles 1-12 therefore looked for the grounds of the metaphors involved and took the form, 'how is x like y?', where the items mentioned were those involved in the metaphorical comparison. the task for the children is to verbalise the grounds which have already been implied in riddles 1-12 (presented previously). 2.4 children involved in the study educational setting the children involved in this study attended either: (a) an all-female primary school or (b) a mixed-sex primary school. both schools are located in an urban setting, are english-speaking schools and are judged to be similar in socio-economic status. preliminary introduction a letter of introduction was sent to each school prior to the commencement of the study, along with an explanation of its aims and a description of the procedure involved. discussions were then held with the principal teachers, outlining the selection criteria for the children involved. a letter explaining the aims of the study and the procedure involved was sent to the parents or guardians of children identified as suitable for participation in the study. permission for their children to be involved in the study and for audio-taping of the interviews was obtained in writing from interested parents and guardians. selection of children for the study a list of children who were suitable for involvement the study was compiled by each class teacher. from this, children who were within the average age range for the particular class level (including both boys and girls) were identified. parental permission for possible participation in the study was obtained for the children in 34 riddle use and comprehension this group. children were then chosen at random from the group by the researcher for participation in the study. twenty-four children participated in all. six children were chosen from each of the 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th classes. equal numbers of boys and girls were chosen from each of the class levels. table 2: selection criteria the children involved in the study ·were within the average age range for their class levels. ·were judged by their teachers to be developing normally and to be of average ability. ·had no reported speech and language difficulties or difficulties with written language. ·had the written permission of their parents or guardians to take part in the study. table 3: class levels and average age ranges class 3rd class 4th class 5th class 6th class age range for average age range the class level 8yrs 2m to 8yrs 8m 9yrs 3m to 9yrs 9m 10yrs 1 m to 10yrs 7m 11 yrs 0m to 11yrs 6m 8yrs 0m to 9yrs 4m 8yrs 11m to 10yrs 2m 9yrs 10m to 10yrs 11m 10yrs 10m to 12 yrs 8m table 4: details of the children selected class 3rd class 4th class 5th class 6th class child no. 1-6 7-12 13-18 19-24 average age 8 years 5 months 9 years 5 months 10 years 3 months 11 years 4months 35 staunton 2.5 procedure the procedure was informal in nature and essentially took the form of a riddling session between the researcher and each child. there were three main tasks involved in the procedure, however the order of presentation of these tasks was frequently altered depending on the interests of the children involved. for example, if a child was especially eager to begin telling riddles at the start of the interview, then the third task was completed first. the children were interviewed individually by the researcher. each interview was audio-recorded for later analysis. the interview began with the researcher introducing herself to the child and explaining that she was doing a project which was looking at the riddles which children use. the riddle tasks were then introduced with the following explanation: 'i'm going to tell you some riddles to see if you've heard any of them before and then afterwards you can tell me any riddles that you know. some riddles that you might have heard before are ones like, 'why did the chicken cross the road? (to get to the other side) 'or 'what goes up when the rain comes down? (an umbrella)' or 'what has hands but no arms? (a clock) '. the child was given a chance to answer the introductory riddles (above) if he or she was able. otherwise, the answers to the riddles were given by the researcher. further examples of riddles were given if necessary, until the child understood the 'question and answer' nature of the riddles. three tasks were then presented to the child: task 1: listening to riddles the first task (task i) involved the presentation of the metaphoric riddles. the task for the child was to listen to riddles 1-12 (see appendix 1) and their riddle answers. the children could also attempt to answer the riddles if they so wished the presentation of each riddlequestion was followed by a pause, during which the child had an opportunity to answer the riddle or to respond, 'i don't know'. children who attempted to answer the riddle were encouraged to state why they had given that answer. the researcher 36 riddle use and comprehension then responded, 'that’s very good. another answer that i was going to say was. . . " and provided the child with the target response. similarly, children who did not attempt to answer the riddle were provided with the target response. task 2: responding to probes this task was introduced with the instruction, 'i'm going to give you some more questions now which are a bit the last ones. you listen to them and try to think of the answers '. the questions which had been constructed to probe the children's comprehension of the riddles were then presented in random order (i.e. in a different order to their corresponding riddles). the children were encouraged to listen to each question and try to think of the answer. some of the terms which were involved in the nonsensory riddles (7-12) were in more abstract than those involved in the sensory riddles (1-6). the depth of the children's comprehension of the metaphors involved in riddles 7-12 was therefore probed further by encouraging the children who gave correct answers to elaborate further. prompts such as, 'can you tell me a little bit more about that? 'or, 'what is a bright person like?', were therefore used to probe for full understanding of the non sensory metaphors. task 3: riddle-telling finally, the children were asked, 'do you know any riddles a bit like the ones that i've told you? ' and the riddles which they told were recorded riddles which children contributed at any other point during the interview were also recorded for later analysis. 2.6 analysis protocol the interviews were later transcribed from the audiotape. the responses collected from the children on each of the three tasks were analysed both quantitatively and qualitatively, where applicable. patterns which emerged in the style of answering on all of the tasks were recorded and described. 37 staunton results 3.1 introduction this study sought to investigate the development of children's ability to both comprehend and pose metaphoric riddles. the following questions in particular were investigated: 1) are there developmental patterns in the types of answer which children give to metaphoric riddle questions? 2) does the ability to comprehend metaphoric riddles increase with age? 3) is there a developmental sequence in the types of riddles which children use? 4) are there differences in the developmental patterns displayed by boys and girls in riddle comprehension and use? 3.2 development of the ability to answer metaphoric riddles although the main aim of task i (where riddles 1-12 were presented) was simply to allow the children to listen to the riddles, the informal nature of the interview meant that many children attempted to answer the riddles also. the task involved in answering the riddles which were based on nonsensory grounds (7-12) was much different to that involved in answering the sensory riddles (1-6). in compiling the list of riddles prior to testing (from riddle and joke books), it became apparent that, in general, riddles based on nonsensory grounds only contain the use of metaphorical language to provide ambiguity in their answers, rather than in the riddle questions. in order for the children to answer riddles 7-12, they were therefore required to have made use of metaphorical language in their answers. from the sample of 216 answers to these non sensory riddles, only two answers were judged as possibly completing the riddles. a large proportion of the other answers were 'don't know' responses. analysis of the children's answers therefore focused on their responses to the riddles (1-6) involv 38 riddle use and comprehension ing sensory metaphors, which are more typical of 'true' riddles. the answers given by the children to the true riddles were analysed by the tester and classified in three ways. the answers were firstly considered to be 'target' or canonical answers if they were the same as, or very similar to the answers which had been found in the riddle and joke books. secondly, children in all of the age groups gave a number of 'alternative' answers to the riddles, which had not been found in any of the riddle or joke books. all of the alternative answers given by the children were judged as fitting the descriptions given in the riddles to some degree, although some were deemed more suitable than others. this finding will be described in more detail below. the final group of answers were 'don't know' responses. an examination of the results firstly from a quantitative point of view revealed some possible developmental patterns. the overall accuracy of the children in supplying the target answers to the riddles was found to be greater amongst the older children as compared with the younger groups. however, the 8-year-old group were found to have given more target answers than the 9-yearolds. whilst the 9-year-old group did not give the target answer for any of the riddles, they were the group most likely to give an 'alternative' type of answer to the riddles. the proportion of target answers given increased greatly after 9 years, to just over a quarter of the answers of the 10-years-olds and two-fifths of the answers given by the 11-year-olds. about half of the answers given by the 8and 9-year-olds were classified as 'alternative' answers. the incidence of alternative-type answers decreased overall amongst the two older groups, with just under a quarter of the answers of the 10-year-olds being of this type. the level was slightly higher amongst the 11-year-olds, at about one-third of answers. the proportion of 'don't know' responses gradually increased, from just over two-fifths of answers at 8 years to half of the answers at 10-years-of-age. the proportion of 'don't know' answers was lowest amongst the 11-year-olds (the oldest group), and this was also the group who were most likely to respond with the target answer. 39 staunton analysis of the alternative answers a second type of analysis was also used to examine the 'alternative' riddle answers generated by the children. this involved the examination of the answers in terms of their ability to satisfy the condition known as a 'partially obscured semantic fit' which exists between the riddle question or 'image' and its answer (scott, 1965, cited in kallen, 1981: 4). in order to fulfill this condition, the riddle answer firstly had to belong to a semantic field opposite to that of the riddle image. the second condition which the children's answers had to fulfill was that of being judged a prototypical example of a member of the particular semantic category. the final criteria which was used was that the riddle answer had to share some obvious, minor characteristic with the item in the riddle image in order to complete the metaphorical comparison. the first kinds of answers which the children gave to the riddles were considered to be 'anomalies' because they did not strictly fit the description given in the riddle image, even in literal terms. there were just a couple of instances of such answers, both of which were given by 9-year-old children. these answers belonged to the same superordinate category as the item implied in the riddle image (i.e. animate) and were therefore not considered to have a great degree of obscurity as answers. however, in the case of each of the responses of this type, the children had created an explanation to make the answer fit the description in the riddle image, as can be observed from this example: image: what can howl but has no mouth? answer and explanation: 'a frog or a toad, because a toad can let out a big noise and their mouths are different to ours '. just over a fifth of the answers given by the children were those which were considered to be 'literal' answers as they fitted the description used in the image in a literal sense, and there was no attempt to give an answer which had originally been obscured through the use of metaphor. the riddle answer was therefore from the same category (animate) as the riddle image in each case. this type of answer was given with the greatest frequency amongst the 8and 9-year-olds, with few instances amongst the older children. examples include the following: 40 riddle use and comprehension image: what has legs but cannot walk? answer: tadpoles. image: what has eyes but cannot see? answer: a bat. image: what goes around all day with its tongue sticking out and sits by the bed at night? answers: a dog, a cat. answers of a similar type to those above involved the use of a feature named in the riddle image, put in a situation so that it fitted the description in the image as in this example: image: what has teeth but no mouth? answers: teeth in a box. the third group of answers were those which came from the same superordinate category or set as was implied in the riddle image (i.e. animate), but involved some change of state so that the human or animal was made to fit the description in the image, as in these answers: image: what has legs but cannot walk? answers: a person that has a spell put on them. image: what has eyes but cannot see? answers: a dead fish. just over one-tenth of the answers in the study were of this nature and were given by children from all age groups. examples of the changes of state described include the use of magic, the death of the animate entity or the existence of a disabling condition. the remaining types of answers given in the study were those which were considered to have some degree of validity as conventional riddle answers, as they came from an opposite category to the item implied in the image (inanimate) and were obscured to some extent. however, the requirement of a 'partially obscured semantic fit' was judged to be fulfilled more readily by some of these types of answers than others. some of the answers given were therefore judged as being more suitable in terms of completing the riddle than others. the fourth overall group of answers were labeled 'replica-type answers' due to the fact that they involved the naming of an object which was considered to be a representation of a living thing. these answers were therefore considered to be partially obscured in that they came from the opposite superordinate category to the human or animal implied in the 41 staunton riddle (i.e. they were inanimate objects). they were also man-made or 'cultural' objects, as opposed to 'natural' objects, according to köngäsmaranda's (1974) method of classification. however, they were not considered prototypical examples of inanimate objects as they were generally objects which bore a likeness to a real living creature or part of a living creature (e.g. a teddy bear can be thought of as an inanimate representation of a real bear). these answers accounted for about onesixth of the responses given by the children and occurred with greatest frequency amongst the 9and 10-year-olds and included the following: image: what has legs but cannot walk? answer: a doll or a teddy; a gymnastic horse (i.e. a wooden horse used in gymnastics). image: what has eyes but cannot see? answer: joke glasses (with eyes drawn on them) cats' eyes on the road a similar group of answers were those which, although they were not considered to represent a living thing, were considered to be linked very closely to the animate item implied in the riddle image. these answers came from the inanimate category but were not considered to be obscured to a degree sufficient to provide good metaphor in the riddle. for example, the answer, 'trousers', given for the riddle image, 'what has legs but cannot walk? " was considered to be partially obscured because the item is inanimate, but was judged to be too closely related to a human leg, as a trouser leg actually fits over a human leg. it was therefore not considered a good example of a metaphorical renaming. similarly, the answer given by two children to the riddle image, 'what runs but never walks?' was 'a runner' (running shoe). such an answer does not involve a metaphorical renaming, and instead involves the use of a name closely related to the action named in the riddle image. overall, there were only a few answers in this fifth group and they were given only by the 8and 9-year-old children in the study. the sixth and largest group of answers in the study (accounting for just over two-fifths of responses given) were those which were considered to have most validity as answers for each of the riddles. they involved the naming of items which belonged to the inanimate set and which could also be considered to involve good examples of metaphor. these answers involved the use of meta 42 riddle use and comprehension phor of two kinds. firstly, the 8and 9-year-olds gave answers which were characteristic of 'radical polysemy'. such answers involved the creative metaphorical renamings of an object or an action by the children, based on some type of similarity which they had noticed. this is illustrated in the following examples: image: what has teeth but no mouth? answers: a piano; a needle (one tooth). image: what goes around all day with its tongue sticking out and sits by your bed at night? answers: (the safety sticker on) a lamp; your tie. the remaining answers involved the use of 'conventional polysemy' as they were metaphorical terms which are already present in the language (e.g. the 'eye' of a needle, the 'running' of an engine). almost a third of the answers given in the study were of this type and their use was most common amongst the wand 11-year-olds. the two meanings of terms involving conventional polysemy are intuitively thought of by native speakers as being related. it was this type of metaphor which was in use in the original 'target' answers for the riddles, such as the 'leg' of a table or the 'howling' of the wind. these answers therefore tended also to involve more prototypical examples of inanimate objects than the other types of answers which were given (such as the 'repilca-type answers'). these answers included the following: image: what has teeth but no mouth? answers: a trap; a saw. image: what has eyes but cannot see? answers: a needle; a pin (meaning 'a needle '). image: what runs but never walks? answers: your nose; a car engine; a tape recorder. the children as a group were judged to be more successful in providing answers which fulfilled the condition of a 'partially obscured semantic fit' for the first four of the six riddles based on sensory similarity. the contrast involved in the target answers for riddles 1-4 was that between an animate entity and an inanimate one, but more specifically between a human being and a cultural object. this contrast was made in a number of the answers which 43 staunton were suggested by the children. however, the contrast involved in riddles 5 and 6 (when the original answers are used) was that between an animate entity (human or animal) and a natural object (i.e. water, the wind). the answers which the children suggested, although valid in that they were from the inanimate set, an belonged to the set of cultural objects, such as the following answers: image: what runs but never walks? answers: a car engine; a tape recorder. image: what can howl but has no mouth? answers: a radio; the alarm system (burglar alarm); a hairdryer; an alarm clock; the brakes on a car. the set of natural objects did not feature in any of the answers given by the children in the study. summary: ability to answer true riddles overall, the children's accuracy in giving 'target' or canonical answers increased with age. the only exception to this pattern was amongst the 9-year-old children who gave less target answers than the 8-year-olds. children aged 8 and 9 years were also the most likely to give a response other than the target answer. the 9-yearolds also gave the most alternative answers of any of the groups. the 11-year-olds were the group least likely to give a 'don't know' response and most likely to give the target response. the riddle answers classified as 'alternative' answers were analysed in terms of their ability to complete the condition known as a 'partially obscured semantic fit' between the riddle image and the answer. overall, the 10and 11-year-olds, were more likely to give an answer which was from a category opposite to that of the item implied in the riddle image. the prototypicality of the riddle answer which belonged to an opposite category was also greatest amongst the 10and 11-year-olds. 'literal' types of answers were characteristic of children aged 8 years, while 'replica-type' answers occured with greatest frequency amongst the 9 and 10-year-olds. the answers judged as metaphorical which were given by the 8and 9-year-olds tended to be more novel than those of the 10 and 11-year-olds, who made use of metaphors already sanctioned in the language. 44 riddle use and comprehension the patterns which emerged overall in the types of answer given by the children at different age levels are summarised in table 5 below. table 5: the types of answers given by the children in each age group to the riddles based on sensory similarity (n = 24). 8 years 9 years 10 years 11 years target answers 11% 0% 28% 39% alternative 47% 53% 22% 30.5% 'don't know' responses 44% 47% 50% 30.5% 3.3 development of the ability to comprehend metaphoric riddles the method used to test for comprehension of metaphoric riddles (i.e. riddle question and answer sequences) consisted of two tasks. the children were firstly posed twelve metaphoric riddle questions and given their answers (task 1). they were later asked randomly ordered questions based on the riddles which looked for the ground of each metaphor (i.e. the children had to state the type of similarity mentioned in the riddles earlier). this was task 2. the 'probe' questions were of the form, 'how is x like v?' or 'how could x be like y?', where the items mentioned were the topic and vehicle involved in the metaphorical comparison. as stated earlier, the use of these questions was based on the assumption that children who had fully understood a metaphoric riddle would later be able to recall the similarities or ground which formed the basis for that metaphor. children who were able to state the grounds of the metaphoric riddles were therefore judged to have understood these riddles. in examining the results of this task, some developmental patterns emerged. overall, the number of children judged as being able to recall the grounds of the metaphoric riddles on task 2 was seen to increase with age. this therefore suggests increased comprehension of metaphors in the context of riddles amongst the older children as compared with the younger ones. the answers which 45 staunton the children gave on this task were analysed as either being correct (i. e. the target response), an alternative response, or a 'don't know' response. a comparison of the results indicates that the greatest difference in performance between children in consecutive age groups is between the 8and 9-year-olds. the 8-year-olds were able to recall the grounds of the riddles with 72% accuracy compared with the 80% level of accuracy achieved by the 9-year-olds. however, the 75% level of accuracy achieved by the 10-year-olds was lower than that of the 9-year-old children. the 11-year-olds displayed the greatest level of comprehension and were able to recall the grounds of 83% of the riddles. the number of' don't know' responses was found to decrease overall amongst the older children. whilst just under a fifth of the 8-year-olds gave a 'don't know' response, only one-tenth of the 11-year-olds gave such a response. however, the number of 'alternative' responses given was greatest amongst the 9and 10-year-aids. this finding is described in more detail in section 3.3.2. summary: comprehension of riddles involving metaphor the ability to comprehend the metaphoric similarity involved in the riddles presented was observed overall to increase with age, as judged through the use of a 'probe' task. only the performance of the 10-yearolds was not in keeping with this pattern. the greatest increase in the ability to comprehend the riddles appeared to occur between the ages of 8 and 9 years. the 11-year-olds achieved the greatest level of accuracy overall in recalling the grounds of the metaphoric riddles. a quantitative summary of the overall patterns of responding on the task probing for comprehension is given in table 6 below. table 6: types of response given by children in different age groups on the task testing for comprehension of the metaphoric riddles (n = 24). expected explanation alternative answer 'don't know' response 8 years 72 % 10% 18% 9 years 80% 17% 3% 10 years 11 years 75% 83 12.5% 8.3% 12.5% 8.3% 46 riddle use and comprehension 3.3.1 the effect of type of similarity on the comprehension of metaphoric riddles the riddles presented to the children were of two types (see appendix 1). the first six were metaphoric riddles which demanded that the listener view the topic of each metaphor in terms of its vehicle, based on shared sensory grounds. the topic and vehicle are linked in these sensory metaphors due to similarities of appearance (e.g. the physical appearance of the leg of a table likened to that of the leg of a person), of sound (an animal's howling likened to the howling of the wind), or of movement (the movement of a person likened to the movement of water). the remaining riddles (7-12) also involved metaphorical uses of language, though the similarities between the topic and vehicle were of a nonsensory nature. the nonsensory metaphors were of either a psychological-physical type (riddles 7 and 8) or a relational type (riddles 9-12). the most striking pattern when comparing the overall performance on the task which probed for comprehension of the riddles (task 2) was the difference in the children's ability as a group to comprehend sensory as opposed to nonsensory riddles. examining the results firstly from a quantitative point of view, the children were shown to comprehend the sensory riddles (1-6) with between 75% and 88% accuracy overall (as judged by the use of the probe question task). however, their level of comprehension of the nonsensory metaphors involved in riddles 7-12 was lower, ranging between 59%-78% overall, as judged by the same task. a comparison of the performance of each age group on the probe question task indicates firstly that there were no large differences amongst the age groups in their level of comprehension of the riddles involving sensory metaphor. the 8and 9-year-olds were judged to have comprehended the sensory metaphors with an 86% level of accuracy, and this increased very slightly for the 11-year-olds. the performance of the 10-year-olds on this task (who comprehended 75% of the sensory metaphoric riddles), however, was not in keeping with the performance of the other age groups. secondly, the correct answers which were given on the probe question task for the sensory riddles were found to be qualitatively very similar across the age groups. 47 staunton a more noticeable pattern emerged in the abilities of the children to verbalise the similarities involved in the nonsensory metaphors. a comparison of the results from the younger children with those of the older group reveals both quantitative and qualitative differences on this task. the 8-year-olds verbalised the similarities involved in the nonsensory metaphors with a 59% level of accuracy (as measured by the use of the probes on task 2). this level increased considerably to 75% for both the 9and 10-yearold children, and was slightly higher for the 11-year-olds, at 78%. a further pattern emerged in the depth of comprehension of the nonsensory riddles which was indicated by the responses given by the children. many of the younger children (8and 9-year-olds) correctly recalled the similarity which was earlier implied in each riddle and were therefore deemed to have understood the metaphor involved. in the case of riddle 7, for example, the question which probed for comprehension of the nonsensory metaphor was, 'how could a person be a bit like the sun?', to which the accepted answer was 'if they're bright' or 'they could both be bright'. although it was assumed once they had given the correct answer that the younger children were aware that the terms could be applied in two senses, their explanations (when prompted further) were generally less accurate and less complete than those of the older group (10and 11-year-olds). in the case of the riddles involving psychological-physical metaphors (which involved the dual-function adjectives 'bright' and 'hard'), the 8and 9-year-olds tended to verbalise only the physical sense of the terms in their explanations, as opposed to both senses. examples of such explanations include the following: question: how could a person be a bit like the sun? child (8 years of age): 'if they were bright '. (further prompt): '/f someone's bright, their teeth would be all shiny'. question: how could a person be a bit like concrete? child (9 years of age): 'because they could be hard as well'. (further prompt): 'like, cement would be really hard and a hard person can hurt if they bump into you '. the explanations given by the 10-year-olds more frequently contained reference to both the psychological and physical mean 48 riddle use and comprehension ings involved in the metaphors than those of the younger children. only the 11-year-olds who had given the target answer were consistently able to articulate the fact that the terms could be used to refer to both an object (in the literal sense) and a person (in the psychological sense). responses which were more typical of the older children include the following: question: how could a person be a bit like the sun? child (10 years of age): 'they could be bright '. (further prompt): 'well, the sun could be bright because it shines a lot, but a bright person would be really clever and good at their work. and they can kind of shine like that because they're so clever…' question: how could a person be a bit like concrete? child (11 years of age): 'both of them could be sort of hard'. (further prompt): 'something might happen to them and they would take their anger out on other people and stuff. the ability to verbalise both senses of the relational metaphors involved in riddles 9-12 appeared overall to be present slightly earlier in this group of children than the ability to explain the psychologicalphysical metaphors. the ability to articulate the relationship between both meanings of the relational metaphors was indicated in some of the responses given by the 8and 9-year-old children. for example, the following responses were given by children in this age group: question: how can time be a bit like a bird? child (8 years of age): 'it can fly and a bird can fly'. (prompt): 'when time flies it means that it goes really fast '. question: how could a person be a bit like a broken up jigsaw? child (9 years of age): 'a broken up jigsaw falls to pieces and the person could fall to pieces because they're sort of sad and want to do something but they can't do it '. children in all the age groups who were unable to verbalise the similarity involved in the relational metaphors tended to give a 'don't know' response, rather than an incomplete or inaccurate response. by 10 and 11-years-of-age, the children who gave correct responses to the questions probing for comprehension of the 49 staunton relational metaphors were consistently able to articulate the grounds of these metaphors. the following examples are typical of such explanations: question: how could a telephone be a bit like a person who’s going to get married soon? child (10 years of age): 'it could be engaged '. (prompt): 'if a telephone is engaged it means that it s busy because someone is talking on it when you're trying to ring them '. (prompt): 'the person who s engaged is busy because they're going to get married to someone soon '. question: how could a person be a bit like a sweeping brush? child (11 years of age): 'because they could be pushed around'. (prompt): 'if someone gets pushed around it means that people don't respect them or take any notice of them. and people make a sweeping brush clean up by pushing it around the floor '. summary: the influence of the type of similarity on comprehension riddles involving a sensory type of metaphoric similarity were found to be more easily comprehended by children from every age group than those involving nonsensory similarity. the level of comprehension of the sensory riddles was found to vary little with age. the 10-year-olds, however, achieved a lower level of accuracy than the younger children for this type of riddle. comprehension of riddles involving a nonsensory type of similarity increased greatly between 8 and 9 years, but varied little beyond that age. the older children in the study (10and 11-year-olds) indicated a greater depth of comprehension of the nonsensory metaphors, when elaborating on their responses to the probes, than the younger groups. overall, the ability to verbalise both meanings of the relational type of metaphor was observed to emerge earlier (at 8 or 9 years) than in the case of the psychological-physical type of comparison (at 10 years). the accuracy of each age group in answering the probe questions for the sensory and nonsensory riddles is summarised in table 7 below. 50 riddle use and comprehension table 7: accuracy of each age group in comprehending riddles involving sensory and nonsensory metaphors (as judged by the use of the probe question task) (n = 24). sensory metaphors nonsensory metaphors 8 years 86% 59% 9 years 86% 75% 10 years 75% 75% 11 years 88% 78% 3.3.2 the ability of the children to remark on types of similarity not implied in the riddles the ability to remark on a similarity between two entities might essentially be said to be the ability which is involved in creating a metaphor. the children in the oldest age group tested in this study (the 11-year-olds) were the most likely to verbalise the similarity involved in the riddles which they had heard earlier (for task 2), which was the desired response on this task. however, in analysing the results it also became apparent that a number of children who were unable to correctly recall this similarity were able to compare the items involved on other grounds which were not implied in the original riddles. a number of these responses were highly thoughtful and creative. additionally, some of the children who were able to recall the similarity implied earlier in the riddles added to their answers by giving other ways in which the items involved are similar. the incidence of the 'alternative' responses was greatest amongst the 9and 10-year-olds in the study. examples of these responses are given below. a further pattern emerged in the type of responses collected from the children from different age groups. the younger children in the group (8 years of age) were most likely to give creative responses which were based on a sensory similarity between the two items. the sensory similarities which were noted were either physical in nature or were similarities of movement. responses which were typical of the 8-yearolds include the following: 51 staunton question: how is a table a bit like a person? child (8 years of age): because they have legs. and the table stands still when the tvs on and so does a person. question: how is a potato a bit like a face? child (8 years of age): 'because sometimes it has dots somewhere. and supposing the dots got stuck together and another dot went up like a mouth, it would look like a face '. the creative responses of children aged between 9 and 11 years were more frequently based on a relational type of similarity than any other type of similarity. such responses remarked upon a similarity between two items in the ways in which they function (as opposed to a purely physical type of similarity). although the boundary separating relational and psychological-physical metaphors is often vague (winner, 1988), there appeared to be few examples of psychological-physical metaphors amongst the creative responses. examples of the responses grounded in a relational type of similarity include the following: question: how is a shoe a bit like a mouth? child (9 years of age): 'because you put your foot into it. it's like the shoe is kind of eating your foot. but if you take your foot out, it's not kind of slobbery or anything. and you can 'put your foot in it' if you 're talking and you say something you shouldn't say'. question: how could a person be a bit like the sun? child (10 years of age): 'if it 's bright and it gives off rays. you know, like if people are clever they kind of give their information out. and the sun sends affrays. a clever person gives rays of information out to other people, you know?' question: how could a person be a bit like a rock? child (11 years old): 'if they 're tough '. (prompt): a tough person might have their mind made up about something and it would be really hard to 'get around' them, to get them to change their mind. and if there's a really big rock in the middle of the road or somewhere then it would be really hard to get around that too '. in analysing the responses it also became clear that individual children were more likely than others to give creative responses. 52 riddle use and comprehension for example, the following responses were all given by a ten year-old girl: question: how is a table a bit like a person? child. 'they have legs and they make you eat. as soon as you see the table you kind of go, 'grand, this means food. just sit down, eat!' and i don't like vegetables or potatoes or anything like that and my mum makes me eat them '. question: how is a shoe a bit like a mouth? child: 'it has a tongue. and if it's old, it opens too much. you know the way if the shoe is old, the top of it comes apart and it opens. and when you get older you tend to talk a lot more, so your mouth opens more. like, my granny used to talk a lot... '. question: how can the wind be a bit like a wolf? child: 'it howls. and it can carry things, like frogs or fish. like sometimes you can have rain with a frog in it because of the way the water evaporates up into the cloud and the frogs could be taken up into the clouds with the fish '. summary: ability to comment on similarities not implied in the riddles children who were unable to recall the target type of similarity in the riddles presented earlier were sometimes able to compare the topic and vehicle based on other grounds. the incidence of these 'alternative' answers was greatest amongst the 9and 10-yearolds. the creative explanations given by the 8-year-olds were all based on a sensory type of similarity. children between the ages of 9 and 11 years were more likely to base their creative explanations on a relational type of nonsensory similarity. a couple of instances of explanations based on psychologicalphysical grounds were also recorded amongst the older children. overall, some children were more likely than others to make use of a creative type of response rather than a 'don't know' response. 3.4 development of the use of riddles the final task in the study involved the children being asked to tell the researcher any riddles which they knew. the riddles which 53 staunton were collected were analysed in terms of both their overall structure and the types of 'block element' involved, according to the methods of classification described by mcdowell (1979) in his study and by green and pepicello (1984). having been asked to supply the researcher with some riddles, many children supplied a number of jokes also, perhaps viewing the riddles and jokes as being linked through their common property of humour (see appendix 3). in collecting and analysing the sample of riddles it also became obvious, however, that the boundaries between what constitutes a riddle and a joke are not always well defined. for example, some of the responses which were classified by the researcher as 'jokes' made use of the device known as 'catching' which is a common feature of riddles. it must therefore be borne in mind when examining the results that the division between the concepts of 'joke' and 'riddle' is often an arbitrary one. whilst the jokes which the children supplied were not analysed in detail, a cursory examination indicates that metaphor was not used as a source of ambiguity in any of the jokes in this sample. analysis of riddle structure the riddles which were collected from the children in this study were firstly analysed in terms of their overall structure (according to the types of structure described by mcdowell, 1979: 66-68). three main types of structure featured in the present sample. over half the riddles and descriptive routines in this sample were based on attribution, which involves the use of many simple descriptive units, which are described as being 'stacked'. riddles of this type were most common amongst the 8-year-olds (though half of these were descriptive routines) and the 11-year-olds. examples of these riddles include the following: what’s got two legs, a medium-sized body and a very, very big tail? a peacock. (girl, aged 8 years) what do you call a chimp with a banana in each ear? anything you like—he can't hear you! (boy. aged 10 years) what do you call a cucumber with four doors? a slammer. (girl, aged 10 years) 54 riddle use and comprehension almost a third of the riddles in this study were concerned with causality and usually took the form of a question involving 'why' and answer beginning with 'because'. this type of structure was used most by the 8and 9-year-olds. examples of this nature included the following: why did the egg go around the world? because he wanted to be an eggs-plorer. (boy, aged 10 years). why did the boy bury his clock? because the batteries were dead. (girl, aged 12 years). riddles based on instrumentality did not feature in the sample collected in this current study. the two other riddle structures which mcdowell (1979) describes, take the form, 'what did the x say to the y?' and 'what kind of x is a p'. only the former construction featured in the present sample of riddles, whereby inanimate objects appear to be engaged in imaginary conversations and the two possible meanings of a well-known figure of speech are exploited. this structure was used in approximately a quarter of the riddles in the current study and its use decreased steadily amongst the older children. typical examples include the following: what did the big biscuit say to the little biscuit? 'crumbs '. (girl, aged 8 years). what did the skeleton say to the toilet? 'you can't get anything out of me '. (boy, aged 8 years). analysis of types of riddling device used the content of the riddles was analysed according to the types of block element or other riddling device which were used to provide ambiguity or confusion, using the descriptions of riddling devices given by green and pepicello (1984) and mcdowell (1979). the riddles were each assigned to what was judged to be the most appropriate category in each case, although in reality some of the riddles could be classified as belonging to more than one category. 55 staunton there were firstly some examples of descriptive routines given by an 8-year-old girl which, by definition, do not contain a block element and involve the description of one or more attributes of an object. the routines which this child supplied were as follows: what's big and has a very big appetite? an elephant. what can you get that can be different colours and very soft? a cushion. what’s got two legs, a medium-sized body and a very, very big tail? a peacock. what’s green and brown and has different colours all over it? a christmas tree. the rest of the riddles can be classified as 'riddles proper' as they all employed some type of device which was intended to cause confusion on the part of the riddlee. riddles involving block elements of both a grammatical and a metaphorical variety were collected in the study. of the grammatically-based riddles collected from the children in this study, only riddles which made use of phonological and morphological types of ambiguity were recorded. phonological ambiguity was the device used in a quarter of the riddles collected in the study and simple lexical ambiguity was the device used more often than any other by the children. included here were words which involved homophony in that they made use of a single phonetic string which had two unrelated meanings. riddles such as, 'what did the big chimney say to the little chimney? ('you're too young to be smoking) ' or 'why did the tortoise cross the road? (he wanted to get to the shell station) ' made use of two possible interpretations of a single word. the use of this type of ambiguity increased up to 10 years, but decreased sharply amongst the 11-yearolds. the second type of single-word homophony was that of conventional polysemy, in which the two meanings of the word are thought of as being related. this will be described along with the riddles involving the use of metaphor. also at the phonological level, there was just one example (given by a 8-year-old girl) of the use of ambiguity involving minimal pairs ('paws' and 'claus'), in the riddle: 'why does a lion like 56 riddle use and comprehension christmas? because of his sandy paws (santa claus) '. no other types of phonological ambiguity were featured in this sample of riddles. ambiguity at the morphological level accounted for about one-tenth of the riddles collected and was only used by the 9and 10year-olds in the study. the riddles involving morphological ambiguity were of three kinds. firstly, the riddle given by a 10-yearold girl, 'what’s black and white and read/red all over? (a newspaper) ' involves the use of homophony between the past participle morpheme of the verb 'to read' and the colour adjective 'red'. secondly, the riddle 'why did the egg go all around the world? (because he wanted to be an eggs-plorer) ' involves the deliberate confusion of the word 'egg' with the bound morpheme 'ex-'. thirdly, the 'pseudomorphological' type of ambiguity was also featured in the riddles, whereby an actual word is deliberately confused with part of another word (though not a morpheme). this type of ambiguity is involved in the riddle, 'what did the hat say to the scarf? (you stay here and hang around and i'll go on a head)', here, the word 'head' is deliberately confused with the phonological sequence 'head' in the word' ahead'. this second phonological string cannot be described as a morpheme, as it is not used as a unit which gives meaning in any other word. about a fifth of the riddles collected were metaphorically-based and these mainly involved the use of conventional polysemy (i.e., metaphors already sanctioned in the language). children from all of the age groups made use of this type of ambiguity in their riddles, although its use increased amongst the 10-year-olds and then decreased amongst the 11year-olds. examples of riddles which might be described as involving conventional polysemy include the following: why did the chicken cross the road? to show he had guts. (girl, 10 years). why did the burglar buy a surfboard? because he wanted to stay on the criminal wave. (boy, 10 years) why did the boy bury his clock? because the batteries were dead. (girl, 11 years). 57 staunton only a couple of instances of metaphorically-based riddles involving 'radical' or novel polsemy were recorded. one 8-yearold girl supplied a riddle which involves comparison (between an egg and a tennis ball) this riddle involved partial obscuring of the answer, but would be very difficult for the riddlee to guess, based on everyday knowledge of the world: what s round and yellow, laid in a nest but won't hatch like the rest? a tennis ball. a version of the classic example of the use of metaphor in riddling, the riddle of the sphinx, was supplied by one 9-year-old boy: what has four legs in the morning, two legs at midday and in the evening has three legs? answer: 'it’s the three stages of man. he crawls in the morning, then walks and then gets a walking stick '. whilst the expectation set up in the riddle image is that some type of mythical creature is being described, the metaphor in fact involves a comparison with the life stages of a human being. a feature which appeared almost exclusively in the riddles of the oldest children in the study (the 11-year-olds) was the use of anomaly. an early example of a riddle which might be said to involve anomaly, in the form of a contradiction based on knowledge of the world, was the following 'puzzle', given by an 8-year-old boy: greek riddle: this greek king came into his castle and these people came along and tried to take him. but before they could take him, he took poison. why did they still take him? answer: greek kings take small bits of poison all the time so that if they have to take poison it won't harm them. and that’s why they still took him—because he was still alive. 58 riddle use and comprehension more typical examples of the use of anomaly in riddling were given by the 11-year-olds: what gets bigger the more you take out of it? a hole. what gets wetter the more it dries? a towel. girl, 11 years of age) riddle: what’s as green as grass, as red as a rose, white as snow, black as coal? answer: a blackberry. when it’s not ripe it’s green. it flowers white. when it's not quite right it’s red and when it’s ripe it turns black. (boy, 11 years) the 11-year-olds in the present study also provided a few riddles which involved the generation of 'unnatural facts'. the answers to these riddles usually involved the naming of imaginary creatures whose features were a combination of real life attributes and imaginary ones. riddles of this nature included the following: what do you call a fly without wings? a walk. (boy, aged 11 years) what has sixteen wheels and pink spots? an elephant with the measles on rollerblades. (girl. aged 12 years) the riddling device known as 'catching' was also employed most often by the 11-year-olds in this study. a characteristic of catch riddles is that the riddle question appears to be a conundrum and the riddlee is tricked into thinking that an ingenious answer is required (opie and opie, 1959). the answer, however, does not involve any type of play on words and is instead a plain fact, stated in a very ordinary manner. it is for this reason that these riddles can be described as 'victimising' the riddlee (mcdowell, 1979), as illustrated in these examples from the current study: what’s pink and fluffy? pink fluff why did the tortoise cross the road? he wanted to get to the shell station. (boy, aged 10 years) 59 staunton why did the turkey cross the road? it was the chicken’s day off. (girl, aged 11 years) summary: children's use of riddles the riddles in this sample involved three main types of construction. over half the riddles collected made use of a structure based on attribution. almost a third of the riddles were concerned with causality and took the form of a 'why?/ because' question and answer sequence. the remaining riddles (just over a quarter of the sample) involved the use of the structure, 'what did the x say to the yt, whereby inanimate objects are featured in imaginary conversational situations, and the two meanings of the a well known figure of speech are exploited. a quantitative summary of the types of riddle construction used by children from each of the age groups is shown in table 8. a number of types of riddling device were used in this sample to provide ambiguity or confusion. a few examples of the 'descriptive routine' which does not contain a block element were given by an 8-yearold girl in the study. simple lexical ambiguity was the most commonly used source of ambiguity in the sample, followed by the use of metaphor known as conventional polysemy. the younger children were more likely to use novel metaphors than the older group. the use of metaphoric terms already in existence in the language (conventional polysemy) was favoured by the 8and 10-yearolds in the study. the 10-year-olds made more use of metariddles than any other age group. the use of phonological ambiguity and conventional polysemy decreased at 11 years of age, to be replaced by the use of riddles involving anomaly and the use of 'catch riddles'. a quantitative summary of the types of riddling device favoured by the children in different age groups is given in table 9 below. 60 riddle use and comprehension table 8: the types of riddle structure used by children from each age group (n = 24). 8 years 9 years 10 years 11 years attribution 9 3 5 11 causality 4 5 3 1 'what did the x say to the y?' 3 2 2 1 table 9: the numbers of riddles involving each type of rid dling device used by children from different age groups (n =24). 8 years 9 years 10 years 11 years descriptive routine 4 0 0 0 phonological ambiguity 3 4 5 1 morphological ambiguity 0 2 2 0 radical polysemy 1 0 0 conventional polysemy 3 1 4 1 catch riddles 1 0 1 4 metariddles 1 1 4 2 anomaly / use of unnatural facts 1 0 0 6 3.5 a comparison of the performances of boys and girls in the study the performance of the boys and girls on each of the three tasks used in the study was compared in both quantitative and qualitative terms. whilst the overall performance of the two groups was found to be similar at every age level, there were some areas where slight differences were noted. 61 staunton (1) answering metaphoric riddles the types of answer given by the girls and boys to the 'true' riddles (1-6) were firstly compared using a quantitative type of analysis. as described earlier, the three types of answer which were given on this task were the 'target' answer (the answer which the tester had in mind), an 'alternative' answer or a 'don't know' type of response. when the overall accuracy of the two groups of children in answering the riddles was compared, it was observed that the girls were slightly more accurate than the boys in providing the target answer. the girls gave the target answer for 22% of the riddles, compared with 17% for the boys. the boys were more likely overall to give an 'alternative' type of answer than the girls. the types of answer given by the two groups of children within each age group were also examined. whilst in the 8 and 11 year age groups, the girls were found to have given more target answers than the boys, the 9and 10-year-old girls and boys were found to have performed equally well. the 8-, 9and 11-year-old boys gave approximately 15% more' alternative' answers than the girls in these age groups, though this pattern was reversed amongst the 10-year-olds. secondly, a qualitative type of analysis was used to compare the validity of the' alternative' types of answer given by the boys and girls. the answers were examined in terms of their ability to complete the condition of a 'partially obscured semantic fit' between the riddle image and the answer. as described earlier, six different types of answer were identified from the overall sample of alternative answers. answers which were labelled 'anomalies' and 'literal answers' were given with equal frequency by the boys and the girls. these were answers which were not considered to complete the riddles, as they usually belonged to the same superordinate semantic category as the item implied in the riddle image. a similar group of answers was those which involved a 'change of state' so that the human or animal in the answer was made to fit the description in the riddle image. these were found to be used more often by the boys than the girls. the girls, however, were found to have given more 'replica-type' answers overall than the boys. 62 riddle use and comprehension of the answers which were judged as completing the riddles (i.e. those involving metaphor), more answers based on a novel type of metaphorical similarity were used by the girls than the boys. however, the boys were found to have given a third more answers which were judged as completing the riddles than the girls. they also gave twice as many answers which were based on conventional polysemy as the girls. (2) comprehension of the metaphoric riddles the performance of the boys and girls on the task which probed for comprehension of the riddles was also compared. whilst the performance of both groups differed slightly at each age level, no obvious developmental trends were apparent. the accuracy of the boys in the 8 and 9 year age groups in recalling the grounds of each riddle, for example, was slightly better than that of the girls. the opposite was the case, however, amongst the 10and 11-yearolds. only at the age of 10 years was there a large discrepancy in the performance of the two groups, where the girls comprehended the grounds of 81 % of the riddles compared with the level of accuracy of 69% obtained by the boys. the latter score, however, is not in keeping with the overall trend of improved comprehension with increasing age which was displayed by the other age groups. the proportion of 'alternative responses' given by boys and girls on the probe task was also found to be similar overall. the only exception to this finding was amongst the 8-year-olds, where the girls were far more likely than the boys to compare the items in the probe question on grounds other than those in the original metaphor. the children's comprehension of the riddles was also examined in terms of the effect of the type of metaphoric similarity (i.e. sensory or nonsensory) on comprehension. with the exception of one age group, both the girls and the boys were found to have greater comprehension of the riddles grounded in sensory similarity than the nonsensory riddles. only the 10-year-old boys showed greater comprehension of the nonsensory than the sensory metaphors, though their level of comprehension of both types of riddle was again not in keeping with the overall pattern shown by the other groups. 63 staunton a qualitative comparison of the girls' and boys' explanations of the grounds of the nonsensory metaphors was also used. the pattern of increasing depth of comprehension of the nonsensory metaphors with age was found to be similar for both groups of children. the ability to verablise both meanings of the relational types of metaphor was found to emerge at 8 or 9 years amongst the boys and the girls. similarly, the ability to explain the grounds of the psychological-physical types of metaphor emerged slightly later overall in both groups. a qualitative examination of the' alternative responses' supplied by the children showed similar patterns overall in the types of creative comparisons used by the boys and the girls at each age. whilst the comparisons based on sensory grounds were characteristic of the younger children, the older groups tended to use relational comparisons, as described earlier. neither group used psychological-physical types of comparison in their creative responses. these patterns were generally consistent for both boys and girls. (3) use of riddles due to the small size of the sample of riddles collected from the children, the riddles were grouped in four ways for the purposes of comparison of the patterns of use of the boys with those of the girls. the riddles were categorised according to the type of riddling device involved in each case. the four overall categories of riddle were those based on grammatical ambiguity, riddles involving metaphor, catch riddles and metariddles, and lastly, riddles involving anomaly or the use of unnatural facts. the first finding was that overall the boys contributed a greater number of 'riddles proper' than the girls. whilst twenty-six of the riddles in the sample were collected from the boys, the girls contributed twentyone riddles. however, an additional four 'descriptive routines' were contributed by one of the 8-year-old girls in the sample. secondly, the boys were found to have used twice as many riddles involving grammatical ambiguity as the girls. whilst the girls were most likely to use this type of riddle at the age of 8 years, its use was favoured by the boys at the ages of 9 and 10 years. 64 riddle use and comprehension there was little difference, however, between the boys and girls in their use of the other riddling devices. whilst the boys were found to have used marginally more metaphoric riddles than the girls in the study, the girls made slightly more use of catch riddles, metariddles and riddles involving anomaly. both boys and girls used more riddles involving conventional polysemy as a block element than radical polysemy. the use of catch riddles, metariddles and riddles involving anomaly was also favoured by the older children in both groups. summary: a comparison of the performance of boys and girls in the study the performance of the girls and boys on each of the three tasks in the study was compared in both quantitative and qualitative terms. (1) summary: answering metaphoric riddles the types of answer given by the girls and boys to the 'true' riddles (1-6) were firstly compared from a quantitative perspective. whilst the girls were found to have given slightly more target answers overall, the boys were more likely to give an 'alternative' type of answer. secondly, the answers were compared in terms of their ability to satisfy the condition of a partially obscured semantic fit with the riddle image. overall, the boys gave more answers judged as completing the riddles than the girls, and they also used twice as many answers based on conventional polysemy. the girls were more likely to base their answers on .a novel type of metaphorical similarity. the types of riddle answer given by the girls and boys are compared in tables 10 and 11 below: table 10: an overall comparison of the types of riddle answer given by boys and girls in the study (n=24). target answers alternative answers 'don't know' responses girls 22% 33% 45% boys 17% 43% 40% 65 staunton table 11: a comparison of the types of answers given by the girls and boys in the study to the riddles based on sensory similarity (n = 24). 8 years girls boys 9 years girl boys 10 years girls boys 11 years girls boys target answers 17% 5% 0% 0% 28% 28% 44% 33% alternative answers 39% 55% 44% 61% 28% 17% 22% 39% 'don't know' responses 44% 39% 66% 39% 44% 55% 34% 28% (2) summary: comprehension of riddles (boys and girls) the performance of the boys and the girls on the task which probed for comprehension of the metaphoric riddles was firstly compared in quantitative terms. whilst the level of accuracy obtained by both groups differed slightly at each age level, no obvious developmental trends were apparent. the only age at which there was a large difference in the performance of the two groups was at 10 years, where the level of accuracy obtained by the boys was much lower than that of the girls. with the exception of the 10-year-old group just mentioned, both the girls and boys were found to have greater comprehension of the riddles grounded in sensory, rather than non sensory similarity at each age level. a qualitatative comparison of the children's explanations of the nonsensory metaphors found that the pattern of increasing depth of comprehension with age was similar for both groups. the ability to verbalise the grounds of the relational and psychological-physical metaphors was in general found to emerge at the same ages for both boys and girls. the proportion of 'alternative responses' given by boys and girls on the probe task was also found to be similar overall. comparisons based on shared sensory features were in general typical of the younger children in each group, whilst relational metaphors were used from the age of 9 years. a quantitative comparison of the types of response given on the probe task by the girls and boys at each age level is given in table 12. 66 riddle use and comprehension the influence of the type of metaphoric similarity on the level of accuracy of the two groups is summarised in table 13. table 12: the types of response given by boys and girls in different age groups on the task testing for comprehension of the metaphoric riddles (n = 24). 8 years girls boys 9 years girl boys 10 years girls boys 11 years girls boys target answer s 69.5 75% 78% 83.5% 81% 69.5% 86% 80.5% alterna tive answer s 19.2% 0% 19.5% 14% 11% 14% 8.5% 8.5% 'don't know' respon ses 11. 3% 25% 2.5% 2.5% 8% 16.5% 5.5% 11% table 13: accuracy of boys and girls in comprehending riddles involving sensory and nonsensory metaphor (as judged by the use of the probe question task) (n = 24). 8 years 9 years 10 years 11 years girls boys girls boys girls boy girls boys sensory similarity 89% 83% 83% 89% 84% 67% 94% 83% nonsensory similarity 83% 89% 83% 89% 84% 67% 94% 83% (3) summary: use of riddles (boys and girls) the boys were found to have contributed a greater number of 'riddles proper' overall than the girls. they were also found to have used twice as many grammatically-based riddles as the girls in the study. there was little difference between the boys and girls in their use of the other riddling devices. both boys and girls used more riddles involving conventional polysemy as a block element than radical polysemy. the use of catch riddles, metariddles and 67 staunton riddles involving anomaly was also favoured by the older children in both groups. a quantitative sununary of the types of riddling device used by the boys and girls in each age group is given in table 14 below. table 14: the numbers of riddles involving each type of riddling device used by girls and boys from each age group (n = 24). 8 years girls boys 9 years girls boys 10 years girls boys 11 years girls boys grammaticallybased 2 1 1 5 1 5 1 0 metaphoricallybased 3 1 0 2 2 2 0 1 catches/ metariddles 1 1 0 1 3 1 3 3 anomaly/ unnatural facts 0 1 0 0 0 0 2 4 discussion 4.1 introduction this study sought to explore the development of riddle use and comprehension in irish school-aged children. this involved the examination of: a) the types of answer which children from different age groups gave to the metaphoric riddles b) the type of response given by children from different age groups to a task probing for comprehension of metaphoric riddles 68 riddle use and comprehension c) the effect of the type of metaphoric similarity on comprehension of these riddles d) the types of riddle which were contributed by children from different age groups. the following four questions had been posed by the researcher: 1. are there developmental patterns in the types of answer which children give to metaphoric riddle questions? 2. does comprehension of metaphoric riddles improve with age? 3. do children use certain types of riddles before they use others? 4. are there differences in the developmental patterns displayed by boys and girls on these tasks? each of these questions will be examined in terms of the results which were obtained in this study. the overall conclusions which may be drawn from these results will then be outlined. finally, the limitations of the study will be set out and suggestions for further research will be made. 4.2 is there a developmental pattern in the types of riddle answers used by children? the approach of children to the answering of true riddles is an area which, up to this point, has not been investigated by researchers. however, the results of the current study would suggest that the tendency of providing canonical answers to such riddles is present in some children from the age of 8 years. furthermore, it appears that this tendency continues to become more marked between the ages of 8 and 11 years. the first finding of note in this study was that the tendency to give answers which are typical of those found in riddle books increased with age. secondly, the creative answers which were offered by the older children in the study were found to be more 69 staunton canonical than those offered by the younger groups. both findings would suggest that children's awareness of the conventional requirements of the riddling form gradually increases with age. as stated above, it was found in the current study that the tendency of children to give a canonical riddle answer seems to increase overall with age. however, the 9-year-olds in the study were an exception to this overall pattern. whilst a small proportion of the 8-year-olds provided the answer which the tester had in mind, none of the answers given by the 9year-olds were of this nature. a possible explanation for this finding is the small size of the sample of children used in the study (six in each age group). the abilities of the six particular children in this group may not be representative of the children in their age group in general. the high proportion of 'alternative' answers given by children in every age group provides support for the notion put forward by kaivolabregenhøj (1996) that riddles are solved through a process of 'creative guessing'. the qualitative examination of this type of answer suggests that children's awareness of the conventional requirement of a partially obscured semantic fit between the riddle image and answer seems to increase with age. the riddle answers which were judged as fulfilling this condition were seen as satisfying three criteria. they were firstly members of a semantic category opposite to that of the item implied in the image, they secondly shared some minor characteristics with the item in the riddle image, and they were thirdly prototypical members of the category to which they belonged. the results of this study suggest that there may be a developmental sequence in which children develop awareness of the conventional need to fulfill each of these criteria. the' anomaly' answers which were used by the younger children in the study, for example, were found to fulfill none of the criteria necessary for a partial obscurity of semantic fit. these answers generally belonged to the same semantic category or 'set' as the item in the riddle image. they tended not to be prototypical members of that category and were found not to fit the description given in the image, even in a literal sense (e.g. 'what can howl but has no mouth? a frog '). however, in each case the children had created an explanation to make the answer fit the description in the image. this suggests an emerging awareness of the need for the riddle image to have features in common with its answer. 70 riddle use and comprehension the 'literal' answers given in the study were found to fulfill the criteria of having features in common with the item implied in the riddle image. this type of answer was mainly used by the 8and 9-year-olds in the study, with some instances amongst the older children. such answers do not involve the use of metaphor, however, as they belong to the same semantic category as the item implied in the image (i.e. animate). about half the answers given could not be considered prototypical members of this category (e.g. 'tadpoles', 'a bat'). awareness of the need for the riddle answer to have features in common with the riddle image would therefore appear to be the first of the three riddle-answering skills to emerge. a similar group of answers were those which fitted the riddle image literally but which involved a 'change of state' (e.g. death, the use of magic) so that the animate entity was made to fit the description in the image. examples of this type of answer were found in all age groups. the use of such a 'change of state' might indicate an emerging awareness that riddle answers are generally obscured from the sight of the riddlee in some way and that the use of logic might be necessary in order to solve the riddle. however, these answers did not fulfill two of the criteria necessary for riddle answers. they belonged to the same category as the item implied in the image and were not prototypical members of this category due to the special conditions displayed by each of the members (e.g. 'a blind man'). the group of 'replica-type' answers which were given by the 9and 10-year-olds, in the study were found to fulfill two of the three criteria necessary for a partial obscurity of semantic fit. these answers belonged to the inanimate category and had characteristics in common with the item implied in the riddle image. the fact that these answers were typically used by a slightly older group of children, suggests that the awareness of the need to give an answer which is from an opposite semantic category might be the second of the three riddle-answering skills to emerge. the 'replica-type' answers were not judged as being metaphorical, however, as they shared too many characteristics with the item in the riddle image. the answers therefore tended not be prototypical members of the inanimate category. aitchison (1994: 150) points out that although the items compared in a good metaphor must 71 staunton have some characteristics in common, 'the items must not be too similar because the metaphor will be incomprehensible'. the answers which were judged as having the most validity as canonical riddle answers were those which involved the use of metaphor and also fulfilled the three criteria outlined earlier. whilst some metaphorical answers were given by the younger children in the group, these tended to involve the use of 'radical polysemy'. these answers therefore involved the use of a novel metaphorical similarity which an individual child had noticed. some of these answers were not considered to be prototypical members of the inanimate category (e.g. 'the safety sticker on a lamp') and would be very difficult for a riddlee to guess. the metaphorical answers which were most typical of the 10and 11-yearolds were those involving conventional polysemy. these metaphorical answers were considered to be prototypical members of the inanimate category, as they involved comparisons which are already sanctioned in the language. it would appear from these responses that the awareness of the need to give a prototypical riddle answer might be the last of the three conventional riddle-answering skills to develop. the overall findings of this study would suggest that the awareness of the conventional requirement of satisfying the condition of a partially obscured semantic fit may emerge in three general developmental stages. whilst there was some individual variation in this pattern amongst the children in this study, an overall developmental sequence was observed. the tendency of giving an answer which has characteristics in common with the item in the riddle image was found to be present in children aged 8 and 9 years. whilst the tendency of giving an answer from the opposite semantic category was displayed by a few of the younger children, this feature typically emerged at 9 or 10 years of age. the tendency of giving an answer which satisfied all three answering conditions, was most frequently observed amongst the 10and 11-year-olds in this study. this would suggest that, in general, the tendency of generating creative answers which satisfy the requirement of a partial obscurity of semantic fit emerges between the ages of 10 and 11 years. 72 riddle use and comprehension 4.3 does comprehension of metaphoric riddles improve with age? whilst no other study has specifically examined children's comprehension of metaphoric riddles, the development of comprehension of grammatically-based riddles and the development of metaphor comprehension are both areas which have been investigated by researchers. the studies of children's riddle comprehension have produced conflicting findings. while prentice and fathman (1975) and shultz (1974) reported a steady improvement in riddle comprehension with age, fowles and glanz (1977) found no such relationship. there is much evidence in the literature, however, to suggest that the comprehension of metaphors improves with age (e.g. asch and nerlove, 1960, cited in billow, 1977; gentner and stuart, 1983, cited in winner, 1988; pollio and pickens, 1980; pollio and pollio, 1979; winner, rosenthiel and gardner, 1976). the results of the present study suggest that there is an overall improvement in the comprehension of metaphoric riddles between the ages of 8 and 11 years. the greatest increase in the level of comprehension occurred between the ages of 8 and 9 years. the performance of the 10-year-olds in this study, however, was found.to be poorer than that of the 9-year-olds. fowles and glanz (1974) reported a similar irregularity in the developmental patterns of riddle comprehension displayed by the children in their study. they concluded from their results that riddle comprehension was not related to age, but to reading ability. the children in their study who displayed superior riddle comprehension were found to be those who were also rated as successful readers by their teachers. they state that the ability to attend to the surface properties of the language, rather than focusing solely on the literal interpretation of the words, is one which is necessary for riddle comprehension and is also essential to reading. unlike the riddles used in this study, the riddles used by fowles and glanz (1977) were mainly grammatically-based. the ability to extract nonliteral meaning is none the less necessary for comprehension of both types of riddle. had an assesssment of reading ability been used with the children in the current study, it might have been possible to establish whether such a link between metaphoric riddle comprehension and reading ability, rather than age, was in existence. 73 staunton the overall pattern of improved comprehension with increasing age, which was displayed by the other groups in the current study, would suggest, however, that the performance of the group of 10-year-olds in this study may not have been representative of that children from this age group in general. had a larger sample of children been included in the study, a more even developmental pattern of improving comprehension might have emerged. such a pattern of development was reported in the studies by prentice and fathman (1975) and shultz (1974). the language experience hypothesis the finding of this study that even 8-year-old children displayed comprehension of metaphoric language contradicts the cognitive prerequisite hypothesis put forward by piaget (1926, cited in kamhi and friemoth lee, 1988). according to this hypothesis, the attainment of the stage of formal operational thought is a prerequisite for comprehension of figurative forms of language. whilst no assessment of cognitive abilities was administered to the children in this study, the formal operational stage typically does not begin until the age of twelve years. it might therefore be fair to assume that the younger children in this study would not yet have attained this cognitive stage of development. this overall finding that metaphor comprehension emerges prior to the formal operational stage of thinking concurs with those of billow (1975), cometa and eson (1978) and smith (1976). the results of this study provide some support, however, for the language experience hypothesis proposed by ortony, turner and larsonshapiro (1985). according to this theory, children's comprehension of figurative language develops gradually through meaningful exposure to such language. as they grow older, children have more exposure to metaphoric language and more opportunity to test out their understanding. the depth of comprehension of metaphors would therefore be expected to increase with age. such a pattern of development was noticed amongst the children in this study between the ages of 8 and 11 years. a number of researchers have noted this pattern of an increasing level of metaphor comprehension as children grow older (asch and nerlove, 1960, cited in billow, 1977; gentner and stuart, 1983, 74 riddle use and comprehension cited in winner, 1988; pollio and pickens, 1980; pollio and pollio, 1979; winner, rosenthiel and gardner, 1976). 4.3.1 the effect of the type of similarity there is some controversy in the literature regarding the effect of the type of metaphoric similarity on comprehension. a number of researchers have found that metaphors grounded in non sensory similarity are more difficult for children to comprehend than those based solely on sensory characteristics (e.g. gentner and stuart, 1983, mendelsohn, gardner and winner, 1981 and shantiris, 1983, all cited in winner, 1988). a small number of studies have reported no difference in the ease of understanding of such metaphors (kogan, connor, gross and fava, 1980, cited in winner, 1988; nippold, leonard and kail, 1984). no studies to date have formally compared children's level of comprehension of riddles involving the two main types of metaphoric similarity. however, fowles and glanz (1974) found that riddles involving metaphorical language were more difficult for children to comprehend than those involving ambiguous, concrete terms. the results of the current study suggest that the type of similarity on which a metaphor is based can have an effect on children's level of comprehension. the children in this study were found overall to have a greater level of understanding of riddles based on a sensory type of metaphoric similarity than those involving a nonsensory metaphoric comparison. the quantitative results of the study suggest that the difference in the level of the comprehension of the two types of metaphor was greatest at the age of 8 years. the overall level of understanding of the sensory metaphors was found to increase only slightly between 8 and 11 years. however, comprehension of the nonsensory metaphors was found to increase greatly overall between these ages, with the greatest increase in the level of comprehension occurring between the ages of 8 and 9 years. the level of comprehension of the sensory metaphors which was displayed by the 10-year-olds in the group is not in keeping with the overall developmental trend in this study. as suggested earlier, the small size of the overall sample of children included in the study might have contributed to this irregularity in the overall developmental pattern. 75 staunton the findings of this study concur with those of the studies cited by winner (1988) that the comprehension of nonsensory metaphors poses more difficulty for children of all ages than the comprehension of sensory metaphors (gentner and stuart, 1983; mendelsohn, gardner and winner, 1981; shantiris 1983, all cited in winner, 1988). the qualitative analysis of the children's performance on the explanation task also suggests some developmental differences in the comprehension of the two types of nonsensory metaphor used in this study. whilst some of the younger children in the study were able to explain the grounds of the relational metaphors, the ability to explain both senses of the psychological-physical metaphors did not appear to emerge until the age of 10 years. a similar type of trend was reported by shantiris (1983, cited in winner, 1988), who found that psychological-physical metaphors were more difficult for children of all ages to comprehend than those grounded in a relational type of similarity. the finding that younger children tend to interpret psychologicalphysical metaphors in a literal sense has been reported by asch and nerlove (1960, cited in billow, 1977) and winner, rosenthiel and gardner (i976). the explanations of the grounds of the psychologicalphysical metaphors which were given by the younger children in this study also involved a 'literal' type of interpretation. only the explanations given by the 10and 11-yearolds in this study consistently contained reference to both the psychological and physical senses of the terms. children aged 8 and 9 years tended to verbalise only the physical sense of terms such as 'bright' or 'hard' in their explanations. however, the same children had often responded appropriately to the 'probe' task, where they simply had to recall the grounds of the riddles presented earlier. this task frequently required only a single-word answer. this overall finding is consistent with that of asch and nerlove (1960, cited in billow, 1977) who reported that children between the ages of 7 and 10 years are aware that dual-fuction terms can be applied in a psychological sense to people. the ability to explain both senses of the dual-function terms was also found to be consistent only after the age of 10 years in their study. winner, rosenthiel and gardner (1976) however, report that ahnost a third of the 8year-olds in their study were able to explain the psychological meaning such terms. 76 riddle use and comprehension measurement of comprehension the difference in the performance of the younger children on the 'probe' and 'explanation' tasks in the current study provides support for the view that explanation tasks can under-estimate children's level of metaphor comprehension. a number of the 8and 9-year-olds were able to recall the appropriate grounds of the nonsensory metaphors when a single-word reponse was required, yet their explanations of the same metaphors frequently indicated only a 'literal' type of understanding. theorists such as vosniadou (1987) have criticised the use of explanation tasks due to the significant metalinguitic demands involved in verbalising the grounds of a metaphor. the results of the studies which have compared children's performance on multiple-choice and explanation tasks suggest that the ability to comprehend metaphors develops prior to the ability to fully explain them (gardner, 1974; winner, rosenthieal and gardner, 1976; pollio and pickens). it is therefore likely that the children in this study had a greater level understanding of metaphors at every age than their performance on the explanation task would suggest. sources of difficulty with nonsensory metaphor comprehension the finding that younger children tend to have a lower level of comprehension of nonsensory metaphors was attributed by keil (1979,1985, cited in winner, 1988) to a lack of knowledge about the properties of things in the world. the term 'domain knowledge' is used to describe children's knowledge of the properties and functions of the items in the world's categories or domains. keil found that in order for a child to comprehend a metaphor, he or she must firstly have knowledge of the two domains involved in the metaphor (keil, 1985, cited in winner, 1988). the finding that the younger children in the current study displayed less understanding of the nonsensory metaphors than those in the older groups might therefore be explained in terms of a limited knowledge of particular domains. younger children may not yet have sufficient knowledge of domains such as that of personality traits, for example, and therefore tend to misinterpret metaphors involving these domains. the language experience 77 staunton hypotheisis (ortony, larson and shapiro, 1985) is also useful in explaining this finding. the use of non sensory types of metaphoric similarity is typically a feature of the spoken and written language of adults and older children (winner, 1988). younger children are thus less likely than their older counterparts to have meaningful exposure to such metaphors on a daily basis. the finding that younger children have difficulty with nonsensory metaphors might therefore be attributed in part to a limited knowledge of the domains involved and a lack of meaningful exposure to this type of metaphor. in interpreting the results of this particular study, however, the syntactic context in which the nonsensory metaphors were presented must also be considered as a possible source of difficulty. a small number of researchers have reported that the syntactic presentation of a metaphor can influence children's level of comprehension (nippold, leonard and kail, 1984; renolds and ortony, 1980; winner, engel and gardner, 1980). the sensory metaphors in this study were presented in the context of a true metaphoric riddle, which generally took the form, 'what has x but no y? '. however, the riddles grounded in nonsensory similarity took a greater variety of syntactic forms, such as 'what did the x say to the y? ' or riddles involving 'why / because' structures. the possibility that the syntactic presentation of the nonsensory metaphors might have contributed the lower level of comprehension of these metaphors must therefore be considered also. the studies to date which have reported children's greater difficulty with nonsensory, than sensory metaphors have generally involved the presentation of such metaphors either in a predicative sentence or in isolation. the overall results of this study suggest that this finding also holds when metaphors are presented in the context of riddles. a small number of riddles involving each of the types of similarity was used in the study, however, and the number of children included in each age group was also relatively small. further research on a much wider scale is therefore necessary before any general conclusions can be drawn. 78 riddle use and comprehension 4.3.2 remarking on types of similarity not implied in the original riddles a small number of children from each age group in the present study were found to give an 'alternative' type of explanation when presented with the task probing for comprehension of the metaphoric riddles. the use of an alternative type of explanation would suggest that these children did not comprehend the grounds of the metaphors which they had heard earlier. however, given the great creativity of some of the children's responses, the use of an alternative type of explanation might simply indicate a greater degree of imaginativity on the part of these children. the use of an alternative explanation might therefore be attributed in some cases to a different approach to the answering of the probe questions, rather than a lack of comprehension of the metaphoric grounds. the notion that the children used different approaches in completing the probe task is evidenced in the finding that certain children were much more likely than others use a creative type of comparison. the fact that the probe questions were based on the metaphoric riddles was not made explicit to the children in the study. some children may therefore have used an alternative type of explanation because they were not aware that the probe questions related back to the metaphoric riddles. a number of children who gave the target response to the probe task also went on to describe other similarities between the items mentioned in the probe question. again, this suggests that the children may have been eager to demonstrate their creativity in comparing the two items, rather than simply giving the target answer only. whilst the overall number of creative (i.e. alternative) explanations given in this study was relatively small, this type of response was given with greatest frequency by the 9and 10-yearolds. the finding that children in these age groups were the most likely to be creative in their use of metaphoric comparisons contradicts the notion of there being a 'conventional' stage in children's use of metaphor between the ages of 8 and 10 years (winner, 1988). gardner, kircher, winner and perkins (1975) reported that children between these ages in their study tended to reject the use of metaphor, preferring instead to use language in a conventional, unimaginative way. a similar finding was reported 79 staunton by pollio and pollio (1974) when a story-writing task was used. however, when pollio and pollio presented the same group of children with a structured comparison task (similar in format to the 'probe' task used in this study), the children's use of metaphors was found to increase steadily between the ages of 8 and 11 years. the fact that the comparison task in the current study was presented in the context of an informal riddling session might therefore have encouraged the children to be less inhibited in their use of language. an examination of the creative metaphoric comparisons which were used by the children in this study suggests that there is a developmental sequence in the types of metaphoric similarity used. the creative comparisons which were used by the 8-year-olds in the study were based solely on a sensory type of grounds. children between the ages of 9 and 11 years were found to favour a relational type of grounds in the comparisons which they used. a few instances of the use of psychological-physical types of similarity were reported amongst the older children in the study. the order of acquisition of the creative use of metaphor, which is suggested by these results, is similar in nature to that which was observed in the children's comprehension of metaphoric riddles in this study. the overall results of the current study suggest that the period between 8 and 9 years of age may be a time of rapid development in both the ability to verbalise metaphoric grounds and in the comprehension of metaphors. the greatest overall increase in the level of metaphor comprehension amongst the children in this study (as judged by their performance on the probe task) was found to occur between the ages of 8 and 9 years. the transition from making creative comparisons involving a sensory type of similarity to making comparisons grounded in relational similarity was also found to occur between the ages of 8 and 9 years of age. the use of metaphor by all of the children in the study (and not just those who used a creative response) would need to, be examined, however, before overall conclusions could be drawn in relation to the development of this skill. 80 riddle use and comprehension 4.4 do children use certain types of riddles before they use others? mcdowell (1979) concurs with the observation by sanches and kirshenblatt-gimblett (1976, cited in mcdowell, 1979) that children's level of acquisition of the language seems to be reflected in their verbal play. these researchers remark that the focus of children's verbal play progresses 'from sound play to sense play, finally culminating in play with sociolinguistic rules' (mcdowell, 1979: 192). the results of the current study suggest that by 8 years of age, children are able to make use of riddles involving most types of linguistic ambiguity and also riddles which involve a playful violation of sociolinguistic rules. the current study differs from that of mcdowell (1979) in that it involves an examination of riddle use by children from the age of8 years. the study by mcdowell, however, focused on riddle use in children below this age. he concluded from his results that the development of riddling skills is virtually complete by this age. the finding of the current study that children aged 8 years displayed some use of all the types of riddles used by the older groups, would also support this notion. the patterns of use which were displayed by the children in the current study might therefore be interpreted as reflecting their preferences in using riddles, rather than indicating a particular stage of acquisition. the results of the present study suggest some overall trends in riddle use between the ages of 8 and 11 years. a significant finding of this study was that the children favoured the use of riddles proper over the use of descriptive routines. mcdowell (1979) noted in his study that older children continue to use descriptive routines once they have exhausted their repertoire of riddles proper. he also noted that the routines of the older children in his study generally involved the description of exotic, rather than mundane items. the descriptive routines which were supplied by the 8-year-old girl in this study also involved the use of such items (e.g. an elephant, a peacock). it appears from the results of this study that children between the ages of 8 and 11 years favour the use of homophony as a block element in their riddles. the use of grammatically-based riddles in this study was found to increase overall up to the age of 10 years. 81 staunton this finding is contrary to that of mcdowell, who found a decrease in the use of homophony after the age of 7 years. however, a dramatic decline in the use of grammatical ambiguity was noted amongst the 11year-olds in the current study. whilst phonological and morphological types of ambiguity were featured in the riddles in this study, syntactic riddle strategies were not used. mcdowell (1979) found that metaphoric riddles were favoured by the 7and 8-year-olds in his study. both radical and conventional types of polysemy were featured in the current study. the use of radical polysemy was a feature of the 8and 9-year-olds but was not used beyond this stage. there were therefore few examples in the study of children's creative use of metaphor. the use of metaphors which are already sanctioned in the language (conventional polysemy) was featured in a much larger proportion of the riddles. no overall developmental trend emerged in the use of this type of metaphor, although it was used by children in all age groups. the analysis of the riddles collected in this study suggests that the period between the ages of 10 and 11 years is a time of great change in the types of riddling device used. whilst the riddles collected from the children in the other age groups largely involved the use of linguistic ambiguity (including metaphor), the 11-yearolds in the study preferred the use of catch riddles, metariddles and riddles involving anomaly or unnatural facts. the finding that children in this age group favoured the use of 'catch riddles' is in keeping with the sequence of development described by sanches and kirshenblatt-grimblett (1976, cited in mcdowell, 1979). catch riddles involve the victimisation of the riddlee and can thus be described as violating the sociolinguistic rules of the language. the popularity of metariddles at this age might also reflect an increased eagerness to 'trick' the riddlee. these riddles frequently involve the use of a well-known riddle question to which the riddlee might give the traditional answer. the child, on the other hand, is in possession of the updated answer which the riddlee has far less chance of guessing. the finding that children in the 11 year age group strongly favoured riddles involving anomaly is an interesting one, as mcdowell (1979) found that the use of such riddles emerges as early as six years of age. whilst it is difficult to explain the popu 82 riddle use and comprehension larity of anomaly riddles and riddles involving unnatural facts at this age, their use might indicate a general move away from linguistic ambiguity as a source of humour. such a pattern of development has been reported by researchers such as mcghee (1979, cited in nippold, 1988c) who found that adolescents favour jokes where a greater cognitive challenge is involved to jokes involving linguistic ambiguity. types of riddle structure whilst five main types of riddle structure featured in mcdowell's (1979) study, the riddles in the present study made use of three types of structure. mcdowell found that the structures of attribution, causality and instrumentality were the most frequently used in his study. the use of the structures of attribution and causality accounted for approximately three-quarters of the riddles in the current study. the results of the present study suggest that the structure of instrumentality is not a feature of the riddling of children over the age of 8 years. the remaining riddles in this study involved the use of the structure, 'what did the x say to the y? '. however, the structure 'what kind of x is a y? " which featured in mcdowell's study, was not used by the children in this study. the overall results of the current study suggest that the structure of attribution is a consistent feature of the riddling of children between the ages of 8 and 11 years. the use of the structure of causality, however, appears to decline after the age of 9 years. whilst the use of the riddle from, 'what did the x say to the y?', was most popular amongst the 8-year-olds, the results of this study suggest there is a decline in its use after this age. 4.5 are there differences in the developmental patterns displayed by boys and girls? the studies to date which have examined children's use and comprehension of both riddles and metaphors have reported no significant difference in the performance of boys and girls in these areas. the results of this study would concur with this overall finding. however slight differences in the performance of the boys and girls were detected on some of the tasks in this study. 83 staunton whilst the performance of the boys and girls on the riddle comprehension task was very similar at every age, some differences were noted in their performance on the riddle-answering task and in their use of riddles. whilst the girls in the current study were found to be more likely to give the target answer on the riddle-answering task, the boys were found to have contributed a greater number of 'riddles proper' when asked to tell the researcher any riddles which they knew. the alternative answers which the boys gave on the riddle-answering task were more often found to be canonical than those given by the girls. the boys were found to have generated twice as many alternative riddle answers based on conventional polysemy as the girls, and were also twice as likely to contribute riddles involving grammatical ambiguity. the girls were more likely to base their answers on a novel type of metaphoric similarity. these last findings might suggest a preference amongst the boys for the use of types of ambiguity which are already sanctioned in the language, as opposed to the more novel approach which appears to have been taken by the girls. it was noted by the researcher during the collection of the data that the boys generally showed a greater interest the reading of riddle books than the girls in the study. the use of grammatical ambiguity is a common feature of the riddles in such books. the types of response which were given by the boys in the study might therefore be related to their greater familiarity with this type of ambiguity. a comparison of the performance boys and girls would need to be carried out on a much larger scale, however, before such findings could be generalised to the population as a whole. 4.6 overall conclusions this study set out to examine the development of riddle comprehension and use in irish school-aged children. it was firstly concluded from the results of this study that the tendency of children to give canonical riddle answers increases between the ages of 8 and 11 years. it also appears that there are three general stages in the emergence of children's awareness of the conventional requirement of a partial obscurity of semantic fit between the riddle question and answer. 84 riddle use and comprehension the results of the current study concur with the widely-reported finding that the comprehension of metaphors improves with increasing age. the comprehension of metaphors in the context of riddles was found to increase overall between the ages of 8 and 11 years. the findings of this study provide support for the hypothesis that the comprehension of nonliteral language develops gradually through meaningful exposure to such language. it also appears from the results of this study that the type of metaphoric grounds affects the degree of comprehension of metaphoric riddles. the creative use of metaphor which was displayed by some children in response to the 'probe' task contradicts the notion of there being a 'conventional' stage in metaphor use between the ages of 8 and 10 years. the analysis of the types of riddles collected from the children in this study suggests that there is a change at about 11 years of age in the types of riddling device which children use. children up to this age appear to favour the use of linguistic ambiguity as a riddling device. after the age of 11 years, however, children show a preference for the use of catch riddles, metariddles and riddles involving anomaly. the performance of boys and girls was compared on all of the tasks used in this study. whilst their performance on the comprehension tasks was almost identical, slight differences were observed in the types of riddling device which were favoured by each group. due to the small size of this study, however, no overall conclusions about the influence of gender on riddling skills can be drawn at this stage. 4.7 limitations of this study and implications for further research the main limitation of this study was the small size of the group of children included in the study. it is possible that individual differences amongst the children may have influenced the results. the children in this study were all irish and all came from a middleclass background. it is therefore possible that cultural factors might also influence the results. a relatively small number of riddles involving each type of metaphoric similarity was also presented to the children. 85 staunton the tasks used in the study would therefore need to be replicated on a much wider scale, with children from a variety of cultural backgrounds, before any findings could be generalised to the overall population. were the study to be repeated, it might also be of value to test out the hypothesis put forward by fowles and glanz (1974) that riddle comprehension is related to reading ability, rather than age. a formal assessment of reading ability would therefore need to be administered to the children in the study in addition to the 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"a cognitive developmental study of metaphor com prehension." developmental psychology 11[4] (1975): 415-23. ______. "metaphor: a review of the psychological literature." psycho logical bulletin 84(1] (1977): 81-92. ______. "observing spontaneous metaphor in children." journal of ex perimental child psychology 31(1981): 430-45. clark, e. "what's in a word? on the child's acquisition of semantics in his first language." cognitive development and the acquisition of language. ed. t. e. moore. new york: academic p, 1973. cohen, s. "connecting through riddles or the riddle of connecting." untying the knot. ed. g. hans-rokern and d. shulman. oxford: oxford up, 1996.294-315. cometa, m.s., and m.e. eson. "logical operations and metaphor inter pretation: a piagetian model." child development 49 (1978): 649 59. crossley-holland, k. the riddle book. london: macmillan children's books, 1982. eastman, c. m., and kallen, j.l. 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"children's comprehension of metaphor: a piagetian in terpretation." language and speech 19 (1976): 236-43. vosniadou, s. "children and metaphors." child development 58 (1987): 870-85. winner, e. "new names for old things: the emergence of metaphoric language." journal of child language 6 (1979): 469-91. ______. the point of words: children s understanding of metaphor and irony. london: harvard up, 1988. winner, e., m. engel, and h. gardner. "misunderstanding metaphor: what's the problem?" journal of experimental child psychology 30 (1980): 22-32. winner, e., a.k. rosenthiel, and h. gardner. "the development of meta phoric understanding." developmental psychology 12[4] (1976): 289-97. 88 riddle use and comprehension appendix 1 list of 12 riddles used in task i (chosen from children's riddle and joke books) riddles involving a metaphorical comparison based on sensory grounds 1. what has legs but cannot walk? a table. 2.what has teeth but no mouth? a comb. 3.what has eyes but cannot see? a potato. 4.what goes around all day with its tongue hanging out and sits by your bed at night? a shoe. 5.what runs but never walks? water. 6.what can howl but has no mouth? the wind, riddles involving a (nonsensory) metaphorical use of language 7.why did the teacher wear sunglasses to school? because the class was so bright. 8. what happened when the thief fell into the cement? he became a hard ened criminal. 9.why did the boy throw his clock out the window? he wanted to see time fly. 10. what do jigsaw puzzles do when they get bad news? they go to pieces / they fallapart. 11. what did the big telephone say to the little telephone? 'you're too young to be engaged '. 12. what did the sweeping brush say to the vacuum cleaner? 'don't you wish people would stop pushing us around?' explanations of the types of metaphors involved in riddles 1-12 riddles involving a metaphorical comparison based on sensory grounds riddles 1-4 are based on a comparison between the physical features of an animate entity and those of an inanimate one, riddle 5 is based on a comparison between the movement of a human or animal (running) and the movement of a natural object (water). riddle 6 is based on a comparison between the sound of a vocalisation by an animate entity and the sound of a natural phenomenon (the wind). 89 staunton riddles involving a (nonsensory) metaphorical use of language riddles 7 and 8 involve dual-function adjectives which are based on the comparison between a physical notion (e.g. brightness or hardness) and a psychological one. riddles 9-12 are based on relational types of similarity. the comparison involved in riddle 9 is that between an abstract entity (time passing) and the movement of an animate (or inanimate) entity (flight) . the comparison on which riddle 10 is based is that between a physical action of falling apart and a psychological state (getting upset). the comparison involved in riddle 11 is between the notion of a telephone being in use therefore unavailable and someone who is engaged to be married and therefore unavailable. the comparison involved in riddle 12 is between the physical act of pushing something around and the act of bullying someone psychologically. probe questions which followed the riddles (questions used in task 2) riddles involving a metaphorical comparison based on sensory grounds (target answers are in italics) 1. how (in what way) is a table a bit like a person? it has legs. 2. how is a comb a bit like a mouth? it has teeth. 3. how is a potato a bit like a face? it has eyes. 4. how is a shoe a bit like a mouth? it has a tongue. 5. how could water be a bit like a person in a race? it can run. 6. how can the wind be a bit like an owl? it can howl. riddles involving a (nonsensory) metaphorical use of language 7. how could a person be a bit like the sun? they could be bright. 8. how could a person be a bit like a rock? they could be hard. 90 riddle use and comprehension probe questions which followed the riddles (questions used in task 2) riddles involving a metaphorical comparison based on sensory grounds (target answers are in italics) 1. how (in what way) is a table a bit like a person? it has legs. 2. how is a comb a bit like a mouth? it has teeth. 3. how is a potato a bit like a face? it has eyes. 4. how is a shoe a bit like a mouth? it has a tongue. 5. how could water be a bit like a person in a race? it can run. 6. how can the wind be a bit like an wolf? it can howl. riddles involving a (nonsensory) metaphorical use of language 7. how could a person be a bit like the sun? they could be bright. 8. how could a person be a bit like a rock? they could be hard. 9. how can time be a bit like a bird? it can fly. 10. how could a person a bit like a broken up jigsaw? they've gone to pieces / they're falling apart. 11. how could a telephone be a bit like a person who's going to get mar ried soon? it could be engaged. 12. how could a person be a bit like a sweeping brush? they could be pushed around. these questions were presented in random order. appendix 2 the children's alternative answers on the riddle answering task 1. what has legs but cannot walk? 8 years: girls:(none) boys: trousers; tadpoles; a person that has a spell put on them. 9 years: girls: a doll or a teddy; boys: a footpath. 10 years: girls: a gymnastic horse; boys: (none) 11 years: girls: (none) boys: a person in a wheelchair. 91 staunton 2. what has teeth but no mouth? 8 years: girls: a piano; a fork; boys: teeth in a box. 9 years: girls: false teeth; boys: a needle (one tooth). 10 years: girls: shark teeth on a piece of string; boys: a trap. 11 years: girls: (none) boys: a saw (two answers). 3. what has eyes but cannot see? 8 years: girls: a bat; boys: joke glasses. 9 years: girls: a person in a painting; boys: a bat; a needle. 10 years: girls: a dead fish; cats' eyes on the road; boys: a pin (needle). 11 years: girls: (none) boys: a blind man. 4. what goes around all day with its tongue sticking out and sits by your bed at night? 8 years: girls: a dog; the safety sticker on a lamp; boys: a dog. 9 years: girls: a dog; boys: a dog or cat; a rude teddy. a dog. 10 years: girls: a dog; boys: (none) 11 years: girls: a dog; your tie; boys: (none) 92 riddle use and comprehension 5. what runs but never walks? 8 years: girls: a runner; a cheetah; boys: your nose; a car engine; 9 years: girls: an ostrich; your nose; boys: runners (shoes); a bicycle or rollerskates. 10 years: girls: (none) boys: a tape recorder; 11 years: girls: a car (the engine); boys: a robot that is programmed to run, not walk. 6. what can howl but has no mouth? 8 years: girls: a radio; boys: the alarm system (burglar alarm). 9 years: girls: a hairdryer; boys: a frog or toad; a whistle. 10 years: girls: (none) boys: (none) 11 years: girls: an alarm clock; boys: the radio; the breaks [brakes-ed] on a car;a car. appendix 3 riddles collected from each class group third class (girls) child no.2 (1) what did the big biscuit say to the little biscuit? 'crumbs.' (2) what's big and has a very, very big appetite? an elephant. (3) what can you get that can be different colours and very soft? a cush ion. (4) what's got two legs, a medium-sized body and a very, very big tail? a peacock. (5) what's green and brown and has different colours all over it? a christmas tree. 93 staunton child no.3 (6) what's round and yellow, laid in a nest, but won't hatch like the rest? a tennis ball (7) what did the ground say to the rain? 'if you keep this up my name will be mud. ' (8) why does a lion like christmas? because of his sandy paws (santa claus). (9) what has keys but can't open any doors? a piano. (10) why did the wolf cross the road? because the chicken hadn't been invented yet. third class (bovs) child no.4 (11) what did the skeleton say to the toilet? 'you can't get anything out of me'. (12)why did the skeleton cross the road? because he needed to go to the body shop. (13) what do you call a chimp with a banana in each ear? anything you like—he can't hear you! child no.5 (14) greek riddle: this greek king came into his castle and these people came along and tried to take him. but before they could take him, he took poison. why did they still take him? answer: greek kings take small bits of poison all the time so that if they have to take poison it won't harm them. and that's why they still took him-because he was still alive. fourth class (girls) child no.7 (15) what did the big candle say to the little candle? 'i'm going out to night' . fourth class (boys) child no. 10 (16) what did the big chimney say to the little chimney? 'you're to young to be smoking'. child no. 11 (17) why did the egg go all around the world? because he wanted to be an eggs-plorer! child no. 12 (18) why did the egg start crying? cause it was all cracked up. (19) what is a math teacher's favourite tree? a geometree. (20) why did dennis bring a ladder to assembly? because his teacher wanted him to sing higher. (21) what has four legs in the morning, two legs at midday and in the 94 riddle use and comprehension evening has three legs? answer: it's the three stages of man. he crawls in the morning, then walks and then gets a walking stick. (22) why did the tortoise cross the road? he wanted to get to the shell station. (23)what do water and a nose have in common? they can both run if they're cold. fifth class (girls) child no. 13 (24)what's black and white and re(a)d all over? a newspaper. or it could be a penguin or a zebra with sunburn. (25) what do you call a cucumber with four doors? a slammer. (a slammer is a sandwich). (26) why did the chicken cross the road? to show he had guts. child no. 15 (27) riddle: in comes two legs, carrying one leg and puts it on three legs. in comes four legs and out goes five legs. out comes two legs and throws three legs at four legs. (and you've got to figure out the answer over 24 hours). answer: in comes two legs (a human), carrying one leg (a leg of lamb) and she puts it on a three-legged stool. and in comes a four-legged dog and takes it outside (and that's the five legs that go out, the dog and the leg of lamb). and when two legs sees that the leg of lamb is gone she picks up the three-legged stool and goes outside and throws it at the dog. fifth class (boys) child no. 17 (28)why did the hedgehog cross the road? to show his friends he had guts. (29) why does a golfer wear two pairs of trousers? in case he gets a hole in one. (30)did you hear about the surfing burglar? he stayed on the criminal wave. (31) what did the hat say to the scarf? you stay here and hang around and i'll go on a head. (32)what's a frog's favourite football stadium? croak park. child no. 18 (33) what did the big hand say to the little hand? i’ll be around in an hour'. (34) why is the baseball stadium hot after the game? because all the fans have left. sixth class (girls) child no. 19 (35) what has sixteen wheels and pink spots? an elephant with the measles on rollerblades. 95 staunton (36)what's black and white red all over? a nun who's fallen down the stairs. (37) supposing, supposing, three men were a-frozing. one died. how many were left? none-because you're only supposing. child no. 20 (38)why did the turkey cross the road? it was the chicken's day off. child no. 21 (39) why did the boy bury his clock? because the batteries were dead. (40) what gets bigger the more you take out of it? a hole. (41) what gets wetter the more you dry? a towel. (42) what's big, purple and eats spaceships? a big, purple spaceship eater. child no. 23 (43)what do you call a fly without wings.? a walk. (44)riddle: what's as green as grass, as red as a rose, white as snow, black as coal? answer: a blackberry. when it's not ripe it's green. it flowers white. when it's not quite right it's red and when it's ripe it turns black. child no. 24 (45) what did the big chimney say to the little chimney? 'you're too young to be smoking'. (46)what's pink and fluffy? pink fluff. (47)what's brown and sticky? a brown stick. (48) what's blue and fluffy? 'blue fluff?' no, pink fluff with a cold. jokes collected from the children third class (girls) child no.2 (1) the dad asked the girl, 'do you want any help with your homework?' . and the girl said, 'no thanks, i can get it wrong by myself. third class (boys) child no.5 (2) this man was in a pub watching a match. he drank half his glass of harp and put it down on the table. and this little green goblin comes along while he's watching the game. and the goblin goes, 'be, wee, wee, wee, wee' (putting his finger in the glass) and fills it up again. then the man comes back, 'now, don't do that'. and the green goblin comes back and goes, 'be, wee, wee' and fills the glass up again. and the man says, 'if you do that again, i'll pull down your yocks and and pull your wey off. and the man puts down the drink and watches the t.v. again. and the goblin comes back and goes, 'be, wee, wee', and the man goes, 'that's it!'. (gestures puffing some 96 riddle use and comprehension thing oft). and the man says, 'now, how will you go to the toilet? and the goblin goes, 'bee, wee, wee, wee' and the glass overflows. (3) if i was a teacher, i'd give my pupils glasses. get it? my pupils glasses. fourth class (girls) child no.7 (4) knock, knock, who's there? boo who? there, there, don't cry. it's only a joke. child no.8 (5) knock, knock. who's there? owls. owls who? yes, they do, don't they? fourth class (boys) child no. 10 (6) knock, knock, boo. who's there? banana who? knock, knock. who's there? banana. banana who? knock,knock. who's there? orange. orange who? orange you glad i didn't say banana? (7) there were three elephants called shut up, mercy and trouble. and one day trouble went missing. and shut up went to the police station and the policeman asked shut up for his name. so he said 'shut up'. and the policeman said, 'are you looking for trouble?'. 'yes, please'. so the policeman said, 'right then, you're going to get it'. so shut up shouted for mercy. and the policeman said, 'it's alright, i wasn't serious'. (8) one day a boy wanted to go to the toilet and he asked his teacher if he could go. and she said, 'no'. and then she said, 'say your abc'. so he said, 'abcdefghijklmno_qrstuvwxyz'. 'where's your 'p' '?. and the boy said, 'it's dribbling down my leg'. child no. 12 (9) this is a joke about newcastle football club, saying that they're not very good: 97 staunton 'somebody broke into newcastle's trophy room'. 'really?' 'yeah'. 'what did they take?' 'everything. they're looking for a man with a black and white carpet'. fifth class (girls) child no. 13 (10)there's a little boy and a granny and he's walking down the road when he comes across a five pound note. and he says, 'granny, granny can i pick the five pound note off the ground? and the granny says 'no, because anything on the ground is dirty'. and then he comes across a ten pound note and he says, 'granny, granny can i pick up the ten pound note? and the granny says, 'no, because anything on the ground is dirty'. and then he comes across a hundred pound note and he says, 'granny, granny, can i pick up the hundred pound note? and she says, 'no, because anything on the ground is dirty'. the granny falls on the ground and she says, 'sonny, sonny, pick me up' and the boy goes, 'no, because anything on the ground is dirty'. (11) 'anything i say, you have to say, 'and so did the fat lady'. one day i went into a shop... ' 'and so did the fat lady'. 'i got bread and milk' . 'and so did the fat lady'. 'i paid for the bread and milk'. 'and so did the fat lady'. 'i went out of the shop'. 'and so did the fat lady'. '1 bought a balloon'. 'and so did the fat lady'. 'the balloon burst'. 'and so did the fat lady'. (12)this man always drove to work on an egg. and one day it wouldn't start. so he rang the aa and the aa came out and said, 'well, we'll take the yoke out'. so they took the yoke out and the car started and he drove to work. and when he got to work he rang the aa to thank them because his car was all white now because they had taken the yolk out. child no. 14 (13) mr. mccarthy and mrs. mccarthy were a family in america. mrs. mccarthy always stayed at home and mr. mccarthy always went to work. and when mr. mccarthy came home one day he said, 'did any mail come today? and mrs. mccarthy said, 'no, there's only been female in the house all day'. 98 riddle use and comprehension (14) paddy englishman, paddy irishman and paddy scotsman all walked into a bar. and one of them said, 'i need to go to the toilet'. so paddy scotsman walks up to the toilet and he opens the door and he hears this sound: 'i am the ghost of the one black eye'. and he runs out really quickly and says, 'there's a ghost in the toilet!' so, paddy englishman, thinking he's being really brave, walks in and he hears the sound, 'i am the ghost of the one black eye' and he runs out and says, 'there really is a ghost in the toilet'. so paddy irishman goes in and the door opens and he hears the voice, 'i am the ghost of the one black eye'. and he says, 'yeah. and you'll be the ghost of the two black eyes in a second if you don't shut up'. fifth class (boys) child no. 16 (15)how do you know a blonde has been at her computer? there's tippex all over the screen. (16) doctor, doctor, i've got a spanner in my throat.' 'are you choking?' 'no, i'm serious.' (17)'waiter, there's a fly in my bowl'. 'he'll be swimming in the cup tomorrow. ' child no. 18 (18 paddy english, paddy irishman and paddy scotsman were all going to jail for five years. and they were each allowed to bring five hundred things with them. paddy englishman brought five hundred bottles of wine, paddy scotsman brought five hundred cakes and paddy scotsman [irishman-ed] brought five hundred cigarettes. when the five years were up, paddy englishman came out drunk, paddy scotsman came out fat and paddy irishman came out and said, 'does anyone have a light? sixth class girls) child no. 20 (19) paddy englishman, paddy irishman and paddy scotsman were out in the desert and they each bought one thing in the shop. paddy englishman bought a bottle of water, paddy scotsman bought a baseball cap and paddy irishman bought a car door. and they each asked each other why they had bought these things. paddy englishman wanted the water to drink if he got hot. paddy scotsman wanted the cap to keep the sun out of his eyes. and paddy irishman wanted the car door so that if it got too hot he could roll down the car window. child no. 21 (19) what goes black and white thump, black and white thump, black and white thump? a nun rolling down the stairs. what goes black and white, 'ha, ha', black and white, 'ha, ha', black and white, 'ha, ha'? the nun who pushed her. 99 staunton sixth class (boys) child no. 23 (20) what do you call a lada going up a hill? a miracle. (21) what do you do if a kerryman throws a grenade at you? you pull out the pin and throw it back. (22) what do you do if a kerryman throws a pin at you? you run because he probably has the grenade between his teeth. (23)how do you drown a kerryman? knock on the door of his subma rine. (24)did you hear about the kerryman's dictionary? it has an index. (25)have you heard about the kerryman's latest inventions? the water proof teabag and the underwater hairdryer. (26) what's black and white and goes, 'thump, thump, thump, crash?' a nun falling down the stairs. and what's black and white and goes, 'ah, ha, ha!' the nun who pushed her. child no. 24 (27)this idiot is in bed and the phone rings. and the voice says, 'hello, is this 2333964?' and the idiot says, 'no, this is 2333963'. 'oh, i'm sorry to get you out of bed'. 'no, it's ok. i had to get out of bed anyway to answer the phone. 100 ocr document children's folklore review volume 22 number 2 spring 2000 published by the children's folklore section of the american folklore society with support from the english department at east carolina university contents from the editor........……………………………………….…….5 1999 newell prize paper bare bums and wee chimneys: rudeness and defining the line between child and adult donna m. lanclos .................................................................... 7 e-contributions………………………………………………....49 cfs: 1999 annual meeting…………………………………….50 notes and announcements..........………………………......53 contributors.…………………………………………….……..54 on the cover: reproduction of the cover of w. w. newell's games and songs of american children. from the editor the dogwood and azaleas are blooming in eastern north carolina, and there is pollen everywhere. it must be, and indeed is, time for the spring volume of the children s folklore review. there are two fine essays in this issue of cfr. the first is "bare bums and wee chimneys: rudeness and defining the line between child and adult" by donna m. lanclos. this paper is one of the two newell prize papers for 1999. the co-winner was john m. bodner for his paper, "playing with networks: an ethnology of the scu-mun daycare based on network analysis". another of the e-mail contributions (which began a few issues ago) comes from judy mckinty in australia and is a follow-up to elizabeth tucker's "barney" article in cfr 22.1. as usual, the annual minutes of the meeting of the children's folklore section are printed here. the meeting was particularly important as new people, joann conrad and cherry levin, were elected to positions in the organization. little in the way of new notes and announcements was sent in this time, and the issue closes with the contributor's section. by the time you read this, panels and paper sessions will already have been proposed for the 2000 american folklore society meetings in columbus, ohio. please attend those sessions on children's folklore and come to the children's folklore section meeting which, again this year, will be a breakfast meeting. c.w sullivan iii bare bums and wee chimneys: rudeness and defining the line between child and adult donna m. lanclos a careful consideration of the uses of rude or "dirty" folklore on and off the playground is necessary, because it is around rude performance and references to rudeness by children that adults enact many of their expectations and desires for their children. reactions to verbal "dirt" reveal both the construction of children in the minds of adults, and the reaction of children to that construction. they explore it, they resist it, and occasionally they attempt to enforce it amongst their peers. the reaction of adults to the forbidden words and actions of kids, whether or not they are their own children, in turn speaks to anxieties and expectations that adults have about children and, by association, the society of the future. this paper concerns the ways in which belfast children used rude folklore to mark and question age categories among themselves on the playground. it is based on materials i collected during nine months of fieldwork, from 1996 into 1997, in five different belfast primary schools: two protestant/state schools (p.s.1 and p.s.2), two catholic schools (c.s.1 and c.s.2) and one integrated school (i.s.).1 in particular, i address the adult/child divide, the ways in which that separation is dependent upon western constructions of childhood, and furthermore, how folklore materials reveal children's awareness of and ambivalence toward the very label of child. in working-class northern ireland, it seems to be particularly difficult to maintain a rigid split between adult and child, and both kids' and parents' awareness of this difficulty informs many of the apparent contradictions between standards of behavior within the schools, and those applied without. the folklore materials i focus on here are those that the kids themselves classified as "dirty" or "rude": especially those concerned with scatological or sexual words and situations. i found in the course of my research that children's use of rude materials, and corresponding adult reactions to and anticipation of that use, serves as a kind of flashpoint for the discussion and negotiation of definitions of what it is supposed to mean to be a child. fundamental to this discussion, then, is a sense of what is meant by lanclos "dirty", and what it meant by childhood. mary douglas' description in purity and danger: an analysis of the concepts of pollution and taboo of "dirt" as "matter out of place" is also crucial to this argument, as is horace beck's equation of the term "dirty" with forbidden or obscene folklore, in his journal of american folklore article "say something dirty!" in this case, the "matter" in question consists of the sexual and scatological words and references. in belfast, i and the children i met encountered two different "places" where particular sorts of "matter" were unwelcome, and therefore "dirty." the first place was institutional settings, in particular schools, which are permeated by generalized middleclass notions of propriety (notions which do not include the public references to sex or other bodily functions). the second place was that of the abstract notion of childhood, also as defined by the middle-class, as a protected and (forcibly) innocent space ideally unsullied by forbidden, adult knowledge. while the vast majority of the kids i worked with in belfast were from working-class backgrounds, in the course of their everyday lives they were in frequent contact with institutions such as schools and with conventional, middle-class notions of proper child-like behavior. in this they were like the adults in their lives, who are regularly forced to confront middle-class expectations of behavior in their encounters with government agencies, city center department stores, and so on. most adults have long since learned the unspoken rules of conduct that determine when and where particular language and actions are and are not appropriate. children are in the middle of their struggle to learn the contexts in which "rudeness" is allowed (or at least, tolerated), but are also embroiled in the struggle to understand what can easily be perceived as adult hypocrisy around such issues. until the conventions are more clear to kids, they often see adult silencing and censoring as hypocritical: how can teachers forbid them to use the very same words they hear other adults using in the shops, or even at home? as they learn the nuances of rudeness, and the importance of context, the distinction between institutional, teacher-based behavior expectations, and the other everyday models they encounter outside of school becomes more clear, and kids become increasingly adept at interpreting and acting on contextual cues. however, one set of references are uniformly perceived, across class lines, as forbidden to children, and that is references to vio 8 bare bums and wee chimneys lence, especially sectarian violence. the association of rude, "dirty" language and violence is inherent in much of the folklore materials i collected in belfast. i explore the implications of this connection towards the end of this paper. for the purposes of the analysis i present here, expectations of "proper" childlike behavior directly inform notions of what is "dirty" when said or done by a child. i will first address some of the theoretical discussions about the status of children in western society, and the ways in which concerns about obscenity and children's use of same reflect both ideal constructions of childhood, and the conflicts of reality with that ideal: the lived reality of children, and the reality of adults who care for and about them. i then turn to the various ways in which children in belfast used obscenity and obscene folklore. both the folklore texts and the contexts in which they were employed provide a complex commentary on age roles, and especially on the children's perceptions of their own place within their rigidly age-graded society. a word on age-groups in northern irish schools schoolchildren receive strong signals about the importance of age in separating themselves from each other in their everyday school practices. the class grouping in northern irish primary schools, as is the case in the rest of britain, ireland, the united states, and indeed most of the parts of the world that use the western european model of schooling, are based on age ranges, so that p1 is four to five years old, p2 is five to six, p3 is six to seven, p4 is seven to eight, p5 is eight to nine, p6 is nine to ten, and p7 is ten to eleven. "p" stands for "primary," so "p1" is pronounced "pee one," and is short for "primary year one." such institutional separation of age grades frequently translates into separation away from school: parents in the united states frequently use whether or not there are children the same age as their own as a factor in deciding whether to move into a particular neighborhood, and the children themselves can take on these age-grades as given, if they have enough people their own age around to maintain such separations. in neighborhoods or schools with low populations of children, however, the rigidity of the age-grades breaks down in favor of simply having someone to play with; this has been described in america by marjorie goodwin, in he-said-she-said, and barrie thorne in gender play. 9 lanclos in the belfast schools in which i worked, even though children mixed with other age groups on the playgrounds, the mixing was controlled by the adults in the schools. for instance, at c.s.1, the teachers allowed the younger girls (p1—p4) to mix with the older girls (p5 through p7) for about ten minutes during their lunch break, but at the end of that time insisted that the younger children line up and go back into their classrooms. resistance to mixing also came from the kids themselves, especially among groups close in age (e.g., p4s and p5s). this was the case when i saw p5s rejecting p4s who volunteered to play with them, something that happened at most populous schools in my sample: p.s.1, c.s.1 and c.s.2, and i.s. but if maintaining the rigid agegrades meant that there wouldn't be enough players in a game, or simply that play wouldn't be very satisfying, they were quick to adjust, as was certainly the case outside of school in their home neighborhoods, where many age-mates might or might not share a street, but a wide range of ages would. internal (that is, within the category of child) age grade distinctions were most frequently maintained in the practice of play. that is, distinctions were made from one group through the exclusion of people from the game, or from overt declarations that "you don't know how to do it properly," a dismissal that resulted more often than not in the child retreating to the company of an age-mate, and playing with them. distinctions of child from adult, while also exercised in physical practice (children ran around on the playground and played, adults supervised that play), was more frequently present in the performances of folklore materials, especially in rude rhymes, jokes, and songs, wherein children would not only mark the distinction, but would challenge and mock it. regardless of internal divisions among the pupils at all of the schools, all were classified as "children" by the adults, including teachers, playground supervisors, classroom aides, and custodial staff while the divisions within the school of p7 from p4 were important, the constant status of "child," held by all pupils at the schools, and the behavior expectations implied in that label by the adults at the schools, permeated the everyday experiences of every child. 10 bare bums and wee chimneys the child as innocent: constructions of childhood these behavior expectations are linked to broader western (european and american) expectations of how children are supposed to act, by virtue of the fact that they are children. much has been written about the socio-cultural constructions of the child, and childhood, beginning in 1962 with philippe aries' seminal volume centuries of childhood. in particular, the notion of a proper child as innocent, meek, protected, has been discussed as a particularly bourgeois and western concept, but one that has become a conventional model, in this the end of the twentieth century, for what the behavior (if not the actual essence) of a child ought to be. because the innocence of children can only be observed by adults through patterns of behavior, underlying assumptions about the true nature of the child can vary, even within uniform expectations of behavior patterns. therefore, while one parent may subscribe to the model that children are inherently bad, and must be taught to be good, and one parent may assume that children are inherently good, and learn to be bad from outside sources, both parents may still hold expectations of behavior that require outward appearances of goodness and innocence. in the end, it does not matter if the children curse inwardly, so long as they do not do it aloud, among adults, and so rupture the desired image of the child as innocent. of course, aries was not the first to discuss the culturally constructed nature of childhood; margaret mead and martha wolfenstein explored that very issue in 1955, in their edited volume childhood in contemporary cultures, as did beatrice whiting in her 1963 work six cultures: studies of child-rearing. his discussion of a particularly protected, bourgeois notion of childhood is important here, because it is this notion that belfast children (and most children in the urban, western european and american world's) regularly encounter in their everyday lives. this is not to say that this ideal model of the innocent and dependent child is accepted wholeheartedly, either by the children themselves, or by their parents. it is to say that this model has been generalized to such a degree that it has become the picture of what "should be normal," in belfast and elsewhere, and so it must be confronted, 11 lanclos both in this theoretical discussion, as well as by the kids themselves. the epistemological move that aries documents via social history, removing young people from the realm of everyday adult life and into a separate, protected childhood, coincided in the nineteenth century with an invention of notions of obscenity and pornography that very explicitly constructed women as particularly susceptible to the corruptive influences of pornography, as has been discussed by the authors in lynn hunt's edited volume the invention of pornography: obscenity and the origins of modernity. women and children both were constructed as the vulnerable, and therefore needing protection from harm, including the potential harm of obscenity. it was not until 1977 in the u.s. that child pornography laws were in effect; in the face of women's rejection of male "protection," this is a striking parallel with the move from women being the "problem" informants in anthropology, as described by edwin ardener, to children being classified as the same.2 some feminist theorists today define pornography as another form of violence, and if women and children must be protected from violence, then they must likewise be protected from pornography and obscenity. this is not to suggest that children (and women, and all others) should not be protected from sexual and other sorts of abuse. the fact that obscenity definitions include far more than just pornography, however, means that children's speech is regularly censored by wellmeaning adults who are afraid that children's familiarity with "dirty" materials will lead to familiarity with other, more dangerous and antisocial realms, including violence. while in the belfast city center, i would regularly observe women or men talking to friends, on buses, in taxis, or simply on the street, as if their child were not there, observing every act and listening to every word. the adults would often use words such as "fuck," "shite," "hell," – words that children are simply not supposed to say, even if they know them. even if these adults themselves do not punish their children for rudeness—i did observe some parents laughing indulgently at a "cheeky" child—some adults will, especially teachers and playground supervisors. regardless of the individual model of childhood constructed within each family, then, the broader "societal" model will be encountered by chil 12 bare bums and wee chimneys dren at regular intervals, and they will have to deal with the tension that ensues, between what they have observed to be true about adult behavior, and what is expected of "proper" children's behavior. folklore and definitions of the obscene g. legman, in his introductory essays to sandra mccosh's children's humor: a joke for every occasion, and vance randolph's roll me in your arms: "unprintable" ozark folksongs and folklore, details with some dismay the long history of folklorists' struggle with obscene materials, of self-censorship and the censorship of informants, especially children, who produce obscene or even slightly off-color materials. it is telling that the censorship in print of children's lore begins in the seventeenth century, a time that aries identifies as one of the most "plentiful" in the definition of childhood as an innocent time apart from the adult world. during the late nineteenth century, when folklore was just beginning to be defined as a discipline, censorship of children's folklore was at its height, as evidenced by the production of what in 1979 legman called the "lily-pure" (xvii) collection by lady alice gomme, the traditional games of england, scotland, and ireland published from 1894 to 1898. the victorian sensibilities surrounding childhood in turn continued to influence subsequent generations of folklorists, most notably peter and iona opie, as evidenced in their works the lore and language of schoolchildren, and childre’ s games in street and playground. while the opies' collections are undisputedly important contributions to the field of folklore collection, they dismiss scatological or sexual materials as only used by "ogre" or "savage" children, first in lore and language (95-96), and additionally in iona opie's people on the playground (26). such dismissal continued the tradition of normalizing "innocence" among children, and marking the display of any other kind of knowledge as pathological. of course, freud and those who were to follow the thinking in his three essays on the theory of sexuality wrote much to disrupt the victorian hegemony of the innocence of the (middle-class) child, and there were folklorists influenced by his attempt to re-introduce the notion of childhood sexuality as normal, and 13 lanclos as requiring more study than silence.3 martha wolfenstein's children’s humor: a psychological approach is exemplary in its analytic approach to children's humor of all sorts, including the sexual and the scatological. legman noted in 1979 that the number of folklorists actively collecting (and more importantly, finding publishers for) obscene materials from anyone, including children, had remained a steady trickle since the 1930s, especially in the united states and britain. now, in the 1990s, one can with relative ease find published collections of children's obscene lore, for example, parts of simon bronner's american children’s lore, as well as wendy lowenstein's shocking, shocking, shocking: the improper play rhymes of australian children. many of these published works lack analysis, and remain disembodied collections, with little sense of the purpose to which children would put such folklore. it should also be noted that many collections of obscene materials, both from children and adults, are the result of attempting to fill in the "holes" left by expurgated volumes printed earlier, as randolph tried to do with his ozark collections in roll me in your arms. with children's folklore, researchers are trying to balance the previous "lily-pure" picture given by earlier scholars, and in so doing produce volumes that actually exaggerate the existence of obscene children's lore in everyday practice. publishing the materials in separate volumes highlights them in a way that is not true to the actual performance of the lore, which tends to be mixed, and highly dependent on intentions of performers, and context in which they are performing. such exaggeration can feed the fears of adults who continue, as most do in the united states and britain, to hold to at least some extent the now middle-class ideal of the good child as an innocent child, and a good childhood as one that shields children from inappropriate experiences and materials. such an ideal has an impact regardless of the economic class, in that it tends to be the middle and upper class who make and enforce the rules, and when those rules pertain to children and child welfare, the middleclass ideal of innocence is imposed upon everyone. the censorship of children's folklore in print and in practice speaks as much to the adult need to protect themselves from the awareness that children are not and cannot be the ideal innocents so perfected in image by the victorians. but as michel foucault 14 bare bums and wee chimneys made clear with the case of sexuality, in the history of sexuality, an introduction: volume 1, the silencing of the obscene (much of which was defined as such because of explicit references to sexuality, not coincidentally) in fact highlights its titillating appeal, for adults as well as children. the individuals defining materials as rude are the adults, and they make these definitions known by silencing or censuring children who are "dirty" within adult earshot.4 children then take these definitions on amongst themselves, gasping in disbelief, disapproval, or (frequently) pleasure when one of their peers would come out with a joke or rhyme that, had adults heard, would elicit the usual adult response. this is a context-driven definition very much based on a "because we [the adults] say so" rationale regarding the nature of obscene materials. the bourgeois model of an innocent childhood could be seen in the expectations of many parents in belfast, and in the precautions children took to make sure they were not caught being "improper" (and in the joy they took in disobeying the rules of propriety). it should be noted that what i am calling the innocent child model of behavior was not uniform, and was very dependent on class; children can be protected only insofar as the family can afford to, and if the child is needed for domestic work, such as childcare, doing the shopping, or even just taking care of themselves while their parents/grandparents are at work, then the adults are aware that children are more "exposed" by necessity, and are less uniformly condemnatory of obscenity and other "improper" behavior. in some cases, such behavior would be classed as "cheeky" or "bold" in a good way: the working class child needs that attitude to succeed in the economically and politically and socially hostile world outside (and sometimes even within) their own neighborhood/community.5 sandra mccosh noticed while collecting jokes in schools in england and america that teachers uniformly censored kids who asked if they could tell "rude" jokes, but for a variety of reasons. one teacher in leeds simply asserted that the kids "shouldn't know any" rude jokes (75), while a teacher in san francisco was afraid that once the kids started, they wouldn't stop telling dirty jokes. this idea that kids would become uncontrollable once they were allowed to express dirty materials speaks eloquently of broader 15 lanclos adult fears concerning the need to control children, and in particular the fear of the potential for "other" children to get out of control. "other" children are those of the other, whether it be class or race-based distinctions of otherness; teachers in belfast, and often in america and england, are frequently from a community other than the one in which they taught (although this is changing somewhat) and so do not see the children they taught or the children's parents as necessarily members of the same community that they, the teachers, belonged to. this fear of uncontrollably "dirty" kids implies that the slope from rudeness to outright obscenity and beyond is a slippery one, nearly impossible to escape once embarked upon. additionally, these fears seem to point to an underlying assumption behind the innocent child model: if children are not made innocent through the efforts of adults around them, then they will become bad children, uncouth, antisocial, and even violent. there are, in fact, two related models of childhood imbedded in aries' discussion, and in contemporary popular concepts of the child: the first, the innocent protected child, is the ideal cleaved and aspired to, especially by those who can afford to shield their children from the "real world." it is incumbent on parents operating under this model to make sure their children are not exposed, or do not indulge in, behavior that does not fit this model of innocence. therefore they censure kids who refer to sex or bodily functions, because they interpret such references as beginning the slide down the obscenity slope mentioned above. the second model, that of the uncontrollable, bad child, is one frequently employed to discuss the problems with "other people's children." this is the case in many parts of the world with "street children" problems; the kids are stigmatized as inherently out of control and uncivilized, a contaminating influence on whoever they contact and wherever they live.6 these "bad children" are the logical result of not protecting children, as well as justification for protecting children in the first place. what is missing from these complementary models is any sense of middle ground, any feeling that kids could, for instance, use "bad words" and still be worthwhile members of society, let alone children.7 the fact is that kids, like most people, mix obscene, "bad" materials in with the rest of their everyday discourses. they just have to try and make sure they do it out of adult earshot, so as not to invite punishment. 16 bare bums and wee chimneys gender and class in uses of obscenity there are clearly class differences regarding rudeness and the appropriateness of dirty words. the working-class parents i observed outside of school seemed to be more tolerant of cursing, so long as it wasn't directed at them, or seen to be intended as hurtful. intentionality was far more important than just the bare fact of cursing, and so standards of behavior as far as obscenity (in terms of words, anyway) were more contextual, less absolute in the "children should never say that" way. standards about other kinds of unacceptable behavior, including making fart noises, potty talk, and sectarian language, were also situational. i saw some adults simply ignore such things, if they did not feel it was directed at them, or if they saw no real harm in the activities. i also saw some adults use that behavior as an excuse to come down on a child who "had it coming," who had been acting up in more innocuous ways, and who was perhaps getting on their nerves, and so the obscenity was the last straw, and the adult wasn't prepared to overlook it. it is a more flexible approach to obscenity among children, one which actually gives the kids some credit for being capable of knowing when it is and is not appropriate, and to some extent lessening the hypocrisy of those adults who do use obscene language in their everyday speech practices. it also acknowledges that one cannot control one's kids' speech all of the time, and that being selective about the battles one has with them conserves precious energy needed to spend on the real problems and pleasures of life. however, while it might have been more acceptable for the kids in the neighborhoods i was working in to be "obscene" by middle-class belfast standards, it was still restricted by the potential for adult disapproval. many kids were still learning and testing when and where they could get away with obscene language, in much the same way (and often at the same time) that they would test the limits of physical play, often dancing on the edge of verbal or physical violence, and sometimes going beyond it. when they did go beyond it, the kids were frequently pulled back, by peers as well as adults. kids who were viciously physical or obscene with their peers were not played with as often, or were interacted with cautiously, and not with abandon. 17 lanclos kids might also, in their uses of obscene language and images, have been rebelling against the hypocrisy of adults who used those very same words and phrases, but attempted to prohibit children from doing so. such prohibition from adults was very gendered; most of the censure i witnessed came from women, and furthermore, girls tended to be scolded for such language more so than boys. this speaks to particular constructions of the masculine in working-class belfast, where it is not only expected but more acceptable that men would curse and be crude. this is not to say that women didn't similarly indulge, only that public perceptions of who could do so "acceptably" were strikingly split. this model is also particularly class-specific, where in the working class, it is more accepted that women do indulge in such behavior, while middle or upper-class women would not do so, for fear of seeming "lower class." again, the ideal model of gender behavior is class-situated, so that even if working class women actually accept it far more amongst themselves, they are still aware of the abstract potential for censure from the middle and upper class establishment-whether or not they change their behavior because of the potential censure is an individual matter. one would also hear girls scold each other and their male peers, far more than boys ever would, for obscenity. in my experience, boys rarely threatened to tell an adult about a peer's obscene conduct, even if they were not friends. younger boys (under the age of 6, for the most part), did appear to be more likely to report obscenity. i was frequently used in attempts to get others in trouble, when boys would run up and tell me "so and so said a bad word!" the minute i asked them (as i tried to do consistently), "which one?" the tattlers knew i was a lost cause as an authority figure. frequently they would start to say the word, and then catch themselves, shooting me a startled and cross look as they went in search of a more effective authority figure. girls of all ages, on the other hand, would police each other far more vigilantly, even if sometimes it was only in play; they would threaten to tell, playfully, and so highlight the naughtiness of the just-uttered joke or word. definitions of dirt for the kids i met in belfast, the awareness of potential adult censure was enough to make most uses of obscenity self-consciously 18 bare bums and wee chimneys rebellious acts. the older kids, especially boys around the age of 11, seemed to have a less self-conscious attitude towards cursing—while they were still very self-conscious about sexual matters. this may be related to the rather unself-conscious cursing that many adults in belfast appeared to engage in, and could reflect the growing conception that the boys (and some girls) have of themselves as near-adults, even at the relatively young age of 11 or 12. what then counts as forbidden or rude materials? by whose standards are materials proclaimed as such, and do these definitions always hold true? in her collection of children's jokes in the u.k. and the u.s., sandra mccosh included all "dirty or 'rude' jokes" under the analytic category of "sex, " which for her included "actual or implied reference to the physical relationship between men and women; parts of the body, both male and female; swear words or dirty words; and bodily functions, such as going to the toilet (75)." she based this definition on children's attitudes towards the joke, and i agree that this is the most effective way of ascertaining the level of rudeness that the kids are engaging in. if they perceive the materials to be forbidden, then they are. however circular that definition may be, it is certainly a relevant one to the kids, who know how to classify materials like jokes based on the reaction of those around them, including peers and adults. mccosh notes that the younger children, from about 6 to 8 years of age, she collected from tended to indulge more often in jokes concerning bodily functions, especially toilet jokes, while the older kids, starting at about 9 and for her sample, through the age of 12 or 13, tended to tell what she names "actual" sexual jokes. i define "dirty" materials, for the purposes of this discussion, as either language or subject matter considered by adults to be unacceptable, rude, or even wicked for children (and in some cases, depending on the social context, for adults). this includes curse words, the most popular of which were "fuck" and "shit," references to undergarments and sex, and references to other bodily functions, especially excretory ones. the materials were frequently marked by the kids themselves as "dirty," either in exclamations about another's joke ("oh, that's a dirty one!"), or in a warning phrase before a joke was told ("this one's dirty"). some of their "catches" played with the notion of "the dirty," especially the following: 19 lanclos wanna hear a dirty joke? a man fell in the mud. wanna hear a clean one? he got washed.8 the above teases the audience with the teller's knowledge that his or her audience does want to hear the dirty joke, and then further teases with a very literal punchline. it indicates the teller's knowledge of the attraction of truly dirty materials, both for him or herself, as well as for their audience. my consideration of rude materials on the playground is one that i hope makes clear the integral nature of materials considered improper or forbidden by adults within the traditions of children. they use "dirt" in very measured ways, for very particular purposes, and not simply because they know adults don't want them to-although that is certainly part of it. at what point do materials used by children cease, if ever, to become dirty, and segue into the realm of acceptable? it is possible that such materials, because the joy taken in expressing them is so tied to the awareness of an abstract adult disapproval, that it would be singularly dissatisfying to ever move rude materials into the realm of the acceptable.9 their very forbidden nature is what makes the jokes, rhymes, and isolated words and exclamations, so very attractive, and so particularly useful as well. in some cases, they were used to mark and question my own status. i encountered most such marking early in my field season, when i was still being introduced to the students, and when they were still unsure about my status on their playgrounds. i was, clearly, not a "kid", not one of them. so was i a supervisor? was i a teacher? if i was none of those, what was i, anyway? in addition to direct questions—of which there were many—the children at all of the schools tended to employ jokes and very measured uses of rudeness as a way of gauging my status. concealing dirt in the schools the sensitivity of the kids to their uses of dirty materials may in fact be far more related to their awareness of the requirements of the institutional setting (the school), rather than their adherence to some far more abstract notion of innocence perpetuated by 20 bare bums and wee chimneys middle-class notions of a proper childhood. the two are not unrelated, however, as the schools' ethos, especially surrounding that of the place of children in society, is directly informed by such middle-class notions, regardless of the class identity of the kids within the school. one game perfectly mocked this sense of propriety: at both c.s.2 and i.s. i observed kids playing "sorry," wherein the players deliberately run into each other, almost but not quite knocking other players over. each time they knock into someone, the players call, "sorry!"—often in whining, insincere tones of voice.10 the message of the game appeared to be that so long as one held to social conventions and appearances, however insincerely, one's rude, actual behavior could become acceptable. as with the rigidity of gender separation on the playground, described in barrie thorne's gender play as well as in derek van rheenen's article "boys who play hopscotch," the apparently strict awareness of what is "proper" behavior on the playground may fade once off school grounds, both among kids on their own, as well as among kids and parents. this would go a long way towards explaining why, away from school, i witnessed parents tolerating and even encouraging some kinds of language and behavior that on the playground was instantly censured. the parents were aware of what was "proper" for particular contexts, and were enforcing this sense of propriety when appropriate. in many cases, kids who violated that propriety on the playground did not do so out of ignorance, but rather did so in a very deliberate and calculated way, as a part of their continuing evaluation of the loyalty of their peers, and of the actual rigidity of the boundary that separated the acceptable behavior of adult and child.11 one strategy for walking that fine behavioral line was the use of several different versions of the same rhyme within a given child's repertoire. most notably, the knowledge and use of a "g-rated" version in place of an "r-rated" version allows reference to the forbidden material without actually saying it. some 6 and 7 year old girls at c.s.2 gave me this counting out rhyme: ip dip12 dog shit you aren't on it everyone but you you aren't on it 21 lanclos but one girl at c.s.1 had a censored version that still allowed her to indulge in the imagery of dog excrement, without saying a completely forbidden word: ip dip, dog's dirt [etc.]. a cognate, and much milder version of the two rhymes above, also collected from c.s.2, went as follows: ip dip dip my little ship sailed down the alleyway and you aren't on it this last version was used quite frequently, especially during the early months of my fieldwork, and i continued to collect it at the larger schools, especially i.s., where not all of the kids knew me well, or were very comfortable in my presence. the rude versions were said in situations where either the kids did not know i was around (in which case they acted horrified when they realized i'd just taped them), or knew me well enough not to care that i was hearing them say those words. for example, at p.s.2, two five-year old girls counted out to "ip dip dog shit," but while i was listening, the first time they did it, the girl doing the counting out simply fell silent at the place where the dirty word belonged. after the first rendition, she actually said the word "shit," perhaps confident in my lack of censure after the first round.13 some counting out is done in complete silence, with the child doing the counting out saying the rhyme to themselves as the rest of them count along, keeping track of who should be out. you can tell that the others do keep track, because occasionally there would be disputes about who should "really" be out. the "silent performance" of a counting out rhyme allows for "closet" rudeness, where all know that the forbidden rhyme is being used, because it is "called" beforehand (e.g., "ip dip!"), and so can enjoy the knowledge that they are violating adult interdictions even while they are protected by their overt silence. 22 bare bums and wee chimneys among the peer group: rudeness as a means of testing loyalty as i witnessed this process of assessing tolerance for the forbidden as applied to me, i began to realize that they applied this to each other, as well. kids regularly used rude materials as a sort of test, not just of me, but of their peers, as a way of determining who was more loyal to their friends, and to children's notions of conduct and propriety, than to abstract adult standards of same. many issues of belonging and identity are invested in who one's age mates are, and how loyal they are. loyalty to friends is expressed in a variety of ways, including tolerating (and not interrupting) particular jokes, or, alternately, tolerating someone's interruption of their joke, and even accepting corrections (or at least, accommodating them). it is also expressed in a toleration of rudeness, and very specifically, in not reporting it to adults in authority. in telling me dirty jokes (starting at a low level and progressing a higher level), they were assessing my trustworthiness, and therefore my eligibility to be included in some way in the group. for instance, invariably, at every school, the first even slightly-off color joke i was told was the following: knock knock [who's there?] bear [bear who?] bare bum! generally this joke would come after one or two "why did the x cross the road" jokes, or some other equally innocuous piece. my reaction to the "bare bum" joke was inevitably closely scrutinized, and when i encouraged them to tell more, the kids would usually continue, not necessarily immediately following with an even more off-color joke, but usually throwing one or two into the subsequent mix. and no wonder they were curious how i would react. the joke is actually quite provocative. one p4 girl at c.s.1 followed her performance of "bare bum" with: 23 lanclos knock knock [who's there?] bear [bear who?] bare clare! in making herself bare as a part of the punchline, clare revealed, so to speak, that the bum in the original joke is not just anyone's behind, but is in fact that of the joke-teller. the joke allows the teller to (in american argot) "moon" the listener without actually doing so, a masterful substitution of words for action.14 they did the same among their peers. in a "joking relationship," as traditionally defined by anthropologists,15 individuals tolerate impropriety within the frame of play, as defined by gregory bateson, as an expression of trust. while peer groups were predominantly age groups, they were also cross-cut by gender. therefore, if a girl wanted to emphasize her difference from boys, she might exaggeratedly disapprove of their fart jokes as "disgusting." if she wanted to emphasize how much older she was than a group of boys and girls, she might do the same; or, she might even bewilder or impress them by upping the ante from toilet humor to sexual references. sometimes the testing incorporated a catch question as well as some kind of dirty reference. for instance, an ll-year old boy at p.s.2 asked me: what do you call a wee man made out of cement? a wee hard man he then moved on to: knock knock dml: who's there? bear dml: bear who? bare bum. [giggles] and for the finale: guess what? dml: what? you guessed 24 bare bums and wee chimneys as i was laughing, the boy exclaimed, "this is cracker!" meaning, "this is great," and i tried to get him to say even more jokes by telling him i knew he was "full of them." the above exchange shows him testing me, seeing how i will react to the mild dirtiness of the bare bum joke and then catching me with the "you guessed" joke. he shows his pleasure with "this is cracker," which might be an indication that he's pleased with my positive reaction, or lack of a negative one; i laughed, rather than scolding him for tricking me, or for mentioning bare bums. catch questions like "guess what" were frequently used by boys to mark the boundary of an in-group from an out-group.16 the person caught in the catch is made to appear to say, do, or be something embarrassing. those who fall for the catch could be: 1) not in the age group of the person executing the catch, 2) not in the peer group of the person executing the catch, or 3) actually in the peer group, but the person "catching" you is "only messing," and in so doing, is emphasizing your friendship. the third option is seldom the case, because if you are firmly a member, you do not fall for the catch-primarily because it is not done to you in the first place. a more likely scenario is that you learn the catch from witnessing a member of your in-group doing it to a nonmember. children's rules for appropriate behavior-much like those employed among adults-are not hard and fast, but rather are guidelines that allow kids to use language in fluid, complex ways to suit their own purposes, and not just that of the adults in their world. it is because the rules are variable and context-dependent that kids relied on a "testing" strategy to evaluate a person's trustworthiness. in my experience, children would seldom come right out and be rude first thing. they went, as a rule, through very measured stages of evaluation, observing my reaction to mildly risqué material before escalating to something more explicit. for instance, "cinderella" was an immensely popular skipping rhyme at p.s.1, and the versions i invariably heard on the playground were some variety of: cinderella dressed in yellow went upstairs to see her fellow how many kisses did she give him? 1,2,3 25 lanclos this was an extremely popular rhyme, not least in part because of the reference to kissing, which is assumed to be engaged in by the skipper. the more skips the skipper successfully carries out, the more kisses she "gives," making the truly skilled skippers into extremely experienced "kissers" in one fell swoop. the embarrassment of being a "kisser" thus tempers the joy in skipping, and might even discourage some skippers from monopolizing the rope. those waiting their turn to skip frequently sing along, which allows them to enjoy the potential discomfort of the current skipper/kisser. one day, a couple of months into my field season, i was taping the a group of p5 girls "cold," that is, taping them singing without them skipping, and one girl, amy, led the group into the following version: cinderella dressed in yellow went upstairs to kiss her fellow when she came down her knickers busted how many people were disgusted i had never heard this version before, but the rest of the girls clearly had, and were initially quite giggly and nervous that amy had chosen to sing it for me. i asked them to repeat it for the tape, however, and with that all of the girls chipped in singing, quite loudly.17 the sexual nature of cinderella's actions (resulting in her "knickers busting") was what both attracted the girls to the rhyme and made it such a risky thing to chant in the presence of a real adult—that is, one who would punish them for uttering it in the first place. while i did have that potential power, i had never exercised it. i had successfully made the transition, distancing myself from "'real" adults, and becoming a fit, potentially appreciative audience for the rhyme. much later in the year, at i.s., a small group of p3 girls were skipping, and one girl in particular, kira, insisted that i record the following version of cinderella. i had already recorded the "usual" version, the first one listed above, many times at this school. cinderella dressed in blue18 went upstairs to do a poo 26 bare bums and wee chimneys how many poos did she do? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20 these much younger girls had hit upon a particularly rich vein of adult disapproval—any mention of excretory functions, in particular "doing a poo," but also including farting, or making fart noises. the girls who chanted this rhyme were particularly pleased that kira managed to skip as high as twenty times, maximizing the number of "poos" they could refer to in the rhyme. notice as well that the obscenity for the younger children, in this case about six years old, concerned excretory functions, while the older children, eight or nine years for the ones who sang the "knickers busted" version, are using sexual images. where there was no gradual buildup to outright dirtiness, it was because i asked for it first thing. the only time i did this in my fieldwork was when i specified to the kids that i wanted "rude christmas carols." these were almost inevitably parodies of jingle bells,19 and i had discovered that if i did not specify that i wanted the rude ones, that i would be left with several minutes worth of the regular christmas carol on my tapes. direct inquiry yielded songs such as the following, from i.s. jingle bells, jingle bells joker smells a thousand miles away he let a fart behind the cart and blew up the ira. this is rude not only because of the mention of farting, but also because of the reference to the ira. i collected this christmas parody from protestant, catholic, and integrated school pupils, all of whom appeared delighted to be singing about farting and blowing up the ira, a lethally funny combination of forbidden subjects: bodily functions and sectarian violence. children were not supposed to mention the paramilitary organizations around adults, and were often shushed for doing so in my presence. after that rendition, which is a combination of the parody involving batman and the one involving santa claus, several kids20 remembered that they knew that one, so i got a group version: 27 lanclos jingle bells santa smells a hundred miles away let a fart behind the cart and blew up the ira—ho! similar stuff was to be had at c.s.2, from some of the older girls, ranging in age from 9 to 11: jingle bells santa smells a thousand miles away let a fart behind the cart and blew up the ira! the only non-jingle bells parody i collected was the following, from c.s.2, sung right after a version of "jingle bells, batman smells," and was probably inspired by the reference to farting: the addams family started21 when uncle fester farted he farted through the keyhole and par-al-ysed the cat the cat got all excited and shouted, "man united"22 and man united shouted "the addams family!" duh deh deh deh thpph thppph[two farting noises] duh deh deh deh thpph thppph[mad giggling at all this farting noise] duh deh deh deh duh deh deh deh duh deh deh deh thpph thppph much could be said here about the image of uncle fester "starting" the family by farting, reminiscent of freudian theories of male appropriation of birth through images of defecation, as 28 bare bums and wee chimneys has been discussed by alan dundes in his article "couvade in genesis," but in this particular performance of the rude song, what were clearly most important at the time were all of the farting noises, which inspired gales of giggles and laughter, and were so much fun that the girls had no hesitation at all in repeating the song for me, so that i might capture it on tape. once it was recorded, the girls insisted that i play it back for them, and they thoroughly enjoyed hearing—and occasionally sang along with—their voices on tape. at c.s.1 i frequently held "recording sessions" with a particular group of p4 girls who, once they figured out i wanted to hear from them, were happy to provide me with materials. the girls would crowd around me and my tape recorder, and would often simply sing or chant the rhymes. it was evident that it was far easier for them to remember the words to counting out and clapping rhymes if they were actually doing the counting out or clapping, and so i would encourage them to "say it like you're doing it," if their memory failed them as i was taping them "cold." a series of materials they gave me in november, still fairly early in my field season, began with a counting out rhyme containing no risqué material. one potato, two potato, three potato four23 five potato, six potato, seven potato more [this] spud's out! the next volunteer ("can i say one?") proceeded to a rhyme wherein the main character has her "knickers [underwear] in the air and her jumper [sweater] inside out," suggesting improper if not outright obscene behavior. the performer initially forgot how the entire rhyme goes, but clearly remembers the important part, that of the knickers being in the air. a nearby friend took over the recitation of the rhyme. for these girls, the part of the rhyme that made them giggle appeared to be the very mention of the word "knickers," and not so much the implied situation that would have resulted in the knickers being in the air in the first place. again, the mere mention of bodies, especially those improperly exposed, or engaged in private and often gross functions, was plenty amusing for these younger children. 29 lanclos there is a party on the hill would you like to come? [yes] {pause}. . . with your knickers in the air. . . {interruption} [no!] {someone else takes over} there's a party on the hill would you like to come? [yes] who's your very best chum? [martina] martina will be there with her knickers in the air and her jumper in-sideout24 a series of knock knock jokes was started at this point, and towards the end, one girl then told the following knock knock joke. knock knock [who's there?] paddy [paddy who?] paddy irishman this joke signals a whole new turn in the joke telling, which led to a series of paddy jokes, three in all they go from mild to rude, with the last one actually having the word "shit" in it. a different girl starts the series with a paddy irishman, paddy englishman and paddy scotsman joke: paddy irishman, paddy scottishman and paddy englishman were in this big haunted house. and they were starving, and paddy irishman went down intil the kitchen, and he—he went til the cupboards and he got a cup of tea, right, and he was looking in the fridge and he sees a big thick slice in the fridge and he…and he hears this voice, {makes her voice deep} "i told you once i told you twice i told you thirty times not to eat that thick slice." this is an unfinished joke, cognate with several others i collected involving a ghost protecting something, usually food or money, that the various characters want.25 the last character to go in and 30 bare bums and wee chimneys try for the object is usually the one to get it. this joke speaks to a desire to ignore edicts about what you can and cannot have-adult restrictions on children's desires-and allows for that desire to be satisfied within the joke, with the usual punch line allowing the final protagonist to get away with the desired object. in this version of the joke, however, the teller leaves us with the edict "not to eat that thick slice" unchallenged by any of the characters, perhaps indicating less conviction about the possibility of defying such a command from a figure of authority. another girl joined in the session with the following contribution: paddy englishman paddy scotchman and paddy irishman were all in a haunted house and they brought guns and that and they heard somebody go "whoooo whoooo!" and one of them shooting and banged the door open and went and knocked the door in 'hi the toilet and there's a wee girl in there picking her nose going, "whooo whoooo!" [the teller mimics the blissful smile the girl in the joke would have had].26 this joke maintains the thematic thread of the "three paddys in a haunted house," but introduces the mention of a rude action—picking one's nose, and furthermore, enjoying it. the girl telling the joke was explicit both in tone of voice and in expression that the girl in the joke was having a wonderful time both picking her nose, and perhaps in scaring the three (adult) paddys, who were probably expecting a ghost. the end of this short session was the following: paddy irishman, paddy englishman, and paddy scotchman were all on this flying carpet, right? whatever they wished for they got. and paddy irishman wished for a pot. . . paddy englishman [she gets help here—"wished for a pot of gold!" teller says "no," the corrector says, "he did!" so i say to let her tell the joke her way for now.] paddy englishman wished for a big thing of. . . you know. . . pot of [corrector says, "money!"]. . . gold. paddy scotchman wished for a big bottle of scotch. and paddy irishman, didn't know what to wish for, and he tripped and said, "shit" and landed in a big pile of shit." 31 lanclos the theme has shifted again here; this is still a paddy joke, but it belongs to the set of jokes involving wishes27 the joke was hurriedly told, and to some extent "by committee," with help from the audience, indicating a desire to get to the punchline, which contains not only the word "shit," twice, but the terribly funny image of paddy irishman landing in a big pile of it. not only does the joke itself violate adult standards of proper children's conduct, but the image of landing in a pile of shit runs rather contrary to adult admonitions, regularly heard on the playground, not to get dirty, to be careful with one's clothes, etc. these jokes were told in november, and while it rains frequently throughout the year in northern ireland, it is particularly rainy in the winter, and supervisors at this school and at others had been particularly vigilant about not letting the students into the grassy areas near the playgrounds, so that they would not get muddy. this was a very long session, involving rhymes, jokes, and songs, and i had been extremely careful not to act shocked or disapproving of any of the materials they gave me, so as to make the girls feel at ease. just as the bell was about to ring for them to return to class, some of the girls wanted to give me "a funny song," and a large group of them sang very loudly: mummy mummy mummy! there's something in my nappie it's big and brown i can't sit down and if i sit and squash it you will have to wash it it's not a joke the washing machine's broke there is no soap my dolly's head's broke. this song is funny because of the reference to shit-filled diapers, the "big and brown" "something in my nappie." it is also an exercise in control, with the child, in the nappie, lording over the mother the fact that "if i sit and squash it, you will have to wash it." the seriousness of that threat is exacerbated by the apparent poverty, or at least temporary down and out status, of their situation. "the washing machine's broke, there is no soap, my dolly's 32 bare bums and wee chimneys head's broke" can be read not just as a statement of the way things are, but as a protest by the child of the conditions in which she has to live. she is clearly blaming the parent-in this case, the mother-for the situation, and is threatening to make it worse if it doesn't get better. the issues of control over adults implicit in the text of this song were accompanied by the sense of control that the girls were clearly reveling in while they were singing this very rude song, very loudly, while standing in their classroom, traditionally the site where they are most assuredly not supposed to be singing rude songs. the performance was a triumph over perceived limits set by adult sensibilities, and an expression of solidarity amongst the girls against those who would censor them. children challenging adults there is a distinct discourse within rude jokes concerning challenging authority, as embodied in a variety of different adult characters. the challenge comes not just the act of telling an inappropriate joke, but in the texts of the jokes themselves. occasionally the jokes were relatively subtle, as was the case with one told by carly, a 10 year old at p.s.2. she had been listening to a series of jokes told by 10 and 11 year old boys, and joined in at the level of obscenity that the boys had worked up to, after they had walked away for a few minutes. right, paddys englishman, paddy scotchman, paddys irishman, seen this devil. so [laughs], paddys englishman goes, i betcha i can sit in his hand for 10 seconds. he goes, 1, 2, and then he jumps off. then he goes, i'm away for a cold bath, because it was warm. then he runs off, comes back, paddys englishman [sic], paddy—said, i bet i can sit on it for 10 seconds, so he goes, 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8, and then he jumps off and says, i'm away for a cold bath. and so he goes into the cold bath and comes back again. paddy scotchman says, i'll be able to do it, so he got on, and he goes, 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10, and got off. here they were, how'd you do that? and here he was, chocolate melts in your ha—no, chocolate melts in your mouth, not in your hand. [repeats it for my benefit, and to make the punch line that she nearly messed up more clear] chocolate melts in your mouth, not in your hand.28 33 lanclos the listener has to think about the fact that the "chocolate" in the punch line is actually excrement.29 that combined with the famous m&m's slogan, "melts in your mouth, not in your hands,"30 allows carly to indulge in a very round about way in the image of someone eating shit. at the very least, the joke involves someone who takes a shit in the hand of a devil, perhaps even the devil, a powerful image indeed. carly knows it is not obvious, and because i had a previous record of not always understanding their jokes on the first try, she "explained" the punch line to me by repeating it. jokes involving rude names for the main characters reveal a great deal about children's perceptions of hypocrisy in a social world that does not allow them to participate in the dirty discourses that they can clearly witness adults engaging in. it is indicated in the following pair of jokes told to me by a small group of p7 girls at c.s.1. annie: right, there was these three people, called shutup, manners, and [someone prompts her, "dog's dirt,"] dog's dirt, right? they were all walking along, and then dog's dirt falls down the hole, and then the policeman comes over, and then manners goes to pick him up, and then here he goes— [her friend interrupts]—no, you go like this, he picks him up and then walks on, and then this policeman comes up, and he goes, what's your name, and he says, shutup, and then the man goes, the policeman goes, i'll ask you again, what's your name, and he says [with more emphasis] shutup! and then he says, where's your manners, and then shutup says, um, down the hole, picking up dog's dirt.31 [laughs] dml: and where did you learn that one? annie: [someone] told me it. mary: right this jokes called sit down, dick out, pee in the corner [shocked laughter] mary: right. [there were three kids. . .] one called sit, one called dick, and one called pee, right, and they were all in school, and they were all throwing papers at each other and being mad, and the teacher comes in, and goes, right, sit down, dick out, pee in the corner! [some silence] pee in the corner! [for emphasis] 34 bare bums and wee chimneys on the face of it, the kids seemed to enjoy telling these jokes because they provided the opportunity to engage in forbidden, obscene language, and to make their peers laugh simply for that reason. the girls described the jokes to me as "dirty," and they were learned in this case (i found out later) from an older, male cousin. but a closer look at their content reveals further elements that may feed kids' interest in and enjoyment of these narratives. in the first joke, the policeman, a convenient symbol for parental authority, questions the children about what they are doing, and is rewarded by what could be interpreted as a string of obscene words and images, that is, the children's answer. however, that string of words is also a very accurate description of what is going on. herein lies the children's dilemma. when asked, they are perfectly capable of representing the world as they know it, warts and all. frequently, however, the adults in their world either do not know or do not want to know about this level of awareness among their children. for a child to rupture this parental illusion is to invite a variety of potential punishments, from simple silencing ("you mustn't say that"), to actual censure ("you're a bad girl for saying that"), and occasionally physical reprimands or threats ("you say that again and i'll give you a smack."). in the jokes above, however, the adult is never allowed to punish the children; the joke ends before that is possible, and the punch line is the child getting to say what is really going on. in the second joke, the adult, this time a teacher, is forced to be obscene when she punishes the children, dick and pee. in engaging in an activity that usually warrants punishing (saying obscene words or phrases), while in the act of punishing, the teacher reveals herself to be like many adults who tell children to do one thing while they themselves do another. the jokes that kids tell are told in very particular contexts, usually within a body of other jokes, and the sequences that build up are especially revealing. in one session, at p.s.2, girls segued smoothly from telling jokes about big phones (adults) telling wee phones (children) what to do, to a mildly obscene knock knock joke, therefore doing and saying something that probably wouldn't be approved of by an adult, inspired by the prior jokes concerning older figures forbidding younger ones from doing things. older boys at p.s.2, during the same session, continually upped the rude 35 lanclos ness ante with each successive joke, building on the jokes told before, and clearly inspired by them, too. this sequence of jokes also reveals the implicit association of the violent with the dirty, a theme i will return to later on. one finds frequent representations in jokes and rhymes of older/bigger people/objects telling younger/smaller people/objects what to do. the following two wellerism jokes are about "big and wee" conversations.32 they were told to me in the context of an extended joke telling session with a number of kids, ranging in age from 8 to 11, at p.s.2, after school. william and mike floated in and out of the session, as they were frequently distracted by the indoor football game that was happening nearby. william: what did the wee [his cousin mike cuts in, and they both say] what did the big chimney say to the wee chimney? dml: what? both: you're too young to smoke. william: [fast on the heels of the last punchline]: what did the big phone say to the wee phone? [he answers himself] you're too young to get engaged! these jokes reference notions of what you should do (i knew at least one of the boys telling the chimney joke to smoke regularly), and being told that by adults (the big chimney, etc.), told in the face of what they actually do—smoke, act as though they are "engaged" –or at least, sexually active (or acting as though they are). these jokes also invoke adults saying that children shouldn't do things that they (the adults) themselves clearly do. the chimney is a thing that by definition smokes, the phone is a thing that by definition becomes engaged (in use); the implication of the characters in these jokes is that they are going to, and indeed have to, do precisely what they are told not to. this is more than simple resistance, but a complex representation of a certain sense of inevitability held by both parents and children: people in northern ireland do have families (if not get engaged) young, they do smoke,33 also starting quite young. in so doing they are reproducing their own parents' patterns of behavior, something that makes it that much more difficult for a parent to condemn the behavior, however much they might wish their children would do differently. 36 bare bums and wee chimneys ambivalence and concern about authority are displayed particularly well in a series of jokes about doctors. when told by adults, they undoubtedly plug into a series of anxieties around health, the authority of doctors, and the national health system, but with children there is additional resonance in the fact that doctors are another kind of adult, telling them what to do.34 doctor doctor, everyone thinks i'm a liar35 i don't believe ya' doctor doctor, i can't get to sleep at night. well, lie at the edge of the bed, and you'll soon fall off. doctor doctor, i feel like a pair of curtains. pull yourself together! doctor doctor, i feel like i'm invisible.36 next, please! doctor doctor, i feel like a dog. how long have you felt like this? since i was a puppy. doctor, doctor, i feel like a bridge. what's come over you lately? two trucks and a car. there was this man who went to the doctor's, and he said, "doctor, doctor, i keep fartin' and i'm stinkin'!" the doctor goes out and comes back with a pole with a hook on it, and the man says, "doctor, doctor, what's that for?" "t'open a window, you're stinkin'!"37 frances: doctor, doctor, i feel like a deck of cards.38 shut up and i'll deal with you later. doctor doctor i feel like a spoon. sit down and don't stir. note that the doctor's responses are singularly unhelpful. the patient (child) is asking for help for frequently serious conditions, 37 lanclos some social, some physical-not being able to sleep, being stigmatized as a liar, smelling awful because of uncontrollable flatulence-but the doctor (adult) is flippant and uncaring, making a joke at the patient's expense. in several of the jokes, the patient/child likens themselves to an inanimate object-a pack of cards, a bridge-something to be played with or run over by cars, a thing without agency, without exercisable power. the doctor/adult answers with a line confirming the patient/child's initial feeling: "i'll deal with you later," to the pack of cards. while the laughter generated by the joke is frequently at the patient's expense, occasionally the joke does seem as if the patient is getting back at the doctor, as in the case of the patient who feels like a dog, and has done since he "was a puppy." the doctor looks foolish here: if he had been thinking, of course, he would have known that the patient who is a dog now would have been a puppy when young. the unhelpful advice from the doctor is in contrast to the advice given in the following rhyme, which was used in this case as a countingout rhyme. the kids are directing advice and sanctions of their own to adults, and even seem to be assuming the voice of a doctor. put your fags in the box sir39 yes sir let me hear you cough sir [cough cough] very bad indeed, sir and you are not on it for the rest of the game. here the child performing the counting out rhyme takes over the role of doctor, and the reference to "sir" indicates an adult is being addressed. the doctor appears to be giving "sir" a physical; the "let me hear you cough" line suggests the "turn your head and cough" portion of a male physical, wherein the testicles are held by the doctor; for the purposes of the rhyme, this gives the child/doctor even more power over "sir"/the adult.40 at the end of the counting out, the person identified as the smoking adult is not on it for the game. the child thus gets to put the adult in his place, controlling "him" physically, and judging "him" (i observed this counting out rhyme as performed by girls), and not only for the unhealthy practice of smoking. ultimate playground power is finally exercised by not allowing "sir" to play the game. 38 bare bums and wee chimneys persistent association of rudeness with violence contrary to the argument presented by g. legman in his introduction to sandra mccosh's work, the association of obscenity with violence is in the kids' performances of folk materials; this is not just an adult injection of violence as a substitute for sex, as legman suggests, but an actual association made by the children, most often in their following a sexual piece with a violent one during a performance, or vice versa. the kids i observed were fairly consistent in following an obscene reference with a violent one. for example, the c.s.2 version of "ip dip dog shit" (cf. above) was swiftly followed by a version of: my mummy and your mummy41 were hanging out the clothes my mummy hit your mummy a punch on the nose what color was the blood? [the person picked says:] red r-e-d spells red and you are not on it for the rest of the game violent and dirty references were also occasionally united in the same piece of folklore. for example, the following was sung' by a large group of girls at c.s.2. the giggling when they say "underpants" indicates that they know they're not supposed to be saying anything about it, but they can do it in groups and it will be safer. my boyfriend gave me an apple42 my boyfriend gave me a pear my boyfriend gave me a [kiss noises, hand to mouth as if blowing a kiss, three times] and he kicked me down the stairs [i kicked him] 1 kicked him over london 1 kicked him over france 1 kicked him over u-s-a 39 lanclos and he lost his underpants! [giggles] i made him do the dishes i made him do the floor i made him do the baby's bum and i kicked him out the door! starting after "underpants," the two p3s who started the rhyme were joined in their singing by 5-6 other girls, who lent their voices— loudly!—to the last part of the rhyme, even though they were not clapping. there was also some dispute over whether the boyfriend was doing the kicking, or being kicked (indicated in brackets, above); some girls sang one version, and some sang the other. the version where the girl is kicking her boyfriend took over at the next line. also at c.s.1, the girls sang the following parody right after their lusty rendition of "mummy mummy mummy," (cf. above) just as the bell was ringing for them to return to class activities. the fact that it concerns a television show, "barney and friends," that is explicitly intended for children,43 and is insistent in its emphasis on love and sharing, makes the parody even more striking in the mouths of the very children supposedly targeted by the show. i hate you44 you hate me let's get together and kill barney with a big axe through barney's head aren't you glad that barney's dead? on the surface, i think that this association is in the folklore, and made by the kids in their performance of the materials, because obscenity and violence are clearly things not approved by adults for children. if they are going to indulge in one, it is a small enough leap to indulge in the other as well. on a deeper level, i think that obscenity and violence, while perceived by the adults in their society as dangerous and anti-social, are being used by the kids as a kind of social glue. those who choose to participate in the obscene or violent moments, in word or in deed, are united in their shared defiance of adult edicts concerning appropriate thoughts and behavior. this is not unique to children, of course. violence within the frame of play is frequently cited as an arena for male bonding in 40 bare bums and wee chimneys western european societies; in northern ireland, as in much of europe and in the united states, this occurs at football, rugby, and other team sporting events. using casual obscenity among friends is a way of indicating your level of comfort with them, and is characteristic of the "joking relationship" much cited by anthropologists in their descriptions of behavioral roles and expectations, especially among family members. so in one sense, children are no different from adults; they indulge in obscene and play-violent behavior as a way of bonding with particular groups of friends. on the other hand, they are still learning just where the boundaries of obscenity and unacceptable violence lay, and the variable nature of standards of obscenity, depending very much on social context. it is in the testing of these boundaries and standards within the frame of play that we can see that learning process taking place. i observed cases on every playground where the play violence shaded into actual violence; the nearly universal condemnation of such a shift by the kids who observed and were victimized by it speaks to the consensus among children that play violence is, in fact, "only playing." they know the minute it stops being "play," and when it becomes unacceptable. perhaps what disturbs adults the most is the revelation in their folklore of potentially violent behavior in children, especially boys. adult concerns about children engaging in violent acts came out in the complaints of a group of playground supervisors at p.s.1; they were all mothers with children at the school. they remarked about the older boys, that "all they ever do is fight" if they don't have a football to play with. even then, the suggestion was made that boys would fight over football games if the supervisors did not intervene. while i did see conflict over scoring and rules among the older (p6-p7, mostly) boys at p.s.1, the most violent conflicts i saw were a result of interactions between the supervisors and the kids themselves. when one supervisor took a child out of play, and the child resented the reasons (or simply resented being taken out in the first place), that kid would frequently re-enter the game, against the commands of the supervisors, thus generating a verbal tug of war that frequently ended in the kid being banned from playing at all. that kid would then act up on the sidelines, throwing things at those still allowed to play, in protest. many times, adult worries about violence, and a reluctance to let the kids work 41 lanclos it out for themselves because they perceive the kids to be at risk, seemed to do more harm than good.45 conclusions it is this implicit association of rudeness with violence, seen so clearly in the folklore materials, that appears to feed much adult anxiety about "dirtiness" among children. this is particularly pointed in a society like that in northern ireland, where children are only too likely to have quite personal experiences with violence. parents may wish to protect their children, in limiting their exposure to forbidden language and folklore, because of this perceived link with violence. at the very least, parents can try to maintain the illusion that they are protecting their children from the one (violence), by limiting their children's expression of the other (dirty materials). dirty words themselves are potentially violent; if they are used to hurt or insult others, they can have an impact often just as severe than physical violence. children fling words at each other far more often than their bodies, and are aware of the power they have to make each other feel bad, simply with words. in this case, conventional rudeness doesn't even have to be used-intent is key, and if someone wishes to hurt another person, they can call that person a "melon" and have it hurt, because hurt was intended. adult anxieties about child obscenity are not simply a result of generalized cultural constructs dictating proper childlike behavior, of course.46 parents in particular can be concerned because such words can be interpreted as "fighting words," and lead to violence. in a place like northern ireland, where the threats to people from violence are quite real, and violence frequently impacts children both directly and indirectly, such worries are not idle, and are very much reflective of actual dangers. it is this adult impulse to protect children from violence, and to prevent their participation in it, that is also behind adult censure of child rudeness. it is more than just a violation of some abstract model of a proper childhood, but a very real warning sign that children might not be as safe as adults would like them to be. 42 bare bums and wee chimneys notes 1. i carried out this research thanks to funding from the wenner-gren foundation for anthropological research, the u.c. berkeley vice-chancellor for research grant, the u.c. berkeley humanities graduate grant, and lowie/olson funds from the department of anthropology, u.c. berkeley. 2. i am grateful to professor nancy scheper-hughes for this insight. 3. joann conrad points out in her article, "lost innocent and sacrificial delegate: the jonbenet ramsey murder," that americans in particular continue to struggle with notions of child sexuality. 4. such silencing also happens when children bring up other topics adults would rather they not discuss, in particular issues surrounding the protestant/catholic divide in northern ireland. 5. paul willis presents an economic view of the perpetuation of workingclass perspectives among a small group of secondary school boys in britain in learning to labor: how working class kids get working class jobs. 6. nancy scheper-hughes and carol sargent address this issue in their edited volume small wars: the cultural politics of childhood, continuing a discussion laid out in sharon stephens' children and the politics of culture. joann conrad summarizes much of this in her article, "lost innocent and sacrificial delegate." 7. for more on the apparent disqualification of children from childhood, because of their violation of the standards of innocence and dependency, see especially allison james and chris jenks' article, "public perceptions of childhood criminality." 8. the folklore materials in this article are annotated in notes, by, indicating other collections of children's folklore where these materials, or variants of them, can be found. this particular rhyme is also found in mccosh's collection (202-3). 9. for a detailed discussion of definitions of obscenity, especially regarding legal definitions, see harry m. clor's obscenity and public morality. 10. also observed by iona opie (32). 11. mccosh (134) suggests a similar phenomenon around jokes; that is, that jokes can reveal children's attempts to escape from often adult-imposed ignorance of matters intellectual, sexual, and physical. 12. in their collection one-potato, two potato... : the secret education of american children, mary and herbert knapp record a shorter version of this: "dog shit you're it. out!" (26). in the course of her dissertation research, jane hubbard encountered a different variant in derry that she calls in the first volume of children’s play, songs and games in 43 lanclos derry, "more typical of a boys' choosing rhyme: icky dicky dog's dicky, out pops piss!" (170). 13. jane hubbard also recorded this strategy of simply falling silent where the dirty word came in the rhyme. 14. alison lurie discusses this substitution of words for action as children get older in her essay "the folklore of childhood." 15. the joking relationship was first defined by a.r. radcliffe-brown in his article "on joking relationships" in 1940. keith basso discusses the phenomenon at length in portraits of "the whiteman": linguistic play and cultural symbols among the western apache (67-75). 16. mccosh (129) makes the same point regarding jokes, especially rude ones. mccosh also gives several examples of tricks and catches (21722), as do knapp and knapp (92-99). 17. my colleague jay dautcher suggested to me that the knickers bust because of menstruation, and that's why people are disgusted. i think it more likely that cinderella's knickers bust because of her expanding belly; she is pregnant because of going upstairs to "kiss" her fellow, and people are disgusted at her state. 18. for other cinderella dressed in colors other than "yella" rhymes, see knapp and knapp (125-26). 19. this was also recorded by simon bronner (105-6), and iona opie (31). 20. this was a mixed group of boys and girls, and while boys were leading most of the songs, the girls present were singing just as loud. 21. knapp and knapp recorded a version of this as well (213-14). when i recorded this in belfast, the addams family movie had just been shown on television. 22. this is manchester united, the football team, and one of the favorites of kids from all schools. 23. this rhyme and variants of it also recorded in america by bronner (53) and knapp and knapp (25), and in northern ireland by hubbard (vol.1, 172, vol. 2, 62,106), and by maurice leyden, in his book boys and girls come out to play (106). 24. hubbard collected several versions of this (e.g., in vol.1, 174) without any mention of knickers: ". . . bring your own cup and saucer and your own cream bun. [name] will be there with ribbons in her hair. . . " 25. also in bronner (155), mccosh (241), and i. opie (24). 26. also bronner (156) and mccosh (242-43). 27. also see bronner (141). 28. notice that this is a protestant child in a school within a neighborhood with a heavy paramilitary (uda/uvf) presence. paddy irishman is in the first line, but is effaced in the body of the joke. the scotsman is the hero here, which resonates well with some ulster protestant affinities to and for, scotland as a prime site for heritage and allies. 44 bare bums and wee chimneys 29. as in the rhyme "milk, milk, lemonade, around the corner fudge is made," the symbolic equivalence of things that are brown and potentially mushy makes chocolate a convenient stand-in for shit. 30. bronner (142) records a similar joke told about a black man. in that case, however, the man himself was "chocolate" due to the color of his skin. 31. also in mccosh (281) and i. opie (14). 32. also in mccosh (212-13), bronner (117), i. opie (13, 111), and opie and opie (81-82). 33. northern ireland's consumption of nicotine and caffeine products outstrips the consumption of alcohol. 34. these jokes are usually started and ended by the same person, making them rather more like couplets than the more regularly encountered riddling question. examples can also be found in collections by mccosh (214-16) and i. opie (14). 35. two jokes from p.s.2, p6es and p7s. 36. four jokes from c.s.1, p6s 37. from p.s.2, p7s 38. two jokes from c.s.1, p6es and p7es 39. from c.s.1, p4s; bronner (68) collected a "sir" rhyme that has him with a cold, caught while hunting polar bears at the north pole. variants can also be found in roger abrahams' jump rope rhymes (60), in eilis brady's all in! all in! (64), in the second volume of hubbard's collection (75), as well as in leyden's (116,133). 40. thanks to professor alan dundes for this insight. 41. also collected by abrahams (133), bronner (56), hubbard (vol. i, 173; vol.2, 40,63, 105, 138), knapp and knapp (26), and leyden (1056). 42. hubbard (vol. 1, 179, vol.2, 78,125) records the gifts of the boyfriend as apples, pears, and then opal fruits (a chewy fruit candy similar to starburst in america) rather than kisses; this rhyme is also found in brady's collection (3738) as well as leyden's (147). 43. while barney the big purple dinosaur and his television show had already had their heyday in the united states before i entered the field, the show and the characters within it, especially barney himself, and his little green friend baby bop (a girl dinosaur in frilly clothes), were still quite popular among some younger (4-6 years old) children in belfast during the time i was there. as was the case in the united states, many older children and adults were disgusted or annoyed by the treacly show, and such sentiments are clearly present in the parody song given here. 44. josepha sherman discusses this rhyme and variants of it in an american context in her article "gopher guts and army trucks: the modern evolution of children's folklore rhymes" (22-23). 45 lanclos 45. in her article "trashy talk makes educators cry foul," reporter deneen brown, in the may 12, 1998 edition of the washington post, reveals that in the local schools, the link between rude language and violence is made explicit in their conduct codes. one 17 year old was quite clear in noting how contextual language is, suggesting an awareness that "violence" in language is not an absolute, any more than rudeness or obscenity is. 46. thank you to professor nancy scheper-hughes for stimulating this line of thought. references abrahams, roger d. jump rope rhymes: a dictionary. austin: university of texas press, 1969 ardener, edwin. "belief and the problem of women," in the interpretation of ritual. j. la fontaine, ed. london: tavistock, 1972. aries, philippe. centuries of childhood: a social history of family life. robert baldick, transl. new york: random house, vintage books, 1962. basso, keith h. portraits of "the whiteman ": linguistic play and cultural symbols among the western apache. illus. by vincent craig. cambridge: cambridge, 1979. bateson, gregory. "a theory of play and fantasy," in steps to an ecol ogy of mind. new york: ballantine books, 1972. 177-93. beck, horace. "say something dirty!" journal of american folklore. 75(1962): 195-99. brady, eilis. all in! all in!: a selection of dublin children’s traditional street-games with rhymes and music. dublin: cohmairle bhealoideas eireann, an colaiste ollscoile, 1984. bronner, simon j. american children’s folklore. little rock: august house, 1988. brown, deneen l. "trashy talk makes educators cry foul," washing ton post. washington, d.c., tuesday, may 12, 1998. a01. clor, harry m. obscenity and public morality: censorship in a liberal society. chicago: u of chicago p, 1969. conrad, joann. "lost innocent and sacrificial delegate: the jonbenet ramsey murder," childhood 6 (1999): 313-51. douglas, mary. purity and danger: an analysis of concepts of pollu tion and taboo. new york: praeger, 1970 [1966]. dundes, alan. "couvade in genesis," in parsing through customs: es says by a freudian folklorist. madison: u of wisconsin p, 1987. 145-66. 46 bare bums and wee chimneys foucault, michel. the history of sexuality, an introduction: volume 1. new york: vintage books, 1990. freud, sigmund. three essays on the theory of sexuality. new york: basic books, 1962. gomme, alice bertha. the traditional games of england , scotland, and ireland, with tunes, singing-rhymes, and methods of playing ac cording to the variants extant and recorded in different parts of the kingdom. 2 vols. london: d. nutt, 1894-1898. goodwin, marjorie harness. he-said-she-said : talk as social organization among black children. bloomington: indiana up, 1990. hubbard, jane anne. children’s play, songs and games in derry: a social anthropological study, volume 1. unpublished ph.d. dissertation, department of social anthropology. belfast: queen's university, 1995. _______. children s play, songs and games in derry: a social anthropological study, volume 2. unpublished ph.d. dissertation, department of social anthropology. belfast: queen's university, 1995. hunt, lynn, ed. the invention of pornography: obscenity and the origins of modernity, 1500-1800. new york: zone books, 1993. james, allison, and chris jenks. "public perceptions of childhood crimi nality," british journal of sociology 47 (1996): 315-31. knapp, mary, and herbert knapp. one potato, two potato... : the secret education of american children. new york: norton, 1976. legman, g. "introduction," in children s humor: a joke for every oc casion. s. mccosh. london: panther books, 1979. vii-xlix. _______. "introduction," in roll me in your arms: "unprintable" ozark folksongs and folklore. vance randolph. fayetteville: u of arkan sas p, 1992. 1-31. leyden, maurice. boys and girls come out to play: a collection of irish singing games. belfast: appletree press, 1993. lowenstein, wendy. shocking, shocking, shocking: the improper play rhymes of australian children. prahran, vic.: fish and chip press, 1974. lurie, alison. "the folklore of childhood," in don't tell the grown ups: the subversive power of children s literature. boston: back bay books, 1990. 189-204. mccosh, sandra. children s humor: a joke for every occasion. lon don: panther books, 1979. mead, margaret, and martha wolfenstein, eds. childhood in contempo rary cultures. chicago: u of chicago p, 1955. opie, iona, and peter opie. the lore and language of school-children. oxford: oxford up, 1967. 47 lanclos _______. children’s games in street and playground. oxford: oxford up, 1984. opie, iona. the people in the playground. oxford: oxford up, 1994. radcliffe-brown, a. r. "on joking relationships," africa 13 (1940): 195-210. _______. "a further note on joking relationships." africa 19 (1949): 133 40. randolph, vance. roll me in your arms: "unprintable" ozark folksongs and folklore. edited with an introduction by g. legman. fayetteville: u of arkansas p, 1992. scheper-hughes, nancy, and carolyn sargent, eds. small wars: the cultural politics of childhood. berkeley: u of california p, 1998. man, josepha. "gopher guts and army trucks: the modern evolu tion of children's folklore rhymes," children’s folklore review 21:2 (spring 1999): 17-24. stephens, sharon. "introduction: children and the politics of culture in 'late capitalism,'" in children and the politics of culture. s. stephens, ed. princeton: princeton up, 1995. 3-48. thorne, barrie. gender play: girls and boys in school. new brunswick, n.j.: rutgers up, 1995. van rheenen, derek. "boys who play hopscotch: the historical divide of a gender space," children s folklore review 12: 1(1998): 5-34. whiting, beatrice. six cultures: studies of child-rearing. new york: john wiley and sons, inc., 1963. willis, paul. learning to labor: how working class kids get working class jobs. new york: columbia up, 1977. wolfenstein, martha. children’s humor: a psychological analysis. fore word by alan dundes. bloomington: indiana up, 1978 [1954]. 48 e-contributions in response to elizabeth tucker' article, '''i hate you, you hate me': children's responses to barney the dinosaur," cfr 22.1 (1999): 2533, judy mckinty sent the following from australia. i was very interested to read elizabeth tucker's article. the first time i came into contact with the barney song was when i visited england in 1998. it went like this: i hate you, you hate me, let's shove barney up a tree, with a stick up his bum and a bullet through his head, sorry kids but barney's dead. i heard it again later in the day, but the words had been changed and the song was about the teletubbies. there were two versions: i hate po, po hates me, come on, tinky winky, let's go kill laa laa with a dagger in the head uh-oh dipsy, laa laa's dead. i hate po, po hates me. we're not a happy family, with a dagger in his back and a bullet through his head, uh-oh laa laa, dipsy's dead. i was fascinated at the time, because the teletubbies program was the latest introduction to australian children's television, less than two months old. judy mckinty 49 cfs: 1999 annual meeting president bill ellis called the breakfast meeting to order at 7:00 am on 23 october 1999 in the barclay room of the peabody hotel, memphis, tennessee. a quorum was present. reports president bill ellis reported that he had attended the conveners meeting and that (1) communications between the sections and the executive board of the american folklore society and communications among section members needed to be increased and (2) that to facilitate the latter sections might want to investigate setting up listserves. treasurer joe edgette was unable to attend the meeting, and there was no treasurer's report. cfr editor chip sullivan reported that east carolina continues to provide $3000.00 in support funds per academic year and that that has allowed him to continue printing the children’s folklore review on the quality paper used for the 20th anniversary issue. sullivan also encouraged people to submit articles to the journal and to encourage their colleagues to submit articles. newell committee chip sullivan reported that the newell prize committee had selected two papers for the 1999 newell prize: "bare bums and wee chimneys: rudeness and defining the line between child and adult," donna m. lanclos, university of california at berkley. 50 1999 annual meeting "playing with networks: an ethnography of the csu-mun daycare based on network analysis," john m. bodner, memorial university of newfoundland. aesop committee sean galvin reported that 145 titles from 36 publishers were submitted for the 1999 aesop prize. although this was not a banner year for titles, galvin reported, the committee agreed that more books were being submitted that did conform to the aesop eligibility criteria. 1999 aesop prize trickster and the fainting birds. written by howard norman and illustrated by tom pohrt. harcourt brace/gulliver books, 1999 king solomon and his magic ring. written by elie wiesel and illustrated by mark podwal. greenwillow books, 1999. 1999 aesop acolades the deetkatoo: native american stories about little people. written by john bierhorst and illustrated by ron hilbert coy. morrow junior books, 1998. the donkey and the rock written and illustrated by demi. henry holt & co., 1999. the hatseller and the monkeys: a west african folktale. written and illustrated by baba wagué diakité. scholastic, 1999. why leopard has spots: dan stories from liberia. written by won-ldy paye and margaret lippert and illustrated by ashley bryan. fulcrum books, 1998. galvin also reported that the new accolade stickers are selling with some success and that judy sierra has taken over production of the aesop certificates. 51 1999 annual meeting new business elections joann conrad was elected president-elect cherry levin was elected to the aesop committee cfs at afs 2000 there will be a call for papers and/or panel members in the afs newsletter. proposals thus far include (1) teaching children's folklore and (2) folklore and the adolescent experience officer's duties the membership voted that the past president will become the communicating secretary, taking over that function from the secretary treasurer. special projects as possible follow ups to children’s folklore: a source book, now available in paperback from utah state university press, the membership is asked to consider the following as topics for collections of essays: (1) material lives of children, and (2) adolescent lore. president ellis adjourned the meeting at 8:30 am. respectfully submitted, c. w sullivan iii secretary du jour. 52 notes and announcements the children's folklore section of the american folklore society annually offers the w.w. newell prize (which includes a cash award) for the best student essay on a topic in children's folklore. students must submit their own papers, and published papers are eligible. instructors are asked to encourage students with eligible papers to enter the competition. papers must be typed, double-spaced, and on white paper. on the first page include the author's name, academic address, home address, and telephone numbers. deadline for each year's competition is september 1st. submit papers or write for more information: dr. c.w. sullivan iii, english department, east carolina university, greenville, nc 27858-4353. children’s folklore: a source book, edited by brian sutton-smith, jay mechling, thomas w johnson, and felicia r. mcmahon, originally published by garland in 1995, was republished in the fall of 1999 by utah state university press. the collection of essays originated with members of the children's folklore section, and all of the contributors were then (and many still are) members of cfs. royalties from the book continue tofund the maintenance and expansion of the children's folklore section of the utah state university folklore archives. the children's folklore section now has its own web site at the afs website at: www.afsnet.org/sections/childrenl 53 contributors donna m. lanclos, an anthropologist and folklorist, has just completed her phd in anthropology at the university of california at berkeley. her dissertation, "under the bramble bushes, down by the sea: folklore and the formations of identity on the playgrounds of belfast, northern ireland," discusses the ways in which working-class belfast children create and explore aspects of gender, age, and sectarian (protestant/catholic) identities. judy mckinty is an independent folklorist/researcher with a special interest in children's play. she has a graduate certificate of applied science (environmental and heritage interpretation), from deakin university, melbourne, and her last full-time position was co-ordinator of the children's museum, museum of victoria. she has been closely involved with the australian children's folklore collection for over a decade, researching and collecting children's folklore. her research includes an oral history project on aboriginal children's play. she is on the committee of the victorian folklife association and is currently working on the development of a cd-rom based on children's traditional games. 54 19 the endangered child: choking and fainting games in the online underground of youtube elizabeth tucker in 1987, a nine-year-old boy named derek told a student fieldworker in binghamton, new york, that he and his friends had taken turns putting a rope around their necks and pulling it tight, to see “who [could] choke himself the longest” (tucker 2008, 79). having expected to hear derek speak about active but not life-threatening games, the student felt shocked and concerned. i also felt worried about derek but knew that such games had been going on for years in the united kingdom and the united states. in the late 1980s, choking and fainting games, as well as other games involving breath control, were not very familiar to the public. iona and peter opie had identified fainting games as “misplaced audacity” in their book children’s games of street and playground (1969, 27374), but their documentation of the games had not caused widespread concern. children and adolescents had identified choking and fainting games by so many different names (including pass out, space monkey, california dreaming, purple dragon, and the gasp game), that it was hard for adults to identify the games’ purpose. because of the childhood underground — a network of young people that adults did not usually enter — choking and fainting games took place in relative obscurity until the early twenty-first century, when media reports of accidental deaths of game-players became common. in my article “‘go to bed, now you’re dead’: suffocation songs and breath control games” (2008-2009), i examined choking and fainting games’ origins and interpretations of their meaning by folklorists, forensic pathologists, psychologists, and anthropologists; i also discussed adults’ educational websites and young people’s accounts of playing breath control games. in conclusion, i noted that playing these risky games seems to facilitate passage from childhood to adulthood and asked whether adults can persuade young people to stop playing such games (2008-2009, 54). building from and expanding upon my previous work, this article analyzes adolescents’ and adults’ interaction based on videos about fainting and choking games posted on youtube in an effort to interpret the meaning and impact of such broadcasts through the analysis of meta-information. by taking a close look at comments on videos uploaded by boys and girls, as well as comments on videos uploaded by adults, i interpret adolescents’ and adults’ interaction related to this important, difficult subject and explain why young people persist in posting their own videos in spite of parental opposition. from the late 1990s to the middle of the twenty-first century, more and more people have become accustomed to communicating with each other on the internet. an important change took place in 2005, when three young computer specialists activated the domain name “youtube.com” (snickars and vonderau 2010; van dijck 2013). suddenly it became possible for kids aged thirteen and over (and many younger children as well) with access to the internet to upload, share, cfr_2014.indb 19 11/20/14 1:07 pm the endangered child tucker 20 and view videos. curious adolescents could upload videos of themselves playing games with friends and watch videos uploaded by others. youtube gave kids a new kind of childhood underground in which they could share their traditions and interests with peers around the world. this online childhood underground is porous because parents and other adults can attempt to check what kids are doing. before the internet made checking so easy, it was common for adults to let children learn and play games on their own. according to brian sutton-smith’s concept of the “triviality barrier” (1970, 1-8), adults tend not to find children’s games and other forms of folklore very significant or useful for children’s development. there have, however, been good reasons for adults to try to learn all they can about choking and fainting games. tragically, many preadolescents and adolescents have died while playing such games, and numerous reports of these fatalities have appeared in newspaper, television, and internet articles (e.g. o’sullivan 1999; parker-pope 2008; warner 2005). choking games involving ropes and chokeholds are high-risk; fainting games tend to be somewhat “safer” but can result in death from head injuries. more boys than girls have died as a result of choking games. the center for disease control’s report of 2008, based on news reports, explains that 86.6% of choking game deaths in the united states from 1995 to 2007 were males aged six to 19, with a mean age of 13.3 years. information about fatal falls resulting from fainting games is more difficult to find, but such information has gradually become available (e.g. phillips 2014). without breathing, it is impossible to live. understanding the peril of breath control games has contributed to adults’ awareness of young people’s vulnerability. the columbine high school massacre in 1999, followed by a series of tragic school shootings culminating in the newtown massacre in 2012, has enhanced american adults’ sense of children being in danger.1 when i wrote my article “changing concepts of childhood” for the journal of american folklore in 2012, i noted the significance of the “monstrous child” concept that emerged after the death of so many teenagers at the hands of fellow adolescents at columbine high school. i also found that carole carpenter’s (2011) analysis of the “bubblewrapped child” conveyed adults’ worries about safety very well. two years later, i find that the metaphor of “the endangered child” fits the impression of childhood that has come from both school shootings and fatal breath control games. folklorists of childhood have a unique perspective; their close observation of children’s interaction and respect for children’s own rules result in significant perceptions. since the columbine high school massacre, these scholars have paid particular attention to the relationship between folklore and school violence. simon j. bronner has noted that since the publication of reports on school shootings in the 1990s, which have emphasized the fact that most shooters have been male, boys have seemed to be more at risk than girls; “much of their plight [has] seemed expressed or exacerbated by circulating folklore” (2011, 149). the higher percentage of males’ deaths after playing choking games fits this pattern, which should be studied closely. careful consideration of youtube videos and comments posted by viewers makes it possible for researchers to gain insight into young people’s performances and responses. cfr_2014.indb 20 11/20/14 1:07 pm tucker the endangered child 21 methodology and numerical results methodology for analyzing young people’s use of youtube is still developing, since this medium of communication is relatively new. one good study of the performative use and function of youtube videos is anthony buccitelli’s “performance 2.0: observations toward a theory of the digital performance of folklore” (2013). between september 26, 2013, and november 1, 2013, i did keyword searches on youtube to find videos of breath control games, searching for “choking games,” “fainting games,” and “pass out games.” through these searches i found 54 videos: 27 (50%) of all-male groups posted by boys, 16 (30%) of all-female groups posted by girls, and four (7%) of mixed groups posted by either boys or girls. there were also seven educational videos (13%) posted by adults. i took notes on the content of all 54 videos and recorded comments that had been made. in some cases there were numerous comments; in others there were none or very few. i also noted the gender and, if possible, the place of residence of the individual who posted the video. in some cases it was difficult to learn the age, gender, place of residence, and past experience of the people who posted comments. the tone and diction of many comments suggested that teenagers had posted them, but it was impossible to be certain. some teenagers commented that they had “pranked” their younger brothers or sisters by making them play choking or fainting games while making videos. youtube is supposed to be used only by people aged thirteen and older, but a close look at comments shows that children are sometimes involved as well. my search for percentages of video generation was influenced by martha linkletter, kevin gordon, and joe dooley’s (2009) article, “the choking game and youtube: a dangerous combination,” a significant medical study that points out the connection between watching videos online and playing games; it also notes that familiarity with videos posted online may deter some young people from playing.2 the study’s main goal is to describe demographics and techniques of the choking game; its methodology is retrospective content analysis. noting that very little information on this subject exists in medical literature, the authors conclude: “there is no causal link between youtube allowing increased access to videos and any increase in participation and increase in morbidity and mortality. it is possible that youtube has merely allowed access to previously unobserved activity” (277). linkletter, gordon, and dooley discovered that 90% of the participants in the 65 videos they studied were male. in 55% of the videos, participants had hypoxic seizures, but the percentage of seizures went up when participants used the valsalva maneuver, usually called the “sleeper hold,” in which one person puts an arm around the other’s neck and squeezes it. in 88% of those videos, there was a hypoxic seizure. clearly, the level of danger rises when this kind of choking takes place. in contrast to linkletter, gordon, and dooley’s (2009) study, my own research — compiled three years later — shows a larger percentage of female participants and only one use of the valsalva maneuver. in most of the videos i watched, children or adolescents lost consciousness after hyperventilating while squatting, then standing up and putting their thumbs in their mouths. this difference might cfr_2014.indb 21 11/20/14 1:07 pm the endangered child tucker 22 seem to indicate a major change in kids’ game-playing patterns since the study by linkletter, gordon, and dooley, but it seems more likely that the difference in percentages results from youtube having limited viewings of the most dangerous choking games during the past several years. some videos that have been deemed inappropriate by youtube can still be viewed. in the video “cofer passed out” (2010), which i found in the fall of 2013, a late-adolescent boy uses the valsalva maneuver to make a girl have what appears to be a hypoxic seizure. when i clicked on this video on july 28, 2014, i was able to watch it, although it was labeled with the message “this video has been removed because it violates youtube’s terms of service.” perhaps part of the content had been removed before i watched the video. according to youtube’s community guidelines, any member of the youtube community can flag a questionable video, and staff members work twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, to remove objectionable content (“flagging content” 2014). it is noteworthy that youtube recommends, in its “teen safety” section, consideration of “the grandma rule”: if you don’t want your grandma to watch a video you have made, you should not post it. in this way, youtube promotes standards that might be found in a family or a small community (“teen safety” 2014). reading young viewers’ comments on youtube videos helps adults understand the impact of videos of the games on young people. but why do so many kids want to play these games? what questions and worries arise as they learn about the games and think about playing them themselves? comments on videos show adults how children and adolescents react to the videos while engaging in dialogue with peers and adults. defiance, dizziness, and danger before examining the videos and comments, it is necessary to consider scholarship that puts them in the context of youth culture. since the 1970s, folklorists have studied adolescents’ trips or quests to experience something amazing or shocking that has a connection to a legend (dégh 2001, ellis 1982-83, meley 1991, thigpen 1971). bill ellis observes that when they visit legendary locations, teenagers seek “deliberate escapes into altered states of being where conventional laws do not operate” (2001, 189). this escape, ellis explains, is part of a broader behavior pattern involving defiance of adults’ rules and drinking.3 when i was doing the research for my essay on breath control games in 2009, i found that the same general pattern applied. during breath control games kids seem to be “pushing each other to the brink of a seductive dream world … prob[ing] boundaries between conscious and unconscious awareness and between life and death” (tucker 2008-2009, 54). this kind of experimentation is deeply embedded in youth culture and resists regulation by parents and teachers. simon j. bronner notes that adolescents tend to take risks and withdraw because of their “betwixt and between” stage of development, during which they may act both defiant and restrained (2014b). in a similar vein, richard a. friedman observes that although teens have an “enhanced capacity for anxiety,” they are also “novelty seekers and risk takers” (2014). cfr_2014.indb 22 11/20/14 1:07 pm tucker the endangered child 23 like legend trips or quests, breath control games offer new experiences and tests of courage before and during adolescence. challenges can, of course, take many forms, but the french play scholar roger caillois’s (1961) study of ilinx play — the kind of play that produces dizziness and disorientation — helps us understand young people’s fascination with breath control. both caillois and finnish play scholar marjatta kalliala (2007) note that children actively seek dizziness, lightheadedness, and related feelings. at amusement parks, young people line up to get dizzy on tilt-a-whirls and other rides. the popularity of such thrilling, disorienting rides, like the popularity of breath control games, never seems to wane. caillois partially explains this phenomenon by comparing vertigo-seeking children with spinning sheep and tail-chasing dogs, but he does not explain why members of different species crave vertigo. instead, he notes that both ilinx play and related spectacles appeal to the young because play is selfrewarding and separate from daily life: essential is the pursuit of this special disorder or sudden panic, which defines the term vertigo, and in the true characteristics of the games associated with it: viz. the freedom to accept or refuse the experience, strict and fixed limits, and separation from the rest of reality. what the experience adds to the spectacle does not diminish but reinforces its character as play. (caillois 1961, 26) the key phrases here are “freedom to accept or refuse the experience” and “separation from the rest of reality.” we can apply caillois’s analysis of ilinx play to the process of maturation during adolescence. play’s creation of a different realm becomes especially valuable during this stage, when it becomes necessary for young people to pull away from their parents to establish independence. this process of separation involves both reliance on parents and resistance to parental control.4 if adolescents post videos of themselves playing breath control games, they take the risk of parental intervention, which may lead to unpleasant objections but may also bring parental attention that the adolescents want to receive. those who post breath control videos show their peers that they have accepted a difficult, possibly dangerous challenge; they also show that they have gone beyond everyday reality to experience something thrilling, unusual, and bravely playful. there is not much consideration of play’s rewards in the current folkloristic discussion of children’s endangerment and early death in mass and new media. this discourse, including the subject of school shootings, may encourage playful but dangerous performances on the internet. some adult viewers of youtube videos express outrage and implore youtube to remove a video because it sets a bad example. both educational videos and comments by concerned adults have potential value, but it is not unusual for young viewers to reject them. while some kids express horror and sadness about negative consequences of choking and fainting games, others make snide or humorous comments that suggest opposition to adults’ guidance. recently it has become apparent that some teenagers who do not like adults’ interference on youtube are sending their videos to instagram cfr_2014.indb 23 11/20/14 1:07 pm the endangered child tucker 24 instead (bronner 2014a). choosing a new site is one of many ways in which young people can keep adults from viewing their communications. danah boyd’s term “social stenography,” which refers to teenagers’ interpersonal encryption, fits this situation well (boyd 2014). adults’ educational videos educational videos made by adults comprised only 16% of the choking and fainting game videos i found on youtube in the fall of 2013, but comments suggested that many kids had also watched them. in my study of educational websites about choking games in 2008, i found that such websites typically presented personal testimony from parents who had lost children, as well as information about the games’ extreme risk (tucker 2008-2009, 50-52). the seven videos on choking and fainting games uploaded by adults that i found in this recent study also contain parents’ testimonies and information about risk. in addition, they emphasize testimony from young people who have lost friends or relatives and want to warn their peers not to experiment with the game. an example of videos of this kind is “survivors of the choking game,” uploaded february 8, 2010. with a shocking profile photo of a child lying in a hospital bed breathing through a respirator, this short (3 minute, 44 second) video has drawn many viewers; 300,509 people had watched it by july 27, 2014. consisting of quotes, images, and video clips accompanied by suspenseful music, the video delivers a strong message: choking games can cause brain damage, and brain damage may be irreversible. the video clips of young teenagers struggling through therapy after playing the choking game convey this message powerfully. comments indicate a broad range of responses: appreciation of the warning, eagerness to warn others, skepticism, and interest in playing choking games. missy, a teenaged girl, writes “thank you for taking the time to help someone.” another teenaged girl, erica, comments, “i did it don’t do the after symptoms aren’t fun. don’t do it! nykro, whose gender is unclear, writes “my class mate ‘friend’ almost died of this shit ‘choking game,’ so guys please trust the rules and live longer.” all of these comments express concern and a desire to help other young people stay safe.5 in contrast to these responses, several teenagers question the truth of the information in the video. brad, a teenaged boy, writes, “ok so this video makes no sense at all. there is no proof that any of these children received their injuries from it.” similarly, “whammy” (gender unclear) asks, “is this real?” and “jesting” (gender unclear) comments, “this video sucks. it’s misleading.” suspicious of warnings from adults, these three young people reject the video’s message. many young commenters on the video support playing choking games and describe their own experiences in a positive way. kelly, a teenaged girl, writes, “i did it, and i’m fine! just hurt my nose a little bit. the vids up on my challenge.” similarly, julius, a teenaged boy, comments, “this is bullshit. i’ve done it a hundred times and never gotten hurt.” sara, a teenaged girl, goes a step farther, explaining why she enjoys playing choking games: “its really addicting, you guys don’t know the amazing feeling it brings unless you try it.” brian, a teenaged cfr_2014.indb 24 11/20/14 1:07 pm tucker the endangered child 25 boy, offers vivid details: “did this shit and my vision was shaking + it was like i was reborn like a new me, all the birds and light and sounds. this shit goooooo00d.” his comment shows that, like some takers of hallucinogenic drugs, teenagers playing choking games may feel that they have entered a new world full of enchanting sensations. one of the most significant aspects of this video’s comment section is the interaction between teenagers and adults (see appendix). when sandra, a teenaged girl, says that the pictures of choking game survivors in the video do not look real, two adults, bob and neecy, assure her that she is wrong. bob expresses himself angrily, telling sandra that she has “shit for brains,” but neecy calmly and authoritatively observes that she knows the parents of the teenagers whose images appear in the video and that her own son died after playing the choking game. after reading bob’s angry comment, sandra retorts, “and who are you to judge me?” she does not object to neecy’s more gentle and reasonable comment. maybe she has stopped questioning the video’s veracity, or maybe she does not want to engage in further dialogue with an adult who proves her wrong. throughout these comments and the comments on many other breath control game videos, we become aware that issues related to belief and non-belief are generating lively debate. are choking and fainting games real, and are videos about such games based upon true information? linda dégh and andrew vázsonyi (1973) argue that both belief and skepticism keep legends alive. comments on choking and fainting game videos display a similar dynamic, in which teenaged skeptics engage other teens and adults in lively, sometimes acrimonious dialogue. boys’ videos while viewing boys’ and girls’ videos in the fall of 2013, i discovered a contrast in settings. most of the boys’ videos were filmed outdoors, in the back yards of private homes or on playing fields, while most of the girls’ videos were filmed in bedrooms of private homes. this contrast fits previously observed patterns of american teenaged girls’ and boys’ social interaction: girls are much more likely than boys to have “sleepovers” at which they eat junk food, play exciting games, watch movies, and stay up all night talking (tucker 2007-2008). teenaged boys also stay overnight at each other’s houses, but the “sleepover” tradition is more formularized among teenaged girls. among the boys’ videos that i watched, two, “choke rope” and “fainting game!!!,” are especially revealing. “choke rope” was removed from youtube between the fall of 2013 and the summer of 2014, and “fainting game!!!” was flagged on july 29, 2014. because both of these videos are part of the argumentation on choking and fainting games that has been taking place in the youtube community, i use them as examples here. “choke rope” is a parody of adults’ educational videos. it was posted on september 21, 2011, by adam, a teenaged boy, and had been viewed by 464 people when i took a close look at it. “choke rope” shows two early adolescent boys horsing around with a rope in their backyard. the video’s soundtrack is garbled, but that problem does not become evident until a person starts watching. cfr_2014.indb 25 11/20/14 1:07 pm the endangered child tucker 26 its cleverly assonantal title suggests the possibility of both humor and violence. the two boys give their video a facetious tone, saying with exaggerated strictness, “warning: do not try this at home!” and outlining steps that viewers should take to choke each other with a rope. mocking serious educational videos, they shove each other, knock each other down, and go indoors, then outdoors again. they enjoy themselves hugely and expend much energy throughout the film. the two boys’ video has serious content, however. throughout their oneminute, four-second performance, they toss around a rope, at one end of which they have made a noose. when they go inside the house, they enter a closet, and one of the boys puts his wrist into the noose. both the choice of the closet as a location and the placement of a wrist in the noose show the boys’ awareness of hanging games in closets and other enclosed spaces. at the end of the video, one boy places the noose around the other’s neck, and both stare into the camera. the absence of words here has its own kind of eloquence. have the two boys played hanging games with ropes, or are they thinking of doing so? we do not know, but the video certainly brings those possibilities to mind. the two boys’ video received no comments at all: no applause, no criticism, no questions. nothing in the video raises the question of “true or fake?” and nothing seems terribly alarming. the fact that 464 people watched the video and nobody chose to comment through early november of 2013 shows that it had not yet become part of the dialogue on dangerous play at that point in time. between november of 2013 and july of 2014, the video was removed from youtube. its removal suggests that someone flagged the video because its content seemed inappropriate for young viewers. although i have not found specific information about the video’s removal, it seems likely that it disappeared from youtube because a staff member or a viewer questioned the appropriateness of its content. the second boys’ video, “fainting game!!!,” was flagged for inappropriate content on july 29, 2014. its poster was league city stunts, a group that films “all types of things, from 4wheeling to rolling people down hills in tires.” the video was uploaded on may 30, 2013, and had been viewed 314 times as of november 1, 2013. by july 25, 2014, the number of viewers had risen to 2,620. this brief, 59-second video is typical of short fainting game videos made by boys. four adolescent boys stand on a playing field, laughing and pushing each other. two of them start to play the fainting game, first squatting on the ground and hyperventilating, then standing up and putting their thumbs in their mouths. two other boys, one of whom looks older than the others, serve as spotters, supervising the two boys who are playing. the two players collapse, seeming to have lost consciousness, and the others laugh. the video ends shortly afterwards. comments on this video show why it was removed from youtube (see appendix). the first few comments indicate amusement; one commenter pokes fun at the legs of one of the boys. on july 29, however, adriana, who appears to be a teenaged girl, comments, “you know you can die from playing this game or end up brain damaged.” shortly after her comment, “music lover” (age and gender unclear) writes, “y’all finna [fixing to] die.” the following day, the video appears with a prompt: “this video has been age-restricted based on our community guidelines.” it is possible for viewers who can confirm their age to view the video, cfr_2014.indb 26 11/20/14 1:07 pm tucker the endangered child 27 but others are not allowed to see it. this restriction demonstrates responsiveness to viewers’ concerns, which is a key aspect of youtube’s ground rules. since the fall of 2013, there have been increasing restrictions and removals of videos that clearly display choking and fainting games. girls’ videos from the many available videos of fainting games created by adolescent girls, i have chosen to examine two: “pass out gamemikala and madison,” posted on june 21, 2013, and viewed 12,181 times by september 27, 2013, and “faint game,” posted on october 13, 2012 and viewed 1,726 times by july 28, 2014. teenaged female video-makers made both films in their bedrooms, with other girls present. “pass out game — mikala and madison” shows five teenaged girls taking turns hyperventilating and passing out in a bedroom. the girls stand against a wall next to a bed. when they fall, they collapse onto an array of colorful pillows. they seem both excited and nervous as they perform for their friends and the larger audience of youtube. the first comment on this video is part of a pattern that is, unfortunately, common on the internet: men ogling teenaged girls and trying to get their attention. this comment, “well i think you are both really cute with sexy legs!” comes from a male who self-identifies as “steve from london”; he cautions the girls to “play safe,” adopting a quasi-parental tone. steve writes “thanks for the uploads,” showing that he enjoys watching pretty girls faint; on breath control videos and others, such responses are fairly common. comments two through six — questions and compliments — are also typical of comments on youtube videos of fainting and choking games. in the sixth comment, however, the young male writer, “go pro hero,” explains that, because he thought the game was “bullshit,” he “just tried it,” passed out, and woke up screaming. although he ends his comment with the abbreviation “lol,” he sounds shaken up. is he really upset after trying the fainting game, or is he pretending to participate in the game to develop rapport with the individual who uploaded the video? it is not possible to know what he did or did not do, but it is significant that this male commenter wants to find out whether the game is “real” or “bullshit.” the “real or fake” question, commonly expressed by young people on youtube, arises often in comments on fainting and choking game videos. debate about what is real and what is fake fuels discussion of performances of these games, as in the dialectics of the legend (dégh and vázsonyi 1973). after go pro hero’s comment, other writers criticize the game and the girls: “fucking idiots,” “you are killing a ton of brain cells,” and “don’t it can kill you.” in comment 12, caitlin, who self-identifies as an adolescent girl, writes, “please tell me how to do this!!” undeterred by the three previous writers’ negative remarks, she seems eager to try the game herself. like the ancient greek pandora, who cannot resist opening her box of troubles, caitlin seems irresistibly drawn to the strange sensations caused by fainting games, as do the creators of the video, mikala and madison. in late september of 2013, when i found mikala and madison’s video, the video had not yet been flagged. by the summer of 2014, however, it was apparent that cfr_2014.indb 27 11/20/14 1:07 pm the endangered child tucker 28 mikala was trying to evade family opposition. her video “passout game — mikala and madison” had disappeared from the internet, and she had posted three sections of the video with different titles. in mid-july, a comment appeared on “pass out game — 2 mikala and madison”: “reported a bunch of these btw, you really have been bad. granddad.” this sounded like the end of mikala’s subversive fun. nonetheless, it was still possible for anyone to view all three fainting game videos through the end of july. the second girls’ video, “fainting game,” comes from hayley, who introduces her video with the apprehensive comment “if you are going to pist [post] comments telling me its bad then go fuck yourself.” her brief, 30-second video shows her or a friend hyperventilating, then collapsing while standing against a bedroom wall. the viewer hears laughter and then, after the girl’s collapse, the words “wakey-wakey!” this is a typically short video from girls in a bedroom with a closed door, who are maintaining their privacy from parents and siblings while sharing their adventures with a wide audience of young and older viewers on youtube. although hayley expresses worry about receiving critical comments, she gets compliments and friendly questions from viewers of her video (see appendix). “steve from london,” who complimented mikala and madison on their fainting game, tells hayley, “well i think you are gorgeous!” claiming to have experienced “déjà vu” after playing a fainting game, he asks her whether she has had the same sensation. answering that she felt as if she were dreaming and does not think that steve is “creepy at all,” she seems receptive to his overtures. another commenter, hizzy, asks, “you got a boyfriend?” answering “no lol,” hayley seems to like his question. both steve’s and hizzy’s questions suggest that they would like to get closer to hayley, and her responses do not discourage their interest. she self-presents as a young woman who has had little experience with men, and, unlike mikala, she has not had relatives intervene by contacting youtube. in the ambiguous realm of the internet, this is one kind of peril of which parents need to be aware. choking and fainting games give young people exciting but nerve-wracking chances to test their bravery. the urge to do something risky, thrilling, and heroic is hard to resist, even (or especially) when pressure from adults provides a deterrent. becoming dizzy, feeling disoriented, and experiencing a briefly altered state of consciousness has a strong appeal to young people on the cusp of adolescence. this experience helps young people feel brave and resilient; they have accepted a difficult, possibly life-threatening challenge and returned from an alternate state of consciousness that seems like another world. not all kids accept this challenge, of course; some agree with adults that the games are too dangerous. but for those who do, performance of breath control games for peers, in defiance of adults’ rules, demonstrates strength of mind and determination. worried parents want to stop the games so that their kids can stay safe and grow up to be responsible adults. both parents and their offspring value progress toward adulthood, but they tend to have different ideas about how to achieve it. in the dynamic performance arena of youtube, new videos appear every day. comments on new and older videos reveal concern about truth and fakery, as well cfr_2014.indb 28 11/20/14 1:07 pm tucker the endangered child 29 as safety and danger. viewers who object to particular videos can ask youtube staff members to remove them. although youtube’s community guidance system has placed viewer-based limits upon some videos, it has not stopped kids from posting new videos that they want to share with others. as the discourse on safety and endangerment continues, we should remember that young people feel a need to demonstrate their courage and that many of them find enormous satisfaction in peer-based video-sharing. notes many thanks to simon j. bronner and trevor j. blank for reading an earlier draft of this essay and sharing their insights, which i greatly appreciate. i especially want to thank simon j. bronner for his very helpful suggestions regarding adolescents’ engagement with adults as they move toward maturity. i also want to thank trevor j. blank very much for his very perceptive, constructive suggestions. i presented a shorter version of this essay at the american folklore society’s annual meeting in the fall of 2013. 1. on december 14, 2012, 20-year-old adam lanza shot and killed 20 children and six adults at sandy hook elementary school in newtown, connecticut. soon afterwards he committed suicide. shocked by the massacre of so many children and adults, americans questioned gun control laws and other aspects of this tragic occurrence. 2. there is no mention in this article of folklorists’ studies of choking games from 1969 to 2009, although the authors note fourteen folk terms for choking games in english and one folk term in spanish, intento desmayo. the authors cite an early study of fainting and choking games in the british medical journal: howard, leathart, dornhurst, and sharpey-schafer’s “the ‘mess trick’ and the ‘fainting lark,’” which was published in 1951. 3. scholars outside the field of folklore have examined children’s and adolescents’ rebellion from a number of perspectives. an analysis of childhood that contrasts adults’ sheltering and spoiling of children with children’s desire to rebel is historian gary cross’s the cute and the cool: wondrous innocence and modern american children’s culture (2004). 4. see roger d. abrahams’s deep down in the jungle (2006 [1970]) for an insightful study of young men’s defense and criticism of their mothers while playing the “dozens” in urban philadelphia. 5. because youtube videos are public documents, i have included links to videos that can be viewed online. in this article, for the sake of preserving individuals’ privacy, i use first names only and do not identify full screennames. all youtube comments are presented in their original form, without correction of spelling or syntax. cfr_2014.indb 29 11/20/14 1:07 pm the endangered child tucker 30 works cited abrahams, roger d. 2006 [1970]. deep down in the jungle: black american folklore from the streets of philadelphia. new york: aldine transaction. boyd, danah. 2014. it’s complicated: the social lives of networked teens. new haven, ct: yale university press. bronner, simon j. 2011. framing violence and play in american culture. journal of ritsumeikan social sciences and humanities 3: 145-160. ______. 2014a. email communication. august 4. ______. 2014b. email communication. august 11. buccitelli, anthony bak. 2013. performance 2.0: observations toward a theory of the digital performance of folklore. in folk culture in the digital age: the emergent dynamics of human interaction, ed. trevor j. blank. logan: utah state university press, 60-84. caillois, roger. 1961. man, play and games. new york: free press. carpenter, carole h. 2011. why children’s studies? center for research in young people’s texts and cultures. http://crytc.uwinnipeg.ca/pdf/papers/carole. carpenter.pdf. choke rope. 2011. posted by adam. youtube. 21 september. no url available because of removal from site. cofer passed out. 2010. posted by kevin. youtube. 25 january. http://www. youtube.com/watch?v=ah0wn9jfi18. conrad, joann. 2002. the war on youth: a modern oedipal tragedy. children’s folklore review 24 (1-2): 33-42. cross, gary. 2004. the cute and the cool: wondrous innocence and modern american children’s culture. oxford and new york: oxford university press. dégh, linda and andrew vázsonyi. 1973. dialectics of the legend. bloomington, in: folklore publications group. ______. 2001. legend and belief. bloomington: indiana university press. ellis, bill. 1982-83. legend tripping in ohio: a behavioral study. in papers in comparative studies, vol. 2, eds. daniel barnes, rosemary o. joyce, and steven swann jones, 61-73. columbus, oh: center for comparative studies in the humanities. ______. 2003. aliens, ghosts and cults: legends we live. jackson: university press of mississippi. fainting game. 2012. posted by hayley. 13 october. youtube. http://www. youtube.com/watch?v=w4nvdz67h4m. fainting game!!! 2013. posted by league city stunts. 30 may. youtube. http:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwdjc1kfrg8. flagging content. 2014. youtube. https://support.google.com/youtube/ answer/2802027. friedman, richard a. 2014. why teenagers act crazy. sunday review, new york times. 28 june. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/29/opinion/sunday/whyteenagers-act-crazy.html?_r=0. cfr_2014.indb 30 11/20/14 1:07 pm tucker the endangered child 31 howard, p., leathart, g.l., dornhorst, a.c., and sharpey-schafer, e.p. 1951. the ‘mess trick’ and the ‘fainting lark.’ british medical journal 2: 382-384. kalliala, marjatta. 2006. play culture in a changing world. maidenhead, uk: open university press. linkletter, martha, kevin gordon and joe dooley. 2009. the choking game and youtube: a dangerous combination. clinical pediatrics 49 (3): 274-279. meley, patricia. 1991. adolescent legend trips as teenage cultural response: a study of lore in context. children’s folklore review 14: 5-24. opie, iona and peter. 1969. children’s games of street and playground. new york: oxford university press. o’sullivan, jack. 1999. so you still want to send the kids to boarding school? the independent. 18 march. http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/ so-you-still-want-to-send-the-kids-to-boarding-school-1081328.html (accessed august 9, 2009). parker-pope, tara. 2008. ‘choking’ game deaths on the rise. nytimes.com. 14 february. http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/ pass out game2 madison & mikala. 2013. posted by mikala. youtube. 21 june. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=betk0u5qhl4. passout game — mikala and madison. 2013. posted by mikala. youtube. 21 june. no url available because of removal from site. phillips, anne. 2014. hyperventilation — a deadly game. jeff orchard, university of waterloo. 10 october. https://cs.waterloo.ca/~jorchard/mike/mike.html snickars, pelle and patrick vonderau. 2010. the youtube reader. stockholm: national library of sweden. sutton-smith, brian. 1970. psychology of childlore: the triviality barrier. western folklore 29 (1): 1-8. teen safety. youtube. 2014. https://support.google.com/youtube/ answer/2802244?hl=en. thigpen, kenneth a. 1971. adolescent legends in brown county: a survey. indiana folklore 4 (2): 141-215. tucker, elizabeth. 2012. changing concepts of childhood: children’s folklore scholarship since the nineteenth century. journal of american folklore 125 (498): 389-410. ______. 2008-2009. “go to bed, now you’re dead”: suffocation songs and breath control games. children’s folklore review 31: 45-58. ______. 2007. haunted halls: ghostlore of american college campuses. jackson: university press of mississippi. ______. 2007-2008. levitation revisited. children’s folklore review 30: 47-60. unintentional strangulation deaths from the ‘choking game’ among youths aged 6-19 years — united states, 1995-2007. 2008. mmwr weekly, center for disease control. 15 february. http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/ mmwrhtml/mm5706a1.htm. van dijk, jose. 2013. the culture of connectivity: a critical history of social media. london: oxford university press. cfr_2014.indb 31 11/20/14 1:07 pm the endangered child tucker 32 warner, paul m. 2005. “choking game” claims life of one california teenager. canyon news. 7 august. http://www.canyon-news.com/artman/publish/ article_3310.php (accessed august 7, 2009). appendix excerpt from comments on youtube video “survivors of the choking game,” uploaded feb. 8, 2010 by carrie (300,509 views by july 27, 2014): 1. sandra: omg...people seriously? you believe that all teenagers from this video died? and their show pictures of them?? really?? okay i believe that someone diedt from that “game” and im really sorry for their parents but i really don’t believe that the pictures of children who died are real.. you really think that some adults or teenager would go to the hospital and take a picture or video of survives.. no i don’t think so.. no hates is just teenage girl opinion, don’t believe her because all teenagers are stupid. 2. bob: well you’re certainly not helping people think any more highly of teenagers, i mean maybe you should work on being able to post comments that don’t make you look like you have shit for brains. 3. sandra: and who are you to judge me? 4. neecy: they are real kids ..... how can you say this is fake? she has permission from all these kids parents to use this material because it really happened. i know these parents and can say it is 100% real and kids die. my 13 year old died from it as many others have. educate yourself and do your research if you have any doubts. comments on youtube video “fainting game!!!,” uploaded may 30, 2013 by league city stunts (314 views as of november 1, 2013): 1. nicholas: hahahahahahaha!!!!!!! 2. connor look at those calves on the white kid! 3. connor: your welcome 4. adriana: you know you can die playing this game or end up brain damaged. 4. music lover: y’all finna die. comments on youtube video “passout gamemikala and madison,” uploaded june 21, 2013 by mikala (12,181 views as of 9-27-2013): 1. steve: well i think you are both really cute with sexy legs! did you feel déjà vu when you came round? i used too. anyway, play safe and thanks for the uploads. steve from london 2. mikala: lol thanks!!!! 3. mojave: why did she fall so hard? cfr_2014.indb 32 11/20/14 1:07 pm tucker the endangered child 33 4. adrian: what’s your guy’s twitter/instagram? 5. johanna: cool t-shirt j 6. go pro hero: well i thought for sure this was bullshit never believed the game was real … i just tried it, bend down breathed hard for half a minute, and stood up and breathed on my thumb. my dogs were pushing me and i passed out i guess, because i woke up screaming what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck with a big pain in my back. landed on a gopro case:/ that was terrifying lol 7. mikala.: adrian it’s @smoking******** 8. mikala: and i know go pro. it’s i cool aft ho 9. jonathan: fucking idiots 10. gentrit.: well, for starters you are killing a ton of brain cells when you do stuff like that. and i am convinced it’s more noticeable because people who play this game already have fewer brain cells than average. 11. dark: dont it can kill you 12. caitlin: please tell me how to do this!! 13. dark: whats crazy is she is having a seizure 14. trinity: she fell hard 15. savanna: the girl that fell last with the cool story bro shirt on or whatever she faked it well at least it looked like she did 16. garrett: yo tell that girl in the white to hmu? 17. morgan: the cool story shirt fake ass 18. jzone: because getting drunk is too much work 19. theo: get rekt excerpt from comments on the youtube video ““fainting game,” uploaded october 13, 2012 by hayley (1,191 viewers by july 30, 2014) 1. hizzy: ok lol you do it to your mates then, you got a boyfriend? 2. super: how to do it 3. hayley: hizzy no lol me and my step sister used to it when we were about 13 so there is some old vids from then. im 17 now then remembered about it so we were bored one night and decided not to do it again :/ 4. steve: wow, you were out cold. did you feel déjà vu when you came round? i used to when i did this. great upload, thanks. just play safe if you haven’t got anyone to catch you. i concussed myself one time! anyway, i think your sexy, not bering creepy, just an observation. take care steve from london 5. hayley: haha i know! no i didn’t feel deja vu, but i do remember dreaming but i couldn’t remember what about. like when you wake up and you know you were just dreaming but you forgot. and oh dear lol i have never concussed myself although i did one time fall forward and nearly broke my nose haah. no not creepy at all lol cfr_2014.indb 33 11/20/14 1:07 pm cfr_2014_part3 cfr_2014_part4 cfr_2014_part5_part1 33 zashikiwarashi, the ghost that is saving japan linda kinsey spetter zashikiwarashi is a ghost which is well known in japan but not well known in the western world. richard dorson did briefly mention this ghost in his folk legends of japan (1962), a book that he began with high praise of kunio yanagita, the “father of japanese folklore,” who first wrote about zashikiwarashi in 1910 in his tono monogatari (which translates legends of tono). michiko iwasaka and barre toelken also mentioned the ghost briefly in their book ghosts and the japanese (1994), and they pointed out that the spirit of zashikiwarashi has been associated with the spirit of unborn children, either through abortion or through mabiki, which was an old practice of killing some children right after they were born so there would not be too many mouths to feed. even though zashikiwarashi is not well known outside of japan, for the past few years japanese culture has been inundated with zashikiwarashi stories in numerous manga, anime, tv dramas, novels, movies, stage plays, musicals, computer games, short stories, newspaper articles, magazines, internet websites, folklore books and children’s books. in my opinion, these stories relate to a number of social problems that japan is now experiencing: a low birth rate because young people do not marry until they are almost 30, a high suicide rate, bullying, a phenomenon known as “hikkikomori” (young men and women who withdraw from society to stay in their rooms because of their inability to interact with society), and the economic necessity of families often having to live apart because of their jobs. this is not to even mention the depression and despair of the 2011 tsunami which killed more than 15,000 people and displaced more than 340,000 people in japan. zashikiwarashi literally means “tatami mat child.” tatami mats are the traditional flooring made of woven rice straw in most japanese homes. in the older versions of this tale, zashikiwarashi is a child ghost only seen by children; it brings good luck to the homes it visits and bad luck to the homes it leaves. the oldest, most traditional version of zashikiwarashi is of a little girl, dressed in a kimono, with a topknot on her head (see figure 1). sometimes an extra child in the counting of children is zashikiwarashi. figure 1. the traditional form of zashikiwarashi, a little girl in kimono with a topknot on her head. sketch by kiyomi nakano. cfr_2012.indb 33 10/19/12 9:25:33 am zashikiwarashi, the ghost that is saving japan spetter 34 always, the spirit of zashikiwarashi has been associated with abandoned or aborted or lost children. in recent versions, there seems to be a thematic element emphasizing the desire of the child to be born or taken in. an example of this kind of story can be seen in the 2007 anime film, mononoke: zashikiwarashi, by takashi hashimoto. a pregnant woman is traveling and is caught in a rainstorm. she begs the people at an old hotel to let her stay there, but they refuse because the hotel is full. she keeps begging for the sake of her unborn child, so at last they put her in “that” room which is usually never used because it is full of zashikiwarashi spirits. the hotel had previously been a brothel, and prostitutes had buried their unwanted children below the tatami mats in that room. all night long, the zashikiwarashi spirits haunt and torment the woman, until at last she agrees to give birth to them, removing the talisman from her stomach that had prevented their entry into her body. in an earlier manga comic book story entitled “enai enai baa,” published in 1981 by osamu tezuka, probably the most beloved manga artist ever in japan, a man goes to a resort hotel to study for his exams, but he is constantly tormented by a mischievous zashikiwarashi ghost baby, who wants to play (see figure 2). finally the man gives up trying to study, and plays with the ghost. magically, the man does very well on his exams, and he credits it to the lucky ghost. the ghost gets the man to promise that he will one day marry and allow the ghost’s spirit to enter his baby. the man marries and takes his bride on a honeymoon to the same resort hotel. when the hotel catches on fire, the couple escapes, but the man rushes back into the burning hotel to rescue the tatami mat which houses the zashikiwarashi spirit, even though everyone thinks he is crazy to risk his life for a tatami mat. he takes the smelly tatami mat to his home, and his wife often tries to throw it away, but he rescues it every time, leading the wife to wonder what kind of crazy man she has married. she becomes pregnant, and at the hospital he drags the smelly tatami mat into the hospital room, and as she gives birth to the child, we can see that the spirit of zashikiwarashi has happily entered the child, and the ending is quite happy for everyone. again, in this story we see the desire of children to be born. in a 2006 young people’s novel, yuta and his strange friends (yuta to fushigina nakamatachi), by tetsuro miura, a young boy is being bullied by many of his classmates. he becomes friends with five zashikiwarashi, who teach figure 2. zashikiwarashi portrayed as a baby, as in osamu tezuka’s 1974 manga “enai enai baa.” sketch by kiyomi nakano. cfr_2012.indb 34 10/19/12 9:25:34 am spetter zashikiwarashi, the ghost that is saving japan 35 him self-defense. they like him because his friend is a girl who always carries a baby doll on her back. the zashikiwarashi like her because she seems to like babies. in the young people’s novel, a zashikiwarashi who befriends yuta is a wild-haired boy (see figure 3). however, in the 2008 musical stage play from the same novel, the zashikiwarashi are not in the form of young children but rather look like old men (see figure 4). they are still wearing diapers, and since their diapers have never been changed, their rumps have grown big and they smell bad. because they like the bullied boy, they encourage him and teach him how to defend himself against the bullies. when he fights with the bullies, their fighting magically changes into a dance every time, and the bullies find that dancing is more fun than fighting. the musical stage version of this novel was presented by the famous shiki theatre company all over japan, and i was lucky to see one of the presentations in kitakyushu city. it was fun watching the five zashikiwarashi fly through the air above the audience. in the novel and the stage play, yuta the boy learns that rather than withdrawing from society, he can become a positive force in society. this story seems to address the current japanese problem of “hikkikomori.” hikkikomori is a social phenomenon which is said to be affecting as many as 20 percent of japanese adolescents now; the young people withdraw figure 3. zashikiwarashi as a wildhaired boy, as in the 2006 children’s novel yuta to fushigina nakamatachi (yuta and his strange friends). sketch by kiyomi nakano. figure 4. zashikiwarashi as an old man, as in the 2008 musical stage play of yuta to fushigina nakamatachi (yuta and his strange friends). sketch by kiyomi nakano. cfr_2012.indb 35 10/19/12 9:25:35 am zashikiwarashi, the ghost that is saving japan spetter 36 from society into their rooms and do not emerge, possibly because of some perceived socially devastating experience they have suffered. the story about yuta and his experiences with the zashikiwarashi teaches children to make themselves strong and to value their lives. another film version of a zashikiwarashi story, “natsushojo” by gyo hayasaka, has been shown in private audiences since 1995 but has never been distributed in theaters. i learned about it in a book called atomic bomb cinema by jerome f. shapiro, a hiroshima university professor (shapiro 2002, 258-59, 261-63). in this film, a link between zashikiwarashi and the atomic bombing of hiroshima is made. a man and his wife were caught in the bombing. they were separated, but they both survived. the man saw his high school classmate, a young woman, dying in the burning river. there was nothing he could do to save her. his wife, who was pregnant, lost her baby. later, they moved to an island near hiroshima. when a very young little girl came to their door a few years later looking for a place to find shelter, both the man and woman thought she was a zashikiwarashi. the man thought she was the spirit of his lost classmate whom he felt guilty about for not being able to help. the woman thought the child was the spirit of her lost baby. the man seems not to value his own life and behaves recklessly, while the mother learns to value her life even more and gladly accepts the little girl as her own child. incidentally, after the atomic bombing at hiroshima, the abortion rate in japan was the highest it has ever been. people were worried about the effects of radiation on their unborn children. now, in modern times, the abortion rate is again high. birth control pills are illegal in japan; they can only be prescribed to help a woman regulate her period. so, aside from using condoms and the rhythm method, abortion is the most common form of birth control, and japan’s current birth rate is the lowest or second lowest in the world. recently i have been collecting information about mizuko kuyou, which is a religious ceremony to honor the spirit of an aborted baby. mizuko literally means “water baby” and refers to a child that has been aborted or otherwise died before birth. single motherhood is still a stigma in japan, so abortion often seems the only choice for young girls who become pregnant. after the abortion, girls usually contact a buddhist temple on their own without their families’ knowledge to purchase a small mizuko jizo god in the shape of an infant. these actions are usually pursued not so much because of guilt but because of a fear that the spirit of the dead infant will come back to figure 5. zashikiwarashi in the form of a mizuko statue. mothers often place such statues at temples in memory of their lost children. sketch by kiyomi nakano. cfr_2012.indb 36 10/19/12 9:25:35 am spetter zashikiwarashi, the ghost that is saving japan 37 haunt and cause trouble in the person’s life, so annual visits to the mizuko jizo to deliver presents, and to dress it up in baby clothes, are ways that women who have aborted their children can appease their spirits. you can see many of these when you visit a temple, little statues of babies lined up side by side, usually in red hoods and bibs. in the mononoke anime film which i mentioned earlier, in which the pregnant woman stayed in a room full of zashikiwarashi spirits, the spirits were in the form of small mizuko statues (see figure 5). not to be confused with the playful child ghost zashikiwarashi is another zashiki figure called “zashikionna” (zashiki woman). this creepy female ghost, as portrayed in a graphic 1993 manga novel by mochizuki minetaro, does not bring joy or luck, but rather stalks young men in classic horror fashion (see figure 6). she seems to be a modern blend of an inverted zashikiwarashi and the vengeful japanese demon ghost oiwa. a new movie about the traditional zashikiwarashi came out in april 2012. the movie is entitled “home: itoshi no zashikiwarashi” which translates home: our dear zashikiwarashi. it is based on the 2008 novel, itoshi no zashikiwarashi, by hiroshi ogiwara. in this story, a family with many problems is forced to move to the country because of the father’s job transfer. the father is having troubles with his new supervisor, the boy has asthma, the girl is being bullied at school, the mother is overwhelmed with caring for the huge, old-fashioned house, and the grandmother is showing signs of dementia. but gradually, zashikiwarashi, the ghost of the house, a mysterious little girl in kimono with a topknot on her head, makes herself known first to the boy, then the grandmother, then the girl, and finally the mother. the family’s luck begins to improve in every aspect. in one of the most touching scenes of the movie, the child ghost is seen sleeping on the mother’s back as the mother is cooking. the father is offered a chance to go back to tokyo with a big promotion, and at a family meeting, the group decides they should stay together and so they agree to go as a family group. guess who goes with them? even though the father himself has never seen the ghost, he accepts the ghost, and at a restaurant on figure 6. zashikionna (“zashiki woman”), who seems to be an inverted variant of zashikiwarashi combined with the demon spirit oiwa. this evil ghost stalks young men. sketch by kiyomi nakano. cfr_2012.indb 37 10/19/12 9:25:35 am zashikiwarashi, the ghost that is saving japan spetter 38 their way back to tokyo, he asks for a table for six, and after the family of five has been seated, he pulls out the sixth chair for zashikiwarashi, a fully accepted member of the family. in ordinary japanese life, when a family has children well situated in schools, the father normally would have gone on to his new job alone and commuted to home on weekends, but this film emphasizes the importance of a family living together. one of the elements in this story is that as the grandmother descends into dementia, she begins to think that the zashikiwarashi ghost is the embodiment of her brother who died as a child, just as the hiroshima film characters also saw the ghost as the embodiment of an abandoned friend or lost child in their lives. thus, zashikiwarashi comes to be very personal for people who have lost someone. at the same time, zashikiwarashi spreads joy and happiness everywhere. the people who are willing to accept zashikiwarashi into their lives have good luck. this element is exaggerated in one of the manga cartoon magazines called “jigoku sensei nube (hell teacher nube)” in a story by shou makura, in which a little zashikiwarashi girl (figure 1) just walks down the street and everything she passes suddenly turns to good: a dog that had just died from eating insecticide suddenly springs back to life, a couple with their baby suddenly sees the baby stand for the first time, children who only had mudpies for their party suddenly have a real cake, and a man discovers he has a winning lottery ticket (makura and okano 1996). good luck is certainly something that the people of japan need right now, and it seems that this friendly ghost is being called upon to deal with many of japan’s current social problems. the problems of hikkikomori, the young men and women who withdraw from society, and also the phenomenon of young women who decline to marry and who choose to stay in their parents’ home without beginning new families of their own, are contributing to talk about “japan’s lost generation,” i.e., a generation of babies not being born. the japanese government is actually working on ways to induce women to marry and have babies, as the old-age pension system will eventually collapse without the birth of new babies. one of the results is that companies are being encouraged to build day care centers so that mothers can work and have their children cared for at their place of work. i cannot help but think that the proliferation of zashikiwarashi stories at this time is somehow functioning in a special way to help japan deal with its current social problems. works cited dorson, richard m. 1962. folk legends of japan. tokyo: charles e. tuttle. home: itoshi no zashikiwarashi (愛しの座敷わらし) (home: our dear zashikiwarashi). 2012. screenplay by narito kaneko based on the novel by hiroshi ogiwara. director seiji izumi. toei. film. iwasaka, michiko and barre toelken. 1994. ghosts and the japanese: cultural experience in japanese death legends. logan, utah: utah state university press. cfr_2012.indb 38 10/19/12 9:25:35 am spetter zashikiwarashi, the ghost that is saving japan 39 makura, shou (writer) and tsuyoshi okano (artist). 2007 [1996]. jigoku sensei nube (地獄先生ぬ～べ～) (hell teacher nube) (volume 15: zashiki warashi no kanashiki kako no maki (座敷童子の悲しき過去の巻) (zashiki warashi’s sorrowful past) 128: 119–138. minetaro, mochizuki. 1993. zashikionna (座敷女) (zashiki woman). tokyo: kodansha. manga. miura, tetsuro (writer) and minami midorikawa (artist). 2006. yuta to fushigina nakamatachi. (ユタとふしぎな仲間たち) (yuta and his strange friends.) tokyo: kodansha. illustrated children’s novel. mononoke: zashikiwarashi. (モノノ怪「座敷童子」) 2007. screenplay by ikuko takahashi. director kenji nakamura. animation director takashi hashimoto. mononoke film partners. dvd. originally broadcast as two episodes in a television series about mononoke in 2007 on the fuji network system. ogiwara, hiroshi. 2008. itoshi no zashikiwarashi (愛しの座敷わらし). tokyo: asahi. shapiro, jerome f. 2002. atomic bomb cinema. new york: routledge. tezuka, osamu. 1974. “inai inai baa.” (いないいないばあ) big comic august 25, 1974: 125–160. pub. shogakukan. manga. yanagita, kunio. 1975. the legends of tono, trans. ronald a. morse. tokyo: the japan foundation. (originally published as tono monogatari (遠野物語) by kunio yanagita in 1910.) yuta to fushigina nakamatachi. (ユタと不思議な仲間たち). (yuta and his strange friends). 2008. stage play by shiki theatre company (gekidan shiki). director asari keita. based on the 2006 novel by tetsuro miura. cfr_2012.indb 39 10/19/12 9:25:36 am cfr_2012_part7 cfr_2012_part8 ocr document "the hare and the tortoise race" eleven variations sharon peregrine johnson introduction this paper compares eleven versions of "the hare and the tortoise race." in these variations a slow, more intelligent creature always beats a fast, overconfident animal through trickery or perseverance. the slower creature wins by the use of deception, or simply because the other contender is so overconfident that he sleeps through the race. the boastful animal needing a lesson in humility is a whale, reedbuck, cat, coyote, wolf, or rabbit; and the slow creature is a sea slug, crab, skunk, tortoise, or hedgehog. the versions discussed in this paper and their shortened titles which i have assigned appear below. • "how the turtle beat the rabbit" edited by james e. connolly (cherokee). shortened title is "cherokee tale." • "the little turtle and the wolf" by betty mae jumper (seminole). shortened title is "seminole tale." • "the race" edited by robert a. roessel, jr. and dillon platero. shortened title is "navaho tale." • "the hare and the tortoise" by aesop, retold by james reeves (greece). shortened title is "aesop tale." • "slow train to arkansas" by harold coulander (united states). shortened title is "arkansas tale." • "mr. rabbit finds his match at last" from uncle remus by joel chandler harris (american negro i). shortened title is "uncle remus tale." • "rabbit and hedgehog" collected by richard m. dorson (american negro ii). shortened title is "american hedgehog tale." • "the tortoise and the reedbuck run a race" by w.f.p. burton (central africa). shortened title is "african reedbuck tale." 3 johnson • "the hare and the hedgehog" by walter de la mare, similar to grimm and grimm version (germany). shortened title is "german hedgehog tale." • "the cat and the crab" edited by keigo seki (japan i). shortened title paper is "japanese cat tale." • "the whale and the sea slug" edited by keigo seki (japan ii). shortened title is "japanese whale tale" history, country, and origins atelia clarkson says that "stories about races between slow and fast animals are among the oldest tales in the world" (167). clarkson notes that the earliest analyses of these tales divided them into three principal forms in which the slower animal wins through perseverance or deception. i have added an additional form that occurs in some native american versions. • slower animal wins through perseverance because the other is overly confident and falls asleep (tale type 275a, hare and tortoise race: the sleeping hare) (clarkson and cross 169). stith thompson refers to this version using the main motif k11.3, "hare and tortoise race: sleeping hare. in a race between the fast and the slow animal, the fast animal sleeps on the road and allows the slow animal to pass him" (macdonald 262). the "aesop tale" by reeves is an example of this type. while no one is absolutely sure that a man named aesop existed 2,000 years ago in greece, most authorities are certain that aesop tales have been handed down for numerous generations (reeves 12). • slower creature hangs onto the tail of the faster animal and claims to have been waiting for his rival at the finish line (tale type 275, the race of the fox and the crayfish). it has been reported that there are 23 recorded versions in japan (seki 25). the main motif is k11.2.0.2, "crab rides fox's tail" (macdonald 262). the "japanese cat tale" by seki is an example of this type. 4 "the hare and the tortoise race" • slower animal defeats the fast one by placing relatives or friends along the route. there are two descriptions for tale type 1074. one is "race, the trickster gets others like him to take places in the line of the race. the dupe sees them and thinks the trickster is outrunning him" (thompson, types 151). the other is "race won by deception: relative helpers" (clarkson 169). the following tales are examples of this type: "cherokee tale," "seminole tale," "uncle remus tale," "american hedgehog tale," "african reedbuck tale," "german hedgehog tale," and "japanese whale tale." • slower animal gets a head start, hides, sneaks back and eats all the prize. the main motif is k11.5—"race won by deception: sham-sick trickster. the trickster feigns lameness and receives a handicap in the race. he then returns and eats up the food which is the prize (macdonald 262). this is the closest motif for the "navaho tale." numerous versions of these tale types are found in africa, germany, europe, japan, united states, finland, estonia, sweden, russia and other places around the world. the principal motifs are k11—"race won by deception," k11.1—"race won by deception: relative helpers," and k11.3— "hare and tortoise race: sleeping hare." the motifs related to the versions selected for this analysis are: k11, k11.1, k11.1.0.3, k11.1.0.5, k11.1.0.7, k11.2—k11.2.0.7, k11.3, k11.5, k22.2.02 (macdonald 261-263). the folklorist will try to find the variances and differences between the versions. some of the key elements of "the hare and the tortoise race" are listed below. • animals that run the race (i.e., whale vs. sea slug, hare vs. hedgehog). • trickster's helpers (whether they are friends or relatives, and the number). • route and terrain of the race (i.e., the existence of ridges, trees, furrows for hiding). • purpose of the race. usually, it is to teach a lesson to a boasting animal and occasionally to win a prize. 5 johnson • interaction during the race between the contestants. in the "seminole tale," little turtle sings a song to the wolf. • ending. the loser may admit defeat or dies, the lesson is told, or the author writes an added comment of the wisdom. in "racing a trickster" from nigeria (a version that is not discussed in this paper) the race between frog and deer ends when the deer falls down from exhaustion and dies (lankford 238). the "uncle remus tale" ends with uncle remus explaining to the little boy about cheating. the "aesop tale" concludes with "slow and steady wins the race." in addition to looking for various differences and similarities between versions, the folklorist will look for indications that the transcriber cleaned up a tale, added moralistic insertions, or inserted too much of her/his own writing style and prose (clarkson 168). none of the tales seemed to have been guilty of these transgressions. and clarkson and cross did not feel that this was a problem in the retelling of "the hare and the hedgehog" ("german hedgehog tale") by walter de la mare. she calls him a "master literary artist who uses the essential plot of the tale type as a framework for retelling" and proceeds to tell the reader of his accomplishments (clarkson 168). this tale is so common to numerous cultures and has been retold over and over again for such a long time, it is not surprising that there are so many versions. and they all seem to have a lesson for the reader. this seems to be more obvious in the native american variants. these tales have a teaching lesson theme as an integral part of the story. in the introduction to the "cherokee tale," the author explains that "indian storytellers often used a tale to instruct on what was considered improper behavior, such as boastfulness" (connolly). james e. connolly discusses the significance of the turtle to north american tribes and its relation to creation myths. some editors and authors are not inclined to discuss these aspects, but instead let the tale speak for itself. the storyteller of folktales needs to be faithful to the intent and cultural considerations of the version being presented, and keep in mind any numbering considerations, repetitious phrases useful to audience participation, the basic plot, and other important elements. however, unlike the folklorist, there is more latitude to add personal modifications to the tale. based upon personal experience i have noticed two possible problems with using "the hare and the tortoise race" in a storytelling program. • children hearing that the race was won by deception might respond as the little boy did in the "uncle remus tale." the teller could 6 "the hare and the tortoise race" respond to cheating as uncle remus did ("it is catching and one needs to be careful not to catch it.") or incorporate the wisdom of the animal in the telling. • tales with a moral at the end are usually not very successful. if a storyteller must end with a moral, then the storyteller should consider the endings in the "seminole tale," the "navaho tale," the "uncle remus tale," and the "german hedgehog tale." structural (plot) variation there are some common elements throughout the eleven versions chosen for this paper. the faster animal's annoying behavior and boastful manner cause the slower animal to accept or issue the challenge. in these variants (listed in order of most occurrences first), the race occurs due to the following reasons: • the slower creature is ridiculed, pestered, or annoyed by the faster animal ("seminole tale," "aesop tale," "american hedgehog tale," and "german hedgehog tale"). • one or both animals are boasting and the weaker one wants to teach the faster one a lesson of humility ("cherokee tale," "african reedbuck tale," and "japanese whale tale"). • the two animals are talking and decide to race ("arkansas tale," "uncle remus tale," and "japanese cat tale") • the faster animal wants the prize for himself ("navaho tale"). a race won by deception is the most prominent reason for the victory of the slower animal over the faster. the "aesop tale" was the only variant where the slow creature did not win through some form of deception (with or without helpers). the following reasons occurred in the variants discussed in this paper: • the race is won by deception, relative helpers are placed in locations along the route. in the "uncle remus tale," the wife and three children are helpers; in the "american hedgehog tale," old lady hedge's daughter is the helper; in the "african reedbuck tale," four turtle brothers are helpers, and in the "german hedgehog tale," hedgehog's wife is the helper. 7 johnson • the race won by deception: friends are placed in locations along the route. in the "cherokee tale," three turtle friends help; in the "seminole tale," four turtle friends help; and in the "arkansas tale," three terrapin plot together. the "japanese whale tale," does not specify a definite number of friends as helpers; however, three beaches are mentioned in the story. • the race is won through deception by the "sham-sick trickster" (macdonald 262). the trickster feigns lameness and receives a handicap in the race. he then returns and gets the prize (macdonald 262). in the "navaho tale," brother skunk gets a headstart, hides, and sneaks back to eat the food. • the race is won by deception with the slow creature hanging on to faster creature's tale. in the "japanese cat tale," the crab hangs on to the cat's tail. • the race is won by the slower animal because the faster animal is overconfident and falls asleep. in the "aesop tale," tortoise beats hare because of this reason. the endings have several commonalties. in all eleven versions the smaller, smarter creature tricks the larger, faster animal. six out of the eleven tales were teaching tales that contained some moralizing, and comments of wisdom were added at the end of the story ("cherokee tale," "seminole tale," "aesop tale," "uncle remus tale," "african reedbuck tale," and "german hedgehog tale"). the other variants focused on the race itself ("navaho tale," "arkansas tale," "american hedgehog tale," "japanese cat tale," and "japanese whale tale"). some of the endings were especially noteworthy. 8 • in the "navaho tale," coyote is outwitted by skunk, and skunk becomes the trickster. previous stories in coyote stories of the navaho people by roessel and platero help to explain relationship between coyote and skunk. • in both the "seminole tale" and the "african reedbuck tale," five turtles are able to beat their adversaries. the authors of these variants mention that together the turtles could not be beaten. "the hare and the tortoise race" • in the "german hedgehog tale," the author notes that the "hedgehog had the good sense to marry a wife like himself, not a weasel, or a whale" (clarkson 167). the plot of this folktale has been broken down into three sections: the challenge, the race, and the ending. each version has been analyzed according to the appropriate motif for these areas. motifs came from stith thompson's motif index and margaret read macdonald's the storyteller's sourcebook. there were no subdivisions indicated from thompson's taletype index. please refer to the following charts for further analysis of the plots and related information on the eleven variants used in this paper: tabular analysis of the variants on pages 12-19, and the plot description chart on pages 20-21. conclusion "the hare and the tortoise race" is a prime example of the oral tradition that has been passed down and shared by different cultures through time. its exact origins are unknown, but there are numerous versions worldwide. in a relatively short period of time, i managed to find more than eleven tales from various cultural groups and countries: native american groups (cherokee, seminole, navaho), greece, southeastern united states, africa, germany, and japan. it is not a complex tale with elaborate schemes and plots, but focuses on a simple theme: the little creature winning over the bigger, more powerful animal. the variants of the tale differ in choice of animals, type of deception, ending remarks, cultural influences, and the transcriber's telling. the selected variants of this tale have similarities previously discussed, but each also has a particular strength or special attribute that makes it stand out in some way (see plot description, below). • "cherokee tale." connolly provides excellent background information on the turtle's significance to the native american culture. he states that this is an instructional tale intended to teach the lesson that boastfulness is "improper behavior" (connolly). turtle teaches rabbit not to be too boastful. • "seminole tale." whenever wolf thinks that he has finished the race and is ready to nap under his favorite tree, he hears little turtle singing on the first ridge "your bones will be quivering and the flies will be buzzing and buzzing around you." each time he hears this he 9 johnson 10 gets up and runs the race again. he runs the race three times and collapses under his favorite tree, unable to move. the last song the rabbit sings is "i told you i was little and can't run fast, but i can outsmart you." all the turtles leave the wolf alone, "lying beneath the big tree, with the flies buzzing and buzzing around him" (jumper). the repetitious phrases could be used for participatory storytelling. • "navaho tale." this is a good example of the navaho coyote trickster tale. the ending is exceptionally good. coyote begs for food and gets exactly what he planned on leaving skunk—a few bones. • "aesop tale." this is the most familiar variant and the only version in which tortoise (or slower creature) does not use deception to beat the hare. the hare simply is so overconfident that he takes a nap and oversleeps. it contains the well-known phrase "slow and steady wins the race" (reeves 73). • "arkansas tale." this is a good version with slight southern arkansas dialect throughout the story. • "uncle remus tale." in this version by joel chandler harris, the reader is presented with a very heavy southern dialect. it is a little difficult to decipher. however, this is the only one where there are any human characters, uncle remus tells the story to the little boy. at the end the little boy says that "tarrypin" cheated and uncle remus gives him a word of caution in response. • "american hedgehog tale." this is one of the shorter versions, but it is a good feminist version. while the other tales have male characters as the leads, this one has old lady hedge racing and beating rabbit. • "african reedbuck tale." the ending is especially good in this variant. it says "though they were easy to overcome singly, when they all worked together they were hard to beat" (burton 98). • "german hedgehog tale. " the bet is a bottle of brandy. the wife helps her husband win the race. this tale has a good ending: the "the hare and the tortoise race" hedgehog "had the good sense to marry a wife like himself, and a not a weasel, or a wombat, or a whale" (clarkson 167). • "japanese cat tale." this is a short version that has the crab hanging onto the tail of the cat. there are twenty-three recorded versions of this tale (seki 25). this could be useful for a program on cats. • "japanese whale tale." seki provides information on international versions of this tale in the beginning and a little history. this version could be useful for the storyteller or librarian living in florida or near coastal waters. locating different variants of a folktale can enable the storyteller and librarian to customize their programs to a specific theme or audience. while some audiences might be better able to handle the easier version, such as the "aesop tale," an older group would enjoy a more complicated program containing the "seminole tale" or the "navaho tale." if one were doing the "navaho tale," other coyote tales could be told during the program. other audience considerations are sex of group, location, or setting. for instance, a performer doing a program for a girl scout group might use the "american hedgehog tale," the "german hedgehog tale," or the "uncle remus tale." the storyteller who prefers to do participatory storytelling might tell the "seminole tale" because of its repetitious singing phrases. another person might decide to do a program on native american tales and choose the "cherokee tale," the "seminole tale," or the "navaho tale." the storyteller looking for versions relevant to florida could select the "seminole tale," the "japanese cat tale," or the "japanese whale tale." and for the person wanting the most traditional version with no deception, there is the "aesop tale." this kind of analysis and collection of variants can be very useful for the folklorist and storyteller. it will help them enrich their knowledge of literature and provide more material for future programs. university of south florida 11 johnson tale type 275a: hare and tortoise race: the sleeping hare tale type 1074: race won by deception: relative helpers tale type 1074: race motifs from stith thompson's motif index and margaret read macdonald's the storyteller's sourcebook (a tabular analysis of eleven major variants) principal motifs: kll-22.2 contests won by deception "how the turtle beat the rabbit" cherokee (from why the possums tale is bare & other north american indian nature tales by james e. connolly) "cherokee tale" 1074: race won by deception "the little turtle and the wolf" seminole (from legends of the seminoles by betty mae jumper) "seminole tale" 1074: race won by deception "the race" navaho (from coyote stories of the navaho people by robert a. roessel, jr. & dillon platero) "navaho tale" 1074: race won by deception the challenge j2353.1 turtle and rabbit boast of their speed and decide to run a race to settle the argument. turtle wants to teach rabbit a lesson in humility. k11 [no boasting. wolf pesters little turtle until he agrees to a race. little turtle wants to teach wolf a lesson.] k11 [no boasting. brother coyote and brother skunk tricked and killed big jack rabbit, the mice, and the prairie dogs. brother coyote wants the meat for himself so challenges skunk to a race.] the race z71.1 turtle plots with three friends for z71.2 four hills. little turtle plots with deception four turtle friends for deception z71.2 four ridges k11 race. turtle trickster gets k11 race. little turtle is given k11.5 race to the big rock and headstart, posts a turtle friend on headstart on first ridge. he back: won by deception. brother the first 3 ridges. turtle waits posts a friend on each of the skunk gets a headstart, and the race on the 4th 4 ridges skunk hides, waits till coyote is past him, returns to camp wolf is deceived and thinks little turtle is outrunning him. when he rabbit is deceived and thinks arrives on the 4th ridge, he cannot turtle is outrunning him find little turtle and goes back to sleep under his tree. z71.1 wolf races little turtle 3 times. k11 turtle beats rabbit k11 little turtle beats wolf. wolf k11.5 brother skunk’s trick works. collapses under his tree, unable to move _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ the ending that is how turtle taught rabbit z71.3 takes five turtles to win race. brother skunk gets the food and not to be boastful. together they could not be beaten brother coyote some bones. tale type 275a: hare and tortoise race: the sleeping hare tale type 1074: race won by deception: relative helpers tale type 1074: race motifs from stith thompson's motif index and margaret read macdonald's the storyteller's sourcebook (a tabular analysis of eleven major variants) principal motifs: k11—22.2 contests won by deception "the hare and the tortoise" greece (from fables from aesop retold by james reeves) "slow train to arkansas" united states (from terrapin's pot of sense by harold coulander) "mr. rabbit finds his match at last" american negro 1 (from uncle remus by joel chandler harris) "aesop tale" 275: a hare and tortoise race "arkansas tale" 1074: race "uncle remus tale" 1074: race won by deception the challenge [uncle remus tells little boy about brer rabbit and brer tarrypin.] b120ff wise animals. turtle's mother. k11 [no boasting. terrapin and hare are talking. terrapin challenges hare to a race.] ki1.3 [no boasting. hare annoys tortoise until he agrees to a race.] [no boasting. tarrypin and hare are talking. tarrypin challenges hare to a race.] k11 k11.3 k11.3 hare and tortoise race: sleeping hare. in a race between the fast and the slow animal, the fast animal sleeps on the road and allows the slow animal to pass him. tortoise beats hare. the race z71.1 three terrapin plot against hare. k11.1 tarrypin plots with family for deception. relative helpers are his wife and three children. k11 race won by deception. k22.2.0.2 tarrypin defeats brer rabbit. tarrypin's family takes places in the line of the race. brer rabbit sees them and thinks brer tarrypin is outrunning him. k22.2.0.2 tarrypin beats brer rabbit and wins the money. b120ff slow and steady wins the race. k11.1.0.5 terrapin defeats hare. the hare runs back and forth. terrapin is posted at both ends and one in the middle. hare runs 6 miles (3 one way). kll terrapin beats hare. the ending hare admits defeat. j1370ff uncle remus comments on cheating. tale type 275a: hare and tortoise race: the sleeping hare tale type 1074: race won by deception: relative helpers tale type 1074: race motifs from stith thompson's motif index and margaret read macdonald's the storyteller's sourcebook (a tabular analysis of eleven major variants) principal motifs: kii-22.2 contests won by deception "rabbit & hedgehog" american negro ii (from american negro folktales collected by richard m. dorson) "the tortoise and the reedbuck run a race" central africa (from the magic drum by w.f.p. burton) "the hare and the hedgehog" germany similar to version by grimm and grimm (from told again by walter de la mare) "american hedgehog tale" 1074: race won by deception "african reedbuck tale" 1074: race won by deception "german hedgehog tale" 1074: race won by deception the challenge k11.1 j2353.1 reedbuck boasts of his speed and tortoise laughs at him. reedbuck challenges tortoise to a race. [no boasting. hare ridicules hedgehog because of his short legs. hedgehog challenges hare to a race.] k11.1 [no boasting. rabbit makes fun of hedge's babies. old lady hedge is angry. to even up things rabbit and old lady hedge decide to race.] k11.1 k11.1 k11.1 old lady hedge plots with daughter for deception. race won by deception: relative helpers. old lady hedge and her daughter outwit rabbit. the daughter is at one end and the mother at the other. rabbit is deceived and runs race twice. old lady hedge beats rabbit. k11.1 z71.2 the race tortoise plots with brothers for deception. four turtle brothers k11.1.0.7 tortoise defeats reedbuck with the help of his brothers who are placed in the line of the 20 mile race. k11.1 tortoise beats reedbuck. k11.1 hedgehog plots with wife for deception. kll.l.0.3 hedgehog and wife defeat hare. one is placed at each end of the furrow. hare is deceived. z71.1 hare runs race 3 times before giving up. k11.1.0.3 hedgehog beats hare. hedgehog wins bottle of brandy. rabbit admits defeat. z71.3 the ending takes five turtles to win race. together they could not be beaten. b120ff wise animals. hedgehog had the good sense to marry a wife like himself, not a weasel, or a whale. tale type 275a: hare and tortoise race: the sleeping hare tale type 1074: race won by deception: relative helpers tale type 1074: race motifs from stith thompson's motif index and margaret read macdonald's the storyteller's sourcebook (a tabular analysis of eleven major variants) principal motifs: kii-22.2 contests won by deception "the cat and the crab" japan i (from folktales of japan edited by keigo seki, #10) "the whale and the sea slug" japan ii (from folktales of japan edited by keigo seki, #9) "japanese cat tale" 275: the race of the fox and the crayfish "japanese whale tale" 1074: race the challenge k11.2 [no boasting. cat and crab decide to have a race.] j2353.1 whale brags that "there is no greater animal than i." the sea slug laughs and the whale challenges him to a race. k11.2 crab hangs on to cat's tail and wins. k11.2.0.1 .2.0.7 race won by deception: clinging to tail. cat is deceived. k11.2 k11.2 cat nears finish line, turns around to look for crab. crab lets go of cat's tail and crosses finish line first. crab beats cat. k11 z71.1 k11 the race k11 sea slug plots with friends for deception. race won by deception. sea slug gets friends to help him beat whale in a race. a sea slug is sent to every nearby beach. when whale arrives sea slug is always there first. whale and sea slug agree to swim to three different beaches. sea slug beats whale. k11 the ending whale admits defeat. shortened title plot description plot "cherokee tale" "seminole tale" "navajo tale" "aesop tale" "arkansas tale" "uncle remus tale" turtle and rabbit boast of their speed and decide to race. turtle wants to teach rabbit a lesson in humility. he gets three turtle friends to take places in the line of the race on the first three separate ridges. turtle is on the last ridge. rabbit is deceived and loses the race. little turtle and wolf decide to race. little turtle wants to teach wolf a lesson. turtle gets his four friends to take places in the line of the race on four separate hills. wolf runs race three times, finally collapses, and turtle wins. coyote and skunk are waiting for the mice and rabbit to cook. coyote gets greedy and challenges skunk to a race. skunk gets a head start, hides, waits for coyote to go past, and slips back to the fire. he takes the meat and goes up to the mesa. in the end coyote only gets a few bones. in a race between the fast and the slow animal, the fast animal sleeps on the road and allows the slow animal to pass him. rabbit sleeps and tortoise wins the race. terrapin defeats hare. three terrapin plot against hare. terrapin gets others like him to take places in the line of the race (one at the beginning, one at the end and in the middle). the hare sees them and thinks terrapin is outrunning him. uncle remus tells story to little boy. brer tarrypin tricks brer rabbit. he wins race by deception, wife and three children take places in the line of the race. brer rabbit sees them and thinks brer tarrypin is outrunning him. brer tarrypin beats brer rabbit and wins the money. "american hedgehog tale" rabbit makes fun of the hedgehog babies. old lady hedge is angry and to even up things rabbit and old lady hedge decide to race. old lady hedge and her daughter outwit rabbit, one is at the beginning and the other at the other end. rabbit runs race twice before admitting defeat. "african reedbuck tale" "german hedgehog tale" "japanese cat tale" "japanese whale tale" tortoise laughs at reedbuck tolue's boasting. reedbuck challenges him to a race. tortoise defeats reedbuck by placing his four brothers in the line of the race. reedbuck is deceived and tortoise wins. rabbit ridicules hedgehog. hedgehog challenges rabbit to a race. hedgehog places himself at beginning of furrow and wife at end. hare is deceived and races three times before giving up. hedgehog wins bottle of brandy. cat and crab decide to a race. crab wins by hitching a ride on cat' s tail. when cat nears the finish line, crab lets go of cat' s tail and crosses the finish line first. whale boasts and sea slug challenges whale to a race. sea slug gets friends to go to every beach. when whale arrives, they repeat the same expression. whale thinks they are all the same sea slug, and after swimming to three beaches admits defeat. character and special features analysis title & characters special noteworthy features "cherokee tale" turtle rabbit 3 turtle friends "seminole tale" little turtle wolf 4 turtle friends "navaho tale" brother skunk brother coyote "aesop tale" tortoise hare "arkansas tale" terrapin hare 2 turtle friends james e. connolly has provided background information on turtles and their significance to the native american culture. ends with moral: and that is how the turtle taught rabbit not to be too boastful. little turtle sings songs during the race. there is more vocal interaction in this version. songs can be used as means to encourage audience participation. wolf runs race three times. last song is "i told you i was little and can't run fast, but i can outsmart you." note together they could win. brother skunk has just helped brother coyote catch the meat, and cook it. he knows better than to trust coyote. so he comes up with a plan of his own. more interaction between characters. some comments by other animals. mother's advice mentioned in the beginning and repeated at the end. "slow and steady wins the race." more interaction at each part of the race between hare and the substitutes. hare runs back and forth before he gives up. "uncle remus tale" uncle remus, little boy, brer tarrypin, wife, & 3 children brer rabbit "american hedgehog tale" old lady hedge rabbit lady hedge's daughter "african reedbuck tale" tortoise, reedbuck, tortoise's 4 brothers "german hedgehog tale" hedgehog, hare, hedgehog's wife "japanese cat tale" crab cat "japanese whale tale" sea slug whale sea slug friends good indication of southern dialect. uncle remus tells little boy the story. addresses the cheating issue in the ending. when i have told the native american version, the children mention that turtle cheated. uncle remus warns the little boy to watch out for cheaters. very short version. old lady hedge decides to teach rabbit a lesson. a feminist version. rabbit runs race two times before admitting defeat. race is from village to village with a separate brother stationed at each. reedbuck is fooled. good ending: working together tortoise and his brothers are unbeatable. hare makes fun of hedgehog's short legs. hedgehog bets a bottle of brandy. the wife helps him win the race. good ending-the hedgehog "had the good sense to marry a wife like himself, and not a weasel, or a wombat, or a whale!" short tale. indication of history: appears in aesop, known in europe, africa, and in the negro and indian traditions of america. supposedly 23 versions have been recorded in japan. this could be useful for a program with a cat theme. author gives information on international versions of this tale in the beginning. appropriate for the storyteller living near coastal areas, like florida. whale swims to three beaches before admitting defeat. johnson works cited burton, w.f.p., "the tortoise and the reedbuck run a race. " the magic drum: tales from central africa. new york: criterion, 1961. clarkson, atelia, and gilbert b. cross. world folktales. new york: scribner's, 1980. connolly, james e. "how the turtle beat the rabbit. " why the possums tale is bare and other north american indian nature tales. owings mills, md: stemmer house, 1985. courlander, harold. "slow train to arkansas." terrapin's pot of sense. new york: holt, rinehart and winston, 1957. courtney, julia. "rabbit and hedgehog." american negro folktales. collected by richard m. dorson. greenwich, ct: fawcett, 1958. harris, joel chandler. "mr. rabbit finds his match at last." uncle remus. new york: schocken, 1965. jumper, betty mae. "the little turtle and the wolf. " legends of the seminoles. sarasota: pineapple, 1994. lankford, george e. native american legends: southeastern legends: tales from the natchez, caddo, biloxi, chickasaw, and other nations. little rock: august house, 1987. macdonald, margaret read. the storyteller's sourcebook: a subject, title, and motif index to folklore collections for children. detroit: neal-schuman, 1982. mare, walter de la. "the hare and the hedgehog." told again. new york: knopf, 1927. reeves, james. "the hare and the tortoise. " fables from aesop. new york: p. bedrick,1961. roessel, robert, jr., and dillon platero. "the race." coyote stories of the navaho people. rough rock, ar: navaho curriculum center, 1968. seki, keigo. "the cat and the crab." folktales of japan. chicago: u of chicago p, 1963. ______. "the whale and the sea slug." folktales of japan. chicago: u of chicago p, 1963. thompson, stith. motif-index of folk-literature. 6 volumes. bloomington: indiana up, 1957. _______. the types of the folk-tale. 2nd. rev. ed. folk lore fellows commu nications #184. 1961. 24 hitler's birthday: rumor-panics in the wake of the columbine shootings bill ellis on april 20, 1999, two students, eric harris and dylan klebold, came to columbine high school in littleton, colorado, armed with a variety of weapons and thirty homemade bombs. there they opened fire randomly, killing thirteen people before turning the guns on themselves. the date was the hundred-and-tenth anniversary of adolf hitler's birthday, and police later found a handwritten diary showing that the attack was planned with this date in mind. the two youths were notorious at the school as being members of a misfit group that called itself the "trench coat mafia" because they allegedly came to school wearing black clothing and sunglasses. (emergencynet news, 1999). rumor panics immediately broke out in many other high schools, nationwide, on subsequent dates that were also said to be "hitler's birthday" or some such occasion for mayhem. by april 29, the emergency response and research institute reported that its watch center had been inundated with reports of scares coming from all parts of the united states and canada. such cases were especially prevalent in eastern pennsylvania, where at least 52 threats in 22 counties were reported to the err! watch center. an informal poll of my students documented such scares in easton, pocono mountain, wilkes-barre, hazleton, berwick, bloomsburg, mountaintop, and allentown. while the details of the rumors varied, in general they claimed that a group of students intended to come to school and open fire on students or detonate bombs. in many cases, a "hit list" of students to be assassinated was said to exist. in fact, nothing unusual occurred at any location, but here as nationwide the panic was used to justify tough new restrictions or harsh penalties laid out to students found responsible for some infraction at the time. the area had also been affected by rumor panics during the late 1980s and early 1990s. previously, i have described events that were eerily similar, as they occurred in three local high schools in the spring of 1987. in this case, a "satanic cult" was said to have encouraged a local teenager to commit suicide. as their next act, they were rumored to be prepared to attend their high school's prom and commit a massacre there. an intense panic occurred, in the course of which two reputedly "weird" students were physically beaten by a mob, and unusual security measures, including the installment of metal detectors at the prom location, were instituted. one view of these panics, i noted then, was in terms of "hysteria" or "collective delusion," a rather deterministic approach that assumed that rumors provoke a contagious, illogical response from a group. using con ellis cepts drawn from veronique campion-vincent (1988) and joel best (1989), i argued instead that such events were logically based on narrative themes existing, often unexpressed, in the worldviews of those involved. they are, i suggested, a means of telling a story in a structured format through real-life action rather than through oral narration. first, some social unrest or crisis must be present as an underlying cause. a "triggering event" dramatizes this unrest in an "exceptional and traumatic" way, and a following period of collective action embodies the community's reaction to the threat. this leads to a "showdown," or climactic moment in which the legend is "fulfilled." when such legend-derived panics occur, participants can adopt one of several stereotypical roles, and all such activities constitute a performance of the legend through ostension, or the patterning of real-life actions on a shared narrative model.l in the case of the 1987 prom-panic, i noted that the underlying stresses behind the panic were based on widespread assumptions that satan was a real and influential supernatural force in the world and also that teenagers, in increasing numbers, were practicing satanism. hence when a real suicide occurred, it was logical that these beliefs would form the structure of the collective action that occurred in response. in fact, in 1996, another teenage suicide in the wilkes-barre area provoked another similar panic at wyoming valley west high school. this event led to public meetings, circulation of the usual danger signs of satan ism, and a special workshop for local police on the threat of cults, held at the local penn state branch campus (aliens, ghosts, and cults 238-40). more disturbingly, on april 24, 1998, a 14-year-old boy did come to a prom in edinboro, pennsylvania, and opened fire, wounding two students and killing the teacher who was the event's organizer and chaperone. questioned afterwards, he said only that he had intended to make the dance "memorable." sociologist jeffrey victor has viewed such rumor panics as part of a moral crusade set in action by. interest groups with an ultra-conservative, often evangelical agenda. this approach is certainly valid and helps explain why certain themes (such as alleged satanic symbols in graffiti) appear repeatedly in the information circulated during such panics. however, the wyoming valley west scare was unusual in focusing on satanism. a few years earlier, the jim thorpe area junior high school, in a more rural area south of wilkes-barre, experienced an intense panic based on a rumor that "the kkk and skinheads" were planning to commit a massacre. according to one student, it was surprising that the rumor reached the intensity that it did, because the school was mostly white, and no friction between them and the minorities who attended had been felt. nevertheless, when a "suspicious van" was seen parked outside the school, tensions grew to the point that students began bringing weapons to school 22 hitler's birthday for self-protection, they claimed. "teachers attempted to comfort students," the student recalled, "counseling was offered, and local police patrolled the hallways, to insure safety." while many students disregarded the story, he added, "others were in a state of shock and fear, some were even crying." it took some two weeks for the affair and the community to settle down. a similar panic, complete with suspicious van, occurred in the south london suburbs in 1989. this scare focused on a gang called "the chelsea smilers," and officials blamed it not on satanism but rather on violence inspired by fierce loyalty to football clubs (roud, 1989). since such panics have continued to occur, even after the satanism scare died down, they probably are not caused by evangelical interest groups, though these factions can and do exploit them for their own purposes. rather, it seems likely that rumor panics, like other kinds of narrative, have a structure and rule system of their own. set on foot by existing stresses in the community, they express and incorporate these stresses in narrative logic. satanism and ready access to guns have been blamed as causes for real-life massacres and the rumor panics that mimic them. but the content of such rumor-panics suggests that the core issue, as defined by the participants themselves, is the unresolved "jock/head" conflict as it has developed in american high schools. this paper will examine details from a number of these 1999 panics to study them as an emergent form of folk narrative. the gruesome details of the columbine massacre created stress that the panics dissipated in an essentially therapeutic fashion. they involved a complex interplay of ostensive actions modeled after existing traditions. many of these acts of ostension—perpetrating hoaxes and making bomb threats—were criminal in nature, but they did not involve violence, and the ordeals they gave rise to cleared the air and made most parties feel as though they had defeated any similar threat. however, as i argued ten years ago, rumor panics may communicate the seeds of the violence that they warn against. as folklorists, we need to be concerned about whether some forms of folk narrative might contribute to the social problems that give rise to them. the rumor panic took a number of forms when it occurred in north eastern pennsylvania. at hazleton area high school, "the rumor began . . . that it was adolf hitler's birthday and that this is the way they [the killers] were going to celebrate it. the shootings were supposed to occur during the lunch period." one version had it that "supposedly there was going to be a bomb set off at 12:15 the one day, and someone was also supposed to open up fire and shoot people." another added, "everyone at my school didn't want to go to school on hitler's birthday because they were afraid someone is going to come and start shooting." at another 23 ellis local school, "the rumor was that two students much like the two that killed others were planning to bomb our school." as with the 1987 panic, school proms were frequently mentioned as "showdown" dates. at nearby berwick area high school, "rumor had it that on may 4th someone was going to open fire in the school." another student recalled, "there was a rumor that at our prom a group of younger students were going to shoot and kill all the senior football players and cheerleaders. there was supposed to be a list with all the names on it." similarly, at crestwood high school, a story held that "after the columbine shootings that this one kid. . . made a hit list and was supposed to kill the certain few people whose name was on the list at the prom." in the pittsburgh area, a similar rumor emerged, claiming that a bomb would be detonated at the prom at highlands high school. tensions increased when police arrived at the school on a routine drug search, locked students in classrooms and opened lockers. a school spokesperson emphasized that the prom would be more secure than ever, with security guards present to guard locked doors and, if necessary, use hand-held metal detectors. but students responded with skepticism and fear (everett). at easton area high school, the date was an annual school-pride celebration called eahs day, during which a school king and queen would be chosen in a mass assembly. the morning of the event, the school received a bomb threat, stating "that since everyone in the school would be in the same place at the same time, they [the caller and his friends] would go on a shooting rampage and then set bombs off." at most locations, students and school officials reacted with concern. at hazleton, the panic affected the entire district, and "the principal made announcements during the entire week of school that the students have nothing to worry about because the school is a very safe place and they have security walking around the hallways." coughlin high school, in wilkesbarre, escaped the bomb threats that affected local schools. but in a variation on the "satanic graffiti" theme, students came to school one day to find "dwbs" spray painted on the walls. "nobody was sure exactly what it meant," a student said, "but it was rumored that the letters stood for 'die wilkes-barre students.''' at other locations, though, students engaged in a more disturbing form of ostension, calling in bomb threats and leaving death threats and even fabricated "hit lists" where they could be found. in response, school officials found students bringing weapons to school-knives, bb guns, and the sort-for self defense. at pocono mountain high school, for instance, "the rumor that circulated. . . was [that] on . . . hitler's birthday a handful of people picked out and put on a "hit-list" would be killed." these death threats tended to target "'jocks," especially at berwick, whose foot 24 hitler's birthday ball team has won several regional and statewide championships. one of the members of the team recalled, "none of us . . . really cared that much but some of the cheerleaders where worried about it." he added, "also, many of the faculty were worried about it. they were worried because we already did have a lot of bomb threats and they thought that maybe this would be real." at allentown central catholic, another school with a highly visible athletics program, a list appeared of "football players, cheerleaders, and band members that people wanted to kill." a student recalled, "myself and a lot of my friends were on the list." likewise, at crestwood, a student was found with a similar prom hit list. no actual incidents occurred in any of these cases. most students claimed that they personally were not affected by the scare. a wilkes-barre student said, "most people, including me, really didn't take this too seriously. . . . school went on as usual that day and nothing happened. it was apparently just more people trying to copy what went on at columbine." but he noted that "there were some who were a little worried about it." another said, somewhat cynically, "i wasn't on the [hit] list anyway so i didn't care." nevertheless, at all locations many students stayed away from school on "hitler's birthday." at hazleton, less than half the students showed up on that day, and when the school bell rang at 12:15, the predicted time of the massacre, one student recalled seeing one of his classmates dash for cover. at berwick, the rumor caused a community-wide uproar, with both parents and students expressing concern. on the day of the prediction, over half the students in all grades, including elementary school, stayed away. the school also considered canceling the prom, but relented when seniors objected. bomb threats also were called in to pocono mountain, saying that explosives had been planted on school buses. a tennis match had to be cancelled because experts had not had time to inspect the bus needed to transport the team. on easton's "eahs day," an elaborate rumor emerged that the public assembly was to be bombed. a student observed that as soon as students heard the rumor, they began to leave, group by group, and when the king and queen were crowned, only about a hundred of the school's three thousand students and faculty chose to attend. at another high school, the rumor circulated about two disaffected students who were said to be planning a columbine-style bombing and massacre. on the predicted day, a bomb threat was in fact phoned in, supposedly from these two (who later turned out to be innocent). nothing happened, but a witness recalled, "what i remember the most was the scared little face of the students in the middle school. after the bomb scare many of them went home because they were so scared." 25 ellis in most schools, the panic led to shortand long-range consequences. the hazleton area schools imposed a set of new rules, the requirement of transparent or at least translucent book bags being the most visible. the new rule was imposed virtually overnight, forcing parents to travel to nearby cities to get legal book-bags when stocks in hazleton disappeared quickly. in berwick, students were subject to searches when they arrived at school, and there and in wilkes-barre, police were permanently assigned to patrol school entrances. students found responsible for writing false "hit lists" or calling in bomb threats were frequently given unusually harsh punishments. in the case of a crestwood student who fabricated a prom hit list, a classmate noted that "normally nothing would have been done about it, but it was right after the columbine shootings and so they gave him a three-day suspension." ironically, though, the punishment was light enough that the student actually showed up later at the prom. a somewhat more severe penalty went to another student who was counting down the days until he saw limp bizkit (his favorite band) in concert. one day he came to school with a note on his shirt saying "3 more days!!!" in the midst of all the panic, he was falsely accused of being the kid that was making all the threats, and they interpreted the note as "3 more days until everyone dies in the school." he was suspended for 10 days. at hazleton and at allentown central, students were expelled for bomb threats, and at a nearby new jersey school two students were given a month's jail sentence for making such a threat. such actions were not uncommon nationwide. in chicago, metal detectors were installed at the entrances of public schools in the wake of an incident in which a 15-year-old was caught trying to smuggle a gun into school. at the indiana school for the deaf in indianapolis, fifth-graders were seen standing up in a cafeteria, pointing their fingers like guns, while one reportedly signed "i'm going to kill you." the group was suspended for five days under a new "zero tolerance" policy forbidding jokes about the incident. in several areas, black trenchcoats were outlawed, and the state of delaware instituted a new policy under which teens making threatening statements were forced to undergo psychological evaluation and kept under detention until their parents could come and pick them up (emergencynet news, 1999). another immediate reaction to the panics was renewed agitation in the area to have religious statements placed in public schools. attempts to institute public prayer, in some form, have regularly been blocked by courts. 26 hitler's birthday but the martyrdom story of cassie bernal gave local ministers renewed incentive to push for posting a copy of the ten commandments in public schools. the rationale, as one lutheran pastor told his congregation, was that if god were kept out of schools by law, then inevitably satan would enter in. this move linked the panic to many of the mythological concepts present in this area, which had motivated earlier rumor panics. but this development, as i suggested earlier, was probably an effort by religious groups to exploit public concern, in much the same way as political leaders used the event to advance gun control legislation. a closer look at the incidents suggests that neither god nor guns were central to the narratives being told. in my study of the 1987 prom-panic, i noted that so-called "satanic" activities were best seen in terms of a traditional "jock" (athletic-oriented) versus "head" (alcohol/drug-oriented) rivalry. typically, "jocks" identified themselves with "all-american" crew cuts and clothing with patriotic symbols, while "heads" preferred a disheveled look, complemented by t-shirts with heavy metal or allegedly satanic symbols (aliens, ghosts, and cults 211). kathleen lowney, in her own study of teen satanism, also noted that a self-defined "satanic" group in georgia likewise defined its identity in opposition to groups that had gained approval from adults by participation in athletics or academics. in the case of the columbine tragedy, and the rumor panic reactions it provoked, it seems clear that the main underlying stress was unresolved tension between such factions. such an antagonism was clearly present in the notes left behind by harris and klebold, which included phrases such as "we want to be different, we want to be strange and we don't want jocks or other people putting us down. . . we're going to punish you" (emergencynet news, 1999). and the same tension has regularly emerged in other panics, where students who dressed in modes officially defined as "satanic" were subjected to official harassment. in the 1996 wilkes-barre satanism panic, a 15-year-old girl was expelled from high school when, after two teens committed suicide, she came to school wearing a black outfit. it was intended as a protest against the current fad of wearing pricey clothes from the gap, she explained, and her mother backed her claim that she was in no way involved with the occult. "i searched her room," the mother added (aliens, ghosts, and cults 239). in the wake of publicity over the columbine shootings, many nonconforming high school students reported similar official persecutions. jon katz, an online supporter of free speech rights, received hundreds of messages from self-described "oddballs" who had suffered from similar acts of intolerance. one student from a southeastern high school described how a social studies teacher had initiated a discussion in class. the student said 27 ellis that, while he could not condone the killings, he understood the feelings of the killers: "because day after day, slight after slight, exclusion after exclusion, you can learn how to hate." this discussion had an unexpected result: after the class, i was called to the principal's office and told that i had to agree to undergo five sessions of counseling or be expelled from school, as i had expressed "sympathy" with the killers in colorado, and the school had to be able to explain itself in "acted out." in other words, for speaking freely. . . i was not only branded a weird geek, but a potential killer. that will sure help deal with violence in america. (katz) another student, an enthusiast of online video games, was banned from the internet in the wake of columbine and referred to a school guidance counselor, who told the student that this was a chance to "re-invent" himself, to "mainstream." "this whole colorado thing," the student commented, "it's given them an excuse to do more of what started this trouble in the first place-to make individuals and different people feel like even bigger freaks." "this is a whole new level of exclusion," a role-playing game enthusiast from new york city agreed, "another excuse for the preppies of the universe to put down and isolate people like me" (katz1999). again, this was no new reaction. after the local media had exploited the "satanic" element of the 1996 wilkes-barre panic, an anonymous caller left this message on the paper's "say so" machine: you people are missing the mark once again, and making it harder and harder for young people to get help with the real issues they face. this sensationalizing is turning young people against each other in fear. it breeds paranoia, it stereotypes them, and it dilutes the real issues. . . . this amounts to using them and adding to their confusion about who to trust. think about it. ("satanic déjà vu" 8) in fact, an especially unsettling element of rumor panics is the way in which they actually polarize existing conflicts between the two groups. in the 1996 satanism panic, for instance, other students who regularly dressed in black received anonymous letters with messages such as "die, freaks!" in 1999, this conflict emerged most dramatically at central columbia high school in bloomsburg, pennsylvania, where students had to deal with a double shock.3 on april 19, they learned that a popular student, j. p. cleaver, had been killed instantly in a head-on collision with a drunk driver. as usual, the event was marked with a moment of silence and the posting of memorial ribbons in j. p.'s honor. but the following days brought the effects of the columbine tragedy, and the two reinforced each other to pro 28 hitler's birthday duce an intense panic. the trigger event was an effort by two students to enact a similar tribute in honor of the two columbine assailants: two days after the shooting became news, they came to school in black trenchcoats, playing allegedly "satanic" music on their car stereo. they had been at odds with "the militia," a group of athletics-oriented students that j.p. had belonged to, and the actions of the two provoked a series of confrontations with the dead student's friends, male and female. rumors soon emerged that the two planned to murder members of the militia, and the school was thrown into what one participant called "a state of total lockdown," with students' jackets and book-bags regularly searched for deadly weapons. as happened in the 1987 hazleton panic, official sanctions were supported by vigilante justice. three weeks later, a group of militia supporters, who had been trailing the two "freaks," set an ambush for them on their way home from work. the two were seriously beaten and kicked, one suffering a broken jaw and ribs, the other, a concussion. in retaliation, the two students pressed charges against their attackers. but when one of them put up photographs of their assailants and their friends up on his website, labeled "wanted, dead or alive," police interpreted it as a death threat. instead of prosecuting those who attacked them, authorities ordered the two committed to a local hospital for psychiatric treatment. even with the "freaks" temporarily out of school, rumors still circulated that one of them was intending to show up "with a bomb strapped to his back and was waiting until everyone was leaving school to set it off." the standoff continued until the end of the school year, with militia posses escorting the threatened students to and from school and work and shadowing the two oddballs. such, sadly, was the conclusion of many such reactions to the columbine shootings. rather than dealing directly with the tensions that underlie such acts of violence, both official and unofficial actions drove existing factions further apart in a way that may sow the seeds of further massacres. given the widespread nature of rumor panics and the way they adhere to a stereotyped narrative form, school massacres may in fact be best understood as a traditional means of performing these legends. for this reason, folklorists are socially responsible for recognizing the traditional elements in such violent actions and for connecting them to the less violent but still sociopathic elements in rumor panics that end in acts of hate and non-lethal violence. as free speech activist jon katz has stressed: people who are different are reviled as geeks, nerds, dorks. the lucky ones are excluded, the unfortunates are harassed, humiliated, sometimes 29 ellis assaulted literally as well as socially. odd values-unthinking school spirit, proms, jocks-are exalted, while the best values-free thinking, nonconformity, curiosity-are ridiculed. maybe the one positive legacy the trenchcoat mafia left was to ensure that this message got heard, by a society that seems desperate not to hear it. it is unfortunate that, given the political weakness and internal divisions of the folklore community, the people whose messages we should be hearing and interpreting for our culture largely remain unheard, except through bombs, bullets, and the distorting medium of the popular press. the central columbia panic, as ugly as it became, suggests another possible direction. while teachers and administrators, reportedly, were clueless as to how to resolve the matter, meredith, a classmate of the feuding groups thought up a way of providing closure. in addition to j. p. 's death, sadly, a young girl had also passed away during her senior year, and meredith suggested that both seniors could be quietly honored during the graduation ceremony. a local stationery store donated a box of stickers to the school, butterflies to honor the girl, harley-davidson logos to honor j. p. the latter symbol was an ingenious choice, as the logo could allude both to outdoor activities practiced by the militia and to the motorcycle as a symbol of adolescent rebellion. in any case, the entire class, including the two freaks, graduated wearing both symbols. "i was totally shocked to the [the two] wearing them on their caps," a participant later commented to meredith, adding, "i didn't know if it was a peace offering or just a fluke. . . . you would think that they would have just chosen not to do that." "i guess so," meredith replied, "but then again it was our only way of incorporating them into the ceremony." thankfully, cases like the columbine massacre and the "memorable" edinboro prom remain the exception rather than the rule. in many places and in many traditional ways students find ways of working through panics without resorting to violence. as folklorists we could find ways of looking positively at the rumor panics that provide one of the inspirations for such tragedies. there are models of ordeals that provide closure by incorporating all factions into a newly found sense of community, the experience that victor turner (1977) called communitas. in any case, if we ourselves wish to be more than the oddball faction of academia, we need to be aware of the ways in which our scholarly craft can contribute to understanding the social implications of emergent events such as these. penn state hazelton 30 hitler's birthday notes 1. this paper was initially presented at the 1989 afs meeting in 1989 and published as ellis 1990. a revised version appears in ellis 2001 : 199-219. 2. baptistfire: the cassie bernall story http://www.baptistfire.com/ articles/other/cassie.shtml is a useful compilation of reactions, both skeptical and religious, to this story. a book, she said yes, was written by cassie's mother misty bernall and has also been highly promoted in religious circles. see http://www.cassiebernall.org/ 3. details on this panic come from a collection project written in april 2000 by jess shuman, a freshman at penn state hazleton, who was a close friend of many of the participants in this affair. my thanks to her for allowing me to use this material. works cited best, joel. "bad guys and random violence: folklore and media constructions of contemporary deviance." contemporary legend 1(1991): 107-21. campion-vincent, veronique. "complots et avertissements: legendes urbaines dans la ville." revue francaise de sociologie 30(1989): 91-105. ellis, bill. aliens, ghosts, and cults: legends we live. jackson: up of mississippi, 2001 ______. "death by folklore: ostension, contemporary legend, and murder." western folklore 48 (1989): 201-220. ______. "the devil-worshippers at the prom: rumor-panic as therapeutic magic." western folklore 49 (1990): 27-49. ______. "satanic deja vu in northeastern pennsylvania." foaftale news 40-41 (1996): 4-8. emergencynet news. "summary of real-time reports concerning a shooting at the columbine high school in littleton, colorado—04/20/99 to 05/01/99" (1999). available http://www.emergency.com/1999/col-shothtm . everett, wynne. "school officials: enough is enough." [pittsburgh, pa] valley news dispatch. 7 may 1999. available: http://tribune-review.comlnews/valldisp/0507safe.html. katz, jon. "other side of littleton story: anti-oddball hysteria" free: the freedom forum online. 26 april 1999. available http:// www.freedomforum.org/technology/1999/4/26katz.asp. lowney, kathleen. "teenage satanism as oppositional youth culture." journal of contemporary ethnography 23 (1995): 453-84. roud, steve. 'chelsea smilers: interim report on a gang-violence rumor." foaftalenews 15 (september 1989): 1-2. "students arrested amid rumors". the [sharon, pa] herald. 29 april 1989. available http://www.sharon-herald.com/local news/recentnews/9904/ ln042999b.html. turner, victor. "liminality and communitas. "in his the ritual process: structure and anti-structure. ithaca, n.y.: cornell up, 1977.94-130. 31 ellis victor, jeffrey a. "a rumor-panic about a dangerous satanic cult in western new york." new york folklore 15 (1989): 23-49. ______. "satanic cult legends as contemporary legend." western folklore 49 1990): 51-82. 32 pages from cfr_2002_part6 cfr_2002_part7 cfr_2002_part8 cfr_2002_part9 cfr_2002_part10 ocr document "now i lay me down to sleep. . .": symbols and their meaning on children's gravemarkers j. joseph edgette now i lay me down to sleep; the bedtime prayer so familiar to many children dating back to the new england primer of 1781 was a plea to the almighty to protect the soul of the petitioner during the night. if for any reason death would come while the child was in that vulnerable state of sleep, the lord was asked to take the soul, thus saving it from other alternatives. even to this day as we approach a new millennium, this child's bedtime prayer is still invoked. the victorian age was a time when euphemism was very much the rule of the day. it would be correct to assume that the child did not consciously comprehend the symbolic significance of the prayer. however, when visiting burial sites and reading the inscriptions upon the markers there, we frequently see such phrases as: at rest, asleep in the lord, resting, in the company of angels, asleep, and so on. mourners and visitors quickly saw the implied meaning of the reference being made. therefore, when looking at the words of the prayer, we can fairly claim that it serves as a good example of euphemism. the other form equating to this lessening of that considered too strong was symbol. everyone who has studied literature is already acquainted with this. of the two types, open and closed, it is the closed symbol having one meaning readily recognized by those who encounter it. the antecedent of death was more often than not established through the motif found carved or etched upon the marker. these symbols held the quality of universality crossing racial, national, and ethnic boundaries. for example, the cross was always symbolic of death; whereas; a flower, vine, or other depiction of something living was symbolic of life— eternal life. the laurel wreath stood for victory over death. death was and is still looked upon as a transition from earthly life to eternal life. recognition of the lily as symbolic of eternal life and the rose for love became closed symbols as well. symbols, then, convey a specific meaning relative to death and more specifically to human qualities and are universally understood. probably most important is the fact that the gravemarker reflects society's attitude towards death at the time of the symbol's implementation. edgette humans are the only creatures aware that they will eventually die. because of this knowledge they plan for that eventuality. as a part of the preparation for the inevitable, serious thought is given to ways in which to memorialize the deceased. there is sometimes much planning in the design and execution of the gravemarker. nowhere is the impact more apparent than that of the marker for a child. the child has always been revered by its parents; however, it was during the victorian period that a noticeable shift occurred in the overall philosophy of the family unit especially in terms of a change in perception of the child. its image was changing to that of being innocent, unblemished, and pure. the child was closely associated with the home (snyder). as a direct result, the death of a child was treated much differently than that of the adult counterpart. this attitude was reflected clearly in the resulting funerary monuments. another accompanying change was that of the view of death. by the mid-nineteenth century religious ideas began to alter the shape of the notion of death in america. with the arrival of arminianism, which advocated that salvation was attainable through good works, protestant americans realized it would be better to focus on salvation rather than on damnation (sloane). the gravesite became a permanent memorial to the successes and good deeds of the loved one. symbols were being created to convey this new focus. for children, these sites became even more important. thus, we see more serious attention being paid to the design and use of symbols for the children. with the place of the child in the family and the new religious shift, children who had died were actually being adored in the cemeteries (sloane) through all kinds of memorial structures and new child-specific symbols. throughout the early evolution of symbolic representations for use on children's gravemarkers, emphasis was placed on human mortality. children very often had the same symbols as adults, but the symbols were smaller to represent the child as a small adult. the skull and bones evolved to the winged skull during early new england times (dickran and tashjian). the markers for children very often showed cherubs, or the smaller angels. in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries a gradual move to lambs, small angels, and guardian angels became more prominent for the child's marker. once the twentieth century arrived, the use of these same symbols 8 "now i lay me down to sleep. . ." continued. by mid-century another level emerged. the sudden appearance of images of toys, small animals, and effigies of the deceased became more commonplace. the use of photographic images as depicted on porcelain attachments to the markers was profuse for nearly thirty years beginning at the turn of the twentieth century. as we approach the end of this century, we find a resurgence of the photographic images as well as laser images of the child. today, we have also included by way of engraved etchings and carvings of the kinds of activities engaged in by the departed child. also, depictions of those things most cherished in life by the deceased are prominently displayed. at this point it should be noted that grave goods, not to be confused with grave decorations (edgette 1998), are used to supplement and to underscore the vitality and interests of the child that once lived. often, the impression conveyed is that of peace and tranquility and knowledge that the child is safe in the hands of the maker. one could suppose that rest and slumber-like peace is the universal trait prevailing. i pray the lord my soul to keep. in looking at various examples of children's gravemarkers from around the country it quickly becomes very obvious through emerging patterns that the symbols used are commonly found in all areas of the united states. in bristol, rhode island, for example, there is an ancient slate marker (1700) that shows the six babies who never lived beyond their first year. the marker is approximately seven feet wide and eighteen inches high having six sculpted winged cherubs across its top. immediately, one is drawn to this marker by its strong visual presence. in 1925 a small child died outside philadelphia, pennsylvania. his parents had a small angel mounted to the right of the family monument. it is made of white marble and shows a small angel with spread wings having his hands folded as if he were praying. the overall height of the angel is approximately three feet. not far from this small angel is one that stands eight feet in height at a grave for an adult. in a paper i gave at the association for gravestone studies at its regional conference in portland, oregon, in august of 1998 (edgette 1998), i made a case for the soul being represented by a winged creature. in terms of class or level, the angel would be first. it is the only human-like non-human symbol used to represent the deceased. further, much attention has been given to the idea that guardian 9 edgette 10 "now i lay me down to sleep. . ." angels do exist. it is my contention that the angel is simply a way to characterize the soul of the human. in many cultures the use of the bird, a symbol for flight, is the means of transporting the soul to its place in eternal life. another winged creature found on the markers for children is the butterfly. a double symbol is exhibited here in that the butterfly also suggests a metamorphosis from mortal to spirit. once more the wings imply flight back to the father. angels and other winged creatures, if small in size, are indicative of the child. in the chester rural cemetery not far from philadelphia is a small flat stone of salt and pepper granite having a small fairy seated atop a small green oblong stone about an inch long embedded into the granite. this is the marker of little melissa watt who died at the age of eight years. the tiny fairy with spread wings is symbolic of the spirit or the soul of melissa. pattern emerges very quickly when discovering these symbols. in lasalle, illinois, in 1987, an abandoned baby was found in a waste can in one of the local cemeteries there. the simple flat, granite stone place atop her grave read: baby girl doe, march 15,1987, march 18,1987, with an angel carved to the right of the name. this angel was positioned as a side profile facing the name. it is kneeling with hands folded in prayer. the motif depicted is very commonly found across the country. one needs only to visit a cemetery where a section has been dedicated to the burial of children. among the various designations of these areas would be babyland, god's children, littlest angels, and our children. time or age of the marker does not appear to alter the likelihood of its design or presentation. the only appreciable change is that of the technique used to depict the image, i.e., etching versus engraving versus laser. the angel does abound and is the most common symbol used to represent the child in death; however, it is not the only one. included in a long list of motifs directly associated with very young children are rattles, alphabet blocks, tricycles, wagons, highchairs, toy trains, dolls, baby shoes, and the like. the motifs found on the memorials for older children have a tendency to show the kinds of things associated with that age group. examples include: sports equipment (bats, basketballs, baseball gloves, hockey sticks, pucks, boxing gloves, skiis), automobiles, scooters, bicycles, motorbikes, the whole range of musical instruments, school insignias, organizations to which they belonged, class rings, and so on. 11 edgette 12 "now i lay me down to sleep. . ." 13 edgette there are times, however, when no motif is found. the wording itself is powerful enough to tug at the heartstrings of the visitor. in upstate new york at a fairly large cemetery there is a flat little stone that reads: baby john, bornjan. 7, 1974, 4 pounds 2 ounces, 18 inches tall, died the same day. another, in yeadon, pennsylvania, simply reads: w. w. colt, aged, 8 months, died, july 1877. the letters have been stenciled onto a piece of wood cut in the shape of a tablet stone and placed next to his father's military issued marker in the military section of the cemetery. sometimes there are phrases: our gift from heaven, stillborn, our brief joy, our little angel, god's gift, our saint, dearest one, or simply baby. the word when carefully and appropriately chosen can be just as moving as the visual icon. from the mid-1850s and continuing for the next fifty or sixty years, it was commonplace to see the use of both headstones and footstones at the burial site. the headstone, placed at the head or top of the grave, had a smaller but identically shaped stone at the foot. usually the only printing on the latter consisted of the departed's initials. furthermore, it was a time in cemetery design that curbing, coping, and fencing were used to set off the burial plot from those neighboring it. for ease of maintenance and for insurance reasons most of these boundary markers have been removed today. a practice was begun whereby the headstone and footstone were connected by the use of side pieces. the resulting configuration became to be known as a cradle stone because of its visual similarity to the shape of a baby's cradle. however, similar cradles were designed for adults as well. these obviously were larger. it is a very moving sight to see a row of three or four adult cradles with a small one beside the mother's. one of the finest examples of the baby cradle i have discovered was found in pennsylvania. it consists of a white marble headstone on which is inscribed: daughter of g. purtis & hannah m. cox born oct. 22, 1877. died april l0, 1879. 14 "now i lay me down to sleep. . ." no more need of signing. when evening shadows creep. the cradle bed is empty. our darling's gone to sleep. approximately 48 inches below the headstone is a footstone on which is carved a simple a. perhaps the first initial of the child. connecting the two stones are sides of matching white marble. taken as a whole a cradle has been created. the opening in the bed part of the cradle was often filled with flowers or ivy to symbolize everlasting life. in the chester rural cemetery, established 15 edgette in 1864, is another white marble child's marker. this one has a small baby's cradle bed atop a twenty-inch high pedestal. the cradle is empty with the blanket turned down at an angle to the bottom of the cradle. on the floor next to it can be found two little shoes, one upright and the other on its side. over the headboard is a cloth-like material draped very carefully going from a left to right direction. this symbolizes the pall or curtain of death that has descended upon the child. the grave contains the mortal remains of a one-year-old who died in 1878. the use of effigies was popular throughout most of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, especially for those families who could financially afford such monuments. typically, they were lifesized statues of the deceased child. it is important to note that the resemblance between the sculpted figure and the child were remarkably close. they were the equivalent of carved photographs. the zurbuch stone in fort wayne, indiana, shows a little boy seated on the ground with legs outstretched leaning against a tree. his right hand is resting upon his right knee. in that hand we see what appears to be the other end of a leash. on his left is a puppy whose head and upper body are resting upon the boy's left knee. the boy's left hand is resting upon the head of the puppy. the face of the child is innocent with eyes wide open and a hint of smile. his hair is parted in the middle. he is wearing a long sleeved shirt with collar opened at the neck and overalls whose right strap is slightly sliding off his right shoulder while that on the left is securely in place. the gravestone reminds the passerby of a norman rockwell subject at fernwood cemetery in a suburb of philadelphia can be found another effigy. this one depicts "bicycle boy," a name known to the residents of norman vankirk's neighborhood. carved by thomas wood, a prominent philadelphia carver in the early 1900s, it presents a small boy with his tricycle. according to local lore, norman accompanied his parents to atlantic city, new jersey, the shore resort, in the summer of 1898. little norman having become overheated while riding his tricycle decided to cool off by climbing into a nearby horse trough. within a few days he had contracted pneumonia and was dead within ten days. because of severe weathering and the adverse effects of acid rain, the marker today is undergoing restoration at the h. c. wood monu 16 "now i lay me down to sleep. . ." 17 edgette 18 "now i lay me down to sleep. . ." ment company, owned by the great-great nephew of thomas, the creator of the effigy. function was not always looked upon as simply an aesthetic one, but rather a way of personifying the memory of the deceased. often, it has been discovered that the cemetery effigy becomes the photographic record, a photograph in stone, of notable members who once lived within the community. however, the use of the effigy to immortalize the child by families who were not classified as community notables are found frequently. a charming grave marker in the form of the effigy is found in the presbyterian cemetery in ellettsville, indiana, of a little boy who has fallen asleep with his hands under is chin. he has very short hair and a peaceful smile. he is in a kneeling position with his rump up in the air as he sleeps. if i should die before i wake. because of the change in attitude and perspective on death, it became very common for families to photograph their loved ones in death. photography has been an important piece in the coming to grips with the traumatic impact of dealing with life's disruption caused by the premature passing of loved ones, especially children (norfleet). the death images are sometimes shocking, some 19 edgette times melancholy, but at the same time they can be sobering and comforting; the grief never totally goes away. the loss of a child results in permanent and unbinding sorrow. no other death can compare to it. shakespeare's king john states, "grief fills the room up of my absent child" (norfleet). the transferal of a photographic image to porcelain through a special process made it possible to show and to preserve the actual image of the child as they looked in life or at the time of their death this addition would make its way into the cemeteries throughout the entire nation. in the case of children it was most common to include the picture as an actual attachment to the gravemarker. these photos typically showed the child in eternal sleep in their coffin or casket. it was literally the last view of the child cemeteries established from the early 1900s through late 1930s will certainly contain many examples of these photos. after the peak, approximately 1941, these photographs fell into disuse. many families who would sometimes show the photographs to others began to hide them from public view. the practice was labeled "morbid." a shift again toward death was becoming evident. since the early to mid-1970s, the resurgence in the interest of using porcelain portraits has arisen. today, we continue to use these porcelainized photos; however, the images are often "favorite" photos of the child. these poses are from life not death. also, greater use is being made today of laser etching which enables the designer to transfer the photographic image to granite without any appreciable loss of detail. since we now have evidence of more modern designs and presentation, we are seeing the retention of the standard symbols, but they are being configured and arranged in a more modern context. for example there is a marker for a child whereon is a frontal view of the child asleep in the palm of a hand. the hand is presumably that of god. the fingers are strong and at the same time gentle. the fingernails are well manicured and imply those of male. the motif here is obviously a reference to the hymn, on eagles' wings specifically to the line, ". . . and he will hold you, hold you in the palm of his hand." the size of the child shown would correspond to a very young one. this is substantiated by the inscribed data. linda trosley was born on the 15th day of june in 1997 and "became an angel" on april 24, 1998, but will never be forgotten. the motif in this instance is both relative and appro 20 "now i lay me down to sleep. . ." 21 edgette 22 "now i lay me down to sleep. . ." priate. thus, in examining the gravemarkers of children attention is always drawn first to the motif and then to the inscription. the inscription tends to confirm any implications suggested by the motific symbols. death is a part of the life cycle, and it is important that it be treated with dignity and solemnity. any death is a tragic one, for the loss of any individual is always tragic; however, the power of prayer or faith, support, and the healing qualities of time soften the harshness of death itself. the loss of a child is enormous in its levels of grief and sorrow it is said that parents are not supposed to survive their children; but this is not always the case. for, everyday somewhere, someplace, somebody is losing a child to that predator, death. because of the strong belief in the innocence and purity of the child, we have a more difficult time coming to terms with the death. it is through the gravemarker and its employing iconography that the memory of the child is immortalized far better than that of the adult. the innocence guarantees a select seat in the afterlife. ryan white, the young man who achieved national attention in the 1980s because his aids-related illness, is buried in cicero, indiana. his gravemaker is made of two-tone granite, unpolished white and polished black. it has his name and dates and three very conspicuous symbols. as one approaches, the porcelain close-up of a young man sporting a happy smile is placed precisely at the center of a cross where the arms come together. it is very attractively designed and the contrast is very stark, gray against deep black. adjacent to and on the left segment of the marker the reverse is in evidence. deep black lines meticulously are carved into an unpolished background of white granite. centered above, near the top, is a soaring pigeon. this bird is a symbol for the soul, and its being shown in flight indicates return to that place from whence it came. beneath the eagle are the words kid of courage, obviously an allusion to the pain and suffering he had to endure through his physical battle coupled with the social nonacceptance of the situation. a quotation from elton john graces the front bottom of this side of the marker: turn me lose from your hands. let me fly to distant lands. 23 edgette fly away sky-line pigeon, fly from all the things you left so very far behind. love elton john next to this quotation is a second from michael jackson: "gonna make a difference, gonna make it right." friends forever michael jackson finally, along the base of ryan's memorial stone are the words: patience-tolerance-faith-love-forgiveness-will taken as a whole this grave marker embodies all that symbolism is supposed to do. it conveys in iconographic terms our wishes and hopes for the deceased relative on their place in eternity. over time we as a culture have always honored our dead. we insist on a dignified and fitting funeral, and we erect suitable and most often tastefully designed gravemarkers. the marker for a child tends to be more poignant than those of adults. the poignancy is manifested in the symbols used thereon. for, regardless of those used, the ultimate request is: i pray the lord my soul to take. works cited edgette, j. joseph. "frozen countenances: form and function of cemetery effigies." paper presented to the american folklore society, portland, or, 1998 ______. "atop the grave: its goods vs. its decorations" paper presented to the american culture association, orlando, fl, 1998 norfleet, barbara p. looking at death. boston: david godine, 1993. sloane, david charles. the last great necessity: cemeteries in american history. baltimore: johns hopkins, 1991. snyder, ellen marie. "innocents in a worldly world: victorian children's gravemarkers." cemeteries and gravemarkers: voice of american culture. ed. richard e. meyer. ann arbor, mi: umi research p, 1989. tashjian, dickran and ann tashjian. memorials for children of change. middletown, ct: wesleyan up, 1974. 24 17 children’s folkore in the twenty-first century: folklorists of childhood respond to the newtown tragedy elizabeth tucker this introduction to the panel “children’s folklore in the twenty-first century: folklorists of childhood respond to the newtown tragedy” was presented at the annual meeting of the american folklore society in providence, rhode island on october 17, 2013. at the american folklore society’s annual meeting in 2000, the children’s folklore section sponsored a panel in response to the columbine tragedy of 1999. titled “the monstrous child: folklore responds to columbine and adolescence,” this panel resulted in a special issue of children’s folklore review (2002) in which folklorists of childhood responded to both columbine and adolescence. jo ann conrad’s paper, “the war on youth: a modern oedipal tragedy,” identified the concept of a “monstrous child” from which tragedies come. since the time of our panel on columbine, questions have arisen about the line between play and violence in frames of children’s activities and the issue of adult control of such activities. in the aftermath of the horrifying tragedy at newtown in 2012, in which twenty children and six teachers died at the hands of a late-adolescent shooter, this panel again gathers folklorists of childhood to re-examine the use and urgency of children’s and adolescents’ folklore for youth and adults. during the thirteen years since our panel on “the monstrous child,” many changes have taken place. with horrifying rapidity, so many school shootings have occurred that it is hard to remember when all of them happened. newtown, however, has left an indelible imprint of horror and sadness on people’s minds. the children who died were so young; there were so many of them, and their killer was a troubled late adolescent or young adult who also killed his mother. newspaper reporters wrote about newtown as “slaughter of the innocents,” invoking a well-known biblical theme. something terrible had happened, and people of diverse backgrounds struggled to find meaning. in this panel we will try, as folklorists of childhood, to interpret contemporary children’s and adolescents’ behavior. our presentations address diverse aspects of contemporary children’s folklore, but all of them reflect the need for folklorists to analyze how children’s culture develops and changes, particularly in relation to intertwined roles of play and violence in youth folk practices. this year’s theme of cultural sustainability, defined on the afs website as “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs,” fits our panel’s purpose well. we plan to examine the culture of childhood from multiple vantage points, exploring how children and adolescents maintain their own culture and what methods and strategies we choose to use in our research. during the discussion period, we will ask you to consider how childlore is growing and changing in the early twenty-first century and how it contributes to the discourse of play and violence in twenty-first century public life. cfr_2014.indb 17 11/20/14 1:07 pm children’s folkore in the twenty-first century tucker 18 works cited bronner, simon j. 2002. introduction: folklore responds to columbine and adolescence. children’s folklore review 24 (1-2): 7-20. conrad, jo ann. 2002. the war on youth: a modern oedipal tragedy. children’s folklore review 24 (1-2): 33-42. tucker, elizabeth. 2012. changing concepts of childhood: children’s folklore scholarship since the late nineteenth century. journal of american folklore 125:498 (fall 2012): 389-410. cfr_2014.indb 18 11/20/14 1:07 pm '~:rn '''ii!/lu''''j~ ol l 'on ~!wj"d ai"d 3~'it.lsod 's'n '6jo ~!jojd,uon baloney & pe£lnuls politics among gradr schoolers c.w.sullivaniii . eastcarolinauniversity recently, a derisive political rhyme about president carter has been sweeping the grade schools in the greenville, north carolina, area. so far as i know, this rhyme did not come to the children from an adult source; few of my colleagues or my folklore students knew of its existence before i brought it to their attention. moreover, the rhyme is circulating among the children in traditional ways. the first version i heard goes as follows: my peanut has a first name, it's j-i-m-m-y my peanut has a second name, it's c-a-r-t-r oh, i hate to see him every day and if you ask me why i'll say 'cause jimmy carter has a way of messing up the u.s.a. sometimes a child will spell c-ar-t-e-r to get the spelling correct, but the c-a-r-t-r spelling makes the six letters of jimmy carter's last name fit into the meter of the source of the tune, an oscar mayer bologna jingle: . 1::13.ll3'sm3n 31::10'>1'0::1 s,u3jpiili a4~ t£8lz ':)'n '<ju!au<j.}j{) ahsj<ja!ufl 8uhoj8:) 1s83 qsh8u3 jo 1u<jwp8d<jo .jtjutj1smtjntj.j°l'l.lod s,utj.jpl1'lj johp3 'iii u8amns 'm ':) my baloney has a first name, it's o-s-c-a-r my baloney has a second name, it's m-a-y-e-r oh, i love to eat it every day an if you ask me why i'll say 'cause oscar mayer has a way with b-o-l-o-g-n-a more than a political rhyme, this new rhyme is a parody of a baloney commercial, and the correspondence of "baloney" in the original to "peanut" in the parody is interesting in light of the slang definitions of baloney: "foolishness" or "nonsense." this and the slang definitions of peanuts, "a small or trifling amount, usually in regard to money," are intriguing comments about mr. carter in these inflationary times. the rhyme tells us that the peanut's name is jimmy carter; therefore, this jimmy carter is a peanut -a small or trifling amount (of money), behind his peanut-ness is baloney-foolishness or nonsense. all of which the rhymer tells us that he "hates" to see because it's "messing up the u.s,a." are the third, fourth, and fifth graders who sang this jingle-parody to me such astute political commentators? i do not know, when asked how jimmy carter was "messing up the u.s,a.," they had no comment. 4 ocr document index to the children's folklore review 1978-1997, volume 1.1 through 19.2 kathryn s. fladenmuller articles arleo, andy. "strategy in counting-out: evidence from saint-nazaire, france." 14.1 (1991): 25-29. an examination of french counting-out techniques and how these contribute to cross-cultural studies in children's folklore. beresin, ann richman. "'sui' generis: mock violence in an urban school yard." 18.2 (1996): 25-35. the non-violent violent handball game of "suicide" is examined in detail in this paper, and it will be argued that the hybridity of the game reflects its paradoxical status as mixed genre and unique culture marker. branigan, michelle. "blocks and matchboxes: negotiation of a shared reality between two siblings." 16.1 (1993): 3-31. examines an episode of play between children, observing the statics and dynamics of their interaction. bronner, simon. "expressing and creating ourselves in childhood: a commentary." 15.1 (1992): 47-59. general thoughts on the evolution of the study of children's folklore and reviews of narrative articles in the same issue (15.1). carnes, pack. "arnold lobel's fables and traditional fable features." 15.2 (1993): 3-19. investigates what role traditional elements in lobel's fables play in the relationship between folklore and a literary text. carpenter, carole h. "developing an appreciation for the cultural significance of childlore." 17.1 (1994): 19-29. a study of how childlore contributes to "the development and expression of individual, group and national identity." chinery, david. "snooping for snipes: america's favorite wild goose chase." 10.1 (1987): 3-4, 10.2 (1987): 3-4. variations of the snipe hunt and conjectures about the continuance of the tradition. cox, cynthia anne. '''postmodern fairy tales' in contemporary children's literature." 16.2 (1994): 13-19. explores postmodern elements in new fairy tales-denial of order, antiheroes, the lack of control over human experience and perception, and subjectiv 67 fladenmuller ism. davey, gwenda beed. "'what's for dinner?' 'duck under the table': traditional verbal sayings addressed to children by adults." 19.1 (1996): 13-18. a study of folklore for children: how adults convey their folklore about children in "family sayings." freed, shaari. "spooky activities and group loyalty." 16.1 (1993): 33-39. asserts that intimacy among friends is increased by participation in supernatural beliefs and practices. friel, tara. "'once upon a time' to 'happily ever after': the development of children's narrative skil1." 18.1 (1995): 352. an analysis of the process by which children learn and develop the ability to tell stories. grider, sylvia anne. "howard, dorothy: pioneer collector of children's folklore." 17.1 (1994): 3-17. some notes on the life and achievements of dorothy howard. groth, susan charles t. "'here we sit like birds in the wilderness waiting for our dessert': the girl scout program and ordering space in camp sacajawea's dining hall/main house." 19.2 (1997): 3-30. underlines the presence of themes of "domesticity: and "playing indian" in girl scout camping, and how a dining hall chant exhibits these themes. haut, judith. "'i believe in santa claus, but i know he's not real': the role of ambivalence in belief." 13.2 (1991): 3-12. how uncertainty and degrees of possibility play into distinguishing knowledge from beliefs. ______. "'i know a story about that': one young child's use and understanding of narrating." 15.1 (1992): 33-46. a case study examining a child's development of voice and skill in narration. ______. "of related interest: children's music." 14.2 (1992): 23-27. reviews of various children's music collections. hurlston, nicola. "who's the boss? a study of power-defining folklore among children." 13.1 (1990): 10-16. an analysis of power struggles among young children observed at play in a college daycare program. johnson, sharon peregrine. '''the hare and the tortoise race' eleven variations." 18.2 (1996): 3-24. compares eleven different printed versions of the traditional story, discusses its origins and structure, and provides a great deal of comparative analysis. lapp, dean m. "a systematic investigation of jump rope rhymes: computer applications for field collected cultural materia1." 11.1 (1988): 3-5, 6. relates children's psychological development with the folklore in which they participate in 68 69 index to the children's folklore review jump rope rhymes. lenz, millicent. "mythologizing chief seattle: susan jeffers' brother eagle, sister sky or how to make a myth in ten easy steps." 19.1 (1996): 3-11. an inquiry into the responsibility of writers to accurately transmit myths without enhancing them. lonnqvist, bo. "the concept 'toy' and cultural research." 14.1 (1991): 3138. a study of how adults' conception of children's reality is reflected in mass-produced toys, and how actual child culture has been relatively ignored. mcgonnagill, laurie. "preschool protolore." 16.1 (1993): 41-47. the immature social and cognitive skills of young children explain their brand of prototypical folklore which imitates more developed formulas of folklore. meley, patricia m. "adolescent legend trips as teenage cultural response: a study of lore in context." 14.1 (1991): 524. results from a group study of the "legend trips" of adolescents examined in light of recent scholarship on the subject. ______. "paper power: a search for meaning in the folded paper toys of pre-adolescents./i 11.2 (1989): 3-5. the making and sharing of paper toys among children illustrates a need for them to create identities apart from adult culture. ord, priscilla. "'curiouser and curiouser!': narration and mimicry in literature about and for children."15.1 (1992): 5-16. a consideration of the ability of children to narrate, mimic and reenact, illustrated in characterizations of children and in children's stories. perry, evelyn m. "the ever-vigilant hero: revaluing the tale of tam lin." 19.2 (1997): 31-49. a description of "current devaluations of folk literature" through close reading of the original text and evaluation of variations on that text for different audiences. riley, linda. "extremes: how girls play slaughter, how boys play slaughter at valley oak elementary." 13.1 (1990): 1016. variations on the game's rules indicate shared group meaning for each genderdistinct team. rush, judith l. "twin pranks and practical jokes." 10.3 (1987): 3-6. suggests that twins' pranks afford them the opportunity to establish individuality and to distinguish their personalities. samuelson, sue. "a review of the distinctive genres of adolescent folklore." 17.2 (1995): 13-31. adolescents create their own distinct folklore to define for themselves the transition from child fladenmuller hood to adulthood. edited and introduced by simon j. bronner. stone, kay. "child as story-maker." 16.2 (1994): 3-11. an obser vation of a child creating stories, and a consideration of the relationship between researcher and subject. sullivan, c.w. iii "baloney and peanuts: politics among grade schoolers." 1.2 (1977): 4. an examination of a children's rhyme which equates jimmy carter with foolishness and insignificance, and how much children grasp the political content of their song. ______. "folktales, ballads and high fantasy: an excerpt from research in progress." 5.1 (1982): 2,4. use of myths and fairy tales as sources and structures for works of modern fantasy. ______. "knowing what children believe: believing what children know." 19.1 (1996):19-24. an examination of the separation between child and adult culture and how this is significant to folklore studies. ______. "learning the structure of traditional narrative." 15.1 (1992): 1723. asserts that in experiencing folklore, we learn the structure of traditional narrative that we carry to all other aspects of life. sutton-smith, brian. "tradition from the perspective of children's games." 14.2 (1992): 3-16. a colonial commentary on the history of games. tillery, randal k. "folklore and children's worlds: nature, place, and belonging in a romantic key." 17.2 (1995): 3-11. examines the traditional perceptions of frontier experience which make up much of the "lore" of summer camp organizations. tucker, elizabeth. '''text, lies and videotape': can oral tales survive?" argues that children's creativity remains fecund despite the innundation of video-produced stories. tuleja, tad. "the tooth fairy: perspectives on money and magic." 13.2 (1991): 13-22. examines the origin of tooth fairy folklore and the integration of the this into modern culture and traditions. watson, laura. "the nature lore of children: functions and variations." 16.1 (1993): 49-60. an examination of various instances of children's lore involving nature, and how these function for children's greater grasp and acceptance of the world surrounding them. wein, elizabeth. "show biz: performance and text in the children's show." 13.2 (1991): 23-28. implications of how children's "shows" evolve from improvisation to written, rehearsed performances. 70 index to the children's folklore review newell prize winners 1983 "a systematic investigation of jump rope rhymes: computer applications for field collected cultural material" by dean lapp of penn state. 1984 "giving and giving it up: the social and emotional economics of male adolescents at boys' home" by robert horan of university of pennsylvania. 1985 "the false knight upon a road: a new appraisal" by john minton of university of texas, austin. 1986 "so sing and we'll carry it on" by laura k. simmons of university of california at davis. 1987 "twin pranks and practical jokes" by judith l. rush of penn state. 1988 "paper power: a search for meaning in the folded paper toys of pre adolescents" by patricia m. meley of penn state. 1989 "who's the boss? a study of power-defining folklore among children" by nicola hurlston of university ofcalifornia, davis. (tie) 1989 "extremes: how girls play slaughter, how boys play slaughter at valley oak elementary" by linda riley of university of california, davis. (tie) 1991 "adolescent legend trips as teenage cultural response: a study of lore in context" by patricia meley of penn state. 1992 "blocks and matchboxes: negotiations of a shared reality" by michelle braningan of indiana university. 1994 "'once upon a time' to 'happily ever after': the development of children's narrative skill" by tara friel of trinity college. 1995 '''the hare and the tortoise' eleven variations" by sharon peregrine johnson. 1996 '''here we sit like birds in the wilderness waiting for our dessert': the girl scout program and ordering space in camp sacajawea's dining hall/main house" by susan charles t. groth of university of pennsylvania. 71 fladenmuller book reviews "all in together, girls: skipping songs from regina, saskatchewan by robert cosbey." 13.2 (1991): 33-34. "all our noses are here by alvin schwartz." 8.1 (1986): 6. "busy buzzing bumblebees and other tongue twisters by alvin schwartz." 5.2 (1983):4. "captain cook chased a chook: children's folklore in australia by june factor." 11.2 (1989): 2,6. "children's humor by sandra mccosh." 4.2 (1982): 4. "children's literature of the renaissance by warren wooden." 13.1 (1991): 25-26. "children's literature: volume 10 ed. by francelia butler." 5.1 (1983): 4. "the classic fairy tales by iona and peter opie." 4.3 (1983): 5. "counting-out rhymes: a dictionary by roger d. abrahams and lois rankin." 3.3 (1982): 4. "growing up on the playground by andy slukin." 4.3 (1983): 5-6. "more scary stories to tell in the dark by alvin schwartz." 8.1 (1986): 6. "oxford children's encyclopedia edited by mary worrall." 15.2 (1993): 27-28. "reynard the fox by rachel anderson and david bradby; the curse of the ring and the doom of the gods by michael harrison; and the island of the mighty by hayden middleton." 12.1 (1990): 6. "the skit book: 101 skits from kids by margaret macdonald." 14.2 (1992): 21-22. "someone saw a spider: spider facts and folktales by shirley climo." 8.3 (1987): 4. "storyteller's sourcebook: a subject, title, and motif index to folk lore collections for children by margaret macdonald." 5.3 (1984): 4. "there is a carrot in my ear by alvin schwartz." 5.2 (1983): 4. "the truth about santa claus by james cross giblin." 8.3 (1987): 4. "unriddling: all sorts of riddles to puzzle your guessery by alvin schwartz." 8.1 (1986): 6. "world folktales by atelia clarkeson and gilbert cross." 2.2 (1979): 4. 72 minutes 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1.2 (1979): 1. 2.2 (1980): 1-2. 3.2 (1981): 2. 4.3 (1982): 2. 5.3 (1983): 2-3. 6.3 (1984): 2-3. 7.3 (1985): 2-4 8.3 (1986): 2. 9.3 (1987): 2. 10.3 (1988): 2, 8. 11.2 (1989): 2-3. 12.2 (1990): 3. 13.2 (1991): 29-32. 14.2 (1992): 17-20. 15.2 (1993): 21-25. 16.2 (1994): 20-23. 17.2 (1995): 35-38. 18.2 (1996): 36-38. 19.2 (1997): 51-54. index to the children's folklore review 73 45 “go to bed, now you’re dead”: suffocation songs and breath control games elizabeth tucker when i was growing up in washington, d.c. in the late 1950s, my best friend karen taught me some new games and songs. during the winter when we were nine years old, she showed me a game that she enjoyed playing with her younger brother geoffrey. “he’s really good at the game of smother,” karen told me. “come see!” following her into her brother’s bedroom, i heard a faint voice from the bottom of a pile of quilts. “more, more!” the voice called. karen and i ran from room to room, pulling blankets off beds and piling them on top of geoffrey. finally he shouted, “let me out!” and we removed the pile of sweltering bedcovers. none of us told our parents what we had been doing. a year later karen taught me a song called “suffocation,” sung to the tune of the french “alouette”: suffocation, easy suffocation. suffocation, easy way to die. first you get a plastic bag, then you put it on your head. go to bed, now you’re dead. oh, oh, oh, oh. we thought this song was hilarious. our mothers had warned us against putting plastic bags on our heads, so this song about defying such warnings appealed to us. we sang the song for a while, until other topical songs took its place in our singing repertoire. almost twenty years after karen and i learned the above version of the popular “suffocation” song, mary and herbert knapp included a very similar text in their one potato, two potato: the secret education of american children (1976, 253). in 1995 josepha sherman and t.k. f. weisskopf published four variants of the song, identifying them as parodies of the remco company’s game fascination. noting that the concept of suicide is “all too intriguing to children and teenagers, most commonly the latter” (1995, 71), sherman and weisskopf document the “suffocation” song’s circulation in the united states through the early 1970s and its popularity at american summer camps. among the methods of self-strangulation that these songs describe are “a big, brown rope” and “a rubber hose,” as well as plastic and rubber bags (71-72). whether or not youngsters had been familiar with these suicide methods before learning the verses, they certainly knew about them afterwards. this “suffocation” song has been documented well by folklorists of childhood, but games involving breath control have not. iona and peter opie’s “daring games” chapter of children’s games in street and playground includes a thought-provoking discussion of hanging and fainting games, with emphasis on the dangling man cfr_2009_r4.indb 45 10/25/09 6:19:22 pm “go to bed, now you’re dead” tucker 46 game in which a child hangs above the ground with a roller-towel twisted around his or her neck (1969, 273). with characteristic insight, the opies explain that games of this kind emerge in cyclical “crazes,” sometimes causing injury and death of children. they describe one such craze in 1961 and another in 1966. quoting boys’ confident assertion to their primary school’s headmaster, “we can make a boy faint for a minute, sir,” they note children’s pride in mastering a risky new game (274). during the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, more information about breath control games has become available. it has gradually become clear that young people’s activities range from risky pursuits such as the smother game i once played with my best friend and her brother to very dangerous choking games played in groups or alone. accounts of children’s group games have tended to stress the brevity of such experimentations. in the fall of 2007, fellow folklorist bill ellis sent me a long e-mail about levitation games that i quoted in my recent article “levitation revisited” (2007-2008). the message’s last line was “[levitation] was one of those things, like ‘knocking yourself out’ by hyperventilating that went the rounds of preadolescent kids like wildfire, then next week was gone.” experimentation with breath control usually ends quickly, but sometimes it leads to permanent damage or loss of life. although a short period of hyperventilation may seem relatively safe, all games that suppress normal breathing involve risk. in children’s folklore: a handbook, i include a description of the game hangman, collected from a nine-year-old boy in binghamton, new york in 1987. according to his description, “we take a rope, and it gots a hole in it, and you put it around their head. we close it as tight as we can and see who can choke himself the longest” (2008, 79). this description haunts me. how many young people have risked their lives by playing such a game? because breath control games belong to the childhood underground, it has not been easy for adults to understand the games’ extent and meaning, but the internet has greatly increased adults’ and children’s understanding of the games’ dangers. warnings against breath control games have circulated actively on the internet during the past five years. in this essay i examine relevant studies by folklorists, psychologists, anthropologists, and specialists in other fields. i also consider portrayals of breath control games on the internet that have significantly influenced public perception. after presenting some recent examples of games gathered from young adults, i draw a few conclusions and raise questions for future study. when i began my research on this subject, i asked my son, a young adult, what he knew about breath control games. “a lot of my friends played choking games in middle school,” he told me, “but i didn’t play myself.” i was not surprised that he and his friends had not brought this subject up before. like karen, geoffrey, and me, they had known what kind of information belonged to the childhood and adolescent underground. origins and explanations although the origins of children’s breath control games are unclear, it seems likely that such games began through imitation of adults’ activities. in children’s games cfr_2009_r4.indb 46 10/25/09 6:19:22 pm tucker “go to bed, now you’re dead” 47 of street and playground, the opies trace children’s imitative game-playing back to ancient rome, when boys played the roles of judges and other officials; the opies also mention sixteenth-century flemish children’s imitation of christenings, weddings, and religious processions (330-31). as michel foucault explains in discipline and punish: the birth of the prison (1977), public executions in premodern europe restored the sovereign’s authority through spectacles open to all viewers. crowds at these public events often expressed derision and sympathy for the criminal in a rowdy way. hangings, conducted on easily visible scaffolds, drew large crowds of adults and children (cooper 1974, 13-18). the horror, excitement, and fascination inspired by public hangings probably encouraged children to create their own hanging games. we know some details about an eighteenth-century hanging game played by boys in melton ross, a village in england, through a local legend published in the first issue of notes and queries in 1849. in this legend, three or four boys “[are] playing at hanging, and seeing who [can] hang the longest in a tree.” as one boy adjusts the noose around his neck, the devil in the form of a three-legged hare distracts the boy’s friends, who run away and do not return until after his death. afterwards, a gallows goes up on the site of the boy’s demise (ashliman 2000). today melton ross includes this legend in summaries of its history on the internet (“north lincolnshire” 2006). in the nineteenthand early twentieth-century american west, public hangings generated excitement for young and older people.1 memories of these public hangings persist through some western towns’ continuing recognition of a “hanging tree” in the center of town. in goliad, texas, for example, a hanging tree outside the town’s courthouse reminds residents of the many public hangings that took place between 1846 and 1870. in shelby county, texas, a young boy helped a mob hang a suspected criminal from a hanging tree (“famous texas trees” 2005). houston, columbus, and other municipalities in texas also take pride in their centrally located hanging trees, which serve as focal points of local history. although i have found no narratives about games played in american hanging trees, i believe that often-told stories about these living reminders of hangings have made young people more aware of events that have troubled and excited members of their community.2 in 2004, children’s imitation of the hanging of dhananjoy chatterjee in india resulted in two deaths and a near-fatality. a fourteen-year-old boy died after hanging himself with a rope attached to a ceiling fan; a twelve-year-old girl died after demonstrating the execution to her younger sibling; and a ten-year-old boy almost died after he and his friends took the roles of chatterjee and his hangman, doctor, and prison warden (“brutalization effect” 2009). the third case, which fortunately resulted in no deaths, demonstrates children’s enjoyment of impromptu multi-role dramas. we might wonder why all of these children engaged in similar imitative play soon after chatterjee’s hanging. the answer seems to be that this execution, the first in india since 1995, received a great deal of public attention. chaterjee’s hanging occurred as the result of a rape/murder of a girl in 1990, so it is not surprising that children felt fascinated and horrified by the details of his execution. cfr_2009_r4.indb 47 10/25/09 6:19:22 pm “go to bed, now you’re dead” tucker 48 besides imitation and excitement, pursuit of pleasure explains the development of breath control games. getting a “rush” or a “high” from choking increases young people’s interest in playing dangerous games of this kind. after oxygen deprivation, the brain responds to normal airflow with a euphoric sensation (“unintentional strangulation deaths” 2008), although other effects may be alarming (ullrich, bergin and goodkin 2008). frank dattilio’s study “the versatile effects of breath-holding” (2006) asks whether breath holding alleviates anxiety and makes people feel better. young people who have told me about their own breath control experiments have tended to emphasize pleasure and entertainment. one of my recent interviewees, a twenty-four-year-old male student who watched friends play pass out in middle school, told me, “what you do is, you put your hands around somebody’s throat and then push their chest in. they get a rush, pass out and wake up. it’s a funny thing to do.” in this interview and others, the word “rush” has repeatedly came up. clearly, feeling euphoric makes this game attractive to young people, as does the intriguing strangeness of the breath control process. forensic pathologists, psychologists, and anthropologists have documented the quest for pleasurable sensations that has motivated some hangings. the term “autoerotic asphyxiation” (called “aea” by specialists) means self-strangulation for the purpose of erotic pleasure. children, adolescents, and adults have pursued this solitary process, which differs from group games without a specific sexual orientation. a 2006 study by anny sauvageau and stéphanie racette, “autoerotic deaths in the literature from 1954 to 2004: a review,” identifies the age range of aea practitioners as 9-77. since this study analyzes 408 deaths reported in 57 articles, it covers a wide range of situations resulting in the same tragic outcome. sometimes it is difficult to know whether or not young people have intended to commit suicide. careful studies such as the one by sauvageau and racette have made it somewhat easier to distinguish between dangerous game-playing and deliberate self-destruction. psychologists and psychoanalysts have raised interesting questions about breath control. e.c. schneider’s “observations on holding the breath” (1930) suggests that will power, not physiology, determines how long a person can hold his or her breath. psychoanalytic studies of autoerotic asphyxiation have found that breath control results from regressive and masochistic fantasies. j.m. johnstone’s, a.c. hunt’s, and e. milford ward’s “plastic-bag asphyxia in adults” (1960) interprets the use of a plastic bag in asphyxiation as a symbolic attempt to return to the womb. robert r. hazelwood, park elliott dietz, and ann wolbert burgess, authors of autoerotic fatalities (1983), find that the need for oxygen deprivation has a strong connection to masochistic fantasies and sexual arousal through risk-taking. similarly, edward saunders’ “life threatening autoerotic behavior: a challenge for sex educators and therapists” (1989) emphasizes the prominence of risk-taking and thrill-seeking. saunders suggests that castration anxiety and masturbation guilt account for autoerotic behavior. these psychoanalytic treatises and others have raised thought-provoking points that deserve further consideration. besides pursuit of pleasure, excitement, and risk, a search for understanding accounts for young people’s motivation for playing breath control games. cfr_2009_r4.indb 48 10/25/09 6:19:22 pm tucker “go to bed, now you’re dead” 49 according to jean piaget’s stages of cognitive development, children in the concrete operational stage (ages 7-11) build concepts based on trial and error, while adolescents in the formal operational stage develop more abstract and logical thought (2001). legend specialists have documented children’s and adolescents’ efforts to understand death by telling stories and taking trips to places associated with death and dying. according to linda dégh, author of legend and belief, “most of the adolescent legends are quest stories” (2001, 253). some of these quest stories describe attempts to communicate with dangerous spirits, as in janet langlois’s essay “’mary whales, i believe in you’: myth and ritual subdued” (1978). numerous studies of legend trips, including bill ellis’s “legend-tripping in ohio: a behavioral study” (1982-83) and my own chapter on legend trips in haunted halls (2007, 182-210), have demonstrated young people’s eagerness to probe the borderline between life and death. learning how breathing works and what happens when breathing stops constitutes a significant quest for understanding. simon j. bronner suggested in a recent e-mail message that adolescents’ questioning of life may include wondering “whether breath as life can be controlled” (2009). his suggestion rings true. since living requires breathing, it makes sense that young people ask what will happen when breathing changes or stops.3 this question makes breath control games part of a larger search for understanding of life and death. studies of breath control games played by groups of children have been less common than studies of solitary autoerotic asphyxiation by children, adolescents, and adults. the earliest anthropological essay, a.w. stearns’ “cases of probable suicide in young persons without obvious motivation” (1953), observes that eskimo [inuit] children hang themselves in games that involve sexual stimulation. psychologist h.l.p. resnik explains in his essay “erotized repetitive hangings: a form of self-destructive behavior” (1972) that children of shoshone-bannock indians play suffocation games; this generalized statement does not seem persuasive. a more convincing, detailed observation of a hanging game played by a group of boys appears in decoccola and king’s the incredible eskimo: life among the barren land eskimo (1986). decoccola and king describe what happens when most of the boys playing the game get distracted and run away; with no friend nearby to help, the boy with the rope around his neck chokes to death. this sad account makes the reader wonder how many other boys died in similar circumstances. stories told by british boarding school students show that hanging and fainting games have flourished in school settings since the 1950s; these games seem to have entertained boarding school students for quite a long time. like levitation, which an informant of iona and peter opie learned at boarding school in bath in the 1940s (1959: 309), hanging and fainting games give students an intriguing alternative to games organized by adults. journalist jack o’sullivan describes variants of fainting games played by male and female boarding school students from the 1950s to the end of the twentieth century in his essay “so you still want to send the kids to boarding school?” (1999). he identifies three kinds of games: breath-holding games that involve bending the knees, hugging games, and strangulation games involving a cord. cfr_2009_r4.indb 49 10/25/09 6:19:22 pm “go to bed, now you’re dead” tucker 50 tragically, a game of the third kind resulted in the death of nicholas taylor at eton in february of 1999. this well-publicized death increased parents’ and teachers’ awareness of the games’ dangers. since the turn of the twenty-first century, authors have given more attention to young people’s breath control games. forensic specialists sergey sheleg and edwin ehrlich have written a very informative study, autoerotic asphyxiation: forensic, medical and social aspects (2006). their chapter devoted to “aea and adolescents” includes detailed descriptions of children’s and adolescents’ efforts “to induce unconsciousness in various ways to gain approval of their peers, without apparent sexual intentions” (93). sheleg and ehrlich note that games involving a “bear hug” replicate the valsalva maneuver (vm), weight lifters’ breathholding and abdominal muscle-squeezing to improve their ability to lift heavy weights (93). this similarity suggests that children and adolescents may have imitated weight lifters in developing hugging games. there have also been a number of books for parents of children and adolescents. dr. lisa boesky’s when to worry: how to tell if your teen needs help—and what to do (2007) offers parents practical advice about young people’s experimentation with drugs, choking games, and other challenges. similarly, moira mccarthy’s the everything guide to raising adolescent girls (2008). tells parents about breath control games played in groups. these books and others sold at commercial bookstores and on the internet have given parents much useful information. educational websites twenty-first-century websites have significantly heightened public awareness of breath control games. youtube, the video-sharing website that went online in 2005, has made it possible for children and adolescents to post their own videos, including graphic enactments of life-threatening games. grieving parents of children and adolescents who died playing these games have opposed posting such videos to encourage others to play and have created educational websites. as a result of their work, many educational websites currently offer help for young people and their parents on youtube. one of the most influential websites of this kind, “chokinggame.net (passout, fainting, blackout, space monkey),” comes from the db foundation, founded by kate b. leonardi in january of 2006. leonardi’s eleven year old son, dylan, died in october of 2005. her activism in helping other parents become aware of breath control games’ dangers has been recognized by the new york times and the today show (forsloff 2009). it is noteworthy that leonardi’s website lists multiple folk synonyms for “the choking game” in its title: “passout, fainting, blackout, space monkey.” while these are some of the most widespread names, there are many others, including “gasp game,” “the scarf game,” “suffocation roulette,” “american dream,” “california dreaming,” “purple dragon,” “purple hazing,” “flatlining,” and “the tingling game.” as in the drug culture, a multiplicity of names makes it harder for parents to understand what their children are doing. now that leonardi’s cfr_2009_r4.indb 50 10/25/09 6:19:23 pm tucker “go to bed, now you’re dead” 51 website and others list many of the names, parents and educators can better identify this part of the childhood and adolescent underground. according to “chokinggame.net,” 148 young people were seriously injured or died after playing suffocation games from 1974 to 2004; 96 were seriously injured or died in 2005, 117 in 2006, 63 in 2007, 50 in 2008, and 25 in the first half of 2009. these figures show an encouraging downturn in the yearly total of deaths, but the website’s list of victims reminds readers how important it is to be vigilant. this same list of victims is printed on the backs of “choking game awareness” t-shirts, which visitors to the website can purchase. memorial websites dedicated to young people who died playing breath control games provide heart-rending evidence of the games’ lethal impact. most of these websites, lovingly created by grieving parents, contain warnings, folk terms for the games, details about the tragic loss, and links to other websites and newspaper articles, as well as tributes to the lost child. nicholas serna’s memorial website, for example, includes photographs, music, and strongly worded warnings. the “bio” section explains that nicholas learned to play a choking game at summer camp before his death at the age of sixteen in arizona in 2005. a photograph shows nicholas passing out during a game at camp. as of august 6, 2009, 15,929 people had visited nicholas’s site. another moving memorial website is “still loving my gabriel” (2005). gabriel harry mordecai, aged thirteen, died in 2005 in paradise, california after playing a choking game. gabriel’s twin, samuel, found his brother lying unconscious with a noose around his neck. admitting that he had played the same choking game about five times, samuel explained that a friend from another town had taught him and his brother how to play. trying to describe how the choking game felt, samuel said, “it’s like a dream world, kind of, and then you wake up.” usually, adults would not hear such explanations of a game’s transmission and appeal. after a suffocation game tragedy, however, parents may put the story of events that preceded their child’s death up on the web in an attempt to prevent similar tragic losses. sometimes news of a game-playing fatality elicits reminiscences from adults. after gabriel mordecai’s death, his mother, sarah pacatte, received mail from people who had played suffocation games, including a woman who had played one in 1939. pacatte herself remembered playing the game but not liking it. having learned about the game through personal experience, she understood its dangers and warned her twins not to play. unfortunately, only one of the twins stopped playing (warner 2005). one of the most informative and emotionally wrenching websites devoted to choking game prevention is “g.a.s.p.: games adolescents shouldn’t play” (2008). this website’s video begins and ends with the “911” emergency call that samuel mordecai made after discovering his brother’s body. samuel’s heartbroken crying and desperate appeal to the operator, combined with visual images of his home, give the video a painfully intense impact. the narrator explains the deadly effects of oxygen deprivation with the help of an anatomical diagram. he states that between 250 and 1,000 people die from suffocation games each year but that “many [of these deaths from game-playing] are reported as suicides.” designed cfr_2009_r4.indb 51 10/25/09 6:19:23 pm “go to bed, now you’re dead” tucker 52 to stop high school students from playing choking games, this video seems very effective. some parents’ blogs have also warned others about swimming pool games that involve breath control. catherine holecko’s “family fitness blog,” for example, describes “see how long you can hold your breath” games played in bathtubs and pools (2009). holecko notes that some swimming pools have banned such games because of the risk of drowning. “mama lisa’s world blog,” by lisa yannucci, presents swimming pool games in a more positive way; one of her commentators calls the canadian pool game hen rooster chicken duck “a great game for kids as it gets them to hold their breath and put their heads under the water” (2009). this blog-based dialogue has raised parents’ consciousness of pool games’ perils. folklorists have documented the traditionality of children’s pool games (knapp and knapp 1976, 52; bronner 1988, 179; tucker 2008, 74) but have not emphasized these games’ risks. in a recent e-mail message, simon j. bronner told me that his students have played both “tame” and “extreme” versions of the traditional pool hide-and-seek game marco polo; in extreme versions, “the ‘it’ is supposed to hold his or her breath for extended portions of time” (2009). twentyfirst-century children’s love of “extreme sports” seems to be raising the risk level of pool games. recent game descriptions during the fall of 2008, i asked the students in my children’s folklore class at binghamton university what they knew about breath control games.4 of the 51 students in the class, aged 19-24, only four seemed completely unfamiliar with such game-playing traditions. one male and one female student remembered taking leadership roles in games as young teenagers because of their expertise in passing out. the other students had participated briefly, watched friends play, or heard friends talk about games. none of them knew of injuries or deaths from breath control games in their own communities. as a result of our class discussions, several students asked friends to give them information about breath control game experiences. one male student, alan, told me about “the couch game,” played by a small group of boys during sleepovers. to take one member of the group by surprise, the other boys would suddenly catch him between the mattresses of their fold-out couch. trapped between the two mattresses and caught inside the couch’s heavy metal frame, the hapless boy would try to stay inside as long as possible. anyone who begged for a quick release earned the hated nickname “baby.” before tiring of the game, the boys held competitions and praised the ones who could last the longest with little air to breathe. in this way they tested their bravery and endurance. fortunately no one got injured during the long game-playing sessions, about which their parents knew nothing. another male student, phil, described learning the choking game space monkey at summer camp, then teaching it to his friends. his memories of the game follow: cfr_2009_r4.indb 52 10/25/09 6:19:23 pm tucker “go to bed, now you’re dead” 53 my camp friends had instructed me to take ten deep breaths and hold the last one in, while one friend would push on either side of my larynx until, to my surprise, i fell asleep. i went into the game with honest expectations and had no idea that i would be experiencing such a rare sensation, which is only usually obtained right before/ during sleep. i woke up confused, disoriented, and on the ground. when i finally realized what had happened, it was such a thrill that i immediately started laughing, right along with my cackling friends. i thought the game was great. i had no qualms in doing it over and over—i didn’t consider the physical harm i could have been doing to myself. phil’s statement offers valuable insight into this choking game’s appeal. even though the game makes players feel “confused” and “disoriented,” it takes them by surprise and makes them laugh. like many other young players, phil did not stop to consider the possibility of harm. besides providing these interesting details about the game’s appeal, phil explained that space monkey made his friends “babble and talk like babies.” he and his friends videotaped each other acting strangely while unconscious, laughing when anyone did something especially odd. these filming sessions lasted until one of the boys accidentally fell through a large piece of glass, cutting himself. suddenly, the game stopped seeming harmless and funny. the boys never played it again. one other description came from my female student marie, who had interviewed her friend emily. during high school, emily had enjoyed playing a version of the passing out game that involved taking turns while sitting in a circle. her description follows: we were on vacation with another family, and they had two boys and the older boy had played it with his friends before, and he’s the one who introduced it to us. he’s such a bad influence…you’d have one person sitting down and another person get down behind them on their knees, and what they would do is they would kind of put you in a headlock. you weren’t supposed to breathe, so they just put you in a headlock in case you started to breathe. they’d put their elbow by your windpipe, and once you went limp, they would let go…we were bored and the older kid said that people do all kinds of crazy things when they were unconscious and that it was funny, so we were just looking for a source of entertainment. emily’s graphic description of the passing out game sounds frightening.5 “were you ever scared?” her friend marie asked while conducting the interview. emily replied, “yes, i was. you kind of just got the black spots around you and then you don’t remember anything after that. i don’t know. all i remember is waking up and people laughing at me.” cfr_2009_r4.indb 53 10/25/09 6:19:23 pm “go to bed, now you’re dead” tucker 54 after her interview with emily, marie commented, “after being forced into a risky situation, you get to sit back and enjoy the humor of seeing others lose control. thus, to be in this state of control, you also need to be put under control as well.” this insightful observation helps us understand how the more complex breath control games work. although the excitement of discovering unconsciousness partially explains the game’s dynamics, an exchange of power keeps the process moving. players voluntarily submit themselves to friends’ control and possible mockery so that they can enjoy exerting the same power themselves. watching friends do “all kinds of crazy things” seems so rewarding that giving up control does not seem as difficult as it might under other circumstances. conclusions and questions writing this essay has made me draw upon several roles from the past and present: nine-year-old game-player, ten-year-old singer, professional folklorist, and parent. memories of childhood game-playing have helped me understand how easily children and teenagers take risks; my academic training has given me a methodology, and my experience as a parent has made me grieve for parents who have lost their children. knowing that any parent could experience a loss of this kind, i have felt acutely aware of the importance of studying breath control games. folklorists of childhood usually try to maintain objectivity, but in this case, the need to protect young people from danger seems more important than maintaining a professional distance. i am glad to express the hope that children’s breath control games will stop endangering lives. can we, however, expect children and adolescents to stop teaching each other popular, long established games because of adults’ warnings? one of the greatest pleasures of playing dangerous games has been rejection of adult authority, so it seems unlikely that kids will stop playing breath control games just because their parents and teachers worry about their safety. game-playing traditions tend to keep going, and kids’ belief in their own strength makes them resist warnings. although recent breath control game death totals have shown some improvement, deaths and serious injuries still occur. why do children and adolescents have such a strong desire to experiment with unconsciousness? some players’ explanations show that they find unconsciousness to be exciting and compelling. pushing each other to the brink of a seductive dream world, they probe boundaries between conscious and unconscious awareness and between life and death. this kind of boundary probing seems to facilitate passage from youth to adulthood. by losing consciousness in a risky way, young people prove their bravery and readiness for more complex challenges. building upon the literature that psychologists, anthropologists, and forensic specialists have generated, folklorists can contribute to the ongoing dialogue about breath control games. depth psychology offers one possible approach. having applied jungian theory to late adolescents’ ghost stories (2005 and 2007, 94-114), i see potential for analysis of children’s and adolescents’ encounters with their own negative, death-seeking “shadow sides” through breath control games. folklorists who study group dynamics should find some of these games’ focus on rolecfr_2009_r4.indb 54 10/25/09 6:19:23 pm tucker “go to bed, now you’re dead” 55 playing and control-taking to be worth exploring. other approaches can also lead researchers in productive directions. there is much research to do and many questions to answer. amid restrictions on research with human subjects, can one ask children about this sensitive subject? how have choking games developed in korea, australia, pakistan, and other nations in which they have become popular? and how does gender influence the playing of these games? these questions and others need answers. i hope to read new studies of breath control games by folklorists of childhood in the years ahead. notes this essay is dedicated to the memory of gabriel mordecai, nicholas serna, chelsea lynn dunn, jason linkins, and other young people who died after playing choking games. i want to thank simon j. bronner, janet langlois, c.w. sullivan iii, and geoffrey gould for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of the essay. 1. public hangings have also occurred in other parts of the united states and in the american colonies; among the most notorious hangings are those that took place in salem, massachusetts during the witchcraft trials of 1692. 2. the american tourist industry has also done its part to preserve memories of hangings. while visiting the wild wild west casino in atlantic city, new jersey in the summer of 2009, i noticed a sign on the casino’s wall: “hangings on tuesdays.” 3. the film flatliners (1990) portrays young medical students’ experiments with induction of near-death, causing terrifying consequences. while this is a commercial film designed for entertainment, it mirrors young people’s quest for understanding very well. 4. to maintain confidentiality, all students who participated in our class’s dialogue and marie’s interviewee are identified with pseudonyms. 5. an interesting article that explores the connection between breath holding and fright is “piracetam in severe breath holding spells” by matloob azam, nasera bhatti, and naheed shahab (2008). works cited ashliman, d.l. 2000. the hanging game: folktales of aarne-thompson type 1066. http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/type1066.html (accessed august 2, 2009). azam, matloob, nasera bhatti, and naheed shahab. 2008. piracetam in severe breath holding spells. international journal of psychiatry in medicine 38: 195-201. boesky, lisa. 2007. when to worry: how to tell if your teen needs help—and what to do. saranac lake, new york: amacom books. bronner, simon j. 1988. american children’s folklore. little rock: august house. ______. 2009. e-mail communication. 14 august. cfr_2009_r4.indb 55 10/25/09 6:19:23 pm “go to bed, now you’re dead” tucker 56 brutalization effect: children die imitating recent execution in india. 2009. death penalty information center. http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article. php?did=2118 (accessed august 10, 2009). cooper, david d. 1974. the lesson of the scaffold: the public execution controversy in victorian england. athens: ohio university press. dattilio, frank. 2006. the versatile effects of breath-holding. archives of psychiatry and psychotherapy 8: 41-46. decoccola, r. and king, p. 1986. the incredible eskimo: life among the barren land eskimo. surrey, british columbia: hancock house. dégh, linda. 2001. legend and belief. bloomington: indiana university press. ellis, bill. 1982-83. legend-tripping in ohio: a behavioral study. in papers in comparative studies, vol. 2, ed. daniel barnes, rosemary o. joyce, and steven swann jones, 61-73. columbus, oh: center for comparative studies in the humanities. ______. 2007. e-mail communication. 8 june. famous trees of texas. 2005. http://famoustreesoftexas.tamu.edu/default.aspx (accessed august 12, 2009). flatliners. 1990. twentieth century fox. forsloff, carol. 2009. grieving parents warn others of ‘choking game.’ digital journal. 25 apr. 2009. http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/271516. foucault, michel. 1977. discipline and punish: the birth of the prison. new york: pantheon books. g.a.s.p.: games adolescents shouldn’t play. 2008. http://www.stop-the-choking. game.com/en/flash_vid.html (accessed july 30, 2009). hazelwood, robert r., park elliott dietz, and ann wolbert burgess. 1983. autoerotic fatalities. lexington: lexington books. holecko, catherine. 2009. catherine’s family fitness blog. 2 june. about.com: family fitness. 2 june. http://familyfitness.about.com/b/2009/06/02/don’thold-your-breath.htm (accessed august 29, 2009). johnstone, j.m., a.c. hunt and e. milford ward. 1960. plastic-bag asphyxia in adults. british medical journal 2 (5214): 1714-15. knapp, mary and herbert. 1976. one potato, two potato: the secret education of american children. new york: norton. langlois, janet. 1978. “mary whales, i believe in you”: myth and ritual subdued. indiana folklore 11: 5-33.6 leonardi, kate b. 2009. chokinggame.net (passout, fainting, blackout, space monkey). http://chokinggame.net (accessed august 4, 2009). mccarthy, moira. 2008. the everything guide to raising adolescent girls: an essential guide to bringing up happy, healthful girls in today’s world. cincinnati: adams media. nicholas andres’ serna. 2005. http://www.nickserna.com (accessed august 6, 2009). north lincolnshire council—melton ross local history pack. 2006. north lincolnshire online. http://www.northlincs.gov.uk/northlincs/leisure/ libraries/localstudies/localhistorypacks/meltonross.htm (accessed august 23, 2009). cfr_2009_r4.indb 56 10/25/09 6:19:23 pm tucker “go to bed, now you’re dead” 57 opie, iona and peter. 1969. children’s games in street and playground. new york: oxford university press. ______. 1959. lore and language of schoolchildren. new york: oxford university press. o’sullivan, jack. 1999. so you still want to send the kids to boarding school? the independent. 18 march. http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/ so-you-still-want-to-send-the-kids-to-boarding-school-1081328.html (accessed august 9, 2009). piaget, jean. 2001. the language and thought of the child. new york: routledge. resnik, h.l.p. 1972. erotized repetitive hangings: a form of self-destructive behavior. american journal of psychotherapy 26:1: 4-21. saunders, edward. 1989. life threatening autoerotic behavior: a challenge for sex educators and therapists. journal of sex education and therapy 15: 82-91. sauvageau, anny, and stéphanie racette. 2006. autoerotic deaths in the literature from 1954 to 2004: a review. journal of forensic science 51 (1): 140-46. schneider, e.c. 1930. observations on holding the breath. american journal of physiology 94: 464-70. sheleg, sergey, and edwin ehrlich. 2006. autoerotic asphyxiation. tucson: wheatmark. sherman, josepha, and t.k.f. weisskopf. 1995. greasy grimy gopher guts: the subversive folklore of childhood. little rock: august house. stearns, a.w. 1953. cases of probable suicide in young persons without obvious motivation. journal of the maine medical association 44: 16. still loving my gabriel. 2005. http://www.stilllovingmygabriel.com (accessed august 7, 2009). tucker, elizabeth. 2005. ghosts in mirrors: reflections of the self. journal of american folklore 118 (468): 186-203. ______. 2007. haunted halls: ghostlore of american college campuses. jackson: university press of mississippi. ______. 2007-2008. levitation revisited. children’s folklore review 30: 47-60. ______. 2008. children’s folklore: a handbook. westport, connecticut: greenwood press. ulrich, nicole j., ann m. bergin, and howard p. goodkin. 2008. the choking game: self-induced hypoxia presenting as recurrent seizurelike events. epilepsy and behavior 12: 486-88. unintentional strangulation deaths from the “choking game” among youths aged 6-19 years—united states, 1995-2007. 2008. morbidity and mortality weekly report. 15 february. http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ mm5706a1.htm (accessed august 12, 2009). warner, paul m. 2005. “choking game” claims life of one california teenager. canyon news. 7 august. http://www.canyon-news.com/artman/publish/ article_3310.php (accessed august 7, 2009). yannucci, lisa. 2009. mama lisa’s world blog. 19 july. http://www.mamalisa.com/ blog/pool-games-and-chants (accessed august 30, 2009). cfr_2009_r4.indb 57 10/25/09 6:19:24 pm cfr_2008-2009_part14 cfr_2008-2009_part15 cfr_2008-2009_part16 cfr_2008-2009_part17 cfr_2008-2009_part18 ocr document contents from the editor ...................................................................... 2 1993 conference papers child as story-maker kay stone .......................................................................... 3 "postmodern fairy tales" in contemporary children's literature cynthia anne cox ........................................................... 13 cfs: 1993 annual meeting ....................................... 20 notes and announcements………………………….24 contributors…………………………………………..24 cover: photograph of w.w. newell courtesy of harvard university archives. from the editor. . . it has been a long and busy winter. for various reasons (some of them even good ones and not mere procrastination), the printing and mailing of cfr 16.1 dragged on into the new year. i was delighted to receive a progress letter from jan brunvand and discover that others are even later than i getting their encyclopedia articles done. speaking of letters, herb halpert wrote to suggest that the four articles in the last issue were somewhat vague about the location of the research and that it was "a weakness in the papers that the authors did not give the geographical settings for their observations" and that cfr should also provide the names, addresses, and academic affiliations of its contributors. i must say that i have been thinking the latter myself and have done nothing about it. henceforth, however, cfr will provide brief notes about the contributors. this issue of cfr continues two themes discussed at previous children's folklore section panels at afs and also reported in previous issues of this review. the fall 1992 issue (15.1) of cfr carried the complete panel on children and narrative from the 1991 afs meeting. kay stone's "child as story-maker" was originally presented as a paper at the 1993 american folklore society meeting in eugene, oregon, and carries on the concern with how children learn and use narrative. in addition, stone also examines her dual role as mother/folklorist and rachel's dual role as daughter/informant. cynthia anne cox's "'postmodern fairy tales' in contemporary children's literature" follows lines established by pack carnes in "arnold lobel's fables and traditional fable features" (cfr 15.2) and examines the way in which contemporary writers for children are "reinventing" well known works of fairy tale literature. this volume concludes, as all spring issues do, with the minutes from the october meeting and various announcements. for those of you following the fortunes of associate cfr editor laurie evans, i can tell you that she has decided not to return to east carolina university as my secretary, but will stay home with her new son; however, she is establishing an homebased editing and desktop publishing venture and will continue as associate editor of cfr –for a while at least. i look forward to seeing you all in milwaukee. c.w. sullivan iii 2 child as story-makerl kay stone when i was five, my parents tell me, i regaled them with rambling, disjointed stories of my adventures with snaky the rattlesnake, my "invisible" friend. my mother described how amazed she was that a small child could spin out such involved narratives. i assumed that my older brother had found other ways to express his creativity—but now i wonder. shortly after my first child began spontaneously creating his own original stories at roughly the same age—five—i heard a presentation on children's stories by brian sutton-smith.2 i began to understand that i was not, after all, a child prodigy, but merely passing through an exciting developmental stage of childhood that we all experience, in one way or another. i suppose my brother must have kept his stories to himself. in the early 1980s two particular storytelling incidents with my second child, rachel, excited my curiosity as a folklorist with a primary interest in adults as story-makers. in order to document rachel's stories, i had to shift roles from mother to scholar: while listening to and recording the stories and later preparing academic papers on them, i was aware that ethical concerns entered the situation. the delicate balance between my position as subjective parent and objective scholar colors the background of this writing. there are already studies of children at various ages telling stories: these present a broad spectrum of ages and genres, the emphasis being on the development of verbal skills (see suttonsmith; pitcher and prelinger; chukovsky). each of these studies has been carefully conceived and carried out, and each includes abundant examples gathered from dozens of children over a stretch of time. sutton-smith examines the developmental stages of children as verbal artists, while pitcher/prelinger and chukovsky emphasize psychological interpretations. chukovsky in particular insists that children have a deep need for fantasy and create their own even in the absence of external literary models. he also notes what he calls "the linguistic genius" of the child, who does not merely copy any adult models that are available but instead "introduces critical evaluation, analysis, and control," even as early as two years of age (chukovsky 9). obviously such conscientious approaches are needed for any meaningful generalizations to be made on children as storytellers. the stories i offer here, in contrast, were told by one child over a very limited time period in an uncontrolled environment. this serendipi 3 stone tous collecting was not part of a planned study, nor central to my overall work on folk narratives. my modest intent was to describe how one young teller composed two narratives using diverse elements and how she herself responded to these events. however, the question of ethics, as relevant to incidental collecting as it is to other contexts, sheds new light on this topic. i have been acutely aware of my accountability as a folklorist, as well as a parent, in using stories that are by right the property of the teller. when i was asked to contribute a paper to a recent folklore panel on ethics, "the folklorist's responsibility to the child," i thought immediately of my earlier descriptions of rachel's storytelling. the result is a re-view of the context and process of a child's story-making and the complexities of interaction between folklorist and informant. in working with children we need to be respectfully aware of ethical concerns that arise from our "objective" scholarship. what is this folklorist's responsibility to this child, and how was it negotiated in the two-year period covered by rachel's storytelling activities? from the beginning i asked her permission to record the stories and to use them as part of my research. i cannot take full credit for this, since rachel herself was acutely aware that these stories "belonged" to her and reminded me of this fact every time the matter arose. but at age five she had only the vaguest notion of what it meant to use her material for academic research. i was surprised-and encouraged-by rachel's closing comment on the taped variant of her first story. she concludes with "that's the end," and then adds cheerily, "and hello to all your students." she understood even before i did that i was not merely recording her story as a proud parent; i had no plans to examine her story at that time, but i did indeed use it as an example for students in my folklore classes. the two stories i introduce here, the legend of "loon man and bone woman" (told at age five) and the anecdote of "the men with hats" (age seven) struck me as unusual. (the titles were chosen by rachel.) i had just begun examining contemporary storytelling by adults and was sensitive to the dynamics of verbal creativity. i had also told folktales in a number of winnipeg schools and was intrigued by occasional children willing to respond with stories of their own-but children did not become the focus of my narrative studies. thus my initial interest in rachel's storytelling was a general curiosity with no serious intent to transform her into an informant. i had heard many of her spontaneous creations over the years, but these two had qualities that awakened the folklorist in me. they were fuller in their development and told with greater assurance, perhaps because they were each based on stories that rachel had experienced orally. because i had also heard them i could see more clearly how rachel functioned as an expressive artist, using or discarding elements of the originals to produce her own narratives. 4 child as story-maker she firmly claimed them as her own creations, establishing self-consciousness as an artist and also recognition of her responsibility as an entertainer. she was aware that she was not merely discoursing for a sympathetic ear, but consciously seeking to create coherent stories for which i happened to be a listener. this is much clearer in her second story, "the men with hats," told in the presence of an older brother and later to an adult friend. let us look at each story within the context of its telling and then consider the ethical questions raised by publishing this article. rachel, now seventeen and quite fiercely aware of her rights, has again given her full permission to use her material, though she asked why i was still working on "those old stories." "loon man and bone woman"3 in 1981, i was making lunch for the two of us when rachel began a story about a man who became a loon. at this age she was in the plot stage of storytelling discussed at length by brian sutton-smith (1981). at first "loon man" seemed to resemble her other rambling tales with no fixed characters and a loosely connected series of events, but i soon caught the thread of a coherent narrative that took shape as i listened: loon man became a welldefined protagonist who set off in search of his missing bird wife and children, stolen by bone woman. aided by four intimidating giants and a leviathan pike, he arrived at bone woman's "eggloo" just in time to rescue his family from being cooked for supper. her spontaneous narrative seemed to resemble what sutton-smith calls "folkstories," original narratives that "are not the same as folktales, but share common elements with them" (sutton-smith 1). i was intrigued by the literary sophistication of her story (which she very firmly claimed as her own) and asked if she could tell it again, not expecting her to be able to repeat it fully since all previous stories had been once-only events; she not only agreed, but permitted me to tape the retelling. i was surprised that she was able reproduce it accurately, and even improved on it as she went along. the story had a stronger beginning, a better motivated middle, and a more fully resolved conclusion; the characters and action remained stable, not shifting as i had expected. it had all the features of a completed narrative that had been consciously thought out, prepared, and rehearsed. given the finished nature of the story and her ability to reproduce it, i thought she might have heard it in her kindergarten class, but when i asked where she had learned it, she answered with a slightly indignant tone, "i made it up." her unambivalent claim to original ownership intrigued me so i asked how she got the ideas for the story. without speaking she pointed to the wall 5 stone behind me, where i found a colored print by canadian native artist jackson beardy. there, sure enough, was loon man—or more accurately, a loon who seemed to be battling a large fish; four domed shapes sat above them on the top left of the print, but there was no sign of giants or of bone woman and her "eggloo." she explained that the four domes were where the giants lived (in fact they are symbolic thunder-clouds in beardy's print) and that bone woman and her house had been destroyed by loon man, so they were not in the picture. but if the giants and bone woman were absent from the print, did they spring from her imagination or from an outside source? when i asked, she reminded me that we had seen a puppet play based on the inuit legend of "kivioq" in which a hunter marries a bird woman who flies away one day. he follows after her and meets a threatening giant, a huge pike, and a cannibalistic bee woman, whom he defeats.4 rachel told me that she had not enjoyed the play because it was "too scary" and added, "my story was better." why? because it had no puppets, and "it had a better ending." rachel reunites loon man and his family, while in the puppet play kivioq's goose wife and children refuse to return with him. rachel's variant was also less violent and threatening without losing dramatic impact. in sorting out how she composed and repeated her story on the spot by imaginatively bringing together an inuit legend, a cree print, and her own reworking of plot, character, and motivation, i was able to see in miniature the interaction of text, texture, and context. with her permission i presented a paper at the 1984 american folklore society meeting ("at home in the field"), came home, and filed it away. "the men with hats" two years later i again happened to be present when rachel tried a very different kind of story, a narrative joke. a joke is a very challenging genre, as its success depends on the precision of the wording and the successful delivery of the punch line. up to this time rachel had only told simple oneline jokes with no plot line to remember. in the spring of 1984 a few adult friends gathered at our home for an informal afternoon of conversation and joke-telling. rachel, age seven, moved in and out of the room as she went about her own affairs. i was not aware that she was even present when the following joke was told by a woman already known in our circle as an irreverent jokester:5 two sikhs wearing turbans are challenged at heaven's gates by st. peter, who asks each, separately, a question. the first is asked what would happen if he lost one eye and then the other, 6 child as story-maker to which he responds that he would be half blind and then totally blind. st. peter allows him to enter heaven, then questions the second man about what would happen if he lost one ear and then the other. he responds (having heard the first answers but not the questions) that he would be half blind and then totally blind— because his turban would slip down over one eye and then the other. st peter, impressed, lets him in as well. i was putting rachel to bed that night, a time when we often shared casual stories, when she offered to tell the joke "about the men with hats." she surprised me by repeating the joke with absolute accuracy, making only one change from exotic turbans to prosaic hats. i complimented her on her good memory and said good night. the next morning she offered to tell "that joke" again before going off to school, this time in the presence of her older brother who was not normally appreciative of her attempts at joke-telling. as i prepared breakfast, she introduced an entirely original joke based on the pattern of the one she heard the previous day:6 there were two kids getting ready for school and their mother said, "i want to ask you two questions first. you first" so the first boy went in [to the kitchen] and the mother said, "what would happen if i gave you only half your breakfast?" "i'd be half hungry." "so, what if i didn't give you any breakfast?" "i'd be totally hungry." "o.k., you can go." "just a minute. i want to say bye to my brother." "so she let him." so he went in and he whispered, "the first answer is half hungry and the second one is totally hungry. bye!" so then the mother asked the second one, "what would happen if i turned the radio down?" "i'd be half hungry." "well what would happen if i turned it all the way off?" "i'd be totally hungry." "are you crazy? why would you be hungry?" "well, if you were so busy turning the radio on and off you wouldn't have time to make me breakfast" so she let him go too. my son and i both laughed, and rachel seemed embarrassed by the total success of her performance, responding by saying, "that was just a silly joke." when they left for school, i sat down and wrote out her text, and thought again of "loon man and bone woman," also told while i was preparing a meal-that is, a casual rather than a formal setting, with my attention directed elsewhere rather than focused on her. as folklorist rather than mother, i noted that she was able to change the text without losing the original joke pattern, but at this point i had nothing more to say about the process. 7 stone it took a third and unsuccessful retelling of this joke to fully reveal her understanding of her own creativity and to bring my folkloric curiosity to full life. some weeks after the breakfast performance she was sitting with me and another friend, a man whom she felt entirely comfortable with and whom she knew to be a joke teller himself. he had just told a joke, and she uncharacteristically offered another; "here's one i made up," she said proudly, apparently buoyed up by her previous successes. she used the kitchen setting again and remembered that the success of the joke depended on the questions and answers: this mother is making breakfast for her two kids, i think, and she had to ask them some questions before they went to school. so she said to one, "what would you do if i made you stay home from school today?" "i'd be dumb." "well what if i made you stay home for a whole week?" "i'd be dumber." [the teller realizes that she will have difficulty developing this question and reveals her discomfort nonverbally by pausing, grimacing, shifting her weight, as she tries to figure out what to say next.] well, so she says, "you can go to school now." "i have to tell my brother something first," and he runs into the living room and says "the answers are dumb and dumber." and he goes away. so then she asks the other kid, "what would happen if i took away your books?" "i'd be dumb." "what would happen if i took away your pen and paper?" "i'd be dumber." she does not bother to end the joke with the "you can go now" closing, but simply stops, pauses, and comments, "well, that wasn't very good, was it!" this was a rhetorical rather than an actual question, and we all laughed—not at the joke but at her acknowledgment of its failure. i realized that her failure—and her recognition of it—was a clearer demonstration of creativity than her successes had been. i could see how she was using structure to build her new narrative, and i also understood how she had matured as a performer by accepting her responsibility to complete the story even when she understood that it was not going to work-and by gracefully acknowledging her failure. later that year i asked her permission to use these three storytelling events for a paper to be given at the canadian folklore meeting, and she agreed-after asking me who would be there and ascertaining that no one she knew would hear her joke.7 my initial interest was in rachel's gradual recognition of herself as a conscious performer with a responsibility to herself as artist and to her listeners as entertainer. now, several years later, i have tried to reframe these experiences with the idea of addressing the ethical problems raised in this 8 child as story-maker panel—my responsibility to her. i began by showing rachel, now 17, the abstract for the 1993 afs panel and asking her to read what i'd written up to that point, explaining that she had complete control over what was to be included (i had already received permission to reuse the stories). i also asked her to add her own responses. it was my intention to encourage her to be an active collaborator rather than a passive informant. she promised to read what i had written, but never went beyond the abstract. "that's old stuff," she said when i urged her to give me a response. it has been helpful for me to reframe my work with rachel in this altered perspective: if i had not been aware of the significance of our subtle role shifts from child and mother to informant and folklorist, it would have been impossible to reframe the present article. it has also been a challenge to maintain perspective because of the split focus of this article. on one hand it is an example of oral creativity, and on the other it is a commentary on ethical relations between researcher and child. there is obviously an advantage to being parent, teacher, or anyone else who is in steady contact with children on a long term basis. the child is familiar as both a human being and a creative, expressive individual. this is a subjective position given the privileged connections between the adult and the child. on the other hand, an academic researcher who may see a child only a few times has the advantage of objectivity, since personal connections are secondary to research interests. scholarly training prepares the viewer to examine the young artists and what they create without the potential drawbacks of subjective personal relationships. i have enjoyed the challenge of attempting to be both parent and researcher, trying to find a balance between subjectivity and objectivity. what has guided me is the central issue of ethics, which can be even more critical when one is dealing with children who are close and familiar. it is hardly a unique situation, given the ground-breaking work of father/scholar piaget, but the central issue remains the same: the child and the creations of the child must be as fully respected and protected from exploitation as those of any adult. as i noted earlier, i cannot take full credit for treating rachel and her stories with consistent respect; she seemed to understand from the very beginning that her voice was her own possession and managed to let me know that she was aware of her rights. if she had at any point withdrawn her permission, there would be no article. i leave rachel's stories with a sense of incompletion similar to that expressed by pitcher and prelinger, who conclude: we feel vividly how our analyses and interpretations have fallen short of doing justice to or even comprehending the complexity, 9 stone the richness, and the literary quality, poetry, and beauty which many of the stories contain (240). *** as i wrote these final words and asked again if rachel would read this paper and comment, she said, with more than a touch of 17-year-old sarcasm, "i don't need to read this again—i made the stories." she added that she expected a percentage of any royalties i received. while in this case it was a deliberately ironic request (she has learned that academic royalties are not impressive), it might have been less ironic if i were indeed earning money from a book of children's folklore. "and," rachel might add, "hello to all your students." university of winnipeg winnipeg, manitoba, canada notes 1. this is a slightly revised version of the paper i presented at the 1993 afs meeting in eugene, oregon. i am indebted to c.w. sullivan iii for requesting it; and also to mary louise chown, nathaniel stone, and carol mcgirr for their responsive readings. 2. by coincidence sutton-smith's presentation was at the 1976 afs meeting in philadelphia, which i attended with three-month-old rachel, the subject of the present article. sutton-smith's paper, "structural parallels between children's creative activity and children's folklore," seems to be a bridge between his initial work on children's games and play and his later work on storytelling by children. 3. the title was suggested by rachel after the fact, in recognition that the taped telling had become a formal rather than a casual storytelling event and seemed, to her, to require a proper title. 4. "kivioq" was performed by the manitoba puppet theatre in 1981, with realistic and accurately costumed puppets. it was not in any way a "precious" or diminished telling of a complex and challenging inuit legend. rachel was not the only young child in the audience who found it disturbing. 5. since this was an informal storytelling event the joke was not recorded. it is summarized from memory and checked with the original teller, who also gave her permission to include it here. 6. i wrote it down immediately after she left for school, trying to recreate her exact wording as well as i could and checking it with her on her return. 7. "the end of the story" was presented at the annual meeting of the folklore studies association of canada in winnipeg in 1984. 10 child as story-maker works cited chukovsky, kornei. from two to five. translated from the 1925 russian edition, malen’kie deti (little children), by miriam norton. berkeley and los angeles: u of california p, 1965. pitcher, evelyn goodenough, and ernst prelinger. children tell stories. new york: international up, inc., 1963. sutton-smith, brian. the folkstories of children. philadelphia: u of pennsylvania p. 1981. 11 "post modern fairy tales" in contemporary children's literaturel cynthia anne cox publishers of children's literature have shown a renewed interest in fairy tales over the past several years, and especially noteworthy are recent releases which wreak conspicuous—and comic—variations on familiar characters and themes. in their playful experiments with the traditional form and content of märchen, the authors of these highly artistic books reference and re-envision well-known folk narratives as their titles should indicate: the frog prince continued, the true story of the three little pigs, cinderella: the untold story, the stinky cheese man and other fairly stupid tales. unlike the beloved fictions upon which they draw, these reworkings of folk stories deny order. they feature antiheroes and anti-heroines. they relinquish the notion that it is possible to exert any sort of control over the fragmented universe of human experience. they acknowledge that every situation is fraught with endless possibilities and that all we can ever hope to pursue is individual perception in its purely subjective form. in short, postmodernism has reached the fairy tale. on its way toward "reinventing" a work of fairy-tale literature, each of these picture books directs our attention to the printed documents that contain the stories we read and the images we see as do so many "postmodern" works for grown-up readers. for instance: facing each "ordinary" page of the jolly postman or other people's letters is an envelope, and each of the epistles enclosed in these envelopes is addressed to a fairy-tale character. in the manner of a conventional fairy tale, the book follows the course of a journey, tracing the route of a mail carrier as he makes his appointed rounds. in effect, then, the jolly postman is a story about stories. as we watch, mr. and mrs. bear—of three bears cottage, the woods—receive a note of apology from goldilocks; hobgoblin supplies ltd. offers the occupant of gingerbread bungalow a catalog of products "for the modern witch"; b.b. (as in "big bad") wolf is contacted by attorney harold meeny and ordered to cease his harassment of meeny's client, miss riding-hood; mr. v. (as in "very") bigg, resident of beanstalk gardens, receives a postcard from the vacationing jack. and the correspondence of cinderella constitutes a story about a story about a story: from the managing editor of the peter piper press comes a letter asking her royal highness to examine a book he hopes to publish for young readers 13 cox in celebration of her marriage; enclosed with the letter is a tiny book which tells cinderella's "rags to riches" story in "ordinary" fashion. equally aware of itself as a text is the stinky cheese man and other fairly stupid tales. this book is an anthology containing fairy-tale parodiesamong them "the tortoise and the hair," "the really ugly duckling," and "the princess and the bowling ball" (rather than "the pea"). "the stinky cheese man" spoofs the tale of "the gingerbread man," replacing the cute with the disgusting: the title figure is no longer a sweet cookie with raisins for facial features; now, his head is a wheel of limburger, his mouth a piece of bacon, his eyes two green olives. but the volume is much more concerned with the workings of books than the exploits of characters. the narrator, jack, makes himself visible to the reader, and he continually intrudes on the various stories he is "supposed to" share with us, by offering editorial remarks and showing up in the artwork. he argues against the necessity of a title page (because he has mistakenly placed one in the book upside down); he admits to padding his introduction to the stories "so it [fills] up the page and [makes] it look like i really [know] what [i'm] talking about"; his rendition of "chicken little" is cut short because the inadvertently omitted table of contents—rather than the sky—falls down on the characters. throughout the volume, jack badgers and is badgered by the characters of other well-known tales—generally because he isn't telling their stories the "right" way. as he introduces the tale of "little red running shorts," for example, he accidentally "gives away" the entire plot: this next story is . . . about this girl who runs very fast and always wears red running shorts….that's where her name comes from, get it? so anyway, this girl is running to her granny's house when she meets a wolf. he tricks her into taking the long way while he takes the shortcut. ...red runs so fast that she beats the wolf to granny's house. he knocks on the door. red answers it. and guess what she says? "my, what slow feet you have." and that's it. the end. is that great or what? so sit back, relax and enjoy—"little red running shorts." and now like i already said—"little red running shorts." jack is interrupted at this point by red running shorts herself and the wolf— who appear at the bottom of the page, walking away from jack. "you just told the whole story," red tells him. "we're not going to tell it again." "you can't say that," jack objects. "you have to start with 'once upon a time'." "no way," replies the wolf. "you blew it. we're out of here." on the facing page is a drawing of granny's cottage: the spaces red running shorts and the wolf 14 postmodern fairy tales were to fill are white, and the following page is blank. unfortunately, jack had budgeted three pages for the saga of the characters that have gone "on strike. " elsewhere, too, the pictures call attention to themselves as pictures, the same way the stories call attention to themselves as stories. one especially intricate picture about pictures that appears in the stinky cheese man, in fact, sums up what these "postmodern fairy tales" are all about. midway through the book we learn that jack the narrator is one and the same with jack the boy who trades his cow for magic beans in the traditional "jack and the beanstalk." as jack launches his tale—"the best story in the whole book," of course—the giant intrudes and demands that he be allowed to share a tale of his own creation. this creation turns out to be an enormous, visually arresting pastiche: the ogre has cut up a number of storybooks and pasted the pieces together randomly. the giant's collage spans two pages. the left page consists of phrases taken from many texts, each in a different typeface: "the end/ of the evil stepmother/ said 'i'll huff and snuff and/ give you three wishes.' / the beast changed into/ seven dwarves/ happily ever after/ for a spell had been cast by a wicked witch/ once upon a time." on the facing page, drawings that correspond to the texts from which these lines have been taken—and drawings that would appear alongside other texts, as well—have been put together to form a large male figure. we can make out aladdin's lamp, cinderella's glass slipper, a black cat, a blackbird emerging from a pie, a wolf's ears, pinocchio's nose, a donkey, a witch, a red rose, a drawing of aesop, puss in boots, a half-eaten apple, a tin man, a gingerbread man, a harp, a crown, and a golden egg. the message is clear: every story is a hodgepodge of other stories; we all have our own ways of piecing the same materials together. other volumes feature pictures that call attention to themselves in more subtle ways. in the frog prince continued (whose cover is a painting of a book cover) and the true story of the 3 little pigs (whose cover depicts the front page of a newspaper), the illustrations rarely fill an entire page, as they do in many children's picture books. instead, a picture that covers approximately three-quarters of a page appears above or below the text to which it corresponds, and the illustration is framed by an elegantly ragged border or deckle edge. and frequently, this frame is broken: as the frog prince flees a potential persecutor, for example, his right foot and left elbow extend past the borders for the illustration, and in the background, smoke curls from the chimney of a witch's house and drifts out above the picture's top boundary. sometimes, however, things are reversed, so that the pictures are framed by the words on the page—as when the second witch offers the frog prince the 15 cox remains of snow white's poisoned apple. (interestingly enough, the drawing of the apple recalls that which appears in the disney version of "snow white," in the visual equivalent of a parody's reference to a "real" version of a tale.) in myriad other ways, too, these "sequels" to traditional stories are selfreflexive and intertextual. most important, they figuratively go about the business of standing on end some of our most treasured fairy tales. by taking up where such tales leave off or re-viewing the adventures of established characters whose journeys we have traveled many times, the authors of these books are not simply contributing to a body of literature; they are taking that literature itself as their subject and calling into question that literature-along with the nature of all history, tradition, and truth. the true story of the 3 little pigs is a. wolf's attempt to "set the record straight." directly addressing his audience, he begins: "everybody knows the story of the three little pigs. or at least they think they do. but i'll let you in on a little secret. nobody knows the real story, because nobody has heard my side of the story." he remarks, "i don't know how this whole big bad wolf thing got started, but it's all wrong"—and then explains that "way back in once upon a time time" he had set out to make a birthday cake for his dear old granny; a sneezing fit and the need for a borrowed cup of sugar set in motion a series of events that resulted in the destruction of the porky trio's homes. and in a book from the birch lane press series of "upside down tales," we get "two-books-in one." read the first time through, "the traditional story of cinderella is brought to life through glorious illustrations"; turn the book the other way around, and we see cinderella: the untold story, as narrated by one of the allegedly wicked stepsisters. in this "variant," our narrator tells us that "cinderella changed [the real story] a good bit. [she was] pretty and smart, but she had one very bad habit. she liked to make up stories." according to dora, cinderella is the one whose behavior was bad: "[she] was always in trouble for telling stories. her father made her stand in the comer by the fireplace for punishment. she stood there so often, getting cinders in her hair, that one day she cried, 'you might as well call me cinderella!' that's how she really got her name." dora also apprises her readers of the following facts: cinderella's father actually gave her the gown and slippers she wore to the ball; her own carelessness resulted in the loss of her slipper; and she mistook the prince's second cousin for the prince himself. she did marry this royal cousin, we are told, in a brilliant bit of meta-narration: he shared cindy's tendency to embellish stories, so together, they did live happily ever after, having "gone into the fairy tale business" to "make up all sorts of wonderful stories and tell them to the children of the kingdom." 16 postmodern fairy tales the frog prince continued is concerned with similar reversals: joy turns to sorrow, and so the "good guy" must seek out the bad. shortly after their wedding, the formerly amphibian prince and his royal bride discover that oddly enough they were happier together when they were members of different species. to rectify the situation, the frog prince sets out to find someone who can reverse his transformation. over the course of his search through the woods, he meets characters from four other stories, and these characters supply the complications which always mark the journey of a fairytale hero. the trouble caused by his antagonists is unique, though: removed from their proper context, they are confused and incompetent; they needlessly threaten the prince. each sorceress is baffled when the prince refers to himself as a frog, but each shrugs off the confusion to threaten him via a reference to another fairy tale. luckily, the prince possesses a wealth of fairy-tale knowledge which saves him from getting into desperate straits. he wisely flees when the first old crone greets his request for a spell by saying: "i'll have to cast a nasty spell on you. i can't have any princes waking up sleeping beauty before the hundred years are up." the next responds with, "i can't have any princes rescuing snow white. here—eat the rest of this apple"; at this, the prince knows he'd best hurry off. he is once more on the run when the third witch reveals that she is expecting hansel and gretel for dinner. finally, the prince does find someone who can help him, and this character, too, belongs to another fairy story: he meets a fairy godmother who tells him she is "on the way to see a girl in the village about going to a ball." she accidentally turns him into a broken-down carriage, but with another nod toward the tale of "cinderella," a clock in the village eventually strikes midnight, and the prince is again human. he runs home by the light of the moon, vowing to make the best of his lot with the princess, who after all "had believed in him when no one else had." love is all he needs: when he returns to the castle and kisses his wife with renewed passion, they both turn into frogs and "hop off happily ever after." critics of märchen have for decades examined and evaluated the strong sense of order that prevails throughout virtually all of fairy-tale literature, attributing to this orderliness the great appeal of such stories over vast time and space. in his well-known work on the subject, bruno bettelheim notes that evil wishes always have bad consequences but good will can always set things right: "the fairy tale's example provides assurance that the child will receive help in his endeavors. . . and that eventual success will reward his sustained efforts" (71-73). and in his extensive writings on these matters, max luthi contends, "fairy tales are experienced by their hearers and readers as . . . symbolic poetry" (66); taking in these tales, the children see the basic 17 cox conflict of good versus evil and come away with the message that "all [desirable] things are possible"—"all sorts of miracles can occur"; "the lowest can rise to the highest position"; "those in the highest position can fall and be destroyed" (138); the genuine will win out over the inauthentic. so what are we to make of "postmodern" renderings of fairy stories in which chaos is the order of the day? we can't take any reassurance from books containing stories in which there are no simple truths, no guarantees— where one character's reality is another's "myth." in the politically correct 90s there are no villains, only misunderstood, unlucky innocents. there isn't any magic, either—at most, if we're lucky, we might be allowed to borrow daddy's credit cards. and forget neat and tidy conclusions in which any conflicts are resolved-in the postmodern world, there's no such thing as a "happy ending" because there are no endings at all: there is always another perspective or installment; life insists on moving forward. certainly, the smaller scale implications for any sort of fanciful literature are somewhat grim: can we take much delight in fairy tales if 1) we're told that more fun than hearing or reading them is ridiculing their "fairly stupid" content and 2) we see that the creative process is only hindered by the adherence to fiction's formal conventions? i don't mean to suggest that fairy tales are to be regarded with hushed reverence or that all of civilization hangs in the balance if we poke a little fun at them. in the end, the "postmodern" picture books do not stray so very far from tradition: each of their protagonists still must make journey; each still must pass three tests or endure three trials; each ultimately arrives safely home (except for a. wolf, who appears on the last page garbed in prison stripes). these books i've described are clever and colorful and a great deal of fun. and they might well encourage their juvenile audience to ask some important questions about who we are and what we do when we read, as do the adult fictions that these unusual storybooks recall. i wonder, though, if we really need hip three and four-year-olds who can appreciate irony. i do think enchantment continues to have its uses. belmont university nashville. tennessee notes 1. a version of this paper was presented at the 1993 afs meeting in eugene, oregon. 18 postmodern fairy tales works cited ahlberg, janet, and allan ahlberg. the jolly postman or other people's letters. boston: little, brown, 1986. bettelheim, bruno. the uses of enchantment: the meaning and importance of fairy tales. new york: knopf,1976. luthi, max. once upon a time: on the nature of fairy tales. trans. lee chadeayne and paul gottwald. bloomington: indiana up, 1976. scieszka, jon. the frog prince continued. new york: viking, 1991. _______. the true story of the 3 little pigs. new york: viking, 1989. scieszka, jon, and lane smith. the stinky cheese man and other fairly stupid tales. new york: viking, 1992. shorto, russell. cinderella: the untold story. new york: birch lane, 1990. 19 children's folklore section 1993 annual meeting president joe edgette called the 1993 meeting of the children's folklore section to order at 7:10 a.m., friday, october 29. the minutes of the 1992 meeting were approved. secretary-treasurer danielle roemer reported that the section's bank account (as of august 31,1993) contained $14,373.17. this amount included $7804.93 in the newell prize endowment and $6568.57 in the general operating fund. review editor chip sullivan reported that east carolina university currently contributes $1900.00 a year toward publication of the review, a contribution for which the section is very grateful. currently, the review costs $700-800 per issue to produce. according to archivist simon bronner, the materials in the section's archives are growing slowly—but they are growing. children's folklore files donated by mac e. barrick are being added to the archive. the archive will also be happy to accept student papers dealing with children's folklore. joe edgette announced that there were no submissions for the 1993 newell prize; hence, no prize was given. also, no opie prize was awarded for 1993. on behalf of the prize committee, linda morley reported that there were 134 nominations for the aesop prize, twice as many as in the previous year. the two co-winners of the 1992-1993 aesop prize are: 1. love flute. written and illustrated by paul goble. new york: bradbury press, 1992. 2. cut from the same cloth: american women in myth, legend, and tall tale. written by robert d. san souci and illustrated by brian pinkney. new york: bradbury press, 1993. the aesop prize committee also proposed an aesop accolade list and named six titles to it for the 1992-1993 year. recognized for special achievement are: 20 children' s folklore section 1. ishi’s tale of lizard. written by leanne hinton and susan roth. new york: farrar, straus, giroux, 1992. 2. northern lights: the soccer trails. written by michael arvaarluk kusugak and illustrated by vladyana krykorka. buffalo: annick press, 1993. 3. sundiata: lion king of mali. written and illustrated by david wisniewski. new york: clarion press, 1993. 4. surtsey: the newest place on earth. written by kathryn lasky with photographs by christopher g. knight. new york: hyperion books, 1992. 5. the green gourd: a north carolina folktale. retold by c.w.hunter and illustrated by tony griego. a whitebird book. new york: g.p. putnam's sons, 1992. 6. big man, big country: a collection of american tall tales. edited and retold by paul robert walker and illustrated by james bernardin. san diego: harcourt, brace, jovanovich publishers, 1993. on behalf of the lifetime achievement award committee, priscilla ord announced that roger pinon has been named as the section's 1993 recipient of the lifetime achievement award. under old business, chip sullivan reported on his continuing quest for material to be used on the section's proposed t-shirts. he has located a portrait photograph of w.w. newell from the harvard university archives. (the photograph appeared on the cover of the fall 1993 issue of the review.) chip proposed that this photograph be used on the front of the t-shirt with the words "children's folklore section" on either the front or the back of the shirt. members present offered various suggestions. by consensus, they agreed that chip should continue his investigations and report again at the 1994 meeting. priscilla ord passed around possible designs for the aesop prize medallion sticker (which the publishers will purchase from the section and attach to the 21 children's folklore section front cover of the aesop award-winning book). the members present discussed the offered designs and agreed that the executive board, with input from the membership, should decide on the particular design to be used. nominations were then opened for the office of president-elect. margaret read macdonald was nominated and elected by acclamation. under new business, incoming president carole h. carpenter proposed the re-appointment of chip sullivan as review editor and simon bronner as archivist. the re-appointments were moved, seconded, and passed unanimously. chip sullivan announced that laurie evans would continue to serve as associate editor of the review and would assist with matters of editing, layout, and production. the executive board reported its recommendation that the associate editor receive an honorarium of $100.00 per issue for her work. the recommendation was moved, seconded, and passed. mailing costs for the review were discussed, and a motion was made, seconded, and passed to add $5.00 for the members outside the u.s. who want their copies of cfr airmailed. dues will remain $10.00 for those willing to wait for surface mail. priscilla ord advised those present that the aesop medallion artist richard mcclintoch needed to be paid for the rights to his medallion designs. the executive board proposed remuneration of $200.00. the proposal was moved, seconded, and passed. the aesop prize committee for 1993-1994 will consist of linda morley and carole carpenter (co-chairs) as well as new member ruth stotter, who replaces outgoing member gary alan fine. each committee member serves a three-year term. carole carpenter advised those present of a special issue of the joumal of the canadian children's literature association. this publication (which at the time of the present writing has actually been expanded to two issues) deals with reworkings of fairy tales. the journal is produced at guelph university, guelph, ontario, canada. 22 children's folklore section on behalf of herself and her co-author, graham seal, gwenda davey announced the recent publication of their book, the oxford companion to australian folklore. priscilla ord reminded those present of the 1994 meeting of the children's literature association to be held at southwest missouri state university, springfield, missouri, june 2-5. those present were also reminded of the 1993 afs section-sponsored children's folklore panel, "the folklorist's responsibility to the child." the panel was organized and will be chaired by margaret read macdonald. it will be held on friday, october 29, 1993, from 1:15-3:00 p.m. the participants are: 1. priscilla a. ord (longwood college), "alvin schwartz (1927-1992): a retrospective of a modern day pied piper." 2. kay stone (university of winnipeg), "child as story-maker." 3. carole h. carpenter (york university), "developing an appreciation for the cultural significance of childlore." 4. margaret read macdonald (king county library), "a folktale goes to the inauguration. " 5. discussant: ruth stotter (tiburon, california). simon bronner then raised the question of a section-sponsored panel at the 1994 afs meeting. carole carpenter agreed to organize the panel. the meeting was adjourned at 8:00 a.m. respectfully submitted, danielle m. roemer secretary -treasurer 23 notes and announcements the children's folklore section of the american folklore society annually offers the w.w. newell prize (which includes a cash award of $350.00) for the best undergraduate or graduate student essay on a topic in children's folklore. students must submit their own papers, and published papers are eligible. instructors are asked to encourage students with eligible papers to enter the competition. papers must be typed, double-spaced, and on white paper. on the first page include the author's name, academic address, home address, and telephone numbers. deadline for each year's competition is march 1st. submit papers or write for additional information: joe edgette, 509 academy avenue, glenolden, pa 19036. contributors cynthia anne cox is in the department of literature and language at belmont university in nashville where she is currently completing a dissertation on using folklore to teach critical writing. she is also working on a textbook on the same subject. kay stone, a storyteller as well as a university professor, is in the english department at the university of winnipeg and was one of the founding members of the children's folklore section of the american folklore society. 24 the children’s folklore review is available only to members of the children’s folklore section of the american folklore society. to become a member, send $10.00 yearly dues to danielle roemer, literature and language, northern kentucky univer sity, highland heights, ky 41076. dues are $15.00 for non-u.s. members who wish airmail delivery of cfr; non-u.s. members wishing surface mail delivery of cfr will still pay $10.00 yearly dues cfr requests manuscripts that are prepared using laser printed text or letter quality text. we request that authors using typewrit ers or dot-matrix printers have their manuscripts redone and a laser printed copy made. this will enable us to scan the copy, thereby eliminating rekeying the manuscript. please send manuscripts to: c.w. sullivan iii, editor children’s folklore review department of english east carolina university greenville, nc 27858-4353 children’s folklore review is published twice a year and sent to all members of the children’s folklore section of the american folklore society. published by east carolina university issn: 0739-5558 copyright © 1994 children’s folklore section cfr editorial board c.w. sullivan iii, editor judith haut, book review editor 2733 halsey road topanga, ca 90290 jay mechling american studies university of california-davis davis, ca 95616 priscilla a. ord department of english, philosophy, and modern languages longwood college farmville, va 23901 laurie evans, associate editor 2060 quail ridge road greenville, nc 27858 child as story-maker postmodern fairy tales in our own image: the child, canadian culture, and our future carole h. carpenter foreword originally published in 1996, the following text was presented as the ninth annual robarts lecture when i was the john p. robarts professor of canadian studies at york university for the academic year 1994-95. it was well received and excited considerable commentary given that it was perceived as a radical gaze on contemporary childhood. yet little came of it in terms of any concrete action; indeed, the position of children and their culture within canadian culture has, if anything, worsened. more children are now living in poverty than in 1996; children are more controlled and manipulated than ever; they evidence increased passivity (through escalating youth obesity, for example); and anger dominates their environments as never before. hence, the call for a new vision of child and childhood is all the more necessary today in order to offer them a chance at a future they own. a generation ago, the social historian peter laslett noted that: in the pre-industrial world there were children everywhere; playing in the village street and fields when they were very small, hanging round the farmyards and getting in the way, until they had grown enough to be given child-sized jobs to do; thronging the churches; for ever clinging to the skirts of women in the house and wherever they went and above all crowding round the cottage fires. given such ubiquity of youth, it is not at all surprising that the "perpetual distraction of childish noise and talk must have affected everyone almost all the time." an estimated forty-five to fifty per cent of all people alive in stuart england were children, according to laslett's figures which, as he indicates, accord with circumstances in twentieth-century third world communities. it is, then, more than a little surprising that: these crowds and crowds of little children are strangely absent from the written record, even if they are conspicuous in our own image carpenter enough in the pictures painted at the time, particularly the outside scenes. there is something mysterious about the silence of all these multitudes of babes in arms, toddlers and adolescents in the statements men made at the time about their own experience. (104) children per se are not really absent from the record; rather, real children are—their cultural existence is, in effect, a veritable silencing of the lambs. we know very little about what it was actually like to be a child anywhere in the world in times past, especially from the perspective of children themselves. this general suppression of children as a cultural presence persists today; a circumstance that is by no means unique to canada, though it certainly is characteristic of this country. despite a promising increase in scholarly interest recently, canada definitely has not showcased childhood as an aspect of its culture as have some other countries of late: for instance, australia, where an extended and expensive scholarly anthology on childhood sold out soon after publication1; or britain, which, along with producing many other relevant publications, dominates the 1988 collins anthology, childhood edited by penelope hughes-hallett, a work that contains not one canadian item in its 450 pages despite broad coverage of time, space and cultural groups worldwide. children do appear in a variety of "stories of childhood" in canadian culture, that is, the range of discourses and gazes that deal with child and childhood, from anthropological considerations to literary and artistic representations. the anthropological sources are amazingly spare until relatively recently, especially given the vast accumulated data on canada's first nations, but then most of the early documenters were men and, often, priests; children were simply not within their purview, as the noted huronia specialist conrad heidenreich observed (personal communication, dec.1993). the absence of children from franz boas' monumental northwest coast work is even more telling given that he was one of the founders of the american folklore society which, at the time of its establishment in 1888, specifically identified children's traditions as one of its primary foci of interest. the native people were already marginal; their children-far from marginal within indigenous societies-were largely ignored by outside scholars whose gaze tended to exclude them. at best, indigenous children were heard of, but certainly not from. the storying of childhood as the native people actually experienced it has only emerged since the late 1960s as part of their cultural 48 carpenter in our own image reclamation. and then it has poured forth-suppressed voices release into a post-colonial discourse, seeking validation and respect. the result is many extraordinary oral life histories, memoirs and autobiographical novels (see, for example, the works of blackman, johnston and campbell). childhood is effectively a metonym for the overall oppression of the native people, for it is as children that they have been most marginalized, silenced and robbed of their cultural selves by canadian culture either through omission or relentless commission. prevailing paternalist thought and policies essentially transformed all indigenous people into voiceless children and, by so doing, purposefully dismissed them. this is not to suggest that canada's first nations should be treated as children nor that children are actually to be equated with the indigenous people, but rather that canadian society has treated them both comparably. investigation of the positioning of such different groups at the margin illuminates some key concepts and orientations within our culture. it is also worth noting that since the late 1960s, the native peoples have often served as a bellwether of canadian concerns; hence, their contemporary cultural circumstances may presage the future of our nation's youth. the denial of voice to children generally is simply part of the adult world's control over them. as rex and wendy stainton rogers note in their extended deconstruction of the knowledging of childhood, stories of childhood: one voice has been largely missing. . . that of children themselves. this is not accidental; it very much reflects a general dismissing of such texts in our culture. (104) the stainton rogers' argument was not constructed using canadian examples, though it easily might have been. children have an historical cultural presence in canada, but their cultural present has been largely ignored and they themselves have not typically been heard. very little indeed has been made of their existence as cultural beings, of their real or imagined significance in cultural terms, or most particularly, of their own culture. most discourses pertaining to canadian children come from education and the social sciences (particularly sociology and psychology), and consider them largely in the context of various institutions, social processes or roles. some folklore studies assume a humanistic approach focussing on aesthetics and creativity; or child-centered cultural dynamics and meaning. otherwise, virtually all analyses of 49 in our own image carpenter culture in relation to canadian children deal primarily with its acquisition through socialization and its operation in families, schools, community organizations and the like. even the finest works available on the history of canadian childhood, such as joy parr's edited collection, childhood and family in canadian history, tend to concentrate mainly on what comes passively to children from the adult world and their gradual adjustment to the established social orders in which they live. seldom is consideration paid to children's active creation and manipulation of their environments through cultural means; their philosophical encounters with things, people and concepts; and the position of their own thoughts and traditions in their grappling with life. noteworthy exceptions are neil sutherland's article, "'everyone seemed happy in those days': the culture of childhood in vancouver between the 1920's and the 1960's" and the study from which it emerged, the canadian childhood history project conducted in the 1980s at the university of british columbia. the best-known works on canadian children's traditions, such as edith fowke's handsome bestseller sally go round the sun (1969), tend far more to description than analysis so they have done little to counter popular opinion that such cultural artifacts are passing phenomena-charming, delightful and amusing, perhaps, but in the final analysis, not very significant. fowke's book was selected 1970 children's book of the year by the canadian library association. this recognition, though arguably welldeserved, has had somewhat detrimental results in terms of the appreciation of children's lore as legitimate culture, for the work enables and, through its popularity with teachers and librarians has promoted, an approach to children's traditions as adult-directed entertainment over their actual operation in child-focused situations. dr. fowke assuredly did not directly intend this outcome and ought not to be faulted for it, since she both recognized the value and import of children's culture and was recognized for contributions to its appreciation.2 * * * the traditional behaviors and the intangible and tangible artifacts of canadian children continue to be viewed primarily as the embodiment of the timelessness and universality of childhood, which itself is conceived of as a state we must survive in order to emerge as people. children in this country are, then, effectively perceived and hence treated as pre-cultural or protocultural beings and, therefore, because culture is a defining characteristic of human beings, as not fully hu 50 carpenter in our own image man. canadians certainly are not alone in possessing or implementing such ideas, but the situation has particular relevance to us because of whom we think we are and should be. in many respects, children today can be seen to occupy a position in our culture not dissimilar to that which native peoples endured from contact through into the second half of the 20th century. children are a recurrent image, a central concern, even a national symbol, but they are not considered to be people like or, more to the point, quite equal to other people. rather they are treated to a greater or lesser extent as objects—possessions or commodities to be manipulated at will. presumably with the best intentions, adults treat them paternalistically, claiming that they act only for children's own good. but that good is determined by outsiders to the group and children rarely have any opportunity to express their own truth. the canadian nation has come to recognize the folly of its historical treatment of the native peoples and the necessity to deal in contemporary, post-colonial times with a resultant complex tangle of human anguish and irreparable damage; just demands for reparations; cultural guilt; and a search for moral justice through self-determination. yet, we have not mended our ways for, prevented by our laws and consciences from subjugating the "childlike primitives" we once supposed the native peoples to be, we canadians persist in enacting the same imperialist scenario with today's children. let us explore the similarities. strong societal images of the child and childhood are reflected in their many and varied representations throughout this country over time. these images are certainly not exclusive to canadian, but then, exceptionally little of what characterizes us (or, for that matter, any other contemporary nation) is unique. we came by many of our images quite honestly through our heritage of western civilization and christianity, namely: the biblical child as innocent, pure and good; the romantic child as visionary, closer to nature and hence to supreme understanding; john locke's child as tabula rasa or blank slate; and the calvinist child as evidence of original sin and so evil by nature, though sometimes salvageable through nurture. some images we fashion into a distinctive, that is, truly canadian mould, for the representations reflect as well as shape us. one such image is the child as worker or extra hands. for a period in the latter nineteenth and early twentieth century, a child (specifically a needy one in care) was thought to be a highly desirable immigrant-viewed as malleable, biddable, capable of much-needed labor and bound to be grateful for the rewards that would certainly come his or her way. as a 51 in our own image carpenter result of this image, nearly 89,000 children were brought to canada from dr. thomas barnardo's homes and similar institutions in britain between 1865 and 1925, many to be abused and made virtual slaves, treated worse than the farm animals they frequently tended. this disparity between the imaginary child as hands and the reality is vividly presented in a 1990 documentary, welcome home, which juxtaposes historical evidence, government propaganda and the commentary of one home child. the population of canada now includes well over a million descendants of such children—an enormous debt to an image. the child of nature, as natural creature, which is another significant image, takes on special meaning in this country given the mythic connection with the land that underlies our identity, be it local, regional or national. the child of the canadian imagination is not merely a part of nature, but is one with nature, assuming an almost pan-like quality. two excellent examples are the stop-frame, frozen children in jean-paul lemieux's portraits of the quebec landscape (often in winter) and the young ben, a real boy who embodies the spirit of the prairie in w. o. mitchell's classic novel, who has seen the wind (1947). the image goes much further back, however, to charles g.d. roberts' 1921 publication, children of the wild, and some of his other books, as well as to ernest thomas seton's late 19th-century works of naturalist animal stories that established this distinctively canadian contribution to international children's literature. the persistent image is one of a "sensuous little savage," as wallace stegner characterizes it in wolf willow (1962), his storying of the last plains frontier, the pre-world war i saskatchewan milieu of his childhood. the profound impact of calvinism on canadian culture (jansenism in french canada) is evident in our distinct take on the child as, on the one hand, evil (at least potentially) and, on the other, supremely good. the single most famous folktale of canadian origin that centers on a child is rose latulippe also know as the devil at the dance (fowke, 1979: 83-87). in this story, a young girl disobeys her parents' and societal proscriptions and sneaks out (sometimes wearing a red cape, no less) to go dancing: a handsome, dark stranger appears at the dance and leads our rose into a whirl of temptation, only to be recognized for the evil one himself, sometimes by a babe in arms who cries out or by a passing priest who eventually exorcises him away. rose is marked indelibly in this encounter: visibly as scars of the devil's claws on her hands and spiritually as a necessity to dedicate her lift to the church. a pointed message to all rebellious youth! alex colville, an internationally renowned canadian artist, once asserted that he preferred to paint subjects that were "wholly good"; 52 carpenter in our own image consequently he turned his highly controlled magic realist vision to the task of portraying children and animals.4 similarly, in creating the first of his many renderings of children's games on the canadian prairies while hospitalized in england following a nervous breakdown, william kurelek used childhood then as later to discover goodness and worth in himself and to proclaim a message of christian virtue as the means of confronting the moral dilemmas of modern life. this image of the canadian child is very widespread and popular, for kurelek's illustrated book, prairie boy's winter (1973) has won more awards than any other canadian publication and, together with his other three works specifically for children (1974, 1975, 1976), has sold in excess of half a million copies worldwide. briefly, there are some other perhaps more immediate images: first, child as redeemer or savior is ever-present as third-generation figures in our immigrant literature—noah in mordecai rich1er's son of a smaller hero (1955) or young moses in adele wiseman's the sacrifice (1956)—let alone in the daily lives of countless thousands whose sacrifice of home and heritage their children carry as a sentence from which they redeem themselves and their families through success in this, the new land. second, the child as helpless dependent is widely evident in advertising-what's riding on those michelin tires, for instance, or appealing for moderation in drinking from posters in your local liquor store asking "do you need a better reason?" and child as victim is a vivid image in such compelling modern works as the boys of st. vincent's (1992) back to perhaps the best-known visual image of child in canada, paul peel's "the tired model" painted in 1889 and regularly on exhibit at the art gallery of ontario. working out of a victorian sensibility which elevated the child's form to a consideration now deemed almost pathologically voyeuristic, peel painted several youth nudes including" a venetian bather" (1889) about which the noted art historian dennis reid has said: it was probably the first nude to be publicly exhibited in toronto. viewers who normally would be outraged at the display of such seductive flesh were enabled by the innocence of the young subject in her exotic setting to luxuriate in the delicious curves and soft glow and to savor pleasure for its own sake. such obvious exploitation of the young brings us to a singularly appropriate point to conclude this section on imaging children in canada. in general, these representations demonstrate how we have fashioned 53 in our own image carpenter children in our own image, for our own purposes and how, in so doing, combined with the silence of the child's own voice, we have lost sight of the real living child. this cultural imaging and its relevance throughout our culture over time will receive the fuller discussion it merits in a book-length study-the direct result of my robarts chair research—on "images of child and childhood in canadian culture." what is pertinent to this discussion is the impact of such imaging on the lives of contemporary children. * * * fine studies by scholars such as daniel francis (1992), terry goldie (1989) and leslie monkman (1981) pertaining to images of native people in canada indicate the extent and impact of this storying of our aboriginal peoples, their stereotyping along the pesky redskin/noble savage dichotomy, and the consequent failure to represent their multifaceted real cultural and human nature. the resultant situation is one of subjugation, alienation and marginalization and sentimentalization, exploitation and fossilized preservation among the image-makers. such is the case as well for canada's children, who remain suppressed in spite of the postcolonial, feminist, multicultural, and human rights movements of today. they are a special kind of human being sentenced to a status as "a mixture of expensive nuisance, fragile treasure, slave and super-pet," in the words of the educator and commentator on childhood, john holt (1975: 18). just as the images of native people, their way of life and their cultural artifacts have been drawn into service to represent canada and canadianness at home and abroad, so too have children and childhood been used, as is evident by a glance at the most famous canadian child of all—anne (with an "e") of green gables. in her particularly insightful book, children’s literature in canada, elizabeth waterston describes anne as operating in a distinctly canadian way: the fictional anne shirley uses idealism, imagination, humor, and independent thought to tame society's emphasis on unremitting work, social propriety, and religious conformity. waterston goes on to state that emily carr3 dealt with life in a similar manner, and to argue that: characters [of contemporary children's literature] are armed with the same weapons as the fictional anne shirley and the real emily carr: 54 carpenter in our own image humor, intense feelings, the will to survive, honesty and essential kindness. canadians believe these qualities represent national values.(4) later in her work waterston says: canadian children's books fix an image of the country that will endure and that may well affect international relations in the future. the true image of canada is a composite of savagery and sweetneslike literature, like childhood. (11) if any book has worked in this manner, it certainly is lucy maud montgomery's classic, translated into dozens of languages and variously commodified overtime throughout the world (especially in prince edward island where not a summer passes but that the play is staged for tourists who make pilgrimages to anne's home, cradled on the waves of the gulf of st. lawrence). anne encapsulates many of the key canadian child images: she is an orphan, sought as extra hands (by mistake since they wanted a boy, about which much more deserves to be said); she is good (and does good, not least for matthew and more especially marilla cuthbert, for whom she is a savor, brining nurturing love into an emotionally arid existence); she is unquestionably sensuous and certainly wild or savage in the sense of being untamed, but far the better for that; and above all, she is not merely close to nature, she is the essence of that particular place. we canadians frequently conceive of ourselves and present our essence as child-like, offering up our supposed youth as a nation as an excuse for our perceived or felt cultural immaturity. when our prime minister sir wilfred laurier proclaimed late in the nineteenth century that "the twentieth century belongs to canada," some canadians seem to have believed that we would one day grow up, become a world power and have real guns rather than toy pistols (or the popular chicken cannon devised by the royal canadian air farce4). some canadians still harbor such beliefs despite the modern postnational condition. it is not merely by chance then, nor does it seem unfitting, that the 1984 canadian volume in the a day in the life of [various countries] series carries a photograph of a young boy and girl as a symbolic representation of our nation comparable to the cowboy used on the american volume. as a people we seem to conceive of ourselves, of our essential being, in terms of the best that child represents—that sublime and natural goodness, simplicity and faith in people and life for example, the ojibway artist arthur shilling wrote in 1986: 55 in our own image carpenter children are my island, my innocence. they are the spirit of forgiveness. children are the giving and forgiving part of god in me. (80) a central underlying canadian conception of child, then, is as our conscience as a people, which made it quite natural for federal government under brian mulroney to chair the 1990 united nations summit on the child. this national identification of ours with and through children renders all the more remarkable the fact that as a group, children are, without doubt, culturally the least advantaged—indeed, most oppressed5—people in canada today for they do not even have recognition, let alone status, as a cultural group. at the same time, children are not merely important in our cultural expression as already discussed, but central to our contemporary daily existence and (not insignificantly) to our economic activity. kids constitute a huge market (estimates predict that by 2011 there will be 3.5 million children and youth in ontario alone). kid-stuff involves large sums of money: toys alone were a $1.2 billion canadian industry in 1990; revenue from children's camps across the nation in 1993 was almost $110 million; and primary and secondary education combined now gobbles up over $30 thousand million canadian dollars annually. childhood itself is a major commodity, to be preserved individually, in specially purchased grandmothers' remembrance books for instance, or collectively in museums (akin to the famous museum of childhood in edinburgh)6; to be nostalgically exhibited in our homes through those objects of great pride—our family photographs—or sold in art galleries.7 as well, childhood artifacts and expressions are regularly circulated internationally in campaigns aimed at tugging our heartstrings to loosen our purse strings in support of various causes. one particularly notable canadian commodification of children's expression is ben wicks's 1995 compilation of young people's letters and drawings, dear canada/cher canada: a love letter to my country, which is unabashedly intended to enlist children's voices in promoting national unity.8 canadians have a particular angle on the commodification of childhood in that children's music is easily one of our most successful cultural exports. from over twenty years of performing, recording and publishing, sharon, lois and bram as well as raffi and fred penner have emerged as icons of childhood, in canada and beyond our borders. they are all canadians rooted in a long tradition of folk singing 56 carpenter in our own image for children fostered by the cbc around mid-century and sir ernest macmillan's arrangements of traditional music for school children dating from the inter-war period (for extended discussion see posen, 1993). it must be noted that this industry almost exclusively involves music produced for children by adults rather than the music children sing and pass on by themselves, that is, their own culture. * * * children's culture itself conjures up images-of youngsters singing, skipping, clapping, playing and sharing together a rich lore passed down over the generations and occasionally recorded by dedicated collectors such as the american, william wells newell, in his late nineteenth-century study, games and songs of american children and britons, iona and peter opie following world war ii (see, for instance, their first major work, the lore and language of schoolchildren. in part we story our childhood years through such imagery, recounting our past-times, our experiences on the streets and in the playgrounds of yesteryear, often in the process nostalgically lamenting their passage and the other concurrent transformations we perceive in society, the environment and everyday activities during the intervening years. but, today the streets are the preferred playgrounds for relatively few children; parks are frequently favored haunts of pushers and perverts; schoolyards are by intention orchestrated into adventure playgrounds and adult-supervised activities or patrolled by peacemakers, adult-designated peer troubleshooters. surface evidence might easily lead one to presume that the demise of children's lore has come, having been predicted virtually since the name in 1846 of the discipline of folklore which studies such oral-based culture. one might claim, in keeping with neil postman's argument presented in the disappearance of childhood (1984), that much more than the lore, the very state of being a child has vanished, its passing hastened along as (in the manner outlined by david elkind in the hurried child [1988]) we determinedly hurry our children through a brief, youthful apprenticeship for supposedly real life. would we dare suggested that old age is comparably an apprenticeship for the next phase of the life cycle—death? in a certain spiritual sense the golden years may indeed serve such a preparatory function, but surely that would command greater not less respect for this period. the political correctness emergent from gerontology demands the social recognition and just treatment of our seniors as full human beings with all the attendant rights, feelings, interests and so on. why not similar recognition and treatment 57 in our own image carpenter for those at the other end of the life cycle? after, as a childhood friend of mine wisely remarked many years ago, "babies are wee people."9 we in contemporary western society significantly orchestrate our children's existence. in good part our of fears for their physical safety and security now or in the future: we institutionalize them early—age three was recommended in the "for the love of learning," the report of a recent ontario royal commission on learning; we structure their free time into endless classes or organized activities, often of our choosing for their good, or for our good so we can fulfill the demands of our lives; we direct them towards success as we define it; we instruct them variously and continuously as we perceive they require; we manipulate their environments to reflect our ideas; we censor their cultural experiences and expressions according to our aesthetic sensibilities, and we generally seek to control and direct them so as to produce children as we think they ought to be, that is, in our own image. in assuming as our right this extension of ourselves onto and through our children, surely we ought to accept responsibility for the contingent messages we convey to the young. yet, there is little to suggest that we give much more than passing thought to those messages or how they are received. comparable were the messages we communicated explicitly or implicitly to our aboriginal peoples in the course of their colonization. now, faced with the consequences, we recognize that the native people generally felt belittled and demeaned; came to view themselves as being inferior and forced to undergo radical transformation in order to benefit from, let alone participate in, mainstream culture. large numbers ended up believing that they had lost control of their existence and, far too often, that their lives were not worth living. culture was both medium and message in this communication, which we now dub cultural genocide while engaging in a communal mea culpa. but does the guilt feel so good that we wish to repeat it? it would seem from our actions that singularly appropriate representations are to be found in the haunting portraits of the young amongst edward s. curtis's documentary photographs of "the vanishing race" included in his magnum opus, the north american indian, published in the early 1900s. during their colonization, native people were encouraged away from their cultural traditions, sometimes purposefully 58 carpenter in our own image impeded and/or prohibited from practicing and transmitting them by outsiders who did not really understand or appreciate the cultures. are not the cultural circumstances of canada's children similar? * * * as elsewhere in the world, the culture of childhood in canada must be seen to comprise three different, though inter-related aspects. the first of these is the predominantly oral culture shared amongst children themselves, that is, their folklore-folklife, which includes material they appropriate from the world around and make their own; the second is all those cultural artifacts considered appropriate to children and/or to which they are intentionally exposed; and the third, the concept of child as storied and applied in the culture which necessarily both bounds and enables the existence of a culture of childhood. in this child-centered era, it is the latter two aspects that have mushroomed in presence so as to overshadow the child's present, which comprises his/her own take on the world, interpretation of circumstances, creative expression and the like embodied in children's own cultural artifacts not only preserved from the past but also shaped from and to contemporary life. in order to have such cultural artifacts of their own, children need time to be together, to explore the natural, social and personal worlds in which they exist, and to share their ideas and experiences. they need to encounter trials, be surprised, experiment, manipulate their surroundings, fail and master. in other words, they need to develop their cultural fitness through relevant exercise just as they should develop physical fitness by using appropriate muscles. the "cultural muscles' appropriate to children are rhymes, jokes, riddles, games, taunts, songs, parodies, gestures and much more that young people operate with and through amongst their peers, thereby manipulating, creating, negotiating, absorbing, reacting within a vital, interactive and, in a healthy way, subversive10 cultural matrix. it is such experiences that validate their existence as child, make worthy their very being (rather than their becoming), and underscore their joy in living. the dynamics of contemporary life are such that relatively few children are encouraged or enabled to spend extended periods in child-focussed, childdirected environments engaged with children's own culture. indeed, not a few responsible adults seem to view such circumstances with suspicion or derision. rather than being respected as their right to privacy and freedom of expression, the secret world of children alone together is frequently equated with dark or sinister 59 in our own image carpenter behaviors, and as contributing to violence on the playgrounds, or to racial and gender stereotyping, or to "mischief" in its various aspects from sexual exploration to drug use. either out of necessity or, in good calvinist fashion, to ensure that their time is spend more wisely, the adult world increasingly restricts children's free time to be children. but children's lore is far from dead, as demonstrated by the ease with which virginia caputo collected some 300 songs in oral circulation among urban schoolchildren in just six one-hour sessions.11 a forum i organized for the 1994 american folklore society meeting on "children's folklore in the media age: assessing the field" concluded that the tradition, while transformed, notably persisted but also continued to display dynamic creativity. very young children today may sing along with an animated purpose dinosaur they see on television but, as documented by panelist elizabeth tucker, they readily come to manipulate the barney theme song in order to comment on the media or on human interrelationships, especial friendship and homosexuality.12 when the adult world turns its gaze upon children's own culture, it is commonly with pragmatic intent. specialists from many fields recognize the benefits to children of engaging with their own culture, including: developments in terms of motor control, physical fitness, linguistic acumen, social skills, cultural stances or orientations, and understanding of abstract concepts such as justice as well as basic life skills. play is good for children, psychologists tell us; it enables the proper unfolding of individuality that permits people to control their own lives. fair enough, but such ideas do place emphasis on the becoming rather than the being in terms of culture. adults typically want to ensure that the unfolding is, indeed, proper, and hence tend to intervene. let us consider an example: contemporary playground observations indicate that some children playa form of tag in which it has and can pass on hiv upon learning of this game, many adults react in horror in one of two ways: either proclaiming (on the basis of their moral precepts or sentimental images) that youngsters should not play with aids, or demanding that children be taught the real facts of aids. the game should, then, be banned or attached through appropriate instruction. few would let it be, allowing that the game is children's means of coping with the existence of this real-life terror through exerting control over it in the relatively sage microcosm of life that their culture, in effect, really is. during the second world war, british children are reported to have played similarly with hitler and nazism (see opie & opie) in an effort to understand and to maintain the sense of 60 carpenter in our own image control over surroundings necessary to emotional well being. also, one of the hypothetical origins for "ring around the rosie" suggests that this game, too, developed among youngsters in their efforts to assert control through play over another terror, the black death.13 the world around seldom seems to view children as knowing, having, doing but rather as needing, lacking, emerging. little if any intrinsic value appears to be placed on the state of being child. how to encourage self-worth, then? much of children's own culture has been around a very long time: it should be obvious that it is of significance, that it works and has real meaning for children since it truly has been strong enough to be remembered by them. by what right then do we endeavor to change it? and with what effect? take some modern (politically correct) rewritings of nursery rhymes, for instance: "georgy porgy, puddin' and pie, kissed the girls and made them cry. . ." becomes "georgy porgy, what a shame, kids call you such a silly name . . ."14 children who use the first rhyme know that georgy did something he should not have done and made girls cry, so name-calling is georgy's just dessertsretributive justice, an idea generally favored by children; youngsters who hear the second verse recognize it for the over, preaching didacticism it is and will not embrace it in their tradition so the adult's intent is foiled. which is really in the cultural best interests of the child? the liberties we take with children's culture demonstrate our unwillingness to accept the young for who they are, to recognize their differences and to celebrate their distinctiveness. these familiar phrases are the demands of multiculturalism, enshrined in the laws of the land, expressive of the fundamental freedoms of all (presumably younger and older) canadians as specified in our charter of rights and freedoms and at the heart of canadianness. cultural self-determination is the cry of our times, yet our children are less culturally empowered than any other distinctive minority. while children in care have the right to their religious freedom, the right to maintain their own culture and various other rights guaranteed under provincial legislation (for instance the child and family services act in ontario), there is no similar statement of rights for a child not in care, who is, therefore, much at the mercy of his/her parents culturally. the phenomenal cultural reality experienced by many youngsters seriously infringes upon their rights, namely, to freedom of expression and freedom of thought, conscience and religion as specified in articles 13 and 14 of the hague convention, the unesco convention on the rights of the child adopted in 1989, of which canada was a major supporter and signatory. 61 in our own image carpenter children are such cultural pawns that it comes to some as a genuine revelation that their lives are actually their own. jean little, one of canada's most famous authors for children, recounts her awakening at age nine following upon an aesthetic reaction to orange segments arranged as "a line of glowing orange boats": for the first time i saw my world and my life as something that belonged to me and began to put small scraps of time away in a place where i could take them out and look at them whenever i needed.(92-93) ms. little's marked success despite being legally blind is undoubtedly linked to this empowerment that refuses victimhood. substantial numbers of canada's children never are personally empowered culturally and assuredly suffer variously as a result, just as the native people have. many of the significant youth problems of today are notably similar to the a-social and anti-social behaviors exhibited by native people that are commonly traced to colonization, for instance, low self-esteem, substance abuse, increased violence, inter-generation conflicts, rootlessness and lack of identity and, most alarming, a dramatic rise in the suicide rate. some psychologists and youth psychiatrists offer perspectives from their disciplines that may be adapted to a cultural understanding of this situation. in particular, alice miller presents in he drama of the gifted child and the search for the true self (l983) a concept of loss of authentic self during childhood which derives from the abandonment or repression of aspects of children's personality deemed unacceptable in an effort to seek approval from parents or society-at-large. the result if a false self that requires external validation: in effect, a young person who is highly vulnerable and without internal direction. it is evident that growing numbers of children are experiencing a similar loss of their true cultural selves to which they may respond in several ways. some develop a false cultural being that meets with parental, peer group and/or societal approval but is seldom richly satisfying in terms of providing a firm sense of identity and ownership. others may rebel culturally, seeking solace in the highly subversive youth pop culture, which can lead them away from the security of local identifications into the consumerism and anonymity of international media and often into selfdestructive or anti-social actions. still others exist in a cultural void, estranged and without commitment or purpose. the notable rage evident among contemporary youth owes partly to the suppression of this authentic cultural self which an individual 62 carpenter in our own image normally would. come to realize by actively manipulating culture to include self in relation to various groups, their traditions and artifacts. what we have, then, is growing numbers of young people who are suffering because they do not know who they are or where they belong as a result of being unable to engage actively with culture—any culture, let alone our national culture which could be seen to need their involvement. there seems to be little joy in life for many of our youth, but why? an absence of fulfillment through joy, as opposed to amusement or thrills, can be directly linked to a stifling of the play-element in modern childhood. today's children certainly play, but they generally do so under the scrutiny of adults as in daycare or during school recess, unless they are in the aerobics classes now being scheduled by some schools to utilize this time to (supposedly) greater effect in promoting fitness. such efforts may foster physical, but not emotional fitness. children need the freedom to develop emotional well-being, too, which is facilitated more through the interpersonal connectedness of their oral traditions and through observation and imitation amongst themselves than through intellectual activity or instruction under adult control.15 adults authoritatively make certain that children are well controlled and supervised to ensure that their play is good for them, that no one gets hurt, that no one bullies or name-calls or teases or . . . copes in. manipulates and masters the natural and social world around or the emotional world within, so it is that our children are culturally deprived and become disengaged. marginalized and repressed while young, they do not personally appreciate culture as a concept, a process or a set of products. hence they become prey to manipulation as passive recipients of, rather than creative participants in, the larger cultural matrix beyond their limited experience-a retrograde state for any nation, let alone for one so tentative about identity as our own. the recognition of the culture of childhood within canadian culture today and in the future has implication for the overall cultural well being of our nation's citizens. our own image for children may not be in their cultural best interests or in canada's best interests culturally. it remains a challenge to determine and pursue these cultural best interests of the child (cbioc), but doing so is imperative. only by actually, rather than merely rhetorically, recognizing the full rights of children will canadians act in accord with their cultural ideals and enable future generations to continue the pursuit of excellence in being human that rests at the core of canadianness. to do so requires that the child's own voice not only be heard but also be taken on advisement. 63 in our own image carpenter for young people to come to possess canadian culture, they must first manipulate and master culture as children. they must know that they themselves own culture and realize the self-validation and self-esteem attendant upon the acceptance of that culture as equal to all others recognized under multiculturalism. paradoxically, while children's rights in some, especially legal, areas are being supported (see wilson), the respect for children's way of being, and therefore their culture, is lessening. key to promoting better child-adult interaction is the promotion of children's enablement rather than their containment, which first demands appreciation for the cross-cultural communication involved as a two-way process. simply put, such a situation means that we adults have much to learn about children from children themselves. the knowledge children bring to any situation bears consideration, for no more than members of any other cultural group are children neutral receptacles disposed to received and be shaped entirely from outside. heritage is naturally a prime concern relating to the cbioc. it behooves us as responsible adults to consider whether we are doing children any favor by imposing our heritage baggage on them, especially given the emergence of mixed ethnicity as the defining characteristic of the largest single group of canadians. is it not right and in keeping with canadian ideals that any child should have a say in heritage-related matters within the family just as that child would be heard in a custody dispute? according children such a voice (and hence increasing their control) would, however, necessitate major restructuring of engrained cultural concepts of child and childhood, parent, child rearing and more. but such a restructuring is needed to liberate canada's children and to ensure their just treatment today as well as their ownership of their futures. in surviving as indians: the challenge of self-government (1993), menno boldt poses five carefully argued imperatives to effect a just future for indians in canada (see p. x). four of these are, with adaptation, applicable to a just future for children in canada, as follows: l. moral justice for children; 2.canadian policies that treat children's rights, interests, as pirations and needs as equal to those of other distinctive cultural groups in canada; 3.child-focussed leadership that is committed to eliminating the colonization of children and to empowering young people; and 64 carpenter in our own image 4. the assurance of appropriate circumstances for children to maintain and pursue their cultural traditions with other children. boldt's fifth imperative concerns economic self-determination which, in the case of children, should be replaced by the security of the necessities of life provided by the adult world. but how are we as a people to move toward this just future for children? first, adult canadians must make evident a certain humility with respect to youngsters, what they know, what they have, what they want, what they can best teach themselves and so on. if manipulate we must, then let it be the environments not the children. in particular, we ought to consider carefully whether our agendas of child concern and the resultant environments we impose on children are really in their (and ultimately, then, the canadian peoples') cultural best interests. of the many questions this presentation raises, the most central concern is how to achieve the goals it establishes. as a single example we might consider the desirability of children having free time to play. if we in our communities made such playtime a priority, we could direct resources towards ensuring safety on playgrounds by employing students or seniors (armed with cell phones) as discreet supervisors, or to establishing block networks for after-school play in homes or yards, using the extant model of babysitting cooperatives. what is required is the communal will; appropriate methods will follow apace. throughout canada we must recognize that dealing with children is comparable to relating to members of any other cultural group. in the interests of developing better child-adult communication (and hence, mutual understanding), it is time, as kathleen mcdonnell argues, that "we called a truce in this thankless, no-win war with out kids"(18) and learn to do more than just censor and rage against their cultural preferences (20). today's kid culture, as she terms children's own culture, contains a fair dose of material appropriated from or strongly influenced by popular culture. we clearly ought to recognize the legitimacy of children's chose cultural expressions— we demand the same for other cultural groups. but, cultural tolerance seemingly extends much more easily to diverse traits of distinctive others than to the sometimes wild, anarchic behaviors, attitudes and artifacts of our own children which challenge and disturb the established order. they are subversive-no more, no less than children's own traditions have always been and rightly so. in don't tell the grown-ups (1990), alison lurie makes a powerful argument that: 65 in our own image carpenter we should take children's literature seriously because it is sometimes subversive; because its values are not always those of the conventional adult world (xi) the argument applies equally to children's culture, for it is through the manipulation, rejection and re-creation of their cultural world that young people simultaneously search for and validate their voice and so situate themselves culturally. while deserving of recognition as a distinct cultural group, children are decidedly different from other such groups, since they do grow our of their child-focussed culture. yet, that cultural world can be, after tolkien's claims for the secondary world of faerie, a key means of coming to terms with the larger reality while offering fantasy, recovery, escape and consolation in the same manner as fairy stories do. as children we can be closer than perhaps at any other time of our lives to our authentic selves in our personal cultural operations. the cultural of childhood remains with us in memory as adults, a secondary reality to be revisited as burden or release, depending on our empowerment through it. such revisitation may illuminate the primary reality of our true (as opposed to ideal or actual) selves-a scenario played out effectively in such scenes from canadian literature as that in gabrielle roy's novel, the cashier, where the constrained and unfulfilled protagonist, alexandre chenervert, "sees" an image of himself as a playful child who looks upon the actual adult he is to become quizzically, in seeming startled disbelief(104). to more fully appreciate the authentic child, we should recognize the limitations of our cognitive map regarding childhood, cease appropriating the child's voice and admit the complex, multi-dimensional reality of child, embracing in particular the darker side, which we all know from personal experience does exist. only by so doing will be enable children to reappropriate their full voice and be the true subject of their own discourse. let us return to wallace stegner's sensuous little savage and consider part of his account of the savage (darker) aspect, the portrait of a real child for sure: i learned dirty words and dirty songs from the children of construction workers and from the. . .cowpunchers. with others, i was induced to ride calves and engage in "shit fights" with wet cow manure in the. . .corrals. then or later i learned to dog-paddle, first in the irrigation ditch, later in the river. . .we put.22 cartridges or blasting caps on the tracks ahead of approaching handcars or 66 carpenter in our own image speeders, and once we got satisfactorily chased by gandy dancers. around christmas we all watched the first soldiers go off to the [first world] war, and then and afterward we had trouble with some canadian kids who said the united states was too yellow to fight. (164-65) this picture of the child is not wholly admirable, perhaps (and that is without the scatological ending), but it is human-the real-life experiences of living children which deserves recognition and valorisation. the ideal child of our imagination must cease to silence the real child so that the actual lives children lead in this country accord with their truly, fully human nature. * * * 1975 was the international year of the woman, a commemoration that drove the women's movement forward around the world. 1979 was the international year of the child, but children have neither here nor abroad yet achieved a cultural position or voice comparable to that of contemporary women, for they have no political presence and require advocates. recently, concentration on the image of child as victim (of abuse in particular) has engendered considerable genuine empathy for children and prompted many to speak out for them. these victimization accounts may serve canada's children as the guilt literature of the seventies did the native people. they should prod us forward toward what we know we ought to do: stop doing to our children and let them do and be themselves while accepting and respecting them in the process. our cultural ideals, our cultural superego, confront us-a child, whose voice needs to be heard, whose existence as a child must be validated, whose freedom to be demands affirmation, whose full humanity must be recognized. not only must we let our children be, we must also enable them (gradually as they are capable) to assume control over their existence, actively cope with life and, potentially, triumph over rather than passively become victims of the adversity they surely will encounter. according to a popular saying, frequently cited in contemporary popular culture as an african proverb, "it takes a whole village to raise a child"16 we need to provide effective villages-spaces in our culture where children can come into themselves, surrounded by and connected with supportive adults. childhood must not be "something we live to recover from," as historian william westfall recently termed it.17 to this end, young people everywhere 67 in our own image carpenter should be freed to experience the sheer, immediate joy in living and be able, each and everyone individually and collectively, to assert that joy. if, as johann huizinga suggested, the best designation for humans is "homo ludens," we will be most human and best realize our ideals as canadians when we let the culture of children reverberate through our lives. we are all but fellow-travellers along life's weary way; if any man can play the pipes in god's name, let him play.18 afterword in the years since i gave this lecture, some encouraging changes of orientation to child, children's culture and childhood have occurred, notably within academe. numerous calls for a more holistic and child-focussed approach to the study of children and their worlds (variously defined) now emanate from many disciplines. europeans have spearheaded this trend and recently produced a body of singularly illuminating research that demonstrates the merits of the approach. north americans have more recently, but quite vociferously, joined the movement to appreciate children's culture and legitimize the area of "children's studies." in an insightful article, kenneth kidd discusses "this new enthusiasm for culture as representing continuity as well as innovation."(147) certainly it opens the door to curricular developments that may have long-range impact. at york university in toronto where i teach, the appetite for interdisciplinary courses on child-related topics appears to be insatiable. the enrolment in my first-year humanities offering, "the worlds of childhood" has more than doubled within five years and the course ranks amongst those with the highest unmet need in our faculty of arts which, with almost 10,000 students, is larger than most universities in this country. the course aims first and foremost to "hear the voice of the child" and demands that each and every student undertake fieldwork with this intent. it is a revolutionary experience for most, who bear the imprimatur of the developmentalist hegemony, but it is indisputably the most rewarding assignment on the course for most participants. the demands for more study along this line escalate every year with the result that we are now in the process of mounting an interdisciplinary undergraduate "children's studies" program, the first of its kind in canada. 68 carpenter in our own image like many other interdisciplinary programs, this one will be housed in the division of humanities, itself an interdisciplinary unit which, along with the divisions of social science and natural science, has provided among its offerings the core general education (now foundations) courses since york's establishment over forty years ago. the children's studies program will have most in common, however, with women's studies—a highly developed area at york, offered through the school of women's studies. students will have many options through children's studies, but basically each will major or minor in a discipline (from arts, environmental studies or fine arts) and take a series of four core interdisciplinary courses plus electives in children's studies. of the core, one course is planned as a practicum or internship involving placement in a child-focused setting in the larger community (a library, publishing house, community center, heritage site...as relevant to each student individually). one other will be a course in the ethics and methodologies of working with or for children. students will, then, be able to graduate with a spectrum of concentrations from writing for children (creative writing/children's studies) to advocating for/with children (social work/children's studies) to appreciating children's interface with the natural world (environmental studies/children's studies). in each case, the emphasis will be on hearing from children, on liberating their voices and on making them authorities on childhood. a research unit, the canadian children's culture collection, has been established to support the program. already the repository of many past student projects, the cccc will facilitate further research by students, faculty and, as appropriate, community members. it will also pursue the development of its resource collections of children's art, hand-made toys, books and relevant secondary sources. one of its primary aims will be to disseminate research results in order to develop greater understanding of children's culture and to effect changes in the condition of being child in canada and beyond. it is hoped that the program (planned to begin in fall 2004) and its allied research unit (well established and soon to open for use) will therefore contribute significantly to achieving the goals laid out in the preceding paper. york university toronto, canada 69 in our own image carpenter notes 1 gwyn dow and june factor, eds. australian childhood, 1991. 2 in 1986 she received the vicky metcalf award given annually by the canadian authors association for a body of work deemed inspirational to canadian youth (in her instance, folklore of or for children). further, in 1993 she was the recipient of a life achievement medal from the children's folklore section for her contributions to the field. 3 a canadian painter who lived from 1871-1945. she is best known for her representations of the northwest coastal forests and the tangible artifacts of the native people who inhabited the region. 4 a weekly comedy program shown in prime time by the canadian broadcasting corporation (cbc) and known for its sociopolitical commentary. 5 for instance, a section (albeit contested) of the canadian chart of rights and freedoms specifically allows for disciplining children by physical means, whereas no other canadian can lawfully be hit by another. 6 one of the models for the proposed toronto museum of child hood. 7 just one example being an exhibit at harbourfront in toronto of works by spring hurlbut incorporating french children's beds, march-april 1995. 8 this was during the threat of strong separatist sentiment in que bec that threatened the canadian union. 9 i am grateful to robert graham who does not know how much his comment has influenced my thinking in the intervening years. 10 a point frequently made in such works on children's folklore as one potato, two potato: the secret education of american children (1976) by herbert and mary knapp and captain cook chased a chook: children's folklore from australia by june factor (1988). 11 in this research, undertaken in the early nineties for her dissertation in social anthropology at york, dr. caputo was replicating the fieldwork done by edith fowke some thirty years earlier in the same toronto schools. 12 for instance, the text of one parody collected by dr. tucker in binghamton, new york and also reported to me in toronto turns the first lines of the barney theme song, "i long you, you love me, we're a happy family" into "i love you, you love me, homosex-u-al-i-ty." 13 it is worth noting that when this lecture was first published, the paragraph received more commentary than any other part of the work. 14 from lansky & carpenter, the new adventures of mother goose (1993), as reported by dale anne freed in "georgy porgy cleans up his 70 71 carpenier in our own image act," toronto star, 7 february a994, section e, 1 & 3. 15 northrop frye maintains in "the cultural development of canada" that our most important learning and that which stays with us longest comes through such interpersonal communication (p. 16), a position long held by folklorists. 16 similar in meaning to the recorded bantu proverb, "the child of your neighbour is yours" which is listed in s. g. champion, racial proverbs (new york: barnes & noble, 1963), p. 597. 17 personal communication, 1994 18 john bennett, p. 21 bartlett s familiar quotations. works cited bennett, john. excerpt from year book, poetry society of south carolina (1921); reproduced in john bartlett, ed. familiar quotations, 13th ed. boston, toronto: little, brown & co., 1955. blackman, margaret b. during my time: florence edenshaw davidson. a haida woman. seattle:u of washington p, 1982. boldt, menno. surviving as indians: the challenge of self-government. toronto: u of toronto p, 199x. the boys of st. vincent s produced by les productions tele-action inc. in coproduction with the national film board of canada in association with the canadian broadcasting corporation, 1992. 92 min. sd. col. directed by john n. smith. campbell, maria. half-breed. toronto: mcclelland & stewart, 1973. canadian childhoods: a tundra anthology. montreal: tundra, 1989. children of canada. dea canada/cher canada: a love letter to my country. toronto: ben wicks & associates, 1995. curtis, edward s. the north american indian. (1907-30). 20 v.; rpt. new york: johnson reprint, 1970. dow, gwyn and june factor, eds. australian childhood: an anthology. ringwood, aus: mcphee gribble/penguin, 1991. elkind, david. the hurried child. don mill, on: addison-wesley, 1988. factor, june. captain cook, chased a chook: children s folklore in austra lia. ringwood, aus: penguin, 1988. fowke, edith. folktales of french canada. toronto: nc press, 1979. ______. sally go round the sun: 300 songs, rhymes and games of canadian children. toronto: mcclelland & steart, 1969. francis, daniel. the imaginary indian: the image of the indian in canadian culture. vancouver: arsenalpulp press, 1992. frye, northrop. "the cultural development of canada." australian-cana dian studies. 10.1(1992): 9-16. goldie, terry. fear and temptation: the image of the indigene in canadian, australian and new zealand literature. montreal: mcgill-queen's up 1989. in our own image carpenter holt, john c. escape from childhood. toronto: clarke, irwin, 1974. hughes-hallett, penelope. childhood: a collins anthology. london: collins, 1988. huizinga, johann. homo ludens: a study of the play-element in culture. (1944) boston: beacon, 1951. johnston, basil. indian school days. toronto: key porter, 1988. knapp, mary and herbert knapp. one potato, two potato: the folklore of american children. new york: norton, 1976. kurelek, william. lumberjack. montreal: tundra, 1974. ______. a prairie boy's summer. montreal: tundra, 1975. ______. a prairie boy's winter. montreal: tundra, 1973. lansky, bruce and stephen carpenter. the new adventures of mother goose: gentler rhymes for happy times. new york: meadowbrook, 1993. laslett, peter. the world we have lost. new york: charles scribner's sons, 1965. little, jean. little by little: a writer's education. markham, on: penguin, 1987. lurie, alison. don't tell the grown-ups: subversive children's literature. boston, toronto, london: little, brown and co., 1990. mcdonnell, kathleen. kid culture: children & adults & popular culture. toronto: second story press, 1994. miller, alice. the drama of the gifted child and the search for the true self london, boston: faber and faber, 1983. mitchell, w. o. who has seen the wind. toronto: macmillan, 1947. monkman, leslie. a native heritage: images of the indian in english-cana dian literature. toronto: u of toronto p, 1981. montgomery, lucy maud. anne of green gables. boston: page, 1908. newell, william wells. games and songs of american children. (1883); rpt. new york: dover publications, 1963. ontario. royal commission on learning. for the love of learning. 4 v. toronto: the royal commission, 1994. opie, iona and peter opie. the lore and language of schoolchildren. ox ford: clarendon, 1959. parr, joy, ed. childhood and family in canadian history. toronto: mcclelland & stewart, 1982. posen, i. s. "the beginnings of the children's (folk) song industry in canada." canadian folk music journal 21 (1993): 19-30. postman, neil. the disappearance of childhood. new york: delacorte, 1982. reid, dennis. a concise history of canadian painting. 2nd ed.; toronto: o up, 1988. roberts, charles g. d. children of the wild. new york: macmillan, 1921. roy, gabrielle. the cashier. trans. harry binsse. toronto: mcclelland & stewart, 1955. royal canadian air farce. cbc television program since 1993; produced by the canadian broadcasting corporation; written by gord holtam, rick olsen and john morgan. 72 carpenter in our own image schilling, arthur. excerpts from the ojibway dream (tundra, 1986) in ca nadian childhoods. montreal: tundra, pp. 78-81. seton, ernest thompson. wild animals i have known. new york: scribner, 1898. smolan, rick and david cohen, eds. a day in the life of canada. don mills, on: collins, 1984. stainton rogers, rex, and wendy stainton rogers. stories of childhood: the shifting agendas of child concern. toronto: u of toronto p, 1992. stegner, wallace. "finding the place" in clams backes, ed. growing up west ern. new york: alfred a. knopf, 1990, pp. 161-85. _______. wolf willow: a history, a story, a memoir of the last plains frontier. new york: viking, 1962. sutherland, neil '''everyone seemed happy in those days:' the culture of childhood in vancouver between the 1920's and the 1960's." history of education review 15.3(1986): 34-51 tolkien, j. r. r. "on fairy stories," tree and leaf. london: george, allen & unwin, 1975, pp. 11-70. waters ton, elizabeth. children’s literature in canada. don mills, on: max well macmillan, 1992. welcome home. produced in association with the canadian broadcasting corporation, national film board of canada, p.a.f.p.s. program (ontario centre) tvontario. published by cue films, 1990. 27 min sd. col. wilson, jeffry and mary tomlinson. wilson: children and the law in canada. toronto: butterworths, 1985. i wish to express my gratitude for continued support from the robarts centre for canadian studies at york university who gave permission to republish this work. 73 cfr_2002-2003_part15 cfr_2002-2003_part16 cfr_2002-2003_part17 cfr_2002-2003_part18 cfr_2002-2003_part19 cfr_2002-2003_part20 cfr_2002-2003_part21 cfr_2002-2003_part22 cfr_2002-2003_part23 pages from cfr_2002-2003_part24 ocr document children's folklore review volume 23 number 2 spring 2001 published by the children's folklore section of the american folklore society with support from the english department at east carolina university contents from the editor………………………………………………….5 2000 newell prize paper riddle use and comprehension in irish school-aged children: a developmental study ................................................. 7 sara staunton to the editor .............................................................................. 101 cfs: 2000 annual meeting…………………………………..103 book reviews .................................................................. 105 announcements……………………………………………….121 contributors…………………………………………………..122 on the cover: reproduction of the cover of w.w. newell's games and songs of american children. from the editor well, the orange cover for the fall 2000 issue received mixed reviews. some liked it, and others, as they told me quite pointedly, did not. but as we publish both numbers of each volume with the same colored cover, here it is again. perhaps some of those who did not like it the first time around will have gotten used to it. cover color aside, this issue contains only one article, the 2000 newell prize paper. "riddle use and comprehension in irish schoolaged children: a developmental study," by sara staunton, is an absolutely first-rate work. according to dr. jeffrey kallen, of the school of clinical speech and language studies at trinity college, dublin, and ms. satunton's supervisor, "this is an undergraduate paper which fulfils the requirement for a project on an aspect of human communication as part of the b.sc. programme in clinical speech and language studies. . . . though this programme includes courses in child development and language acquisition, it has no formal folklore component (not surprisingly!), which in my view makes this project all the more impressive" (letter to the newell prize committee, 16 august 2000). the newell prize committee could not have agreed more. in editing this paper, i have chosen to leave it as much ms. staunton's paper as possible. due to its length, i have taken out some divider pages, the abstract, and a table of contents. i have left in irish spellings and the like which differ from american, as i did with the above quotation from dr. kallen's letter. i would also like to note that this is the second of dr. kallen's students to win the newell prize; the 1994 newell prize was won by tara friel for a paper entitled, "'once upon a time' to 'happily ever after': the development of children's narrative skill." that paper was published in cfr 18.1, 3-52. in the remainder of this volume, we have resumed book reviews under the editorship of gail devos, there is a letter from donna lanclos responding to iona opie's letter in cfr 23.1, the minutes of the 2000 cfs meeting in columbus, and a few announcements. in the fall 2001 number of cfr, we plan to publish the papers from the columbus session, "the monstrous child: folklore responds to columbine and adolescence" along with simon bronner's response as commentator at that session. c.w. sullivan iii riddle use and comprehension in irish school-aged children: a developmental study sara staunton i would like to gratefully acknowledge the help i received from the following people in completing this project: my supervisor, dr. jeffrey kallen for his constant patience, advice and encouragement. the teachers, parents and children who participated in this study. my friends and family who assisted in the completion of this project. introduction 1.1 introduction whilst language development can be described as a lifelong process (obler, 1985, cited in nippold, 1988a), the greatest part of this development occurs during the childhood years. the task of acquiring his or her native language, with which the child is faced from birth, would appear to be a formidable one. however, the evidence that children rise to this challenge with fascination and delight is be found in the numerous kinds of lore which have been collected from children over the past few centuries (crossley-holland, 1982; opie and opie, 1959). included amongst these are the rhymes, riddles, jokes and songs which children relish in sharing amongst themselves, and which are reported to remain almost unchanged when passed from generation to generation (opie and opie, 1959). the forms of folklore which are characteristic of the early childhood years, such as the nursery rhyme and fairy tale, are readily shared between adult and child (mcdowell, 1979). however, schoolchildren's lore (including riddles, jokes and songs) differs from early lore in that its content typically remains 'partly inaccessible to adults' (mcdowell, 1979: 2). it therefore serves an important social function for children, helping to mark them apart from adults as a social group in their own right. forms of lore such as riddles and jokes are of additional interest to linguists as they frequently involve the use of what is termed 'figurative language' (rice and kemper, 1984). the ability to fully comprehend and make use of figurative language is reported to emerge only in the later years of childhood (nippold, 1988a; rice and kemper, 1984; winner, 1988). staunton 1.2 riddles the 'true' riddle can be defined as follows (opie and opie, 1959: 74), 'a composition in which some creature or object is described in an intentionally obscure manner; the solution fitting all the characteristics of the description in the question, and usually resolving a paradox '. opie and opie (1959), who carried out an extensive study of the lore of schoolchildren during the 1950s, state that many of the riddles used by children in this century are actually 300 years old. the observation that the form of these riddles changes little when passed from generation to generation, is illustrated in the following 'cryptic description' of a maid milking a cow which was posed by a 9-year-old child in dublin in the 1950s (opie and opie, 1959: 76): ink ank under a bank ten drawing four, the same riddle was recorded in a collection in 1631 in the following form (in a book of merrie riddles, 1631, no. 59, cited in opie and opie, 1959, 76): clinke, clanke under a banke ten above foure and neere the stanke. although little is known about the exact cultural origins of riddles (green and pepicello, 1984) it is known that their use is by no means restricted to the younger members of society. there is evidence that people of diverse cultures have engaged in riddling for many hundreds of years (crossley-holland, 1982). indeed, riddles are a feature of the rituals of a number of cultures, marking periods of transition in life such as baptism, marriage and death (handleman, 1996). the riddle can be described as consisting of two connected parts, the riddle image and its answer (kangas maranda, 1971, cited in lieber, 1976). the riddle image can take a number of forms, although in english it usually takes the question form of the language (kallen, 1981). cohen (1996) points out that a riddle im 8 riddle use and comprehension age in the form of a question has a very different function to that of a genuine question. a question form is ordinarily used to obtain information which the questionner is seeking. a riddler, however, is already 'in possession of some information which he manipulates the addressee into seeking' through the use of the riddle image (cohen, 1996: 295). although in the past the emphasis amongst those studying riddles was on the analysis of the riddle image, kallen and eastman (1979: 426) state that 'researchers have now begun to consider the answer to a riddle to be of equal importance to its question'. they refer to the observation by maranda (1971) that the influence which the riddle answer has on the riddle image can be seen in the features of style used in the image, such as the use of rhyme or alliteration. sources of ambiguity the special relationship which exists between the riddle image and its answer has been described by scott (1965, cited in kallen, 1981:3) as a 'partially obscured semantic fit' between the two parts of the riddle. whilst one answer may appear obvious on hearing the riddle image, the true answer is obscured in the riddle image through the use of a 'block element'. the definition of a block element given by mcdowell (1979: 18) is 'that deliberate grain of confusion or ambiguity' which is contained within the riddle image. green and pepicello (1984) give a detailed account of the types of strategy which are used to provide a 'block element' in riddles. they state that the ambiguity in the riddle image may be either grammaticallyor metaphorically-based. the latter riddling strategy is more typical of 'true' riddles and will be described in more detail in section 1.2.2. block elements which are of the grammatical variety consist of words or phrases which possess more than one underlying form but have the same surface form. grammatical ambiguity may occur at the phonological, morphological or syntactic levels of the language (green and pepicello, 1984). green and pepicello (1984: 198) conclude from an examination of the work of hockett (1970) that the grammatical strategies which are used in many riddles originate as 'accidents of speech', which are found to be amusing and are later utilised in a riddle form they cite the riddle (193), 9 staunton what’s the difference between a stag fleeing from hunters and a midget witch? one is a hunted stag, the other is a stunted hag, as an example of the speech error of metathesis used as a riddle strategy. green and pepicello (1984: 194-97) also give examples of riddles which make use of the three different types of grammatical ambiguity. at the phonological level of the language, the most commonly used riddle strategy is that of simple lexical ambiguity, whereby a single phonetic string can be said to have two unrelated meanings. an example of such a riddle is, 'what turns but never moves? milk', other examples of riddle strategies at the phonological level include the use of metathesis (referred to above) and the use of minimal pairs, as in the riddle, what’s the difference between a baby and a coat? one you were, the other you wear. at the morphological level, the riddle strategies include the use of homophony between the past participle morpheme of a verb and another word, such as in the well-known riddle, 'what’s black and white and read (red) all over? a newspaper', other strategies at this level include the use of ambiguity between a morpheme and a whole word (e.g. 'what bow can you never tie? a rainbow'), the deliberate confusion of an independent word with a bound morpheme, or a 'pseudomorphological' type of strategy, whereby a whole word (e.g. 'key') is deliberately confused with a phonological string (' -key') which is not actually a morpheme, as in the riddle, 'what's the key to a good dinner? a turkey', riddle strategies employed at the syntactic level of the grammar include an ambiguity of phrase structure, where a surface sequence of words can be syntactically analysed in more than one way, such as in the riddle, 'how is a duck like and icicle? both grow down '. the riddle, 'what do you call a man who marries another man? a minister', involves a 'transformational' riddle strategy, whereby 'two different underlying structures have an identical surface form as a result of their syntactic derivations' (green and pepeicello, 1984: 195). another syntactic strategy plays upon the literal and figurative interpretations of an idiom, such as, 'what goes most against a farmer's grain? his reaper'. a 10 riddle use and comprehension final strategy involves a mixture of devices, such as in the riddle, 'why can you not starve to death in the desert? because of the sandwiches (sand which is) there, ' which involves homophony between a morphemic construction (the plural form of 'sandwich') and another syntactic interpretation ('sand which is'). 1.2.1 metaphor metaphor is not only important as a device providing the ambiguity necessary to many 'true' riddles, it has also been studied in its own right as an important example of the' nonliteral' use of language (rice and kemper, 1984). metaphor is defined by franklin and barten (1988: 299) as 'a use of language in which a term (or phrase) customarily applied in one domain is transported across conventional category boundaries and applied in another'. in order to comprehend nonliteral uses of language (such as metaphors and idioms) the listener must be able to go beyond the surface meaning of an utterance and determine what is referred to as the 'speaker meaning' (searle, 1979). this is the meaning which the speaker wishes to convey through the use of the utterance. in the case of nonliteral uses of language, this will always be different to the surface form of the words uttered by the speaker. lakoff and johnson (1980) give a detailed account of the many ways in which metaphor is used in everyday conversation. they are of the view that some metaphoric expressions have become such an everyday part of language use that speakers of a language may not even be aware that they are using metaphor. for example, we talk of arguments as 'wars' or of time being 'in flight'. not only is metaphor an important feature of language use, it therefore structures the way in which we think and act from day to day. the distinction can be made between literal and figurative metaphors (lakoffand johnson, 1980). literal (or frozen) metaphors, such as those mentioned above, are those that can be seen as 'dead'. they have been assimilated into the language through overuse and have therefore lost their 'metaphoricity' (winner, 1998: 17). figurative or novel metaphors, on the other hand, are those which can be seen as 'alive' as they are creative and serve to illustrate new ideas. richards (1936, cited in kittay, 1987) described all metaphors 11 staunton as having both a topic and a vehicle which are linked by a common ground. the topic is what the metaphor is about (i.e. the subject of the metaphor). the vehicle is the means through which the speaker can refer back to the topic. the ground is made up of the properties which link the topic and vehicle. an example used to illustrate these elements is shakespeare's copula metaphor, 'juliet is the sun' (skinner, 1957, cited in billow, 1977: 84). the topic of this metaphor is 'juliet' and the vehicle is 'the sun'. the ground is composed of the aspects of the sun, such as its warmth and brilliance, which are shared by both juliet and the sun. types of similarity there are a number of types of ground (similarity) on which a metaphor can be based (winner, 1988). the distinction can be made between sensory and nonsensory kinds of similarity between the topic and the vehicle. sensory metaphors are those based on similarities of 'shape, sound, colour, motion, texture, smell or some combination of these' (winner, 1988: 64). for example, a similarity of colour is involved in the sensory metaphor, 'the bird was a rainbow flying in the sky '(nippold, leonard and kail, 1984: 198). nonsensory metaphors are grounded in the types of similarity which are not directly perceived by our senses. this similarity may be of a relational or a psychological-physical nature. metaphors based on a relational type of similarity link the topic to its vehicle due to a similarity in the way in which the two items function. an example is the likening of the human brain to a computer. the suggestion here is that the brain processes information in the same way a computer does (winner, 1988). other metaphors in use in everyday language, such as the notions of time 'flying' or ideas 'blossoming' (lakoff and johnson, 1980), involve similar types of ground. psychological-physical metaphors are usually based on a similarity between 'sensory attributes of a physical object. . . and psychological, nonsensory attributes of a person' (winner, 1988: 67). included here are dual-function terms, such as 'warm', 'sweet' or 'soft' which can be used to describe the physical attributes of objects or the personality traits of people (asch and nerlove, 1960, cited in billow, 1975). asch (1958, cited in billow, 1977: 85) gives 12 riddle use and comprehension the example of the adjective 'hard', which could be applied in a physical sense to a piece of furniture or in a psychological sense to a person. when used to describe a table, the term 'hard' means that the table is resistant to change when physically pushed or pressed. to describe a person as 'hard' might imply that he or she is unlikely to yield to pressure from others. the psychological application of the term is therefore linked to its physical sense, through the notion of an entity resisting change when force is applied. asch (1955, 1958, cited in billow, 1977) also reports that historically unrelated languages have been found to contain the same metaphoric descriptions of personality traits, indicating that this is not an arbitrary phenomenon. 1.2.2 metaphoric riddles good riddles do, in general, provide us with satisfactory metaphor: for metaphors imply riddles and therefore a good riddle can furnish a good metaphor. (aristotle, trans. rhys roberts, cited in hackiyan, 1966: 2) a 'true' riddle can be said to involve a metaphoric comparison between two entities which is obscured in some way so as to puzzle the riddlee. a theorist who has contributed greatly to the study of such riddles is elli köngäs maranda (1971: 196) who states that the metaphors involved in riddles 'are conditional metaphors, and the riddle image states the condition under which the metaphor holds true'. one-half of the metaphoric comparison is therefore revealed in the riddle image (along with information which obscures the answer) and the task for the riddlee is to complete the metaphor, thereby answering the riddle (green and pepicello, 1984). based on her analysis of finnish riddles, köngäs maranda (1971: 198-99) concludes that the metaphoric riddle comprises five basic elements. an example used to illustrate these elements is the finnish riddle, 'one pig, two snouts', to which the answer is 'a plough' (referring to the traditional finnish 'fork plough' which has two prongs or 'snouts'). the first element of the riddle is labelled the' signans' or given term of the metaphor (in this case, 'a pig'). secondly, there is a constant premise (similar to the 'ground' 13 staunton of the metaphor described by richards (1936, cited in kittay, 1987) which is true for both the signans, and the the 'signatum'(riddle answer). in this case, the constant premise is that both a pig and a plough can have snouts. the third element is the hidden variable which is never mentioned in the riddle (e.g. that a pig can only have one snout, not two) but which indicates to the riddlee that something which is stated in the riddle image needs to be resolved. the fourth element is the given variable of the riddle (e.g. that two snouts are involved) which is described as 'the condition under which the metaphor holds true' (köngäs maranda, 1971: 199). finally, the other hidden term is the riddle answer or 'signatum' which the riddlee is seeking. köngäs maranda (1971) also observes from her study of finnish riddles that riddles create a surprise by combining elements from categories or 'sets' which are normally seen as being opposites. köngäs maranda found in her analysis of seventy-two riddles that the most commonly occurring contrast between the categories was that of the set of animate entities versus the set of inanimate entities. within these two sets, almost half the riddles involved a juxtaposition between human objects and cultural objects. about a quarter of the riddles involved the contrast between human beings and wild plants. only a few riddles contained reference to supernatural entities such as god or to abstract concepts such as number and colour. metaphoric or 'true' riddles might thus be said to play on listener's ability to view two entities as being equivalent (on a sensory level) due to their shared characteristics, despite the basic knowledge on an idealogical level that the two things are not the same and in fact belong to different classes (e.g. animate things versus inanimate things) (kallen and eastman, 1979). types of riddle metaphor a distinction can be made between riddles which make use of ‘frozen’ metaphors for their ambiguity and those which involve the generation of a novel metaphorical comparison (mcdowell, 1979: 95). the term ‘conventional polysemy’ is used to describe metaphors which are present in everyday language use (i.e. frozen metaphors). conventional polysemy occurs where the two mean 14 riddle use and comprehension ings of a particular phonetic string are thought of as being related, through a metaphorical comparison (e.g. the leg of a person and the 'leg' of a table). the speakers of the language intuitively consider the two uses of the word the be related, whether or not this is historically the case (mcdowell, 1979). mcdowell (1979: 98) cites other examples of riddles which require the literal interpretation of 'dead' or frozen metaphors which have been assimilated into the language. for example, the riddle 'why did the boy throw his clock out the window?' (to see time fly), involves the literal interpretation of the well-known metaphor of time being in fight. a similar type of riddle involves what mcdowell (1979: 97) describes as the' resurrection of automatized language' through the use of fragments of imaginary conversations between usually inanimate objects. these riddles take the form 'what did the x say to the y?' (mcdowell, 1979: 97), such as in the riddles 'what did the rug say to the floor?' (i've got you covered) or 'what did the big telephone say to the little telephone? ' (you're too young to be engaged). the ambiguity involved in each of these riddles revolves around the two senses of a particular word or phrases, in this case the two senses of the words 'cover' and the phrase 'to be engaged'. in addition to the use of metaphors already sanctioned in the language, riddles can involve the strategy termed 'radical' or novel polysemy. radical polysemy, as described by mcdowell (1979), involves the use of a metaphorical comparison between two things, which has not already been assimilated into the language. the most common example is the use of metaphor to remark on the similarity between the sensory (physical) features of two items. the two items may have little in common other. than their appearance, 'but these incongruities are momentarily held in abeyance while the common features are held in focus'(mcdowell, 1979: 101). radical polysemy was the strategy used in many of the riddles in the sample analysed by köngäs maranda (1971). as mentioned earlier, she too commented on the fact that the items compared were from vastly different categories or sets. mcdowell (1979) notes that the main types of comparison in use in his sample of children's riddles are those of culture versus nature (e.g. a cherry compared to police car lights), animate versus inanimate entities (e.g. an old lady compared to a candle), mankind versus other 15 staunton forms of life, and finally, cultural artifacts compared with each other. 1.2.3 solving riddles there is some debate regarding the processes involved in the solving of 'true' riddles and in the selection of 'acceptable' answers. kaivolabregenhøj (1996:30) in a discussion based on finnish riddles, suggests that riddles in which the riddle image is 'semantically vague' can sometimes be solved by guess-work, as there are a greater number of possible answers which fit. the degree of validity of suitable but unexpected answers seems to depend, however, on the judgement of the particular riddler and on the customs of the culture in which the riddling session is taking place. kallen and eastman (1979: 418), for example, conclude from their study of swahili riddles that such riddles are solved through the use of 'symbolic activity' and interaction between the parties involved, rather than a process of reflection and analysis by the riddlee. köngäs maranda (1971, cited in kaivola-bregenhøj, 1996) remarks that there is a tendency amongst riddlers of accepting only their original, preferred answer and rejecting other suitable answers. kaivola-bregenhøj (1996:32) concludes that in a riddling session the riddler and riddlee take two different approaches to the solving of a riddle. the riddlee uses the process of 'creative guessing' in order to select a suitable answer to the riddle. the answer which the riddler has in mind, however, is founded on 'a conventional interpretation of the image that does not tolerate any variation' . whilst the validity of a particular answer may vary depending on the cultural context of the riddling session or the judgement of the riddler, it would appear that there are a number of conditions which the answer to a true riddle must fulfill. it has been remarked that a riddle answer must complete the condition described as a 'partially obscured semantic fit' which exists between the riddle image and its answer (scott, 1965, cited in kallen, 1981: 4). in order to satisfy this condition, the riddle answer must share enough features with the riddle image for them to be seen as equivalent within the context of the riddle (through the use of metaphor). 16 riddle use and comprehension however, the riddle answer must also fulfill the requirement of being significantly different in nature from that of the image, so that the semantic fit between the two of them is sufficiently obscured. the work of elli köngäs maranda (1971) revealed that there are certain semantic groupings which are traditionally more likely than others to be linked in the metaphors involved in true riddles. as observed from her study of finnish riddles, true riddles generally involve the juxtaposition of opposites (köngäs maranda, 1971). the item which appears to be described in the riddle image typically belongs to an opposite semantic category or 'set' to that of the riddle answer. aitchison (1994: 150) also comments that in a good metaphor, 'the subject of the metaphor is compared to something which is quite different from itself, in the sense of coming from a different semantic field'. thus, the first criteria which a riddle answer might be required to meet is that of belonging to a semantic category which is opposite to that of the riddle image. secondly, the notion put forward by rosch (1975), that some members of a category are considered more 'prototypical' examples of category members than others, might also be borne in mind when judging the degree of obscurity of fit between the riddle image and a possible answer. a riddle answer, one might assume, should be a prototypical example of a member of a category opposite to that item in the riddle image, if the riddlee is to be given the chance to 'solve' the riddle on the first hearing. a third and essential feature of the riddle metaphor is that the item named the riddle answer must have characteristics in common with the item mentioned in the riddle image. aitchison (1994: 150) remarks that although the items compared 'must not share major characteristics, they must share' some'. she states that good metaphors typically involve a comparison based on a minor, but 'fairly obvious' characteristic. this third condition, along with those mentioned above, must be fulfilled therefore, if a particular answer is to be judged as completing the riddle. 1.3 children's riddling the most comprehensive developmental account of children's riddling in the literature is that given by john holmes mcdowell (1979). mcdowell conducted a detailed analysis of the riddles 17 staunton collected from a sample of fifty working class, chicano children and twenty-five anglo, middle class children living in austin, texas, during the 1970s. the children ranged in age from 4 up to 11 years, though mcdowell's analysis focuses mainly on the riddles used by children between the ages of 5 and 8 years. mcdowell (1979: 31) uses the term 'interrogative ludic routine' to label all playful linguistic sequences (such as riddles) which involve an inversion of the everyday speech act of interrogation. he reserves the terms 'riddle' or 'riddle proper' to refer only to interrogative ludic routines which contain an identifiable block element. mcdowell found from the analysis of his corpus of riddles that there is a distinct developmental pattern in the kinds of ludic routines which children use. the riddling of children of 4and 5-years-of-age is characterised by the use of what sutton-smith (1976, cited in mcdowell, 1979: 32-33) labels 'preriddles', as children frequently do not yet show awareness of the relationship between the question and answer of the riddle. children of this age tend either to reproduce a riddle which they have heard elsewhere, without actually comprehending it, or they 'create puzzling questions and give them arbitrary answers'. another feature which is characteristic of the riddling of children at this age (and which is a feature of riddling at all ages) is the use of interrogative ludic routines which contain no block element and which are 'not intended to confuse' (mcdowell, 1979: 34). these early routines are labelled 'descriptive routines' as the riddle image typically involves a description of one or more attributes of an object. examples of such routines used by the chicano children include (mcdowell, 1979: 35): what has five sides and lives in the sea? a starfish. what’s square and gots a point at the top? a house. whilst most descriptive routines are based on the physical characteristics of objects, they can also involve the themes of instrumentality (e.g. 'what do you need feet for? to walk') or causation ('how come a rabbit goes into a hole? cause she eats a lot of carrots '). by the age of six years, children have begun to use the 'riddle 18 riddle use and comprehension proper', whilst still using a large number of descriptive routines. the riddle proper differs from the descriptive routine in that it contains a source of ambiguity (the block element) and its purpose is to trick or confuse, rather than help the riddlee, in finding the answer. the riddle strategies used at this stage are primarily homophony (described earlier) and anomaly, which is the strategy at work in a riddle such as, 'what goes up and never comes down? your age '. mcdowell (1979: 106) states that riddles involving anomaly serve to challenge everyday states of affairs which we have taken for granted (such as the laws of gravity, in the riddle above). by seven years of age, children have become more adept at the use of the riddle proper. there is a strong preference for the use of riddles involving all types of linguistic ambiguity amongst children of this age. there is also a marked increase in the use of riddles involving the polysemies (metaphor) at this stage. anomaly riddles involving the theme of fantasy, such as those involving the generation of 'unnatural facts', are present at this age (e.g. 'what’s big and red and eats rocks? a big, red rockeater', mcdowell, 1979: 253). however, riddles involving 'real world' anomaly are equally popular with this age group. the repertoire of 8-year-old children consists mainly of the riddle proper. mcdowell (1979: 208) reports that by this age 'the riddler's progress appears to be virtually complete', with a more sophisticated execution of riddling routines. the items featured in the descriptive routines of children of this age tend to be more exotic than before. whilst children in this age group still use riddles involving linguistic ambiguity, there is an overall decrease in their use of homophony as a block element. they also favour the use of anomaly riddles with a 'real world' theme. mcdowell remarks that children's interest in riddling levels off during the ninth and tenth years, and seems to be diverted to other performance genres at this stage. types of riddle structure in addition to identifying the types of riddle strategy which were used by the children, mcdowell found that the riddles in his sample were structured in five different ways. over two-thirds of the 19 staunton riddles (and descriptive routines) in mcdowell's sample involved the construction devices of attribution, causality and instrumentality. riddles based on attribution, involve the use of many simple descriptive units, which mcdowell (1979: 65) describes as being 'stacked'. examples from his study include the following: what is white on the outside and green on the inside and hops? frog sandwich. what’s big and red and eats rocks? a big, red rockeater. riddles associated with causality usually take the form of a question and answer sequence involving 'why' and 'because'. examples given by mcdowell (1979: 66) include: why do birds fly south? cause it's too far to walk. why did the man take hay to bed? to feed the nightmares. a less frequent structure used in mcdowell's sample is that of instrumentality, such as in the riddle, 'how do you keep a skunk from smelling? hold his nose '. the two other riddle structures which were used in the study take the form, 'what did the x say to the y?' and 'what kind of x is a p '. in the former riddle structure, inanimate objects are 'endowed with speech' (mcdowell, 1979: 67) and the two possible meanings of a well-known figure of speech are exploited. a well-known example is the riddle involving an imaginary conversation between two chimney pots, 'what did the big chimney say to the little chimney? you're too young to smoke '. finally, riddles based on the structure, 'what kind of x is a y? ' appear classificatory in nature. yet they frequently involve the use of conventional polysemy, whereby a dead metaphor must again be resuscitated in order to solve the riddle, as in the example, 'what kind of head grows in the garden? a head of lettuce' (mcdowell, 1979: 68). 1.3.1 children's comprehension of riddles the development of the ability to comprehend riddles has been investigated by a small number of researchers (fowles and glanz, 1977; prentice and fathman, 1975; shultz, 1974). most of the 20 riddle use and comprehension available research has examined the comprehension of joking riddles which make use of the types of grammatical ambiguity outlined by green and pepicello (1984). the development of the comprehension of 'true' riddles has not specifically been examined, although the study by fowles and glanz (1977) did include some riddles involving the use of metaphoric language as a source of ambiguity. the development of comprehension of metaphor outside of a riddling context has also been examined by researchers and the findings of these studies will be described in section 1.4. fowles and glanz (1977) examined the comprehension (and appreciation) of riddles in a group of fourteen children, aged between 6 and 9 years (grades 1 to 3 at school). the children were presented with a series of riddles and were asked to retell and explain each of them. these riddles mainly involved the use of grammatical ambiguity as a block element. 'true' riddles were not specifically included, although some of the riddles contained terms which had both a literal and metaphorical meaning. on examination of the results, fowles and glanz (1977) report that the children in the 7-8 year age group performed better than those in the age groups above (8-9 years) and below them (6-7 years). although they found that the level of comprehension was not closely related to age, the researchers report that riddle comprehension was related to reading ability (as rated by teachers) in each of the age groups. fowles and glanz (1977) also remark from their results that the riddles which the children found most difficult to comprehend were those which contained more advanced vocabulary and those containing abstract or metaphorical language. riddles in which the two possible interpretations of the ambiguous terms were both concrete were found to be easier to comprehend. familiarity with the riddles themselves facilitated retelling of the riddles but did not necessarily aid comprehension of them. the researchers state that the influence of factors which are thought to affect ease of comprehension (such as the use of metaphorical meaning as opposed to more concrete meaning) is in need of further investigation, 'using riddles chosen specifically to exemplify these polarities' (fowles and glanz, 1977: 450). in a similar study, shultz (1974) investigated the comprehen 21 staunton sion of riddles in a group of thirty children in the 6-, 8-, 10and 12-year age groups. an explanation task was again used to examine the children's comprehension of grammatically-based riddles. comprehension of the riddles was found to increase steadily with age. the 6-year-olds had particular difficulty explaining the two possible interpretations of the ambiguity in the riddles. they were judged to have comprehended just under a quarter of the riddles, with the 8-year-olds comprehending twice this number. the level of comprehension increased to just under twothirds of the riddles amongst the 10-year-olds and the 12-year-olds performed slightly better again. prentice and fathman (1975) also used an explanation task to investigate the comprehension of joking riddles in a group of forty-eight boys and girls aged 6, 8 and 10 years. three types of riddles were included in the study, namely those with a theme of aggression, those with a caring or nurturing theme and those with a neutral content. the influence on comprehension of different types of linguistic ambiguity was not examined. prentice and fathman report that riddle comprehension was found to increase almost linearly with increasing age. no major differences in comprehension of the different riddle types was found between boys and girls. overall, comprehension of the riddles was also found to be significantly related to intelligence. a vocabulary test had been used to rate intelligence, however, which in itself is a verbal task and does not examine other cognitive abilities. the older children in the study showed greater comprehension of the riddles with an aggressive or nurturant content than the younger group. the researchers suggest that this may be due either to an increased ability to cope with riddles with an affective content as the child matures or to a difference in the cognitive demands of the different riddle types. 1.4 development of the use of metaphor traditionally, the study of metaphor was confined to the domains of philosophy and literature (winner, 1988). research into children's ability to use and understand metaphor has only come about in essence in the past thirty years, with increased interest in the topic among those working in the fields of linguistics and cog 22 riddle use and comprehension nitive psychology. there is some debate as to when children actually begin to use metaphor in their speech. it has been widely observed that as preschool children develop language, the phenomenon of overextension of words occurs (bee, 1992). it is thought that children apply a word too broadly because they have not yet learned the correct name for a particular concept. clark (1973) gives the example of the word 'ball' being extended to label other similarly shaped objects such as apples, doorknobs and balloons. winner (1988: 90) points out that 'overextensions, like metaphors, are based on similarity, and hence like metaphors, offer clues to how easily children classify the world'. it has been argued that some overextensions may in fact be metaphors (billow, 1981). winner (1988) is of the view that while children may overextend words as they lack the correct name for an object, the use of metaphor serves a very different function. a child who is using metaphor might already know the name of the object, but is using a metaphoric name in order to remark on a similarity which he has noticed. few studies have examined children's early use of metaphor, but those by winner (1979) and winner, mccarthy, kleinman and gardner (1979, cited in winner, 1988) concluded that two kinds of metaphor are characteristic of the speech of young children. the earliest emerging metaphors appear to be those involving the renaming of an object in the context of symbolic play. these renamings are usually based on the actions which an object displays, or on the function of the object (e.g. the child featured in the first study put his foot inside a wastebasket and said 'boot'). sensory metaphors are reported to be the second form to develop and occur where the child notices a physical similarity between two objects (usually their shape), without using them in pretend play (winner, 1979). winner (1979) also remarks that the metaphors used by preschool children are less sophisticated than those of adults or older children in that they consist solely of the renaming of physical objects and are uttered only in the immediate presence of those objects. the renamings are also based on a sensory (physical) or functional similarity which the child has noticed, rather than using the more abstract types of comparison typical of adult metaphors. 23 staunton development of metaphor in school-aged children: a number of studies (billow, 1981; gardner, kircher, winner and perkins, 1975; pollio and pollio, 1974), have suggested that the incidence of children's spontaneous use of metaphor decreases sharply during the school years. the reasons for this may include the fact that, as they grow older, children are less likely to engage in the kinds of activities (such as symbolic play) which stimulate the use of spontaneous metaphor (billow, 1981). furthermore, it has been noted that between the ages of eight and ten years, a literal or 'conventional' stage occurs in children's use of metaphor (winner, 1988). during this stage, children become far less likely to use metaphor themselves, and may even be resistant to its use. gardner, kircher, winner and perkins (1975: 128) found that given a choice of endings for a sentence such as 'he looked as gigantic as...', children in this age group chose unimaginative, conventional endings above all other types of ending. they rejected novel endings (which were preferred by adolescents and adults in the study), insisting for example, that the term 'loud' could not be applied to a colour. winner (1988) reports that this concern with convention is also reflected in the drawings of children of this age. other research has suggested that the ability to use metaphor continues to develop during the school years, but that the type of writing tasks typically used in school do not encourage children to make creative use of metaphor. pollio and pollio (1974) examined the metaphoric productions of a group of children aged between the ages of eight and eleven years on a story-writing task. the children's use of both novel and frozen (or 'dead') metaphors decreased as their class level in school increased. however, the researchers later presented the same group of children with a structured comparison task, whereby the children were asked to verbalise the similarities between pairs of unrelated items (e.g. 'can and box'). overall, the children used a greater proportion of novel than frozen metaphors on this task, and their production of both types of metaphor increased (rather than decreased) with their class level. the findings of this study suggest that children in the eight to eleven age group continue to develop the ability to use metaphor, but that in completing school tasks they are increas 24 riddle use and comprehension ingly concerned about attaining good marks and so 'are less likely to 'rock the boat' by using words in unconventional or nonliteral ways' (nippold, 1988b: 189). 1.4.1 development of comprehension of metaphor there is controversy as to the age at which children first exhibit the ability to comprehend metaphor (winner, 1988). however, most researchers agree that as children get older, their comprehension of metaphors increases. early research into children's comprehension of metaphor was based on the 'cognitive prerequisite theory' of development (e.g. billow, 1975; cometa and eson, 1978; smith, 1976). according to this view, the attainment of the piagetian stage of formal operational thought is necessary before comprehension of forms of figurative language can occur (piaget, 1926, cited in kamhi and friemoth lee, 1988). thinking during the formal operational stage (which begins at about twelve years) is characterised by a move' away from the reality of the physical data of the senses towards an anticipation of abstract 'potential' properties of the environment' (smith, 1976: 242) . it was hypothesized that full comprehension of metaphor would not be possible prior to the emergence of this type of abstract thinking. metaphor comprehension, according to this theory, would therefore be expected to emerge during the late childhood and early adolescent years. the findings of the studies by billow (1975), cometa and eson (1978) and smith (1976), which examined children's comprehension of metaphor in relation to their piagetian stages of development, did not support the cognitive prerequisite hypothesis. the children in smith's (1976) study, for example, were shown to have an understanding of metaphor before they had reached the formal operational stage of thinking. in addition, a number of studies have reported the finding that even preschool children show a basic understanding of metaphor when simplified testing procedures and age-appropriate materials are used (gardner, 1974; gentner, 1977; vosniadou, ortony, renolds and wilson, 1984; winner, 1979). nippold (1988b) reports that although there may be some relationship between cognitive development and metaphor comprehension, no specific pre-requisites for metaphor comprehension 25 have been identified and the cognitive pre-requisite hypothesis is no longer generally accepted as a theory of metaphor comprehension. staunton the language experience hypothesis a theory which has been more widely adopted is the 'language experience hypothesis', which was proposed by ortony, turner and larson-shapiro (1985). according to this view, the ability to comprehend and use figurative language develops gradually through meaningful exposure to this type of language. as they grow older, children have more exposure to figurative language in both its spoken and written forms, in a variety of contexts. they also have more opportunity to test out their understanding through their own use of such language (nippold, taylor and baker, 1996). the finding of a number of studies that the depth of comprehension of metaphor increases as children grow older might be explained by this theory (asch and nerlove, 1960, cited in billow, 1977; gentner and stuart, 1983, cited in winner, 1988; pollio and pickens, 1980; pollio and pollio, 1979; winner, rosenthiel and gardner, 1976). another implication of the language experience theory is that metaphors which occur more often in the language (i.e. frozen rather than novel metaphors) should be easier for children to comprehend than those which have less frequent usage. this notion was explored in studies by pollio and pollio (1979) and pollio and pickens (1980), involving children between the ages of 8 and 17 years. both studies reported greater comprehension of the frozen than the novel metaphors at every age level, with comprehension of both types of metaphor increasing steadily as the children got older. in addition to the novelty of the metaphorical expression, researchers have examined the influence on children's comprehension of factors such as the type of task used to measure comprehension, the type of metaphoric similarity involved and the complexity of the syntactic form of the metaphor. the findings of research into these aspects will be described in the next sections. 26 riddle use and comprehension 1.4.2 measurement of comprehension winner (1988: 45) concludes from a review of studies into metaphor comprehension that the method used to measure comprehension, 'dramatically affects the level of comprehension revealed'. the contradictory findings of various studies as to when metaphor comprehension emerges have been attributed in large part to the differences in the demands of the tasks used. the two tasks which are most frequently used to assess metaphor comprehension are multiple choice measures (e.g. gardner, 1974; nippold, leonard and kail, 1984) and explanation or paraphrasing tasks (e.g. asch and nerlove, 1960, cited in billow, 1977; smith, 1976; winner, rosenthiel and gardner, 1976). multiple-choice tasks require children to choose from a set of possible meanings or pictures showing the meanings of the metaphors presented. however, these tasks may either underor overestimate children's comprehension of the metaphors, depending on the type and range of options presented (winner, 1988). tasks in which children are asked to paraphrase metaphors offer insight into the degree and nature of their understanding (nippold and rudzinski, 1993). the possibility of over-estimating a child's level of comprehension is also greatly diminished. such tasks have also been criticised, however, due to the metalinguistic demands involved (vosniadou, 1987). the finding of some studies that metaphor comprehension only emerges in late childhood might therefore be attributed to the significant meta1inguistic demands of the tasks used (e.g. billow, 1975; cometa and eson, 1978; smith, 1976). a study by gardner (1974) compared the performance of children aged between 3 and 11 years on a multiple-choice picture task and an explanation task. the level of accuracy using the receptive condition was found to be greater than with the paraphrasing task. similarly, a study by winner, rosenthiel and gardner (1976) involved the use of a paraphrasing measure and a written multiple-choice task. children who had difficulty paraphrasing the metaphors were often found to have performed well on the multiple-choice measure. pollio and pickens (1980) reported parallel findings in their study. in evaluating and comparing the findings of various studies, it is therefore essential that the demands of the measures used be taken into account. 27 staunton 1.4.3 types of similarity a factor which is thought to have a large influence on children's comprehension of metaphor is the type of similarity on which the metaphor is based. winner (1988) cites the findings of (unpublished) studies by gentner and stuart (1983), mendelsohn, gardner and winner (1981) and shantiris (1983), that nonsensory metaphors pose more difficulty for younger children than those grounded in sensory similarity. in the study by shantiris, children of different ages were presented with a series of sensory metaphors, nonsensory metaphors and anomalies. the children were asked to decide whether statements such as, 'eyes are marbles' (74) made sense, thereby indicating comprehension of the grounds. at all ages, children found psychologicalphysical metaphors the most difficult type to comprehend. however, relational metaphors proved no more difficult than sensory metaphors for any age group. a different finding regarding relational metaphors was reported by gentner and stuart, whose study involved children aged 5-6 years and 9-10 years. metaphors based on a sensory similarity (e.g. 'a cloud is like a marshmallow') and relational similarity (e.g. 'tree bark is like skin' [p. 74]) were presented to the children. when asked to explain the sensory metaphors, children aged 5-6 years performed as well as the older children. they had considerable difficulty explaining the metaphors grounded in a relational type of similarity. mendelsohn et al. (1981, cited in winner, 1988) used a multiplechoice task to probe for comprehension of sensory and nonsensory metaphors in children aged 6 years and above. children of all ages were found to have more difficulty with metaphors grounded in relational or psychological-physical similarity than those involving sensory grounds. a study by nippold, leonard and kail (1984) contradicted this finding in relation to psychological-physical metaphors, however. their study involved children aged 7 and 9 years who were again presented with a multiple-choice task. they reported no difference in the ease of understanding between sensory and psychological-physical metaphors. kogan, connor, gross and fava (1980, cited in winner, 1988) reported similar findings when a basic picture matching task, with minimal linguistic demands was used. 28 riddle use and comprehension literal interpretation of nonsensory metaphor studies where explanation tasks are used offer insight into the nature of younger children's interpretation of nonsensory metaphor. the finding that younger children tend to interpret nonsensory metaphors in a literal (physical) sense has been commonly reported. an early study by asch and nerlove (1960, cited in billow, 1977) investigated the comprehension of dual-function terms such as 'hard', 'sweet' and 'warm' in children aged between 3 and 12 years. whilst the preschool children comprehended the dual-function adjectives in reference to physical objects, they showed no understanding that people could also be described in this way. the 5and 6-year-olds in the study understood that the adjectives could be applied to people, but only in a physical sense (e.g. 'cold' people were understood to be people who were not warmly dressed). only between the ages of 7 and 10 years did the children show awareness that the terms could be applied in a psychological sense to people. and only the 11and 12-year-olds (who understood the metaphors with a level of 96% accuracy) were consistently able to verbalise the metaphorical fink between the two senses of the terms. a study by winner, rosenthiel and gardner (1976) also involved the presentation of dual-function terms, but in predicative metaphors. they report that 30% of 8-year-olds and 48% of 10year-olds were able to explain the psychological meaning of the terms. prior to this, the children tended to interpret the metaphors literally (e.g. the description of a prison guard as a 'hard rock' was interpreted as meaning that he had hard, tough muscles). the finding that nonsensory similarity seems to pose more difficulty for children was explained by keil (1979, 1985, cited in winner, 1988) in terms of a lack of 'domain knowledge'. the term 'domain' is used here to refer to the categories by which humans beings organise their world (such as furniture, modes of transport or personality traits). 'domain knowledge' therefore refers to the knowledge which a child has about the properties and functions of things within a particular domain and about the boundaries of that domain. keil was of the view that in order for a child to comprehend a metaphor, he or she must be not only be familiar with the referents of the topic and vehicle, but must also have knowl 29 staunton edge of the two domains to which the topic and vehicle belong. keil's hypothesis that knowledge of the world increases as children get older was supported by the findings of the study by gentner and stuart (1983, cited in winner, 1988) mentioned earlier. prior to the presentation of the metaphor task used in their study, gentner and stuart asked each child to describe the items mentioned in the metaphors (e.g. tree bark, skin etc.). the list of properties which the children gave for each item was found to increase considerably with age. the results of keil's own study (1985, cited in winner, 1988: 8283), which involved children between 5 and 9 years of age, suggest that metaphor comprehension 'emerges on a domain-by-domain basis'. once the children understood a metaphor involving items from the two domains, such as the properties of plants applied to ideas (e.g. 'the idea bloomed'), they also showed understanding of most other metaphors involving items from those domains. 1.4.5 syntactic form a small number of studies have investigated the influence on comprehension of the syntactic form of a metaphor (nippold, leonard and kail, 1984; renolds and ortony, 1980; winner, engel and gardner, 1980). the study by nippold, leonard and kail (1984) involved children aged 7 and 9 years. equal numbers of predicative metaphors (involving only one topic and one vehicle) and proportional metaphors were presented to the children. proportional metaphors contain two topics and two vehicles and involve the use of analogy at an underlying level (e.g. 'the bird's nest was a piggybank that had no coins' [p. 198]). the researchers found that the children had more difficulty understanding the proportional metaphors than the predicative ones. the 9-year-olds also displayed a greater level of comprehension that than the 7-yearold children. an earlier study by winner, engel and gardner (1980) (involving children aged 6, 7 and 9 years) compared ease of comprehension of five different syntactic presentations of metaphor. the researchers had firstly hypothesised that the rewriting of a predicate metaphors in the form of a simile (a comparison involving the 30 riddle use and comprehension term 'like') would facilitate comprehension, by highlighting that a comparison was being used. secondly, a similar prediction was made in relation to topicless metaphors (in which the vehicle is stated but the topic is only implied). topicless metaphors were rewritten both in the from of an explicit analogy (e.g. 'a picture frame surrounds a picture and ________ surrounds a field' [p. 26]) and in the form of a question (which the researchers labelled a 'riddle', e.g. 'what is like a picture frame but surrounds a field?' [26]). the study found that the original and simile versions of the predicative metaphors were equally difficult for the children to comprehend. the analogy forms of the topicless metaphors were also no more accessible to the children than their original forms. however, the 'riddle' forms were found to be easier to comprehend than the topicless metaphors. the predicative metaphors were also more difficult to comprehend than the topicless metaphors. a study by renolds and ortony (1980), involving a more naturalistic task, similarly reported no difference in the ease of comprehension between predicative metaphors and similes. whilst it can therefore be concluded that syntactic form may have some influence on the degree of comprehension of metaphor, further research is needed to determine the exact nature of this relationship. 1.5 researcher's questions to date, there is only a small body of research covering the development of riddling skills in children. few studies have documented the development of riddle use and it would appear that none of the available studies have examined children's ability to answer riddles. the research into riddle comprehension has mainly involved the use of grammatically-based joking riddles, as opposed to metaphorically-based, 'true riddles'. these are all areas, therefore, which are in need of further investigation. most of the studies which have examined children's comprehension and use of riddles and metaphors have reported no significant difference in the performance of boys and girls in these areas. the use of both quantitative and qualitative types of comparison might therefore be useful in revealing any subtle differences in the performance of the two groups. 31 1) are there developmental patterns in the types of answer which children give to metaphoric riddle questions? staunton after reviewing the literature, the following questions were posed by the researcher in order to explore the development of metaphoric riddling in irish school-aged children: 2) does the ability to comprehend metaphoric riddles (i.e. riddle question and answer sequences) improve with age? 3) is there a developmental pattern in the types of riddles which children use? 4) are there differences in the developmental patterns displayed by boys and girls in riddle comprehension and use? methodology 2.1 purpose the purposes of this study were 1) to investigate the riddle-answering skills of irish schoolaged children 2) to investigate the development of comprehension of metaphoric riddles in irish school-aged children 3) to investigate the effect of different types of metaphoric similarity on comprehension 4) to investigate the development of children's own use of riddles 5) to investigate the effect of gender differences on the results of the study. 32 riddle use and comprehension 2.2 design a linguistic approach was used in the research study, incorporating elements of an experimental design. 2.3 preliminary procedure selection of metaphor-based riddles twelve riddles which involve the use of metaphor (see appendix 1) were chosen from a wide selection of popular children's riddle and joke books. table 1: criteria in selecting riddles the riddles chosen ·involved the use of metaphor to provide either ambiguity in either the 'question' or 'answer' of the riddle. ·occurred frequently in the riddle and joke books and were therefore more likely to be familiar to the children. ·included six riddles involving the use of metaphor based on sensory grounds and six involving nonsensory grounds. ·involved a simple 'question and answer' format. construction of probe ouestions questions to be used in order to test for comprehension of the twelve metaphor-based riddles were constructed. the use of these questions was based on the assumption that children who had fully understood a metaphoric riddle would be able to state the similarities or 'ground' which formed the basis for that metaphor. for example, the metaphoric riddle, 'what has legs but cannot walk? (a table) ' is based on a shared physical characteristic which has been noticed between a table and a human being (or animal). the ground in the case of this metaphor is the notion that a table and a 33 staunton human being both have legs. the probe questions which were constructed to test for comprehension of the riddles 1-12 therefore looked for the grounds of the metaphors involved and took the form, 'how is x like y?', where the items mentioned were those involved in the metaphorical comparison. the task for the children is to verbalise the grounds which have already been implied in riddles 1-12 (presented previously). 2.4 children involved in the study educational setting the children involved in this study attended either: (a) an all-female primary school or (b) a mixed-sex primary school. both schools are located in an urban setting, are english-speaking schools and are judged to be similar in socio-economic status. preliminary introduction a letter of introduction was sent to each school prior to the commencement of the study, along with an explanation of its aims and a description of the procedure involved. discussions were then held with the principal teachers, outlining the selection criteria for the children involved. a letter explaining the aims of the study and the procedure involved was sent to the parents or guardians of children identified as suitable for participation in the study. permission for their children to be involved in the study and for audio-taping of the interviews was obtained in writing from interested parents and guardians. selection of children for the study a list of children who were suitable for involvement the study was compiled by each class teacher. from this, children who were within the average age range for the particular class level (including both boys and girls) were identified. parental permission for possible participation in the study was obtained for the children in 34 riddle use and comprehension this group. children were then chosen at random from the group by the researcher for participation in the study. twenty-four children participated in all. six children were chosen from each of the 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th classes. equal numbers of boys and girls were chosen from each of the class levels. table 2: selection criteria the children involved in the study ·were within the average age range for their class levels. ·were judged by their teachers to be developing normally and to be of average ability. ·had no reported speech and language difficulties or difficulties with written language. ·had the written permission of their parents or guardians to take part in the study. table 3: class levels and average age ranges class 3rd class 4th class 5th class 6th class age range for average age range the class level 8yrs 2m to 8yrs 8m 9yrs 3m to 9yrs 9m 10yrs 1 m to 10yrs 7m 11 yrs 0m to 11yrs 6m 8yrs 0m to 9yrs 4m 8yrs 11m to 10yrs 2m 9yrs 10m to 10yrs 11m 10yrs 10m to 12 yrs 8m table 4: details of the children selected class 3rd class 4th class 5th class 6th class child no. 1-6 7-12 13-18 19-24 average age 8 years 5 months 9 years 5 months 10 years 3 months 11 years 4months 35 staunton 2.5 procedure the procedure was informal in nature and essentially took the form of a riddling session between the researcher and each child. there were three main tasks involved in the procedure, however the order of presentation of these tasks was frequently altered depending on the interests of the children involved. for example, if a child was especially eager to begin telling riddles at the start of the interview, then the third task was completed first. the children were interviewed individually by the researcher. each interview was audio-recorded for later analysis. the interview began with the researcher introducing herself to the child and explaining that she was doing a project which was looking at the riddles which children use. the riddle tasks were then introduced with the following explanation: 'i'm going to tell you some riddles to see if you've heard any of them before and then afterwards you can tell me any riddles that you know. some riddles that you might have heard before are ones like, 'why did the chicken cross the road? (to get to the other side) 'or 'what goes up when the rain comes down? (an umbrella)' or 'what has hands but no arms? (a clock) '. the child was given a chance to answer the introductory riddles (above) if he or she was able. otherwise, the answers to the riddles were given by the researcher. further examples of riddles were given if necessary, until the child understood the 'question and answer' nature of the riddles. three tasks were then presented to the child: task 1: listening to riddles the first task (task i) involved the presentation of the metaphoric riddles. the task for the child was to listen to riddles 1-12 (see appendix 1) and their riddle answers. the children could also attempt to answer the riddles if they so wished the presentation of each riddlequestion was followed by a pause, during which the child had an opportunity to answer the riddle or to respond, 'i don't know'. children who attempted to answer the riddle were encouraged to state why they had given that answer. the researcher 36 riddle use and comprehension then responded, 'that’s very good. another answer that i was going to say was. . . " and provided the child with the target response. similarly, children who did not attempt to answer the riddle were provided with the target response. task 2: responding to probes this task was introduced with the instruction, 'i'm going to give you some more questions now which are a bit the last ones. you listen to them and try to think of the answers '. the questions which had been constructed to probe the children's comprehension of the riddles were then presented in random order (i.e. in a different order to their corresponding riddles). the children were encouraged to listen to each question and try to think of the answer. some of the terms which were involved in the nonsensory riddles (7-12) were in more abstract than those involved in the sensory riddles (1-6). the depth of the children's comprehension of the metaphors involved in riddles 7-12 was therefore probed further by encouraging the children who gave correct answers to elaborate further. prompts such as, 'can you tell me a little bit more about that? 'or, 'what is a bright person like?', were therefore used to probe for full understanding of the non sensory metaphors. task 3: riddle-telling finally, the children were asked, 'do you know any riddles a bit like the ones that i've told you? ' and the riddles which they told were recorded riddles which children contributed at any other point during the interview were also recorded for later analysis. 2.6 analysis protocol the interviews were later transcribed from the audiotape. the responses collected from the children on each of the three tasks were analysed both quantitatively and qualitatively, where applicable. patterns which emerged in the style of answering on all of the tasks were recorded and described. 37 staunton results 3.1 introduction this study sought to investigate the development of children's ability to both comprehend and pose metaphoric riddles. the following questions in particular were investigated: 1) are there developmental patterns in the types of answer which children give to metaphoric riddle questions? 2) does the ability to comprehend metaphoric riddles increase with age? 3) is there a developmental sequence in the types of riddles which children use? 4) are there differences in the developmental patterns displayed by boys and girls in riddle comprehension and use? 3.2 development of the ability to answer metaphoric riddles although the main aim of task i (where riddles 1-12 were presented) was simply to allow the children to listen to the riddles, the informal nature of the interview meant that many children attempted to answer the riddles also. the task involved in answering the riddles which were based on nonsensory grounds (7-12) was much different to that involved in answering the sensory riddles (1-6). in compiling the list of riddles prior to testing (from riddle and joke books), it became apparent that, in general, riddles based on nonsensory grounds only contain the use of metaphorical language to provide ambiguity in their answers, rather than in the riddle questions. in order for the children to answer riddles 7-12, they were therefore required to have made use of metaphorical language in their answers. from the sample of 216 answers to these non sensory riddles, only two answers were judged as possibly completing the riddles. a large proportion of the other answers were 'don't know' responses. analysis of the children's answers therefore focused on their responses to the riddles (1-6) involv 38 riddle use and comprehension ing sensory metaphors, which are more typical of 'true' riddles. the answers given by the children to the true riddles were analysed by the tester and classified in three ways. the answers were firstly considered to be 'target' or canonical answers if they were the same as, or very similar to the answers which had been found in the riddle and joke books. secondly, children in all of the age groups gave a number of 'alternative' answers to the riddles, which had not been found in any of the riddle or joke books. all of the alternative answers given by the children were judged as fitting the descriptions given in the riddles to some degree, although some were deemed more suitable than others. this finding will be described in more detail below. the final group of answers were 'don't know' responses. an examination of the results firstly from a quantitative point of view revealed some possible developmental patterns. the overall accuracy of the children in supplying the target answers to the riddles was found to be greater amongst the older children as compared with the younger groups. however, the 8-year-old group were found to have given more target answers than the 9-yearolds. whilst the 9-year-old group did not give the target answer for any of the riddles, they were the group most likely to give an 'alternative' type of answer to the riddles. the proportion of target answers given increased greatly after 9 years, to just over a quarter of the answers of the 10-years-olds and two-fifths of the answers given by the 11-year-olds. about half of the answers given by the 8and 9-year-olds were classified as 'alternative' answers. the incidence of alternative-type answers decreased overall amongst the two older groups, with just under a quarter of the answers of the 10-year-olds being of this type. the level was slightly higher amongst the 11-year-olds, at about one-third of answers. the proportion of 'don't know' responses gradually increased, from just over two-fifths of answers at 8 years to half of the answers at 10-years-of-age. the proportion of 'don't know' answers was lowest amongst the 11-year-olds (the oldest group), and this was also the group who were most likely to respond with the target answer. 39 staunton analysis of the alternative answers a second type of analysis was also used to examine the 'alternative' riddle answers generated by the children. this involved the examination of the answers in terms of their ability to satisfy the condition known as a 'partially obscured semantic fit' which exists between the riddle question or 'image' and its answer (scott, 1965, cited in kallen, 1981: 4). in order to fulfill this condition, the riddle answer firstly had to belong to a semantic field opposite to that of the riddle image. the second condition which the children's answers had to fulfill was that of being judged a prototypical example of a member of the particular semantic category. the final criteria which was used was that the riddle answer had to share some obvious, minor characteristic with the item in the riddle image in order to complete the metaphorical comparison. the first kinds of answers which the children gave to the riddles were considered to be 'anomalies' because they did not strictly fit the description given in the riddle image, even in literal terms. there were just a couple of instances of such answers, both of which were given by 9-year-old children. these answers belonged to the same superordinate category as the item implied in the riddle image (i.e. animate) and were therefore not considered to have a great degree of obscurity as answers. however, in the case of each of the responses of this type, the children had created an explanation to make the answer fit the description in the riddle image, as can be observed from this example: image: what can howl but has no mouth? answer and explanation: 'a frog or a toad, because a toad can let out a big noise and their mouths are different to ours '. just over a fifth of the answers given by the children were those which were considered to be 'literal' answers as they fitted the description used in the image in a literal sense, and there was no attempt to give an answer which had originally been obscured through the use of metaphor. the riddle answer was therefore from the same category (animate) as the riddle image in each case. this type of answer was given with the greatest frequency amongst the 8and 9-year-olds, with few instances amongst the older children. examples include the following: 40 riddle use and comprehension image: what has legs but cannot walk? answer: tadpoles. image: what has eyes but cannot see? answer: a bat. image: what goes around all day with its tongue sticking out and sits by the bed at night? answers: a dog, a cat. answers of a similar type to those above involved the use of a feature named in the riddle image, put in a situation so that it fitted the description in the image as in this example: image: what has teeth but no mouth? answers: teeth in a box. the third group of answers were those which came from the same superordinate category or set as was implied in the riddle image (i.e. animate), but involved some change of state so that the human or animal was made to fit the description in the image, as in these answers: image: what has legs but cannot walk? answers: a person that has a spell put on them. image: what has eyes but cannot see? answers: a dead fish. just over one-tenth of the answers in the study were of this nature and were given by children from all age groups. examples of the changes of state described include the use of magic, the death of the animate entity or the existence of a disabling condition. the remaining types of answers given in the study were those which were considered to have some degree of validity as conventional riddle answers, as they came from an opposite category to the item implied in the image (inanimate) and were obscured to some extent. however, the requirement of a 'partially obscured semantic fit' was judged to be fulfilled more readily by some of these types of answers than others. some of the answers given were therefore judged as being more suitable in terms of completing the riddle than others. the fourth overall group of answers were labeled 'replica-type answers' due to the fact that they involved the naming of an object which was considered to be a representation of a living thing. these answers were therefore considered to be partially obscured in that they came from the opposite superordinate category to the human or animal implied in the 41 staunton riddle (i.e. they were inanimate objects). they were also man-made or 'cultural' objects, as opposed to 'natural' objects, according to köngäsmaranda's (1974) method of classification. however, they were not considered prototypical examples of inanimate objects as they were generally objects which bore a likeness to a real living creature or part of a living creature (e.g. a teddy bear can be thought of as an inanimate representation of a real bear). these answers accounted for about onesixth of the responses given by the children and occurred with greatest frequency amongst the 9and 10-year-olds and included the following: image: what has legs but cannot walk? answer: a doll or a teddy; a gymnastic horse (i.e. a wooden horse used in gymnastics). image: what has eyes but cannot see? answer: joke glasses (with eyes drawn on them) cats' eyes on the road a similar group of answers were those which, although they were not considered to represent a living thing, were considered to be linked very closely to the animate item implied in the riddle image. these answers came from the inanimate category but were not considered to be obscured to a degree sufficient to provide good metaphor in the riddle. for example, the answer, 'trousers', given for the riddle image, 'what has legs but cannot walk? " was considered to be partially obscured because the item is inanimate, but was judged to be too closely related to a human leg, as a trouser leg actually fits over a human leg. it was therefore not considered a good example of a metaphorical renaming. similarly, the answer given by two children to the riddle image, 'what runs but never walks?' was 'a runner' (running shoe). such an answer does not involve a metaphorical renaming, and instead involves the use of a name closely related to the action named in the riddle image. overall, there were only a few answers in this fifth group and they were given only by the 8and 9-year-old children in the study. the sixth and largest group of answers in the study (accounting for just over two-fifths of responses given) were those which were considered to have most validity as answers for each of the riddles. they involved the naming of items which belonged to the inanimate set and which could also be considered to involve good examples of metaphor. these answers involved the use of meta 42 riddle use and comprehension phor of two kinds. firstly, the 8and 9-year-olds gave answers which were characteristic of 'radical polysemy'. such answers involved the creative metaphorical renamings of an object or an action by the children, based on some type of similarity which they had noticed. this is illustrated in the following examples: image: what has teeth but no mouth? answers: a piano; a needle (one tooth). image: what goes around all day with its tongue sticking out and sits by your bed at night? answers: (the safety sticker on) a lamp; your tie. the remaining answers involved the use of 'conventional polysemy' as they were metaphorical terms which are already present in the language (e.g. the 'eye' of a needle, the 'running' of an engine). almost a third of the answers given in the study were of this type and their use was most common amongst the wand 11-year-olds. the two meanings of terms involving conventional polysemy are intuitively thought of by native speakers as being related. it was this type of metaphor which was in use in the original 'target' answers for the riddles, such as the 'leg' of a table or the 'howling' of the wind. these answers therefore tended also to involve more prototypical examples of inanimate objects than the other types of answers which were given (such as the 'repilca-type answers'). these answers included the following: image: what has teeth but no mouth? answers: a trap; a saw. image: what has eyes but cannot see? answers: a needle; a pin (meaning 'a needle '). image: what runs but never walks? answers: your nose; a car engine; a tape recorder. the children as a group were judged to be more successful in providing answers which fulfilled the condition of a 'partially obscured semantic fit' for the first four of the six riddles based on sensory similarity. the contrast involved in the target answers for riddles 1-4 was that between an animate entity and an inanimate one, but more specifically between a human being and a cultural object. this contrast was made in a number of the answers which 43 staunton were suggested by the children. however, the contrast involved in riddles 5 and 6 (when the original answers are used) was that between an animate entity (human or animal) and a natural object (i.e. water, the wind). the answers which the children suggested, although valid in that they were from the inanimate set, an belonged to the set of cultural objects, such as the following answers: image: what runs but never walks? answers: a car engine; a tape recorder. image: what can howl but has no mouth? answers: a radio; the alarm system (burglar alarm); a hairdryer; an alarm clock; the brakes on a car. the set of natural objects did not feature in any of the answers given by the children in the study. summary: ability to answer true riddles overall, the children's accuracy in giving 'target' or canonical answers increased with age. the only exception to this pattern was amongst the 9-year-old children who gave less target answers than the 8-year-olds. children aged 8 and 9 years were also the most likely to give a response other than the target answer. the 9-yearolds also gave the most alternative answers of any of the groups. the 11-year-olds were the group least likely to give a 'don't know' response and most likely to give the target response. the riddle answers classified as 'alternative' answers were analysed in terms of their ability to complete the condition known as a 'partially obscured semantic fit' between the riddle image and the answer. overall, the 10and 11-year-olds, were more likely to give an answer which was from a category opposite to that of the item implied in the riddle image. the prototypicality of the riddle answer which belonged to an opposite category was also greatest amongst the 10and 11-year-olds. 'literal' types of answers were characteristic of children aged 8 years, while 'replica-type' answers occured with greatest frequency amongst the 9 and 10-year-olds. the answers judged as metaphorical which were given by the 8and 9-year-olds tended to be more novel than those of the 10 and 11-year-olds, who made use of metaphors already sanctioned in the language. 44 riddle use and comprehension the patterns which emerged overall in the types of answer given by the children at different age levels are summarised in table 5 below. table 5: the types of answers given by the children in each age group to the riddles based on sensory similarity (n = 24). 8 years 9 years 10 years 11 years target answers 11% 0% 28% 39% alternative 47% 53% 22% 30.5% 'don't know' responses 44% 47% 50% 30.5% 3.3 development of the ability to comprehend metaphoric riddles the method used to test for comprehension of metaphoric riddles (i.e. riddle question and answer sequences) consisted of two tasks. the children were firstly posed twelve metaphoric riddle questions and given their answers (task 1). they were later asked randomly ordered questions based on the riddles which looked for the ground of each metaphor (i.e. the children had to state the type of similarity mentioned in the riddles earlier). this was task 2. the 'probe' questions were of the form, 'how is x like v?' or 'how could x be like y?', where the items mentioned were the topic and vehicle involved in the metaphorical comparison. as stated earlier, the use of these questions was based on the assumption that children who had fully understood a metaphoric riddle would later be able to recall the similarities or ground which formed the basis for that metaphor. children who were able to state the grounds of the metaphoric riddles were therefore judged to have understood these riddles. in examining the results of this task, some developmental patterns emerged. overall, the number of children judged as being able to recall the grounds of the metaphoric riddles on task 2 was seen to increase with age. this therefore suggests increased comprehension of metaphors in the context of riddles amongst the older children as compared with the younger ones. the answers which 45 staunton the children gave on this task were analysed as either being correct (i. e. the target response), an alternative response, or a 'don't know' response. a comparison of the results indicates that the greatest difference in performance between children in consecutive age groups is between the 8and 9-year-olds. the 8-year-olds were able to recall the grounds of the riddles with 72% accuracy compared with the 80% level of accuracy achieved by the 9-year-olds. however, the 75% level of accuracy achieved by the 10-year-olds was lower than that of the 9-year-old children. the 11-year-olds displayed the greatest level of comprehension and were able to recall the grounds of 83% of the riddles. the number of' don't know' responses was found to decrease overall amongst the older children. whilst just under a fifth of the 8-year-olds gave a 'don't know' response, only one-tenth of the 11-year-olds gave such a response. however, the number of 'alternative' responses given was greatest amongst the 9and 10-year-aids. this finding is described in more detail in section 3.3.2. summary: comprehension of riddles involving metaphor the ability to comprehend the metaphoric similarity involved in the riddles presented was observed overall to increase with age, as judged through the use of a 'probe' task. only the performance of the 10-yearolds was not in keeping with this pattern. the greatest increase in the ability to comprehend the riddles appeared to occur between the ages of 8 and 9 years. the 11-year-olds achieved the greatest level of accuracy overall in recalling the grounds of the metaphoric riddles. a quantitative summary of the overall patterns of responding on the task probing for comprehension is given in table 6 below. table 6: types of response given by children in different age groups on the task testing for comprehension of the metaphoric riddles (n = 24). expected explanation alternative answer 'don't know' response 8 years 72 % 10% 18% 9 years 80% 17% 3% 10 years 11 years 75% 83 12.5% 8.3% 12.5% 8.3% 46 riddle use and comprehension 3.3.1 the effect of type of similarity on the comprehension of metaphoric riddles the riddles presented to the children were of two types (see appendix 1). the first six were metaphoric riddles which demanded that the listener view the topic of each metaphor in terms of its vehicle, based on shared sensory grounds. the topic and vehicle are linked in these sensory metaphors due to similarities of appearance (e.g. the physical appearance of the leg of a table likened to that of the leg of a person), of sound (an animal's howling likened to the howling of the wind), or of movement (the movement of a person likened to the movement of water). the remaining riddles (7-12) also involved metaphorical uses of language, though the similarities between the topic and vehicle were of a nonsensory nature. the nonsensory metaphors were of either a psychological-physical type (riddles 7 and 8) or a relational type (riddles 9-12). the most striking pattern when comparing the overall performance on the task which probed for comprehension of the riddles (task 2) was the difference in the children's ability as a group to comprehend sensory as opposed to nonsensory riddles. examining the results firstly from a quantitative point of view, the children were shown to comprehend the sensory riddles (1-6) with between 75% and 88% accuracy overall (as judged by the use of the probe question task). however, their level of comprehension of the nonsensory metaphors involved in riddles 7-12 was lower, ranging between 59%-78% overall, as judged by the same task. a comparison of the performance of each age group on the probe question task indicates firstly that there were no large differences amongst the age groups in their level of comprehension of the riddles involving sensory metaphor. the 8and 9-year-olds were judged to have comprehended the sensory metaphors with an 86% level of accuracy, and this increased very slightly for the 11-year-olds. the performance of the 10-year-olds on this task (who comprehended 75% of the sensory metaphoric riddles), however, was not in keeping with the performance of the other age groups. secondly, the correct answers which were given on the probe question task for the sensory riddles were found to be qualitatively very similar across the age groups. 47 staunton a more noticeable pattern emerged in the abilities of the children to verbalise the similarities involved in the nonsensory metaphors. a comparison of the results from the younger children with those of the older group reveals both quantitative and qualitative differences on this task. the 8-year-olds verbalised the similarities involved in the nonsensory metaphors with a 59% level of accuracy (as measured by the use of the probes on task 2). this level increased considerably to 75% for both the 9and 10-yearold children, and was slightly higher for the 11-year-olds, at 78%. a further pattern emerged in the depth of comprehension of the nonsensory riddles which was indicated by the responses given by the children. many of the younger children (8and 9-year-olds) correctly recalled the similarity which was earlier implied in each riddle and were therefore deemed to have understood the metaphor involved. in the case of riddle 7, for example, the question which probed for comprehension of the nonsensory metaphor was, 'how could a person be a bit like the sun?', to which the accepted answer was 'if they're bright' or 'they could both be bright'. although it was assumed once they had given the correct answer that the younger children were aware that the terms could be applied in two senses, their explanations (when prompted further) were generally less accurate and less complete than those of the older group (10and 11-year-olds). in the case of the riddles involving psychological-physical metaphors (which involved the dual-function adjectives 'bright' and 'hard'), the 8and 9-year-olds tended to verbalise only the physical sense of the terms in their explanations, as opposed to both senses. examples of such explanations include the following: question: how could a person be a bit like the sun? child (8 years of age): 'if they were bright '. (further prompt): '/f someone's bright, their teeth would be all shiny'. question: how could a person be a bit like concrete? child (9 years of age): 'because they could be hard as well'. (further prompt): 'like, cement would be really hard and a hard person can hurt if they bump into you '. the explanations given by the 10-year-olds more frequently contained reference to both the psychological and physical mean 48 riddle use and comprehension ings involved in the metaphors than those of the younger children. only the 11-year-olds who had given the target answer were consistently able to articulate the fact that the terms could be used to refer to both an object (in the literal sense) and a person (in the psychological sense). responses which were more typical of the older children include the following: question: how could a person be a bit like the sun? child (10 years of age): 'they could be bright '. (further prompt): 'well, the sun could be bright because it shines a lot, but a bright person would be really clever and good at their work. and they can kind of shine like that because they're so clever…' question: how could a person be a bit like concrete? child (11 years of age): 'both of them could be sort of hard'. (further prompt): 'something might happen to them and they would take their anger out on other people and stuff. the ability to verbalise both senses of the relational metaphors involved in riddles 9-12 appeared overall to be present slightly earlier in this group of children than the ability to explain the psychologicalphysical metaphors. the ability to articulate the relationship between both meanings of the relational metaphors was indicated in some of the responses given by the 8and 9-year-old children. for example, the following responses were given by children in this age group: question: how can time be a bit like a bird? child (8 years of age): 'it can fly and a bird can fly'. (prompt): 'when time flies it means that it goes really fast '. question: how could a person be a bit like a broken up jigsaw? child (9 years of age): 'a broken up jigsaw falls to pieces and the person could fall to pieces because they're sort of sad and want to do something but they can't do it '. children in all the age groups who were unable to verbalise the similarity involved in the relational metaphors tended to give a 'don't know' response, rather than an incomplete or inaccurate response. by 10 and 11-years-of-age, the children who gave correct responses to the questions probing for comprehension of the 49 staunton relational metaphors were consistently able to articulate the grounds of these metaphors. the following examples are typical of such explanations: question: how could a telephone be a bit like a person who’s going to get married soon? child (10 years of age): 'it could be engaged '. (prompt): 'if a telephone is engaged it means that it s busy because someone is talking on it when you're trying to ring them '. (prompt): 'the person who s engaged is busy because they're going to get married to someone soon '. question: how could a person be a bit like a sweeping brush? child (11 years of age): 'because they could be pushed around'. (prompt): 'if someone gets pushed around it means that people don't respect them or take any notice of them. and people make a sweeping brush clean up by pushing it around the floor '. summary: the influence of the type of similarity on comprehension riddles involving a sensory type of metaphoric similarity were found to be more easily comprehended by children from every age group than those involving nonsensory similarity. the level of comprehension of the sensory riddles was found to vary little with age. the 10-year-olds, however, achieved a lower level of accuracy than the younger children for this type of riddle. comprehension of riddles involving a nonsensory type of similarity increased greatly between 8 and 9 years, but varied little beyond that age. the older children in the study (10and 11-year-olds) indicated a greater depth of comprehension of the nonsensory metaphors, when elaborating on their responses to the probes, than the younger groups. overall, the ability to verbalise both meanings of the relational type of metaphor was observed to emerge earlier (at 8 or 9 years) than in the case of the psychological-physical type of comparison (at 10 years). the accuracy of each age group in answering the probe questions for the sensory and nonsensory riddles is summarised in table 7 below. 50 riddle use and comprehension table 7: accuracy of each age group in comprehending riddles involving sensory and nonsensory metaphors (as judged by the use of the probe question task) (n = 24). sensory metaphors nonsensory metaphors 8 years 86% 59% 9 years 86% 75% 10 years 75% 75% 11 years 88% 78% 3.3.2 the ability of the children to remark on types of similarity not implied in the riddles the ability to remark on a similarity between two entities might essentially be said to be the ability which is involved in creating a metaphor. the children in the oldest age group tested in this study (the 11-year-olds) were the most likely to verbalise the similarity involved in the riddles which they had heard earlier (for task 2), which was the desired response on this task. however, in analysing the results it also became apparent that a number of children who were unable to correctly recall this similarity were able to compare the items involved on other grounds which were not implied in the original riddles. a number of these responses were highly thoughtful and creative. additionally, some of the children who were able to recall the similarity implied earlier in the riddles added to their answers by giving other ways in which the items involved are similar. the incidence of the 'alternative' responses was greatest amongst the 9and 10-year-olds in the study. examples of these responses are given below. a further pattern emerged in the type of responses collected from the children from different age groups. the younger children in the group (8 years of age) were most likely to give creative responses which were based on a sensory similarity between the two items. the sensory similarities which were noted were either physical in nature or were similarities of movement. responses which were typical of the 8-yearolds include the following: 51 staunton question: how is a table a bit like a person? child (8 years of age): because they have legs. and the table stands still when the tvs on and so does a person. question: how is a potato a bit like a face? child (8 years of age): 'because sometimes it has dots somewhere. and supposing the dots got stuck together and another dot went up like a mouth, it would look like a face '. the creative responses of children aged between 9 and 11 years were more frequently based on a relational type of similarity than any other type of similarity. such responses remarked upon a similarity between two items in the ways in which they function (as opposed to a purely physical type of similarity). although the boundary separating relational and psychological-physical metaphors is often vague (winner, 1988), there appeared to be few examples of psychological-physical metaphors amongst the creative responses. examples of the responses grounded in a relational type of similarity include the following: question: how is a shoe a bit like a mouth? child (9 years of age): 'because you put your foot into it. it's like the shoe is kind of eating your foot. but if you take your foot out, it's not kind of slobbery or anything. and you can 'put your foot in it' if you 're talking and you say something you shouldn't say'. question: how could a person be a bit like the sun? child (10 years of age): 'if it 's bright and it gives off rays. you know, like if people are clever they kind of give their information out. and the sun sends affrays. a clever person gives rays of information out to other people, you know?' question: how could a person be a bit like a rock? child (11 years old): 'if they 're tough '. (prompt): a tough person might have their mind made up about something and it would be really hard to 'get around' them, to get them to change their mind. and if there's a really big rock in the middle of the road or somewhere then it would be really hard to get around that too '. in analysing the responses it also became clear that individual children were more likely than others to give creative responses. 52 riddle use and comprehension for example, the following responses were all given by a ten year-old girl: question: how is a table a bit like a person? child. 'they have legs and they make you eat. as soon as you see the table you kind of go, 'grand, this means food. just sit down, eat!' and i don't like vegetables or potatoes or anything like that and my mum makes me eat them '. question: how is a shoe a bit like a mouth? child: 'it has a tongue. and if it's old, it opens too much. you know the way if the shoe is old, the top of it comes apart and it opens. and when you get older you tend to talk a lot more, so your mouth opens more. like, my granny used to talk a lot... '. question: how can the wind be a bit like a wolf? child: 'it howls. and it can carry things, like frogs or fish. like sometimes you can have rain with a frog in it because of the way the water evaporates up into the cloud and the frogs could be taken up into the clouds with the fish '. summary: ability to comment on similarities not implied in the riddles children who were unable to recall the target type of similarity in the riddles presented earlier were sometimes able to compare the topic and vehicle based on other grounds. the incidence of these 'alternative' answers was greatest amongst the 9and 10-yearolds. the creative explanations given by the 8-year-olds were all based on a sensory type of similarity. children between the ages of 9 and 11 years were more likely to base their creative explanations on a relational type of nonsensory similarity. a couple of instances of explanations based on psychologicalphysical grounds were also recorded amongst the older children. overall, some children were more likely than others to make use of a creative type of response rather than a 'don't know' response. 3.4 development of the use of riddles the final task in the study involved the children being asked to tell the researcher any riddles which they knew. the riddles which 53 staunton were collected were analysed in terms of both their overall structure and the types of 'block element' involved, according to the methods of classification described by mcdowell (1979) in his study and by green and pepicello (1984). having been asked to supply the researcher with some riddles, many children supplied a number of jokes also, perhaps viewing the riddles and jokes as being linked through their common property of humour (see appendix 3). in collecting and analysing the sample of riddles it also became obvious, however, that the boundaries between what constitutes a riddle and a joke are not always well defined. for example, some of the responses which were classified by the researcher as 'jokes' made use of the device known as 'catching' which is a common feature of riddles. it must therefore be borne in mind when examining the results that the division between the concepts of 'joke' and 'riddle' is often an arbitrary one. whilst the jokes which the children supplied were not analysed in detail, a cursory examination indicates that metaphor was not used as a source of ambiguity in any of the jokes in this sample. analysis of riddle structure the riddles which were collected from the children in this study were firstly analysed in terms of their overall structure (according to the types of structure described by mcdowell, 1979: 66-68). three main types of structure featured in the present sample. over half the riddles and descriptive routines in this sample were based on attribution, which involves the use of many simple descriptive units, which are described as being 'stacked'. riddles of this type were most common amongst the 8-year-olds (though half of these were descriptive routines) and the 11-year-olds. examples of these riddles include the following: what’s got two legs, a medium-sized body and a very, very big tail? a peacock. (girl, aged 8 years) what do you call a chimp with a banana in each ear? anything you like—he can't hear you! (boy. aged 10 years) what do you call a cucumber with four doors? a slammer. (girl, aged 10 years) 54 riddle use and comprehension almost a third of the riddles in this study were concerned with causality and usually took the form of a question involving 'why' and answer beginning with 'because'. this type of structure was used most by the 8and 9-year-olds. examples of this nature included the following: why did the egg go around the world? because he wanted to be an eggs-plorer. (boy, aged 10 years). why did the boy bury his clock? because the batteries were dead. (girl, aged 12 years). riddles based on instrumentality did not feature in the sample collected in this current study. the two other riddle structures which mcdowell (1979) describes, take the form, 'what did the x say to the y?' and 'what kind of x is a p'. only the former construction featured in the present sample of riddles, whereby inanimate objects appear to be engaged in imaginary conversations and the two possible meanings of a well-known figure of speech are exploited. this structure was used in approximately a quarter of the riddles in the current study and its use decreased steadily amongst the older children. typical examples include the following: what did the big biscuit say to the little biscuit? 'crumbs '. (girl, aged 8 years). what did the skeleton say to the toilet? 'you can't get anything out of me '. (boy, aged 8 years). analysis of types of riddling device used the content of the riddles was analysed according to the types of block element or other riddling device which were used to provide ambiguity or confusion, using the descriptions of riddling devices given by green and pepicello (1984) and mcdowell (1979). the riddles were each assigned to what was judged to be the most appropriate category in each case, although in reality some of the riddles could be classified as belonging to more than one category. 55 staunton there were firstly some examples of descriptive routines given by an 8-year-old girl which, by definition, do not contain a block element and involve the description of one or more attributes of an object. the routines which this child supplied were as follows: what's big and has a very big appetite? an elephant. what can you get that can be different colours and very soft? a cushion. what’s got two legs, a medium-sized body and a very, very big tail? a peacock. what’s green and brown and has different colours all over it? a christmas tree. the rest of the riddles can be classified as 'riddles proper' as they all employed some type of device which was intended to cause confusion on the part of the riddlee. riddles involving block elements of both a grammatical and a metaphorical variety were collected in the study. of the grammatically-based riddles collected from the children in this study, only riddles which made use of phonological and morphological types of ambiguity were recorded. phonological ambiguity was the device used in a quarter of the riddles collected in the study and simple lexical ambiguity was the device used more often than any other by the children. included here were words which involved homophony in that they made use of a single phonetic string which had two unrelated meanings. riddles such as, 'what did the big chimney say to the little chimney? ('you're too young to be smoking) ' or 'why did the tortoise cross the road? (he wanted to get to the shell station) ' made use of two possible interpretations of a single word. the use of this type of ambiguity increased up to 10 years, but decreased sharply amongst the 11-yearolds. the second type of single-word homophony was that of conventional polysemy, in which the two meanings of the word are thought of as being related. this will be described along with the riddles involving the use of metaphor. also at the phonological level, there was just one example (given by a 8-year-old girl) of the use of ambiguity involving minimal pairs ('paws' and 'claus'), in the riddle: 'why does a lion like 56 riddle use and comprehension christmas? because of his sandy paws (santa claus) '. no other types of phonological ambiguity were featured in this sample of riddles. ambiguity at the morphological level accounted for about one-tenth of the riddles collected and was only used by the 9and 10year-olds in the study. the riddles involving morphological ambiguity were of three kinds. firstly, the riddle given by a 10-yearold girl, 'what’s black and white and read/red all over? (a newspaper) ' involves the use of homophony between the past participle morpheme of the verb 'to read' and the colour adjective 'red'. secondly, the riddle 'why did the egg go all around the world? (because he wanted to be an eggs-plorer) ' involves the deliberate confusion of the word 'egg' with the bound morpheme 'ex-'. thirdly, the 'pseudomorphological' type of ambiguity was also featured in the riddles, whereby an actual word is deliberately confused with part of another word (though not a morpheme). this type of ambiguity is involved in the riddle, 'what did the hat say to the scarf? (you stay here and hang around and i'll go on a head)', here, the word 'head' is deliberately confused with the phonological sequence 'head' in the word' ahead'. this second phonological string cannot be described as a morpheme, as it is not used as a unit which gives meaning in any other word. about a fifth of the riddles collected were metaphorically-based and these mainly involved the use of conventional polysemy (i.e., metaphors already sanctioned in the language). children from all of the age groups made use of this type of ambiguity in their riddles, although its use increased amongst the 10-year-olds and then decreased amongst the 11year-olds. examples of riddles which might be described as involving conventional polysemy include the following: why did the chicken cross the road? to show he had guts. (girl, 10 years). why did the burglar buy a surfboard? because he wanted to stay on the criminal wave. (boy, 10 years) why did the boy bury his clock? because the batteries were dead. (girl, 11 years). 57 staunton only a couple of instances of metaphorically-based riddles involving 'radical' or novel polsemy were recorded. one 8-yearold girl supplied a riddle which involves comparison (between an egg and a tennis ball) this riddle involved partial obscuring of the answer, but would be very difficult for the riddlee to guess, based on everyday knowledge of the world: what s round and yellow, laid in a nest but won't hatch like the rest? a tennis ball. a version of the classic example of the use of metaphor in riddling, the riddle of the sphinx, was supplied by one 9-year-old boy: what has four legs in the morning, two legs at midday and in the evening has three legs? answer: 'it’s the three stages of man. he crawls in the morning, then walks and then gets a walking stick '. whilst the expectation set up in the riddle image is that some type of mythical creature is being described, the metaphor in fact involves a comparison with the life stages of a human being. a feature which appeared almost exclusively in the riddles of the oldest children in the study (the 11-year-olds) was the use of anomaly. an early example of a riddle which might be said to involve anomaly, in the form of a contradiction based on knowledge of the world, was the following 'puzzle', given by an 8-year-old boy: greek riddle: this greek king came into his castle and these people came along and tried to take him. but before they could take him, he took poison. why did they still take him? answer: greek kings take small bits of poison all the time so that if they have to take poison it won't harm them. and that’s why they still took him—because he was still alive. 58 riddle use and comprehension more typical examples of the use of anomaly in riddling were given by the 11-year-olds: what gets bigger the more you take out of it? a hole. what gets wetter the more it dries? a towel. girl, 11 years of age) riddle: what’s as green as grass, as red as a rose, white as snow, black as coal? answer: a blackberry. when it’s not ripe it’s green. it flowers white. when it's not quite right it’s red and when it’s ripe it turns black. (boy, 11 years) the 11-year-olds in the present study also provided a few riddles which involved the generation of 'unnatural facts'. the answers to these riddles usually involved the naming of imaginary creatures whose features were a combination of real life attributes and imaginary ones. riddles of this nature included the following: what do you call a fly without wings? a walk. (boy, aged 11 years) what has sixteen wheels and pink spots? an elephant with the measles on rollerblades. (girl. aged 12 years) the riddling device known as 'catching' was also employed most often by the 11-year-olds in this study. a characteristic of catch riddles is that the riddle question appears to be a conundrum and the riddlee is tricked into thinking that an ingenious answer is required (opie and opie, 1959). the answer, however, does not involve any type of play on words and is instead a plain fact, stated in a very ordinary manner. it is for this reason that these riddles can be described as 'victimising' the riddlee (mcdowell, 1979), as illustrated in these examples from the current study: what’s pink and fluffy? pink fluff why did the tortoise cross the road? he wanted to get to the shell station. (boy, aged 10 years) 59 staunton why did the turkey cross the road? it was the chicken’s day off. (girl, aged 11 years) summary: children's use of riddles the riddles in this sample involved three main types of construction. over half the riddles collected made use of a structure based on attribution. almost a third of the riddles were concerned with causality and took the form of a 'why?/ because' question and answer sequence. the remaining riddles (just over a quarter of the sample) involved the use of the structure, 'what did the x say to the yt, whereby inanimate objects are featured in imaginary conversational situations, and the two meanings of the a well known figure of speech are exploited. a quantitative summary of the types of riddle construction used by children from each of the age groups is shown in table 8. a number of types of riddling device were used in this sample to provide ambiguity or confusion. a few examples of the 'descriptive routine' which does not contain a block element were given by an 8-yearold girl in the study. simple lexical ambiguity was the most commonly used source of ambiguity in the sample, followed by the use of metaphor known as conventional polysemy. the younger children were more likely to use novel metaphors than the older group. the use of metaphoric terms already in existence in the language (conventional polysemy) was favoured by the 8and 10-yearolds in the study. the 10-year-olds made more use of metariddles than any other age group. the use of phonological ambiguity and conventional polysemy decreased at 11 years of age, to be replaced by the use of riddles involving anomaly and the use of 'catch riddles'. a quantitative summary of the types of riddling device favoured by the children in different age groups is given in table 9 below. 60 riddle use and comprehension table 8: the types of riddle structure used by children from each age group (n = 24). 8 years 9 years 10 years 11 years attribution 9 3 5 11 causality 4 5 3 1 'what did the x say to the y?' 3 2 2 1 table 9: the numbers of riddles involving each type of rid dling device used by children from different age groups (n =24). 8 years 9 years 10 years 11 years descriptive routine 4 0 0 0 phonological ambiguity 3 4 5 1 morphological ambiguity 0 2 2 0 radical polysemy 1 0 0 conventional polysemy 3 1 4 1 catch riddles 1 0 1 4 metariddles 1 1 4 2 anomaly / use of unnatural facts 1 0 0 6 3.5 a comparison of the performances of boys and girls in the study the performance of the boys and girls on each of the three tasks used in the study was compared in both quantitative and qualitative terms. whilst the overall performance of the two groups was found to be similar at every age level, there were some areas where slight differences were noted. 61 staunton (1) answering metaphoric riddles the types of answer given by the girls and boys to the 'true' riddles (1-6) were firstly compared using a quantitative type of analysis. as described earlier, the three types of answer which were given on this task were the 'target' answer (the answer which the tester had in mind), an 'alternative' answer or a 'don't know' type of response. when the overall accuracy of the two groups of children in answering the riddles was compared, it was observed that the girls were slightly more accurate than the boys in providing the target answer. the girls gave the target answer for 22% of the riddles, compared with 17% for the boys. the boys were more likely overall to give an 'alternative' type of answer than the girls. the types of answer given by the two groups of children within each age group were also examined. whilst in the 8 and 11 year age groups, the girls were found to have given more target answers than the boys, the 9and 10-year-old girls and boys were found to have performed equally well. the 8-, 9and 11-year-old boys gave approximately 15% more' alternative' answers than the girls in these age groups, though this pattern was reversed amongst the 10-year-olds. secondly, a qualitative type of analysis was used to compare the validity of the' alternative' types of answer given by the boys and girls. the answers were examined in terms of their ability to complete the condition of a 'partially obscured semantic fit' between the riddle image and the answer. as described earlier, six different types of answer were identified from the overall sample of alternative answers. answers which were labelled 'anomalies' and 'literal answers' were given with equal frequency by the boys and the girls. these were answers which were not considered to complete the riddles, as they usually belonged to the same superordinate semantic category as the item implied in the riddle image. a similar group of answers was those which involved a 'change of state' so that the human or animal in the answer was made to fit the description in the riddle image. these were found to be used more often by the boys than the girls. the girls, however, were found to have given more 'replica-type' answers overall than the boys. 62 riddle use and comprehension of the answers which were judged as completing the riddles (i.e. those involving metaphor), more answers based on a novel type of metaphorical similarity were used by the girls than the boys. however, the boys were found to have given a third more answers which were judged as completing the riddles than the girls. they also gave twice as many answers which were based on conventional polysemy as the girls. (2) comprehension of the metaphoric riddles the performance of the boys and girls on the task which probed for comprehension of the riddles was also compared. whilst the performance of both groups differed slightly at each age level, no obvious developmental trends were apparent. the accuracy of the boys in the 8 and 9 year age groups in recalling the grounds of each riddle, for example, was slightly better than that of the girls. the opposite was the case, however, amongst the 10and 11-yearolds. only at the age of 10 years was there a large discrepancy in the performance of the two groups, where the girls comprehended the grounds of 81 % of the riddles compared with the level of accuracy of 69% obtained by the boys. the latter score, however, is not in keeping with the overall trend of improved comprehension with increasing age which was displayed by the other age groups. the proportion of 'alternative responses' given by boys and girls on the probe task was also found to be similar overall. the only exception to this finding was amongst the 8-year-olds, where the girls were far more likely than the boys to compare the items in the probe question on grounds other than those in the original metaphor. the children's comprehension of the riddles was also examined in terms of the effect of the type of metaphoric similarity (i.e. sensory or nonsensory) on comprehension. with the exception of one age group, both the girls and the boys were found to have greater comprehension of the riddles grounded in sensory similarity than the nonsensory riddles. only the 10-year-old boys showed greater comprehension of the nonsensory than the sensory metaphors, though their level of comprehension of both types of riddle was again not in keeping with the overall pattern shown by the other groups. 63 staunton a qualitative comparison of the girls' and boys' explanations of the grounds of the nonsensory metaphors was also used. the pattern of increasing depth of comprehension of the nonsensory metaphors with age was found to be similar for both groups of children. the ability to verablise both meanings of the relational types of metaphor was found to emerge at 8 or 9 years amongst the boys and the girls. similarly, the ability to explain the grounds of the psychological-physical types of metaphor emerged slightly later overall in both groups. a qualitative examination of the' alternative responses' supplied by the children showed similar patterns overall in the types of creative comparisons used by the boys and the girls at each age. whilst the comparisons based on sensory grounds were characteristic of the younger children, the older groups tended to use relational comparisons, as described earlier. neither group used psychological-physical types of comparison in their creative responses. these patterns were generally consistent for both boys and girls. (3) use of riddles due to the small size of the sample of riddles collected from the children, the riddles were grouped in four ways for the purposes of comparison of the patterns of use of the boys with those of the girls. the riddles were categorised according to the type of riddling device involved in each case. the four overall categories of riddle were those based on grammatical ambiguity, riddles involving metaphor, catch riddles and metariddles, and lastly, riddles involving anomaly or the use of unnatural facts. the first finding was that overall the boys contributed a greater number of 'riddles proper' than the girls. whilst twenty-six of the riddles in the sample were collected from the boys, the girls contributed twentyone riddles. however, an additional four 'descriptive routines' were contributed by one of the 8-year-old girls in the sample. secondly, the boys were found to have used twice as many riddles involving grammatical ambiguity as the girls. whilst the girls were most likely to use this type of riddle at the age of 8 years, its use was favoured by the boys at the ages of 9 and 10 years. 64 riddle use and comprehension there was little difference, however, between the boys and girls in their use of the other riddling devices. whilst the boys were found to have used marginally more metaphoric riddles than the girls in the study, the girls made slightly more use of catch riddles, metariddles and riddles involving anomaly. both boys and girls used more riddles involving conventional polysemy as a block element than radical polysemy. the use of catch riddles, metariddles and riddles involving anomaly was also favoured by the older children in both groups. summary: a comparison of the performance of boys and girls in the study the performance of the girls and boys on each of the three tasks in the study was compared in both quantitative and qualitative terms. (1) summary: answering metaphoric riddles the types of answer given by the girls and boys to the 'true' riddles (1-6) were firstly compared from a quantitative perspective. whilst the girls were found to have given slightly more target answers overall, the boys were more likely to give an 'alternative' type of answer. secondly, the answers were compared in terms of their ability to satisfy the condition of a partially obscured semantic fit with the riddle image. overall, the boys gave more answers judged as completing the riddles than the girls, and they also used twice as many answers based on conventional polysemy. the girls were more likely to base their answers on .a novel type of metaphorical similarity. the types of riddle answer given by the girls and boys are compared in tables 10 and 11 below: table 10: an overall comparison of the types of riddle answer given by boys and girls in the study (n=24). target answers alternative answers 'don't know' responses girls 22% 33% 45% boys 17% 43% 40% 65 staunton table 11: a comparison of the types of answers given by the girls and boys in the study to the riddles based on sensory similarity (n = 24). 8 years girls boys 9 years girl boys 10 years girls boys 11 years girls boys target answers 17% 5% 0% 0% 28% 28% 44% 33% alternative answers 39% 55% 44% 61% 28% 17% 22% 39% 'don't know' responses 44% 39% 66% 39% 44% 55% 34% 28% (2) summary: comprehension of riddles (boys and girls) the performance of the boys and the girls on the task which probed for comprehension of the metaphoric riddles was firstly compared in quantitative terms. whilst the level of accuracy obtained by both groups differed slightly at each age level, no obvious developmental trends were apparent. the only age at which there was a large difference in the performance of the two groups was at 10 years, where the level of accuracy obtained by the boys was much lower than that of the girls. with the exception of the 10-year-old group just mentioned, both the girls and boys were found to have greater comprehension of the riddles grounded in sensory, rather than non sensory similarity at each age level. a qualitatative comparison of the children's explanations of the nonsensory metaphors found that the pattern of increasing depth of comprehension with age was similar for both groups. the ability to verbalise the grounds of the relational and psychological-physical metaphors was in general found to emerge at the same ages for both boys and girls. the proportion of 'alternative responses' given by boys and girls on the probe task was also found to be similar overall. comparisons based on shared sensory features were in general typical of the younger children in each group, whilst relational metaphors were used from the age of 9 years. a quantitative comparison of the types of response given on the probe task by the girls and boys at each age level is given in table 12. 66 riddle use and comprehension the influence of the type of metaphoric similarity on the level of accuracy of the two groups is summarised in table 13. table 12: the types of response given by boys and girls in different age groups on the task testing for comprehension of the metaphoric riddles (n = 24). 8 years girls boys 9 years girl boys 10 years girls boys 11 years girls boys target answer s 69.5 75% 78% 83.5% 81% 69.5% 86% 80.5% alterna tive answer s 19.2% 0% 19.5% 14% 11% 14% 8.5% 8.5% 'don't know' respon ses 11. 3% 25% 2.5% 2.5% 8% 16.5% 5.5% 11% table 13: accuracy of boys and girls in comprehending riddles involving sensory and nonsensory metaphor (as judged by the use of the probe question task) (n = 24). 8 years 9 years 10 years 11 years girls boys girls boys girls boy girls boys sensory similarity 89% 83% 83% 89% 84% 67% 94% 83% nonsensory similarity 83% 89% 83% 89% 84% 67% 94% 83% (3) summary: use of riddles (boys and girls) the boys were found to have contributed a greater number of 'riddles proper' overall than the girls. they were also found to have used twice as many grammatically-based riddles as the girls in the study. there was little difference between the boys and girls in their use of the other riddling devices. both boys and girls used more riddles involving conventional polysemy as a block element than radical polysemy. the use of catch riddles, metariddles and 67 staunton riddles involving anomaly was also favoured by the older children in both groups. a quantitative sununary of the types of riddling device used by the boys and girls in each age group is given in table 14 below. table 14: the numbers of riddles involving each type of riddling device used by girls and boys from each age group (n = 24). 8 years girls boys 9 years girls boys 10 years girls boys 11 years girls boys grammaticallybased 2 1 1 5 1 5 1 0 metaphoricallybased 3 1 0 2 2 2 0 1 catches/ metariddles 1 1 0 1 3 1 3 3 anomaly/ unnatural facts 0 1 0 0 0 0 2 4 discussion 4.1 introduction this study sought to explore the development of riddle use and comprehension in irish school-aged children. this involved the examination of: a) the types of answer which children from different age groups gave to the metaphoric riddles b) the type of response given by children from different age groups to a task probing for comprehension of metaphoric riddles 68 riddle use and comprehension c) the effect of the type of metaphoric similarity on comprehension of these riddles d) the types of riddle which were contributed by children from different age groups. the following four questions had been posed by the researcher: 1. are there developmental patterns in the types of answer which children give to metaphoric riddle questions? 2. does comprehension of metaphoric riddles improve with age? 3. do children use certain types of riddles before they use others? 4. are there differences in the developmental patterns displayed by boys and girls on these tasks? each of these questions will be examined in terms of the results which were obtained in this study. the overall conclusions which may be drawn from these results will then be outlined. finally, the limitations of the study will be set out and suggestions for further research will be made. 4.2 is there a developmental pattern in the types of riddle answers used by children? the approach of children to the answering of true riddles is an area which, up to this point, has not been investigated by researchers. however, the results of the current study would suggest that the tendency of providing canonical answers to such riddles is present in some children from the age of 8 years. furthermore, it appears that this tendency continues to become more marked between the ages of 8 and 11 years. the first finding of note in this study was that the tendency to give answers which are typical of those found in riddle books increased with age. secondly, the creative answers which were offered by the older children in the study were found to be more 69 staunton canonical than those offered by the younger groups. both findings would suggest that children's awareness of the conventional requirements of the riddling form gradually increases with age. as stated above, it was found in the current study that the tendency of children to give a canonical riddle answer seems to increase overall with age. however, the 9-year-olds in the study were an exception to this overall pattern. whilst a small proportion of the 8-year-olds provided the answer which the tester had in mind, none of the answers given by the 9year-olds were of this nature. a possible explanation for this finding is the small size of the sample of children used in the study (six in each age group). the abilities of the six particular children in this group may not be representative of the children in their age group in general. the high proportion of 'alternative' answers given by children in every age group provides support for the notion put forward by kaivolabregenhøj (1996) that riddles are solved through a process of 'creative guessing'. the qualitative examination of this type of answer suggests that children's awareness of the conventional requirement of a partially obscured semantic fit between the riddle image and answer seems to increase with age. the riddle answers which were judged as fulfilling this condition were seen as satisfying three criteria. they were firstly members of a semantic category opposite to that of the item implied in the image, they secondly shared some minor characteristics with the item in the riddle image, and they were thirdly prototypical members of the category to which they belonged. the results of this study suggest that there may be a developmental sequence in which children develop awareness of the conventional need to fulfill each of these criteria. the' anomaly' answers which were used by the younger children in the study, for example, were found to fulfill none of the criteria necessary for a partial obscurity of semantic fit. these answers generally belonged to the same semantic category or 'set' as the item in the riddle image. they tended not to be prototypical members of that category and were found not to fit the description given in the image, even in a literal sense (e.g. 'what can howl but has no mouth? a frog '). however, in each case the children had created an explanation to make the answer fit the description in the image. this suggests an emerging awareness of the need for the riddle image to have features in common with its answer. 70 riddle use and comprehension the 'literal' answers given in the study were found to fulfill the criteria of having features in common with the item implied in the riddle image. this type of answer was mainly used by the 8and 9-year-olds in the study, with some instances amongst the older children. such answers do not involve the use of metaphor, however, as they belong to the same semantic category as the item implied in the image (i.e. animate). about half the answers given could not be considered prototypical members of this category (e.g. 'tadpoles', 'a bat'). awareness of the need for the riddle answer to have features in common with the riddle image would therefore appear to be the first of the three riddle-answering skills to emerge. a similar group of answers were those which fitted the riddle image literally but which involved a 'change of state' (e.g. death, the use of magic) so that the animate entity was made to fit the description in the image. examples of this type of answer were found in all age groups. the use of such a 'change of state' might indicate an emerging awareness that riddle answers are generally obscured from the sight of the riddlee in some way and that the use of logic might be necessary in order to solve the riddle. however, these answers did not fulfill two of the criteria necessary for riddle answers. they belonged to the same category as the item implied in the image and were not prototypical members of this category due to the special conditions displayed by each of the members (e.g. 'a blind man'). the group of 'replica-type' answers which were given by the 9and 10-year-olds, in the study were found to fulfill two of the three criteria necessary for a partial obscurity of semantic fit. these answers belonged to the inanimate category and had characteristics in common with the item implied in the riddle image. the fact that these answers were typically used by a slightly older group of children, suggests that the awareness of the need to give an answer which is from an opposite semantic category might be the second of the three riddle-answering skills to emerge. the 'replica-type' answers were not judged as being metaphorical, however, as they shared too many characteristics with the item in the riddle image. the answers therefore tended not be prototypical members of the inanimate category. aitchison (1994: 150) points out that although the items compared in a good metaphor must 71 staunton have some characteristics in common, 'the items must not be too similar because the metaphor will be incomprehensible'. the answers which were judged as having the most validity as canonical riddle answers were those which involved the use of metaphor and also fulfilled the three criteria outlined earlier. whilst some metaphorical answers were given by the younger children in the group, these tended to involve the use of 'radical polysemy'. these answers therefore involved the use of a novel metaphorical similarity which an individual child had noticed. some of these answers were not considered to be prototypical members of the inanimate category (e.g. 'the safety sticker on a lamp') and would be very difficult for a riddlee to guess. the metaphorical answers which were most typical of the 10and 11-yearolds were those involving conventional polysemy. these metaphorical answers were considered to be prototypical members of the inanimate category, as they involved comparisons which are already sanctioned in the language. it would appear from these responses that the awareness of the need to give a prototypical riddle answer might be the last of the three conventional riddle-answering skills to develop. the overall findings of this study would suggest that the awareness of the conventional requirement of satisfying the condition of a partially obscured semantic fit may emerge in three general developmental stages. whilst there was some individual variation in this pattern amongst the children in this study, an overall developmental sequence was observed. the tendency of giving an answer which has characteristics in common with the item in the riddle image was found to be present in children aged 8 and 9 years. whilst the tendency of giving an answer from the opposite semantic category was displayed by a few of the younger children, this feature typically emerged at 9 or 10 years of age. the tendency of giving an answer which satisfied all three answering conditions, was most frequently observed amongst the 10and 11-year-olds in this study. this would suggest that, in general, the tendency of generating creative answers which satisfy the requirement of a partial obscurity of semantic fit emerges between the ages of 10 and 11 years. 72 riddle use and comprehension 4.3 does comprehension of metaphoric riddles improve with age? whilst no other study has specifically examined children's comprehension of metaphoric riddles, the development of comprehension of grammatically-based riddles and the development of metaphor comprehension are both areas which have been investigated by researchers. the studies of children's riddle comprehension have produced conflicting findings. while prentice and fathman (1975) and shultz (1974) reported a steady improvement in riddle comprehension with age, fowles and glanz (1977) found no such relationship. there is much evidence in the literature, however, to suggest that the comprehension of metaphors improves with age (e.g. asch and nerlove, 1960, cited in billow, 1977; gentner and stuart, 1983, cited in winner, 1988; pollio and pickens, 1980; pollio and pollio, 1979; winner, rosenthiel and gardner, 1976). the results of the present study suggest that there is an overall improvement in the comprehension of metaphoric riddles between the ages of 8 and 11 years. the greatest increase in the level of comprehension occurred between the ages of 8 and 9 years. the performance of the 10-year-olds in this study, however, was found.to be poorer than that of the 9-year-olds. fowles and glanz (1974) reported a similar irregularity in the developmental patterns of riddle comprehension displayed by the children in their study. they concluded from their results that riddle comprehension was not related to age, but to reading ability. the children in their study who displayed superior riddle comprehension were found to be those who were also rated as successful readers by their teachers. they state that the ability to attend to the surface properties of the language, rather than focusing solely on the literal interpretation of the words, is one which is necessary for riddle comprehension and is also essential to reading. unlike the riddles used in this study, the riddles used by fowles and glanz (1977) were mainly grammatically-based. the ability to extract nonliteral meaning is none the less necessary for comprehension of both types of riddle. had an assesssment of reading ability been used with the children in the current study, it might have been possible to establish whether such a link between metaphoric riddle comprehension and reading ability, rather than age, was in existence. 73 staunton the overall pattern of improved comprehension with increasing age, which was displayed by the other groups in the current study, would suggest, however, that the performance of the group of 10-year-olds in this study may not have been representative of that children from this age group in general. had a larger sample of children been included in the study, a more even developmental pattern of improving comprehension might have emerged. such a pattern of development was reported in the studies by prentice and fathman (1975) and shultz (1974). the language experience hypothesis the finding of this study that even 8-year-old children displayed comprehension of metaphoric language contradicts the cognitive prerequisite hypothesis put forward by piaget (1926, cited in kamhi and friemoth lee, 1988). according to this hypothesis, the attainment of the stage of formal operational thought is a prerequisite for comprehension of figurative forms of language. whilst no assessment of cognitive abilities was administered to the children in this study, the formal operational stage typically does not begin until the age of twelve years. it might therefore be fair to assume that the younger children in this study would not yet have attained this cognitive stage of development. this overall finding that metaphor comprehension emerges prior to the formal operational stage of thinking concurs with those of billow (1975), cometa and eson (1978) and smith (1976). the results of this study provide some support, however, for the language experience hypothesis proposed by ortony, turner and larsonshapiro (1985). according to this theory, children's comprehension of figurative language develops gradually through meaningful exposure to such language. as they grow older, children have more exposure to metaphoric language and more opportunity to test out their understanding. the depth of comprehension of metaphors would therefore be expected to increase with age. such a pattern of development was noticed amongst the children in this study between the ages of 8 and 11 years. a number of researchers have noted this pattern of an increasing level of metaphor comprehension as children grow older (asch and nerlove, 1960, cited in billow, 1977; gentner and stuart, 1983, 74 riddle use and comprehension cited in winner, 1988; pollio and pickens, 1980; pollio and pollio, 1979; winner, rosenthiel and gardner, 1976). 4.3.1 the effect of the type of similarity there is some controversy in the literature regarding the effect of the type of metaphoric similarity on comprehension. a number of researchers have found that metaphors grounded in non sensory similarity are more difficult for children to comprehend than those based solely on sensory characteristics (e.g. gentner and stuart, 1983, mendelsohn, gardner and winner, 1981 and shantiris, 1983, all cited in winner, 1988). a small number of studies have reported no difference in the ease of understanding of such metaphors (kogan, connor, gross and fava, 1980, cited in winner, 1988; nippold, leonard and kail, 1984). no studies to date have formally compared children's level of comprehension of riddles involving the two main types of metaphoric similarity. however, fowles and glanz (1974) found that riddles involving metaphorical language were more difficult for children to comprehend than those involving ambiguous, concrete terms. the results of the current study suggest that the type of similarity on which a metaphor is based can have an effect on children's level of comprehension. the children in this study were found overall to have a greater level of understanding of riddles based on a sensory type of metaphoric similarity than those involving a nonsensory metaphoric comparison. the quantitative results of the study suggest that the difference in the level of the comprehension of the two types of metaphor was greatest at the age of 8 years. the overall level of understanding of the sensory metaphors was found to increase only slightly between 8 and 11 years. however, comprehension of the nonsensory metaphors was found to increase greatly overall between these ages, with the greatest increase in the level of comprehension occurring between the ages of 8 and 9 years. the level of comprehension of the sensory metaphors which was displayed by the 10-year-olds in the group is not in keeping with the overall developmental trend in this study. as suggested earlier, the small size of the overall sample of children included in the study might have contributed to this irregularity in the overall developmental pattern. 75 staunton the findings of this study concur with those of the studies cited by winner (1988) that the comprehension of nonsensory metaphors poses more difficulty for children of all ages than the comprehension of sensory metaphors (gentner and stuart, 1983; mendelsohn, gardner and winner, 1981; shantiris 1983, all cited in winner, 1988). the qualitative analysis of the children's performance on the explanation task also suggests some developmental differences in the comprehension of the two types of nonsensory metaphor used in this study. whilst some of the younger children in the study were able to explain the grounds of the relational metaphors, the ability to explain both senses of the psychological-physical metaphors did not appear to emerge until the age of 10 years. a similar type of trend was reported by shantiris (1983, cited in winner, 1988), who found that psychological-physical metaphors were more difficult for children of all ages to comprehend than those grounded in a relational type of similarity. the finding that younger children tend to interpret psychologicalphysical metaphors in a literal sense has been reported by asch and nerlove (1960, cited in billow, 1977) and winner, rosenthiel and gardner (i976). the explanations of the grounds of the psychologicalphysical metaphors which were given by the younger children in this study also involved a 'literal' type of interpretation. only the explanations given by the 10and 11-yearolds in this study consistently contained reference to both the psychological and physical senses of the terms. children aged 8 and 9 years tended to verbalise only the physical sense of terms such as 'bright' or 'hard' in their explanations. however, the same children had often responded appropriately to the 'probe' task, where they simply had to recall the grounds of the riddles presented earlier. this task frequently required only a single-word answer. this overall finding is consistent with that of asch and nerlove (1960, cited in billow, 1977) who reported that children between the ages of 7 and 10 years are aware that dual-fuction terms can be applied in a psychological sense to people. the ability to explain both senses of the dual-function terms was also found to be consistent only after the age of 10 years in their study. winner, rosenthiel and gardner (1976) however, report that ahnost a third of the 8year-olds in their study were able to explain the psychological meaning such terms. 76 riddle use and comprehension measurement of comprehension the difference in the performance of the younger children on the 'probe' and 'explanation' tasks in the current study provides support for the view that explanation tasks can under-estimate children's level of metaphor comprehension. a number of the 8and 9-year-olds were able to recall the appropriate grounds of the nonsensory metaphors when a single-word reponse was required, yet their explanations of the same metaphors frequently indicated only a 'literal' type of understanding. theorists such as vosniadou (1987) have criticised the use of explanation tasks due to the significant metalinguitic demands involved in verbalising the grounds of a metaphor. the results of the studies which have compared children's performance on multiple-choice and explanation tasks suggest that the ability to comprehend metaphors develops prior to the ability to fully explain them (gardner, 1974; winner, rosenthieal and gardner, 1976; pollio and pickens). it is therefore likely that the children in this study had a greater level understanding of metaphors at every age than their performance on the explanation task would suggest. sources of difficulty with nonsensory metaphor comprehension the finding that younger children tend to have a lower level of comprehension of nonsensory metaphors was attributed by keil (1979,1985, cited in winner, 1988) to a lack of knowledge about the properties of things in the world. the term 'domain knowledge' is used to describe children's knowledge of the properties and functions of the items in the world's categories or domains. keil found that in order for a child to comprehend a metaphor, he or she must firstly have knowledge of the two domains involved in the metaphor (keil, 1985, cited in winner, 1988). the finding that the younger children in the current study displayed less understanding of the nonsensory metaphors than those in the older groups might therefore be explained in terms of a limited knowledge of particular domains. younger children may not yet have sufficient knowledge of domains such as that of personality traits, for example, and therefore tend to misinterpret metaphors involving these domains. the language experience 77 staunton hypotheisis (ortony, larson and shapiro, 1985) is also useful in explaining this finding. the use of non sensory types of metaphoric similarity is typically a feature of the spoken and written language of adults and older children (winner, 1988). younger children are thus less likely than their older counterparts to have meaningful exposure to such metaphors on a daily basis. the finding that younger children have difficulty with nonsensory metaphors might therefore be attributed in part to a limited knowledge of the domains involved and a lack of meaningful exposure to this type of metaphor. in interpreting the results of this particular study, however, the syntactic context in which the nonsensory metaphors were presented must also be considered as a possible source of difficulty. a small number of researchers have reported that the syntactic presentation of a metaphor can influence children's level of comprehension (nippold, leonard and kail, 1984; renolds and ortony, 1980; winner, engel and gardner, 1980). the sensory metaphors in this study were presented in the context of a true metaphoric riddle, which generally took the form, 'what has x but no y? '. however, the riddles grounded in nonsensory similarity took a greater variety of syntactic forms, such as 'what did the x say to the y? ' or riddles involving 'why / because' structures. the possibility that the syntactic presentation of the nonsensory metaphors might have contributed the lower level of comprehension of these metaphors must therefore be considered also. the studies to date which have reported children's greater difficulty with nonsensory, than sensory metaphors have generally involved the presentation of such metaphors either in a predicative sentence or in isolation. the overall results of this study suggest that this finding also holds when metaphors are presented in the context of riddles. a small number of riddles involving each of the types of similarity was used in the study, however, and the number of children included in each age group was also relatively small. further research on a much wider scale is therefore necessary before any general conclusions can be drawn. 78 riddle use and comprehension 4.3.2 remarking on types of similarity not implied in the original riddles a small number of children from each age group in the present study were found to give an 'alternative' type of explanation when presented with the task probing for comprehension of the metaphoric riddles. the use of an alternative type of explanation would suggest that these children did not comprehend the grounds of the metaphors which they had heard earlier. however, given the great creativity of some of the children's responses, the use of an alternative type of explanation might simply indicate a greater degree of imaginativity on the part of these children. the use of an alternative explanation might therefore be attributed in some cases to a different approach to the answering of the probe questions, rather than a lack of comprehension of the metaphoric grounds. the notion that the children used different approaches in completing the probe task is evidenced in the finding that certain children were much more likely than others use a creative type of comparison. the fact that the probe questions were based on the metaphoric riddles was not made explicit to the children in the study. some children may therefore have used an alternative type of explanation because they were not aware that the probe questions related back to the metaphoric riddles. a number of children who gave the target response to the probe task also went on to describe other similarities between the items mentioned in the probe question. again, this suggests that the children may have been eager to demonstrate their creativity in comparing the two items, rather than simply giving the target answer only. whilst the overall number of creative (i.e. alternative) explanations given in this study was relatively small, this type of response was given with greatest frequency by the 9and 10-yearolds. the finding that children in these age groups were the most likely to be creative in their use of metaphoric comparisons contradicts the notion of there being a 'conventional' stage in children's use of metaphor between the ages of 8 and 10 years (winner, 1988). gardner, kircher, winner and perkins (1975) reported that children between these ages in their study tended to reject the use of metaphor, preferring instead to use language in a conventional, unimaginative way. a similar finding was reported 79 staunton by pollio and pollio (1974) when a story-writing task was used. however, when pollio and pollio presented the same group of children with a structured comparison task (similar in format to the 'probe' task used in this study), the children's use of metaphors was found to increase steadily between the ages of 8 and 11 years. the fact that the comparison task in the current study was presented in the context of an informal riddling session might therefore have encouraged the children to be less inhibited in their use of language. an examination of the creative metaphoric comparisons which were used by the children in this study suggests that there is a developmental sequence in the types of metaphoric similarity used. the creative comparisons which were used by the 8-year-olds in the study were based solely on a sensory type of grounds. children between the ages of 9 and 11 years were found to favour a relational type of grounds in the comparisons which they used. a few instances of the use of psychological-physical types of similarity were reported amongst the older children in the study. the order of acquisition of the creative use of metaphor, which is suggested by these results, is similar in nature to that which was observed in the children's comprehension of metaphoric riddles in this study. the overall results of the current study suggest that the period between 8 and 9 years of age may be a time of rapid development in both the ability to verbalise metaphoric grounds and in the comprehension of metaphors. the greatest overall increase in the level of metaphor comprehension amongst the children in this study (as judged by their performance on the probe task) was found to occur between the ages of 8 and 9 years. the transition from making creative comparisons involving a sensory type of similarity to making comparisons grounded in relational similarity was also found to occur between the ages of 8 and 9 years of age. the use of metaphor by all of the children in the study (and not just those who used a creative response) would need to, be examined, however, before overall conclusions could be drawn in relation to the development of this skill. 80 riddle use and comprehension 4.4 do children use certain types of riddles before they use others? mcdowell (1979) concurs with the observation by sanches and kirshenblatt-gimblett (1976, cited in mcdowell, 1979) that children's level of acquisition of the language seems to be reflected in their verbal play. these researchers remark that the focus of children's verbal play progresses 'from sound play to sense play, finally culminating in play with sociolinguistic rules' (mcdowell, 1979: 192). the results of the current study suggest that by 8 years of age, children are able to make use of riddles involving most types of linguistic ambiguity and also riddles which involve a playful violation of sociolinguistic rules. the current study differs from that of mcdowell (1979) in that it involves an examination of riddle use by children from the age of8 years. the study by mcdowell, however, focused on riddle use in children below this age. he concluded from his results that the development of riddling skills is virtually complete by this age. the finding of the current study that children aged 8 years displayed some use of all the types of riddles used by the older groups, would also support this notion. the patterns of use which were displayed by the children in the current study might therefore be interpreted as reflecting their preferences in using riddles, rather than indicating a particular stage of acquisition. the results of the present study suggest some overall trends in riddle use between the ages of 8 and 11 years. a significant finding of this study was that the children favoured the use of riddles proper over the use of descriptive routines. mcdowell (1979) noted in his study that older children continue to use descriptive routines once they have exhausted their repertoire of riddles proper. he also noted that the routines of the older children in his study generally involved the description of exotic, rather than mundane items. the descriptive routines which were supplied by the 8-year-old girl in this study also involved the use of such items (e.g. an elephant, a peacock). it appears from the results of this study that children between the ages of 8 and 11 years favour the use of homophony as a block element in their riddles. the use of grammatically-based riddles in this study was found to increase overall up to the age of 10 years. 81 staunton this finding is contrary to that of mcdowell, who found a decrease in the use of homophony after the age of 7 years. however, a dramatic decline in the use of grammatical ambiguity was noted amongst the 11year-olds in the current study. whilst phonological and morphological types of ambiguity were featured in the riddles in this study, syntactic riddle strategies were not used. mcdowell (1979) found that metaphoric riddles were favoured by the 7and 8-year-olds in his study. both radical and conventional types of polysemy were featured in the current study. the use of radical polysemy was a feature of the 8and 9-year-olds but was not used beyond this stage. there were therefore few examples in the study of children's creative use of metaphor. the use of metaphors which are already sanctioned in the language (conventional polysemy) was featured in a much larger proportion of the riddles. no overall developmental trend emerged in the use of this type of metaphor, although it was used by children in all age groups. the analysis of the riddles collected in this study suggests that the period between the ages of 10 and 11 years is a time of great change in the types of riddling device used. whilst the riddles collected from the children in the other age groups largely involved the use of linguistic ambiguity (including metaphor), the 11-yearolds in the study preferred the use of catch riddles, metariddles and riddles involving anomaly or unnatural facts. the finding that children in this age group favoured the use of 'catch riddles' is in keeping with the sequence of development described by sanches and kirshenblatt-grimblett (1976, cited in mcdowell, 1979). catch riddles involve the victimisation of the riddlee and can thus be described as violating the sociolinguistic rules of the language. the popularity of metariddles at this age might also reflect an increased eagerness to 'trick' the riddlee. these riddles frequently involve the use of a well-known riddle question to which the riddlee might give the traditional answer. the child, on the other hand, is in possession of the updated answer which the riddlee has far less chance of guessing. the finding that children in the 11 year age group strongly favoured riddles involving anomaly is an interesting one, as mcdowell (1979) found that the use of such riddles emerges as early as six years of age. whilst it is difficult to explain the popu 82 riddle use and comprehension larity of anomaly riddles and riddles involving unnatural facts at this age, their use might indicate a general move away from linguistic ambiguity as a source of humour. such a pattern of development has been reported by researchers such as mcghee (1979, cited in nippold, 1988c) who found that adolescents favour jokes where a greater cognitive challenge is involved to jokes involving linguistic ambiguity. types of riddle structure whilst five main types of riddle structure featured in mcdowell's (1979) study, the riddles in the present study made use of three types of structure. mcdowell found that the structures of attribution, causality and instrumentality were the most frequently used in his study. the use of the structures of attribution and causality accounted for approximately three-quarters of the riddles in the current study. the results of the present study suggest that the structure of instrumentality is not a feature of the riddling of children over the age of 8 years. the remaining riddles in this study involved the use of the structure, 'what did the x say to the y? '. however, the structure 'what kind of x is a y? " which featured in mcdowell's study, was not used by the children in this study. the overall results of the current study suggest that the structure of attribution is a consistent feature of the riddling of children between the ages of 8 and 11 years. the use of the structure of causality, however, appears to decline after the age of 9 years. whilst the use of the riddle from, 'what did the x say to the y?', was most popular amongst the 8-year-olds, the results of this study suggest there is a decline in its use after this age. 4.5 are there differences in the developmental patterns displayed by boys and girls? the studies to date which have examined children's use and comprehension of both riddles and metaphors have reported no significant difference in the performance of boys and girls in these areas. the results of this study would concur with this overall finding. however slight differences in the performance of the boys and girls were detected on some of the tasks in this study. 83 staunton whilst the performance of the boys and girls on the riddle comprehension task was very similar at every age, some differences were noted in their performance on the riddle-answering task and in their use of riddles. whilst the girls in the current study were found to be more likely to give the target answer on the riddle-answering task, the boys were found to have contributed a greater number of 'riddles proper' when asked to tell the researcher any riddles which they knew. the alternative answers which the boys gave on the riddle-answering task were more often found to be canonical than those given by the girls. the boys were found to have generated twice as many alternative riddle answers based on conventional polysemy as the girls, and were also twice as likely to contribute riddles involving grammatical ambiguity. the girls were more likely to base their answers on a novel type of metaphoric similarity. these last findings might suggest a preference amongst the boys for the use of types of ambiguity which are already sanctioned in the language, as opposed to the more novel approach which appears to have been taken by the girls. it was noted by the researcher during the collection of the data that the boys generally showed a greater interest the reading of riddle books than the girls in the study. the use of grammatical ambiguity is a common feature of the riddles in such books. the types of response which were given by the boys in the study might therefore be related to their greater familiarity with this type of ambiguity. a comparison of the performance boys and girls would need to be carried out on a much larger scale, however, before such findings could be generalised to the population as a whole. 4.6 overall conclusions this study set out to examine the development of riddle comprehension and use in irish school-aged children. it was firstly concluded from the results of this study that the tendency of children to give canonical riddle answers increases between the ages of 8 and 11 years. it also appears that there are three general stages in the emergence of children's awareness of the conventional requirement of a partial obscurity of semantic fit between the riddle question and answer. 84 riddle use and comprehension the results of the current study concur with the widely-reported finding that the comprehension of metaphors improves with increasing age. the comprehension of metaphors in the context of riddles was found to increase overall between the ages of 8 and 11 years. the findings of this study provide support for the hypothesis that the comprehension of nonliteral language develops gradually through meaningful exposure to such language. it also appears from the results of this study that the type of metaphoric grounds affects the degree of comprehension of metaphoric riddles. the creative use of metaphor which was displayed by some children in response to the 'probe' task contradicts the notion of there being a 'conventional' stage in metaphor use between the ages of 8 and 10 years. the analysis of the types of riddles collected from the children in this study suggests that there is a change at about 11 years of age in the types of riddling device which children use. children up to this age appear to favour the use of linguistic ambiguity as a riddling device. after the age of 11 years, however, children show a preference for the use of catch riddles, metariddles and riddles involving anomaly. the performance of boys and girls was compared on all of the tasks used in this study. whilst their performance on the comprehension tasks was almost identical, slight differences were observed in the types of riddling device which were favoured by each group. due to the small size of this study, however, no overall conclusions about the influence of gender on riddling skills can be drawn at this stage. 4.7 limitations of this study and implications for further research the main limitation of this study was the small size of the group of children included in the study. it is possible that individual differences amongst the children may have influenced the results. the children in this study were all irish and all came from a middleclass background. it is therefore possible that cultural factors might also influence the results. a relatively small number of riddles involving each type of metaphoric similarity was also presented to the children. 85 staunton the tasks used in the study would therefore need to be replicated on a much wider scale, with children from a variety of cultural backgrounds, before any findings could be generalised to the overall population. were the study to be repeated, it might also be of value to test out the hypothesis put forward by fowles and glanz (1974) that riddle comprehension is related to reading ability, rather than age. a formal assessment of reading ability would therefore need to be administered to the children in the study in addition to the 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"children's comprehension of metaphor: a piagetian in terpretation." language and speech 19 (1976): 236-43. vosniadou, s. "children and metaphors." child development 58 (1987): 870-85. winner, e. "new names for old things: the emergence of metaphoric language." journal of child language 6 (1979): 469-91. ______. the point of words: children s understanding of metaphor and irony. london: harvard up, 1988. winner, e., m. engel, and h. gardner. "misunderstanding metaphor: what's the problem?" journal of experimental child psychology 30 (1980): 22-32. winner, e., a.k. rosenthiel, and h. gardner. "the development of meta phoric understanding." developmental psychology 12[4] (1976): 289-97. 88 riddle use and comprehension appendix 1 list of 12 riddles used in task i (chosen from children's riddle and joke books) riddles involving a metaphorical comparison based on sensory grounds 1. what has legs but cannot walk? a table. 2.what has teeth but no mouth? a comb. 3.what has eyes but cannot see? a potato. 4.what goes around all day with its tongue hanging out and sits by your bed at night? a shoe. 5.what runs but never walks? water. 6.what can howl but has no mouth? the wind, riddles involving a (nonsensory) metaphorical use of language 7.why did the teacher wear sunglasses to school? because the class was so bright. 8. what happened when the thief fell into the cement? he became a hard ened criminal. 9.why did the boy throw his clock out the window? he wanted to see time fly. 10. what do jigsaw puzzles do when they get bad news? they go to pieces / they fallapart. 11. what did the big telephone say to the little telephone? 'you're too young to be engaged '. 12. what did the sweeping brush say to the vacuum cleaner? 'don't you wish people would stop pushing us around?' explanations of the types of metaphors involved in riddles 1-12 riddles involving a metaphorical comparison based on sensory grounds riddles 1-4 are based on a comparison between the physical features of an animate entity and those of an inanimate one, riddle 5 is based on a comparison between the movement of a human or animal (running) and the movement of a natural object (water). riddle 6 is based on a comparison between the sound of a vocalisation by an animate entity and the sound of a natural phenomenon (the wind). 89 staunton riddles involving a (nonsensory) metaphorical use of language riddles 7 and 8 involve dual-function adjectives which are based on the comparison between a physical notion (e.g. brightness or hardness) and a psychological one. riddles 9-12 are based on relational types of similarity. the comparison involved in riddle 9 is that between an abstract entity (time passing) and the movement of an animate (or inanimate) entity (flight) . the comparison on which riddle 10 is based is that between a physical action of falling apart and a psychological state (getting upset). the comparison involved in riddle 11 is between the notion of a telephone being in use therefore unavailable and someone who is engaged to be married and therefore unavailable. the comparison involved in riddle 12 is between the physical act of pushing something around and the act of bullying someone psychologically. probe questions which followed the riddles (questions used in task 2) riddles involving a metaphorical comparison based on sensory grounds (target answers are in italics) 1. how (in what way) is a table a bit like a person? it has legs. 2. how is a comb a bit like a mouth? it has teeth. 3. how is a potato a bit like a face? it has eyes. 4. how is a shoe a bit like a mouth? it has a tongue. 5. how could water be a bit like a person in a race? it can run. 6. how can the wind be a bit like an owl? it can howl. riddles involving a (nonsensory) metaphorical use of language 7. how could a person be a bit like the sun? they could be bright. 8. how could a person be a bit like a rock? they could be hard. 90 riddle use and comprehension probe questions which followed the riddles (questions used in task 2) riddles involving a metaphorical comparison based on sensory grounds (target answers are in italics) 1. how (in what way) is a table a bit like a person? it has legs. 2. how is a comb a bit like a mouth? it has teeth. 3. how is a potato a bit like a face? it has eyes. 4. how is a shoe a bit like a mouth? it has a tongue. 5. how could water be a bit like a person in a race? it can run. 6. how can the wind be a bit like an wolf? it can howl. riddles involving a (nonsensory) metaphorical use of language 7. how could a person be a bit like the sun? they could be bright. 8. how could a person be a bit like a rock? they could be hard. 9. how can time be a bit like a bird? it can fly. 10. how could a person a bit like a broken up jigsaw? they've gone to pieces / they're falling apart. 11. how could a telephone be a bit like a person who's going to get mar ried soon? it could be engaged. 12. how could a person be a bit like a sweeping brush? they could be pushed around. these questions were presented in random order. appendix 2 the children's alternative answers on the riddle answering task 1. what has legs but cannot walk? 8 years: girls:(none) boys: trousers; tadpoles; a person that has a spell put on them. 9 years: girls: a doll or a teddy; boys: a footpath. 10 years: girls: a gymnastic horse; boys: (none) 11 years: girls: (none) boys: a person in a wheelchair. 91 staunton 2. what has teeth but no mouth? 8 years: girls: a piano; a fork; boys: teeth in a box. 9 years: girls: false teeth; boys: a needle (one tooth). 10 years: girls: shark teeth on a piece of string; boys: a trap. 11 years: girls: (none) boys: a saw (two answers). 3. what has eyes but cannot see? 8 years: girls: a bat; boys: joke glasses. 9 years: girls: a person in a painting; boys: a bat; a needle. 10 years: girls: a dead fish; cats' eyes on the road; boys: a pin (needle). 11 years: girls: (none) boys: a blind man. 4. what goes around all day with its tongue sticking out and sits by your bed at night? 8 years: girls: a dog; the safety sticker on a lamp; boys: a dog. 9 years: girls: a dog; boys: a dog or cat; a rude teddy. a dog. 10 years: girls: a dog; boys: (none) 11 years: girls: a dog; your tie; boys: (none) 92 riddle use and comprehension 5. what runs but never walks? 8 years: girls: a runner; a cheetah; boys: your nose; a car engine; 9 years: girls: an ostrich; your nose; boys: runners (shoes); a bicycle or rollerskates. 10 years: girls: (none) boys: a tape recorder; 11 years: girls: a car (the engine); boys: a robot that is programmed to run, not walk. 6. what can howl but has no mouth? 8 years: girls: a radio; boys: the alarm system (burglar alarm). 9 years: girls: a hairdryer; boys: a frog or toad; a whistle. 10 years: girls: (none) boys: (none) 11 years: girls: an alarm clock; boys: the radio; the breaks [brakes-ed] on a car;a car. appendix 3 riddles collected from each class group third class (girls) child no.2 (1) what did the big biscuit say to the little biscuit? 'crumbs.' (2) what's big and has a very, very big appetite? an elephant. (3) what can you get that can be different colours and very soft? a cush ion. (4) what's got two legs, a medium-sized body and a very, very big tail? a peacock. (5) what's green and brown and has different colours all over it? a christmas tree. 93 staunton child no.3 (6) what's round and yellow, laid in a nest, but won't hatch like the rest? a tennis ball (7) what did the ground say to the rain? 'if you keep this up my name will be mud. ' (8) why does a lion like christmas? because of his sandy paws (santa claus). (9) what has keys but can't open any doors? a piano. (10) why did the wolf cross the road? because the chicken hadn't been invented yet. third class (bovs) child no.4 (11) what did the skeleton say to the toilet? 'you can't get anything out of me'. (12)why did the skeleton cross the road? because he needed to go to the body shop. (13) what do you call a chimp with a banana in each ear? anything you like—he can't hear you! child no.5 (14) greek riddle: this greek king came into his castle and these people came along and tried to take him. but before they could take him, he took poison. why did they still take him? answer: greek kings take small bits of poison all the time so that if they have to take poison it won't harm them. and that's why they still took him-because he was still alive. fourth class (girls) child no.7 (15) what did the big candle say to the little candle? 'i'm going out to night' . fourth class (boys) child no. 10 (16) what did the big chimney say to the little chimney? 'you're to young to be smoking'. child no. 11 (17) why did the egg go all around the world? because he wanted to be an eggs-plorer! child no. 12 (18) why did the egg start crying? cause it was all cracked up. (19) what is a math teacher's favourite tree? a geometree. (20) why did dennis bring a ladder to assembly? because his teacher wanted him to sing higher. (21) what has four legs in the morning, two legs at midday and in the 94 riddle use and comprehension evening has three legs? answer: it's the three stages of man. he crawls in the morning, then walks and then gets a walking stick. (22) why did the tortoise cross the road? he wanted to get to the shell station. (23)what do water and a nose have in common? they can both run if they're cold. fifth class (girls) child no. 13 (24)what's black and white and re(a)d all over? a newspaper. or it could be a penguin or a zebra with sunburn. (25) what do you call a cucumber with four doors? a slammer. (a slammer is a sandwich). (26) why did the chicken cross the road? to show he had guts. child no. 15 (27) riddle: in comes two legs, carrying one leg and puts it on three legs. in comes four legs and out goes five legs. out comes two legs and throws three legs at four legs. (and you've got to figure out the answer over 24 hours). answer: in comes two legs (a human), carrying one leg (a leg of lamb) and she puts it on a three-legged stool. and in comes a four-legged dog and takes it outside (and that's the five legs that go out, the dog and the leg of lamb). and when two legs sees that the leg of lamb is gone she picks up the three-legged stool and goes outside and throws it at the dog. fifth class (boys) child no. 17 (28)why did the hedgehog cross the road? to show his friends he had guts. (29) why does a golfer wear two pairs of trousers? in case he gets a hole in one. (30)did you hear about the surfing burglar? he stayed on the criminal wave. (31) what did the hat say to the scarf? you stay here and hang around and i'll go on a head. (32)what's a frog's favourite football stadium? croak park. child no. 18 (33) what did the big hand say to the little hand? i’ll be around in an hour'. (34) why is the baseball stadium hot after the game? because all the fans have left. sixth class (girls) child no. 19 (35) what has sixteen wheels and pink spots? an elephant with the measles on rollerblades. 95 staunton (36)what's black and white red all over? a nun who's fallen down the stairs. (37) supposing, supposing, three men were a-frozing. one died. how many were left? none-because you're only supposing. child no. 20 (38)why did the turkey cross the road? it was the chicken's day off. child no. 21 (39) why did the boy bury his clock? because the batteries were dead. (40) what gets bigger the more you take out of it? a hole. (41) what gets wetter the more you dry? a towel. (42) what's big, purple and eats spaceships? a big, purple spaceship eater. child no. 23 (43)what do you call a fly without wings.? a walk. (44)riddle: what's as green as grass, as red as a rose, white as snow, black as coal? answer: a blackberry. when it's not ripe it's green. it flowers white. when it's not quite right it's red and when it's ripe it turns black. child no. 24 (45) what did the big chimney say to the little chimney? 'you're too young to be smoking'. (46)what's pink and fluffy? pink fluff. (47)what's brown and sticky? a brown stick. (48) what's blue and fluffy? 'blue fluff?' no, pink fluff with a cold. jokes collected from the children third class (girls) child no.2 (1) the dad asked the girl, 'do you want any help with your homework?' . and the girl said, 'no thanks, i can get it wrong by myself. third class (boys) child no.5 (2) this man was in a pub watching a match. he drank half his glass of harp and put it down on the table. and this little green goblin comes along while he's watching the game. and the goblin goes, 'be, wee, wee, wee, wee' (putting his finger in the glass) and fills it up again. then the man comes back, 'now, don't do that'. and the green goblin comes back and goes, 'be, wee, wee' and fills the glass up again. and the man says, 'if you do that again, i'll pull down your yocks and and pull your wey off. and the man puts down the drink and watches the t.v. again. and the goblin comes back and goes, 'be, wee, wee', and the man goes, 'that's it!'. (gestures puffing some 96 riddle use and comprehension thing oft). and the man says, 'now, how will you go to the toilet? and the goblin goes, 'bee, wee, wee, wee' and the glass overflows. (3) if i was a teacher, i'd give my pupils glasses. get it? my pupils glasses. fourth class (girls) child no.7 (4) knock, knock, who's there? boo who? there, there, don't cry. it's only a joke. child no.8 (5) knock, knock. who's there? owls. owls who? yes, they do, don't they? fourth class (boys) child no. 10 (6) knock, knock, boo. who's there? banana who? knock, knock. who's there? banana. banana who? knock,knock. who's there? orange. orange who? orange you glad i didn't say banana? (7) there were three elephants called shut up, mercy and trouble. and one day trouble went missing. and shut up went to the police station and the policeman asked shut up for his name. so he said 'shut up'. and the policeman said, 'are you looking for trouble?'. 'yes, please'. so the policeman said, 'right then, you're going to get it'. so shut up shouted for mercy. and the policeman said, 'it's alright, i wasn't serious'. (8) one day a boy wanted to go to the toilet and he asked his teacher if he could go. and she said, 'no'. and then she said, 'say your abc'. so he said, 'abcdefghijklmno_qrstuvwxyz'. 'where's your 'p' '?. and the boy said, 'it's dribbling down my leg'. child no. 12 (9) this is a joke about newcastle football club, saying that they're not very good: 97 staunton 'somebody broke into newcastle's trophy room'. 'really?' 'yeah'. 'what did they take?' 'everything. they're looking for a man with a black and white carpet'. fifth class (girls) child no. 13 (10)there's a little boy and a granny and he's walking down the road when he comes across a five pound note. and he says, 'granny, granny can i pick the five pound note off the ground? and the granny says 'no, because anything on the ground is dirty'. and then he comes across a ten pound note and he says, 'granny, granny can i pick up the ten pound note? and the granny says, 'no, because anything on the ground is dirty'. and then he comes across a hundred pound note and he says, 'granny, granny, can i pick up the hundred pound note? and she says, 'no, because anything on the ground is dirty'. the granny falls on the ground and she says, 'sonny, sonny, pick me up' and the boy goes, 'no, because anything on the ground is dirty'. (11) 'anything i say, you have to say, 'and so did the fat lady'. one day i went into a shop... ' 'and so did the fat lady'. 'i got bread and milk' . 'and so did the fat lady'. 'i paid for the bread and milk'. 'and so did the fat lady'. 'i went out of the shop'. 'and so did the fat lady'. '1 bought a balloon'. 'and so did the fat lady'. 'the balloon burst'. 'and so did the fat lady'. (12)this man always drove to work on an egg. and one day it wouldn't start. so he rang the aa and the aa came out and said, 'well, we'll take the yoke out'. so they took the yoke out and the car started and he drove to work. and when he got to work he rang the aa to thank them because his car was all white now because they had taken the yolk out. child no. 14 (13) mr. mccarthy and mrs. mccarthy were a family in america. mrs. mccarthy always stayed at home and mr. mccarthy always went to work. and when mr. mccarthy came home one day he said, 'did any mail come today? and mrs. mccarthy said, 'no, there's only been female in the house all day'. 98 riddle use and comprehension (14) paddy englishman, paddy irishman and paddy scotsman all walked into a bar. and one of them said, 'i need to go to the toilet'. so paddy scotsman walks up to the toilet and he opens the door and he hears this sound: 'i am the ghost of the one black eye'. and he runs out really quickly and says, 'there's a ghost in the toilet!' so, paddy englishman, thinking he's being really brave, walks in and he hears the sound, 'i am the ghost of the one black eye' and he runs out and says, 'there really is a ghost in the toilet'. so paddy irishman goes in and the door opens and he hears the voice, 'i am the ghost of the one black eye'. and he says, 'yeah. and you'll be the ghost of the two black eyes in a second if you don't shut up'. fifth class (boys) child no. 16 (15)how do you know a blonde has been at her computer? there's tippex all over the screen. (16) doctor, doctor, i've got a spanner in my throat.' 'are you choking?' 'no, i'm serious.' (17)'waiter, there's a fly in my bowl'. 'he'll be swimming in the cup tomorrow. ' child no. 18 (18 paddy english, paddy irishman and paddy scotsman were all going to jail for five years. and they were each allowed to bring five hundred things with them. paddy englishman brought five hundred bottles of wine, paddy scotsman brought five hundred cakes and paddy scotsman [irishman-ed] brought five hundred cigarettes. when the five years were up, paddy englishman came out drunk, paddy scotsman came out fat and paddy irishman came out and said, 'does anyone have a light? sixth class girls) child no. 20 (19) paddy englishman, paddy irishman and paddy scotsman were out in the desert and they each bought one thing in the shop. paddy englishman bought a bottle of water, paddy scotsman bought a baseball cap and paddy irishman bought a car door. and they each asked each other why they had bought these things. paddy englishman wanted the water to drink if he got hot. paddy scotsman wanted the cap to keep the sun out of his eyes. and paddy irishman wanted the car door so that if it got too hot he could roll down the car window. child no. 21 (19) what goes black and white thump, black and white thump, black and white thump? a nun rolling down the stairs. what goes black and white, 'ha, ha', black and white, 'ha, ha', black and white, 'ha, ha'? the nun who pushed her. 99 staunton sixth class (boys) child no. 23 (20) what do you call a lada going up a hill? a miracle. (21) what do you do if a kerryman throws a grenade at you? you pull out the pin and throw it back. (22) what do you do if a kerryman throws a pin at you? you run because he probably has the grenade between his teeth. (23)how do you drown a kerryman? knock on the door of his subma rine. (24)did you hear about the kerryman's dictionary? it has an index. (25)have you heard about the kerryman's latest inventions? the water proof teabag and the underwater hairdryer. (26) what's black and white and goes, 'thump, thump, thump, crash?' a nun falling down the stairs. and what's black and white and goes, 'ah, ha, ha!' the nun who pushed her. child no. 24 (27)this idiot is in bed and the phone rings. and the voice says, 'hello, is this 2333964?' and the idiot says, 'no, this is 2333963'. 'oh, i'm sorry to get you out of bed'. 'no, it's ok. i had to get out of bed anyway to answer the phone. 100 to the editor dear editor: i am pleased by iona opie's interest in my research, and appreciate this opportunity to address her concerns about my recent article. my discussion of peter and iona opie's work was a part of my attempt to situate past research within a history of concepts of childhood, and was in no way intended to be a judgment of past work by present standards. it is possible that quoting legman's discussion of the history of folkloristic treatments of rudeness and obscenity made my own review of that history seem unduly harsh. i do think that my phrasing made it seem as though researchers had more agency than they truly had in getting their works published, and in what they could publish. indeed, as mrs. opie points out, "in the 1950s, before the arrival of the permissive society, no general book could (along with television, radio, and the newspapers) include anything that was sexually explicit." the reasons for this were my original point, and far pre-dated the 1950s: the construction of the innocent child as the only true child did not permit the mainstream publication (or acknowledgment) of materials that could indicate the contrary. the quote i referred to but did not reproduce from the people in the playground (oup paperback ed. 1994) reads as follows: "'i really need some more games,' i [mrs. opie] said. 'what about shagging? that's a good one,' he [a "bold bad storyteller"] said. he has glowing honey-amber eyes, and an air of radiant health. he is the kind of healthy animal one would forgive for anything, as the bishop in norman douglas' south wind forgave his healthy savages their lapses into cannibalism. (26)." mrs. opie's comparison conjured a time when children were regularly likened to "savages" and when european intellectuals used "savage" as a word to describe people not like themselves. the term "savage" connoted an innocence of civilization, and of course the term included children, because they, too, had yet to learn how to be "civilized." i thought this was a perfect illustration of how we continue to be haunted by past constructions of childhood-they never disappear, but rather become subsumed into our current representations. mrs. opie's evocation of cannibalistic savages in describing the nature of this boy made clear to me how difficult it is to escape the constructions of childhood while writing about children. it seems to me that the "ogre" child described in the lore and language of schoolchildren (oxford university press paperback ed. 1967) and revisited in mrs. opie's response to my article could be constructively described as a social outcast who didn't 101 to the editor get to learn the nuanced uses of rudeness that i detail in my article. the career of the bully, the character the opies appear to describe in lore and language (95), frequently begins with rejection from the peer group. the difference from other kids lies not in the face-value use of rude language, but in how the child uses such language. the problem, "ogrish" rudeness is that which is isolated from other social discourse, or is the only form of social interaction. a bully, regardless of age, throws social conventions into sharp relief in the violation of those conventions, and so can be seen as a part (however dysfunctional) of the larger social whole, not simply as a pathological outlier. my point here is that the child incapable of using rude folklore in a socially acceptable manner is still a child, and so should be taken into account in any description or analysis of children and their folklore. i hope i have made my perspective more clear. donna m. lanclos, ph.d. post-doctoral affiliate uc berkeley department of anthropology 102 cfs: 2000 annual meeting president bill ellis called the breakfast meeting to order at 7:00 am in the grant/harding room of the hyatt regency hotel, columbus, ohio. a quorum was present. reports president: bill ellis reported that he had attended the conveners meeting and that the main topic of discussion was web sites and that sections should develop web sites to be included on the afs website. treasurer: joe edgette was not at the meeting, but bill ellis was able to report that the section has approximately $3900.00 in its account. cfr editor: chip sullivan reported that east carolina university continues to provide $3000.00 in support funds per academic year and asked if the section was willing to cover additional expenses for the publication of two longer-than-usual issues, one containing this year's newell prize paper, and the other containing the papers from this year's cfs session, "the monstrous child." the membership voted to support those two issues. newell prize committee: chip sullivan reported that the newell prize committee had selected sara staunton's "riddle use and comprehension in irish school-aged children: a developmental study," as this year's prize winner. aesop committee: judy sierra reported that 81 titles from 23 publishers were submitted for the 2000 aesop prize. both numbers are down from last year's 145 titles from 36 publishers and may reflect both mergers and an industry-wide trend toward publishing fewer picture books. 2000 aesop prize: the day the rabbi disappeared: jewish holiday tales of magic. text by howard schwartz and illustrations by monique passicot. viking, 2000. cfs: 2000 annual meeting 2000 aesop accolades: the hunter: a chinese folktale. text by mary casanova and illustrations by ed young. atheneum, 2000. in the hollow of your hand: slave lullabies. text by alice magill and illustrations by michael cummings. houghton, 2000. stockings of buttermilk: american folktales. text by neil philip and illustrations by jacqueline mair. clarios, 1999. new business bill ellis handed the gavel to incoming president joann conrad. elections: jacqueline thursby was elected president-elect. the section needs a website manager. judy sierra, who set up the present website, is resigning. a committee of bill ellis, chip sullivan, rosalyn bryn-ladrew, and joann conrad was established to consider the matter. the section voted to continue the breakfast meeting. possible topics for a paper session or forum at next year's meeting were discussed; they included: cosponsoring a harry potter panel with the folklore and literature section, a panel or forum on the images of the indigenous child, and a panel or forum on folklore and the socialization of the child. as time ran out, the possibility of a follow up to children’s folklore: a source book was mentioned. no immediate ideas or plans were forthcoming. president conrad adjourned the meeting at 8:00 am. respectfully submitted, c.w. sullivan iii secretary pro tem 104 book reviews de vos, gail and anna altmann. new tales for old: folktales as literary fictions for young adults. englewood, colorado: libraries unlimited, 1999. 406p. $39.00 hc. as society changes and the entertainment industry impacts our culture, traditional fairy tales borrowed from the oral tradition have been adopted and adapted into new forms by the popular media. the unique contribution of new tales for old is the listing and discussion of a wide range of contemporary adaptations—movies, novels, operas, poetry, short stories, picture books, and internet resources based on eight folktales: "cinderella," "the frog king," "hansel and gretel," "little red riding hood," "rapunzel," "rumpelstiltskin," "sleeping beauty," and "snow white." the persistence of these familiar fairy tales—often in dramatically altered forms—highlights the haunting power of these images and messages whose roots lie deep in oral tradition. replete with interdisciplinary interpretations, this book is a treasure trove for teachers who work with undergraduates or high school populations. folklorists, too, will find this a useful and stimulating resource. after discussing the theories of walther j. ong as presented in orality and literacy: the technologizing of the word, the authors provide an overview of the folktale genre and various interpretative approaches. in the following chapters, each focusing on a single tale, scholarly commentaries from folkloristic, literary, social, political, and psychological perspectives follow the story text. these scholarly syntheses, which emphasize the symbolism. of each tale as well as gender issues, are offered in an objective and non-judgmental manner. versions of the tale in various popular media are discussed, and each chapter ends with thoughtful and creative classroom exercises and an extensive bibliography. an overview of one of the chapters will serve to illustrate the breadth and variety of scholarship in this work. "snow white" (chapter nine) begins by comparing the version of the tale in giambattista basile's the pentamerone (seventeenth century) with the grimm version, including a chart showing revisions made in subsequent editions of the grimm texts. in their "overview of critical interpretations," book reviews the authors summarize in chronological order commentaries on "snow white" by karl schenkl, alfred nutt, ernest boklen, bolte and polivka, kurt heyman, j.p grant duff, a.n. foxe, a.s. macquisten and r.w pickford, julius heuscher, bruno bettelheim, n.j. girardot, roger sale, sandra m.gilbert and susan gubar, derek brewer, kay stone, max luthi, maria tatar, betsy cohen, ruth bottigheimer, wolfgang mieder, joyce thomas, shuli barzilai, steven swann jones, james mcglathery, lutz rohrich, trina schart hyman, nancy walker, martin hallett and barbara karasek, diane purkiss and christiana bacchilega. interpretive and philosophical' statements are presented without criticism, as the authors' purpose is "to provoke rather than to judge." the authors' discussion also covers literary works based on "snow white," including three novels: pictures of the night by adele geras (san diego, ca: harcourt, 1992), the godmother by elizabeth ann scarborough (new york: ace, 1994) and little snow white, a graphic novel by david wenzel and douglas wheeler (new york: nantier, beall and minoustchine, 1995). donald bartheleme's snow white is not included, perhaps because the authors considered it inappropriate for young adults? references to "snow white" in children's picture books along with synopses of eighteen short stories and eleven poems (presented in chronological order of their publication) are also presented. the chapter includes a lengthy examination of "snow white and the seven dwarfs" (1937), walt disney's first full-length animated film which sparked interest in animated reworkings of traditional and literary tales. de vos and altmann even include a section on "movie trivia" which reveals that individualized dwarfs were previously found only in a picture book published in england (1921) where the illustrator drew names on the dwarf's trousers: stool, plate, spoon, fork, knife, bread and wine. disney's innovation was not only to provide names for the dwarfs, but in addition, to give them distinct personalities. (other names disney considered included gabby, jumpy, sniffy, puffy, lazy, stubby, shorty, nifty and wheezy.) additional contemporary films discussed in this chapter include snow white: a tale of terror (1996), directed by michael cohen and willa: an american snow white (1997), directed by tom davenport as well as several short films. finally, in the internet category, the authors describe a site developed by professor kay e. vandergrift: www.scils.rutgers.edu/spe 106 book reviews cial/kay/swteach.html. here an 1898 edition of "snow white" can be used to compare highlighted portions of the text with more than thirty other variants. the "classroom extensions" exercises include questions for discussion on essay writing: to what extent can the apple in "snow white" be compared with the spindle in "sleeping beauty?" what is the role of the witch in history? in folklore? is this witch different than the witch in "hansel and gretel" and "rapunzel?" the chapter concludes with an extensive bibliography. each of the other stories is presented with the same in detail coverage, referencing media publications and productions. new tales for old is enhanced by an attractive book design which includes convenient headers and footers, easy to read charts, and use of a bold font for story titles and section headings. i heartily recommend this book for lovers of folk tales and/or popular culture. ruth stotter suwyn, barbara j. edited and with an introduction by natalie o. kononenko. the magic egg and other tales from ukraine. [world folklore series.] englewood, co: libraries unlimited. 1997. isbn: 156308-425-2. 222p, b&w and color illustrations, bibliography, index. $29.50 this is a collection of delightful stories, rewritten to appeal to children, suitable for reading aloud or retelling orally. the volume, part of the world folklore series, has been designed with a school and library market in mind. it includes supplemental material such as a glossary and pronunciation guide, introductions that provide historical and cultural context, and bibliographies with suggestions for further reading. the collection is divided into animal tales, how and why stories, moral stories, and legends and fairy tales. the variety of stories is chosen to appeal to a range of age levels and teachers and parents are urged to be selective in deciding which stories to share. a young child enchanted by stories like "the turnip" or "the little round bun" might find stories like "the stranger" (a vampire story) or "the sorceress" frightening, although these are gripping tales that will captivate older readers. the work is the result of collaboration between suwyn, a professional copywriter and poet, and kononenko, 107 book reviews a professor of folklore whose area of expertise is ukrainian and turkish folk performance, resulting in well-told stories with appropriate cultural details. although the bibliography includes source material in english and in ukrainian, more could have been done to indicate specific sources for individual stories. admittedly, the volume is not intended as a scholarly work of folklore, but a brief indication of documentation by tale would have been useful, especially since suwyn indicates in her introduction that some stories are "original composites" or "new conflations of traditional themes" (xxvi). kononenko contributed several of these, which she acquired orally; and written sources may not have been readily available. suwyn comments specifically on her use of named characters, noting that "in traditional ukrainian tales, characters are often unnamed or go by a common name, such as ivan or marusya (the ukrainian equivalents of john or mary). because this book is intended to introduce readers to ukrainian culture, a variety of common ukrainian names have been used for the characters" (xxxiii). although this accomplishes its purpose, some tales seem too specific. in the animal tales, it is easy to see that little fox is a familiar character who appears in several of the stories. this sense of familiarity disappears when other stories are individualized. the story "the doll," which parallels the well-known russian folktale about vasilissa's encounter with baba yaga (baba yaha in ukrainian), here features a girl named paraska. kononenko comments that this name is probably derived from paraskovia piatnytsia, the patron saint of cloth and fiber arts an apt choice since the girl is a noted seamstress and embroiderer but do we assume this name is attached to the story or did suwyn choose it because it seemed appropriate? some traditional names are kept, like the historic character of cossack bandit oleska dovbush who warns, "take only what you need" in the story about his treasure. kononenko establishes links between the tales and pre-christian spiritual beliefs, suggesting that the witch baba yaha was once a goddess figure to explain her dual nature of magic helper and evil witch as derived from the clash between western and pre-christian attitudes toward witches and wise women. unsuccessful struggles of the church to suppress pagan belief appear in the powerful story "the sorceress," which features a priest's daughter. despite her father's conviction that "there is no such thing as a sorceress, or magic, or curses," the daughter, aided by faith and a wise woman, resolutely withstands the evil forces she has inadvertently become involved in. 108 book reviews the introductions suggest that this book is a product of its time, arising out of efforts to reclaim ukrainian culture and heritage as a distinctive tradition following the dissolution of the soviet union. the emphasis on the tales as "a portrait of the country's soul" (xxv) that contribute to a persistent sense of national identity despite centuries of oppression by successive dominating forces reflects the nation's political history but is also indicative of the romantic nationalist attitude that underlies this work. still, the political and historical details provide a useful context for the tales. the stories themselves are wonderful humorous, robust, some simple and some complex. some are ukrainian variants of widely distributed stories -comfortably familiar although perhaps with a surprising twist; others are new to me and i am glad to learn of them. suwyn's charming black-and-white marginal drawings add to the book's visual appeal. the short section of color illustrations are used as an educational supplement to expose readers to the ukrainian folk arts of pysanky (elaborately decorated easter eggs) and rushnyky (ceremonial embroidered cloths). illustrations of folktales by ukrainian artists are also included. suwyn is a good storyteller, despite a few disconcerting slips. in "the frog princess," one of my favorite stories, the frogs are supposed to say "ribbet, ribbet, " -a startling americanism accompanied by a footnote explaining that ukrainian frogs actually say "kvak, kvak." but on the whole, the stories are well told quickly moving narratives, accessible yet culturally specific. relatively little ukrainian folk material is available for the general public, especially children. altogether, this is an appealing collection that will be welcome to schools and libraries. vicky dworkin ph. d. candidate in american studies, student of storytelling, university of hawaii at manoa mabie, hamilton wright. norse stories. new york: hippoerene books, 1999. 250pp. $14.95 hc growing up as a child in scandinavia you were automatically introduced to the heathen religion of your forefathers by virtually daily references to some pagan god or other. if there was a thunderstorm, it was said that thor was out riding in the sky, if the harvest failed 109 book reviews frey was seen as ill-tempered. now, children and adults alike have the change to get acquainted or re-acquainted with this mythical world. norse stories, first published in 1901, has been brought back into print. on 250 pages, each with a handsome border depicting various mythical creatures, the author brings to life the adventures of the gods and goddesses, giants, dwarfs, serpents and other creatures and animals inhabiting this world. he tells how our forefathers thought the world was created, how odin was the ruler of this world, how thor got his hammer, how frey fell in love with the beautiful gerd, how idun's apples kept them young, how loke always tried to ruin everything and finally succeeded by having balder slain, an occurrence that ultimately introduced evil into the world and finally led to ragnarok, or the end of the world. balder was the best of the gods, the fairest and the kindest. prior to being slain he had a dream about his own death and the goddess frigg, his mother, extracted an oath from everybody and everything not to hurt balder. thinking that the mistletoe was too tiny and insignificant, she neglected to extract an oath from it. loke soon found out, went looking for the mistletoe and brought it to hoder, balder's blind brother, and asked him to throw it at balder. since balder was thought to be invincible, the gods had been using him for target practice by throwing darts, spears, and other weapons at him, all of which fell harmless at his feet. hoder throws the mistletoe twig at balder, it pierces his heart and he falls dead to the ground. since he did not die in battle, he is not allowed to go to valhalla but ends up in hel. frigg sends his other brother, hermod, to retrieve him in hel. however, this can only be accomplished if everybody weeps for him. again, loke, disguised as an old woman, refuses to weep for balder who therefore must remain in hel. the tale of balder's death can be seen as representative for all the other tales in that it describes the everyday life of the gods with them playing or waging battles against the giants during the day and feasting at night, but it also shows the dichotomy between good and evil, here symbolized by balder and loke, and the ongoing battle between these forces. these stories are based on the prose edda by snorre sturieson, which was written in the 13th century. by this time scandinavia had already been converted to christianity and snorre himself was a christian. the stories had been handed down from generation to genera 110 book reviews tion and it can be assumed that they had changed in the process and that snorre's version is more the result of a brilliant storyteller bringing these tales to he than an accurate rendition. however, even today, the edda is considered the most important source of norse mythology. these tales again have been transformed, this time into individual fairytales with titles such as "the making of the world," "odin's search for wisdom," "thor goes fishing," "the binding of the wolf' and so on. the tales in the edda are intertwined and are told by one or several narrators. dividing the tales into separate chapters obviously makes them more accessible and easier to follow, especially for a youthful audience. whereas the narrators in snorre's edda repeatedly point out that "there is no need to make a long story of it," this is exactly what this author has done. the language is highly embellished and filled with descriptive adjectives, creating a distinct mood or impression, but sometimes unnecessarily slowing down the flow of events. passages such as "words could hardly describe the beautiful country through which odin took his way-its deep, quiet green valleys, with the sparkling cold streams rushing through them; its steep mountains, crowned with fir and pine; its great crags standing out into the sea; and its fjords breaking the coast into numberless bays," gives a marvelous description of the landscape but might, however, make a young reader reach for his "asterix." in addition, the author/narrator often comments on an event or personage. observations such as "like all other people of little nature, they were envious or cruel" or "but when one has nothing to do, it's easy to do wrong." are strewn throughout the stories. in comparison, snorre generally abstained from such philosophical or moral judgments. in spite of the above comments, norse stories, make for entertaining reading about gods and heroes and their heroic or not so heroic deeds, their longings and their fears. norse stories can be enjoyed at any age, however, with the presentation of the stories as fairy tales, the most likely target audience would be 10-14 year olds. with black and white instead of the colorful illustrations in the original edition, younger children might not appreciate it and adults might prefer reading the original text in the prose edda. anita burns, hawaii 111 book reviews running wolf, michael b. and patricia clark smith. on the trail of elder brother: glous'gap stories of the micmac indians. illustrations by michael b. runningwolf. new york: persea books, 2000. $16.95 hc. 160 pages from the inside cover: "michael b. runningwolf grew up in maine and in canada, a direct descendant of beminuit, the grand chief of the micmac nation. a master storyteller, he tells micmac tales in libraries, schools, parks, and museums. he lives in los lunas, new mexico. patricia clark smith is of irish, french-canadian, and micmac descent. she is the author of two volumes of poetry and many essays and stories. she teaches native american literature and creative writing at the university of new mexico, albuquerque." each of the sixteen tales included in this refreshing collection begin with the ancient words: "wodin'it atog'agan" (woh-dehn-eet ahtoogah-gahn) –"this is a story." the authors gave their readers "the micmac words for things as often as possible," (xii), and pronouncing aloud the soft sounding words helps to draw the reader into a distant time and place the micmac, which means "allies," are part of the eastern algonquin nation and live in nova scotia, cape breton island, prince edward island, new brunswick, quebec, and maine. they once fought as allies to the french in the french and indian wars. in earlier days, their explorations and wanderings took them as far south as delaware and as far west as minnesota and the great lakes. sometimes called "keepers of the sunrise" or "children of the dawn," a portion of their traditional stories has been shared here by runningwolf and smith. pen and ink illustrations by runningwolf at the beginning of each story include "traditional designs and symbols from micmac quill and bead work, hide paintings, and writings on rock and birchbark" (xii). the narrators have selected stories which connect us to a far-away past by using complex twists and unexpected continuities. we are led along the knowledge path by glous'gap the micmac embodiment of god's power. a spiritual trickster, the ultimate warrior, and a medicine person, he leads us through woodland forests to bubbling waters. then we are transported to soaring bluffs and chilly ocean depths. the reader meets young wolf, pine marten, mrs. bear, grandfather turtle, and others. glous'gap's actions and words are models for the micmac people, and we learn consequences, the way things 112 book reviews are, from the experiences glous'gap has with other creatures including wa'sis (wah-seez) a baby and tji'nou (jee-noo) a cannibal. laws, morals, and wisdom are presented in action stories like "the boy in the birchwood box." when he was a man, he remembered his experiences as a boy, and "if ever he felt a little impatient or dissatisfied with his lot, he always recalled the time he had spent as a boy in a birchwood box, and he shuddered and gave thanks for his life" (91). the stories give answers to questions you perhaps have not asked. have you ever wondered why a bullfrog's skin is wrinkled, or where the painted turtle came from? have you ever thought about why turtles lay their eggs in sand, or why the gopher has a handprint at the end of its tail? or even why the stones are red at pipestone national monument in minnesota? it was glous'gap in his wisdom, the lord of men and beasts, who helped the animals and plants evolve and made the earth the way we know it. these are more than simple origin myths. the stories reflect the human condition and what it is to learn to survive emotionally and physically in a vast, mysterious, and often threatening world. the tales are narrative forms that link the reader to ancient belief systems among the micmac. annette kolodny said of this book: "through these stories the general reader will enter a world of monsters, magic, sorceresses, spring flowers, irascible porcupines, and troubling prophecies. . . . for the scholar," she continued, "this collection provides invaluable lessons about the persistence of narrative forms, aesthetic codes, and inherited belief systems among the eastern algonquin peoples." it is a good collection for almost any age and would be particularly useful for reading aloud. the stories are complete in themselves but have linking threads that create a continuing saga. the micmac language sprinkled throughout the book provides an interesting challenge but not a stumbling block. there is a glossary which includes pronunciation guides in the back of the book as well as a map of glous'gap's trail. the stories take the reader into an unfamiliar world that is sensitively rendered. i would recommend it for ages ten through adult. jacqueline thursby, ph. d. brigham young university, english department, assistant professor 113 book reviews romano, lilia e. italian fairy tales. new york: hippocrene books, 1999. 16.95 hc. 134 pp. italian fairy tales, called a wonder book, was originally published before 1920, and it represents a sampling of italian folklore. this "original" collection of eleven stories filled with fairy magic, goblins, beautiful maidens, brave youths, giants, and exquisite italian names ("gennareillo," "giovannion," "luciella," "filandoro," and "cecella") is as refreshing as the perfume of orange groves and myrtle trees that figuratively waft through its pages. maria tatar remarked that fairy tales "circulate in multiple versions, reconfigured by each telling to form kaleidoscopic variations with distinctly different effects" (ix).1 as i read these stories, i found sparkling twists and gentle turns of familiar threads with "distinctly different effects." the first story, "the quest of the bird with the golden tail," begins with a prince being turned into a pig because his mother, a queen, laughed at a lame child. he learned in a dream that his only hope would be to be loved by a beautiful girl who would marry him. of course, this is familiar, but there is more. he finds the girl, and with a twist on psyche and eros, the groom turns into a beautiful young man at night when he is with her, and then appears as a pig to others during the day. the queen is exceedingly curious about her pig-son's appeal to his beautiful bride, and finally intrudes on his privacy. this results in his turning into a bird (with a golden tail), and it begins the searching quest for him by his beautiful bride who must wear medieval-like iron shoes (another familiar motif). she is given three nuts, a chestnut, walnut, and peanut, from three kind ogresses she meets on her journey, and she is told to "open when you are in need." the story becomes more complicated but ultimately has a happy ending. though it is "original", it is reconfigured from other tales. the text is profusely illustrated with pen and ink drawings and reproductions of paintings. the illustrations, by howard davie, are reminiscent of h.j. ford, fp jacomb hood, and lancelot speed, whose works appear in andrew lang's fairy book series. the pictures provide an education in material lore: furniture, clothing, architecture, foods, and even a parade celebration are pictured with revealing detail. the second story, "malconseil," is illustrated with a gestural line drawing of fantina, a water-temptress, that has so much energy one can almost feel the wet chill. 114 book reviews "the legend of the white chamois," about a mountain animal called the slarorog, takes the reader to the italian alps: "up to the sky in a mass of abrupt peaks and deep precipices. . . slopes where only the hardy rhododendron and chilly edelweiss grow. . ." (romano, 30). there, on monte ricco, spirits of the mountain guard a treasure cove, and there the heroic youth risks everything. "little goat-face" includes spinning flax, "luciella" has a cinderella theme and includes another psyche and eros-like scene: "the lantern threw out a drop a burning oil which fell on the youth man's shoulder, and, awakening with a start. . . "oh why have you done this?" he cried. . .and at that moment everything vanished from sight." (58). "viola," the sixth story, has an ogre, a garden, three sisters (the older two surpassed in beauty by the youngest), a prince, and a thimble. it is a good story and ends, like many of the stories, with a verse: they lived in bliss till a hundred years old, and so my story is said and told. (70) "the child of the myrtle tree" is a story of a mother who had seven sons. they pined for a daughter and sister. soon, the family bargained with an old woman for a little girl, and the tale continues. the boys become prisoners of an ogre, and the little girl is born out a myrtle tree. it is a delightful story enriched by helpful animals. "filadoro," the next story, has another very familiar element: "there was no staircase in the house, and filadoro had to put down her hair for her mother to get up and down" (92). "the fairy kittens" and "the three pomegranates" have princes, beautiful maiden, and excellent descriptive passages. the last story "little good-for-nothing" tells the story of rosella, and has reminders of rumpelstiltskin because of secret and mysterious naming. the stories are captivating and engaging. for one not familiar with european folk tales, the stories would be enjoyable and entertaining. for a reader familiar with western lore and tales, the stories provide creative new twists and reconfigurations of familiar themes. these are stories of romance, mischief, and adventure suitable for all ages. part of the enjoyment in these tales comes from the descriptive, impressionistic prose: "an almost invisible path to a beautiful spot where the poplars, the oaks, the chestnut trees, and the beeches joined overhead their marvelous foliage" (72), or "thousands and thousands 115 book reviews of skeins of the softest silk and finest thread beautifully tied together with lovely pale pink ribbons" (127). often, according to max luthi2, descriptive prose is kept to a minimum in fairy tales. he stated: "this absence of all desire to describe unessential details gives the european fairy tale its clarity and precision." (50). but in these italian gems, the author's descriptive imagination was in full force. the tales are beautiful, and they are written to be read silently or aloud and enjoyed. jacqueline thursby livo, norma j. and george livo. the enchanted wood and other tales from finland. englewood, co.: libraries unlimited, 1999. 188pp. $27.50 some finlanders will tell you that hidden deep in the waters and forests of their rugged country are trolls or peikkos, human-like creatures who live in clans or families. the peikkos also inhabit the craggy mountains and rolling hills. some are noisy and have tails (hiisi), some are giants (jattilainen), some are dwarfs (kaapio), and still others (keiju fairies) are beautiful females who can entice beautiful but unsuspecting men. woven into a collection of nineteen folktales, these characters assume tasks and mischiefs that make it difficult (and maybe unnecessary) for some believers to separate myth from reality. to help charm and engage the rest of us with this ancient and complex culture, the livos have put together a carefully researched and accessible text that documents and preserves the folk literature and culture of finland. from the finnish national anthem in the beginning of the book, to part iv which includes a helpful reference section, a bibliography, and an index, the book is informative, lucid, and engaging. part i describes the folklife of the finns, and is contextualized by the creation myth from the finnish national epic, kalevala. the land and climate are described, and the complex early history is carefully explained. the text systematically explains the adverse climatic conditions and how the finns have occasionally used those conditions to their advantage the introduction in part i invites the reader into a mysterious world. "come with us to the north woods," it says, "and meet the people with sisu" (5) (sisu represents guts, tenacity, and/or perseverance.) 116 book review.s the second section of part i, culture and traditions, begins with a description of independence day (december 6, 1917) and continues with leading folk practices of today's christmas celebrations in finland. "the word joulupukki is the finnish word for father christmas and literally translates to christmas goat" (33). the old custom is unique and it is remembered today by straw goat figurines that hang above the christmas table or tree. part ii takes the reader through a spectrum of vernacular traditions including proverbs, folk beliefs, and folktales. from weather proverbs, "if a cat sits looking out the window, it means rain is coming." (59) to "the tree of life," a great oak often pictured at the center of shamanistic drums. to make a prediction using the drum, the shaman placed a small piece of reindeer bone on the top of the drum and then shook it. the path that the piece of bone took and where it stopped was then read to reveal information thought to be from the spirit world. this section of the book also includes an explanation of the sampo, the magical millstone and producer of plenty. the nineteen folktales following include two stories about the sampo: the taiga sampo (the magic mill) and "the magic millstone." other stories resonate with vaguely familiar folk practices from other parts of the northern world. the story of "the amazing towel" as an episode where an underwater bride distributes gifts of remembrance to her guests: "beautiful shirts, stockings, gloves, and other fine handiwork" (113) were given away similar to potlatch traditions in the american northwest. in the story "sacks of cold and heat," i was reminded of the character sampson's comment in shakespeare's romeo and juliet. the finnish tale has the protagonist say, "they promised to be grateful, but they were merely biting their thumbs at me" (156). the last tale, a fictionalized account of a 1600s witch trial, ends with the shaman's "death by fires and stake along with his magical drum" (170). there is historical accuracy to the tale; many of finland's shaman were put to death for practicing magic during the days of the european witch hunts. part iii is made up of intriguing recipes, most of which have common ingredients and uncomplicated methods. finnish pancakes (pannukakku), salmon stew (lohikeitto) or the famous lutefish (keitetty lipekala) are all here for the adventuresome novice or master chef to try. at the end of the recipe section are color plates of well-chosen 117 book reviews paintings and photographs. three of artist akseli galien-kallela's wellknown paintings are reproduced.. they are illustrations from the kalevala. "lemminkainen's mother," (1897) was so popular that copies of it were displayed for many decades in finnish schools. the lore is that the face of the mother in the painting was that of gallen-kallela's own mother who modeled for him. supposedly he told her horrible stories until her face took on the fear and tragic expression he sought. this text provides a wide range of valuable information about finland, a little known country and yet the fifth largest (in land size) in europe. the book is an historical and cultural overview with an appeal for any age. from notes on architecture to literary contributions, from saunas to folktales, it can be used as an accurate research resource or for pleasurable reading aloud. the national epic of the finns, the kalevala, is an expression of finnish nationalism. "through this work came a national movement to establish proof of an ancient culture that solidified an identity distinct from their nordic neighbors and russian rulers" (39). the enchanted wood might have developed more specific information about the establishment of finnish identity through that work. more information should have been included about the region of karelia. many karelian songs had "analogues in finland's national epic, the kalevala."3 elias lonnrot "trekked countless miles through the sparsely populated country north and east of kajaani and across the nearby russian border in karelia, collecting these backwoods areas a large store of epic songs no longer to be found in southwestern finland."4 karelia was mentioned in the text but not given the discussion it deserved considering its importance in influencing finnish nationalism. in spite of that, the book would be a valuable addition to school and public libraries. "the stories can be used as read-alouds with younger students; older students will find valuable material for reports. storytellers, folklorists, and general readers, especially those with an interest in finland, will also appreciate the book."5 jacqueline thursby 118 book reviews yolen, jane. touch magic: fantasy, faerie and folklore in the literature of childhood. 2nd edition. little rock: august house, 2000. 128p. paper $11.95. it was with great delight and the feeling of sitting down with a trusted old friend that i read this second edition. the original essays, to which i have turned to again and again in the past nineteen years, were as fresh and as relevant as they were on my first reading. the only change i noticed was a reference to xena and hercules. there is a magic in yolen's writing style, allowing the reader to become a listener to her story about story. in her opening essay, "how basic is shazam" she talks of the importance of introducing mythology to children: these four functions of myth and folklore should establish the listening to and learning of the old tales as being among the most basic elements of education: creating a landscape of allusion, enabling us to understand our own and other cultures from the inside out, providing an adaptable tool of therapy, and stating in symbolic or metaphoric terms the abstract truths of our common human experience. in those first essays, yolen explains the ability stories have to empower and to transform lives, how they provide a sense of good and evil, and link us not only to our past but to our future. she explores the roles of teller and listener, the spirit of "once upon a time," and the need for children to receive not only the gift of words, but also the capacity to wonder. she talks about the need for "tough magic" the understanding that to receive, one has to give, and the importance of children hearing stories and reading books that confront the evils, fantasy, and real, and stand up to them. when one came to the end of the first edition, there was a feeling of completeness, but yolen has added part four, called touchtones, which contains six new essays. here she, among other things, writes about story when censorship and morality come calling. "story in ten fits" tells, with great humor, what story is not, and thus explains what 119 book reviews story is. in "touchstones" yolen chooses five children's books which she considers the touchstones of fantasy writing. "fabling to the near night" uses seven books to explore prejudices or "cultural baggage" with a plea that we be aware of both the "hidden and open messages" in every story. yolen tackles three popular folktales in "killing the other" and points out the need to read below the surface and to examine the layers of story to find the true richness. with "an experiential act" she uses time-travel books and her writing of the devil's arithmetic to show how the past can be interwoven with the present and the future-a living and continuous process of which they are a part. in the final essay, she reflects on how, and maybe why, we live our lives through metaphor, and this reader truly felt that she had touched magic and had the power to pass it on. a selective bibliography of books and articles that have been "very special, helpful stimulating companions and resources" follow the essays. touch magic is all of the above and more; it is a book that can, and should, be read again and again. jane yolen writes "a book remains for the life of its paper and print and thus its imprint persists on the lives of its hundreds, even thousands of readers." for children everywhere, my hope is that this imprint will persist on the lives of millions. merla harris, storyteller 1 tatar, maria, ed. the classic fairy tales: texts, criticism. a norton critical edition. new york: w.w. norton, 1999. 2 luthi, max. once upon a time: on the nature of fairy tales. bloomington: indiana university press, 1976. 3 wilson, william a. "sibelius, the kalevala and karelianism." in the sibelius companion. edited by glenda dawn goss. westport, ct: greenwood press, 1996, 43-60. 4 wilson, 48. 5 libraries unlimited: books & resources for librarians & media specialists. 120 notes and announcements the children's folklore section of the american folklore society annually offers the w.w. newell prize (which includes a cash award) for the best student essay on a topic in children's folklore. students must submit their own papers, and published papers are eligible. instructors are asked to encourage students with eligible papers to enter the competition. papers must be typed, double-spaced, and on white paper. on the first page include the author's name, academic address, home address, and telephone numbers. deadline for each year's competition is september 1st. submit papers or write for more information: dr. c.w. sullivan iii, english department, east carolina university, greenville, nc 27858-4353. melbourne university press announces the publication of kidspeak: a dictionary of australian children's words, expressions and games. the book is edited by june factor, currently a senior fellow at the australian centre and winner of the children's folklore section's opie prize for captain cook chased a chook: children s folklore in australia. to order, contact melbourne university press, po box 278,268 drummond street, carlton south victoria, australia, or go to http://www.mup.com.au open university press announces the forthcoming publication of play today in the primary school playground. the book is edited by julia c. bishop and mavis curtis, and contains a foreword by iona opie. julia c. bishop teaches at the university of sheffield, and mavis curtis is an independent scholar. for additional information, contact open university press, celtic court, 22 ballmoor, buckingham, mx18 1xw, uk, or go to http:www.openup.co.uk lloyd demause announces that he has placed his 84-page article, "the history of childrearing," complete with illustrations and over 1000 scholarly references, on his website (www.psychohistory.com). the article is the fruit of 35 years of primary source research and draws upon 70 studies in the journal of psychohistory in the past 28 years. julia c. bishop, university of sheffield, announces that the discussion list on children's folklore that she has been maintaining on her own is now an official discussion list maintained by jiscmail. to find out more about this list and have your name added to it, go to the jisc website (http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk). contributors sara staunton, b.sc (hons), is a graduate of the school of clinical speech language studies, trinity college, dublin, ireland. she is a speech & language therapist working in the community care service for the eastern regional health authority in west dublin. her split-post currently involves working with a general paediatric caseload and specialist work with children with intellectual impairment. 122 target answers alternative answers 'don't know' responses cfr_2008-2009.pdf co-creatl'.iic iiarry potter: loc/\1. expre 'sio'i. of a global piie:\o\ie'\o'\ col\ tess\ s\i \ll smee lhc first release of j.k. ro" ling·s han:r potier um/ the philosopher\ stone. in 1997, ro\\ 1mg ·c; popular series has sold in e,cess ofj00 million copies in 63 languages ( .. global pottcr"' 2005). i larry potter hns been referred 10 as .. ,he biggest chtldn:n·s publishing and merchandising phenomena or modcrn times·· ( heilman 2003: i). kno,, n popularly as .. poucrman1a·· (turner-vorbcck 2003: 1-1 ). ro,, ltng·s books h:l\ c prompted a massi, e global c.:ornmcrc1al and cultural mdustl') ( whitc.:d 2002:2). beyond the se, c1h olume series. i larry poller has im,pircd numerou-. fcawre films produced by worner brothers and nvailable 011 vhs and dvd, a barrage of booi..-.. mo, ie soundtracks. ,, all calendars. trading cards. carr) ing cases. , ideo and board games, a i jarry poller i pod, magic set!>, ,, atche,;, act ion figures, cand). cmbos�cd furniture. clothing and costumes. linens and home clccorations. and n huge variety or other merchandising paraphernalia (turner-vorbeck. 2003: 17). corporate consumerism surrounding i jarry poller has mm cd beyond all pre, ious commcrciali/_ation or children's literature. tclc\ ision, and movie images, including superman. spidennan. power rangers und pokt:mon (teare 2002:331 ). all or\\ hieh ha, c prompted their o,, n massi, e merchandising campaign,. spanning the " orld and dominating. the market. the harry poller ,cries has 4ui1e simpl) bc.:comc a global phenomenon. a global phenomenon that childrt:n's literary critic jack zipes describes a-. the --11arry poller phenomcnn·· (2000: 170-89). he writes thul the \\ord "phc.:nomcna .. ... gcnemlly refers 10 some kind of ocrnrrence. change. or foci that is directly pcn:eived; quite olkn the e,ent is striking ... whether an occurrc.:nce or a person. there is something rnercdibk about the phenomenon 1ha1 dr�i\\ s our aucntion. we hesitate.: 10 belie, c in the e,em or person \\c pcrcci,c, for a trarn:,formation has une,pcctedly taken place. one of the reason� ,, e cannot bclicv1:: our senses b because the phenomenon de lies rationul c.:,planation. there seems to be no logical cause or clear explanation for the sudden appearance or transformmion. yet it is there., i�iblc.: and palpable. the ordmal') becomes extraordinary. and ,, e are tal-.en hy the phenomena that we admire," orship, and idoli/c it ,, ithout grasping it fully why we regard it \\ ith so much re,crcnce and a\\c except to sa) that so many others regard it a� a phenomenon and, therefore. it must he a phenomenon. ( 2000: 173) a number of scholar:; ha, c critiqued the corporate construction of children ·s popular culture arguing. m, does douglas kellner. that children·� traditional artifacts arc being replaced and manipulated by ··medio culture objects'' ( i 997:85). tammy turner-vorbc.:ck ,,tiles. ··corporate con-.umc.:risrn ·s mass marketing of manufactured cullurnl products ... invoh cs exercising control o, er the imaginations of children robb[ing them] or the !"rec use of their o,, n minds" (2003: 19). the prolifer::nion of poller commercial productions and mass marketing is. ho\\ c, er, only a small part orll,e pottermania swry. while merchandising companies certainly target. exploit and manipulate children·� popular culture. it i�. howc,er. problematic 10 sec all ocr document children's folklore review volume 27 2004-2005 published by the children's folklore section of the american folklore society with support from the english department at east carolina university contents from the editor ................................................................................................................ 5 found photographs and children's folklore jay mechling ................................................................................................................................. 7 the singing games of munster children john buckley ............................................................................................................................. 33 the lost manhood of the american girl: a dilemma in early twentiethcentury girl scouting laureen tedesco.. ................................................................ ... ................................................. 89 aunt betts' attic c. w sullivan iii ....................................................................................... 108 notes and announcements ....................................................................................109 about the contributors ................................................................................................110 from the editor i am sitting here thinking about the future of children s folklore review. i have been editing this journal for 27 years now. all i have to do is look at the volume number on the cover to figure that out as i took over the children s folklore newsletter with volume i, number 2, back in . . . well, you can figure that one out if you like. i hope that a look at this volume will indicate how pleased i am with how far we have come as the children's folklore section of afs and as the children s folklore review. we are still able to attract articles from children's folklore scholars at the top of the profession. jay mechling's "found photographs and children's folklore" is certainly an example of that as well as an example of the new avenues to be explored in children's folklore. i am also pleased when contributors appear out of the blue, as did john buckley with his massive collection, "the singing games of munster children." and i am equally pleased to find a colleague interested in the traditional roles of children and depictions of those roles in mainstream culture as i did in laureen tedesco and her article, "the lost manhood of the american girl: a dilemma in early twentieth-century girl scouting." these three articles make for a very fine volume 27. there are no minutes from the 2004 children's folklore section because no one sent me anything. if i can find those minutes, they will be published in the next volume. i also have a couple of concerns. there were no submissions for the newell prize this year. i am sure some of you out there have students interested in children's folklore, i know the articles in cfr are being indexed by the mla and others, but i wish we were being bought by more libraries. my other concern is about the future of cfr. i think that we, the section, should start looking for a new editor. it's not that i want to step down, necessarily, but i think that next year or the year after could be my last at east carolina university. anyway, i would be happy to talk details with anyone who thinks that he or she might be interested in taking over as editor, and i will discuss this with the executive board in atlanta at the 2005 afs meetings (when, perhaps, my future plans might be a bit clearer). i had thought to step down after the 30th volume, but i may have to do so before that. see you in atlanta. c.w. sullivan iii found photographs and children's folklore jay mechling children's folklorists do not always have the luxury of studying live children. because children live largely in an oral, material, and customary world, leaving little written evidence (aside from the occasional diary or autograph book) of their worldviews, reconstructing the history of the everyday lives of children requires the creative use of what scant evidence we do have of their elusive worlds. folklorists are accustomed to reconstructing the historical cultures of children using written materials, such as autobiographies, diaries, letters, ethnographic accounts dating back to the late 19th century, and other sources largely created by adults. folklorists and historians also have learned to make creative use of the material culture of childhood in reconstructing the everyday lives of past children (e.g., bronner 1999). we necessarily make a great many guesses about what the evidence really means, and we know that in most cases the evidence has gone through a great deal of editing, as adults ultimately are the gatekeepers for what evidence of children's lives survives and what perishes. the rise of photography after its invention in 1839 introduced a new genre of evidence of the everyday lives of people, and children have been the subjects of countless photographs since then. in what follows, i aim to examine what are sometimes called by dealers and collectors "found photographs" in order to discover how these snapshots might be used to help write the history of american children's lives, especially their folk cultures. first, i provide a bit of history of the photography of children and describe in more detail the nature of "found photographs." then i briefly characterize the sorts of questions the folklorist would have about past children's lives, for my aim here is to treat the photographs as true evidence and not merely as pretty pictures accompanying generalizations of the sort we make from other sorts of historical evidence. finally, i offer some close readings of a few representative snapshots i have collected as of this writing. that final section amounts to a test of the proposition that snapshots actually might teach us something new about american children's folklore. children's folklorists share with, historians, sociologists, and anthropologists the desire to understand children's cultures on their own terms, but i believe folklorists are especially inclined to brush aside as best as possible the adult contaminations of our evidence of children's lives. photographs are especially seductive evidence in trying to recreate the autonomous worlds of children, and with proper caution scholars can use photographs to see what might otherwise go unseen. at the same time, photographs seduce us into believing what we are seeing. i provide here found photographs mechling only a beginning for navigating these tough issues of evidence, authority, authenticity, power, and subversion in found photographs of children. photographs of children the earliest photographs of children, given the bulky technology and the long exposure times required by that technology, are usually set in studios. these have some value as historical evidence in that photographic studio portraits borrowed from painted portraits certain conventions, which in the case of children meant that the photographic portraits often include toys and the more formal dress for children. in many cases these probably were toys and other props provided by the photographer, so it is hard to sort out those photographs where a child is holding or otherwise posed with a favorite toy. the clothes in these studio portraits are, one presumes, chosen by the adults and do not necessarily (or likely) represent the everyday dress of children. studio portraits fulfilled the family's need for more formal images, but the 1890s saw an explosion of stereoviews, from commercially produced sets to snapshot-like views taken by those amateurs who could afford a stereoscopic camera and developing. many of these stereoviews are still set in the studio, but george eastman's invention of the gelatin dry plate in 1878 freed the photographer from the constricting limits of the earlier technology and made it possible for the photographer to move outside. most stereoviews were still posed, though collectors find the occasional one-of-a-kind snapshot-like stereoview. there is a very interesting history of adult views of children that could be written using stereoviews as the texts; briefly, we can note that some of these photographs captured some of the folklore and other dimensions of children's everyday lives. frozen in the images of these stereoviews are children's more formal games, such as maypoles and blind man's bluff, and play with toys, but the stereoviews also record more informal play in snow and sand, for example. professional art and commercial photography in the late 19th century and well into the 20th still operated from the romantic era view of the innocent child (higonnet 1998). the adults' romantic view of childhood crept into more documentary views of children's lives. to be sure, a social realist strain of the documentary photography of children-practiced by lewis hine, jacob riis, james agee and others-has had its place up to the present, but in the wake of world war ii many photographers of children seemed to adopt the ideological position so evident in the famous "family of man" exhibit edward steichen created for the museum of modern art in 1955 (see sandeen 1995), namely, that all human beings share a universal human nature and that children everywhere are inherently 8 mechling found photographs innocent. barbara morgan's 1951 photographic essay, summer's children, for example, seems driven by this ideology as she documents kids at summer camp. these two traditions in documentary photography-some showing children innocently at play in middle-class, benign settings and some showing disadvantaged children (still innocent) in some of the most squalid settings-have co-existed for the past seventy-five years or so. some of this documentary and art photography does reveal a bit of children's worlds under their own control. salinger's photo essay of teenagers in their bedrooms, for example, is wonderfully provocative for those scholars interested in the material culture of teens, but salinger's only use of words are the kids' brief self-descriptions; she bypasses the opportunity to analyze the larger meanings of the visual and oral testimony. similarly, lauren greenfield's two color photo essays--fast forward (1997) and girl culture (2002)--give voice to the teens themselves without offering much analysis of what we are to make of these affluent kids and their worlds. the photographer winks knowingly at us, as a sort of postmodern joke between photographer and audience, but also some true affection for the subjects comes through, just as in bruce weber's branded youth: and other stories (1997). weber, like andy warhol before him, straddles the already fuzzy art/commercial photography boundary to offer a photoessay wherein punks and boy scouts seem equally freaky and wherein weber seems to love them all in a warholian, postmodern move that refuses to judge and refuses to make distinctions. all of these photoessays, and more, are produced by professional, adult photographers who aim to say something profound about the lives of children and adolescents in contemporary american culture. these, really, are not the texts for my analysis here, but the whole constellation of photographs of children serve as a contextual background for what does interest me here-namely, the snapshot, the found photograph. snapshots of children george eastman's invention of the gelatin dry plate in 1878 made the true snapshot possible. in 1888 eastman introduced his kodak camera no.1, the first portable camera containing a roll of film that would take one hundred shots developed as 2-1/2 inch round images. the amateur photographer would send the whole camera back to eastman, who developed the roll and sent back the developed prints and the camera loaded with a new roll of film. in 1889, eastman brought out kodak camera no.2, which produced larger (3-1/2 inches diameter), still round prints (king 1964, 6). it was then possible for the amateur photographer to create what came to be called "snapshots," borrowing for photography 9 found photographs mechling a term that described the hunting shot hurriedly taken in the field (kouwenhoven 1982, 161-62). what collectors and dealers call "found photographs" are plentiful and perplexing. these are the snapshots that we find at yard sales, at estate sales, at vintage photography shows, and on the internet in online auctions and on the sites of dealers in vernacular photography. these are orphaned photographs usually tom from their original contexts; they no longer live as texts interacting with human memories. now they are objects for collectors with a variety of tastes and aims. unless there is writing on the back ("real photo" postcards often have a full message and were mailed), a date included as part of the printing process, or some internal clue to place and time, we often are forced to guess where and when the snapshot was taken. these snapshots sometimes are of poor quality, as the amateur misjudges the light and the shadows, blurs the image with the camera or with film too slow to capture a moment in motion, frames the picture oddly, accidentally creates a double exposure, or commits any number of other "errors" that help signal an image as a snapshot (king 1964, 4957). at the same time, these telltale signs of the snapshot also help certify the authenticity of the moment; its spontaneous, unposed, candid, opportunistic qualities help persuade the viewer that the image captures a "true" moment in time and perhaps a "truth" about the subject. a very few scholars have begun the work of using snapshots to write the history of children's lives. the most important to date is thompson and austin's massive 2003 work, america’s children: picturing childhood from early america to the present. using a range of sorts of photographs of children, some by professional photographers but also many "found" snapshots, the authors "read" these photographs as evidence for writing the history of american children's lives. rather than following a simple chronological scheme for organizing the photographs and commentary, the authors present thematic chapters around family life, mobility, community, work, learning, play, and courtship and marriage. there are billions of snapshots of children out there in the world. i have at hand a small sample of these for the analysis i present here, though i have looked at enough snapshots at antique fairs, vintage photography shows, and on the internet to have a firm grasp of what the genre has to offer. my generalizations have to be modest and provisional. there is also a bias in my sample toward snapshots of boys, as this project arose out of my research on the boy scouts and on the larger question of the social construction of masculinity in boys and young men (see mechling 2001). and, of course, the snapshots at hand have survived editing of one sort or another. people have made choices about which snapshots to save and which to discard; dealers select snapshots deemed interesting enough to sell, sometimes poring through hundreds of thousands of snapshots to 10 mechling found photographs yield a few hundred images. and for my own collection i have chosen to buy some images and not others. so there is cultural bias galore in these existing snapshots. still, they have an oddly powerful grip on the collector, as we gaze into the faces of these kids now aged or dead. before examining the genre, we have to acknowledge at the outset that most snapshots of children and youth very likely have been taken by adults. kids have had access to cameras across the 20th century, and doubtless some surviving snapshots have been taken by kids, especially in settings such as schools, playgrounds, summer camps, and neighborhood play spaces. some researchers actually teach children how to use cameras and analyze the sorts of visual conventions and topics the kids adopt in using snapshots to capture their everyday lives and to communicate with other kids and with adults something about their kids' worlds (e.g., ewald 1985, 2000; hubbard 1991, 1994; and padilla 2002). we even have snapshots of kids with cameras, so we know that some images from the past were captured by children and youth. one sort of kid with a camera, of course, is the school yearbook photographer, and yearbook pictures are a surprisingly neglected source of information about the cultures of teens. in the united states, yearbooks tend to capture the worlds of adolescents, generally kids twelve and older, teens in junior high and senior high schools. yearbook photography includes three sorts of photos-posed pictures (individual portraits plus pictures of classes, clubs, sports teams, performing arts groups, formal events, and so on), action shots (e,g, sports), and "candid" snapshots of students in less formal and usually unposed contexts. yearbook photography works under adult supervision and surveillance, usually, so there are several layers of censoring behind each "candid" snapshot published in a yearbook. still, these photographs capture teens in some unguarded moments and, presumably, represent a version of the "story" of going to that school as seen from the students' viewpoint. the historian always hopes that someone "cleaning house" in an organization did not throwaway the invaluable evidence the historian is looking for, and one wonders how many boxes of old yearbook snapshots (or contact sheets of negative strips) are out there in boxes and file cabinets. the folklore historian would be especially interested in the photographs that were not selected for publication, photographs that did not get through the self-censoring and adult censoring processes because they are photos judge inappropriate or even disruptive. the one island in this sea of general neglect of yearbook photographs is a little-known book, school spirit (2003), by pierre huyghe and douglas coupland, who is perhaps the quintessential generation x novelist. in this quirky, but fascinating, book, the authors (compilers, really) use real california high school yearbook pictures and inscriptions to create a quite 11 found photographs mechling open and ambiguous narrative about life for high-schoolers, which is to say that huyghe and coupland provide no meta-narrative of their own other than the order of photographs and handwritten texts from the yearbooks. coupland must have been working on this book at the same time he was writing his novel, hey, nostradamus! a novel (2003), a postmodern fiction telling the story of a columbine-like school shooting. coupland comes no closer than do filmmakers michael moore (bowling for columbine, 2002) and gus van sant (elephant, 2003) in understanding what was going on in the worlds of the perpetrators and victims of the columbine high school massacre and similar shootings, but i think school sprit is an attempt to do visually what coupland attempts to do in his novel. the value in school spirit lies in its suggestion that coded somewhere in high school yearbook pictures are the answers to questions adults have been asking about teenagers for some time now. i am not prepared to explore this lead here and now, but i hope an army of folklorists and historians gets out into the schools to rescue this photographic record from oblivion. returning to the body of snapshots we know are available, what can be said of the found photos with children's lives as the subject? most of these snapshots of kids and teens hold few surprises. setting aside the posed photographs of kids with families, often in front of the family home or car or on a family vacation, the snapshots that capture kids' play and rituals tend to feature familiar scenes. birthday parties, first communion, halloween costumes, playing in the sand at a beach, playing with the electric train under the christmas tree, posing outside with the new bike, and playing with a family pet are common images. yet, among these images are a few that i think can be used as texts for revealing something about children's folklore, and in offering close readings of a few of these i hope to provoke folklorists and historians into making more of found photographs. first, though, i need to inquire what we think we know and don't know about children's folklore, for it would be unanswered questions that would be the only justification for taking found snapshots seriously as historical evidence. what's missing in our knowledge of children's folklore? what do we think we know about american children's folklore? although we have earlier accounts of children's games and play, some of which are still useful today for recognizing the continuities and discontinuities in children's play, i would have to say that the modern (maybe postmodern, a topic for another time) study of american children's folklore began in the mid-l970s, in large part in response to the emergence 12 mechling found photographs of the performance paradigm in folklore studies. (the mid-1970s also saw the emergence of the animal rights movement, and i believe that the two movements are connected, though that also is a topic for another time.) independent initiatives in the university of texas, indiana university, and the university of pennsylvania graduate programs in folklore sent a good many graduate students into the field to study children's folklore in performance, and from then on the study of children's folklore seems to have split into two strands, the one still operating from a text-base approach and the other committed to studying children's performances of folklore in natural contexts. by the mid-1980s that second, ethnographic strand, had also come under the influence of the postmodern approach to ethnography, especially the view that objective, scientific ethnography was not possible. many ethnographers in several disciplines made this "linguistic turn," but the epistemological questions were especially relevant and vexing for those of us who conduct fieldwork-based study of children. children's worlds are inaccessible to us in so many ways that we understand more than most folklorists, i think, the tentative and provisional nature of our generalizations about children. when, in that mid-1980s period of upheaval in the epistemological basis for studying the lives of other people, i came to write a chapter on "children's folklore" for elliott oring's textbook, folk groups and folklore genres (1986), i attempted to generalize about american children's folklore by alerting readers to certain themes in the lore they might observe, themes like power and the child's body as a symbol of the society. i wrote then about some binary tensions in children's folklore--order/disorder, hierarchy/equality, male/female, and dynamism/ conservatism ("newell's paradox," as gary alan fine [1980] named it)and i recommended a batesonian approach to the paradoxes of play in children's folklore (see bateson 1972). i wrote that essay nearly twenty years ago, and in thinking what i might change if i revised that essay today, i would add a much more thorough section on the ways folklore and popular culture continuously fold back upon one another, proving every day the point of newell's paradox-namely, that children's folklore is simultaneously very dynamic in its content and very conservative in its forms. i touched on this point only slightly in the 1986 essay, but i have come to think of this interaction between mass-mediated, commercial, popular culture produced with kids and teens in mind as the consuming audience, on the one hand, and children's and teens' folk cultures on the other as one of the most important set of relationships in understanding children's everyday cultures. commodity culture endlessly appropriates children's folklore and sells the folklore back to the children, but children's folklore endlessly 13 found photographs mechling appropriates popular culture and uses that culture for the children's own motives. several things have changed or, at least, accelerated in american culture since 1986. first, it has become clear that kids and their cultures have become the sites for political battles in the adult "culture wars" (see hunter 1991). second, adult panic over kids' popular culture has led parents, teachers, politicians, and others to blame the violent and sexual content of a great deal of mass media aimed at kids for a range of social evils, including the murder of children by children, teen suicide, gang rapes, and the series of school shootings in the last half of the 1990s and into this century (see the special section on "folklore responds to columbine and adolescence" in the children s folklore review in 2002). third, the mass-mediated cultural products aimed at kids and teens shows signs of belonging to a global, international culture. in the most visible example, manga (graphic novels, comic) and animé (cartoon versions of the manga) created initially for japanese audiences now find voracious consumers among children, teens, and young adults in the united states. what are the implications of the internet and other globalizing forces on the folk cultures of children? so the workings of newell's paradox in the dialectic between children's folk cultures and the mass-mediated, popular, commercial cultural commodities produced for youthful consumers is the first new, real question i expect the found photographs to help illuminate. the second open question in the study of children's folklore has to do with "dark play" (sutton-smith & kelly-byrne 1984) or "dirty play" (fine 1988). both sorts of play challenge adult notions of the innocence of children. "dark play" is the phrase suttonsmith and kelly-byrne use to describe play that relies on some degree of danger or transgression for its pleasure, a form of play more likely found in older children and teens. "dirty play" is fine's phrase for the transgressive play of children, especially if it involves forbidden words and actions. "dark play" and "dirty play" usually take place away from adult surveillance, so we should not have high hopes that snapshots will capture a great deal of such play. polaroid and digital photography bypass many of the possibilities for adult censorship, so it might be that there will be an increasing number of available images recording dark and dirty play. still, existing snapshots point in some interesting ways to transgressive play and traditions, as i shall show. a third sort of question about children's folklore and folklife that snapshots might address has to do with gestural culture and proxemics. moving pictures (film or video) are the best media for capturing how children move their bodies in space, how they position themselves in relation to playmates, how they touch or don't touch other children, and 14 mechling found photographs so on, but still photography can capture some of the ways children use bodies and space, and snapshots of children reach much farther back into history than do home movies and home video. finally, it seems to me that snapshots might help write the history of children's emotional lives. emotions are fundamentally human (probably fundamentally mammalian), but cultures shape human emotions, socializing fear, jealousy, love, anger, sadness, grief, and so on into forms the cultures deem acceptable and minimally likely to disrupt social relations. historian peter n. stearns almost single-handedly created the interdisciplinary field of "the history of emotions," but he and others have relied almost exclusively on written evidence to chronicle the history of the socialization of particular emotions across time and space (e.g., stearns and stearns 1986). the family is the primary setting for the socialization of emotions, the setting where a child learns, for example, how to express or repress anger. children's folk groups certainly must be another site for the socialization of emotions, and it is possible (as is so often the case) that the socialization in the children's group resists and undermines the socialization in the family. in any case, since we have good reasons to believe that facial expressions, gestures, and other visual cues signal a person's emotional condition, we would expect snapshots to provide some sort of evidence of the contexts for the emotional lives of children. some other issues in children's folklore and folklife will arise as i discuss particular images below, but this list of four sorts of questionsabout popular culture, about dark and dirty play, about proxemics, and about the socialization of emotions-helps orient the analysis to come. note that in all four cases we have very little historical evidence reflecting the children's point of view. snapshots might be our only evidence for some insights about children's everyday lives. all of this hope i bear for the usefulness of snapshots for understanding the everyday lives of american children in the past relies upon "reading" the photographs. this matter of "how to read" photographic images is the subject ofa great deal of useful criticism (e.g., chalfen 1975,1987,1991; king 1984; ohm and bell 1975; ibson 2002). when we look at any snapshot, we tend to read meaning into it from the nonverbal clues the image offers. we draw upon our experiences with other images and the history of our interpretive successes and failures-as, for example, when we may have misread a facial expression. these readings of found photographs involve a great deal of speculation, but then (i would argue) so does the folklorist's observation of a live folk performance in context. the inner meanings of the immediate event for the participants are no more accessible to us, really, than are the meanings to the participants of an event photographed a hundred years ago. still, these are not wild guesses but may be reasonable and persuasive interpretations of the 15 found photographs mechling meanings of the event captured in a snapshot. let me illustrate some of the interpretive possibilities with a few select snapshots. children's lives in snapshots up to this point i have laid out some issues we should be on lookout for as we peruse found photographs for evidence of children's everyday folk lives, but rather than organize the remainder of this essay according to these analytical categories, i prefer to work instead from a sample of interesting and provocative snapshots in my collection, always on the lookout for the more theoretical issues i have laid out. when i choose to buy a found photograph, i am drawing upon these issues in finding a photograph "interesting," but i am also open to being surprised by a photograph that taps some issues i had not expected. this is why it is best to begin with some compelling snapshots. the sample photos and the interpretive comments i offer here are illustrative, meant to be suggestive and provocative rather than definitive and comprehensive. with these qualifications in mind, let us look at some actual snapshots. some photographs serve the text-based approach to the history of children's folklore, as in snapshots that capture a traditional game or a calendrical custom, for example. as we gaze at the real photo postcard (fig. 1) of a school playground in 1912, we recognize that the very nature of photography is to capture a brief moment in time, a micro-second slice of the continual flow of everyday life. seeing such photographs adds a visual memory and impact to the historical point that, say, children have played the traditional game of red rover across time and space. now in our mind's eye we can put real faces and settings to a past performance of the game. but the photographs seem poor evidence for a performancebased approach to children's folklore in context. in this real photo postcard, for example, we do not know if the girls chose to play the ring game or were directed to do so by an adult. we do not have the contextual background for this playground scene that linda hughes (1993) had, for example, in her ethnographic study of the game of four square as it was played by the same kids over several months' time. we do not know the players, their relationships, or the other information we would need to answer the characteristic folklorist's question (based on kenneth burke's pentad-see rueckert 1982): who performed what traditional item of folklore, how, for what audience, in what time and place, for what reasons, and what was the outcome? the photograph does suggest some things about gender segregation on the playground and children's clothing for a time period, but that is about the extent of information we're going to glean from this photograph. 16 mechling found photographs but other photographs suggest thicker interpretations might be possible. let me narrow my gaze to snapshots revealing boys' everyday folk lives, with the understanding that we could put the same fine lens on girls' folk cultures and on a mix of the two. masculinity studies generally agree that the social construction of masculinity in cultures across time and space is a fragile project, and that a good many observable features of boys' and men's group cultures arise as adaptive responses to this fragility. for western middle-class cultures like ours, the emotional structure of the nuclear family and the fact that mothers have primary care of young children lead to a developmental circumstance in which boys must separate from the mother and identify masculinity as "not female." one's masculinity must be proven constantly, and cracks in the male façade must be repaired quickly and effectively. this leads to certain features of male friendship group cultures, including stylized aggression, hierarchy, misogyny, the deprecation of men perceived to be too feminine (in some contexts full homophobia), and a tendency to communicate relationships through "doing side-by-side" rather than through speech. there is a "boy code" enforced largely by a shame culture (pollack 1999). i think some snapshots help us see the workings and affective impact of these features of growing up male in the united states. for one thing, unlike formal, posed portraits, snapshots show us the everyday dress of boys and how boys used their clothing and hairstyles to perform masculinity in a particular social, cultural, and historical context. this snapshot of a teenage boy (fig. 2), probably from the 1940s or early 1950s, features the wide-rolled dungaree cuffs necessary for the performance of a "cool" masculinity. the squared body language and the direct stare into the camera by the young man standing in front of the car is aggressive and confrontational, and even his hairstyle connotes challenge. he frames his genitals with two hands, fingers spread for added attention, intensifying this male performance. the automobile in that photograph signals a common convention in american snapshots. americans love their cars, and kids of all ages can be found posing in front of or in the family car. in some cases-this is one, i suppose-the car actually belongs to the teenager. this american infatuation with the automobile-an affection that tells us much about american culture, as lots of scholarship has shown-extends to kids, often photographed playing with cars and trucks or, more interestingly, posed in a commercially produced pedal car or, more interesting still, some version of a home-made car. these snapshots range from the more formal "boxcar derby" cars (fig. 3) to the far more ad hoc constructions from scavenged parts, evidence of a continuing tradition of bricolage among boys. 17 found photographs mechling some snapshots capture kids in the process of making things or even constructing folk playthings (fig. 4). snapshots of kids of both sexes building castles and other forms in sand on the beach (fig. 5) confirm one important point-namely, that kids' folk constructions tend to follow what robert plant armstrong (1981) calls an aesthetic of syndesis rather than the aesthetic of synthesis we are used to in western art. working from a syncretic aesthetic, kids create things through addition and accretion such that creations might never be finished. as kids get older, the great preponderance of snapshots with constructions are of boys. sometimes (figs. 6, 7) the constructions are of materials provided by the commercial culture-another instance of newell's paradox at work-while in other cases the constructions demonstrate the bricolage we see in the folk constructions of playthings, such as this raft (fig. 8). some snapshots provide fascinating, concrete detail to the generalizations we make about boys' friendship groups. for example, some of the photos of boys building things capture the point made by pollack (1999) and others who write about boy cultures that boys often express and experience closeness through engaging in activities "side by side." whereas girls more often favor face-to-face play and come to understand intimacy as requiring face-to-face communication, boys tend to rely upon "doing sideby-side" as an expression of intimacy. some scholars make a sociobiological argument that boys experience face-to-face gazes from other boys as aggressive, as an invitation either to fight or to back down, so that expressions of intimacy between boys generally avoid the face-to face contact. and, as bateson notes, the very act of sharing a frame--such as "we're building this raft together"--communicates to the participants in the frame important things about their relationships. just like the male gaze, male touching must be managed in the friendship group. in general, boys touch each other only in stylized ways, such as playfighting. one of things we see in some snapshots is rough-andtumble play. this 1957 snapshot (fig. 9) of eight early teens boys on what must be a school playground in southern california speaks volumes; the racial mix here--at least black, white, and asian--is unusual for the time period, but the photo also confirms the view that touching between males in american society must be framed very carefully as heterosexual. touching in the frame of some sort of "horseplay," for example, is permissible. in fact, a number of the snapshots in my collection of rough-and-tumble play by boys will not reproduce well here for publication because their blurry focus is a product of a spontaneous action barely caught by the photographer. more problematic than rough touching are the less aggressive ways boys touch each other in snapshots portraying friends in an affectionate embrace (fig. 10). it is interesting that internet auction sellers often insert the phrase "gay interest" in the description of 18 mechling found photographs a snapshot of two boys or men posing with their arms around each other in a clearly affectionate embrace. how to sort out affection between two heterosexual males and between two homosexual males is not easy from the appearance of this touching alone, and heterosexual male friends constantly must construct and maintain a frame that the touching is not sexual while still powerfully emotional. these matters are highly contextual, of course, as conventions of male touching and the meanings of those conventions change over time, across ethnicity and social class, and across social contexts (e.g., all male settings versus mixed groups). john ibson's (2002) study of the changing conventions of such touching in snapshots of men (some of which ibson knew, through their provenance, were of gay men) deals mainly with males college age and older, but if we were to write a similar snapshot history of boys we would find the same ambiguities, albeit with a much larger proportion of the snapshots capturing touching framed as horseplay. many of these points about the ways boys relate to each other physically are made in a photographic album in my possession. an album often provides context and narrative flow missing for a single found photograph. this is an "orphan album" in that the dealer from whom i purchased it on ebay could not provide any information about its provenance. in more than two hundred photos, the album records high country mountain hiking and camping trips stretching from february to september (and maybe beyond) in 1938. the photos for the first three fourths of the album have captions recorded in white ink on the black pages, and it seems clear from the captions for the many mountains and lakes in the photos that these are the cascade mountains of oregon and washington. nine to a dozen boys and young men appear in group photos, sometimes just in pairs, and sometimes doing more than posing-such as cooking, eating, fishing, and swimming. in the posed, group photos these boys and men are hanging on each other just as we see in so many group photos. we also find some horseplay, such as this snapshot (fig. 11) of boys having a playfight with knives, and, late in the album, photos of a group of younger boys swimming and huddling around campfires, spread throughout the album are photos taken during "skinny dipping" swims in the mountain lakes and streams (fig. 12), and the naked bodies remind us that one sort of framed, safe intimacy between boys and men is expressed through casual nudity in each others' presence. i also have in my possession a remarkable set of negatives of a cub scout den and pack (a collection of the smaller dens). the pictures of the pack record a banquet, with each den's boys and his parents sitting together by den. judging from the women's clothing and hairstyles, i would guess that these photos are from the 1940s or early 1950s. the 19 found photographs mechling photos of the pack banquet are not what is so remarkable about the collection, however. dens typically prepare skits for such pack gatherings. (i was a cub scout in the 1950s and my mother was a "den mother," so i know this world.) amongst the pictures of the pack gathering are pictures of these white cub scouts dressed in blackface and white gloves, clearly prepared to perform a minstrelsy skit (fig. 13). we know well the racism embodied in minstrel shows, and we also know well the racially segregated world of the 1940s and 1950s when these cub scouts were growing up. but even this knowledge does not prepare the viewer fifty-some years later for the jolting impact of seeing these eightor nine-year old white boys performing blackface minstrelsy. in this case, no written historical record or testimony can convey the alarming mix of innocence and social evil captured in these photographs, just as some lynching photographs slap us when we see children in the crowd of onlookers laughing, posing, and even gathering souvenirs (allen, als, lewis, and litwack 2003). the lynching photographs seem like "dark play," but can we say the same of the cub scout minstrels? possibly. also in this category of white children dressing up as something they are not are the photographs of kids "playing indian." such snapshots are plentiful, and they reinforce our understanding of the power of such play for white children in the 20th century. adults created youth organizations based on "indian lore" almost as soon as real native americans were no longer a threat (mechling 1980, deloria 1999), but the snapshots show how pervasive was "playing indian" in the informal, folk play of kids (fig. 14). this snapshot (fig. 15) of young kids playing with guns also counts as dark play. i think most adult viewers would have shuddered a bit at this snapshot even before the columbine and other school shootings, but in the post-columbine world, where kids have become demonized and are scrutinized closely to see who is the next sociopath to bring an arsenal to school, it is impossible to view this snapshot without invoking those meanings. in fact, there is good reason to believe that a great deal of "dark play" by kids and teens involves firearms. at the same time, in other contexts snapshots of children holding guns would not be dark play but merely evidence of the socialization of boys and girls into the hunting cultures of their fathers and mothers (mechling 2004). there is no logical place to stop with examples, so let me end with a snapshot showing a moment of hazing (fig. 16). this snapshot from 1941 shows the very public paddling of a fraternity pledge, one assumes, as part of the hazing process for bringing new members into the fraternity. college students are no longer children, in most cases, but children's folklorists easily extend "childhood and adolescence" into the college years because they find so many continuities between adolescent folklore 20 mechling found photographs and college student folklore. in the case of hazing, high school and college fraternities haze pledges as a more formal version of the informal hazing quite common in male friendship groups, where a young man must pass a "test" to show himself worthy of belonging to the group. hazing-which is now generally outlawed by colleges and by the national offices of fraternities, but still practiced nonetheless-has its private moments and its public moments, and both sorts of moments have been captured in snapshots. snapshots capturing public moments of hazing (as in fig. 16) remind us that this was not "dark play" but socially recognized and accepted "fun" for boys of certain ages. in more private contexts away from public scrutiny, humiliation, power, dominance, submission, shame, nudity, and even some homoerotic moments show up in hazing, and a vernacular photographic record of the hazing appears to play an important role in marking the moments and in "remembering" them (an accidentally wonderful word in this context, given the uses of the photographs to rehearse again the conversion of a pledge into a "member" of the group) once the pledge can look back fondly upon hazing as a test passed. the now infamous photographs, made public in the spring of 2004, of the humiliating treatment of iraqi prisoners by american soldiers in the abu gharib prison seem familiar to the folklorist who knows the male folk culture of the military. some commentators have blamed internet sadomasochistic pornography sites as the sources of the visual tableaux that led the american soldiers to pose the iraqi prisoners in certain positions and nude; but any folklorist of male cultures knows it is fraternity and military boot camp hazing, not pornography, that provides the visual commonplaces re-enacted in the prison photos. this is disturbing dark play, but it has a long pedigree. conclusion as these examples demonstrate, found photographs provide a potentially rich body of evidence for writing the history of children's everyday lives, especially their folklore. in the case of boys, the bulk of my examples, the vernacular photographic record is invaluable in reconstructing the rich nonverbal worlds of boys' friendship groups. nearly thirty years ago in a special issue of folklore forum a group of folklorists attempted to alert their colleagues to the value of photographs as evidence of folklore as a form of visual communication (ohm and bell, eds. 1975). 21 found photographs mechling it is time that we return to that invitation and mine this evidence for all it reveals. works cited allen, james, hilton als, john lewis, and leon f. litwack. 2003. without sanctuary: lynching photographs in america. santa fe, nm: twin palms publishers. armstrong, robert plant. 1981. the powers of presence: consciousness. myth, and affecting presence. philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press. bateson, gregory. 1972. "a theory of play and fantasy [1955]." in steps to an ecology of mind: collected essays in anthropology, 177-93. new york: ballantine. bronner, simon j. 1999. "material folk culture of children." in children s folklore: a sourcebook, ed. brian sutton-smith et al., 251-71. logan: utah state university press. ______, ed. 2002. special section on "folklore responds to columbine and adolescence." children s folklore review 24 (1& 2): 7-63. chalfen, richard. 1975. "introduction to the study of non-professional photography as visual communication." in saying cheese: studies in folklore and visual communication, ed. stephen ohm and michael e. bell, 19-25. folklore forum no. 13. bloomington: the folklore institute, indiana university. _______. 1987. snapshot versions of life: explorations of home mode photography. bowling green, oh: the popular press. _______. 1991. turning leaves: the photographic collections of two japanese american families. albuquerque: university of new mexico press. coupland, douglas. 2003. hey, nostradamus! a novel. new york: bloomsbury. deloria, philip j. 1999. playing indian: otherness and authenticity in the assumption of american indian identity. new haven, ct: yale university press. ewald, wendy. 1985. portraits and dreams: photographs and stories by children of the appalachians. new york: writers and readers publishing, inc. _____. 2000. secret games: collaborative works with children 1969-1999. zurich: scalo. fine, gary alan. 1980. "children and their culture: exploring newell's paradox." western folklore 39: 170-83. ______. 1988. "good children and dirty play." play and culture 1:43-56. goffman, erving. 1976. gender advertisements. new york: harper & row. greenfield, lauren. 1997. fast forward: growing up in the shadow of hollywood. ny: knopf. _________. girl culture. 2002. san francisco: chronicle books. higonnet, anne. 1998. pictures of innocence: the history and crisis of ideal childhood. london: thames and hudson. hubbard, jim. 1991. shooting back: a photographic view of life by homeless children. san francisco: chronicle books. _________.1994. shooting backfrom the reservation: a photographic view of life by native american youth. new york: the new press. 22 mechling found photographs hunter, james davison. 1991. culture wars: the struggle to define america. new york: basic books. hughes, linda. 1993. "'you have to do it with style': girls' games and girls' gaming." in feminist theory and the study of folklore, ed. by t. hollis, l. pershing, and m.j. young, 130-48. urbana: university of illinois press. huyghe, pierre, and douglas coupland. 2003. school spirit. paris: encounters. ibson, john. 2002. picturing men. washington, dc: smithsonian institution press. king, graham. 1984. say "cheese"! looking at snapshots in a new way. new york; dodd, mead & co. kouwenhoven, john a. 1982. half a truth is better than none. chicago: university of chicago press. mechling, jay. 1980. '''playing indian' and the search for authenticity in modern white america." in prospects 5: an annual review of american cultural studies, ed. jack salzman, 17-33. new york: burt franklin company. ________.1986. "children's folklore." in folk groups and folklore genres, ed. elliott oring, 91-120. logan: utah state university press. ________. 2001. on my honor: boy scouts and the making of american youth. chicago: university of chicago press. ________. 2004. "picturing hunting." western folklore 63:1/2,51-78. morgan, barbara. 1951. summer s children: a photographic cycle of life at camp. scarsdale, ny: morgan & morgan, publishers. ohm, stephen, and michael e. bell, eds. 1975. saying cheese: studies in folklore and visual communication. folklore forum no. 13. bloomington: folklore institute, indiana university. padilla, ai. 2002. reality from the barrio: the photography and prose of native santa fe youth, from censorship to survival. santa fe, nm: santa fe boys & girls club. pollack, william. 1999. real boys: rescuing our sonsfrom the myths of boyhood. new york: henry holt and company. rueckert, william h. 1982. kenneth burke and the drama of human relations. 2nd., ed; berkeley: university of california press. salinger, adrienne. 1995. my room: teenagers in their bedrooms. san francisco: chronicle books. sandeen, eric. 1995. picturing and exhibition: the family of man and 1950s america. albuquerque: university of new mexico press. stearns, carol zisowitz, and peter n. stearns, 1986. anger: the struggle for emotional control in america s history. chicago: university of chicago press. sutton-smith, brian, and diana kelly-byrne, eds. 1984. the masks of play. west point, ny: leisure press. thompson, kathleen, and hilary mac austin, eds. 2003. america s children: picturing childhoodfrom early america to the present. new york: norton. weber, bruce. 1997. branded youth and other stories. boston: bulfinch/ little,brown. 23 found photographs mechling illustrations fig. 1. 1912 playground fig. 2. teen boy with car and attitude 24 mechling found photographs fig. 3. boy in soap box derby car fig. 4. boys play with legos 25 found photographs mechling fig. 5. sand castles at beach fig. 6. boy with erector set construction 26 mechling found photographs fig. 7. boy with tinker-toy airplane fig. 8. boys on raft t 27 found photographs mechling fig. 9. boys on los angeles playground, 1950s fig. 10. affectionate boys 28 mechling found photographs fig. 11. playfighting with knives (album) fig. 12. skinning dipping (album) 29 found photographs mechling fig. 13. cub scout minstrels fig. 14. boy playing indian 30 mechling found photographs fig. 15. boys with guns fig. 16. fraternity hazing, 1941 31 the singing games of munster children john buckley skipping--a definition skipping is an activity that usually goes on in a group, although it can be done alone. skipping is usually associated with girls, but boys also join in depending on the context and circumstances. a shorter rope can be used if only one person is skipping while a longer rope is used for group skipping. the beat or rhythm of the rhyme dictates the rhythm of the skip or jump. the rhythm or pace of the jump or skip is also influenced by the beat of the rope against the surface of the ground that's being skipped on. this relationship between the rhythm of the rhyme and the turning of the rope is very important because if the coordination between the two is lost, the flow is interrupted causing the rope to be tripped up thereby stopping proceedings. the language of skipping girls have their own terminology associated with skipping. for instance, in cork city, if you are not skipping but instead are turning the rope for those skipping, you are known to be "on the rope." if, while skipping, a girl causes the rope to stop, the term used is that she has "downed the rope." when the suggestion in a group is announced to skip, or to "play skipping," shouts of "begs not on" (again heard by cork children) might be heard, which means that the person doesn't want to be one of the group to turn the rope for the others to skip. there can also be pre-skipping rituals, such as the reciting of a counting-out rhyme or the wrapping of the rope with the bend between the thumb and first finger being one end and just above a bent elbow of one group members being the other end for the rope to be wrapped. the elbow is usually at a 90 degree angle to the rest of the arm below the elbow, and the hand of the person performing this ritual is usually vertically positioned above the elbow. each girl in the group then grabs hold of a piece of the rope and whoever picks the parts of the rope nearest the ends of the rope, have to be "on the rope," that is, have to turn the rope for the rest of the group. classification systems brian sutton-smith and various other scholars have attempted to classify skipping and skipping rhymes either from activities that are carried out while skipping or from the subject matter of the rhymes themselves. singing games buckley sutton-smith, according to abrahams, divides the skipping games into "those in which the turners attempt to trip the jumpers, those skipped through in turn, those calling for special jumping skills, those using multiple ropes, those calling for divination, and those calling for imitation. these are not mutually exclusive categories but simply as a basis of discussion and description" (xx). bruce buckley is another researcher who attempted a classification system, and a simple one at that. in his article, "jump-rope rhymessuggestions for classification and study," he broke skipping down into four categories based on what the jumper does. they are: "plain skipping," where the person skipping just jumps up and down while reciting a rhyme, for example: gypsy, gypsy, caroline, washed her hair in turpentine the turpentine makes it shine, gypsy, gypsy, caroline. (cape clare island, co. cork, ireland. spring 1982) "action skipping," where actions are carried out during the skipping process, as in: all in together, girls. never mind the weather girls. when i count two, tip your shoe. when i count four, tip the floor. when i count six, do some tricks. when i count eight, tip the gate. (run out and tip the gate.) (cork city, ireland, spring 1980) "call in/call out skipping," where a girl is called in to skip with another who then leaves the rope to allow the girl she called in to skip alone. she in turn, calls another in. an example is: vote, vote, vote for devalera. and we call in mary at the door. (mary runs in to skip.) mary is the one we all like the best. and we don't like veronica anymore. (veronica runs out.) (ennis, co. clare, ireland. 1981) 34 buckley singing games bruce buckley's last category is "endurance skipping," where the person's skipping ability is tested in terms of speed and energy. the following is an example: i had a motor bike, no. 48 i went around the c-o-r-n-e-r, (run out, go around one of the turners and back in again.) and never pulled my brake. a policeman caught me, and put me in jail. how many years was i there. 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10, etc. (the rhythm of the rope speeds up to test how long the person can last under pressure.) (cork city, southside. 1981) other researchers have attempted to classify skipping games and rhymes, not from the actions but from the rhymes and their contents. we could look at roger abraham's jump-rope rhymes--dictionary (1969) as a classification system in itself whereby he classifies rhymes in an alphabetical order and thus becomes a great help to those working with this genre of game rhymes. yet another classification system is francelia butler's approach, in which rhymes are differentiated according to the themes of the rhymes. in her work, skipping around the world (1989), she has chapter headings that read as follows: mystery and romance; hope and hopelessness; sex and skipping; protest; political and personal; skipping to silliness; food and feet; pondering death; and rhymes of joy. yet another classification has been done by robert cosbey, all in together girls (1980), in which skipping song-games fall naturally into three categories: (1) where everyone gets a quick turn at skipping, somewhat like the "call in/call out" category of bruce buckley; (2) central character games which tend to be longer and tend to be more favored according to the girls he studied in saskatchewan, canada; these would be rhymes where only one girl is skipping and all the attention is placed on her to see if she performs the actions correctly or how long she can skip in a quick fashion; (3) groupskipping games, where the emphasis is on coordination. two or more persons skipping together is common in this type of skipping, and this group effort can make the process more difficult, 35 singing games buckley simply because there are more people involved and consequently there's more chance for error. the rhyme: all in together girls. never mind the weather girls. when i count your birthday please run out (cork city, northside, spring, 1980) is a typical rhyme for this type of skipping. the collection the following game rhymes were collected between 1979 and 1983, when i lived and worked in cork city. they were collected from girls (mostly) and boys between the ages of 6-12. initially, my collecting was confined to cork city, but later my interest and curiosity grew, and i started collecting in the county of cork and then around munster. in my travels, i visited primary schools where i interviewed children in the classroom and, if the time and weather permitted, i then accompanied the children to the school yard where some of the games were demonstrated. also, i observed children in their "natural" environments, i.e. the street, the terrace, the lane, the road, the estate, the back or front garden, the wood, the playground, the field or whatever kind of space they found themselves in. these different environments threw up different kinds of props and challenges for children to work with, and they manipulated these environments in all kinds of creative ways under their own terms and using their own code of legislation away from adult interference. in my collecting, i used a note book, tape recorder, 35mm camera, and video camera, and during the four years i spent collecting, i amassed a lot of material that includes hundred's of pages of notes, about thirty hours of audio tapes, hundreds of photographs, mostly black and white and some color, and two video tapes of games and rhymes. these games and rhymes are, for the most part, taken for granted by most adults and even considered trivial. but the more i observed children and collected their games and rhymes, the more i realized how important they were from the point of view of learning. some writers have called what children do amongst themselves as the other educational system they have in their lives. they are an example of pure folklore, in that they are passed on from children to children by word of mouth, and in so doing, give games and rhymes generational continuity. the mere fact that children, as a group, tend to be conservative, also makes for traditions to be maintained. but they are also creative and will change a rule or change a word or line of a rhyme to suit the local environment, if they feel it makes 36 buckley singing games sense. and even though these rhymes were collected in munster, it doesn't make them peculiar to the area. the rhymes sung by cork and clonmel children can also have versions heard in chicago or cambridge or the caribbean. they have a far-flung existence, reflecting travel across continents and ocean stretches. a lot of these games go on in groups of two and more, and this allows them to be transmitted to other children, increasing our understanding of the group process, how groups work, who makes the decisions, how they are made and how the rules of the game are worked out. games also teach them about those who lead and who follow, who has power and who doesn't, and what it means to have it, versus not to have it. through games, children also observe how conflicts are resolved and how harmony within the group is important for the game to continue. the need for cooperation is perceived, and the experience of competition is also discovered along with what it's like to manipulate, cheat, get caught and possibly go undetected. a sense of morality is learned, a morality that may not always seem fair, depending on the personalities present. along with learning to listen to the other person's point of view, and from this the idea of compromise and consensus can be appreciated. the joys of winning are savored, and the disappointments of loss are tolerated. physical skills are demonstrated, sometimes bringing the big boys down to size, strategies are refined, and chances taken, that succeed from time to time. the whole area of children's folklore in ireland is an area that is only recently getting the attention it deserves. while one of the biggest folklore collection anywhere in the world is housed in the folklore library at ucd, entitled "the schools collection," carried out in 1937-38, by foresightful folklorists of the time, publications on the subject of children's folklore have been relatively sparse. references to games and rhymes played and sung by irish children have appeared in the work of lady alice gomme that she carried out in the l890s. to assist her in her two part publication, the traditional games of england, scotland and ireland, she had informants in cork, down, dublin, kerry, leitrim and waterford. these 1894 and 1898 works, published by david nutt, london, as part 1 of the dictionary of british folklore (1894), and part 11 in 1898, were later published by dover publications in new york in 1964. the next major work pertaining to ireland was written in wonderful style, in 1949 by leslie daiken, children s games throughout the year, followed some years later by another collection, this time dublin street rhymes, out goes she. little, if nothing, was published until sean o'suilleabhain's, irish wake amusements (1967), translated from the original irish, caitheamh aimsire ar thoraimh (1961), by the author, which dealt with, among other things, dancing, riddling and rhyming, mischief making, and pranks at wakes. some of these activities, no doubt, were also played outside the environment of the "wake" and were probably passed on to or imitated by 37 singing games buckley children. the same author also has a thorough classification of games in, a handbook of irish folklore, published in 1970. eilis brady's excellent book, all in! all in!, a selection of dublin children's traditional street games with rhymes and music, was published in 1975 by the folklore commission at ucd. this was the first serious publication on the study of children's games and rhymes in ireland. in more recent times, bill meek has collected rhymes and songs that appear in his humourous and informative book, moonpenny, published in 1985 by ossian press in cork. in 1986, mercier press in cork published, the irish children s songbook, by carmel o'boyle. this has some children's game rhymes. and in the last couple of years, maurice leyden's fine book, boys and girls come out to play, a collection of irish singing games, has been published by appletree press in belfast. in the irish language, cniogaide cnagaide, rainn traidisiunta do phaisti, written by nicholas williams, was published in 1988 by an clochomar tta i baile atha cliath, and cluichi agus caitheams aimsire, amuigh faoin aer i gconnamara, written by brian mac suibhne was published in 1991 by clo iar-chonnachta. along with these publications, articles on games and rhymes, along with other aspects of children's folklore, have appeared from time to time, both in the irish language and english, in bealoideas, the journal of the folklore of ireland society, ulster folklife, an stoc, the journal of the irish folk song society, irishleabhar na gaeilge, and in articles by connradh na gaeilge, an cumann le bealoideas eireann, and oifig an tsolathair. children's games and rhymes have also been published in other publications by the folklore commission in ucd, such as sean o'connell's book, stories and traditions from iveragh. and, games have also appeared in books on the folklore of a particular county or counties that have been collected by locals in the area aided and advised in their collecting methods by the folklore comission. one such book would be along the black pig’s dyke, folklore from the armagh area. this book also researched the school’s collection, in the folklore archives in ucd, for games and rhymes of the area. autobiographical, biographical and fictional works also have reference to children's games. they include: borstal boy, by brenden behan; teems of times and happy returns, by dominic behan; the green fool, by patrick gallagher; dubliners, by james joyce; knocknagow, by charles j. kickham; beyond the hills: an ulster headmaster remembers, by haughton w. crowe; paddy the cope: an autobiography, by patrick gallagher; and janey mack, me shirt is black, by eamonn mc thomais. 38 buckley singing games the function of games and rhymes in the late 20th century the more i read about and collect children's folklore in general and games and rhymes in particular, the more i realize how important they are on different levels. they are the kinds of activities that are taken for granted by most people and are even considered trivial. but there is more to them that meets the eye. they are a pure folk form. they are not taught or controlled by adults (although some adults try to do so), and they pass freely between children on a street, in a school, in a village, town and city and even hop over borders and bodies of water resulting in rhymes like, "cinderella dressed in yella," being sung by children in bandon, boston and birmingham, with perhaps some slight variation, but with most of the words intact. we live in a world that has rapidly changed and in which more and more technological inventions change our behavior. children now have a much greater variety of things to do, whether they watch tv, play video games, or explore "virtual reality" using cd rom. these new developments are exciting and create all kinds of creative opportunities for children and mankind in general. but questions repeatedly asked by educators, parents, and play scholars are, how do they effect children's ability to interact with other children, how suitable are these inventions to a deepening of our understanding of each other, how do they benefit the notion of community, are children becoming more sedentary and obese, and less active, and what are the implications for how they effect learning, do we in fact know more about knowledge, life, and ourselves as result of modern technology, and will they make us more happy? these are important questions as we learn how to navigate the information superhighway, and deal with the knowledge explosion. cross references cross references have been done in relation to most of the irish publications and articles on the subject of rhymes (in the english language only) over the past one hundred years or so. unfortunately, at this time, it does not include any of the more than 1100 manuscripts that make up the "schools collection" that are housed in the folklore archives in ucd. along with the irish authors on the subject, i have included the two volumes by lady alice gomme, the traditional games of england, ireland, scotland and wales, from the 1890s. this is because of her irish informants from the counties of cork, down, dublin, kerry, leitrim, and waterford, who gave her information on games and rhymes from these areas. i have also included as part of my cross referencing, roger abraham's, dictionary of jump-rope rhymes, published in 1969, and last but certainly not least, 39 singing games buckley i have included two publications by the greatest contributors to the area of children's folklore, iona and peter opie. the publications include, the lore and language of schoolchildren (1959), and the singing game (1985). the cross-referencing is done after the rhyme, or if there are a number of variants, after the final variant. notes to the rhymes notes on each rhyme appear beneath each rhyme, or if there is more than one variant, beneath the first variant. the author's name is mentioned first followed by the year of publication in brackets. then the page number, and when known, the place where the rhyme was collected along with the year or decade it was collected. if there was a different first line collected by someone else but the rest of the rhyme was the same, i have written the first line. conversely, if the first line is the same but the rest of the rhyme is different, i have included the entire rhyme. skipping rhymes the classification system used in this chapter on, "skipping rhymes," was devised by bruce buckley. his article, in the summer 1966 issue of keystone folklore quarterly, "jump-rope rhymes: suggestions for classification and study," as the title suggests, discusses the pros and cons of different classification systems for jump-rope rhymes. while his system is not perfect, it does provide a good working model for the study of jumprope rhymes. his system is broken down into action skipping, plain skipping, run in-run out skipping and endurance skipping. these are the four headings under which i will look at the skipping rhymes of munster children. action skipping in action type skipping, girls carry out different actions while skipping. the words of the rhyme tell the action to be performed. 1. cowboy joe from mexico, hands up, stick 'em up, drop our gun, pick 'em up. cowboy joe from mexico. north, south, east and west, jacobs biscuits are the best. 40 buckley singing games if they're not, send them back, to the north, south, east and west. (miss on "mexico," you walk down to end of road and back up again. miss on "mexico" twice, you're out. miss on "north .......... west," you have to tell which is n,s,e,w. if you don't, you're out.) cork city, northside, (spring 1981). 1a. cowboy joe from mexico, hands up,stick 'em up, drop you guns, pick 'em up. cowboy joe from mexico. north, south, east and west, jacobs biscuits are the best. if they crack, send them back, north, south, east and west. crosshaven, co. cork, presentation convent, (spring 1980). lb. cowboy joseph mexico, hands up, stick them up, drop your guns, pick them up. cork city, st. catherine's school, bishopstown, (spring, 1980). 1c. cowboy joe from mexico. hands up, pick 'em up, drop your guns, pick 'em up. o-ut spells out. (run out.) ennis, co. clare (spring 1981). also used as a "counting out" rhyme, a process for starting a game. this process is known as "abbling" in ennis. 1d. 41 singing games buckley cowboy joe from mexico, lost his knickers in the snow. cowboy joe from mexico, hands up, stick 'em up, drop your guns, and pick 'em up, cowboy joe from mexico. north, south, east and west, jacobs biscuits are the best. if they crack, send them back, to the north, south, east and west. ballintemple area, cork city, (spring, 1980). (abrahams [1969],33, 141; mccaughan [1971-2],20, (belfast); colgan, [1980],20, (lisbum, co. antrim) 2. jelly on the plate, jelly on the plate, going wibbly, wobbly, wibbly, wobbly, jelly on the plate. sausage on the pan, sausage on the pan, twirl (or twist) around, twirl around, sausage on the pan. baby in the cradle, baby in the cradle, ma,ma,ma,ma, baby in the cradle. money on the floor, money on the floor. pick it up, pick it up, money on the floor. tomato on the floor, tomato on the floor, squash it down, squash it down, tomato on the floor. egg on the pan, egg on the pan, twist a loo, twist a loo, egg on the pan. robber in the house, robber in the house, 42 buckley singing games kick 'im out, kick 'im out. robber in the house. sweets on the table, sweets on the table, pick 'em up, pick 'em up. sweets on the table. ennis, co. clare, (spring 1981). (brady [1975], 86; leyden [1993],129; behan [1958], band 3; abrahams [1969],284; mccaughan [1971-2],21) 2a. money on the ground, money on the ground, pick it up, pick it up, money on the ground. jelly on the plate, jelly on the plate, wiggly, woggly, wiggly, woggly, jelly on the plate. cork city, st. catherine's primary school, bishopstown, (spring, 1980). for verse one, girls in mallow, co. cork, ardfert, co. kerry, girls say "wibbly, wobbly." 3. fud judge, call the judge, mammy's havin' a baby, daddy's going crazy, push him down the acrobats, first floor, stop, second floor, turn around, third floor, tip the ground, fourth floor, get out of town. (run out.) tralee, co. kerry, (spring 1981). (abrahams [1969] 148) down the road in killarney, girls sing the following version: 3a. fud judge, call a judge. 43 singing games buckley mammy's got a new born baby judge. she wrapped it up in tissue paper. threw it down the alligator, first floor, stop. second floor, splits. third floor, twist around fourth floor, tip the ground, fifth floor, all out. st. oliver's school. killarney,co kerry, (spring, 1981). 3b rock, rock call the doc! mammy's having a new born baby doc. wrap him up in tissue paper, send it down the alligator, first floor, stop! second floor, splits, third floor, turn around, fourth floor tip the ground, fifth floor, get out of town. limerick city, (spring, 1981). 4. i'm a little girl guide, all dressed in blue. these are the actions i can do. salute to the officer, bow to the queen, run around the corner (run out one side, around a turner and run back in.) and buy an ice cream. ennis, co. clare, (spring, 1981). (abrahams [1969],206; brady [1975],86; mccaughan [1971-72],22) in the glen area of cork city in the spring of 1980, girls sang about a "dolly all dressed in blue" that "can stand up straight, bend one knee, salute to the captain, and bow to the queen." in the mayfield area, "the girl guide is all dressed in "white" and "brown," while in schull, co. cork, it's not a doll at all they sing about, but: 44 buckley singing games 4a. there was a little beet root, dressed in pink. her mammy didn't want it, so she sent it to the ink. the ink didn't like it, so she sent it to the pen. the pen said close your eyes, and count to ten. a different colour again shows up in ennis, co. clare. the colour is green. and instead of a dolly it's a "teddy bear all dressed in green, sent a letter to the queen, the queen didn't like it, so she sent it to the king, the king said close your eyes and count to l6"(with eyes closed). the same rhyme was sung in tipperary town and cork city but a "dolly" instead of a "teddy bear" is mentioned in tipperary town and a "rag doll" enters the rhyme in the north side of cork city, where girls count to 17. in waterford city, the "dollie" is also dressed in green and is "put in a match box, and sent to the queen." while in another waterford city, there's a version that goes: 4b. i have a little teddy bear all dressed in green. these are the actions he must do. stand up straight, bend one knee, salute to the officer and bow to the queen. run around the corner and into a shop(run out and come back) and out i come with my lollypop. waterford city, presentation convent, (spring 1980). 5. banana splits, banana splits, (you have to have the rope between your legs on "splits") banana, banana, banana splits. hoppy splits, hoppy splits, (hop while you skip) hoppy, hoppy, hoppy splits. twirly splits, twirly splits, (twirl while you skip) 45 singing games buckley twirly, twirly, twirly, splits. one eye splits, one eye splits, (close one eye) one eye, one eye, one eye splits. two eyes splits, two eyes splits, (close two eyes) two eyes, two eyes, two eyes split. one arm splits, one arm splits, (one arm behind back) one arm, one arm, one arm splits. two arm splits, two arm splits, (two arms behind back) two arm, two arm, two arm splits. crosshaven, co. cork, (spring, 1981). (abrahams 31) in cork city, south side, girls go "hoppy," "one eye" and "two eyes split." in presentation convent, tralee, girls sang: sa. banana, banana, banana, splits. repeat over and over. (for "splits", you have to have the rope between your legs when you stop. presentation convent, tralee, (spring 1981). 6. not last night but the night before, twenty four robbers came knockin' at the door. as i went down to let them in, this is what the said to me. jason, jason do the splits. jason, jason do the kicks. jason, jason turn around. jason, jason tip the ground. mallow, co. cork, (spring, 1981). over in doneraile, co. cork, i collected in the spring of 1981, the first two lines are the same as mallow but the verse has only two more lines: "i went down to let them in, spanish lady do the splits, kick, turn around, tip the ground." 46 buckley singing games the ardfert, co. kerry version of this rhyme, which i picked up from girls at a boarding school in ring, co. waterford, is much longer and encompasses the rhyme "jelly on the plate" on to the end of it. it goes: 6a. not last night but the night before, twenty five robbers came knockin' at my door. i went outside to let them in, and this is what they said to me. spanish lady turn around, spanish lady tip the ground. spanish lady do the splits. spanish lady show your knee. jelly on the plate, jelly on the plate, wibbly, wobbly, wibbly wobbly jelly on the plate. sausage on the pan, sausage on the pan, turn it over, turn it over sausage on the pan. robbers in the house, robbers in the house, kick them out, kick them out, robbers in the house. in cork city, the home of the irish ballet company in the early 1980s, "ballet dancers," instead of spanish dancers, "do the splits, do the kicks, turn around and tip the ground." (opie [1959], 23, [portsmouth, dundee]; abrahams [1969], 100: for the whole rhyme; abrahams [1969], 180, for "spanish dancers" lines); abrahams & rankin [1980], 134, (counting out rhyme)) 7. money on the ground, money on the ground you've got to pick it up, pick it up. money on the ground. jelly on the plate, jelly on the plate, wiggly, woggly,wigg1y, wogg1y, jelly on the plate. cork city, st. catherine's school, bishopstown, (spring 1980). (abrahams 284; leyden 129) 47 singing games buckley 8. up the missisippi, if you miss a loop you're out. (swing rope high) hop the missisippi, if you miss a loop you're out. (hop on one leg) down the missisippi, i you miss a loop, you're out. (skip low) smoke the missisippi, if you miss a loop you're out. (pretend you're smoking) swim the missisippi, if you miss a loop you're out. (perform swimming strokes) (cork city, blarney st, (spring 1979). in ballintemple, cork city, girls go: "up the mississippi, down and twirl the mississippi." the listowel, co. kerry version collected in spring 1981, is similar to the blarney street version in cork city, in its actions. in the waterford version of the skipping rhyme girls say: 9a down the mississippi where the boat go push. up the mississippi where the boat goes push (as each girl runs in she pushes the girl before her out of the rope on "push," thus also putting the rhyme in the "run in/run out" category of skipping rhymes.) (abrahams 120) in tralee, co. kerry, the version is different again and has the "teddy bear" rhyme tagged on to the end of it. 9b. up the missisippi, where the girls are very pretty, where the boys are very ugly, if you miss a loop you're out. teddy bear, teddy bear, twirl around, 48 buckley singing games teddy bear, teddy bear, tip the ground, teddy bear, teddy bear, say your prayers, teddy bear, teddy bear, go to bed. 10. the teddy bear rhyme is sung by itself in some parts of munster, such as: teddy bear, teddy bear go upstairs. teddy bear, teddy bear say your prayers. teddy bear, teddy bear turn off the light. teddy bear, teddy bear say good night. ennis girls school, co.clare. (daiken [1949], 64; abrahams [1969], 545; brady [1975],84; ni fhloinn [1982],70, [cavan]; macthomais [1982],19, [dublin, 1920'2-30's]; kane [1983],81, [belfast 1910-20]; meek [1985], 38; leyden [1993],131) 10a. teddy bear, teddy bear twirl around. teddy bear, teddy bear tip the ground. teddy bear, teddy bear go upstairs. teddy bear, teddy bear say your prayers. cork city, southside, (1981). 10b. teddy bear, teddy bear turn around. teddy bear, teddy bear touch the ground. teddy bear, teddy bear go upstairs. teddy bear, teddy bear say your prayers. teddy bear, teddy bear turn off the light. teddy bear, teddy bear say good night. cuil aodh national school, co.cork, (spring, 1980). 10c. teddy bear, teddy bear twirl all around. teddy bear, teddy bear tip the ground. teddy bear, teddy bear go upstairs. teddy bear, teddy bear say your prayers. teddy bear, teddy bear turn out the light, 49 singing games buckley teddy bear, teddy bear say good night, teddy bear, teddy bear 1,2,3. tipperary town, (spring, 1981). 10d. teddy bear, teddy bear go upstairs, teddy bear, teddy bear say your prayers, teddy bear, teddy bear turn off the light, teddy bear, teddy bear say good night. clonminch road, ennis, co.clare, (spring, 1981). 11. telly on the telephone, miss a loop you're out. clonmel, co. tipperary, (spring, 1981) (each person skips for the length of the rhyme, then jumps out, to be immediately followed by another person who cannot miss a loop. otherwise she has to take the rope.) (brady 77) 11a. there's somebody on the telephone, calling up maria. (maria jumps in, other person jumps out.) maria is on the telephone, calling up joanne.etc. (joanne jumps in, maria jumps out, without missing a loop.) barrett's terrace, cork city (spring, 1979). 12. christopher, columbus was a mighty man, he sailed to the ocean in a tin can. the waves grew higher and higher and over. (skip higher as the rope is raised) 50 buckley (abrahams 30) (abrahams 53) singing games croom, co. limerick, (spring, 1981). 13. george washington never told a lie. she ran around the corner, and stole a cherry pie. (run out and in again.) his father said for punishment, she has to run to the gate, and be back by ten. tralee, co.kerry, (summer, 1980). 14. charley, charley stole some barley, from outside the baker's shop. the baker came out and gave him a clout, and made poor charley hop all around the baker shop, full stop. (hop on one leg and then suddenly stop rope.) waterfordcity, (spring, 1981). (abrahams 24) 15. bang, bang you're dead, twenty bullets in your head, drop your gun, pick 'em up. bang,bang you're dead. put out your hands for "drop your guns." touch the ground for "pick 'em up." touch the ground for "you're dead." cork city. st catherine's school, bishopstown, spring, 1980). 16. 51 singing games buckley little black doctor, how's your wife? very well thank you, she's alright. she won't eat a biscuit, nor a tube of lipstick. o-u-t spells out. o-v-e-r spells over. u-n-d-e-r spells under. i-n spells in, like a bottle of gin. lady, lady tip the ground, lady, lady twirl around, lady, lady show off your shoe, lady, lady right through a house, a fire, a fire brigade. a woman sat down with a drink and gin. drink and gin was a very nice drink, so out pops you. listowel, co. kerry, (spring, 1980) (brady 77) 17. george washington, went to france. to teach the ladies how to dance. this is how he taught them. ladies, ladies turn around. ladies, ladies tip the ground. ladies, ladies tip you shoe, ladies, ladies that will do! meadowlands estate, tralee, co. kerry, (spring, 1980). (brady 85; meek 9; leyden 115, ball rhyme known as "charlie chaplin went to france" daiken 34, ball rhyme) 18. shirley temple is a star, s-t-a-r. she can do the hokey pokey, she can do the splits, 52 buckley singing games she can turn all around, just like this! mallow, co. cork, (spring, 1981). 19. monday night i'm all alone, tuesday night on the phone, wednesday night i call a friend. i call jacinta. oh, jacinta, pretty, pretty jacinta, all the boys and all the girls, they love jacinta. izzy, busy twirl around,(twirl.) izzy, busy, tip the ground, (tip the ground.) izzy, busy show your shoe. (put one foot out.) izzy, busy i love you. gurranabrather ave, cork city, (summer, 1979). (daiken [1949], 63; brady [1975], 82; macthomais [1982], 79, [dublin 1920's-30's]; opie [1985] 339--4l,circ1e game) 20. piggy on the railway, picking up sticks. along came a driver, and broke piggy's nose. oh said piggy that's not fair, oh, said the driver, i don't care. piggy on one leg, one leg, one leg. (hop on one leg) piggy on two legs, two legs, two legs. piggy on three legs, three legs, three legs (+one hand) piggy on four legs, four legs, four legs. (bend over while skipping so that your two hands touch the ground as you feet touch the ground.) listowel, co. kerry, (spring, 1980). (mac coil and behan, band 1, folkways recording, fw 8501, [1958]; opie [1969],37, (originated around the turn of the century. comes from the old scots ditty "pussy at the fireside suppin' up brose."). opies have six variants "paddy", "piggy," "polly," "peggy," "tommy," and "teddy," meek [1985],87; abrahams [1969], 158; abrahams/rankin [1980], 189, "paddy on 53 singing games buckley the railway, picking up stones./up came the engine and broke pady's bones./ "ah," said paddy, "that's not fair."/ "puff," said the engine, "i don't care.") 21. up the ladder, down the ladder, abc. down the ladder, up the ladder, 123. (skip up and down the rope while skipping. tralee, co. kerry, (spring, 1980). (leyden 136) 22. pineapple stand, pineapple stand, pineapple, pineapple, pineapple stand. (stand on rope at the end of rhyme.) waterford city, (spring, 1981). 23. over the moon, just like a spoon. the moon is light, and i'm so bright. over the moon just like a spoon.(skip up and down the rope.) waterford city, (spring, 1981). 24. all in together girls, never mind the weather girls. when i count two, tip your shoe. when i count four, tip the floor. when i count six, do some tricks. when i count eight, tip the gate. (run out and tip a gate.) cork city, northside, (spring, 1979). (daiken [1949], 71 (great britain); abrahams [1969], 6; ni fhloinn [1982], 70, [cavan]) 25. 54 buckley singing games upsy, downsy, twirl all a roundsy. clap and if you miss a loop you're out. waterford city, (spring, 1980). 26. dr. bannister lost one eye. (close one eye while skipping.) lost two eyes.(close two eyes while skipping.) lost one leg. (skip on one leg.) then one arm. (one hand behind the back.) then drop down dead. (roll out of rope.) waterford city, (spring, 1980). plain skipping plain skipping means that someone skips without any particular actions other than jumping up and down to the rhythm of the rope while singing some rhyme. 27. singing the letters of the alphabet while skipping is a simple form of plain skipping. a,b,c .............x,y,z. x,y,z, sugar in my tea, now i know my a,b,c. will you play with me. cork city, (spring, 1980). (brady (1975),75; leyden (1993), 134; abrahams (1965) 5) the alphabet is also used in a prophetic sense when girls want to find out who their boyfriend might be. whatever letter the rope "downs" on, is the first letter of some boy's name she might know. it also enters the following little rhyme: 28. lemon and lime be on time, 55 singing games 56 buckley start with alphabet a,b,c.... (if you miss, you're "on the rope.") cork city, st. catherine's school, bishopstown, (spring, 1981). 29. skippy, skippy, skippy, the bush kangaroo. skippy, skippy, skippy, the bush kangaroo. (repeat as many times as you want.) cork city. north presentation convent, 2nd class, (spring, 1979). 30. chocolate biscuits down the lane. if you want one spell your name. a-n-g-e-l-a. angela. clonmel, co. tipperary, (spring, 1980). (porcheddu [1992],122-3, counting out rhyme, cork city) 30a. chocolate biscuits down the lane, if you want one spell your name. s-a-m-a-n-t-h-a, samantha. cork city, northside, (spring, 1979). 30b. chocolate biscuits down the lane. if you want one spell your name. s-u-s-a-n-n-e, susanne. cork city, st. catherine's school, bishopstown, (spring, 1979). 31. 1,2,3,4,5, i caught a little fish alive, 6,7,8,9,10. then i let him go again. why did you let him go? because he bit my finger so. buckley singing games which finger did he bite? the little finger on the right. ennis girls primary school, co. clare, (spring, 1980). (abrahams (1969)150-51 32. cinderella bright and yella, went upstairs to kiss a fella, made a mistake and kissed a snake. how many doctors did she meet? 1----------------------------------10. presentation convent, 5th class. tralee, co. kerry, (spring, 1980). (leyden (1993), 132; abrahams (1969), 30; mccaughan [1971-2], 20 ; porcheddu [1992],180, counting out rhyme, cork city) 32a. cinderella, dressed in yella, went to the ball to meet her fella. she made a mistake and kissed a snake. that was the end of cinderella. ennis, co. clare, (spring, 1980). 32b. cinderella, dressed in yella, all dressed up to kiss her fella. by mistake she kissed a snake, how many doctors did she need? (count up to as many as you can, and you miss, the other person is in.) cork city, st. catherine's school, bishopstown, (spring, 1979). 32c. cinderella, dressed in yella. went upstairs to get her umbrella. 57 singing games buckley on her way she met her fella. how many kisses did she give him? 1,2,3, ............. etc. mallow, co. cork, (spring, 1979). 33. johnny in the water, johnny in the sea, johnny broke a window, and he blamed me. 1 told ma, ma told da. johnny got a beating, ha, ha, ha. tralee, co.kerry, (spring, 1980). 33b. i had the german measles, i had them very bad. they put me in warm blanket, and put me in a van, the van was very shakey, i nearly fell out, when i got to hospital, i heard a baby shout, mammy, daddy take me home, from this hospital, from this home. i've been here a week or two, and now i want to be with you. here comes dr. bannister, coming down the banister, half way down he ripped his pants, and now he's doin' the cha, cha, dance. waterford city, (spring, 1980). (opie [1985],455, handclapping rhyme, "i had the scarlet fever," porcheddu [1992] 191, "recited just for fun." cork city.) 34. little willy wagtail, born in a sea shell. christened in a handkerchief, oh willy wagtail. i know a woman whose name is miss, every sunday morning she walks like this. 58 buckley singing games ("block the rope with your foot on 'like this'''10 year old girl who was part of the game.) ennis, co. clare, (spring, 1981). (brady [1975], 74) 35. gypsy, gypsy, gypsy from carrigaline, washed her hair in turpentine. the turpentine made it shine, gypsy, gypsy, gypsy from carrigaline. sacred heart school, glasheen road,cork, (spring 1979) and carrigaline, co.cork, (spring, 1980). (brady 57, [ball rhyme], [dublin]) 35a. gypsy, gypsy, caroline, washed her hair in turpentine, the turpentine makes it shine, gypsy, gypsy, gypsy caroline. cape clare island, co. cork, (spring, 1981). 35b. car, car, caraline, wash her hair in turpentine, the turpentine made it shine, car, car, caraline. ennis girls school, co. clare, (spring, 1980). 36. policeman, policeman don't catch me. for i've got a wife and family. how many children have you got? twenty four and that's a lot. (count to 24.) 59 singing games buckley ennis, co. clare, (spring 1980). (daiken [1949], 69; daiken [1963], 27; brady [1975], 97; behan & maccoll [1958], band 3, folkways 8501; macthomais [1982], 107, (street chant), [dublin 1920's-30's]) 37. mrs. brown went to town, with her knickers hanging down. mrs. green saw the scene, and put it in the magazine. tralee, co. kerry, (spring 1980). (abrahams [1969],130; leyden [1993],132; opie [1985] 441 [handclpping]; brady [1975], 65, [ball rhyme]) 38. seven girls names i do know, wish me luck 'cause here i go. one, angela, two, mary three, stephanie. four, assumpta. five, jacinta, six, helen, seven, ann. (this format is used also as a ball bouncing rhyme.) waterford city, spring (1980). 39. down in the meadow where the grass grows green. a tomcat sat on a sewing machine. the sewing machine sews so fast, so fast it sews the tomcat's ass. ennis girls primary school, co.clare, (spring, 1980). the following rhyme is widespread in cork city and is used for plain skipping, but also has versions that involve endurance skipping (turning the rope very fast). here is a plain skipping version. 60 buckley singing games 40. down in the alley-o, court hand sally-o, see all the girlsio, kissing all the boysio. out comes missio, have you seen my brother-o, oh no missio, she's down in the alley-o. the rip, the rap, the sailor broke his back, slips on a banana skin, and that was that. cork city, the glen area, (spring, 1979). this rhyme might then lead into another rhyme to keep the rhythm going. elsewhere on the northside of cork city, a different version is heard: 40a. down in the alley-o. where they play release-o. see all the boys-e-o. kissing all the girls-e-o, up jumps miss-e-o, have you seen my daughtero, no, no, miss-e-o, she's down in the alley-o. rip, rap, sailor broke his back, slipped on a banana skin that was that. era, but, sure, i must, learn to say my a, b, c . . . z. gurranabrather ave. cork, (spring, 1979) (daiken [1963], 45, macthomais, [1982],144, [dublin 1920's-30's]) 61 singing games buckley in presentation convent, tralee, girls sang this following rhyme, that was learnt in garrettstown, co. cork by one of the girls in 5th class, while she was on holiday. it's a rhyme that was sung on the terrace that i lived on when i was growing up in the 1950s and was still being sung by my nieces in 1979. 40b. down in the alley-o, where they play release-e-o. see all the boys-e-o, kissing all the girls-e-o. up jumped miss-e-o. have you seen my mary-o, no, no miss-e-o, she's down in the alley-o. the rip, the rap, the sailor on the seashore, please play a loop for me. are you comin' , are you comin' , are you comin', to the fair, we went, and we went, but the fair wasn't there. barrett's terrace, cork, (1979) 40c. down in the alley-o courting sally-o. picking up cinders, breaking windows. my mother said to be good, and not to interfere with the gypsies in the wood. farranree, cork city, (spring, 1979). 41. there's a boy over there. and he's winkin' his eye. he tells me that he loves me, but he's telling a lie. his hair is all curly, and his shoes are all shine. he ain't got no money, so he wont be mine. 62 buckley singing games look whose coming down the street, brenda sheehan isn't she sweet. she's been married twice before, and now she's knocking on brendan's door. presentation convent, tralee, co.kerry, (1980). barrett's terrace, cork city, (1950's & 1970s80s.) around gurranabrather avenue on the northside of cork city, the same words to the above rhyme are sung added to by the following lines. 41a. mrs. murphy is brendan coming out? yes my love at half past three. half past three is much too late, so marry me in the morning at half past eight. how many kisses did she give him? 5-10-15-20-25-30 etc. (when you "down" the rope, that's the number of kisses the girl gave.) the next rhyme, from cape clare island, is a combination of "the wind blows high" and "down in the valley where the green grass grows," with a few lines from the song, "i'll tell me ma," thrown in the middle. 42. the rain, the rain, the rain blew high, the rain blew falling from the sky. mary, mary said she'd die, if she didn't get the fella, with the marble eye. he is handsome, he is pretty, he is the man from kerry city, let the girls say what they like, padraigh murphy will have a wife. cape clare island, co. cork, (spring, 1981). (abrahams 209; daiken [1949], 61, belfast and cork; brady [1975], 92; meek [1985], 59; leyden 140; behan, [1958], band 2, folkways 8501; 63 singing games buckley mccaughan, [1971-2], 22; opie [1985],134-6, circle game, macthomais [1982],49, [dublin 1920's-30's]) in ring, co.waterford,version, the rain "came tumbling from the sky," and the fella has a "roman" eye. he comes from any town or city you want, and the rhyme ends as follows: 42a will she marry him? yes/no. (whatever you "down the rope" on) how many children? (count while you skip) what colour dress? (list colours while skipping). ring, co. waterford, (spring 1980). in one tralee, co. kerry, version, it's "the wind" that "blows high," creating, "all the scattering in the sky." the rhyme then resumes as follows: 42b. she is handsome, she is pretty, tell me who she loves? he loves her, he kisses her. oh my darling won't you tell your name to me? while another version from tralee, (spring, 1980) goes as follows: 42c. the wind, the wind, the wind blew high. the wind came rushing from the sky. gay thought she would die, all because of her poor boy. he is handsome, he is pretty, he is from killkenny city. and if you want to know his name, his name is colin costello. do you love him? yes/no. 43. 64 buckley singing games she sells sea shells on the seashore. and the sea shells that she sells, are sea shells no more. crosshaven, co. cork, presentation convent, (spring 1979). (meek [1985], 79) run in/run out skipping rhymes run in/run out rhymes take different forms. a girl might be skipping alone and then calls in a friend to skip with her. or, calling the friend in might be a signal for her to exit the rope at the same time. in some rhymes, a girl might skip for a number of loops, but in other rhymes she will only skip for one loop and be followed by another girl, who only skips for one loop and so on. in this kind of situation, where a girl skips for just one or more loops of the rope, the pattern for running in to skip and running out when it's your time, is that of a figure eight. whatever the situation may be, timing is crucial and if a girl's timing is off, she'll "down" the rope, causing her to "take the rope." also, if she doesn't enter on the right loop, she may also have to "take the rope." the following short rhyme is popular around munster. 44. down the mississippi if you miss a loop you're out. (this line is repeated over and over as one girl jumps in while another is exiting from the other side on "out." cork city, st. catherine's school, bishopstown, (spring, 1980) 44a. down the mississippi where the boats go push. (repeat the line over and over with the girl jumping into the rope pushing the girl skipping out of the rope. waterford city, (spring, 1980). (abrahams [1969],44) 65 singing games buckley 44b. in waterford city, (spring, 1980) also, girls say: up the missisippi where the boats go push. (repeat the line over and over with one girl jumping in and pushing the girl who is skipping, out.) the same procedure goes on in ennis, co. clare (spring, 1980), but the rhyme is different. 44c. down in the meadow where the ghost goes boo. ennis, co. clare, (spring, 1980). 44d. in ennis also, is heard the words: up the mississippi if you miss a loop you're out. (the same procedure is followed, whereby one girl jumps in and the girl before her exits). 45. christopher, columbus was a mighty man, he sailed to the ocean in a tin can. the waves flew higher and higher and over. (skip higher as the rope is raised) croom, co. limerick, (spring, 1980). (abrahams [1969], 30) 45a. christopher, columbus was a mighty man, he sailed to america in a tin can. the wind it blew higher and covered his head. close your eyes and count to ten. limerick city, (spring, 1980). 66 buckley singing games 46. george washington never told a lie. she ran around the corner, and stole a cherry pie. (run out and in again.) his father said for punishment, she has to run to the gate, and be back by ten. tralee, co.kerry, (spring, 1980). (abrahams [1969], 53) 47. vote, vote, vote for de valera, and we call in mary at the door, (mary runs in) mary is the one we all like the best, and we don't like veronica anymore. (veronica runs out) (the rhyme is repeated with mary skipping alone and a new girl is called and mary runs out.) ennis, co. clare, 9spring, 1980). (brady [1975], 80; abrahams [1969], 201; daiken [1949], 69; daiken [1963], 25; behan & maccoll [1958], band 4, folkways 8501; macthomais, [1982], 111, [dublin, 1920's-30's]) in st. patrick's school in mayfield, cork city, collected in the spring of 1979, girls sing "love" instead of "like", otherwise the rhyme is the same. on the northside of cork city also, girls sing the following version: 47a. vote, vote, vote for de valera and we call in michelle at the door if michelle don't come in, there'll be war in spangle hill, and we won't like orla anymore, shut the door. meanwhile over in tralee, co. kerry, girls sing: 67 singing games buckley 47b. vote, vote, vote for devalera, and we call in deirdre, at the door, elaine is the one, who will have a lot of fun, and we won't call her in anymore, shut the door, no.4. 48. i like coffee, i like tea, i like sarah in with me. (sarah runs in) i hate coffee, i hate tea, i hate sarah in with me. (sarah runs out.) croom, co. limerick, (spring, 1980) & sacred heart school, south douglas rd, cork (spring, 1979). (daiken [1949], 33, ball game, [co.antrim] abraham [1969], 85;opie [1985],358; porcheddu [1992], 143, [counting out rhyme], (cork city); leyden [1993],130) in doneraile, co.cork (spring, 1979), the rhyme is extended to go as follows: 48a. i like coffee, i like tea, i like sarah in with me. i don't like coffee, i don't like tea, i don't like sarah in with me. now that she's in, i can't get her out, how many pushes must i give her? l-2-3-4 ........ (until she "downs"), hard or soft? (hard or soft belts to get her out). in ring, co. waterford, after the first two lines, girls sing the alphabet, whatever letter she "downs" on, tells her boyfriend's name. say the rope downs on "p", then the boys name is used as follows: 68 buckley singing games 48b. i like coffee, i like tea, i like michelle in with me. a,b,c, .......... p. peter and me under a tree, will i marry him? yes/no! if the girl "downs" the rope on "yes," it's a way of prophesizing that she will marry him. the opposite also applies. 48c. i like coffee, i like tea. i like sitting on a blackman's knee. cork city, (spring, 1979). 49. as i was in the kitchen, doin' a bit a stitchin', in came a boody man, and i ran out. (run out of rope, next girl runs in.) crosshaven co. cork, (spring, 1979), ennis, co. clare, (spring 1980), cork city, (spring, 1979) (abrahams [1969], 12; daiken [1949], 63 [great britain]; daiken [1963], 33 [dublin]) 49a. as i was in the kitchen, doin' a bit a stitchin' in came a booby man, and i ran out. (you run out then and the other person after you comes in.) 49b. in the southside of cork city, girls use "boogey man," instead of "boody man" and "booby man." 69 singing games buckley 49c. in doneraile, co. cork, there is a combination of two different rhymes. it goes: seashells cockleshells, evy, ivy over. mother in the kitchen, doing a bit of stitchin' . how many stitches did she drop? (count up until you "down" the rope.) in another cork city (spring 1979) version, the following lines opens the verse: bluebells cockidy-shells, evor, ivor overhead. as i was in the kitchen, doin' a bit a stitchin'. in came a boody man, and i ran out. (abrahams [1969],18; brady [1975], 83; ni fhloinn [1982], 70, (cavan) 51. tiger tim, swallowed a pin, that's the end of tiger tim. (run out) cape clare island, co. cork. this rhyme can then lead into another rhyme to keep the flow going. (brady [1975], 65 (ball rhyme)) 51a. on the northside of cork city, the following lines are added to the two lines above: steve mcgarrett, ate a carrot, that's the end of steve mcgarrett. 70 buckley singing games 52. i am a little girl guide all dressed in blue, these are the actions that i do. stand up straight,bend one knee, salute to the captain, and bow to the queen. cork city, st. catherine's primary school, bishopstown (spring, 1979). (daiken [1949], 65; abrahams [1969], 70; mccaughan [1971-2], 22; brady [1975],86) 52a. i am a little rag doll all dressed in green. my mother didn't like me, she gave me to the queen. the queen didn't like me, she gave me to the king, the king said said shut your eyes and count to seventeen. (count up to seventeen with your eyes closed. if you miss before seventeen, you go on the rope turning.) cork city, st.catherine's school, bishopstown (spring 1979). (abrahams [1969], 78; mccaughan [1971-2], 20) 52b. i have a little dolly all dressed in blue. the queen didn't like her, so she sent it to the king, the king said close your eyes, and count to sixteen. ennis, whitehall estate, co. clare, (spring 1980). 52c. i'm a little dutch girl, all dressed in green. these are the actions i must do. salute to my master, bow to my queen, 71 singing games buckley run around the corner, and buy an ice-cream. (run out of rope and back in) how many ice creams did i buy? limerick city, (spring, 1980). 52d. i have a little teddy bear, all dressed in green. these are the actions he must do. stand up straight, bend one knee. salute to the officer, and bow to the queen. run around the corner, (run out of rope and back in.) and into the shop. and out i come with a lollypop. waterford city, (spring 1980). (abraham [1969], 82) 53. i had a little bumper car, no. 48. i went around the corner, and couldn't pull my brakes. c1onmel, co. tipperary, (spring 1981). (abrahams [1969], 80) 53a. bumper car, bumper car, no.48. turn around the corner, (run out and back in.) and pull on the brakes. (stick leg out to stop rope.) ennis, co. clare, (spring 1980). 53b. i had a little bumper car his name is 48. i ran him around the corner, and then i pulled my brakes. (when rope stops, you have to stop with it.) 72 buckley singing games presentation convent, tralee, co. kerry, (spring 1980). 53c. i had a little baby car, no.48. i went around the corner and, (run out and back in.) then i pulled my bakes. (stop the rope with your foot.) waterford city, (spring 1980). 53d. i have a little bubble car, no.48. i go around the c-o-r-n-e-r. (run out and in while you spell 'corner.') cork city, northside, (spring 1979). 53e. bubble car, bubble car, no.28. turn corner, (run out and around one of the girl's turning the rope and back in.) and pull down the brakes. (stop the rope with your leg.) mallow, co. cork, (spring 1979). 53f. i have a little bunny car, no. 48. goes around the corner, (run out and back in.) and then it stops its brakes. (stick out leg to stop rope.) cork city, northside, (spring 1979). 53g. i have a little motor car, no.48 i went around the corner, (run out and back in.) and i had to put on my brakes. (block rope.) a policeman caught me, and put me into jail. how many years was i there? 73 singing games 74 buckley 1,2,3, ................ .30. (if you miss, first off the rope gets to jump.) cork city, southside, (spring 1979) 53h. i have a bobby car, no. 98. i go around the corner, (run out and in.) then i pulling brakes, just like this. (stop rope with leg.) ballintemple, boreenmanna road, cork city, (spring 1979). 53j. bubble car, bubble car, no. 28. turn around the corner, and pull down my brakes. mallow, co. cork, (spring 1979). 53k. i'm a little bumper car, no.48. i went around the corner. i forgot to pull my brakes. my brakes didn't work, i went tumbling down the hill. and into a duck pond, there i stood still. croom, co. limerick, (spring 1980). 53m. i am a little bunny car, no.48. i live around the c-o-r-n-e-r, (run out and in.) pulling my brakes. the brakes didn't work, so i brought her to the g-a-r-a-g-e, (run out and around one of the girl's turning the rope and back in) and then i pulled my brakes. (go out and in again on "brakes." rope must land buckley singing games between legs. if not, repeat the line "so i brought her to the g-a-r-a-g-e, and "pull the brakes again.") crosshaven, co. cork, (spring 1979). 53n. i have a little buggy car, no. 48. i go around the corner, (run out and in.) and then i pull my brakes. glasheen area, cork city, and barrett's terrace, cork city, (spring 1979). mayfield area of cork city is similar except "drive" is used instead of "go." 53p. i had a little buggy car, when i am 64. i go around the c-o-r-n-e-r, and then i pull my brakes. (rope must stop between your legs. if it doesn't, you're out. if it does, you go to the end of the line.) cork city, st. catherine's school, bishopstown, (spring 1979). 53q. i had a little motorbike, it's number was 48. i went around the corner, and forgot to put on the brakes the policeman caught me and put me in jail, how many years was i there? ("start skipping fast and keep trying to skip as long as you can. when he misses, then you go out." fieldnotes-girl playing in the game.) cork city, st. catherine's school, bishopstown, (spring 1979). 54. george washington went around the corner. (run out and in.) 75 singing games buckley and bought a penny pie. he slapped it in the face of his father. and his father said, george do not tell a lie. you were very bold george. don't do it again. you were very bold george, don't do it again. jump out now and leave me alone. (girl jumps out.) george don't do it again. presentation convent, 5th class. tralee, co. kerry, (spring 1980). (abrahams [1969], 53) 54a. little george washington never told a lie. he ran around the corner, (run out around the turner and back in before the next line ends) and stole a cherry pie. how many pies did he steal? (count up to ten.) cork city, southside. st. catherine's school, bishopstown, (spring 1979). 54b. georgie porgy puddingy pie, ran around the corner, (run out and in.) and stole a penny pie. when he went home he told his dad. run around the corner, and be back by 10. (run out and back by 10.) 1 .............. 10. tralee, co. kerry. presentation convent, 5th class, (spring 1980). 55. there is a lady on the mountain, who she is, i do not know? all she wants is gold and silver, and she wants is a fine young man. 76 buckley singing games so i call in my collette dear, (collette runs in.) while i run out to play. (girl runs out.) repeat again. cork city southside, (spring 1979). (gomme [1894], daiken [1949], 75, (circle game); abrahams [1969], 155 [texas 1963]; mccaughan [1971-2], 23, [belfast 1968]; brady [1975],103, circle game, [dublin]; leyden [1993],14) 56. two little dicky birds, sitting on a wall. one named peter, other named paul. flyaway peter, flyaway paul, (run out) come back peter, come back paul. (come back to skip.) ennis, co. clare, (spring 1980). (daiken [1949], 69; abrahams [1969],198; brady [1975],81, [dublin]; leyden [1993],130) 56a. two little dicky birds, sitting on a fence. one named peter, the other named paul. flyaway peter, flyaway paul. (run out) come back peter, come back paul. (come back to skip.) cuil aodh, co. cork, (spring 1980). 57. there's somebody under the bed. i don't know who it is. i got a shock in earnest, and i called joanne in. joanne light the candle, joanne light the gas. run in, run out, there's somebody under the bed. cork city, northside, (spring 1979). 77 singing games buckley (daiken [1949], 63, [great britain]; abrahams [1969], 190-1; brady [1975], 78, [dublin]; leyden [1993],126; macthomais [1982], 63, [dublin 1920s30s] ) 58. susanne on the telephone, calling in georgina. georgina on the telephone, calling in mary. mary on the telephone, calling in sheila. cork city, st. catherine's school, bishopstown, (spring 1979). the girl skipping calls another girl in to skip with her. then the new girl calls in another girl who is next in line to skip with her. as the new girl comes in, a girl is going out the other side of the rope. (brady [1975], 77, [dublin], jinny on the telephone, /miss your loop you're out/ou t spells out. 59. all in together girls, never mind the weather girls, when it is your birthday please jump out, jan. feb ......................... december. is it the first, the second, the third ....... etc. (jump out on the month of your birthday. then, when all the girls have jumped out for their birthday, everyone jumps in again for the days of the month, and jumps back out for the day their birthday falls on. cork city, st. catherine's school, bishopstown, (spring 1979). tra1ee, co.kerry, (spring 1980), limerick city, (spring 1980) waterford city, (spring 1980). (daiken [1949], 71, [great britain]; abrahams [1969],6, [texas]; brady [1975], 95, [dublin]; nifhloinn, [1982], 70, [cavan], from "schools collection," 1937-8 ) 78 buckley singing games 59a. all in together this frosty weather, when i count your birthday the rope must be empty. jan. feb.march ........ dec. monday, tuesday ........ fri. one, one and a half, two, two and a half, three, three and a half. four, four and a half….. five ........ eleven or twelve. ennis girls primary school. co. clare, (spring 1980). endurance skipping endurance skipping means that a test of endurance is put to the person while skipping. this usually involves turning the rope faster than normal to see how fast and how long the person can skip. it's also associated with lines in the rhymes that have a "prophetic" aspect to them, like, "how many children will you have?" also these "prophetic" lines have the tendency to be tagged on at the end of a rhyme, but they can also stand alone as rhymes unto themselves as in the following rhymes, some of which are only one line long. 60. salt, mustard, ginger, cayenne pepper. ennis, co. clare, (spring 1980). (the rope is turned more quickly as the one line verse progresses from salt to pepper. the line is then repeated until the girl skipping' downs' the rope). (gomme [1898], 204, [deptford, england]; o'suilleabhain, [1942], 668,[ireland?]; daiken [1949],63, [great britain]; abrahams [1969], 175, [texas], brady, [1975], 78, [dublin]; kane [1983], 80, skipping & ball rhyme, [belfast]; leyden [1993],126) 79 singing games buckley 61. high, low, jolly, pepper. limerick city, (spring 1980). for "high," the rope is raised off the ground and then turned. the person skipping then has to jump higher when skipping. for "low," she has to skip lower than normal. for "jolly," she twirls around. for "pepper," the rope is turned fast. (abrahams [1969], 63) in another limerick version, the one line goes as follows: 61a. high, low, quick, slow, medium, pepper (fast). all the others are self explanatory. in cork city (spring 1979), the version is more elaborate. 61b. high, low, medium, slow, jolly, rocky, happy, pepper. for "high," you turn the rope high. for "low," you turn the rope low. for "medium," you turn the rope in a "normal" fashion, neither fast nor slow. for "slow," you turn the rope slowly. for "jolly," the rope is "wriggled" and the girl jumping has to jump over it and go down low as she does it. she does it ten times. for "rocky," shake the rope as you are turning it, creating an unevenness as the rope turns. for "happy," you hop over the rope. for "pepper," the rope is turned very fast. (abrahams [1969], 63) 61c. in st. catherine's school in bishopstown, cork, girls sing the same rhyme, but instead of saying "jolly", they say "dolly." for "dolly," you go 80 buckley singing games down low and skip. whatever of these you "down" on, "you have to do ten times with the rope going real fast." (fieldnotes-one of the girl's skipping). in tralee, co. kerry, girls sing: 61d. high, low, medium, walky, talky. the same explanation holds for "high," "low," "medium," as in 61b above. for "walky," the girls turning the rope walk while turning the rope, so that sometimes you might find yourself skipping sideways. for "talky," the girl turning the rope talks to you while you are skipping. they ask you five questions like: where do you live? whose your boyfriend? what's your age? then you turn to the other girl and she asks you more questions. oak park, tralee, co.kerry, (spring 1980). 61e. high, low, jolly, pepper. ennis, co. clare, (spring 1980). 61f. high low, medium, slow. ennis, co. clare, (spring 1980). 62. roundy, suzi, bluebell, pepper. (faster and faster ten times.) if you "down," on "roundy," you twirl around or walk around in circles. for "suzi," you skip for 13 ordinary steps. for "bluebell," jump from side to side over the rope. for "pepper," skip ten times at a fast pace. cork city, southside, (spring 1979). 81 singing games buckley the following rhyme, sung in tra1ee, co. kerry, and has an endurance line at the end that goes, "tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor," during which time the rope is turned fast. 63. mrs. brown she lives by the shore. she's got children three and four. the eldest one is twenty one. and she's going to marry a tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor. mrs. brown: (daiken [1949], 64 [great britian]; abrahams [1969],131; brady [1975],65, [dublin]). tinker, tailor etc: (daiken [1949], 63, [great britian, 68, [dublin]; daiken [1963], 26, [dublin]; brady [1975], 90, [dublin]; leyden [1993], 135) another tra1ee, co. kerry, collected in spring 1980, the version goes as follows: 63a. mrs. brown lived by the shore. she had children two and four. oldest one is twenty four. she's going to marry a tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, rich man, poor man, beggarman, thief. (speed up the rope.) she's going to marry in high heels, low heels, flat heels. is she going to wear rags, cotton, silk, wool? (for the last three lines, the rope is speeded up.) (leyden [1993], 135-6, for the last two lines). sometimes girls in tra1ee, co. kerry sing the following by itself: 63b. who will you marry? tinker, tailor, beggerman, sailor. (whomever you down on, you'll marry). 82 buckley singing games will you be a queen, princess, or a maid? will you wear high heels, low heels, ragged shoes, patched shoes? what will you go to mass in? carriage, car, walk or a horse? then whatever the girl "downed" on, in each line, is called out at the end of the rhyme. presentation convent, tralee.co. kerry, (spring 1980). 63c. another tralee, co. kerry version ends with the following lines: 1,2, tinker, tailor, captain, sailor, lord mayor, general, duke, went to london all dressed in blue. a cork version sung by girls in the northside (cathedral road) is similar to the first tralee version (#63 above) with a few minor changes. 63d. mrs. brown she lives by the shore. she has children three and four. and the eldest one is twenty four, and she's getting married to the boy next door. tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor. (speed up rope.) another cork city version goes as follows: 63d. old misses brown, she lives by the shore. mercy convent primary school, southside, cork city, (spring 1979). in the glen area of cork city, girls sing: 83 singing games buckley 63e. mrs. brown she lives by the shore. she's got children three and four. and the eldest one is twenty four. and she's getting married to the boy next door. sing 1,2,3. tinker, tailor, captain, sailor, (speed up rope.) lord mayor, general, duke, cowboy london dressed in blue. 64. i had a motorbike, no. 48. i went around the corner, (run out and in.) and never pulled my brake. a policeman caught me, and put me in jail. how many years was i there? (the rope speeds up.) cork city, southside, (spring 1979). (abrahams [1969], 80) 65. cinderella, dressed in yella, went downtown to buy an umbrella. on her way she met a fella. how many kisses did she get? 1 10. skip fast. presentation convent, 5th class, tralee, co. kerry, (spring 1980). (abrahams [1969], 30-31; mccaughan [1971-2], 20, [belfast]; leyden [1993],132) 65a. cinderella, dressed in yella, went upstairs to get her umbrella. on her way she met her fella, how many kisses did she get? 5-10-15-20 ............ ! (skip fast.) mallow, co. cork (spring 1979). 84 buckley singing games 65b. cinderellla, dressed in yella, went upstairs to kiss her fella. by mistake she kissed a snake how many kisses did she give him? 1,2,3 ............... etc. (skip faster and faster until you down.) ennis girls school, co. clare, (spring 1980). 66. fire, fire, false alarm, i fell into my boyfriend's arms. how many kisses did he give me? 1,2,3,4, ......... etc. (skip fast.) (if you miss, you go to the end of the line. cork city, southside.st. catherine's school, bishopstown, (spring 1980). (abrahams [1969],49) 67. jelly on the plate, jelly on the plate, wibbly, wobbly, wibbly,wobbly. jelly on the plate. sixpence on the floor, sixpence on the floor, go pick it up, go pick it up. sixpence on the floor. baby in the pram, eating bread and jam. how many slices did she get? 5-10-15-20-25-30 ........... ! (turn the rope fast.) mallow.co cork. (abrahams [1969], 99; brady [1975],86; leyden [1993],129) 85 singing games buckley 67a. jelly on the plate, jelly on the plate, wibbly, wobbly, wibbly wobbly, jelly on the plate. sausage on the pan........ turn it over, turn it over, sausage on the pan. baby on the floor......... pick it up, pick it up, baby on the floor. robber in the house........ kick him out, kick him out, robber in the house. ballytruckle, john's hill, john's park, waterford city. the next rhyme, a divination rhyme, is a combination of two rhymes, "strawberry custard" & "john and mary went for a ride." 68. strawberry custard, cream on top. tell me the name of your sweetheart. a .............................. z. john and mary went for a ride, around the countryside. john asked mary will you be my bride. yes/no. maybe so. (skip fast for last two lines.) listowel, co. kerry. ("strawberry custard etc": gomme 2, [1898],202; opie, [1947],22; daiken [1949],67, [tipperary], 70 [great britian];abrahams [1969], 73, (john and mary etc: abrahams [1969], 99-100, [texas]) 68a. john and joan went for a ride. john asked joan would you be my bride. yes, no, maybe so. 86 buckley singing games how many kisses did he throw? 10,20,30,40 ........................ 100. how many children did he get? were they triplets, twins? what kind of housepalace, cottage, house? will you be a tramp, queen or princess? waterford city. 69. s-h-o-p, s-h-o-p. s-h-o-p, repeat while turning the rope fast. if you "down on" 's', you skip slow. if you down on 'h', you hop on one leg. if you down on 'o', you skip ordinary. if you down on 'p', you skip fast. limerick city. 70. firecracker, firecracker, bumb, bumb, bumb. the boys got the muscles, the teachers got the brains. the girls got the sexy legs, and we won the game. extra, extra, read all about it. we won the game. i give you a nickel, i give you a dime, and i'll bet you, i'll be back in time. (run out and back by a certain time.) croom, co. limerick. works cited abrahams, roger, ed. jump-rope rhymes: a dictionary. austin: university of texas press for the american folklore society, 1969. abrahams, roger. & rankin, lois. editors. counting-out rhymes: a dictionary. austin: university of texas press for the american folklore society, 1980. adams, j.r.r. "children's games in county own a century ago." ulster folklife, 37,1991: 13-21. 87 singing games buckley austin, roger. "playground culture in northern ireland." ulster folklife, 35, 1989: 109-112. brady, eilis. all in! all in! a selection of dublin children 50 traditional street games with rhymes and music. dublin: comhairle bhealoideas eireann, 1975. castleblayney community enterprise. along the black pig’s dyke -folklore from monaghan and south armagh. castleblayney, 1993. colgan, brendan. let’s play: children’s games. belfast: blackstaff press, 1980. daiken, leslie. children’s games throughout the year. london: b.t.batsford ltd, 1949. ______, out goes she: dublin street rhymes. dufour editions, 1965. gomme, alice. the traditional games of england, scotland, and ireland, volume i. 1894. ed. david nutt. london. new york: dover publications, incorporated, 1964. _______, the traditional games of england, scotland, and ireland, volume ii. 1898. ed. david nutt. london. new york: dover publications, incorporated, 1964. kane, alice. songs and sayings of an ulster childhood. ed. edith fowke. dublin: wolfhound press, 1983. leyden, maurice. boys and girls come out to play: a collection of irish singing games. belfast: appletree press, 1993. maccoll, ewan. & behan, dominic. the singing streets: childhood memories of ireland and scotland. sleeve notes by kenneth s.goldstein. folkways records: fw 8501, 1958. macthomais, eamonn. janey mac me shirt is black. dublin: the o'brien press, 1982. mccaughan, michael. '''cinderella dressed in yella': some belfast skipping rhymes." ulster folk museum yearbook, 1971-72. meek, bill. moonpenny: a collection of rhymes, songs and play-verse for and by children gathered in ireland. cork city: ossian publications, 1985. ni fhloinn, bairbre. "the heart of breiffne: the traditions, ballads, legends & folklore from mid-cavan 1978-83." kids' stuff. ed. anna sexton. cumann staire leathratha: 65-88. nic amhlaoibh, brona. "margadh na bpaisti." bealoideas. 1980-81: 59-73. nihil, i. j. "forosa: a study o some children's games." ulster folklife, 12 (1966): 14-17. o'boyle, carmel. cut the loaf: the irish children’s songbook. cork city: the mercier press, 1986. o'conchubhair, padraigh. "children's games from offaly." bealoidas. (1947): 186-200. opie, iona & peter. the lore and language of schoolchildren. oxford: oxford university press, 1959. ______, the singing game. oxford: oxford university press, 1985. porcheddu, annarella. "children's games and rhymes in cork city." diss. university college cork, ireland, 1991. 88 the lost manhood of the american girl: a dilemma in early twentieth-century girl scouting laureen tedesco in the late teens and early 1920s, when the girl scouts incorporated were sending field workers across the nation to train troop leaders and establish the growing organization's reputation, girls and boy scouts of america scoutmasters tackled the problem of girl scout training in their own way: the scoutmasters, independently or at the request of local girls, taught the girls the basics of boy scout training and then wrote to national girl scout headquarters for help. the letters often expressed urgency on the part of the girls who had asked the letter-writers to get girl scout materials for them. one letter asks, "would you kindly reply by return mail as the girls want to get their uniforms as soon as they pass their test" (whitehead 22 nov. 1920). a birmingham, alabama, scoutmaster justified his involvement as "a duty that i owe these girls," who had recruited his help (edmy 27 nov. 1921). the father of a boy scout in davenport, iowa, reported to boy scout headquarters that eighteen girls had called at his home to ask him to find out whether girl scouts existed in this country (the letter was forwarded to the girl scouts) (andrews 14 oct. 1918). a largo, florida, scoutmaster addressing girl scout staff members as "dear co-workers" reported that local girls wanted "some organization similar to the boy scouts of america" (roberts 19 nov. 1921). some of these men volunteered to lead girl scout troops themselves (see, for example, parkins 10 mar. 1922). others asked for help in finding a woman leader who could build on the foundation they had laid. these boy scout workers' perception that the separately run boy scout and girl scout institutions were doing essentially the same work mirrored a popular perception that persists today. the scoutmasters' willingness to give girls the apparently universal "basics" of scouting highlights a central question about the founding of the girl scouts: how much was founder juliette low seeking to offer girls the same program, broadening the scope of activities available to girls and women, and how much were she and early girl scout officials softening or "feminizing" the core scouting material?1 the men who wrote to girl scout headquarters either missed the gendered adaptations that low had made and that british boy scout founder robert baden-powell had earlier built into the girl guide program, or they understood the shared (masculine) heritage of the girls' and boys' programs. to some degree, the adults who sponsored girl scout troops, allowed their daughters to join them, and provided the infrastructure needed for camping and service projects saw the common scouting tenets and activities as transcending gender differences, or as relevant to girls the lost manhood of the american girl tedesco as well as to boys. and the girls' eagerness to get their uniforms underscores the appeal and novelty of the military-inspired features of the program in the world war i era. while at the national level, the separately run boy scouts of america emphasized its distinctly masculine identity and sought distance from the girl scouts inc., the girls' organization often highlighted the similarities between the two programs, pursuing parallel activities and health training for girls. girl scouting before the 1930s drew on both feminine gender codes and masculine symbolism, its gendered status complicated by the organization's borrowings from the boy scouts, low's deliberate re-appropriation of boy scout forms and symbols, and the mixture of male and female iconography used in the first four handbooks.2 girl scout handbooks appropriated the figures of the pioneer and the soldier, offered girls male examples from the frontier era and the great war, and chose as their exemplary women those who excelled in nontraditional endeavors, though emphasizing the homemaking skills of the most famous, louisa may alcott. in this essay, i examine the masculine heritage of the girl scouts, as well as the program's seemingly genderless emphasis on exercise and public safety, in the 1920 girl scout handbook, scouting for girls, the organization's longest and most military instruction manual. the handbook's army analogies were particularly attractive during and just after the great war, when american girls and women had turned out for war work in record numbers.3 the military models offered to girls and adult women-at a time when they could not join the armed forces enabled an imagined identity that was strong, capable, and rewarded. the program's relatively new outdoor activities for girls-camping, hiking, and military drill-passed muster with adults because they met a perceived need for health and outdoor exercise in the nation's future mothers. the pioneer-life aspects of the girl scouts' camping, nature study, and woodcraft skills assuaged fears that technology would rob young americans of resourcefulness. at the same time that it allowed girls to play with hatchets and send coded messages with signal flags, scouting for girls trained girls in efficient "modern" ways of handling the historically feminine provinces of home, sick relatives, and children. girls learned traditional morality, such as an emphasis on sexual purity, in more up-to-date packaging. before the girl scouts began in the united states in 1912-13 (first as girl guides and a year later rechristened as girl scouts), british girls had appropriated the activities described in baden-powell's 1908 scouting for boys (mitchell 119). girls' public appearance at baden-powell's crystal palace inspection of the boy scouts, however, spurred baden-powell to develop a tamer girls' program, the girl guides, to entice girls away from boy scouting. still, scouting-style activities for girls got some 90 tedesco the lost manhood of the am erican girl endorsement from adults on both sides of the atlantic, and even badenpowell's more "womanly" program, developed with his sister agnes, allowed girls to follow tracks across the moors, practice signaling, and bandage imagined victims of severe injuries. one british girls' reader editor praised scouting as "'a wholly fresh phase of woman's activity,' for 'healthy, open-air, adventure-loving young women, who go about their work of tracking, spying, signaling and what-not with a zeal and intelligence that may well set an example to their male confreres'" (qtd. in mitchell 122). on this side of the atlantic as well, fresh-air adventure for girls received hearty adult approval, via "woodcraft" organizations such as the camp fire girls (1912), the girl scouts, and the ywca's girl reserves (1918). outdoor adventures akin to scouting appeared in american girls' series fiction of the 1910s, with outdoor girls, pioneer girls, wide-awake girls, red cross girls and a host of heroines with their own series taking overnight trips, rescuing accident victims, and hiking outdoors. the unofficial camp fire girl and girl scout series by various authors further capitalized on the contemporary climate for girls' outdoor activities, also apparent in lina and adelia beard's, on the trail: an outdoor book for girls (1915). sally mitchell places the scouting phenomenon in britain in a chapter of the new girl, devoted to "being a boy," exploring turn-of-the (twentieth)-century girls' adoption of male personae. the girl scouts-like the slightly tamer girl guides-used the foundation of baden-powell's initial scouting program for boys, with its models of organization, awards, and moral pledges as well as its "scouting" or wilderness survival training. the feminine overlay included extensive homemaking training, moralistic injunctions to do only those things that could comfortably be exposed to group scrutiny, and an emphasis on childcare and female health. girl scouts earned more home-making badges than outdoor ones and had to demonstrate childcare, nursing, and personal health skills to achieve the highest rank, first class. still, girl scouts wore khaki uniforms visually echoing the boy scouts', could earn military inspired lifesaving medals, learned the signaling codes used by the army and navy, and marched in patriotic parades during the great war. recommended reading for girl scouts and their officers included the boy scout and scoutmaster handbooks (1920, 540, 544-45).4 the girl scout organization benefited from a growing public belief that boys and girls should have similar recreational opportunities. although the boy scouts' chief executive campaigned against the girl scout name for seven years through letters and social pressure for the girls' group to become camp fire girls or girl guides, his workers in the field sometimes missed the message that girl scouting must differ from boy scouting for the boys' program to remain "manly." the instructional texts emphasized 91 the lost manhood of the american girl tedesco the "womanly" character of girl scout training, but girl scout officials politely, but steadily, resisted boy scout executive james e. west's pressure to change the name,5 expressing in internal communications their commitment to offering equal experiences to girls. their belief in separate spheres-in a woman's domain of influence through good home and social management-seems at times incongruously balanced with their insistence that girls be offered some of the same experiences as boys. the incongruity can perhaps be explained by the conservative character-training program that scouting activities for both boys and girls framed. the underlying program sought to restrain precocious sexuality and instill ardent patriotism and civic service. as mary rothschild and georgeanne scheiner note, in the 1920s "girl scouting saw itself as a conscious promoter of 'up-to-date womanhood' but also as a bulwark against flappers and american moral decline" (317). girl scout organizers sought to preserve the sexual mores and domestic focus of traditional womanhood, with a modern recognition of career opportunities and voting powers. they also, however, offered novel experiences to preteen and adolescent girls, experiences that included trying on the independence and self-reliance expressed in the group-sanctioned uniforms. the mature expression of early girl scouting's dual impulses towards appropriately feminine training for girls and gender parity appears in the 1920 girl scout handbook, scouting for girls. prepared during world war i, drawing from the nation's experiences at war, scouting for girls reflects shifting expectations of what girls "can do to help their country," as the title of the earlier handbook puts it. the 1920 handbook outlines ways to give social and government service, includes pictures of the military-style insignia and life-saving medals a girl could earn, and depicts girl scout camps with tent-lined streets laid out in military-camp formation and a bugle-accompanied flag-raising at dawn. the instructional and motivational text challenges girl readers to develop the physical stamina necessary to climb a high mountain and draws analogies between soldiers in the great war and girl scouts saving lives. its 558 pages contain articles by experts on home nursing, nature study, and outdoor living, attempting to transmit to the 10 to 18-year-old girl scout the knowledge and experience needed to earn badges on citizenship, pioneering, star gazing, and telegraphy, as well as the more traditionally feminine child nursing, cooking, and gardening. in addition to group badges for scout aide, woodcraft scout, scout neighbor, and land scout, all of them including components of health or homemaking, there are instructions for military drill, with variations in the types of marching steps and orders to give so that the groups of girl scouts will pivot and file off in columns. these activities are presented as means to discipline and impressive displays for the public. 92 tedesco the lost manhood of the am eric an girl no subsequent girl scout handbook has held so much information, expected so much of the reader, or supplemented so thoroughly the traditional expectations of girls with physical challenges and the tools for outdoor exploration. written at the time of a peculiar conjunction of progressive-era interest in social welfare through play and a war-expanded need for everyone's help, scouting for girls spoke to the 10 to 18-yearold girl as a capable, efficient being who could prepare herself to have the only cool head in an emergency. its admonitions to her appealed to her desire to make large contributions to society, presenting personal hygiene, safety knowledge, and physical fitness as preparations for hero(in)ism. this instruction manual was the organization's first to develop technical pictures of girls saving the drowning and using semaphore flags, instruction which, in the two earlier books, 1913 and its revision in 1916, used drawings of boy scouts (1913, 24) or soldiers (1916, 77) for signaling and of boys for lifesaving (1913, 92-93; 1916, 122-23).6 the 1920 handbook represents the organization's increasing adaptations to its audience of girls, but it also displays the girl scouts' continued appropriation of the uniform color, insignia, and opportunities of the unaffiliated boy scouts of america. low and her first national secretary wanted to use the boy scout emblem, the fleur-de-lis, as the girl scout symbol, but chief scout executive james west politely objected, suggesting instead the trefoil, or three-leafed clover, that baden-powell had assigned to the british girls' program (west, letter to johnston, 9 july 1913).7 the boy scouts of america at the national level jealously guarded its uniform, name, and insignia with patents, trademarks, and legal action against imitators (macleod 156-57). the organizational similarities, the breadth of the handbook, and the image of girl scouts as near-adults lasted only as long as this handbook was in effect: the 1927 revision of scouting for girls cut the length by 94 pages and removed many of the analogies to soldiers. by the time of the minor 1929 revision of the handbook, the uniform color had become grey-green, the handbook itself featured a green rather than a khaki cover, and troop "officers" (lieutenant and captain) had become "leaders" (girl scouts of the usa, highlights 10). in their early incarnations, though, the captain, lieutenant, optional second lieutenant--a girl 16 or older--and corporal, or assistant patrol leader, represented the military values of authority and obedience. the pseudo-military appearance of the khaki-clad girl scouts and their khaki-clad handbook were a passing phenomenon, a reflection of an unparalleled moment in women's and girls' history. at a time when women did not serve in the u.s. armed forces, the program's inclusion of drill and military uniforms opened an imaginary portal to a realm of ritual and service from which women were excluded. general public acceptance of 93 the lost manhood of the american girl tedesco the military features of the program suggests that its values outweighed american conceptions of gender norms. the girl scout program, like the analogous one for boys, used pledges and laws-a series of statements about the positive character traits of all members-as the repeated, spoken affirmations that accompanied the girls' ceremonies and weekly meetings. these laws asserted the honor, loyalty, helpfulness, friendliness, courtesy, obedience, cheerfulness, and thrift of the girl scout, as well as her kindness to animals and her physical and moral cleanliness. initial entrance as a "tenderfoot" required memorizing the girl scout motto, slogan, laws, and promise, and leaders were to incorporate these statements of faith into their regular activities. in consequence, seemingly values-neutral girl scout pastimes carried the ideals of the national organization. the motto and slogan, "be prepared" and "do a good turn daily," conveyed an ethic of service, as did the promise, "on my honor, i will try: / to do my duty to god and my country. / to help other people at all times. / to obey the scout laws" (1920 [xii]). service in the promise is religious, patriotic, and social. it is left to the individual to determine what counts as service to god, country, and others, and when one is doing one's best. however, the rest of the handbook, and, one presumes, troop leaders' instruction, gives a context to the kinds of preparation and service that "count" in the girl scout ethos. the badge and rank ceremonies prescribed in the handbook echo military rites and underscore the ideology of the program. for example, the presiding girl scout official tells first class candidates, "'you should thoroughly understand by now the meaning of duty to god and country, the privilege of helpfulness to others, and the seriousness of the scout laws'" (50). the first class girl scout promises to pay back "in generous service" the effort that many people contributed to her achievement of first class (51). when a girl scout meets the requirements for scouting's highest award, the golden eaglet--now obsolete--the girl scout official emphasizes to the golden eaglet "'that you understand now even better than the average girl scout that your great principles of duty to god and country, helpfulness to others, and obedience to the scout laws, are lessons that no scout can fully learn as long as she lives'" (53). this understanding stems from the girl scout "training." recurring themes in the handbook clarify the focus of girl scout preparedness: girl scout training can prevent accidents or rescue people involved in them; girl scout activities such as camping and hiking ensure girls' physical health; and members of the organization learn efficient methods of housecleaning and childcare. the handbook represents membership in the girl scouts as strategic preparation for womanhood in the twentieth century. it calls for a return to the broad-scale usefulness of pioneers, but wants girls to combine old-style resourcefulness with the 94 tedesco the lost manhood of the am erican girl new household efficiency and civic action expected of twentieth-century women. the woman of tomorrow, while doing some of the same activities as the woman of yesterday, has a new self-confidence and pride of accomplishment: the girl scout makes bandages and clothes, bathes babies, or gets meals "quick[l]y and cheerfully," and takes pride in her badges and "the sense of independence that comes from all this skill with her hands" (35). first aid gives the girl scout "a real glow of pleasure to feel that... she may be able to save a life some day," and invalid cooking and nursing "may make her a valuable asset in case of any great disaster or epidemic" (35). girl scouts did, in fact, help during the flu epidemic of 1918. i am emphasizing in this article the adventurous and nontraditional aspects of the 1920 girl scout handbook, but the adventurous sections of the handbook are interspersed with more routine expectations of girls. the grandly named scout aide designation, for example, goes to girls who earn a group of badges in home economics, child care, first aid, home nursing, public health, and personal health. the text seeks to establish the primacy of these skill sets: this badge will probably be regarded by the outside world as the most important decoration the girl scouts can win, and all scouts who will try for it should realize that those who wear it will represent the organization in a very special sense and will be eager to prove their practical knowledge and ability in the important subjects it stands for. (105) household economics, the "scout aide" section of the handbook asserts, is "the great general business and profession of women" (105). the text optimistically expects girl scouts and voting women to wield power over home and health issues: "practical knowledge of personal health, public health and child care will add to the efficiency and happiness of this nation, and the women of today have a better chance to control these things than ever before" (105). the organization's domestic feminism, and its emphasis on intelligently handled home management, place it firmly within the home economics movement.8 at the same time, the text challenges the reader to prepare herself physically and mentally for whatever circumstances might require. the preparation primarily involves safety knowledge, first-aid training, and physical fitness, as well as developing keen observation skills and visual judgment of distances, heights, and bulk measurements. the motivational text calls the attitude of being a giver rather than a taker "the spirit that makes the older scout into a fine, useful, dependable woman, who does 95 the lost manhood of the american girl tedesco so much good in her community that she becomes naturally one of its leading citizens, on whom everyone relies, and of whom everyone is proud. it may end in the saving of a life, or in some great, heroic deed for one's country" (6). while the latter phrase sounds like war service, the reader is reminded that life-saving and grand patriotic acts are simply "bigger expressions of the same feeling that makes the smallest tenderfoot try to do at least one good turn a day" (6; emphasis in original). even so, lifesaving is one of the goals of girl scout preparation enumerated in section ii, "principles of the girl scouts." the girl scouts is also preparing for "the big duties" (presumably marriage and children) and training her body to be "the fine machine it was meant to be" (3). personal health and vigor, home efficiency, and emergency preparedness are the stated goals of girl scouting. community service is also a version of "do a good turn daily" (3). as the text explains: this is the spirit that makes the older scout into a fine, useful, dependable woman, who does so much good in her community that she becomes naturally one of its leading citizens on whom everyone relies, and of whom everyone is proud. it may end in the saving of a life, or in some great, heroic deed for one's country. (6). the hope of performing a grand act is continually dangled before the girl scout, but she is also trained for the mundane daily tasks that are more likely to be her lot. the scout: a pioneer ideal for the twentieth century the handbook's central metaphor for the girl is the scout, the (male) handyman of the frontier. the passages on scouts and their hardiness refer to an idealized pre-technological era when men and women could fend for themselves. these passages' references to the resourcefulness of earlier americans offer a key to the cross-gendering of the model for the young girl. worries about the rising generation's self-sufficiency trump concerns about appropriately gendered behavior. section iv, "who are the scouts?" invokes the tougher pre-machine-age past: although "[o]ur pioneer grandmothers might have been frightened by the sight of one of our big touring cars, for instance, or puzzled as to how to send a telegram, ... they knew an immense number of practical things that have been entirely left out of town-bred lives, and for pluck and resourcefulness in a tight place it is to be doubted if we could equal them today" (17). the text decries the laziness and helplessness bred by the attitude embedded in the kodak advertising slogan "you push a button and we do the rest" (17). 96 tedesco the lost manhood of the am eric an girl on the frontier, "there was no button to press, as we all know, and nobody to 'do the rest': everybody had to know a little about everything and be able to do that little pretty quickly, as safety and even life might depend on it" (17; emphasis in original). the anxiety that technology is edging out practical knowledge reflects the same concern that fueled john dewey's educational philosophy. while scouting for girls offers several young girls as examples of grit and determination on the frontier, its foundational models of the self reliant person are male, "the old 'scouts,' of whom natty bumpo, in cooper's famous old indian tales is the great example" (17). the frontier scouts were explorers, hunters, campers, builders, fighters, settlers, and in an emergency, nurses and doctors combined. they could cook, they could sew, they could make and sail a canoe, they could support themselves indefinitely in the trackless woods, they knew all the animals and plants for miles around, they could guide themselves by the sun and stars, and finally, they were husky and hard as nails and always in the best of health and condition. (18) this romanticized image of the scout--living, incidentally, without women's contributions--is the central metaphor of baden-powell's boy scouting and appears "whole" in the 1920 girl scout handbook. the 1927 edition regenders the passage, making it refer to "our pioneer grandmothers" (14) rather than to men. because the american program echoed the "scout" name in the second year of its version of "girl guiding," the 1920 passage on male "scouts" presents the same standards for girls. while one might view girl scouting as "softer" than boy scouting, the 1920 text enables a self-vision for girl scouts that relies on further male examples, the scout as policeman, and the cowboy. the scouts "had to act as rough and ready police (for there were no men in brass buttons in the woods!) and be ready to support the right, and deal out justice, just as our 'cow-boys' of later ranch days had to prevent horse stealing" (18). the handbook makes its transition from "scouts" to girl scouts via examples of nineteenth-century "brave, handy girls, who were certainly scouts if ever there were any" (21). these girls include the quebecoise magdeleine de verchères, who fended off an indian attack with the help of her younger brothers for eight days (21), pioneer and future suffrage leader anna howard shaw (25-26), and wilderness guide sacajawea (21-22). the girl scouts could also gain inspiration from the handbook's 97 the lost manhood of the american girl tedesco accounts of russian girls assisting in the russian revolution by delivering state secrets for revolutionary leaders (30). seemingly endorsing the revolution, the text recommends similar readiness on the part of american girl scouts: "all we have to do is to fix scout habits in our hearts and hands, and then when our country calls us, we shall be as ready as the little russian scouts were" (31). in the same way that folklorist jay mechling yearned for life-saving opportunities as a young boy scout (36), girl scouts could hope for opportunities for bravery or helpfulness during a war: "instances like these are very exceptional; they could not occur to one in ten thousand of us; but we stay-at-homes can always remind ourselves that it was the obedience, the quickness, and the skill learned in quiet, every-day scouting that made these few rise to the opportunity when it came" (31). camping and the twentieth-century girl the handbook emphasizes camping and hiking as the means to health and as preparation for patriotic service. the aspects of camping highlighted in this handbook are those that recover a supposedly lost connection to nature and those that build stamina. as the section on "girl scout camping" puts it, "a girl scout likes to hike and camp. she learns to know the stars and becomes acquainted with the plants and animals about her. she gains independence from her ability to help herself, and health and strength from exercise in the sunshine and fresh air" (313). camping's development of self-reliance is particularly touted in the passages excerpted from the writings of baden-powell and his wife olave. a girl guide handbook passage entitled "how camping teaches the guide law" tells of a man going naked into the american woods to learn to supply all of his needs-including clothing-for himself: in this way, he lived for over a month in the wild, and came out in the end very much better in health and spirits and with a great experience of life. for he had learned to shift entirely for himself and to be independent of the different things we get in civilization to keep us going in comfort. (robert and olave baden-powell, qtd. in 1920, 36). the baden-powells use this story to explain the frequent camping in the boy scouts and girl guides: '''[i]n camp life we learn to do without so many things which while we are in houses we think are necessary, and find that we can do for ourselves many things where we used to think ourselves helpless'" (baden-powells, qtd. in 1920, 36). the passage hints 98 tedesco the lost manhood of the am erican girl at robert baden-powell's anxiety about "softness," or race degeneration, an anxiety that fueled the eugenics movement that sought to breed a genetically superior generation.9 it wasn't only the british baden-powell who sought to recover lost reserves of physical and moral strength. the relatively new sport of leisure camping via girl scouting resonated with early twentieth-century americans seeking simplicity and a connection to the past. horace kephart, whose camping and woodcraft manual is liberally excerpted in the "camping for girl scouts" section of scouting for girls, specialized in wilderness survival. kephart moved to a remote mountainous region of western north carolina after a nervous breakdown, a crisis in his marriage, and the loss of his job as a library director, seeking to "realize the past in the present" (ellison 352). his 1906 camping and woodcraft, drawing on his backwoods experiences, "became in time the standard work in its field" (352-53). kephart's attempts to recover his equilibrium through outdoor life are akin to the 1920 handbook's laments over a fading pioneer heritage and its admonitions to the reader to learn to shift for herself outdoors without mechanical aids other than a compass. kephart's inclusion in the girl scout manual suggests--as does the handbook's reference list of camping manuals aimed at girls as well as boys10--that camping for girls was becoming an accepted part of american culture as city dwellers increasingly retreated to nature, even if they didn't stay there. the girl camper gets to perform novel duties and carry dangerous equipment. the camping group is advised to carry a hatchet (341), and the wood scout, the youngest girl in the eight-member girl scout patrol, "carries a spade, pick axe and cutting axe" (326). the "handy scout" oversees all tools and makes furniture and bridges, as well as being "field engineer, carpenter, ... the general maker, mender, patcher, splicer and tinker," repairing tents and clothing as well (326). the "lighter" "has care of the lamps, lanterns, candles, matches, oils, and all 'leaky' stuff' and "must keep the camp well illuminated" (326). she also is responsible for sending telegraphs and solving electrical problems. the camping experience simultaneously offers new responsibilities and the fun of playing with dangerous things. since girls had not typically gone on hunting trips, these experiences were newer for them than for boy scouts. also, the instructions expect independence of the girls, with no males and no adults other than the captain and lieutenant on hand. drawing on male-authored texts, the camping material emphasizes physical toughness. for example, the "camping for girl scouts" section opens with walt whitman's poem "the open road": "henceforth i whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing, / strong and content, i travel the open road..." (313). like the kipling poem "the red gods" that appears in the mountain-climbing section, the whitman poem 99 the lost manhood of the american girl tedesco celebrates physical vigor and knowledge of outdoor lore. while "the red gods" features unnamed male protagonists, the girl scout material advises girls to adapt themselves to the demands of camping. clothing choices also come into play: "when living out of doors, one may make shift for shelter, or even go hungry for a space, but there is no substitute for comfortable clothing that is safe to use if one would keep well" (317). instead of wearing skirts, which dangerously limit hikers' range of motion, the girl scout should wear "knickerbockers or bloomers" (314). the girl scout is advised how to care for her feet so she can endure hikes: she is to change her socks daily, never wearing damp ones, and to wear sensible shoes (315) because "no army is stronger than its feet" (316). to cover ground more quickly in the country, the girl scouts are to use the scout's pace of alternating a fixed number of steps running and the same number of steps walking. they are to commit to the girl scout training to learn some simple camping rules and build strength and outdoor know-how by hiking, missing their hikes for only "the worst weather"; even "soft rain or snowstorms are very pleasant to hike in" (314). apart from this advice to hike in light rain or snow, the camping instructions enable girl scout officials to present health advice in an adventure context. for example, the girl-scout-sponsored text suggests, "keep the feet straight when walking. if a girl scout notices the tracks of an indian, the first hikers in this country, she will find them invariably straight forward" (316). this advice to girls on posture uses a presumably male indian as its model and follows up the point with a military reference: "scientists have invariably agreed that the dancing school habit of turning out toes is one of the causes of flat feet, which disqualified so many men for army service" (316). mountain-climbing represents the crowning achievement of the accomplished girl scout camper and hiker. in a section entitled "mountain climbing" by eloise roorbach, we learn that mountain climbing is the final test of a girl scout's perseverance in following a trail, in endurance, courage and woodcraftmanship. . . . no girl scout's education is complete until she has seen mountain peaks like waves of the sea flashing with snow white foam, piercing the blue sky as far as the eye can reach; clouds forming below her feet; breathed rare air found only in high places drunk from the pure source of rivers, and heard the mighty roar of waterfalls. a climb to a high mountain top is an experience that will enrich and influence the entire after life of whoever has had the hardihood and wisdom to accomplish it. (367) 100 tedesco the lost manhood of the am erican girl as elsewhere in the handbook, this text challenges the girl scout to develop the needed strength and endurance for the task. before tackling "this last test of scouting," one should "be in perfect physical trim, be able to sleep on the ground, have learned to live simply" (367). the author's own mountainclimbing trip to the new roosevelt national park there "found her in better physical trim, vigor, strength, and with keenness of vision and joy of life increased daily" (370). the considerable space the handbook devotes to practical instruction in outdoor recreation demonstrates the social acceptability of these vigorous sports for women. being prepared for emergencies throughout the handbook, safety, particularly related to new technologies, arises as a concern. the girl scout is to learn safety measures on her own account and must be prepared to rescue the drowning, provide artificial respiration, and put out fires or give first aid. readying herself for these practical needs establishes the girl's scout identity: "if the scout with the badge keeps her head and shows herself steady, reliable and willing, when called upon to help in illness or emergencies, she proves herself a true scout who is living up to the scout motto of 'be prepared'" (217). baden-powell suggests that the well-trained girl guide (or scout) can avoid the hysteria and revulsion that some people exhibit in an emergency: '''when you see an accident in the street or people injured in an air raid, the sight of the torn limbs, the blood, the broken bones, and the sound of the groans and sobbing all make you feel sick and horrified and anxious to get away from itif you're not a girl guide. but that is cowardice: your business as a guide is to steel yourself to face it and to help the poor victim'" (baden-powell, qtd. in 1920, 29). while they appeal to the reader's self-importance and thirst for adventure, the girl scout writers are serious about the safety information and about a sense of modernity that is curiously nostalgic in its model of womanhood. the girl scouts, in fact, with other youth organizations, became an important conduit of safety knowledge. among the rather routine safety advice in the handbook are admonitions to pay attention to one's surroundings on the street and to avoid strange dogs. the girl scout is also to prevent fires at home by keeping cloth, paper, and fabrics away from flames and keep stairs and hallways clear, and redressing "innumerable other careless things which will occur to you" (166). the modernization of america, with its burgeoning cities, produced the need for advice about using public transportation: "in getting off [street]cars you should face in the direction in which the car is going. a simple rule is to get off by holding a rod with 101 the lost manhood of the american girl tedesco the left hand and putting the right foot down first. this brings you facing the front of the car and prevents your being swept off your feet by the momentum of the car" (165). readers also get information on preventing and treating electric shock (198-99), preventing and extinguishing fires fueled by kerosene, gasoline, or benzene (202), and avoiding natural gas fires (202). if there is a fire in the building, the girl scout is to "[k]eep cool, in order to remember what to do, and do it quickly" (200). she is given not only knowledge but authority: "turn in a fire at once. send someone else if possible who may not know what to do to the fire" (200). the girl scout, presumably, will know because of the handbook she has studied. she is, though, to follow the instructions of the firefighters when they come because "they know exactly what to do" (201). she should "keep the doors and windows closed if possible to prevent draughts from fanning the flames to fiercer effort" (201). if she must enter a burning building she should "leave some responsible person guarding the door, in order that it may not be left open by some one in excitement and the flames fanned beyond control" (201). the child or teen is apparently making the decisions about who is responsible. whether real situations ever worked out this way, girls in the text are presented as potential rescuers and people in charge. the girl scout handbook simultaneously gives children additional rules to follow and admits them into a world of adult knowledge and superiority that many children covet. the rescue charge is empowering and genderless. the child learns what to do for a rather thorough list of accidents. she is to "give the most help and relief immediately, before expert help can arrive, and to have the victim in the best condition possible for the doctor when he comes, in order that he may not have to undo whatever has been done before he can begin to give the patient relief from his suffering" (166). the text details the now-familiar first aid procedures, such as keeping the crowd back, loosening the patient's clothing, turning the head so the patient won't choke on his or her vomit, and arranging to move the person by fireman's lift, a seat of four arms and hands, or an improvised stretcher (167-69). the girl scout learns to deal with heat exhaustion, choking, and dislocations and fractures (17678), and she learns to make a range of bandage types and determine which body part each bandage works best for. the current saturation of red cross teaching makes these concepts familiar to us; the idea of children and teens providing such care was radical in the world war i era and the 1920s. the rescue material presumes a fit, capable girl reader, or encourages her to become that, and the technical instructions take the girl reader seriously. 102 tedesco the lost manhood of the american girl monitoring the young girl's health in addition to caring for the health of the people around her, the girl scout was to monitor and safeguard her own health. the health messages in scouting for girls represent a core value that i believe made girl scouting's less traditional activities for girls acceptable to parents and volunteers. the text recommends outside play to give the body the air, heat, and sunlight it needs (263), and suggests when in a day to drink six glasses of water. to earn the "health winner" badge required for the scout aide designation, girls had to fill in a health chart to track their growth and ensure that they had daily bowel movements, twice-weekly baths, and daily exercise, outdoor work, and play (271). the girl was to compare her height and weight to a national standard for her age, and if she were underweight, she could follow the advice in the manual (269-70). although one might argue that the girls are being protected as potential mothers of the nation, girl scouting's approach to health is the same as boy scouting's and offers the same remedies: outdoor exercise, active games, and self-monitoring. a 1924 school health textbook by physician woods hutchinson offers the same advice of cultivating play for health, suggesting that girls read the boy scout handbook as well as joining girls' groups (156). the text recommends that girls practice daily setting-up exercises--a series of stretches (65). the girl reader is introduced to the setting-up exercises as a way of "oiling and testing" the machine of the body (273). if one neglects this, "the machinery gets rusty and clogged, or the instrument gets out of tune and makes horrid noises" (273). the text suggests a morning tune-up "before you put on your clothes" and at night to "rest the tired parts and exercise the parts that have not been used, so you can even things up" (273). setting-up exercises, like much else in girl scouting, have a military origin. the oxford english dictionary defines the "setting-up drill" or "setting-up exercise" as "a course of gymnastic exercises used to give an erect carriage"; its first entry, a military system of gymnastic exercises (1862) by archibald maclaren, refers to "the setting up and position drill of recruits." another military-derived drill, marching maneuvers, had health benefits and helped captains to handle troops "in an orderly and dignified manner" (84). drill, used in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries for boys' physical fitness classes, offered adult instructors control. the 13 pages devoted to "girl scout drill" praise drill formations as ways to give "an erect carriage, alert habit of obedience, and ability to think or act quickly" (84). tenderfoots learn to stand at attention, mark time, march, and do half-step, side step, and back step, all in quick time or double time (88). they learn to march by flank, move to the rear, and change step. the more complex second-class drill includes "oblique march," in which 103 the lost manhood of the american girl tedesco girl scouts march at an angle in two facing columns, and turning on fixed and moving pivots (94). the even harder first-class drill includes diminishing the front of a column of squads. at the weekly meetings, while lined up for drill, the girl scouts underwent military inspection. the captain checked the girls "for posture, and for personal appearance, which should be neat and clean in every particular, and uniform, which should be correct as to style, length, placing of insignia, etc." (56). traditional expectations of good grooming and posture for girls thus assumed the novelty of soldierly training. conclusion girl scouting of the early twentieth century provided a blend of separate-spheres thinking with attempts to offer girls the same outdoor opportunities available to boys. the organization was committed from its founding to instructing the girls in the details of traditional domesticity, but low and other leaders insisted on procuring for girls the hiking and camping experiences, exercise, and military-style uniforms that boy scouts enjoyed, albeit in an altered fashion. the women who re-made the girl scout program from boy scout and girl guide models found ways to combine boys' pursuits with those more traditionally offered to girls. in doing so, they created a uniquely twentieth-century venture that has twenty-first-century resonances. whatever their gains outside the home, most american women still have responsibility for work within the home, and the girl scouts continue to offer a girls-only program that addresses questions of genderequity as well as providing some training in domestic tasks. as historian leslie paris has said of girls' summer camps, girl scouting's "capacity for allowing girls to reinvent themselves was an important part of [its] power and appeal" (49). the 1920 handbook allowed girls to reinvent themselves as "male"--capable, independent, leaders--while at the same time fitting into the culture in which they were raised and meeting the expectations of their families and peers. today, when girl scouting focuses on addressing problems commonly facing girls and seeks to expand girls' opportunities in math, the sciences, and technology, the anachronistic lessons in signaling and knot-tying still address those early fears that technology would replace american's ability to fend for themselves. the scouting game cloaked traditional messages for children's and girls' behavior, but it also opened some new imaginative possibilities. notes 1 charles e. strickland praises low's perseverance in overcoming her "southern belle" upbringing to create new roles, noting her private championship 104 tedesco the lost manhood of the american girl of women's suffrage though the organization remained silent on the matter before 1920. mary aickin rothschild argues that girl scout officials promoted domestic feminism, deliberately widening girls' opportunities within the context of marriage expectations and an updated version of the well-prepared homemaker (115). sherrie a. inness, on the other hand, sees the program's active aspects as promoting a "fleeting sense of agency" masking its conservative agenda of pointing girls toward marriage and motherhood that terminate careers (234). julia kirk blackwelder contends that the girl scouts in the teens and twenties taught girls to expect a career as well as marriage and children, noting that middle-class girls--scouting's largest audience--could afford that novel expectation (86). 2 katie kent briefly notes the contradictory impulses in the girl scout organization of "an emphasis on patriotism, duty, religiosity, and purity" and "the establishment of a social sphere for women in which they could wield power, assume male military titles, aid in national defense, and participate in physical activities formerly denied them" (353). 3 for an account of women's organized efforts during the great war, see william j. breen, chapters seven to eight. 4 the 1920 handbook urges captains and lieutenants to read the leaders' handbooks of what it dubs allied organizations, the boy scouts, girl guides, ywca girl reserves, and girls' clubs of the national league of women workers (545), which show that despite differing terminology, "our ultimate aim and our broad general principles are precisely the same" (544). 5 see rothschild's "to scout or to guide?" for a discussion of west's opposition to the girl scout name and the to-him overly boyish nature of the girls' scouting activities. 6 for ease of reference, i cite the handbooks by their publication years rather than their authors' names. the three different authors and two different titles of the four manuals cited make the usual reference by author or author and brief title difficult for the reader to follow. the 1913 handbook, how girls can help their country, lists savannah naturalist w. j. hoxie as its author, though anecdotal evidence suggests that juliette low revised the girl guide material that formed its core (see schultz and lawrence 320). the 1916 handbook of the same title lists low as the copyright holder, but the title page names only robert and agnes baden-powell, as the authors of the text adapted for the american book. the 1920 handbook, scouting for girls, names "girl scouts" as its author and "girl scouts inc." as its publisher, as does the significantly abridged 1927 handbook of the same title. 7 the girl scouts did, in fact, adopt the shamrock, or trefoil, as their insignia. 8 rima d. apple and joanne pas set link girl scouting and high school home economics classes in an illuminating way to examine girls' socialization into domesticity. 9 michael rosenthal examines at length baden-powell's and the british government's worries about the deterioration of the british "race" in chapter 5 105 the lost manhood of the american girl tedesco of the character factory: baden-powell and the origins of the boy scout movement. 10 the recommended camping books include camping and hiking, campward ho!, the boy camp manual, the camp fire girls' vacation book, and camp kits and camp life as well as wilderness homes. the range of this list and the inclusion of other organizations' resources as well as works on the playground movement indicate that girl scout officials saw themselves as participating in a broader recreational movement whose proponents had similar aims. works cited andrews, howard r. letter to colier [colin] h. livingstone. 15 oct. 1918. "boy scouts of america—controversy; comments—local scouts; alabamawisconsin." file box. girl scout archives. national historic preservation center. girl scouts of the usa, new york. apple, rima d., and joanne passet. "learning to be a woman: lessons from girl scouting and home economics, 1920-1970." defining print culture for youth: the cultural work of children s literature. ed. anne lundin and . westport, ct: libraries unlimited, 2003. 139-54. beard, lina, and adelia beard. on the trail: an outdoor bookfor girls. new york: scribner's, 1915. blackwelder, julia kirk. now hiring: the feminization of work in the united states, 1900-1995. college station: texas a&m up, 1997. breen, william j. uncle sam at home: civilian mobilization, wartime federalism, and the council of national defense, 1917-1919. contributions in american studies 70. westport, ct: greenwood, 1984. edmy, j. b. letter to girl scout national headquarters. 27 nov. 1921. typescript copy. "boy scouts of america—controversy; comments--local scouts: alabama-wisconsin." file box. girl scout archives. national historic preservation center. girl scouts of the usa, new york. ellison, george. "kephart, horace sowers." dictionary of north carolina biography. vol. 3, h-k. ed. william s. powell. chapel hill: u of north carolina p, 1988. 352-53. girl scouts inc. scouting for girls: official handbook of the girl scouts. new york: girl scouts inc., 1920. _______. girl scouts inc. scouting for girls: official handbook of the girl scouts. abridged ed. new york: girl scouts inc., 1927. hoxie, w. j. how girls can help their country. 1913. facsim. ed. new york: girl scouts of the u.s.a., 1972. hutchinson, woods. building strong bodies. the woods hutchinson health series. boston: houghton-riverside, 1924. inness, sherrie a. "girl scouts, camp fire girls, and woodcraft girls: the ideology of girls' scouting novels, 1910-1935." continuities in popular culture: the present in the past and the past in the present and future. ed. ray b. browne and ronald j. ambrosetti. bowling green: bowling green state u popular p, 1993. 229-40. 106 tedesco the lost manhood of the am erican girl kent, katie. "girl scouts." oxford companion to women’s writing. ed. cathy n. davidson and linda wagner-martin. new york: oxford up, 1995. 352-53. parkins, j. h. letter to sybil m. gordon. 10 mar. 1922. typescript copy. "boy scouts of america--controversy; comments--local scouts: alabamawisconsin." file box. girl scout archives. national historic preservation center. girl scouts of the usa, new york. roberts, g. c. letter to girl scout headquarters. 19 nov. 1921. typescript copy. "boy scouts of america--controversy; comments--local scouts: alabamawisconsin." file box. girl scout archives. national historic preservation center. girl scouts of the usa, new york. rothschild, mary aickin. "to scout or to guide? the girl scout-boy scout controversy, 1912-1941." frontiers 6.3 (1981): 115-21. rothschild, mary, and georgeanne scheiner. "girl scouts." girlhood in america: an encyclopedia. vol. 1. ed. miriam forman-brunell. santa barbara, ca: abc-clio, 2001. 316-20. schultz, glady denny, and daisy gordon lawrence. lady from savannah: the life of juliette low. 1958. new york: girl scouts of the usa, 1988. strickland, charles e. "juliette low, the girl scouts, and the role of american women." woman’s being, woman’s place: female identity and vocation in american history. ed. mary kelley. boston: hall, 1979.252-64. whitehead, george. letter to mary c. clendenin, 22 nov. 1920. "boy scouts of america--controversy; comments--local scouts: alabama-wisconsin." file box. girl scout archives. national historic preservation center. girl scouts of the usa, new york. 107 "aunt betts' attic": monroe, michigan i was in monroe, michigan, just about an hour southwest of detroit, in october of 2004 to attend my younger son's wedding. having some time on our hands, my wife and i, accompanied by our older son and his wife, decided to visit the monroe county historical museum. we knew little else but that they had an extensive exhibit of historical materials about general george armstrong custer, who had once resided in monroe. i enjoyed the custer exhibit as i had expected to, but i was delightfully surprised to discover an exhibit entitled "aunt bett's attic." elizabeth upham mcwebb, usually called aunt betty or aunt bett to her relatives and youthful fans and known for her "little brown bear" stories, donated a life-long collection of children's games and toys to the monroe museum. there are awards there from individuals, organizations, and government officials, as well as a bust of aunt bett herself and two lifesized papier maché figures-"grandma," seated in a chair, and "maude," her favorite elementary school teacher-that she made herself. but the bulk of the collection consists of dolls, dollhouses, stuffed animals, and a variety of other toys, some of which were given to her as gifts or were used by her as storytelling props. most of these items are early mid-twentieth century and are in excellent condition. there is also a typewriter table and set of paints that aunt bett used to decorate souvenir cups that she presented to friends and admirers, and her signature hat and locket are displayed on the bust. as simon bronner has observed on various occasions, the study of children's material culture has a long way to go. if you are in the detroit area and can spend the time, you might want to visit the monroe county historical museum and take a look at "aunt bett's attic." monroe county historical museum 126 south monroe street monroe, michigan 4861-2275 telephone: 734-240-7780 c.w. sullivan iii east carolina university if you know of other, perhaps out-of-the-way museums that have collections of children's material culture, please do a short write-up like the one above and send it to the children’s folklore review. 108 notes and announcements newell prize the children's folklore section of the american folklore society annually offers the ww newell prize (which includes a cash award) for the best student essay on a topic in children's folklore. students must submit their own papers, and published papers are eligible. instructors are asked to encourage students with eligible papers to enter the competition. papers must be typed, double-spaced, and on white paper. on the first page, include the author's name, academic address, home address, and telephone numbers. deadline for each year's competition is september 1st. submit papers or write for more information: dr. c.w sullivan iii, english department, east carolina university, greenville, nc 27858-4353. june factor writes with the good news that all back issues of play and folklore (previously the australian children s folklore newsletter) are now available on the web: [http://www.museum.vic.gov.au/playfolklore]. she continues, "our thanks to museum victoria for this achievement. our first issue appeared in 1981, so there is a wealth of material about childhood and children's folklore for those interested. we would welcome feedback and contributions for later issues." forthcoming titles childs play: dorothy howard and the folklore of australian children eminent us children's folklorist dr dorothy howard came to australia as an american fulbright scholar in 1954 to study australian children's folklore. her work provides a rare insight into australian children's folklore in this period and is now the subject of a book published by museum victoria entitled childs play: dorothy howard and the folklore of australian children. the book provides a record of howard's 10 months in australia when she collected and documented children's games and verbal lore in cities and country towns across australia. her meticulous work laid the foundation for research into children's folklore in this country. ten of howard's original essays are reprinted in this title, along with three contemporary essays from other eminent academics. notes and announcements child's play: dorothy howard and the folklore of australian children essays by dorothy howard, june factor, kate darian-smith and brian sutton-smith p/b, b/w photographs and line art 216 x l40mm, 240pp rrp $24.95 published by museum victoria, may 2005 for inquiries and orders, go to www.museum.vic.gov.au/about/ publications.asp 110 contributors john buckley holds a b. soc. sc. degree from university college cork, ireland, (1975) and an m.l.a. degree (1994) from the university of pennsylvania where he studied irish children's folklore with the late dr. kenny goldstein as his advisor. he holds a ph.d. in education (2002) from the graduate school of education at the university of pennsylvania. he teaches a graduate course on "play, learning and education" in the education department at lasalle university in philadelphia. jay mechling is professor of american studies at university of california, davis. a fellow of the american folklore society and a former chair of the children's folklore section, mechling publishes widely on children's cultures, including his 2001 book, on my honor: boy scouts and the making of american youth. laureen tedesco is an assistant professor of english at east carolina university where she teaches children's literature. she is an active member of the children's literature association. she has an article on the problematic pedagogy governing jane andrews's seven little sisters who live on the round ball that floats in the air (1861) forthcoming in children’s literature in education, and she is currently writing a book on the gender signals of the early girl scout manuals (1913 to 1933) and their intersection with girls' fiction of the period. 111 cfr_2009_r4.indb 79 kid culture: neighborhood exploration through enrichment clusters kathryn a. mccormick public school calendars of cultural and historical events are a resource for those who want to view cultural exchange at work. urban environments give students the opportunity to understand folklore through connecting to their neighborhood and describing their experiences. a 2007 enrichment project at p.s. 261 in brooklyn, new york introduced local lore and solicited students’ responses to literature, visual presentations, and neighborhood walks in a study of their own neighborhood. students were encouraged to record with all of their senses, cognitive mapping, interviewing, photographing, diagramming, and planning food tasting to relate their experiences in their neighborhoods. how to get famous in brooklyn was used as an inspirational piece of literature to tap students’ knowledge and awareness of places in their neighborhoods. third grade students in the enrichment cluster project had done neighborhood study in grade 1 and the bridge study in grade 2 and so were quite aware of the working environment of their world. daily travel to school by walking and taking subways, buses and cars provides various levels of awareness and involvement, as does experiencing playgrounds, games, parks, favorite stores and restaurants, gathering places, places they go with parents, street memorials, funeral traditions, and even lost or changing places. the book the heroic adventures of the john j. harvey was used to stimulate conversation about transportation, and harbor life in new york city. students created a model of new york harbor, the working home of the historic fireboat that was activated as an evacuation boat on 9/11. the book emphasizes the working fireboat’s value as a survivor of an earlier time on new york harbor. students appreciate the will of restorers to keep the boat as well as the heroic use of it for a present day event. social outcomes visual presentations of street memorials stimulated conversations about death, remembering loved ones, accidents, and funerary practices in families and communities in the city. students adopted the appropriate moods for these presentations. in fact, the social outcomes of local lore were many, reflecting the importance of recognizing the value children give to their own experiences. students demonstrated pride in discovering their culture and sharing other students’ cultures. students shared their interests and concerns about their community, their play spaces, and their safety and illustrated neighborhood planning strategies to implement model neighborhoods. their sense of belonging was enhanced because they researched and presented material on their own culture, traditions, customs and choices within their living environment. play was affirmed and cfr_2009_r4.indb 79 10/25/09 6:19:27 pm kid culture mccormick 80 categorized as “just fun,” and serious play as an interesting means to understand and communicate “kid” culture. lastly, students became skilled fieldworkers and evaluators of their own lore. what teachers learned students were less interested in the monuments and museums of brooklyn than the everyday life within their neighborhood. their stories were travel narratives of “spatial practice,” as in asim and eli’s model of their favorite park before the renovation planned by the parks department. they related exactly which activity took place in each space of the park, taking ownership of the space. other students showed their skills as keen observers and recorders of physical space, showing how changes to that space impact their daily experiences. emeka and friends demonstrated the use of space where they played games before and during the renovation of their school playground. although they spoke nostalgically about the loss of particular corners of the schoolyard, they pointed out new small spaces which they had adopted for their games during the playground renovation. students recognize ‘folk’ culture and the dynamic clustering of culture as a concept of generative life in the city. they are receptors and communicators of culture, enthusiastic about learning and sharing their own customs. ali and raymond’s model of ‘life on the block’ related what michel de certeau refers to as “spatial narratives…narrated adventures, producing geographies of actions” signaling where they observe their own culture being transmitted, where they shop, eat and spend time with relatives in the middle eastern stores and restaurants on atlantic avenue (1984, 115-16). students are receptors and transmitters of lore involved in making themselves “famous in brooklyn,” as the book how to get famous in brooklyn suggests. participation in activities and festivals in their neighborhoods as well as daily travel and use of the neighborhood roots students actively in their environment. they proudly display a sense of ownership, enthusiasm and confidence in knowing their own displays of culture. in addition, students utilize their own cultural codes and ‘kidspeak’ for their neighborhood and playground. these codes are not necessarily understood or used by adults, and that may be the point; students like to own their place in their local environment. works cited de certeau, michel. 1984. the practice of everyday life. los angeles: university of california press. hest, amy. 1995. how to get famous in brooklyn. new york: simon and schuster. kalman, maira. 2002. the heroic adventures of the john j. harvey. new york: putnam juvenile. cfr_2009_r4.indb 80 10/25/09 6:19:27 pm 61 an eclectic schoolteacher: dorothy howard as applied folklorist jan rosenberg i met dorothy gray mills howard (1902-1996) in 1983 at the annual meeting of the association for the anthropological study of play in baton rouge, louisiana. she was dressed in a bright blue suit, her head framed by brilliant white hair. she was 80 years old. she was in attendance to receive an achievement award from taasp. i recognized her by her name tag. i introduced myself, and we talked about the meeting, by which she was impressed. but she didn’t understand why she was getting this award; perhaps she felt a kind of texas humility. my next contact with her was in 1989. i had been studying her writings and called her to talk about them. it was then that i learned she had had a hard time with institutions, naming some whose journals she felt had ripped her off. she gave me her blessing to study her published work. i didn’t do so until 2000, when i received a traditional arts growth (tag) grant from the national endowment for the arts. then i went to the university of north texas, which was once the north texas state college for teachers. by this time howard had passed away, and all of her work was available for study. on my way to denton, i drove over to lone oak, the place where howard grew up. this small community had a convenience store and a church. other than those gathering places, the community seemed empty, like a place people called home after a day at work, wherever that might be (dallas? garland? fort worth? denton?). the following is an examination of dorothy howard’s work in light of the intersection of children’s folklore and folklore and education. i will illustrate howard’s approaches to education and folklore with an eye on her progressive stance and child-centeredness. i will suggest that howard be viewed as an educator and as a folklorist, a scholar of expressive culture and a guide through language arts in exploring the whole child. in other words, dorothy howard was a pioneer applied folklorist. the work of dorothy howard has been thoughtfully chronicled by sylvia ann grider (1994). in her children’s folklore review article, grider outlines howard’s early journey as a teacher, beginning at age seventeen, when she was asked to take over the class of a teacher who had died during the great flu epidemic, and ending with her position as professor at frostburg state teachers college (19441967), now known as frostburg state university. she made a year-long stop in australia, where she had a fulbright fellowship to document children’s folklore in another english speaking country. pedagog in embryo dorothy gray mills was born on 8 july 1902 and was reared in the sabine bottoms of east texas. she went to school in the bottoms region until she transferred cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 61 11/6/08 11:46:14 am an eclectic schoolteacher rosenberg 62 to a high school in denton, texas, approximately forty miles north of dallas/ fort worth. when asked to take over the class of a deceased teacher, howard immediately latched on to the child-centeredness approach and asked the students to write her a letter about themselves to which she would respond individually. in this lesson she conveyed the form of letter writing, using the students’ own interests. mills graduated from north texas state teachers college in 1923 with a b.s. in education and a permanent certificate to teach in texas schools. in 1925 she married james howard. she had two children and went east to teach school in new york and new jersey, where she taught the middle grades, then moved to western maryland to teach at frostburg state teachers’ college. as a progressive educator, she believed that the child develops naturally according to the way he or she perceives the whole environment. very much in line with john dewey (dewey 1916), howard was able to toe the curricular line with an individual’s eye, using the experiences of her students.1 for example, in howard’s essay “on our own in the classroom” (1941), danny is having trouble with her writing assignment. howard reminds him of an earlier essay in which he wrote about his mother making spaghetti. danny lights up and starts to tell how his mother made ravioli. howard acts as his scribe until he feels more comfortable writing. in “the bell always rang” (1940), the students play a game with the parts of speech until one student asks another how she spells her name. from there the students move into researching their surnames for historical information. the grammar lesson turns into a spelling lesson and a personal history excursion as students share information on their names. howard was progressive, though she didn’t like to assign any label to herself, as she told me in 1989. she saw the child as she or he was, and this is a hallmark of the thinking of progressive education. indeed, this educational approach involves a balance between the child and the environment, the lessons given, and the lessons experienced. in fact, howard and progressive educators were very much on the same level. according to historian of education lawrence cremin, progressive education embraced seven principles in a progressive learning situation: 1. freedom to develop naturally 2. interest, the motive of all work 3. teacher as a guide, not as a task master 4. scientific study or pupil development 5. greater attention to all that affects the child 6. cooperation between school and home to meet the needs of childlife 7. the progressive school a leader in educational movements (1961, 243-245)2 howard followed each principle in a natural flow. she didn’t follow a checklist of principles. for her, education and self were seamless. as a result, lessons could flow from one subject to another. cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 62 11/6/08 11:46:14 am rosenberg an eclectic schoolteacher 63 howard made folklore part of the flow of education. in both “the bell always rang” and “on our own,” it is clear that she applied lore to lessons. at frostburg students documented their childlife by authoring autoethnographies (ruffo 1951). this was a continuation of an approach to childlore that started in 1930. as she explains in her own autoethnography, dorothy’s world: one problem that soon became [howard’s] great concern was the fact that most of the children, especially the boys, reached the junior high school grades ‘hating’ poetry. looking for the causes, she learned that their elementary classroom experiences with poetry had included: (1) homework memory assignments of (2) poems chosen by the teacher (a woman) for (3) didactic purposes and (4) memorized as a chore to escape punishment. then one spring day at noon she stood at an open classroom pondering that problem, casually watching the children play on an unsupervised playground. skip ropes were turning, marbles rolling, balls bouncing. gradually she became aware of metaphoric rhythmic language accompanying the body movements of children. by the time the bell rang calling the children in, she had counted on her fingers more than a dozen rhymes and formulae; and when the children came to class, rhymes, rhythms, and metaphors of the playground were discussed. the next day, self assigned homework was brought in and by week’s end the class had a collection of more than two hundred playground rhymes (1977, 287-288). although howard had difficulty understanding why students didn’t like poetry, she located an infinite resource in her students’ expressive culture. in order to learn the lessons of the day, students supplied grist for the mill. from then on she relied on student culture to develop and execute her lessons. howard, the folklorist howard learned of folklore around 1933, when she met with walter barnes, an english professor at new york university. she was introduced to barnes through howard’s sister, and she spent much time with him learning about this field that was new to her. he introduced her to the work of gomme, newell, and other collectors of children’s lore. barnes suggested that howard corral her collection into a doctoral dissertation, which she did, titling it “folk jingles of american children: a collection and study of rhymes used by children today” (1938). and she continued to teach middle school.3 “folk jingles of american children” howard’s dissertation “explores children’s rhyming traditions as unconscious literature that are an integral part of childlife; that parents recognize the cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 63 11/6/08 11:46:14 am an eclectic schoolteacher rosenberg 64 educational value of children’s folk literature and that writers for children use as a model” (“sixty dirty republikins” 1939). “folk jingles” was a national study in which howard enlisted the aid of her colleagues in folklore and education, as well as children themselves across the united states. it was bold in its present-tense orientation, which enabled howard to bridge the gap between armchair scholar and ethnographer (see grider 1994). in her studies of folk cultures howard was aware of the transmission of expression. like her teachers before her, boas, benedict, and mead,4 howard saw children as constituting a folk group with their own system of expressions, mores, and beliefs. their culture stood three foot tall, and through howard’s studies she confirmed that children had a place on the cultural landscape. she hoped that her schoolchildren would learn the fundamentals of language and that her students would grow to be the peacemakers of the world through their words. she had high expectations of her boys, her girls, and herself. their training was very demanding, involving all of their senses in experiencing the world. “folk jingles” is a breakthrough anthology. howard combined fieldwork with older texts. the older text was her armchair. the fieldwork was that of the ethnographer who explored context as well as performance. it is unfortunate that “folk jingles” is incomplete. howard did not assign dates to the collection she made; therefore we don’t have ethnographic chronology. what we do have is an incredibly variegated collection of taunts, jump rope rhymes, charms, autograph album rhymes, songs, chants, and plenty more. it is an exciting compilation because it explores childlife in the present tense on american soil. most of the collections of childhood rhymes at that time came from overseas, with the exception of newell and barnes. folklore and education: australia these intersections of lore, cultural dynamics, and the english language prepared howard for her next step, documenting children’s folklore in australia. originally she planned to document one group in one environment. but the fulbright group asked that she document the whole of down under, and she spent a year doing fieldwork (factor and darien-smith 2005), sharing her research in a variety of articles in the journal of american folklore, folklore, southern folklore, and western folklore. even while howard practiced this new craft of folklore, she still maintained her stance as a progressive educator. she wrote: “folklore has a justifiable place in the schools, not as a separate subject, or for the purpose of making folklorists out of children, or as an academic book exercise but as an integral part of a co-ordinated [sic] program for child growth and development where children become aware of the folklore process, what it is, and how it operates in their own lives and in their community, demonstrating . . . four ways to use folklore in the schools: as an introduction to poetry; as material for written composition work leading to classroom folklore archives; as a beginning step in creative writing, and fourth, as vital material for social studies” (1950, 106) cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 64 11/6/08 11:46:15 am rosenberg an eclectic schoolteacher 65 one thing shared between folklore and education here is the concept of experience that envelops the classroom and the field. in the educational sense, experience as defined by john dewey (1916) is the interaction of the student and the environment (biesta and burbules 2003). in folklore, experience is marked by the creation of context and performance. in this light the creation of context is the creation of environment. the individual is the folk, and both folklore and education have attempted to create an environment in which the student, the folk, can thrive. this is most visible in howard’s teaching style. for one thing, she needed to have her students trust her. without trust there would be no way students could share their lore and be taken seriously. the same thing holds true with respect. howard respected her students, and they in turn respected her. that enabled the creation of lessons that were homemade and in line with education’s demands. of course teachers need training, and howard’s courses at frostburg were designed to do just that. students’ autoethnographies and visits to museums offered lessons in transmission and preservation, as howard told me in july of 1989. the transmission of lore was made understandable via folklife examples. howard did not intend to make teachers folklorists. rather she wanted to have them understand transmission as something not limited to learning a lesson. it was a way of understanding, knowing life. it was a way of becoming a better person and citizen. between 1955 and 1969 howard published her australia articles. she wrote an introduction to the dover edition of gomme’s traditional games of england, scotland, and ireland (1964). she became more involved in the discipline of folklore, ever continuing to absorb and apply what she had learned in the 1930s. dorothy’s world: an autoethnography during the 1960s and 1970s howard practiced what she preached when it came to autoethnographies.5 dorothy’s world is an exploration of howard’s youngest years in texas, 1902-1910 (1977). in the autoethnography she describes her family life, school, games, friends, and home as a whole. howard wanted to do the autoethnography as a way of expressing herself, albeit in a style somewhat romanticized with age. her book is a lengthy and detailed work that is considered a model for folklorists. i do not know if educators use this book as source material, but folklorists consider it seminal. the book gives a very well rounded view of what childlife looked like in earlier times for an earlier age. it deals with oral tradition and with material culture. the lessons garnered from the book are powerful and eye-opening. dorothy’s world has been a success, with a wide readership now found on amazon and barnes and noble, as well as powell’s in portland, oregon. it is no longer published by prentice-hall. cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 65 11/6/08 11:46:15 am an eclectic schoolteacher rosenberg 66 howard as applied folklorist howard was a pioneering applied folklorist; she utilized childlore for furthering other purposes, primarily education. benjamin botkin, writing on applied folklore in 1953, was of the opinion that the “ultimate aim of applied folklore is the restoration to american life of the sense of community — a sense of thinking, feeling, and acting along similar though not the same lines” (botkin 1953, 204) he had a sense of folklore as something that could be used in the creation of class and social programs: “thus applied folklore goes beyond cultural history to cultural strategy, to the end of creating a favorable environment for the liberation of our creative energies and the flourishing of the folk arts among other social cooperative activities” (1953, 204). although he didn’t look at the classroom per se, he instead explored a curriculum. howard, on the other hand, infused lessons with lore and lore with lessons. nothing was set aside, unless, as in “the bell always rang,” lessons were shifted to accommodate new learning. howard was an applied folklorist in that she saw the ways folk culture could promote social harmony and excite learning. as far as can be told, howard didn’t call herself an applied folklorist or even a folklorist. she was a teacher, an eclectic schoolteacher, a “mugwump pedagog” (dorothy’s world). and she stayed true to her pedagogical roots throughout her days.5 dorothy howard’s work also lays bare a distinction between applied and public folklore. in acting out the latter, the public folklorist develops programs that celebrate and explore a particular theme, people, and folk cultures of communities and individuals while creating programs such as festivals, school assemblies, concerts, demonstrations, and exhibits to highlight those groups and themes. applied folklore helps people in need. traditions are used to help others in one way or another. it is a kind of public folklore in that it focuses on the common good through traditions. but it is the application of traditional practices to enhance such activities as lessons that makes it what it is. howard as an applied folklorist utilized what was present in her students’ lives to create lessons. the students (except for the frostburg students) were not ethnographers. they got the chance to work with materials with which they were familiar. on the one hand, students working with familiar expressions had a certain amount of control over their lessons. on the other hand, it was an astute instructor who looked to her students for answers about language, writing, and overall expression. end piece/end peace 6 dorothy howard had keen insights into the unspoken literature of childhood. she knew the english language well enough to be able to identify traditional structure in children’s unwritten verse. howard was a maverick; there is no doubt about that. she was able to utilize student lore in a variety of learning situations (except math and science), and she gained the trust of her students so that they could be sure of themselves. as cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 66 11/6/08 11:46:15 am rosenberg an eclectic schoolteacher 67 a progressive educator, she was able to connect the class with the lore to create a meaningful experience. as a folklorist she understood how the transmission equation fit into the lives of children. as an applied folklorist, howard understood how traditional culture could be used to support lessons of most all kinds. she believed that children’s folklore had a wide variety of uses in the classroom, and she practiced what she preached. notes i would like to thank sylvia grider, libby tucker, loretta brockmeier, diana kellybyrne and diane sidener for their suggestions. all thanks, no blame. 1. howard was teaching in a very challenging time for education. while small, unconsolidated schools were run essentially by the teacher and the school board, the larger schools, including urban schools, were working within a combination of outlined curriculum and progressive ideas. howard taught in both unconsolidated and consolidated schools and was completely aware of the progressive movement. 2. the progressives’ journal, progressive education, included this on the frontispiece of each number. 3. the doctorate in education was new at new york university. when howard first tried for the ph.d., she was told that her subject matter was not worthy of exploration. barnes, as her champion, found a fit for howard with the university’s new ed.d. program. 4. howard doesn’t specifically name what these scholars taught her, but she conveys a sense of awe at what they taught. 6. dr. howard called herself an “eclectic school teacher” in her authoethnographic writings, most of which are not dated. 7. along i 30 between texarkana and dallas, there are a lot of communities that have their basis in northeast texas agriculture: cotton, soy, vegetables. at the outset the community of lone oak looks fairly deserted, but it is just very small. works cited biesta, gert and nicholas burbules. 2003. pragmatism and educational research. lanham, maryland: rowman and littlefield publishers. botkin, benjamin. 1953. applied folklore: creating understanding through folklore. southern folklore quarterly 17:199-206. cremin, lawrence. 1961. the transformation of the school: progressivism in american education. new york: vintage. dewey, john. 1916. democracy and education. new york: macmillan. dubois, rachel davis. 1984. all this and something more: pioneering in intercultural education. bryn mawr: dorrence. factor, june and kate darien-smith, eds. 2005. child’s play: dorothy howard and the folklore of australian children. melbourne: museum of victoria. cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 67 11/6/08 11:46:15 am an eclectic schoolteacher rosenberg 68 graham, patricia a. 1967. progressive education from arcady to academe: a history of the progressive education association, 1919-1955. new york: teachers college press. grider, sylvia ann. 1994. dorothy howard: pioneer collector of children’s folklore. children’s folklore review 17(1): 3-17. howard, dorothy. 1938. folk jingles of american children: a collection and study of rhymes used by children today. ed.d. diss., new york univ. ______. 1940. the bell always rang. elementary english review 17(7): 262-64. ______. 1941. “our own” in the classroom. story parade (october): 5-6. ______. 1950. folklore in the schools. new york folklore quarterly 6: 99-107. ______. 1958. australian “hoppy” (hopscotch). western folklore 17(3): 163-75. ______. 1958. the game of “knucklebones” in australia. western folklore. 17(1): 34-44. ______. 1959. ball bouncing customs and rhymes in australia. midwest folklore 9(2): 77-87. ______. 1959. autograph album customs in australia. southern folklore quarterly 23(2): 95-107. ______. 1960. counting-out customs of australian children. new york folklore quarterly 16(2): 131-44. ______. 1960. marble games of australian children. folklore 71: 165-79. ______. 1961. string games of australian children. folklore 72: 385-87. ______. 1964. introduction. in the traditional games of england, scotland, and ireland, vol. 1, by alice bertha gomme. new york: dover. ______. 1965. folklore of australian children. keystone folklore quarterly 10(3): 99-115. ______. 1977. dorothy’s world: childhood in sabine bottom. englewood cliffs, nj: prentice hall. ______. 1990. untitled. manuscript. university of north texas archives. ______. n.d. (a) odyssey of a country school teacher. manuscript. university of north texas archives. ______. n.d. (b). pedagog in embryo. manuscript. university of north texas archives. katz, michael b. 1987. reconstructing american education. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. kilpatrick, william. 1918. the project method. teachers college record 19: 319-35. rosenberg, jan. 1990. a history lesson in folklore and education: dorothy howard. paper delivered at the annual meeting of the american folklore society, oakland, ca. ruffo, ronald. 1951. my play life. childhood autoethnography paper for howard’s class. sixty dirty republikins. time. 21 aug. 1939. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/ article/0,9171,762504,00.html (accessed 25 apr. 2008). cfr_2006-07_r3.indb 68 11/6/08 11:46:15 am cfr_2007-2008_part14 cfr_2007-2008_part15 pages from cfr_2007-2008_part16 ocr document child as story-makerl kay stone when i was five, my parents tell me, i regaled them with rambling, disjointed stories of my adventures with snaky the rattlesnake, my "invisible" friend. my mother described how amazed she was that a small child could spin out such involved narratives. i assumed that my older brother had found other ways to express his creativity—but now i wonder. shortly after my first child began spontaneously creating his own original stories at roughly the same age—five—i heard a presentation on children's stories by brian sutton-smith.2 i began to understand that i was not, after all, a child prodigy, but merely passing through an exciting developmental stage of childhood that we all experience, in one way or another. i suppose my brother must have kept his stories to himself. in the early 1980s two particular storytelling incidents with my second child, rachel, excited my curiosity as a folklorist with a primary interest in adults as story-makers. in order to document rachel's stories, i had to shift roles from mother to scholar: while listening to and recording the stories and later preparing academic papers on them, i was aware that ethical concerns entered the situation. the delicate balance between my position as subjective parent and objective scholar colors the background of this writing. there are already studies of children at various ages telling stories: these present a broad spectrum of ages and genres, the emphasis being on the development of verbal skills (see suttonsmith; pitcher and prelinger; chukovsky). each of these studies has been carefully conceived and carried out, and each includes abundant examples gathered from dozens of children over a stretch of time. sutton-smith examines the developmental stages of children as verbal artists, while pitcher/prelinger and chukovsky emphasize psychological interpretations. chukovsky in particular insists that children have a deep need for fantasy and create their own even in the absence of external literary models. he also notes what he calls "the linguistic genius" of the child, who does not merely copy any adult models that are available but instead "introduces critical evaluation, analysis, and control," even as early as two years of age (chukovsky 9). obviously such conscientious approaches are needed for any meaningful generalizations to be made on children as storytellers. the stories i offer here, in contrast, were told by one child over a very limited time period in an uncontrolled environment. this serendipi 3 stone tous collecting was not part of a planned study, nor central to my overall work on folk narratives. my modest intent was to describe how one young teller composed two narratives using diverse elements and how she herself responded to these events. however, the question of ethics, as relevant to incidental collecting as it is to other contexts, sheds new light on this topic. i have been acutely aware of my accountability as a folklorist, as well as a parent, in using stories that are by right the property of the teller. when i was asked to contribute a paper to a recent folklore panel on ethics, "the folklorist's responsibility to the child," i thought immediately of my earlier descriptions of rachel's storytelling. the result is a re-view of the context and process of a child's story-making and the complexities of interaction between folklorist and informant. in working with children we need to be respectfully aware of ethical concerns that arise from our "objective" scholarship. what is this folklorist's responsibility to this child, and how was it negotiated in the two-year period covered by rachel's storytelling activities? from the beginning i asked her permission to record the stories and to use them as part of my research. i cannot take full credit for this, since rachel herself was acutely aware that these stories "belonged" to her and reminded me of this fact every time the matter arose. but at age five she had only the vaguest notion of what it meant to use her material for academic research. i was surprised-and encouraged-by rachel's closing comment on the taped variant of her first story. she concludes with "that's the end," and then adds cheerily, "and hello to all your students." she understood even before i did that i was not merely recording her story as a proud parent; i had no plans to examine her story at that time, but i did indeed use it as an example for students in my folklore classes. the two stories i introduce here, the legend of "loon man and bone woman" (told at age five) and the anecdote of "the men with hats" (age seven) struck me as unusual. (the titles were chosen by rachel.) i had just begun examining contemporary storytelling by adults and was sensitive to the dynamics of verbal creativity. i had also told folktales in a number of winnipeg schools and was intrigued by occasional children willing to respond with stories of their own-but children did not become the focus of my narrative studies. thus my initial interest in rachel's storytelling was a general curiosity with no serious intent to transform her into an informant. i had heard many of her spontaneous creations over the years, but these two had qualities that awakened the folklorist in me. they were fuller in their development and told with greater assurance, perhaps because they were each based on stories that rachel had experienced orally. because i had also heard them i could see more clearly how rachel functioned as an expressive artist, using or discarding elements of the originals to produce her own narratives. 4 child as story-maker she firmly claimed them as her own creations, establishing self-consciousness as an artist and also recognition of her responsibility as an entertainer. she was aware that she was not merely discoursing for a sympathetic ear, but consciously seeking to create coherent stories for which i happened to be a listener. this is much clearer in her second story, "the men with hats," told in the presence of an older brother and later to an adult friend. let us look at each story within the context of its telling and then consider the ethical questions raised by publishing this article. rachel, now seventeen and quite fiercely aware of her rights, has again given her full permission to use her material, though she asked why i was still working on "those old stories." "loon man and bone woman"3 in 1981, i was making lunch for the two of us when rachel began a story about a man who became a loon. at this age she was in the plot stage of storytelling discussed at length by brian sutton-smith (1981). at first "loon man" seemed to resemble her other rambling tales with no fixed characters and a loosely connected series of events, but i soon caught the thread of a coherent narrative that took shape as i listened: loon man became a welldefined protagonist who set off in search of his missing bird wife and children, stolen by bone woman. aided by four intimidating giants and a leviathan pike, he arrived at bone woman's "eggloo" just in time to rescue his family from being cooked for supper. her spontaneous narrative seemed to resemble what sutton-smith calls "folkstories," original narratives that "are not the same as folktales, but share common elements with them" (sutton-smith 1). i was intrigued by the literary sophistication of her story (which she very firmly claimed as her own) and asked if she could tell it again, not expecting her to be able to repeat it fully since all previous stories had been once-only events; she not only agreed, but permitted me to tape the retelling. i was surprised that she was able reproduce it accurately, and even improved on it as she went along. the story had a stronger beginning, a better motivated middle, and a more fully resolved conclusion; the characters and action remained stable, not shifting as i had expected. it had all the features of a completed narrative that had been consciously thought out, prepared, and rehearsed. given the finished nature of the story and her ability to reproduce it, i thought she might have heard it in her kindergarten class, but when i asked where she had learned it, she answered with a slightly indignant tone, "i made it up." her unambivalent claim to original ownership intrigued me so i asked how she got the ideas for the story. without speaking she pointed to the wall 5 stone behind me, where i found a colored print by canadian native artist jackson beardy. there, sure enough, was loon man—or more accurately, a loon who seemed to be battling a large fish; four domed shapes sat above them on the top left of the print, but there was no sign of giants or of bone woman and her "eggloo." she explained that the four domes were where the giants lived (in fact they are symbolic thunder-clouds in beardy's print) and that bone woman and her house had been destroyed by loon man, so they were not in the picture. but if the giants and bone woman were absent from the print, did they spring from her imagination or from an outside source? when i asked, she reminded me that we had seen a puppet play based on the inuit legend of "kivioq" in which a hunter marries a bird woman who flies away one day. he follows after her and meets a threatening giant, a huge pike, and a cannibalistic bee woman, whom he defeats.4 rachel told me that she had not enjoyed the play because it was "too scary" and added, "my story was better." why? because it had no puppets, and "it had a better ending." rachel reunites loon man and his family, while in the puppet play kivioq's goose wife and children refuse to return with him. rachel's variant was also less violent and threatening without losing dramatic impact. in sorting out how she composed and repeated her story on the spot by imaginatively bringing together an inuit legend, a cree print, and her own reworking of plot, character, and motivation, i was able to see in miniature the interaction of text, texture, and context. with her permission i presented a paper at the 1984 american folklore society meeting ("at home in the field"), came home, and filed it away. "the men with hats" two years later i again happened to be present when rachel tried a very different kind of story, a narrative joke. a joke is a very challenging genre, as its success depends on the precision of the wording and the successful delivery of the punch line. up to this time rachel had only told simple oneline jokes with no plot line to remember. in the spring of 1984 a few adult friends gathered at our home for an informal afternoon of conversation and joke-telling. rachel, age seven, moved in and out of the room as she went about her own affairs. i was not aware that she was even present when the following joke was told by a woman already known in our circle as an irreverent jokester:5 two sikhs wearing turbans are challenged at heaven's gates by st. peter, who asks each, separately, a question. the first is asked what would happen if he lost one eye and then the other, 6 child as story-maker to which he responds that he would be half blind and then totally blind. st. peter allows him to enter heaven, then questions the second man about what would happen if he lost one ear and then the other. he responds (having heard the first answers but not the questions) that he would be half blind and then totally blind— because his turban would slip down over one eye and then the other. st peter, impressed, lets him in as well. i was putting rachel to bed that night, a time when we often shared casual stories, when she offered to tell the joke "about the men with hats." she surprised me by repeating the joke with absolute accuracy, making only one change from exotic turbans to prosaic hats. i complimented her on her good memory and said good night. the next morning she offered to tell "that joke" again before going off to school, this time in the presence of her older brother who was not normally appreciative of her attempts at joke-telling. as i prepared breakfast, she introduced an entirely original joke based on the pattern of the one she heard the previous day:6 there were two kids getting ready for school and their mother said, "i want to ask you two questions first. you first" so the first boy went in [to the kitchen] and the mother said, "what would happen if i gave you only half your breakfast?" "i'd be half hungry." "so, what if i didn't give you any breakfast?" "i'd be totally hungry." "o.k., you can go." "just a minute. i want to say bye to my brother." "so she let him." so he went in and he whispered, "the first answer is half hungry and the second one is totally hungry. bye!" so then the mother asked the second one, "what would happen if i turned the radio down?" "i'd be half hungry." "well what would happen if i turned it all the way off?" "i'd be totally hungry." "are you crazy? why would you be hungry?" "well, if you were so busy turning the radio on and off you wouldn't have time to make me breakfast" so she let him go too. my son and i both laughed, and rachel seemed embarrassed by the total success of her performance, responding by saying, "that was just a silly joke." when they left for school, i sat down and wrote out her text, and thought again of "loon man and bone woman," also told while i was preparing a meal-that is, a casual rather than a formal setting, with my attention directed elsewhere rather than focused on her. as folklorist rather than mother, i noted that she was able to change the text without losing the original joke pattern, but at this point i had nothing more to say about the process. 7 stone it took a third and unsuccessful retelling of this joke to fully reveal her understanding of her own creativity and to bring my folkloric curiosity to full life. some weeks after the breakfast performance she was sitting with me and another friend, a man whom she felt entirely comfortable with and whom she knew to be a joke teller himself. he had just told a joke, and she uncharacteristically offered another; "here's one i made up," she said proudly, apparently buoyed up by her previous successes. she used the kitchen setting again and remembered that the success of the joke depended on the questions and answers: this mother is making breakfast for her two kids, i think, and she had to ask them some questions before they went to school. so she said to one, "what would you do if i made you stay home from school today?" "i'd be dumb." "well what if i made you stay home for a whole week?" "i'd be dumber." [the teller realizes that she will have difficulty developing this question and reveals her discomfort nonverbally by pausing, grimacing, shifting her weight, as she tries to figure out what to say next.] well, so she says, "you can go to school now." "i have to tell my brother something first," and he runs into the living room and says "the answers are dumb and dumber." and he goes away. so then she asks the other kid, "what would happen if i took away your books?" "i'd be dumb." "what would happen if i took away your pen and paper?" "i'd be dumber." she does not bother to end the joke with the "you can go now" closing, but simply stops, pauses, and comments, "well, that wasn't very good, was it!" this was a rhetorical rather than an actual question, and we all laughed—not at the joke but at her acknowledgment of its failure. i realized that her failure—and her recognition of it—was a clearer demonstration of creativity than her successes had been. i could see how she was using structure to build her new narrative, and i also understood how she had matured as a performer by accepting her responsibility to complete the story even when she understood that it was not going to work-and by gracefully acknowledging her failure. later that year i asked her permission to use these three storytelling events for a paper to be given at the canadian folklore meeting, and she agreed-after asking me who would be there and ascertaining that no one she knew would hear her joke.7 my initial interest was in rachel's gradual recognition of herself as a conscious performer with a responsibility to herself as artist and to her listeners as entertainer. now, several years later, i have tried to reframe these experiences with the idea of addressing the ethical problems raised in this 8 child as story-maker panel—my responsibility to her. i began by showing rachel, now 17, the abstract for the 1993 afs panel and asking her to read what i'd written up to that point, explaining that she had complete control over what was to be included (i had already received permission to reuse the stories). i also asked her to add her own responses. it was my intention to encourage her to be an active collaborator rather than a passive informant. she promised to read what i had written, but never went beyond the abstract. "that's old stuff," she said when i urged her to give me a response. it has been helpful for me to reframe my work with rachel in this altered perspective: if i had not been aware of the significance of our subtle role shifts from child and mother to informant and folklorist, it would have been impossible to reframe the present article. it has also been a challenge to maintain perspective because of the split focus of this article. on one hand it is an example of oral creativity, and on the other it is a commentary on ethical relations between researcher and child. there is obviously an advantage to being parent, teacher, or anyone else who is in steady contact with children on a long term basis. the child is familiar as both a human being and a creative, expressive individual. this is a subjective position given the privileged connections between the adult and the child. on the other hand, an academic researcher who may see a child only a few times has the advantage of objectivity, since personal connections are secondary to research interests. scholarly training prepares the viewer to examine the young artists and what they create without the potential drawbacks of subjective personal relationships. i have enjoyed the challenge of attempting to be both parent and researcher, trying to find a balance between subjectivity and objectivity. what has guided me is the central issue of ethics, which can be even more critical when one is dealing with children who are close and familiar. it is hardly a unique situation, given the ground-breaking work of father/scholar piaget, but the central issue remains the same: the child and the creations of the child must be as fully respected and protected from exploitation as those of any adult. as i noted earlier, i cannot take full credit for treating rachel and her stories with consistent respect; she seemed to understand from the very beginning that her voice was her own possession and managed to let me know that she was aware of her rights. if she had at any point withdrawn her permission, there would be no article. i leave rachel's stories with a sense of incompletion similar to that expressed by pitcher and prelinger, who conclude: we feel vividly how our analyses and interpretations have fallen short of doing justice to or even comprehending the complexity, 9 stone the richness, and the literary quality, poetry, and beauty which many of the stories contain (240). *** as i wrote these final words and asked again if rachel would read this paper and comment, she said, with more than a touch of 17-year-old sarcasm, "i don't need to read this again—i made the stories." she added that she expected a percentage of any royalties i received. while in this case it was a deliberately ironic request (she has learned that academic royalties are not impressive), it might have been less ironic if i were indeed earning money from a book of children's folklore. "and," rachel might add, "hello to all your students." university of winnipeg winnipeg, manitoba, canada notes 1. this is a slightly revised version of the paper i presented at the 1993 afs meeting in eugene, oregon. i am indebted to c.w. sullivan iii for requesting it; and also to mary louise chown, nathaniel stone, and carol mcgirr for their responsive readings. 2. by coincidence sutton-smith's presentation was at the 1976 afs meeting in philadelphia, which i attended with three-month-old rachel, the subject of the present article. sutton-smith's paper, "structural parallels between children's creative activity and children's folklore," seems to be a bridge between his initial work on children's games and play and his later work on storytelling by children. 3. the title was suggested by rachel after the fact, in recognition that the taped telling had become a formal rather than a casual storytelling event and seemed, to her, to require a proper title. 4. "kivioq" was performed by the manitoba puppet theatre in 1981, with realistic and accurately costumed puppets. it was not in any way a "precious" or diminished telling of a complex and challenging inuit legend. rachel was not the only young child in the audience who found it disturbing. 5. since this was an informal storytelling event the joke was not recorded. it is summarized from memory and checked with the original teller, who also gave her permission to include it here. 6. i wrote it down immediately after she left for school, trying to recreate her exact wording as well as i could and checking it with her on her return. 7. "the end of the story" was presented at the annual meeting of the folklore studies association of canada in winnipeg in 1984. 10 child as story-maker works cited chukovsky, kornei. from two to five. translated from the 1925 russian edition, malen’kie deti (little children), by miriam norton. berkeley and los angeles: u of california p, 1965. pitcher, evelyn goodenough, and ernst prelinger. children tell stories. new york: international up, inc., 1963. sutton-smith, brian. the folkstories of children. philadelphia: u of pennsylvania p. 1981. 11 "mean girls": the reclassification of children's and adolescents' folklore elizabeth tucker in the winter of 2001, ashley, a fifteen-year-old ninth-grader in a catholic girls' school in nashville, tennessee, starts to have trouble with her classmates. "you're barbie," her friend marcia tells her. "i hate your blonde hair and your clothes." marcia and two other girls send threatening emails to ashley; between classes they stand near ashley's locker, muttering, "barbie, barbie!" in singsong voices. following her mother's advice to ignore these mean girls, ashley deletes their e-mails and turns away when they speak to her. then all the name signs around ashley's locker, colorful posters made by her closest friends, disappear overnight. "it's as if she's lost all her spirit," ashley's mother tells me on the phone. "the name-signs were the last straw. she doesn't smile any more. we're thinking of moving her to a different school." insisting on staying at her familiar high school, ashley tries to ignore marcia and her friends. her parents have a talk with the assistant principal, but their talk has little impact. marcia and her friends stop targeting ashley's locker, but their e-mails intensify. when ashley changes her e-mail address, marcia and her friends figure out her new address and start using it. they look for new ways to get ashley's attention. their harassment is long-term, unyielding. during that same winter, ashley's fourteen-year-old cousin nathan is also having trouble with classmates: eighth-grade boys in a public middle school in a small town in upstate new york. noticing nathan's nervous habit of pulling his hair, his friend eric has started chanting "puller! puller! puller!" eric and several other boys get into the habit of chanting "puller!" on the bus ride home every afternoon; nathan says nothing in response. between classes, when no teachers are around, the boys throw paper at nathan; occasionally eric tries to push nathan into his locker. nathan's parents have a talk with the assistant principal, who says that if the situation worsens, a video camera on the school bus can be used to gather evidence. when nathan tells eric to stop bothering him, eric laughs and chants some more. finally, nathan finds eric after school, just outside the school grounds where fighting is prohibited. he grabs eric by the collar and punches him, hard. other kids "mean girls" tucker cheer. eric's nose is broken; he has to miss a half-day of school to go to the doctor. nathan's problems with bullying are over. these two stories from my own circle of family and friends illustrate gender differences in bullying, a phenomenon that has recently received much media attention. a special issue of children s folklore review in 2002 examined aftereffects of the columbine school shooting. since that tragedy and others, adult have learned that bullying can lead to catastrophe. once hidden in the childhood underground, bullying is now national news. definitions of bullying have evolved over time. the oxford english dictionary defines the word "bully" as "a blustering 'gallant'" or "a tyrannical coward who makes himself a terror to the weak"; this definition, with literary examples dating back to 1688, is more recent than" a term of endearment and familiarity," which goes back to 1538. according to an article in the gale encyclopedia of childhood and adolescence, recapitulated on a popular website, bullying "usually involves an older or larger child (or several children) victimizing a single child who is incapable of defending himself or herself" (http:// www.faeriebelievers.com/gnomenews/2002/bullying.htm ). since the early 1990s, people have tended to view bullying as repetitive verbal and physical harassment; the act of bullying has become more significant than the age or size of the bullies, which varies widely. because of the broad age-range of bullying, from first grade through high school, it is necessary to view bullying as a process that begins in childhood and mutates into new forms in adolescence. name calling, injurious pranks, rituals of exclusion, and physical pummeling are among the behaviors of bullying that can be found in the annals of children's and adolescents' folklore. how can the study of folklore help us to understand bullying? the media have given more attention to boys' bullying than girls': a natural choice, since the perpetrators of the columbine massacre and other school shootings were boys. since the winter of 2002, some media attention has shifted to the bullying patterns of girls in this essay i want to examine bullying by girls and, to some extent, bullying by boys, using information from children's folklore studies, the popular press, and a discussion group for parents and educators. i also want to explore how parts of children's and adolescents' folklore have been reclassified: instead of being viewed as traditions belong ing to young people, they have become known as negative behaviors prohibited by school regulations and public policy. this reclassification has major implications for those of us who teach folklore and work with children and adolescents in the public sector. 8 tucker "mean girls" folklore studies before 1999, when the columbine school shootout occurred, folklorists did not devote much attention to children's derisive language and behavior; narratives, play, and games were more common focal points for scholarly studies. as marilyn jorgensen points out in her chapter on teases and pranks in children’s folklore: a sourcebook, folklorists have published sample texts, but "interest in the genre seems to have stopped short of an in-depth analysis of the many possible meanings and functions of taunts" (1995: 224). in the lore and language of schoolchildren (1959), iona and peter opie devote an entire chapter to "unpopular children: jeers and torments." they distinguish between taunts of a general nature, from which recipients can "take little harm," and jeers for particular offenses, which are characterized by "piercing exactitude" (175). the first example of a specific jeer comes from a group of girls expressing their derision toward a girl who seems unfriendly: i know a little girl sly and deceitful, every little tittle-tat she goes and tells the people. long nose, ugly face, ought to be put in a glass case. if you want to know her name, her name is heather lee. please, heather lee, keep away from me; i don't want to speak to you, nor you to speak to me. once we were friends, now we disagree, oh, heather lee, keep away from me. it's not because you're dirty, it's not because you're clean, it's because you've got the whooping-cough, pooh! you awful thing! (175). this rhyme, sometimes used for skipping, describes both offense and punishment. because heather lee is a sly, deceitful, and unattractive tattletale, the other girls will refuse to speak to her. as the opies explain, excluding a child from normal social interaction is often called "sending to coventry." a ten-year-old girl says: "when someone does something most of the class disagrees with, we send that person to coventry which means we never speak to them. sometimes one or two people hold their noses with their fingers and say that the place smells where they have been. another name for this is "giving them a cold shoulder" (199). 9 "mean girls" tucker sending a classmate to coventry can be traced back to british school stories as early as 1795; its apparent origin is the parliamentary practice of sending royalist prisoners to coventry to keep them safe. the opies make it clear that girls send each other to coventry much more often than boys do. boys bump or dump an unpopular fellow on the ground; they pull his arms and legs, make him march backward through mud and bushes, and jump roughly upon him, yelling "pile on" (199201). bullies are frequently subjected to these kinds of physical torture, as bullying tends to "arouse the desire for physical retribution more strongly than any other offender of the juvenile code" (192). from the wealth of examples in the opies' collection, readers can see that juvenile justice is a self-regulating system. both boys and girls call each other names, but the girls' jeers are especially varied and colorful. for example, girls may call a classmate who seems conceited a "swankpot," "swanky liz," "swanky lanky liz," or "swanky pants" (182). echoing the opies, mary and herbert knapp state in one potato, two potato (1976) that "the cruelest epithets are those which are the most specific" (66). their list of cruel jeers includes "pipe-neck, platypus, fishlips, beaver-teeth, mush-mouth, bubble-head, spider-legs, candy-grabber, buger-peeler" (66). focussing on the efficacy of children's self-education, the knapps explain that jeers "enable children partly to control situations that would otherwise be almost unbearably frustrating" (59). although they refrain from saying that verbal duels are always beneficial, they are firm in saying that "the traditional ways children have devised for dealing with feelings are better than most of us realize" (68). although most of the knapps' coverage of children's jeers is not genderspecific, their description of slam books shows that girls are in charge: "girls 'keep' these books, but boys and girls alike write in them" (79). comments about an unpopular child in a 1969 slam book include '''scago la vomit,' 'stupid' (three times), 'gross' (twice), 'ugh!' (three times), 'not nice,' 'show off,' 'stinks,' 'dumb dope,' 'scab,' 'pu pu,' 'ugh boo"'(79). analysis of these hurtful comments takes a generally positive direction: this is scapegoating, and it is appalling. but slam books have redeeming features. children who write in them discover that writing is good for something besides homework, and they learn a lot about the perils and pleasures of judging other people. they need to be surprised when they are misinterpreted, to be shocked as they discover what others think of 10 tucker "mean girls" them, and to find out all those complicated things one learns from quarrels and reconciliations, from secret agreements, treaties, and alliances (79-80). the underlying assumption here is that children, when left to their own devices, teach themselves good things that will prepare them for adult social interaction. this credo can be traced back to rousseau's emile, first published in 1762, in which the child becomes an independent, self-directed learner who makes healthful choices. in american children's folklore (1988), simon bronner lists a number of derisive rhymes, including this one from an eight-year-old girl: mary, mary, is no good chop her up for firewood . if the fire does not burn throw her in a butter churn if the butter turns to cheese georgie, georgie will give her a squeeze (75). bronner explains that jeers clarify children's norms, such as cleanliness and cooperation; they also initiate social drama and elicit information or an emotional reaction from the child who is teased (74). this approach explores what a child can learn from derisive folklore without trying to identify all functions as educational and productive. an early study of adolescent folklore, millicent r. ayoub and stephen a. barnett's "ritualized verbal assault in white high school culture," discusses the popularity of sounding, also known as playing the dozens, among white high school students in the mid-1960s. citing roger abrahams' deep down in the jungle, ayoub and barnett suggest that playing the dozens spread from african-american culture to white culture after world war ii. offering examples of typical mother-sounds ("your old lady is a fag," "your old lady gives green stamps"), ayoub and barnett make several points that are significant for folklorists studying verbal duels and taunts today. sounds begin in elementary school and gradually become more sophisticated as children grow older (339). what looks to outsiders like a serious exchange of verbal abuse can seem harmless to in-group members, who insist that "it's all in fun" (340). girls playa name game related to the dozens but deny that they know about the dozens itself, even though they seem familiar with it. ayoub's and barnett's study conveys the same general message as the opies' and knapps': young people's folklore regulates itself. 11 "mean girls" tucker in his recent essay "redwood grove: youth culture in a group home," published in children's folklore review (2002), jesse gelwicks describes how children use storytelling and teasing to form a social hierarchy outside the control of adults. according to gelwicks, "adults can intervene and impose control based on behavior charts and points, but the social hierarchy framed by the boys is also a very powerful force in shaping the children's experiences" (77). this affirmation of children's hierarchies is an important reminder of what children can accomplish on their own, even in an era when youth culture seems to be fraught with danger. reclassification since april 20, 1999, when the columbine school shootout occurred, the view that children and adolescents can regulate their own society has radically changed. knowing that children with guns can exact retribution for verbal derision makes the derision itself seem much more dangerous. high schools, middle schools, and even elementary schools have tightened their regulations; parents have become more watchful, and the power of words in youth culture has gained new respect. before columbine, however, a change in attitude was already emerging. in 1991, a teenager in duluth, minnesota discovered that her name was listed among "sexually degrading graffiti" on the boys' bathroom wall. after the school refused to erase the graffiti, the girl's parents filed charges with the minnesota department of human rights, and a cash settlement of $15,000 was awarded "for emotional damages as a result of sexual harassment" (strauss). graffiti, often considered verbal and pictorial art by folklorists, had become grounds for a lawsuit. in 1993, susan strauss published an essay in the vocational education journal that gave examples of sexual harassment. among these were graffiti, slam books, pranks such as "spiking" or "de-pantsing" and "wedgies," and "name calling: from 'honey' to 'bitch' or worse." more than half of the offenses listed in strauss's essay came from children's and adolescents' folklore. what used to be part of the culture of childhood, occasionally noticed by parents and teachers, had entered the language of legal prohibition (http:// www.straussconsult.com/article2.htm). a survey of middle school and high school handbook available on the internet shows how school administrators have tried to outlaw behavior that might prove to be dangerous. rule 8 at new lebanon middle school in ohio specifies that there should be no language 12 tucker "mean girls" "deemed inappropriate or obscene by any staff member, either written or verbal, to annoy or humiliate others or to disrupt the educational process" (http://www.newlebanon.ki2.oh.us/handbook ). at st. david's school in miami, with students from preschool to eighth grade, regulations prohibit rudeness, roughness, and "vile, vulgar or indecent language." one rule specifies that "slam books (derogatory writings) will not be tolerated. students participating in slam books will be disciplined accordingly" (http://www.saintdavid.org/school forms/handbook). in hartford, connecticut, high schools and middle schools have adopted a "zero tolerance" approach to fighting and dangerous pranks. the mother of a boy who was in sixth grade in the hartford area told me: michael put plant food in the teachers' coffee pot after his teacher told the class about kids substituting salt for sugar. the police came; they told him that if a teacher had been pregnant, she would have lost her baby after drinking the plant food. before this prank, michael was a wonderful kid. afterwards, he was on the middle school's "most wanted" list. he was suspended. i always thought it was the teacher's fault, because he told the class about that substitution prank (martin). the boundary line between pranks and crimes has changed, and educators' roles have been called into question. could a parent file a complaint against a high-school teacher because a traditional prank was mentioned in class? as the above story suggests, describing a prank could precipitate a grievance. the state of connecticut is currently holding legislative hearings on public act number 02-119: "an act concerning bullying behavior in schools and concerning the pledge of allegiance." defining bullying as "repeated, overt acts by one or more students on school grounds or at a school-sponsored activity that are intended to ridicule humiliate, or intimidate another student," this bill requires all school boards to develop an antibullying policy. connecticut's commission on children has announced that erika harold, miss america 2003, will work with connecticut students to help launch an anti bullying platform (http://www.cga.state.ct.us/coc). colorado and other states have already developed laws against bullying; connecticut's recent efforts should have an impact on the way bullying is received in the northeastern united states. 13 "mean gjrls" tucker "mean girls" on february 24, 2002, the bright pink cover of the new york times magazine displayed a doll-like teenaged girl, punctured with blackheaded pins, held in the fist of another girl who was clearly her tormentor. the headline: "mean girls and the new movement to tame them." this essay by margaret talbot immediately drew nationwide attention. teachers, parents, and internet chat groups mobilized to answer talbot's questions: is it possible that girls are more aggressive than boys? and if so, how can their damage be controlled? talbot's essay gives the reader a glimpse into the "girl world" of rosalind wiseman, a thirty-two-year-old woman who presents programs and seminars on relational aggression, date rape, and other issues that worry parents and teachers of girls. the founder of a nonprofit organization known as the empower program, wiseman works with groups of girls to help them take responsibility for their actions and develop, as her handbook explains, "strategies to interrupt the cycle of gossip, exclusivity and reputations" (40). talbot's description of rosalind wiseman makes her sound like an infiltrator who has studied girls' gestures and folk speech: when wiseman catches sight of you approaching, she knows how to do a little side-to-side wave, with her elbow pressed to her hip, that is disarmingly girlish. she says "totally" and "omigod" and "don't stress" and "chill" a lot and refers to people who are "hotties" or "have it goin on" (40). in fact, wiseman has studied girls' customs and chooses her wardrobe with the help of a seventeen-year-old girl: her sister zoe. she interacts with her girl clients much as an older sister would, but she is an entrepreneur hired to intervene. other programs like hers include the ophelia project in erie, pennsylvania and genaustin in austin, texas. helping girls to avoid hurting each other has become big business. does the prevalence of these relatively new programs show that girls are tormenting each other in new and alarming ways? on the contrary: the examples talbot offers reveal patterns from children's and adolescents' folklore. when wiseman holds an apologies day, girls who have been mean to each other are told to write down feelings of contrition. the girls who resist this exercise most are the ones wiseman calls alpha girls, r.m.g. 's (really mean girls) or queen bees; their victims are wannabes and messengers. interestingly, the written apologies often hold new insults for the original victims. one girl writes, "i'm sorry i told everyone you had an american girl doll. it 14 tucker "mean girls" really burned your reputation" (26). another girl writes a longer note: dear 'friend,' i'm sorry that i talked about you behind your back. i once even compared your forehead/face to a minefield (only 2 1 person though). i'm really sorry i said these things even though i might still believe them (26). devious though these apologies may be, they sound familiar. unflattering, insulting analogies have been common for as long as children's folklore has been recorded. the apologies written by girls in wiseman's group are like slam book entries; the writer is allowed to record comments that will make the recipient furious. another genre of "meanness" common among wiseman's girls is the custom of three-way calling. two girls call up a third girl, but one of the two does not reveal that she's on the line. the girl who is speaking encourages the third girl to say terrible things about her silent partner. this is a phone prank resembling the traditional girls' game truth or dare, in which a player must share shocking truths. with the technology of three-way calling, the potential for inflicting pain is more advanced than it would be otherwise. one especially painful process is the ritual of exclusion. the custom of sending to coventry, noted by the opies, is just one of many for the same purpose. an apology note written by one of wiseman's clients gives a few details: "dear b. i'm sorry for excluding you and ignoring you. also, i have said a bunch of bad things about you. i have also run away from you just because i didn't like you" (26). one reason for exclusion is failure to follow a clique's dress rules, such as "you cannot wear jeans any day but friday, and you cannot wear a ponytail or sneakers more than once a week"(28). rigid self-generated dress codes are typical of adolescents. while folklorists, psychologists, and sociologists have attempted to figure out why such rituals are so common, more research seems to be necessary. rosalind wiseman's book queen bees and wannabes: helping your daughter survive cliques, gossip, boyfriends and other realities of adolescence was published in the spring of 2002. two other books on the same subject came out at that time: emily white's fast girls: teenage tribes and the myth of the slut and rachel simmons' odd girl out: the hidden culture of aggression in girls. the era of "mean girl" analysis has arrived. this publishing trend was preceded, perhaps inspired, by several books by scandinavian scholars. dan olweus's bullying at school: what we know and what we can do (1993) compares boys' and girls' bullying; it also compares bullying in sweden with bullying in nor 15 "mean girls" tucker way. other variables studied by olweus include class size, school size, physical weakness and strength, and supervision at recess and lunch time a book that more specifically addresses girls' aggression is kaj bjorkqvist's of mice and women: aspects of female aggression (1992). with an interdisciplinary approach, bjorkqvist asks whether females of all species are less aggressive than males. his focus on patterns of female aggression has opened up the subject for scholars in other fields. another valuable resource is the nature of school bullying: a cross-cultural national perspective (1999), edited by olweus and others. global village while looking for information about girls' bullying on the internet, i discovered an informative website: http://www.bullying.org. designed by a canadian teacher to help children and their parents and teachers, this website contains pictures, poems, and stories from children who have suffered from bullying in countries around the world. many of the poems, including this one by eleven-year-old dani, show the torment of bullying: when will it stop? i hope one day it does. i want, i need a life. my life. the one i had before you set onto me. before i walked down that hall in fear. before i saw that note you gave to all of them. before i was told i was nothing. before i was spat on. some day i'll be free and i will walk far away from you, so far you'll never find me. according to the proverb that hillary clinton used as a book title, "it takes a village to raise a child" (1996). sometimes it takes a global village, a group of people from various countries connected to each other through e-mail, to find solutions to a problem as serious as bullying. when i joined bullyingsupport@yahoogroups.com, recommended by the "bullying.org" website, i felt i had found that kind of village. at first, never having belonged to such a group, i didn't know what to expect. would group members welcome my queries about children's folklore, or would they find those questions intrusive? i needn't have worried. two teachers and a parent replied immediately, sending me information and asking me to tell them more about my 16 tucker "mean girls" interests. the ongoing dialogue was lively and interesting. within a few days, i had heard from teachers and parents in canada, various parts of the united states, and australia. one teacher at a public junior high school in alabama assured me that name-calling was part of both bullying and everyday discourse: ". . . believe me the use of "ho," "yo mama," and "b" (bitch) are said every day 24-7. both male and female students use them as a defense mechanism when they are upset without thinking" (reese). a teacher in australia wrote that "the most common form of bullying for both sexes is verbal. this includes teasing, harassment and name calling. it is the most painful" (tamer). just as the opies found in collecting jeers for unpopular children, i discovered that there was a wide range of taunts for both girls and boys. more compelling, though, were the stories of personal experience shared by parents of children who had suffered. jill, who had learned about the support group from a television special on bullying in indiana, shared details about what had happened to her eleven-year-old daughter: she makes the honor roll and has long beautiful blonde hair (not from me. lol). several of the girls that have had trouble with grades, 1 in particular that was held back. . . was always telling my daughter that she is stupid and pulling her i keep trying to tell my daughter that this little girl just wishes she made better grades and had her hair. but when your daughter cries herself to sleep and does not want to go to a slumber party because of this other child, it is hard. others replied to jill, offering consolation and advice. two teachers suggested that jill should ask administrators at her daughter's school to buy videos on bullying; several parents agreed. school administrators mentioned community conferencing and spinclusion, both of which are designed to enhance dialogue and empathy. lynn zammit, the coordinator of choices for youth programs in kitchener, ontario, wrote about the restorative justice process, a conferencing model that brings the offender and victim together with school staff and community members. this process has been effective in dealing with gangs, school violence, bullying, truancy, and other difficult issues involving criminal charges (zammit). another important idea that emerged from the group was to read what students have to say in "what can be done about bullying? students speak out," by ruth rees (2002). student-generated ideas include treating fellow students as one would like to be treated one 17 "mean girls" tucker self, sticking up for fellow students, quickly reporting bullying incidents, and running year-long bullying programs; if nothing else works, a change of classrooms or of schools is recommended. teachers should stick to the rules, monitor public spaces, handle troubling situations immediately, and impose progressively severe penalties (5-7). at times the dialogue on this internet support group became ideological. julia, a miami resident who grew up in russia, wrote: in russia, sure there is a lot to be improved, but kids are being taught from the very beginning by teachers and parents and everybody around you should treat everybody equally no matter what, nobody is better than you are, nobody deserves to be hurt, everybody deserves to be treated friendly, etc. here in the us i found out a lot of things that amaze me. 1. schools do what's convenient for them, not for parents or children. 2. you can buy spongebob squarepants video for $10 and "words can't hurt me," the one that really every school needs to see, is $70! (rivers). one day later, ana, who grew up in cuba, expressed a different viewpoint: "the communist ideology did not protect in a special way anyone... i remember many bullies empowered by the ideological system" (faya). it was clear that there was potential for more politically oriented dialogue, as well as more personal experience stories from diverse cultures. two mothers, cindy wesley and fern trithart, were central figures in the bullying support group. their own stories were wrenching, powerful, and difficult to read. both cindy and fern had lost their children because of bullying. cindy's daughter, dawn-marie, died at age fourteen on november 10, 2000, in mission, british columbia. reports of this tragedy were available on the internet, but cindy sent our group a more personal account: on november 10, 2000 our youngest son found his sister who had hung herself. in her suicide note she named three girls who had bullied her at school, one being a police officer's daughter. for the first time in history bullies were charged. during the trial i sat through having to listen to how these girls tormented our daughter. the last words that our baby heard were "dawn-marie you are fucken dead." am i thankful that the judicial system seems to be owning their part in this 18 tucker "mean girls" out of control situation" (wesley). cindy's story deeply saddened us all; this was the worst outcome that a bullying situation could produce. many of us sent messages of sympathy. faced with the starkness of this story, at first i did not want to analyze it as a folklore text; such analysis seemed disrespectful. however, as i read several renditions of cindy's story, i realized that her narratives had become an important vehicle for activism. cindy is the founder of pave, parents against violence everywhere, which has been a strong advocate for children's rights. describing other parents' judicial challenges, she explains that "the process is very lengthy and parents usually give up midway" (wesley). her own story, telling of successful prosecution, gives strength and hope to other parents seeking justice in the courts. fern trithart's story about the loss of her son is equally wrenching. tyler trithart died at the age of sixteen on may 25, 2001, in chestermere, alberta, canada. he got into a fight with another teenaged boy over a girl, and the first punch was fatal. sixty students watched the fight, which took place in a remote area where parents and teachers could not intervene. although a trial was held, the boy who threw the first punch was not charged. fern's recollections of tyler's life are suffused with memories of bullying: losing a child to violence is different from losing someone. we had to endure a trial that blamed everything on tyler not the boy or girl who dragged him into their issues. tyler had a learning disability, he was not mean or violent, he was just an easy target to become involved in these kids' issues (trithart). since tyler's death, fern has become an activist; she maintains a website on which she tells her son's story, urging young people not to engage in violent behavior (http://www.iaredstory.com/tyler.html). on this website, tyler's death is described as a "bullycide." fern regularly participates in the bullying support group, offering advice and encouragement to many people. her courage, like the courage of cindy wesley, is extraordinary. conclusion i began this essay with stories about two teenagers, ashley and nathan, who were tormented by their peers in the winter of 2001. after two months of interaction with my bullying support group, i 19 "mean girls" tucker found it appropriate to conclude with the stories of dawn-marie and tyler, who did not survive being bullied. these stories provide eloquent proof of the need for more effective intervention and education. folklorists, aware of the long-standing traditions of children and adolescents, can approach this crisis with an understanding of how young people's hierarchies function. as ruth rees's essay explains, asking students themselves to come up with solutions is a promising approach. community conferencing also gives students a voice but tends to be managed by adults. in the "global village" of the internet, parents and educators can discuss intervention techniques, sharing their opinions about what works and what doesn't work. several types of children's and adolescents' folklore have undergone reclassification. bullying can be prosecuted as a crime; writing in slam books and planning dangerous pranks can result in suspension from school; name-calling can lead to sexual harassment charges; and exclusion rituals can cause school administrators to hire professional interveners like rosalind wiseman. will the recently published folklore of "mean girls" result in policy changes in the future? by gathering stories and other kinds of data, folklorists can seek answers to that question and others. in the midst of social change, storytelling is one of the most powerful problem-solvers we have. binghamton university binghamton, new york note i would like to dedicate this essay to the memory of dawn-marie wesley, 1986-2000, and tyler james grant trithart, 1984-2001. dawn-marie's memorial website is http://www.missioncity.ca/pave/dawnmariewesley/dawnmariewesley.htm. tyler's memorial website is http://www. jaredstory.com/tvler.html. works cited abrahams, roger. deep down in the jungle. hatboro, pennsylvania: folk lore associates, 1964. ayoub, millicent r., and barnett, stephen a., "ritualized verbal insult in white high school culture." journal of american folklore 78 (1965): 337-44. bjorkvist, kaj. of mice and women: aspects of female aggression. san diego: academic press, 1992. bronner, simon. american children’s folklore. little rock: august house, 1988. 20 http://www.missioncity.ca/pave/dawnmariewesley/dawnmariewesley.htm tucker "mean girls" clinton, hillary. it takes a village to raise a child and other lessons chil dren teach us. new york: simon and schuster, 1996. faya, ana julia yanes. "re: about russia vs. miami." groups.com (19 nov. 2002). gale encyclopedia of childhood and adolescence, ed. susan gall. new york: gale group, 1997. gelwicks, jesse. "youth culture in a group home." children’s folklore review 24: 1-2 (2002): 65-87. jill. "re: girls' bullying: a query." bullying-support@yahoogroups.com (14 nov. 2002). jorgensen, marilyn. "teases and pranks." in children s folklore: a source book, ed. brian sutton-smith, jay mechling, thomas w. johnson, and felicia r. mcmahon. new york: garland, 1995. 213-24. knapp, mary, and herbert knapp. one potato, two potato: the folklore of american children. new york: norton, 1976. martin, amanda. personal communication. 2 oct. 2002. nature of school bullying: a cross-national perspective, ed. dan olweus, phillip slee, yohji morita, richard catalano, peter k. smith, and josine junger-tas. new york: routledge, 1999. olweus, dan. bullying at school: what we know and what we can do. new york: blackwell, 1993. opie, iona, and peter opie. the lore and language of schoolchildren. new york: oxford up, 1959. oxford english dictionary, 2nd edition, vol. 2. oxford: clarendon press, 1989. 645-46. rees, ruth. "what can be done about bullying? students speak out." international electronic journal for leadership in learning 6:23 (octo ber 18, 2002): 1-15. reese, janet. "re: hi—let me introduce myself!!" bullying-support @yahoogroups.com (25 nov. 2002). rivers, julia. "re: some thoughts to share." bullying-support@vahoogroups.com (18 nov. 2002). rousseau, jean-jacques. emile. london: everyman, 1993. simmons, rachel. odd girl out: the hidden culture of aggression in girls. new york: harcourt, 2002. strauss, susan. "sexual harassment in the schools." vocational education journal (march 1993). available http://www.straussconsult.com/article2/ htm. talbot, margaret. "girls just want to be mean." the new york times maga zine (february 24, 2002): 24-65. tamer, caroline. "re: bullying." bullving-support@vahoogroups.com (12 nov.2002). trithart, fern. "re: why are kids so cruel?" bullying-support @vahoogroups.com (7 nov. 2002). wesley, cindy. "re: bullying-support digest number 106." bullying support@vahoogroups.com (10 nov. 2002). 21 mailto:bullying-support@vahoogroups.com "mean girls" tucker wesley, cindy. "re: bullying-support digest number 123." bullying support@yahoogroups.com (3 dec. 2002). white, emily. fast girls: teenage tribes and the myth of the slut. new york: scribner, 2002. wiseman, rosalind. queen bees and wannabes: helping your daughter survive cliques, gossip, boyfriends, and other realities of adoles cence. new york: crown, 2002. zammit, lynn. "re: bullying-support digest number 109." bullving support@vahoogroups.com (17 nov. 2002). 22 cfr_2002-2003_part2 cfr_2002-2003_part3 cfr_2002-2003_part4 cfr_2002-2003_part5 cfr_2002-2003_part6 pages from cfr_2002-2003_part7 ocr document contents from the editor ........................................................................... ...2 featured article arnold lobel's fables and traditional fable features pack carnes ....................................................................... 3 cfs: 1992 annual meeting ......................................................... 21 aesop prize committee report .................................................. 23 review oxford children's encyclopedia, ed. mary worrall ann sullivan .................................................................... 27 alvin schwartz (1927-1992) ........................................................ 29 priscilla ord notes and announcements ........................................................... 35 cover: photo courtesy of harpercollins. artwork: this issue of cfr contains reproductions of original drawings prepared for this issue by andy sugg, a graduate student of english at east carolina university. from the editor. . . this issue of the children's folklore review has come together in a rather serendipitous fashion. almost a year ago, pack carnes submitted an article on arnold lobel's fables for consideration. having decided to publish it this spring, i discovered the aesop prize committee's report in the pile of things still sitting around after the afs conference in jacksonville. the theme of the volume clearly established, i then called harpercollins, lobel's publisher, for something to put on the cover. you have already seen the result. the minutes of the 1992 children's folklore section, a review of oxford children's encyclopedia, priscilla ord' s comments on alvin schwartz, and the usual notes and announcements complete this volume. every new issue brings its own rewards and punishments. i have already noted (14.1) the inability of the editor of a camera ready publication to blame type setters, but there are other agents of confusion lurking out there (or just down the hall). while i will certainly admit responsibility for the "its/it" (page 49, line 25) and the "chid/child" (54, 23) errors, among others, i have discovered that the scanner which reads type onto a disk is not always trustworthy, nor is the author who complains about typos of his or hers that the scanner reproduced accurately but that i did not catch. it was a lot easier when there were typesetters to blame. humbled, i will proceed more slowly and, i hope, more carefully. you may be receiving this a bit earlier than anticipated. i am off for wales in april and may to do more of that celtic mythology and legend research at the national library in aberystwyth. when i return, laurie and i will set up cfr 16.1, a special issue of student papers from the most recent competition, before she takes her maternity leave. c.w. sullivan iii 2 arnold lobel's fables and traditional fable features pack carnes one of the most noticeable aspects of the modem study of folklore is its lack of clear and precise genre boundaries and definitions. it is not altogether certain that these are the necessity that some would have us believe. after all, a great deal of folkloristics is being done today in haughty disregard of this lack. still, most of us agree that some such boundary markers would be a help.1 in no case—save perhaps that of "emerging legends"—is this lack more clearly demonstrated than in the fable and in the various forms that members of fable sets take. arnold lobel's fables present a specific case in point. this small collection of fables is clearly a literary collection, yet it owes much to traditional materials. this article will approach the traditional aspects of lobel's fables as an investigation into the nature of the intertextual relationships of highly personal literary creation and folklore. that the fable lays claim to being folklore can hardly be doubted. it exists as short oral narratives (jokes, proverbs, and songs, etc.), and fabular motifs are found in virtually every folk art form. but the fable is also literature.2 what's more, it is literature of a quite varied, yet interconnected sort. the telling and retelling of fables creates and demonstrates very close intertextual relationships among members of fable sets. each set is defined as being a group of allomorphs of an identified fabular motif or narrative type. thus the fable of the fox and the grapes (p15),3 known from classical times through hundreds, perhaps thousands, of literary fabular reworkings is also found in (predominately) oral versions as folktales in the complex delineated by the at type 59 and has a further extended family covered by the thompson motif index number j871. moreover, the fable is clearly connected to, but not identical with, the proverbial phrase "sour grapes"4 and all the semantic areas involved in the resolution of that metaphor. the set is extendable through many dozens of cartoons, a very long list of "anti-fables," and other parodies.5 all these latter forms are connected theoretically through prior knowledge of the motif and prior introduction to the narrative type, often in the nursery. prior knowledge of the "original" story line of the narrative allows satires and parodies of that narrative encountered later in life to be successfu1.6 in the same way, a fable set is related to other fable sets by commonality of purpose, by form and structure, and by function, 3 carnes among other features. previous experience with the structure of the fable, narrative together with an epimythic "moral," for example, allows predictable responses to such structural features when used in another circumstance as, say, a joke narrative and punch line. this is a critical feature of the form and structure of any genre, although very often overlooked. the structure has meaning, of course, as the resolution of the metaphor of the narrative is in effect channeled and controlled to a certain extent by the secondary metaphor of the epimythium. all this needs to be measured against the background of the history of the fable and the position of the fable in modem society, on the one hand, and studied with regard to the world of children's literature and folklore on the other. this is especially important as the learning of fable motifs appears to take place primarily in the context of children's literature. lobel, in particular, will take great advantage of the positioning of traditional materials in the nursery. with regard to the history of the form, generally speaking, we think of the fable as incredibly old, dating back to aesop, a sixth-century b.c. phrygian slave. but the fable is in fact much older than that, with beginnings that go back to the earliest known literature.7 the earliest known sumerian fables would have been as old to aesop as aesop is to us. the modern fable is clearly different from the classical corpus, but equally clearly connected to it. all this makes the fable an excellent testing board for the multivalence of the motifs and other features of the fable, quite beyond the usual dichotomy of "folklore" and "literature." there are features that are to be found in the interstices of these categories, in the "harmonics" of the structure and content of the texts, such as fabular characterizations (the very specific characters of the lion or the fox, for example), the traditional "shape" or length or other structural considerations of fable texts which help us respond to a fable in a way unlike that of any other genre, its attempt to teach or to instruct, and the transparency of resolution of its metaphorical content. these considerations are found in classical fables, their folklore reflexes, and their modem (essentially literary) analogues.8 they are therefore to be found in both literary and orally transmitted forms.9 the fables under discussion here are at once firmly footed in that classical tradition and yet float free of it in their own way. lobel's fables are a mixture of the traditional and the literary and lay claim to both heritages. the tales are his own literary creations, but the connective tissue is comprised of traditional features. as we examine arnold lobel's fables we need to remind ourselves that the intertextual relationships among the members of any particular fabular motif set are important for an understanding of that set or any member of that 4 arnold lobel's fables set, but that this is not the only important set of relationships. indeed, the interrelationships to be found among sets, though of a different order, are easily shown to be equally important, as there are a number of elements that are cross-overs from one set to another. the very shape of fables is an important consideration here. just as we are conditioned to anticipate a punch-line after an introductory line of a joke, so too the reader/listener's response to fables is very much conditioned by the expectations of the approaching "moral."10 arnold lobel shares in all of these features in a way that allows us to approach his texts a little more closely by identifying his reliance upon traditional fabular characters, motifs, and structure. characterization is a prime example of all of these aspects. for example, the fabular lion is the king of beasts, and the fox the trickster par excellence, and those characterizations are fairly consistent. the characterization is suprasegmental, if the segments are the individual fabular motifs, for the lion is the king of beasts in virtually all fables, including the modem parodies, which question the viability of that very aspect of traditional fabular lions, just as twentieth-century democracy has taken its toll of kings on this planet. 11 5 carnes lobel's materials are not only in the tradition of previous fables; he has made extensive and interesting use of other folklore materials. his fables are not overtly traditional fables or anti-fables; that is, they are not refashioned tellings of traditional common fables, or parodies of such, but they carry much of fable tradition with them. lobel then has not been dependent upon the traditional (that is the aesopic fables) for much of his raw materials as have thousands of fabulists from long before aesop through la fontaine and beyond; yet part of their tremendous success is clearly due to the fables' appeal to tradition. this is not the usual fable tradition; in fact, lobel sometimes ignores or "violates" folk tradition for his effects. this is a commonly enough observed process to be found in genres and types that exist so comfortably in both "literary" and folk tradition, from folk music to schubert, from academic medicine to folk healers, from märchen to kunstmärchen, and other binary operating genres. lobel does not even depend entirely upon general responses to the fable as his pieces are certainly enhanced, if not indeed completed, by the illustrations.12 in all cases, it is clear that the illustrations are more than simply decorations; they freeze the action at certain critical points and also provide particularly effective reference points or points of recognition when rereading the fable. thus, from a receptor's point of view, seeing the picture, the entire text is recalled and re-experienced. there is also the very important consideration of direction. this is a very complicated event, involving both the intention of the author (which can be approximated here because of two elements, pace the zealots for the "intentional fallacy"), and the reception of the reader. first of all, the author channels the reader's resolution of the metaphor by providing the epimythium or moral tag-line. and secondly, since it is this point in the action that is usually the moment of the illustration, the illustration supports and reinforces the interpretation intended by the author. there is in the specific case of arnold lobel another factor of significance here. lobel tells us that the fables came in part after the decision to draw the animal characters, although he does not say that the scene depicted preceded the fable text proper. lobel describes his choice of animals as characters in part as beginning with a list of animals that he thought it would be fun to draw (hood 34-35). and, partly as an artifact of the particular position of the modem fable (a relatively new feature of which is the de-emphasis of the moral orparaenetic, the purely didactic element, of the fable, usually in favor of the satirical or the humorous), lobel's fables float free of the popular expectations of, say, the 6 arnold lobel's fables p373 "ant and the grasshopper" in that his "morals" are less demanding. lobel's fables are bound to a certain extent by the traditions of the literary fable, but they use various folklore traditions very effectively and resonate with various harmonics from traditional fables and other narratives. the characters too, though not always the traditional aesopic characters, are often highly reminiscent of more familiar fable characters (the fox, lion, ant, wolf, mouse and so on) and the traditional "expectations" of characterization (see carnes, "traditional expectations"). lobel's fables seem almost studiously distinct from each other with regard to characters; that is to say, not a single character shows up as the main character in more than one. the characters are all animals, in a sense a somewhat recent "traditional expectation,"13 as the classical corpus of fables has more fables with humans as actors (as well as fables with plants and inanimate objects) than those with only animals. lobel might have felt constrained to present only animals as these appear to be more in keeping what the new "traditional" expectation for a fable today, or it may simply have not occurred to him to use any actors other than animals, as he implies in an interview about his fables (hood 35). the animals he chooses, however, are only in part traditional. king lion is, of course, as are the frogs, the bear, and even the crab and the camel, but many are not. the lobster occurs as a character in no "canonical" (le., aesopic) fable of which i am aware, nor does the rhinoceros or the kangaroo. the use of these characters proclaims lobel's independence from some of the traditional constraints of the aesopic fable as much as his title and the familiar structuring of his stories claim the advantages of it.14 yet lobel has taken from all along the fable tradition. to begin with, his characters are perhaps even more closely akin than the average aesopic fable character is to what fabular characters truly are or are meant to be: costumed humans. it does us no real good to see only a lion in the fables about the king of beasts; we need to recognize the metaphor and see in that creature something of ourselves. lobel, with one significant exception, does not let us forget that, even though his creatures act well within the boundaries of their natural characteristics.15 in this lobel is close to his contemporary fabulists: william march [campbell], james thurber, wolfdietrich schnurre, gerhard branstner, helmut arntzen, jean anouilh, and hoshi shin'ichi, among others. there is little pretext here. thurber's version of the tortoise and the hare has the tortoise ironically remind us that there is a fable about a tortoise and a hare; he "read in an ancient book" a story in which a tortoise beat a hare in a race and never read anything about a hare that beat a tortoise in a race, and thinks therefore that he could beat a hare and sets out to find one, to challenge him to a race. the tortoise loses, naturally 7 carnes (thurber, fables 83). helmut arntzen's lamb runs away from the stream when he sees the wolf. the wolf protests that he would not harm the lamb, but the lamb runs away, saying "thank you very much, but i've read my aesop" (64). these are not animals at all, simply humans in sheep's clothing, so to speak. much of lobel's appeal comes from this sort of thing. his characters are not much in the way of allegorical frogs and camels; they are people that we all recognize, and that is naturally, precisely the point. lobel's opening fable demonstrates this clearly. "a crocodile in the bedroom" (2) begins with a kafka-like (not kafkaesque, but kafka-like) opening: "a crocodile became increasingly fond of the wallpaper in his bedrooin."16 that situation is the problem. the crocodile stared at the ordered patterns of flowers and leaves (well-illustrated in the accompanying drawing which catches this aspect of the fable and not its moral or the "action"). the crocodile becomes so accustomed to the order that the comparative disarray of even the "ordered" growth of mrs. crocodile's garden is abhorrent to him. overcome with distaste for the untidiness everywhere around him, he returns to his room, takes to his bed, and (we assume) slowly slips from life. without making too much of the similarity, the moral is as much like kafka as anything else: "without a doubt there is such a thing as too much order." there is of course nothing crocodilian about this character at all. any other creature would have done as well, but lobel has chosen a character that seems, to judge by its natural appearance, to be about as far as could be from a sentient creature capable of even the limited aesthetic responses needed for the narrative, his own statement about choosing characters that were "fun to draw," notwithstanding. we are set up for this by the title which serves in the office of a promythium, but one is still completely unprepared for the ill fitting match of character and narrative. one would have expected in a traditional tale a more naturally orderly creature: a raccoon, a social insect, perhaps. the choice of the crocodile as an exponent of aesthetics makes this modem fable turn the traditional fable on its ear and outfits it with a finely tuned sense of humor that approaches the grand paradox of disney's having a dragon friendly to children.17 characterization in ''the ducks and the fox" (5), on the other hand, is completely straightforward. the fox is sly and plans to catch and eat the ducks, a familiar response of foxes toward ducks both in the natural and the fabular worlds. the ducks are silly and only just barely recognize the fox as enemy, but they are beguiled by him in the traditional aesopic and märchen manner. the fox very nearly talks the two ducks into his sack, just as the fox talks the crow out of the cheese in the innumerable versions of their classical 8 arnold lobel's fables fable. the ending is thoroughly modem and fits very well even with silly ducks. the fable has a traditional conflict between, incidentally, two clearly opposite forces (as is the usual case in fables). however, the ending appears contrived-perhaps for the sake of the moral tag line or epimythium. the epimythium does seem more typical of lobel's (and our) own time: "at times, a change of routine can be most helpful." the irony generated by the distance between what sounds like a slogan of the jogging 70s and 80s, on the one hand, and the understatement of the moral, on the other, is highly effective, indeed much more so here than in many of his other morals. lobel's use of traditional characterization is best seen in "king lion and the beetle" (7). this fable is far from an aesopic one, but it is firmly dependent upon the reader/listener' s response to such fables, upon the reader/ listener's being responsive to fables in general and having heard aesopic fables before. although the fable itself is a new one, the incremental characterization of the lion wherever he appears in fables is assumed. the lion is the king of beasts-from the two classical versions of the "lion's share" fable to the "aged lion and fox," and a host of others through the modem lion in the ass's skin cycle of helmut arntzen and the lion's share fable by james thurber. here lobel does not depend upon his audience's knowing any particular fable as much as knowing about the general fabular lion's characterization. the lion's role in society and his comical vain insistence upon his "kingliness" is the point of the fable and causes the lion's (literal) downfall. his vanity, expressed physically with robes, heavy jewels and a crown, causes the lion to fall into the mud, down to the level of the beetle from whom he demands acknowledgment. none of lobel's other fables depends upon traditional characterization as much as this one does. there are, however, examples of unexpected behavior within what appears to be a number of more "natural" characterizations. this sometimes bizarre behavior is elusive and ill-defined, but highly effective. "the bear and the crow" (16) is a case in point. behind the highly effective composition of the narrative as a fable, the characterization stands out as particularly vivid, in part because of the use of a traditional fabular actor in an uncommon role. the crow, the deceived in most fables, becomes the deceiver here. the bear, although not unknown as a gullible creature in fables, is more obvious in that role in the cyclical animal tale. emphasis upon the characterization here, however, no matter how interesting, must not draw the reader away from the point of the fable, from the fact that we are all not just creatures in fables, but creatures of fashion in the literal sense. those who allow themselves to be talked into the bear's situation have brought it upon themselves, even though the crow is not altogether blameless. the epimythium is weaker here than in 9 carnes most of lobel's fables and is indeed not really needed at all. a well-chosen epimythium can often add to even a well-told story, much as an emblem enhances the effect of a proverb or motto. in lobel's case, the illustrations are equally effective and often surpass the epimythium in drawing the attention of the reader to the point of the fable. a particular striking example of that is to be found in "the baboon's umbrella" (12). there are two characters: the baboon, who complained that he was unable to close his umbrella, and his obliging friend the gibbon, who suggested the cutting of large gaping holes in it. the action is easily foreseen as the rain begins to fall. the baboon and the gibbon here are not disturbingly out of character at all. although they are not drawn from standard fabular characters, they do function quite well as actors. this is a very wellconstructed fable, and a great deal of its strength and appeal comes from the moral tag line: "advice from friends is like the weather. some of it is good and some of it is bad." i rather suspect that lobel purposely sidestepped the obvious line available to him in constructing his moral with "fair weather" and "friends," but he has certainly felt the need for a moral couched in a quasiproverbial phrase. the natural characteristics of animals is the third source of elements from which a fabulist can draw for his work. this is as old as the originator of the tortoise and the hare fable, in which the actual speed of the hare is matched to the actual slowness of the tortoise. modem fabulists in general have made more use of this aspect than was the case in earlier literary fables, but lobel uses it most effectively. in fact lobel parodies the very process in his fourth fable: "the crab and the lobster" (8). we are so accustomed to looking for metaphors in fables (and allowing for the convention that animals speak), we are taken aback when the actors in a fable actuality are the creatures that they are and moreover are in fact in possession of their natural characteristics. as the two crustaceans set sail on the sea, they encounter a storm and the boat begins to sink. the lobster answers the crab's horrified cries with: of course, we are sinking. this old boat is full of holes. have courage, old friend. remember, we are creatures of the sea. of course they are. the marvel here is that we, too, as fable readers, are not accustomed to having fable creatures operate in their own natural elements, as natural creatures, or falling back upon natural abilities to save themselves.18 even the crab seems to have forgotten that although he is playing a costumed human in the fable, he can still live under water. the epimythium, "even the taking of small risks will add excitement to life," is effective again for its irony. there are, of course, no risks involved at all. 10 arnold lobel's fables the natural crowing of roosters at dawn, and their folktale proclivity to do so, is well-exploited in lobel's "the young rooster" (37). this is especially effective, for the conflict comes about precisely of the fact that the young rooster does not seem able to "crow up the sun," as his first day "on the job" is cloudy and overcast. this results in failure for the young rooster who is now discouraged. all the barnyard animals decry the disastrous lack of sun. the bull, in an attempt to help, provides the rooster with the marvelously incongruent fact that the sun is 93,000,000 miles away, a statement that is not likely to have occurred in any aesopic fable (and inserted, i rather suspect, for precisely that reason). the mouse in the "the mouse at the seashore" (10) is another character chosen for its natural qualities. once the premise of the fable is accepted, then the dangers encountered are those that a mouse would be likely to run into: a cat, a bird, and dogs-all of which attack him. he loses his way and is bloodied time and again, but the sight of the sea is worth it all. the epimythium is an overstatement made redundant by the charming illustration of the mouse sitting on the sand dune watching the sun set over the sea. here, then, the fact that the fable is not about mice at all is clear. the natural enemies pitted against the mouse misdirect the reader into thinking that indeed the story is about a mouse, but the final scene and the exquisite illustration bring us back to our world, resolve the metaphor, and remind us that we are talking about us, in a way that is completely consistent with the aesopic tradition. in contrast to the fables discussed above, there are a number of instances in which lobel has purposefully strayed from the natural characteristics of certain animals, but has stayed in sight of their roles in traditional folk literature and, in some instances, in children's literature. the resulting effect is mixed. the hippopotamus in "the hippopotamus at dinner" (38) is perhaps an obvious choice on the surface for gluttony, but the hippo is not in fact a glutton, just a bulky animal whose dimensions are translated into obesity when compared to a human scale of girth. it is the nature of the hippo to be overtly fat from the human point of view, but it does not follow that he would "over-order" in a restaurant. the situation takes advantage of some characteristics of hippos, real or imagined: hippos seem (to humans) to be fat, and that seems to imply overeating. this is one of lobel’s "weakest" fables, and the epimythium: "too much of anything often leaves one with a feeling of regret," does not save it from being relatively ineffective. the motif is a common one in folk literature: the hippo overeats and then cannot leave the table (cave, hollow tree, etc.), having grown too large. it is significant that this precise motif is found in children's literature in a number of instances, the chapter in winnie the pooh with pooh and the honey pot being but one example.19 11 carnes , further, the wolf, in the somewhat misnamed ''the hen and the apple tree" (11), plays an even more traditional folk-literature role, that of assuming a disguise in order to obtain his prey. although this is not a behavior of wolves observable in nature, it is clearly one common characteristic of wolves in folk literature. the märchen "little red riding hood" is only one example; there are fabular disguised wolves as well: "wolf and the kid" (p572), which has of course a much later märchen reflex, in grimm no. 5, for example. the innovative twist lobel gives his wolf here is twofold: first, the wolf is disguised as an apple tree, and second, in an even more anti-traditional feature, the hen sees through the disguise. the wolf, quite uncharacteristically, "knew that he had been outsmarted," an unusual insight for the plastic characters of the fable; but that having been said, the fable ought to end there, rather than with the too obvious "it is always difficult to pose as something else." it is that line, one suspects, that lobel was writing toward. it is clearly designed for the children for whom the "moral" is intended. there are also the somewhat abstracted natural characteristics of animals that are chosen for fables here. the ostrich is popularly believed to be afraid and thus the "shy lover" ostrich is a natural secondary overtone (21). the camel is clearly one of the most unlikely animals to be chosen to play the part of a ballerina and, therefore, is an excellent choice for a fable in which the main actor is shown not being able to do what she wanted to do well, but "she will dance just for herself" (22). actually, there is an aesopic fable about a 12 arnold lobel's fables camel dancing, p83 "ape and camel," known from the earliest greek prose tradition, in which the camel tried to dance and was so ridiculed that he was forced to leave the gathering of the animals. some of lobel's fables have characters and situations that are not standard, not traditional, and not specie-specific. lobel is not the first to use animals this way, but he is surely the first to write a fable about a vain rhinoceros (a capsule "emperor's clothes," a-t 1620; tmi k445) or a peculiar fable about an elephant and his son (32) that has nothing to do with elephants and does not show any general or specific characteristic of elephants. "the pelican and the crane" (35) also owes nothing to the natural traits or physical attributes of pelicans and cranes, but succeeds extremely well. lobel pays the price of his independence in this regard: he must characterize his actors to set up the moral. the grand advantage of using traditional characteristics and traditional traits of fabular characters is the shorthand and "instant characterization" afforded by that tradition. the fable is best when very short, and that is accomplished in the easiest fashion by letting traditional characterization supply those features for which the animal was selected. when using an animal that is not somehow characterized in traditional literature, the author has to create some of that characterization himself. that is difficult in the short space allowed a fable. in the "pelican and the crane," lobel has to set the stage and establish the characters early on. in the first line, we read "the crane invited the pelican to tea." we know nothing about lobel's general idea of cranes and pelicans, nor this specific fable crane and this specific fable pelican as yet. "no one invites me anywhere," says the pelican, and we ought to be on our guard for the reason for that statement. that is, naturally, the very point: "entirely my pleasure," said the crane to the pelican, passing him the sugar bowl. "do you take sugar in your tea?" "yes, thank you," said the pelican. he dumped half the sugar into his cup, while spilling the other half on the floor. that is the element of characterization we need. the pelican continues with: "i seem to have no friends at all." the crane then asks if he takes milk. some of the milk goes in the tea, but most ends up on the floor-and our suspicions are confirmed. a third clumsy act is needed to make the point most effectively, and pelican does this by stuffing so large a pile of cookies into his mouth that his shirt is covered with cookie remnants. this is the point of the action shown us in the illustration. the moral tag-line: "when one is a social failure, the reasons are as clear as day," could easily be entered in pencil under william march [campbell]'s fable no. 22, "polecat and his friends." the 13 carnes polecat in this fable was indignant at the manner in which he was treated by the other animals, and he complained bitterly to an old tortoise about the "undemocratic snobs" and the fact that they never invited him to any of their parties. the old tortoise at the end is forced to point out: "well, after all, you do stink a little" (march [campbell] 42-43). campbell's polecat does stink, and this aspect of the animal actor results in the clever finale. but lobel has to create the unsavory manners of the pelican, as manners, good or bad, are not commonly attributed to pelicans. there are other features outside of characterization in this collection that tie these fables to traditional materials, such as the idea of gold (and diamonds and pearls) at the end of the rainbow as the central motif for "frogs at the rainbow's end" (14) or the märchen tendency for "threes" in the pelican and crane fable and elsewhere throughout the collection. the collection depends to a great extent upon such traditional features, and that is as it should be. such ties facilitate reception of the work for both children and adults (see carnes, "fable and proverb" 56-61). but these fables are literature, and everywhere there is the distinctive hand of the craftsman using traditional materials to aid, not to dictate, the development of his materials. if today' s fable has any true "direction" at all, then it is to be found as a vector of the work of such fabulists as thurber, schnurre, and lobel. its function is close to the necessity to point out society's little faults, not the grand socio-economic schemes, and its responses are from us on a mediumburner level, because these are all we have time for. they are successful, no longer quite on the rhetorical level of the traditional aesopic fable, nor on the poetic-genre level of the seventeenth-century la fontaine or his eighteenthcentury followers, nor even on the somewhat "higher" moral plane of the fable of the sixteenth century, but on the level of common knowledge and utility, and especially on the plane of traditional, familiar materials presented in a somewhat untraditional manner, mostly for fun. lake forest college lake forest, il notes 1. the call for example issued a quarter of a century ago by alan dundes is as valid today as then, even though dundes himself has sharpened a number of genre lines in many categories and has worked extraordinarily well with many areas and with many types of materials without such delimitations. the surprising lack of definitions and clear-cut categories--with the fable a specific case in point--is 14 arnold lobel's fables best seen in the introduction to dan ben-amos, ed., folklore genres, and the bibliography cited there. 2. the fable in fact is generally defined as such. see, for example, smith, which has not been much improved upon, save by increasingly allowing more freedom to the form in perry, aesopica, and leibfried, all of which leave out the oral component, some aspects of the structure, or the essentials of context and the like. 3. fables here are identified by "perry number," that is, the number of that fable as found in ben edwin perry's monumental aesopica. i use perry numbers to indicate the set of fables, one element of which (and often the earliest known member) is to be found in perry. obviously that set could be designated by other schemes. wherever possible, the set designate includes the tale type number, as well as the corresponding motif index numbers, from aarne-thompson, here designated a-t, and thompson, here tmi, respectively. the sets extend far beyond the fable forms of course; clearly the proverbial phrase "sour grapes" belongs to the same set as the fable "fox and grapes (as in perry, aesopica, no. is), and the folktale equivalents found under a-t 59 are also members of that set. see carnes, ''the fable and the anti-fable," for a more complete discussion of fable sets and their members, especially with regard to the fables and their "anti-fable," analogues. 4. see stahl, reprinted in carnes, proverbia in fabula, and the introduction to that volume. for details of the relationship of the phrase to the fable, see carnes, "fable and proverb." 5. the term anti-fable is coined on analogy of wolfgang mieder's "anti-sprichwort" and refers to the burlesques or travesties constructed upon those aesopic motifs that can be assumed to be part of the cultural baggage of the reader. examples include james thurber's "turtle and the hare" (p226, a-t275a; tmi kl 1.3), in which the rabbit wins (see carnes, fable scholarship 5-9). in the version of this narrative type by the japanese science-fiction writer hoshi shin'ichi, the rabbit does not win, as the turtle has the rabbit arrested for speeding, and the turtle wins by default. for hoshi shin'ichi and his concept of the anti-fable, see carnes, "the fable and the anti-fable." jokes cast in fabular form, with narrative and "moral" are legion, for examples and discussion, see gerth, and carnes, "the fable joke." 6. in contrast, however, this does not mean that prior knowledge of the fable is essential in order to understand the proverbial phrase associated with that fable. rather stringent testing has revealed that knowledge of the fable was absent in the majority of those who recognized phrases such as "lion's share," "out of the frying pan, into the fire," "sour grapes," and the like. most receptors did not know the fable source, nor recognized it after being told. it is significant that virtually none of these understood the phrase in the so-called "standard" metaphor resolution. for details, see carnes, "introduction," proverbia in fabula, and "fable and proverb," 55-76. 15 carnes 7. see, for example, the materials in lambert, and jason and kempinski. the jason and kempinski article attempts to date the earliest known narratives. their dates are fairly firm, depending upon a conservative estimate of the earliest recorded written record. in some cases, the dates are easily extendible one or two thousand years, even assuming that there was no significant period of oral transmission, which there clearly was. of the five they identified as the earliest narratives, all are or are potentially fables, and one or two of the earliest are known today as jokes and as fables. 8. the modern forms are of three types, although the distinction ought not to be too finely drawn. there are essentially modern fables which are written more or less as classical fables are, and then there is another closely associated category which consist of parodies of classical forms, i.e., the above mentioned "anti-fables." most modern fabulists write fables of both of these sorts. the third category is that into which all of lobel's fables fall. they are essentially "new" fables in that they use for the most part "new" motifs and narratives (although there is borrowing all along the tradition). most modern fabulists write some "new" fables, even those, like thurber and ambrose bierce, who "specialize" in antifables. 9. i do not wish to restrict myself to these two categories, but they will do if considered only provisionally. there are a number of other possibilities, such as printed commercials, advertisements, "xerox-lore" (now commonly "faxlore"), and quite a few other venues. 10. this is actually fairly modern. the consolidation of the macro-structure of the fable into the "standard" form today was leveled out in the middle ages on analogy of examples from classical times (see perry, "the origin of the epimythium"). there have been a number of attempts to change these formal structures throughout the ages, but the modern fable has been fairly consistent in favor of the moral tag line. lobel suggests that he thought first of not having epimythia: "they simply seemed very much out of date." but in the end, he decided that fables seemed somehow not complete without them (hood 35). there are in fact a few modern fabulists who use no epimythia (wolfdietrich schnurre, for example), and one very important modern fabulist who uses only promythia(usually in badly rhyming couplets), the (once east) berliner, gerhard branstner. it is important to note that the use of the moral tag-line is so strongly ingrained in most modern fabulists, that some, such as thurber add epymithia to other genres, such as re-cast märchen, which of course never had them, and which were not told for the purpose of the moral as fables were. see thurber's version of "little red riding hood," entitled ''the little girl and the wolf' (thurber, fables 4-5), discussed in carnes, fable scholarship 5-6. evenjokes that are masquerading as fables (see carnes, ''the fable joke") have pseudoepimythia "punchlines." 16 arnold lobel's fables 11. the point is easily made: thurber's "lion's share" fable (thurber, "further fables" 23-2) has king lion lose all the booty in the form of taxes and hunting licenses. helmut arntzen's lion (6) does not fare any better: he is informed that, although he is still technically "king of the beasts," he is now only a constitutional monarch in a parliamentarian democracy. modern jokes about the fall of king lion are legion (see carnes,"the fable and the anti-fable" 26-27, for examples). 12. much work is needed on the reaction to folk elements when accompanied by illustrations. a number of modern fabulists illustrate their own work, and not only for children's books. in addition to lobel, james thurber, wolfdiedrich schnurre, james kniss-who write fables especially for children-all illustrated their fables themselves. there is need for studies of the interaction of both "texts," i.e., the fable narrative and illustration. the history of fable illustration remains unwritten, but a marvelous start has been made for illustrations through the seventeenth century in hodnett 57-72 and 168-222, although none of these ideas are discussed. 13. this is an artifact of survival only. very few fables from the greek prose tradition have survived into the very limited corpus of aesopica alive today. 14. in a sense, this is necessary. in nothing more than this is an important ethos between literature and folklore clearly seen. the traditional, the folklore artifact claims unity with others of its kind and in that it finds its existence and its appeal. literature, on the other hand, claims and insists upon its distinctiveness, away from the group, away from tradition. the virtue of the one is the anathema of the other. modern fabulists are just as likely to use many non-traditional characters in non-traditional fabular motifs as to use the more familiar forms. 15. lobel says much the same thing in his interview with susan hood, an editor of the journal instructor. there he describes his characters as representative of himself. 16. a number of modern fabulists seem to be drawn to franz kafka (who wrote fables himself, or, perhaps more properly, he wrote one true fable, and a number of other pieces that are "fabular" in nature, but not aesopic in type). one of the most striking examples of this kafka connection is found in the seventeenth fable, "la cucaracha sonadora," in augusto monterroso' s fable collection. in this fable" ...a cockroach named gregor samsa dreamed that he was a cockroach named franz kafka who dreamed that he was a writer who wrote about a clerk named gregor sarnsa, who dreamed that he was a cockroach" (monterroso 59). 17. many modern fables do this, in contrast to the classical corpus. wolfdietrich schnurre uses a rabbit as an example for vainglorious behavior (9); a rooster is 17 carnes made the vehicle for a moral about seeing "with the sun" and not against it, in branstner (no. 16), and so on. 18. the irony created by the distance we normally create as a response to the structure of a fable to its characters and content, keeps us from remembering that these characters, after all, live at the bottom of the sea. this is similar to the cartoon figure of daffy duck, who, falling from a tall mountain and plunging down to "certain death," suddenly remembers that he is a duck and, as such, can fly. 19. this is p24 (tmi k1022.1), with the classic forms represented by babrius 86, and it is a-t 41 (see, for example, no. 73 in the grimm collection) usually with a fox or bear, instead of a hippo. works cited anouilh, jean. fables. paris: la table ronde, 1962. arntzen, helmut. kurzer prozefi aphorismen und fabeln. munich: nymphenberg, 1966. ben-amos, dan, ed. folklore genres. austin: u of texas p, 1976. bierce, ambrose. fantastic fables. new york: putnam, 1898. rpt: new york: dover, 1970. branstner, gerhard. der esel als amtsmann oder das tier ist auch ein mensch: fabeln. berlin: der morgen, 1977. carnes, pack. ''the american face of aesop: thurber's fables and tradition." moderna sprak 80 (1986): 3-17. rpt. in carnes, pack. proverbia in fabula: essays on the relationship of the proverb and the fable. bern: lang: 1988. 311-31. _______. "fable and proverb: intertexts and reception." proverbium 8 (1991): 55-76. _______. ''the fable and the anti-fable: the modem faces of aesop." bestia: yearbook of the international beast fable society 4 (1992): 5-33. _______. "the fable joke." southwest folklore 5 (1981): 1-9. _______. fable scholarship: an annotated bibliography. new york: garland, 1985. _______. ed. proverbia in fabula: essays on the relationship of the proverb and the fable. bern: lang, 1988. _______. "traditional expectations in the modem fable." neohelikon 11 (1983): 203-16. dundes, alan. "texture, text and context." southern folklore quarterly 28 (1964): 251-65. rpt.in dundes, alan. interpreting folklore. bloomington: indiana up, 1980. 20-32. gerth, klaus. "fabeln und witze." praxis deutsch: zeitschrift für den deutschunterricht 11 (march 1984): 14-24. hodnett, edward. francis barlow: first master of english book illustration. ilkley, yorkshire: scolar p and u of california p, 1978. hood, susan. "crocodile's terror and an elephant's error-that's what arnold lobel's fables are made of." instructor 90 (may 1981): 34-39. 18 arnold lobel's fables hoshi shin'ichi. mirai issopu [the future aesop]. tokyo: shincho-sha, 1971. jason, heda, and aharon kempinski. "how old are folktales?" fabula 22 (1981): 1-27. krüss, james. die schiffbrüchigen oder die fabelinsel. berlin: die kinderbuch verlag, 1985. lambert, w. g. babylonian wisdom literature. oxford: clarendon p, 1960. leibfried, erwin. fabel. stuttgart: metzler, 1967. lobel, arnold. "ca1decott meda1 acceptance." horn book magazine 57 [4] (1981): 400-4. _______. fables. new york: harper, 1980. march [campbell], william. 99 fables by william march, edited and with an introduction by william t. going. university, al: u of alabama p, 1960. mieder, wolfgang. antisprichwörter. wiesbaden: verlag für deutsche sprache, 1982. monterroso, augusto. the black sheep and other fables. trans. walter i. bradbury. garden city, ny: doubleday, 1971. trans. of la oveja negra y demás fabulas. mexico: joaquin moritz, 1969. perry, ben edwin. aesopica: greek and latin texts. urbana, il: u of illinois p, 1952. ______. "the origin of the epimythium." transactions of the american philological society 73 (1940): 391-419. schnurre, wolfdietrich. der spatz in der hand: fabeln und verse. munich: albert langen, 1973. smith, m. ellwood. "the fable and kindred forms." journal of english and germanic philology 14 (1915): 519-29. stahl, sandra. "sour grapes: fable, proverb, unripe fruit." folklore on two continents: essays in honor of linda degh. eds. nikolai burlakoff and carl lindahl. bloomington: trickster p, 1980.160-68. rpt. in carnes, pack. proverbia in fabula: essays on the relationship of the proverb and the fable. bern: lang, 1988.295-309. thurber, james. fables for our time and famous poems illustrated. new york: harper, 1939. ______. further fables for our time. new york: simon and schuster, 1956. 19 children's folklore section 1992 annual meeting the 1992 meeting of the afs children's folklore section convened at 7:00 a.m., friday, october 16th. a continental breakfast was served at a cost of $7.00 per person. the minutes of the 1991 meeting were approved. secretary-treasurer danielle roemer reported on section finances. we have a total of $13,298.64 in the bank (as of august 1992). of those funds, $2000.00 represents the endowment for the opie prize and $7945.69 represents the endowment for the newell prize. that leaves $3352.95 in the section's general operating fund. review editor chip sullivan reported that the section now has a total of 170 members (a significant increase since we started publishing the review). of that number, 130 members are domestic; 40 are foreign. east carolina university continues to support the publication of the review. the section remains sincerely grateful for the university's generous support. mailing costs for the review are borne by the section. chip repeated his intention to continue contacting individuals and groups as possible future members. archivist simon bronner announced that queries about the section's archives can be made through bit-net #sjb2 @ psuvm. president-elect joe edgette announced the winner of the section's annual newell prize: michelle branigan (indiana university) for her paper "blocks and matchboxes: negotiations of a shared reality." there were no 1992 recipients of either the opie prize or the lifetime achievement award. aesop prize committee members gary alan fine and linda morley announced the 1992 co-winners of that prize. they are: eric a. kimmel for days of awe: stories for rosh hashanah and yom kippur, illustrated by erika weihs (viking, 1991); and barbara bader for aesop & company, with scenes from his legendary life, illustrated by arthur geisert (houghton mifflin, 1991). the aesop prize acknowledges the best book (in this year, two books) using children's folklore published in a given year. under new business, the floor was opened to nominations for offices. carole carpenter was nominated and approved as president-elect. danielle roemer was re-elected secretary-treasurer. and simon bronner was re-confirmed as archivist. 21 children's folklore section joe edgette requested ideas and nominations for participants for a children's folklore panel at the 1993 afs meeting (eugene, oregon). the review's proposed policy of accepting advertisements was discussed as were topics for special issues of the review. special issues are open to guest editors. persons wishing to propose a special issue or who have ideas concerning one should contact chip sullivan. joe reminded those present of the upcoming special issue on narrative (vol. 15, no. 1), guest edited by judith haut. chip sullivan then raised the possibility (initiated in an earlier year) of the section's contracting for and selling section t-shirts. he reported that setup costs would run around $80.00. linda morley proposed and simon bronner seconded a motion empowering chip to oversee the proposal. the motion passed. priscilla ord moved that linda morley and gary alan fine continue to serve on the aesop prize committee. they agreed, and the motion was seconded and passed. it was also moved, seconded, and passed that a third person be named to the committee. danielle roemer reported that, because of the present state of the national economy, the newell prize endowment funds have not earned the requisite $400 to currently support the prize at that amount. linda morley then moved (and it was seconded and passed) that the newell prize amount be reduced to $350.00 until our interest earnings improve. linda morely nominated roger pinon for the 1993 life achievement award. priscilla ord seconded the motion, and it was approved. priscilla ord, linda morley, and danielle roemer will serve as the life achievement award committee for pinon. it was announced that the smithsonian would like to produce audio cassettes for children. the smithsonian has requested nominations (or volunteers) for the post of folklorist editor for that series. persons interested in the project or who would like further information should contact lori taylor at the smithsonian (center for folklife programs, 955 l'enfant plaza sw, suite 2600, washington, d.c. 20560). the meeting was adjourned at 8:06 a.m. respectfully submitted, danielle m. roemer secretary rrreasurer 22 aesop prize committee report the aesop prize committee is pleased to announce the following books as co-winners of the first (1992) aesop prize: kimmel, eric a. days of awe: stories for rosh hashanah and yom kippur. illus. erika weihs. new york: viking/penguin,1991. the three stories from jewish folklore in eric kimmel's days of awe: stories for rosh hashanah and yom kippur are beautifully set up with an introductory essay that gives a very fine cultural context for the appreciation of the stories. the stories are on the theme of charity, one of the three main initiatives of the high holidays of rosh hoshanah (new year's) and yom kippur (the day of atonement), the other two being repentance and prayer. the trio of stories is prefaced by a short essay that includes cultural information and interpretation that carefully introduce the young reader to the traditional rationale for the customs associated with these important holidays in the jewish year. "notes to the stories" are back matter in the book, citing precise sources for each tale and explaining the author's considerations concerning his adaptation of the tale. in "a personal note" kimmel differentiates knowledgeably between the storyteller (or writer) and the folklorist. the stories themselves are engaging and well told. their messages are universal, easily compared with expressions of similar cultural values by many other groups, secular or religious. the color illustrations of erika weihs nicely balance the text. they are direct and uncluttered. early in the text, they effectively complement the cultural information and background explanations of ritual and ceremonial references in the text. the illustrations that follow are, for the most part, full page paintings of important scenes from the stories. the scenes focus on action and human interaction, a pleasing extension of the notion of folklore as communication. they reveal, as well, cultural priorities for appropriate behavior. the illustrations for the supernatural story depict traditional motifs that evoke a personal connection between the human and spiritual worlds. the illustrations also feature meaningful aspects of material culture that involve the reader's attention well beyond the verbal narratives themselves. overall, the book expresses the cultural ideal of integrating spirituality into behaviors in everyday life, a salient component of 23 aesop prize the worldview of many cultures. it is a very satisfying experience to read and examine the contents of this book. the reader from outside the tradition is led to an enjoyment of the material through more involvement with what is familiar to insiders than would be possible without the author's thoughtful presentation of cultural information. for readers who identify themselves as being actively jewish, either religiously or culturally, the book is confirmatory. being associated with the calendar year and ritual traditions, the book itself potentially functions as a stimulus to the preservation and perpetuation of traditional behavior. bader, barbara. aesop & company with scenes from his legendary life. illus. arthur geisert, boston: houghton mifflin, 1991. the committee notes the delicious irony of our first aesop prize co-winner being a book on aesop and his fables. we confess that, independently and jointly, we were overly cautious in deliberating on this book, lest we give the impression of being unable to resist the connection between the book's subject and the prize's namesake. we discussed the possibility of giving the book an honorable mention. however, after lengthy deliberation, our appreciation for its merits reinforced each other's initial evaluation of the book. barber bader's aesop & company with scenes from his legendary life is organized into three sections, the first being an impressive essay on the background of the fables and their author. the essay is clearly written in a style that is easily comprehensible to preadolescent readers and includes a valuable discussion of the nature of fables, setting the record straight on such matters as the antiquity of aesop's fables, their purpose, their publishing history, and the facts and legends of aesop's life, the latter from a centuries old fictional biography comprised of a group of narratives about the "fable maker" that circulated orally among the ancients. a short but excellent bibliography concludes "the introduction." a sample of aesop's most popular fables, nineteen in all, follows. the third part of the book is an excerpt from the legendary "life of aesop" that bader discussed in her introductory essay. this is a book that admirably honors the child reader's intelligence while it provides essential information for the appreciation of a group of narratives long beloved by the reading public. the classic fables are typically concise and stylistically appealing. finally, four legends of aesop's early life provide the reader with a small folklore collection to peruse and enjoy. the illustrations, "pictured by" arthur geisert, are skillfully executed etchings in black and tan. they are interspersed throughout the text, greatly enlivening the introduction's explanatory prose and effectively echoing the 24 committee report narrative action. geisert varies his presentations, placing full page illustrations opposite each fable and scattering smaller ones, often details of the larger pictures, throughout the first and third sections of the book. the arrangements of illustrations and their inclusive designs make the book's visual intelligence equal to that of its verbal text. the production of the book is also superior, printed on heavy, off-white stock. educators will find much of value in ''the introduction." the classic look of the book is consistent with the dignity conventional for publications of aesop's tales. yet the book has a contemporaneity that attests to its author and illustrator's attention to the continuity of tradition in our own time, in aesop & company, translated to both word and image. committee remarks: there were sixty-nine nominations for the first aesop prize, some better than others at meeting the criteria stated in the call for nominations. this seems a most auspicious beginning for our initiative, reflecting, we believe, a strong interest in folklore, especially but not exclusively the folktale, by children's book publishers. we were encouraged by the diversity of the books in terms of the vitality of the inclusion of folklore in books for children. the overwhelming number of nominations were picturebook adaptations of individual tales, very few of which included substantial source material. taken together, the titles well illustrated many of the issues that folklorists working with children's books have raised over the years, the most obvious being the failure of writers or publishers to acknowledge the source material for the book-the one or more specific texts of tales collected in the past by amateur or professional folklorists. members may recall that increasing the awareness of folklore sources and a desire to see an increase in books for young readers that accurately presented individual cultures were the principal motivations behind the initiation of this prize. we believe that the two books honored with our first aesop prize will carry our message to publishers, authors, and illustrators across america as they entertain and enlighten their young readers. gary alan fine and linda morley co-chairs cfs aesop prize committee 25 oxford children's encyclopedia. edited by mary worrrall. new york: oxford univeristy press, 1991. 1,644 pp. hardcover $200.00 written in a style that reminds one of the way a good teacher might communicate with children, the oxford children's encyclopedia is a storehouse of information presented in a manner that whets the reader's appetite for more. the set, which is intended for children 8 to 12-year olds, is made up of 7 volumes with volume 7 being an index. entries are arranged alphabetically. although thematic arrangements are often used in children's encyclopedias, the editors responded to the wishes of their consultants-children, teachers, parents and librarians who said that an alphabetic arrangement was really easier than trying to determine which subject volume to consult. the editors did decide, however, to place all the biographical articles together in volume 6 because, as stated in the introduction, "everyone knows who a person is." the decisions about which topics to include were also influenced by children's statements about what they wanted to know. in all, 112 writers and 60 subject specialists participated in the creation of the encyclopedia. although the set includes 2,000 entries, beginning with "aborigines of australia" and ending with "zulus" (aardvarks aren't included and abacuses are dealt with in an article on calculators), there is not an entry for folklore as a topic. there are, however, approximately 50 articles that bear directly on subjects such as myths, legends, and folk tales, as well as numerous others of interest to folklorists. in general, topics relating to folklore are well presented and as precise as can be reasonably expected in an encyclopedia written for young children. the entry for folk music gives a good sense of the scope of the topic and includes margin notes on cecil sharp and alan lomax as well as interesting asides about classical composers who incorporated folk melodies in their work. the article on folk tales and fairy tales begins, " no one knows who first makes up a folk tale. people (the folk) pass them on by telling them." it makes the major points that folk tales are ever changing, ancient or recent. some standard patterns are discussed, and the derivation of the term "fairy tale" is explained. again the margin notes hold interesting tidbits including information about different sources for the cinderella story, as well as facts about chapbooks and other written sources for stories. although the article does list hans christian andersen, perrault, andrew lang, and the grimm brothers as people who retold folk tales, it refers to their works as "folk-tale collections." unfortunately, no effort is made 27 sullivan here to clearly distinguish between writers who use the folk tale form and collectors of traditional tales. the article on the grimms' in the biography section, however; does point out that although the brothers claimed that they were true to their sources they actually rewrote most of the tales, and the article on andersen makes no mention of folk tales at all, referring to andersen's stories as his own creations. missing from the set is any mention of children's games. under the brief article on children there is a section on play, but it makes no mention of games, jokes, riddles or chants specific to children and reads a bit like a cross between a text on the developmental phases of childhood and a book on how children ought to behave. the article on nursery rhymes fares better with an opening paragraph which provides a good, simple introduction to the topic. nursery rhymes are the best-known poetry there is. you learn them by heart when you are very small and never forget them. when you have your own children they wi11learn them from you. they may not have been written down at all for hundreds of years and we do not know how old they are, or what they mean. this is followed by some interesting "guesses" about the origins or symbolism of several common nursery rhymes. american readers will notice a decidedly european if not specifically british focus throughout the set. in the main that translates into more information about celtic and norse myths and legends and less about native american legends and heroes of the old west. however, there is a native american legend included in the article on myths and legends, and the entry for ballads refers to casey jones and includes the text for "the streets of laredo." also, it can be noted that since paul bunyan and pecos bill aren't mentioned at all they are not incorrectly identified as folk heroes. american children will no doubt have some problems with terminology and word usage. for example, no effort is made to clarify words like "cooker," "hob," or "cling-film" for the non-british reader, and bowling is the british sport played on a green and not the one we play in a bowling alley. still, with its wealth of illustrations, photographs, charts, cross-references, and margin notes, the oxford children's encyclopedia provides information both directly and incidentally, and most children will find it accessible and enjoyable to read. ann b. sullivan 28 alvin schwartz 1927-1992 alvin schwartz, a longtime member of the american folklore society and the children's folklore section, best known to most of us for the impressive, extensive collection of books for children and young adults on the subject of folklore of and for children that he published over the past two decades, died march 14, 1992, in princeton, new jersey, of lymphoma. born in brooklyn, new york, april 25, 1927, and knowing early on that the wanted to be a writer, he studied at the city college of new york, 1944-45; served in the us navy, 1945-46; received his a.b. from colby college in 1949; and earned an m.s. in journalism from northwestern university in 1951. alvin's early jobs included being a newspaper reporter, 195155; writing for non-profit and commercial organizations, 1955-59; and serving as director of communications for opinion research corporation, princeton, nj, 1959-64. in 1962 alvin accepted a parttime position as an instructor of english, teaching composition at rutgers university in new brunswick, nj. it was in 1964, however, after the publication of two of his three novels, that alvin became a free-lance writer and began the work that would occupy the rest of his life. his body of work includes three novels and three non-fiction books for adults on the topics of children's play and recreation, public relations, and fatherhood, respectively; sixteen non-fiction volumes for children; twenty-six books of folklore of and for children; and a recent book that he co-authored with bill finger on batman in the sunday comics. of these nearly fifty books, written from 1948 until his untimely death, over half of them-including all the children's folklore titles, with the exception of chin music: tall talk and other talk collected from american folklore (lippincott 1979)--are still in print. a recent conversation with alvin's editor at harpercollins revealed plans to reprint chin music with new illustrations in the near future. alvin's non-fiction/informational books for children are unique in their ability to provide general information on a given topic that he had drawn from a specific source. for example, in the city and its people: the story of one city's government (putnam, 1967), he was able to describe and explain the inner workings of the city government of trenton, nj, and relate that information to the governments of the towns and cities where the readers of this book might live. similarly, the university of pennsylvania was used as his 29 alvin schwartz 1927-1992 source for life at a typical university in university: the students, faculty, and campus life at one university (viking press, 1969). three dozen different stores and businesses in the author's hometown of princeton, nj, served as his models for stores (macmillan, 1977), in which he chronicled the activity that took place, described the goods and services that were provided, and presented information on the origin or manufacture of the products that were sold in the course of a typical business day. alvin's books on night workers, museums, political campaigns, camping, hobbies, unions, and the like are equally informative, but due to the use of photographs as illustrations, they tend to be dated. most of these books can still be found in school and public libraries, but none is currently in print leaving those portions of folklore that have become literature for children in their own right, such as epics, myths, legends, fables, folk tales, and fairy tales, alvin focused, for the most part, on those aspects of the genre that tended to remain in oral tradition. in successive books he examined and presented tongue twisters, word play, jokes and jests, superstitions and other beliefs, tall tales and lies, nonsense, riddles, his ever-popular "scary stories," secret languages, noodle tales, fortune telling and divination, tales of hidden and lost treasure, folk rhymes, and most recently folk poetry. his most artful book may be gold & silver, silver & gold: tales of hidden treasure (farrar, straus & giroux, 1988). this work includes chapters on treasure found and lost; pirate ships and spanish galleons, the whydah and the atocha among them; codes, maps, and signs, with references to "the gold bug" by edgar allan poe, treasure island by robert louis stevenson, and the beale cipher; captain kidd and haunted treasure. despite the appeal of buried or sunken treasure and both voiced and the written warnings and disclaimers of some parents and teachers who feel that some of his material is too frightening for children, alvin' s best-selling books are his collections of "scary stories." the first, scary stories to tell in the dark (1981), includes stories, legends, songs, and poems. its predictable success prompted the publication of more scary stores to tell in the dark (1984) and scary stories 3: more tales to chill your bones (1991). all three are published by harpercollins and illustrated by stephen gammell, whose eerie drawings effectively complement alvin's haunting stories and heighten parental and pedagogical concern. these three books may be purchased singly or as a boxed set. seven of his folklore titles are part of the harpercollins "i can read" series. these books, appropriate for beginning readers, ages four to eight, have no restrictions on vocabulary, but they must conform to a 64-page format where the text is limited to a set number of lines per page and a specific number of characters in each line. it is to alvin's credit that he was able to 30 alvin schwartz 1927-1992 collect riddles, tongue twisters, noodle tales, scary stories, and folk rhymes that met these rigid specifications and, thereby, bring his outstanding work to even the very youngest of readers. his titles in this series include: ten copy cats in a boat and other riddles (1980), busy buzzing bumble bees and other tongue twisters (1982), there is a carrot in my ear and other noodle tales (1982), the extraordinarily popular in a dark, dark room and other scary stories (1984),all our noses are here and other noodle tales (1985), i saw you in the bathtub and other folk rhymes (1989), and ghosts!: ghostly tales from folklore (1991). the hallmarks of alvin's work are his meticulous research, his artful presentation of his findings, and the inclusion not only of a carefully-worded forward to each volume that explains the topic or genre being presented but also the detailed notes, sources, and bibliography found at the end of each work. every attempt is made to present a balanced picture of the stated topic or representative examples of the given genre and to encourage the reader to participate in his own collection or invention. when i grew up long ago (lippincott, 1978), whose complete title easily exceeds that of simon bronner's american children's folklore (august house, 1988), based on oral histories from 1890-1914, for example, employed varied informants who were rich and poor, lived in urban and rural areas, and were white or were representatives of various ethnic minorities. information on how to collect similar oral histories was included. twister of twists, a tangler of tongues (lippincott, 1972) presents a brief history and some background information on tongue twisters, followed by examples in several categories, including some from foreign languages, and ends with instructions "to twist your own twister" and thorough "notes," "sources," and "bibliography" sections. as interest in folklore and oral tradition as a genre of children's literature increased, in general, many people wanted to know more about alvin schwartz and his work, in specific. it was then that he began to be invited to speak at various workshops and conferences. one of those early invitations came from the national council of teachers of english in 1976. his speech, "children, humor, and folklore," later reprinted in two parts in the horn book magazine, clearly shows his understanding of humor, particularly forms of folk humor, and its appeal to children. due to his unique position as an inveterate collector of all forms of folk humor and "scary stories" as well as his prolific publication of anthologies for children on these topics, he was the obvious choice to be the keynote speaker at the 13th annual children's literature conference at east carolina university in 1989. no complete list of awards is available for alvin's work, and classification of his books, as non-fiction or folklore, excluded him as an author from 31 alvin schwartz 1927-1992 consideration for many of the more prestigious awards for children's literature. in a dark, dark room and other scary stories (harpercollins 1984), illustrated by dirk zimmer, however, won the 1987 garden state children's book award for an easy to read book. likewise, more scary stores to tell in the dark (1984), illustrated by stephen gammell, also published by harpercollins, was the winner of the buckeye children's book award in 1989. these accolades, conferred as they were by state library and teachers' organizations, with direct input from the readers themselves, must have been quite well received by the author. alvin has left us, and his intended readers, a noble legacy of more than two dozen well-researched, delightful, readable, annotated volumes of folklore. he is survived by his wife barbara-who, with his editor at harpercollins, will attempt to put "a longer work of folklore" into publishable form for us and future readers-and their four children, john, peter, nancy, and elizabeth. priscilla ord longwood college chronological bibliography by genre novels the blowtop. dial press, 1948. no such mirrors: a novel. writers' cooperative, 1972. sword of desire. arco publishing company, 1952. non-fiction, adult parent's guide to children's play and recreation. collier books, 1963. evaluating your public relations. national public relations council of health and welfare, 1965. to be a father: stories, letters, essays, poems, comments, and proverbs of the delights and despairs of fatherhood. crown publishers, 1967. non-fiction, children and young adult how to fly a kite, catch a fish, grow a flower. macmillan, 1965. america's exciting cities: a guide for parents and children. crowell, 1966. the night workers. dutton, 1966. what do you think? an introduction to public opinion: how it forms, functions. and affects our lives. dutton, 1966. the city and its people: the story of one city's government. putnam, 1967. 32 alvin schwartz 1927-1992 museum: the story of america's treasure houses. dutton, 1967. old cities & new towns: the changing face of the nation. dutton, 1968. the people's choice: the story of candidates, campaigns, and elections. dunon, 1968. the rainy day book. trident press, 1968. going camping: a complete guidefor the uncertain beginner in family camping. macmillan, 1969. university: the students, faculty, and campus life at one university. viking press, 1969. hobbies: an introduction to crafts, collections, nature study, and other life-long pursuits. simon and schuster, 1972. the unions: what they are, how they came to be, how they affect each of us. viking press, 1972. central city/spread city: the metropolitan regions where more and more of us spend our lives. macmillan, 1973. stores. macmillan, 1977. when i grew up long ago: family living, going to school, games and parties, cures and deaths, a comet, a war, falling in love, and other things i remember: older people talk about the days when they were young. lippincott, 1978. folklore for children and young adults *twister of twists, a tangier of tongues. lllus. glen rounds. lippincott, 1972. *tomfoolery: trickery and foolery with words. lllus. glen rounds. harpercollins, 1973. *witcracks: jokes and jests from american folklore. illus. glen rounds. harpercollins, 1973. *cross your fingers, spit in your hat: superstitions and other beliefs. illus. glen rounds. harpercollins, 1974. *whoppers: tall tales and other lies. lllus. glen rounds. lippincott, 1975. *kickle snifters and other fearsome critters. illus. glen rounds. lippincott, 1976. chin music: tall talk and other talk collected from american folklore. illus. john o'brien. lippincott, 1979. * flapdoodle: purenonsense from american folklore. lllus. john 0 'brien. lippincott, 1980. *ten copycats in a boat and other riddles. lllus. marc simont. harper & row, 1980. *scary stories to tell in the dark. illus. stephen gammell. harpercollins, 1981. *buzzing bumblebees and other tongue twisters. lllus. kathie abrams. harper & row, 1982. *the cat' s elbow and other secret languages. lllus. margotzemach. farrar, straus & giroux, 1982. *there is a carrot in my ear and other noodle tales. lllus. karen a. weinhaus. harper & row, 1982. 33 alvin schwartz 1927-1992 *unriddling: all sorts of riddles to puzzle your guessery. illus. sue truesdell. lippincott, 1983. *fat man in a fur coat and other bear stories. illus. david christiana. farrar, straus & giroux, 1984. *in a dark, dark room, and other scary stories. illus. dirk zimmer. harper & row, 1984. *more scary stories to tell in the dark. illus. stephen gammell. harpercollins, 1984. *all of our noses are here, and other noodle tales. illus. karen a. weinhaus. harpercollins, 1985. *tales of trickery from the land of spoof. illus. david christiana. farrar, straus & giroux, 1985. *telling fortunes: love magic, dream signs, and other ways to learn the future. illus. tracey cameron. lippincott, 1987. *gold & silver, silver & gold: tales of hidden treasure. illus. david christiana. farrar, straus & giroux, 1988. *i saw you in the bathtub, and other folk rhymes. illus. syd hoff. harpercollins, 1989. *ghosts!: ghostly tales from folklore. illus. victoria chess. harpercollins, 1991. *scary stories 3: more tales to chill your bones. illus. stephen ganunell. harpercollins, 1991. *and the green grass grew all around: folk poetry from everyone. illus. sue truesdell. harpercollins, 1992. *stories to tell a cat. illus. catherine huerta. harpercollins, 1992. article "children, humor, and folklore." national council of teachers of english. 26 november 1976. reprinted in the horn magazine. "part i," lid:3 (june 1977):281-87; "part ii," lid:4 (august 1977):471-76. co-authored work *finger, bill, and alvin schwartz. batman: the sunday comics. ed denis kitchen. d. c. comics, 1991. * denotes books currently in print. 34 notes and announcements libraries unlimited announces the publication of gail de vos' storytellingfor young adults : techniques and treasury. ms. de vos, a storyteller and consultant in edmonton, canada, discusses the art of storytelling and outlines the potential classroom uses of folktales and folktale motifs, classical myths and legends, urban legends, and tall tales and shows how storytelling can be combined with the visual arts. for ordering information, contact libraries unlimited, p.o. box 3988, englewood, co 80155, or call 1-800-237-6124. previously unpublished african american, hispanic american, asian american, and native american (arana) authors and illustrators are invited to submit manuscripts for the newly established multicultural publishers exchange (mpe) children's book award. the award will consist of a publishing contract with highsmith press, including royalties and a $2000.00 advance against royalties to be divided equally between the author and the illustrator, and a medal and certificate to be presented at the annual mpe conference. criteria for selection, entry rules, and additional information can be obtained by contacting dr. charles taylor, executive director, multicultural publishers exchange, 2215 atwood avenue, madison, wi 53204 or by calling 1-608-244-5633. on 1 april 1993, oxford university press books for children and young adults will publish two books-the adventures of young krishna. the blue god of india. by diksha dalal-clayton, and the elephant-headed god and other hindu tales. a collection of twelve tales-that bring the world of hindu mythology to life for readers from ages 9 to adult. for ordering information, contact annie stafford, oxford university press books and children and young adults, 200 madison avenue, new york, ny 10016. the 1993 old songs festival of traditional music and dance will be held at the altamont fairgrounds, altamont, ny, 25-27 june 1993. children under 15 are admitted free when accompanied by an adult, and there is a creative play area and a full time music performance stage for families. for information, contact: old songs, inc., p.o. box 399, guilderland, ny 12084. 35 notes and announcements the children's folklore section of the american folklore society annually offers the w.w. newell prize (which includes a cash award of $350.(0) for the best undergraduate or graduate student essay on a topic in children's folklore. students must submit their own papers, and published papers are eligible. instructors are asked to encourage students with eligible papers to enter the competition. papers must be typed, double-spaced, and on white bond paper. on the first page include the author's name, academic address, home address, and telephone numbers. deadline for each year's competition is march 1st. submit papers or write for additional information: carole h. carpenter, 172 roselawn avenue, toronto, ontario, m4r lec canada. 36 the children's folklore review is available only to members of the children's folklore section of the american folklore society. to become a member, send $10.00 yearly dues to danielle roemer, literature and language, nonhero kentucky university, highland heights, ky 41076. cfr requests manuscripts that are prepared using laser printed text or letter quality text. we request that authors using typewriters or dot-matrix printers have their manuscripts redone and a laser printed copy made. this will enable us to scan the copy, thereby eliminating rekeying the manuscript. please send manuscripts to: c. w. sullivan iii, editor children's folklore review department of english east carolina university greenville, nc 27858-4353 children' s folklore review is published twice a year and sent to all members of the children's folklore section of the american folklore society. published by east carolina university issn: 0739-5558 copyright @ 1993 children's folklore section printed by morgan printers carnes carnes carnes alvin schwartz notes and announcements ocr document expressing and creating ourselves in childhood: a commentary simon j. bronner alexander chamberlain (1865-1914) would have been surprised by the essays in this volume. editor of the journal of american folklore from 1900-1907, he promoted child study in the understanding of culture as the pivot that allows for examination of "yesterday" and "to-morrow," for children as a semiliterate society inherit the oral tradition of the past and use it to shape the future. this concern for historical progression ran through many anthropological works of the gilded age, including chamberlain's other writings on "primitive science and industry." with folklorists taking a prominent role, gilded age scholars celebrated and studied children's culture with unprecedented enthusiasm. indeed, the journal of american folklore was a sympathetic home for studies of children's culture, especially since its editors from 1888 to 1907 established their reputations in research of children's folklore. while chamberlain's predecessor at the journal, william wells newell (1839-1907), is often given credit for his groundbreaking collection games and songs of american children (1883), it was chamberlain who most forcefully articulated an early anthropological interpretation of children's culture in the child and childhood in folk-thought (1896). he fixed on what he called the "child-idea" in culture, the view that children represent through folklore the vitality of a culture. unabashedly romantic and religious, yet appealing to science, chamberlain took the vantage of "elders" who pass tradition on to children and evaluate them. "everywhere through the world," chamberlain wrote, "the activities of childhood have been appealed to, and the race has wonderfully profited by its wisdom, its naiveté, its ingenuity, and its touch of divinity" (403). from a perusal of chamberlain's impressive tome or newell's collection, one might gather that children primarily knew simple rhymes, games, and beliefs crafted ages before, probably by adults, and surviving despite the advance of civilization. much of children's folklore study in the twentieth century owed at least some debt to the collections and ideas of the gilded age folklorists, but replacing evolutionism with ideas of relativism pervading new scholarship in folklore, the essayists in this volume make several important theoretical breaks with our gilded age legacy. i offer that the focus on narrating among the essays in this volume is more than the common subject examined; 47 bronner the focus reveals a rethinking of children's culture in light of new documentary and interpretative techniques. these historical and theoretical winds of change and their implications for comprehending children's culture command my attention in this commentary. neither newell nor chamberlain offers much in the way of narrative behavior given by children; four brief paragraphs in chamberlain's study describe "story-telling" to children, but none gives an account of what children do with this knowledge, no less recognize narrative creativity (chamberlain 204-5). ultimately chamberlain's book becomes a study of the image of the child in adult lore rather than an exposition of children's ways of thinking, learning, and developing. for chamberlain, newell, and so many others to this day, the essential question to be answered with the materials of childhood is the relation of literary art as a reflection of culture of an early age to the advanced stage of adulthood. hence we can appreciate the remarkable attention to children's lore by late-nineteenth-century folklorists as a tribute to the industrial progress and rationality supposedly achieved by "modem" adults in the gilded age (see bronner, folklife studies 119-34). in the predominant evolutionary thinking of the day, children represented the infancy, the origins of adulthood and civilization. on the ladder of progress from savagery, through barbarism, to civilization set up in most evolutionary studies, children were our little savages, noteworthy for their retention of ancient lore and invention of new fantasies. the influences of darwinian philosophy and modem aesthetic values should be apparent in the assumptions of many studies of children's folklore from the nineteenth-century to the present. from darwin's influence is an evolutionary premise about the "natural" movement from simple to complex forms, from children's rhymes to adult narratives. the "specimens" of past lore therefore needed to be collected and arranged into comparable types that showed the evolution of forms according to natural laws (see bronner, american folklore studies 1-38). although newell recognized the inventiveness of children, he and others nonetheless selected the "traditional" forms showing stability and distribution over generations for comparison (see fine). scholars well after newell chose specimens that had a completed quality to them and drew attention to themselves because of their artistic characteristics. such arrangements and choices resulted in a picture of cultural stability over an extended time. another result was a map of cultural space in which isolable groups expressed their differences through lore. within this map, children and adults, women and men, to name some groups, inhabited separate spheres (see bronner, american folklore studies 1-38). i consider the essayists here as part of a trend toward asking different 48 a commentary kinds of questions based on new assumptions. they share with chamberlain a concern for the "thought" that folklore reveals, although they would probably phrase it as process rather than form, as "thinking" rather than "thought." significantly, in their very raising of narrative as an essential part of the child's way of forming and communicating meaning, they suggest a further departure from the evolutionary model of movement from simple to complex forms. they don't collect so much as recognize interactions that employ "stories," many of which may be unique but follow recognizable structures (see goodwin). the child studied by judith haul, for example, responds with narrative behavior to different situations. the understanding of these interactions comes not from the historical forms to which they relate as much as the social needs presented in certain situations and the ways that people communicate with one another. natural laws commanding cultural development over the globe don't explain the scene presented by haut as much as do the functions and structures of the moment. the essential questioning thus becomes behavioral rather than naturalistic. the questioning is not about the lines from "yesterday" into "tomorrow," but rather about the ways people express themselves taking cues from any number of simultaneous influences, and indeed create themselves through expression. the breaks that this questioning of expression make with gilded age approaches are evident in the emphasis placed today on the keywords of development, learning, and communication. by using development, many researchers today draw attention to varying rates of growth and varieties of expression among children. its is granted that children strive toward the maturity of adulthood, but one also recognizes that children have distinctive behaviors that don't necessarily carry over in to adulthood. in looking at development, researchers also try to get around the misleading opposition of childhood and adulthood as unified groups. children, the researchers point out, have individual profiles and acquire different skills and tendencies according to a wide array of factors—including gender, class, ethnicity, location, and family. even taking into account the predominance of shared age-related traits among children, one finds more complexity to the subtle difference between, as one child exclaimed in an interview to me, "fifth and sixth grade!" (see fine, 17083, for discussion of "circular generations"). he was not talking about educational skills as much a cultural property of play and narrative styles appropriate to the group with whom he spent most of his time and the environment in which it was spent (see virtanen for a study using these considerations). in addition, many interviewers of youth note the insistence of children ("kids," children prefer to say) on their age not as five or six, but as five and a half or six and a half. 49 bronner within the broad neutral native category of "kids" lies an implication of change, physical and social-and cultural. the rapid physical and cognitive changes that occur in childhood, not to mention the social clustering of children in school, tempt us to categorize it separately. yet contexualizing aging with the life course in the investigation of children's lives offers a closer look at the ways children use lore to respond to developmental and social changes (bronner "left to their own devices"). through the life course, individuals learn from a variety of sources about responding to different situations. during the late nineteenth century, evolutionary assumptions led some scholars to imagine that literacy and technology naturally replace oral forms of learning. yet experience shows that people surrounded by technology demand the kind of learning we usually associate with folklore-by word of mouth, by imitation and demonstration, by custom. indeed, literacy and technology often become tools to engage narrative behavior, as elizabeth tucker's study shows. other examples might be the use of photocopiers for passing traditional humor and computers for folk games. the important lesson is that people use folklore for the kind of powerful learning and communication it offers and are willing to adjust it to new technology so as to engage its qualities. the new awareness of children' s complexity and ability that informs essays here by c. w. sullivan iii and judith haut leads us to consider the remarkable rapidity with which children learn language and the distinctiveness of the first few years of life (see brown; sanches and kirshenblattgimblett). within their first year, children become aware quickly of sequences of words that carry meaning and evoke responses from adults (brown 1973). in multilingual households, children can quickly select different codes of speech and often exaggerate their styles.1 all to little recognized are the culturally variable developments of ordered "baby talk" and the creative uses of play languages by children (see sherzer; sanches and kirshenblatt-gimblett). explaining the mechanisms by which children recognize some word sequences as "stories" and find ways to strategically use them essentially challenges scholars to question social interaction and development. even before language is acquired, children become aware of culturally defined spaces that suggest narrative structures in that they have directions and boundaries. in american culture, the rectangle-in the crib, the room, the play block-is an particularly ubiquitous model (see bronner, grasping things 1517). in many cultures, circular spaces dominate and may be investigated for a relation to narrative structure. in one study of the mescalero apache, for example, claire farrer found that houses, dances, 50 a commentary and children's games such as tag show strong circularity in contrast to anglo-american linearity (farrer; see also bronner "anglo-american aesthetic"). while c.w. sullivan iii asks readers to contemplate the influence of the reading process in the ways that children perceive their own narrating, he also notes the processes that occur prior to reading. before adults "read" to children, they typically use play to enumerate objects on the body as points of reference for narrative sequencing. among the first playful performances recalled from tradition offered by adults to children are finger or toe formulas. in french a formula uses the structure of the family in a sequence from the thumb to the little finger: voici le pére voici la mére voici la demoiselle voici le fils voici le petit rincouincouin. [shiver 223] some of my pennsylvania-german informants recall a formula using the occupations on the farm: der ist der bauer [farmer] der ist die bauerin [farmer's wife] der ist der knecht [farmhand] der ist die dien'rn [farmhand's wife] und ides kleine wutzklein in der wiegen [piglet in a cradle]. [see stoudt] a common sequence played on the toes in american culture is: this little piggy wen to market this little piggy stayed home this little piggy had roast beef this little piggy had none and this little piggy went wee, wee, wee. sometimes known inaccurately as "rhymes," these expressions offered by adults usually before they read to a child are more in the way of verbal formulas accompanied by physical action that make the infant aware of itself. the verbal stress and elongation in the conclusion accompanying the grabbing of the toes or fingers gives the sense of an ending that relies on what preceded it. are these expressions recognized as stories? in some german sources, these expressions are called fingermächen, or "finger tales" (shiver). if american children do not recognize them as 51 bronner stories, then they may employ their structures in their own playful expressions using repetition and rhythm. the formulaic rhythm of "this little piggy," for instance, relates closely to the youthful narrative elizabeth tucker identifies as "in a dark, dark wood": okay, you walk down this long, black road and there's this big, urn, black house and you go in this big black room and there's-(speeds up) in the big black room there's a big black closet, in the big black closet there's a big black tuxedo, in the big black tuxedo there's a big black pocket, in the big black pocket is a big black box, in the big black box is a red jelly bean. (laughs) [tucker 483; see also opie and opie 36]. even later in childhood, the rhythm and repetition characterizing this narrative form appears in ghost stories often given at camps and slumber parties. one such story is sometimes identified as a subunit under the heading "johnny, i want my liver" (a subtype, as it has been categorized by folklorists, of aarnethompson tale-type 366), although the narrative technique repeats in many stories used by children. this lady gave this boy named johnny a dollar to go to the store to get some liver. but he spent it on something else before he got the liver, and he had to bring this lady her liver. so he saw this graveyard right next to the store. so he unburied a guy, and he got the guy's liver and brought it to the lady. the lady said, "this is a real good liver." but that night they heard, "i want my liver back, i want my liver back, i want my liver back." then they hear, "i'm on your first step, i want my liver back, i want my liver back, i want my liver back." then "i'm on your porch, i want my liver back, i want my liver back. i'm in your living room, i want my liver back, i want my liver back. i'm in the bedroom, i want my liver back, i want my liver back" (teller grabs listener in abdomen) [bronner, american children's folklore 158; see also opie and opie 36; virtanen 76; tucker 370-73,495-96] and in so-called invented stories, one can discern similar structures and rhythms, such as this one told repeatedly by a girl from two to three years old that employs the familiar family structure along with the repetition of actions leading to a conclusion: 2/22/75 the man stayed home the children went out then a cookie monster came 52 a commentary then the cookie monster went away and the mommy was angry and then the father was angry and then the children went out again then the father went out then the mother went out they went to the park then they went home and then the father was doing work and then it was getting late the children went to sleep and the mommy and the father went to sleep 8/13/75 the mother went out then the father went out then the mother went out again and then the father went out then the children went out then policeman came the mother came back from the meeting then the father came back from the meeting then a cookie monster came and the policeman came again then the cookie monster went away [sutton-smith 53] with these "texts," we long to know the social interactions and cues that gave rise to them to understand how participants understood their meaning. when these texts are construed as narrative, there is an assumption that they are in themselves part of a sequence. there is an additional assumption that while the story draws attention to the text, "narrative" directs inquiry to the performance, some of which may be out of the awareness of the "story-teller." as judith haut's essay demonstrates, the sequence around the narrative may involve conversation, or play, signals that aid in the recognition of the beginning and ending of "story" and its different meanings in various situations. the use of "narrative" to describe such sequences deserves discussion because it illustrates the different questions being asked by the essayists in this issue. the use of "narrative" is more characteristic of present scholarship than the gilded age folklorists (see bronner 1987). narrative is a technical term that refers to the result of a process (narrating in context) rather than the form of relating information in an organized way. "narrative" is conspicuously absent in folkloristic dictionaries such as the standard dictionary of folklore. mythology and legend (1950) and 53 bronner general ethnological concepts (1960). elliott oring, however, made the term central in his chapter on "folk narratives" in the textbook folk groups and folklore genres (1986). "narrative," be declared, "is another word for story." then why not use the more familiar "story"? the answer lies in the suggestion of process of "narrating" in narrative. oring continues, "narrating is a method by which an experience is transformed into verbal account" (121). in an even more recent source, the dictionary of concepts in cultural anthropology (1991), robert winthrop claims that "one trend discernible, in both anthropology and folklore studies, is a concern for understanding narrative as a communicative performance, 'a totality encompassing not only the verbal story but the entire narrative experience, auditory and visual, of spectator and actor.''' essentially, narrative, winthrop argues, brings out the "expressive dimension of culture" (126). by using narrative, researchers blur the lines between the verbal and non-verbal dimensions of culture. narrative suggests the organization of experience in a number of ways. non-verbal customs such as games played in childhood also follow narrative structure that culturally varies. in many american chasing games, for example, dramatic tension is created in a tripartite narrative structure: a departure from home, a chase, and return home (dundes). in what ways does the parent's playing of "peek-a-boo," one of the first traditional forms of play experienced between adult and child in american culture affect an understanding of narrative sequence? the structure moves from the bidden face to the face revealed accompanied by a rhyme, "peek-a-boo, i see you!" this frame around the repeated play activity causes delight in the child. then among the first organized games played by children among themselves is hide-and-go-seek (bronner, american children's folklore 176-78). one can also notice that a number of spontaneously "invented" fantasies in verbal and non-verbal form reported in the folkstories of children by brian sutton-smith (1981) or city play by amanda dargan and steven zeitlin (1990) involve the dramatic tension of disappearance and recovery. of particular significance to the analysis of learning and development raised by these books and the essays here is the questioning of the uses to which narrating is put. strictly speaking, children don't need stories to communicate, but they demand stories, and quickly employ narrative behavior for various ends. from their early and subsequent experiences, the question arises, bow do children perceive the functions of narrative behavior? is their demand based on the aid to learning that stories provide? do they recall the entertaining reinforcement of the finger rhyme, the social organizing effect of the game, and the communicative clarity of putting ideas in story? how are distinctions made between the 54 a commentary televised story and the told story? or for that matter, between the true and fantastic story? how do they perceive the strategies for recounting a tale to an adult or to other children? judith haut keenly observes the importance of social awareness to the kinds of performances she heard from a single child, while c.w. sullivan iii incisively questions the ways that children learn structural competence for performance. sullivan's inquiry begins at the point of literary understanding of story, but suggests a broader inquiry into the relations of narrative to children's cognitive development. to view such relations and the strategies for employing narrative, the emphasis needs to be on the expressive behavior used, rather than the isolation of finished forms. the categories of preand post applied to the development of narrative forms, i'm afraid, reflect the old evolutionary opposition of child and adult, and may be misleading because they suggest a magical transformation caused by natural law rather than the process by which expressions are used. when talking of process, researchers look to the communication that can be observed and documented. this discussion differs from the collections of specimens because in the study of communication the lore emerges as a small part of an encompassing event. judith haut, for example, documents several situations in which a story emerged in response to the conversation between participants in the situation. in some cases, the story was offered because one was specifically asked for: "tell me a story," someone asked. on other occasions, the story came out as part of conversation to impose an effect on listeners. what haut is describing is a process of creativity rather than one of creations. creativity is employed to bring old and new elements, as well as individual and social concerns, together in response to the social situation; it suggests a process that combines tradition and invention. the "creation" of concern to chamblerlain implied the separation of folklore survivals from new inventions. as the essays in this issue show, various kinds of learning intertwine as do creativity and tradition. the essays suggest therefore that our driving ethnographic task is to examine the various roles of tradition in the communication of meaning. no longer considering the survival of folklore the main issue, they turn to the creativity of tradition in everyday life (see bronner creativity and tradition).2 i'm not surprised by the themes presented in the essays here. as chamberlain and newell used folklore research to reflect on the hierarchical industrial age rising in their gilded age society, so the trend today is to contemplate the swirling social currents of an electronic era. more than an objective anthropological endeavor envisioned by chamberlain, the ethnographic task now is broadly interdisciplinary and simultaneously involves us as participants and observers. one might argue that the 55 bronner observations made by the essayists are at least a response to our ability to document ourselves in the communication technology that in itself stresses process. from this communication technology, we learn more about the simultaneity and spontaneity of everyday life, and we are reminded of how little we remember of ourselves from our own childhoods. we need more attention to children's folklore in an interactional framework to move beyond the blinding influence of the "child-idea." can we separate what happens in childhood from the "child-idea," the images we have created as adults for the age? priscilla ord approaches this subject by examining the adaptations of children's language and lore in books written for children. her discussion reminds me of my experience with reality and image in american children's folklore (1988). in the book, i recorded children's traditions as i heard them, and that commonly included language somehow considered fit only for adults. i received less than kind comments for suggesting in the book that children's expressiveness frequently takes on a harsh tone. "i swear that my child doesn't say those things," i heard. yet many open-minded parents came back to me after i asked them to ask their children about the content of their "stories" and told me that, to their surprise, their children indeed expressed themselves and created themselves outside of adult limits. in recording the creativity of children's tradition, i violated the idea of childhood as evolving from innocence to experience. i also violated the notion of children's expression-sometimes referred to as "ditties"--as quaint or "childish" art. what may be surprising as well in these essays to some readers is the turn from art to expression, for the popular study of children's lore still has a tendency to identify the gems of a diminutive art. in the questioning of structure and process in this special issue, i hope we come to appreciate more the competence each child has for creativity, rather than the concern of chamberlain for "those rude scribblings and quaint efforts at delineations, whence, in the course of ages, have been evolved. . . the marvelous creations of a rubens and an angelo" (chamberlain 3). even priscilla ord's essay, apparently concerned with literary devices used by accomplished authors, reveals sources of narration in the everyday language of children. the "creativity of tradition" thus applies as much to authors as to storytellers. in judith haut's essay, we learn that there is no right version of the child's favorite story; the child employs the structure of what he recognizes as "story" in several situations to create something new. in elizabeth tucker's essay, we learn the ways that children interpret packaged stories for themselves. indeed, all these essays touch on how narrating or storytelling as cultural praxis becomes a way of knowing (see bronner "art, performance, and praxis"). 56 a commentary if the major theme presented in the various essays for consideration is the appreciation for the complexity of children's communication using narrative behavior, then the subtheme is the need to understand children as they perceive their situation in addition to the way we perceive them. these essays signal, in sum, the recognition of tell-tale signs of human thinking. their suggestions inspire an uncovering of the ways that discernment is connected to the telling, the ways as folklore offers, that every child sees, or should i say, tells which way the wind blows. the pennsylvania state university at harrisburg notes 1. to give an example in my home state of the implication of multilingualism on the development of speech and narrative styles, 6.9 percent of pennsylvanians speak a language other than english at home. yet too often, american researchers assume narrative ability exclusively in english. the pennsylvania-german folklorists early on discussed multilingual abilities to express folklore among children; see gladfelter, kreider, and spotts; shoemaker; stoudt. a more recent exception to the american tendency is found in brady on navajo children's stories, although no texts are offered in navajo. 2. similar to the guiding concept of "narrative," the use of "creativity of tradition" underscores the emergent quality of expressive behavior and its purposeful uses in various situations. this folkloristic consideration of the "creativity of tradition" cuts across material and verbal expressions. see crowley; evans; bronner, grasping things; briggs; jones. references brady, margaret k. "some kind of power": navajo children's skinwalker narratives. salt lake city: u of utah p, 1984. briggs, charles l. competence in performance: the creativity of tradition in mexicano verbal art. philadelphia: u of pennsylvania p, 1988. bronner, simon j. american children's folklore. little rock: august house, 1988. ________. american folklore studies: an intellectual history. lawrence: up of kansas, 1986. ________. anglo-american aesthetic." encyclopedia of southern culture. ed. charles reagan wilson and william ferris. chapel hill: u of north carolina p, 1989. 458-60. _______. "art, performance, and praxis: the rhetoric of contemporary folklore studies." western folklore 47 (1988): 75-102. _______. ed. creativity and tradition: new directions. logan: utah state up, 1992. _______. ed. folklife studies from the gilded age: object, rite, and custom in 57 bronner victorian america. ann arbor: umi research press, 1987. ______. grasping things: folklife material culture and mass society in america. lexington: up of kentucky, 1986. ______. "'left to their own devices': interpreting american children's folklore as an adaptation to aging," southern folklore 47 (1990): 101-16. brown, roger. a first language: the early stages. cambridge: harvard up, 1973. chamberlain, alexander francis. the child and childhood in folk-thought. new york: macmillan, 1896. crowley, daniel j. i could talk old-story good: creativity in bahamian folklore. berkeley: u of california p, 1966. dargan, amanda, and steven zeitlin. city play. new brunswick, new jersey: rutgers up, 1990. dundes, alan. "on game morphology: a study of the structure of non-verbal folklore." new york folklore quarterly 20 (1964): 276-88. evans, david. big road blues: tradition and creativity in the folk blues. berkeley: u of california p, 1982. farrer, claire r. "play and inter-ethnic communication." the anthropological study of play: problems and prospects. ed. david f. lancy and b. allan tindal. cornwall, ny: leisure press, 86-92. fine, gary alan. "children and their culture: exploring newell's paradox." western folklore 39 (1980): 170-83. gladfelter, millard e., homer l. kreider, and charles d. spotts. "symposium on the pennsylvania dutch dialect." pennsylvania folklife 18 (autumn 1968): 44-48. goodwin, marjorie harness. he-said-she-said: talk as social organization among black children. bloomington: indiana up, 1990. hultkrantz, alee. general ethnological concepts. copenhagen: rosenkilde and bagger, 1960. jones, michael owen. craftsman of the cumberlands: traditional and creativ ity. lexington: up of kentucky, 1989. leach, maria. standard dictionary of folklore, mythology and legend. 2 vols.. new york: funk and wagnalls, 1950. newell, william wells. 1883. baltimore: clearfield, 1992. opie, iona, and peter opie. lore and language of schoolchildren. london: oxford up, 1959. oring, elliott. "folk narratives." folk groups and folklore genres. ed. elliott oring. logan: utah state up, 1986. 121-45. sanches, mary, and barbara kirshenblatt-gimblett. "children's traditional speech play and child language." speech play: research and resources for the study of linguistic creativity. ed. barbara kirshenblatt-gimblett. philadelphia: u of pennsylvania p, 1976.65-110. sherzer, joel. "play languages: implication for (socio) linguistic." speech play: research and resources for the study of linguistic creativity. ed. barbara kirshenblatt-gimblett. philadelphia: u of pennsylvania p, 1976. 19-36. shiver, sam m. "finger rhymes." southern folklore quarterly 5 (1941): 221 58 a commentary 34. shoemaker, alfred a. traditional rhymes and jingles of the pennsylvania dutch. lancaster: pennsylvania dutch folklore center, 1951. stoudt, rev. john baer. the folklore of the pennsylvania germans. lancaster, pennsylvania: pennsylvania-german society, supplement to volume 23 of the proceedings, 1915. sutton-smith, brian. the folkstories of children. philadelphia: u of pennsylva nia p, 1981. toelken, barre. the dynamics of folklore. boston: houghton mifflin, 1979. tucker, elizabeth. "tradition and creativity in the storytelling of pre-adoles cent girls." diss., indiana university: blooimington, ann arbor: umi, 1977. 7805583 virtanen, leea. children's lore. helsinki: finnish literature society, 1978. winthrop, robert h. dictionary of concepts in cultural anthropology. new york: greenwood, 1991. 59 ocr document extremes: how girls play slaughter, how boys play slaughter at valley oak elementary linda riley extremes a little boy once played so loud that the thunder up in the thunderclouds, said,"since i can't be heard, why, then, i'll never, never thunder again!" and a little girl once kept so still that she heard a fly on the window sill whisper and say to a ladybird "she's the stillest child i ever heard." james whitcomb riley lunchtime at valley oak elementary school in davis is busy. packs of children roar through the playground, running, shouting, shoving, laughing, skipping, crying, kicking, cheering, and chasing-their movements seem random and complicated to the adult eye. but if you watch carefully, you can find a method to all their madness. the children sort themselves out. some play alone, some in small groups of two or three, some in larger groups. and they know who belongs where: the benches nearest the classrooms are for the loners, the jungle gym and lawn area east of the school are for the small groups, and the center of the playground is where the large groups play. this center, made of asphalt, is where games like four-square, kickball, or pogo are played. directly in the center of this center, in between the basketball hoops, the children playa game they call slaughter. some days slaughter is played by a regular group of fifth grade boys; some days is is played by a regular group of fifth grade girls. the two groups are always separate; they never play together. the first group to stake out the basketball hoops is the group who gets to play that day. both groups play slaughter the same way. the game is similar to dodge ball, but the rules are more complex. the children form two lines of opposing teams. each team has a goalie who stands in the back behind the team of opposition. to play, the goalie throws a lightweight ball at the opposing team. the opposing team members try either to dodge the ball or to catch it in midair and throw it at the first team. if a child is struck with the ball or drops the ball onto the ground while trying to catch it, she is said to be "slaughtered" and must exchange places with the goalie. 10 riley what is interesting about the two groups who play slaughter is that, although they use the same methods and rules of play, each game is quite different. both teams have formed their own folkgroups and have invented their own stylized form of play in order to create their own shared group meaning. i believe that shared meanings of each group are different because one group is a male group and the other is a female group. i arrived at my conclusions after spending three hours a week for eight weeks observing the children at valley oak as they played slaughter. to observe, i sat under a tree about ten feet way from their game, watching and taking notes. i chose valley oak because both my children attend school there, although neither plays slaughter. my research was helped by the fact that to the players i was simply matt and dani' s mother. most of them seemed oblivious to my presence. the only problem i had with my research was in the beginning when i tended to make judgements about what was "good" play and what was "bad" play. sometimes i wanted to interfere when the children cheated or fought. someone needed to, i thought. the person in charge of lunchtime discipline at valley oak is a playground supervisor named mary. mary is an elderly hispanic woman who has worked at various school playgrounds for the past twenty-four years. she always stays on the periphery of the playground, only interfering if a child complains to her or if the children's play becomes clearly dangerous. the playground is large, and she misses much of the fighting and swearing. mary smiles often, her eyes crinkling with tiredness. i thought it was from shell-shock. i asked her if the children's play has changed in the past twenty-four years. she smiled and told me, "no, it doesn't change." she paused a moment, then said, "they're good kids though." after talking to mary, i relaxed a bit. i remembered my own childhood games, remembered that we too fought and swore and cheated. i realized that the mortality of modem children is not in decline, at least at valley oak. if anything, these children are more resilient than ever. it was then that i began to see the underlying patterns to their play. i began to be deeply interested in my research and started to relish the "bad" play. it gave me good material to write down. it was from this "bad" play that i learned how slaughter is played, what differences "exist between the girls' playing of it and the boys', and what the implications of these differences are. in discussing the differences and their implications, i will focus upon three topics: how the game is framed by both groups, the boundaries created by both, and how disputes are handled within each group. framing: let the games begin for the boys at valley oak, getting ready to play slaughter is a complicated business. first the boys stand around aimlessly for a while, thumping and kicking the ball. a few try to appoint themselves leader, but are ignored. they wait. there is much scuffling, boasting, and swearing. sometimes the boys throw the ball at 11 slaughter each other's genitals or call out to each other in falsetto, "don't do that! you'll hurt me." one day alex tells billy, "you're such a virgin." the tallest boy in the group, arona, usually arrives late. he looks bored and says little. usually billy names some possibilities for a team. the names include his and arona. arona nods. the game begins. the boys arrange themselves on the basketball court haphazardly. an outsider cannot tell who is on what team. there is more boasting and swearing. the language is aggressive: "waste him." "cream him." "you are trying to challenge me, asshole?" one boy hits another with the ball and pretends to fire a semi-automatic randomly thought the schoolyard.1 for the girls, slaughter begins much differently. the game starts the moment everyone is assembled. the team members are usually the same from day to day. the girls line up in even rows. when a girl takes a turn or is hit by the ball, she looks downward to the ground, as if in embarrassment. no one boasts; no one taunts. two girls act as cheerleaders, dancing in unison, singing "woogah, woogah," and laughing. the play is slow. why the variations? children's folklore can often be understood in relation to four polar oppositions: order versus disorder, hierarchy versus equality, male versus female, and dynamic versus conservative (mechling 96-97). perhaps the differences are the result of different folkgroups focusing on different sides of the dialectics. the boys seem to be constructing a play frame that stresses hierarchy and disorder, the girls, a frame that stresses equality and order. for these particular boys, the notion that children are an underclass in american society seems important. children's play is often antithetical, and is constructed to oppose the official order of meaning, uses, and processes (mechling 97). perhaps boys have good reason to oppose the official order of society. men in american society are valued for their ability to be aggressive and individualistic. during the 20th century, however, boys have been more closely supervised, and their most aggressive games have been delineated. in fact, since 1920, the whole of the play world has become more feminine and favors domestic, verbal, and non aggressive play (sutton-smith 232-233). slaughter is a means for the valley oak boys to invert adult values which stress order and equality. freed from the constraints of the classroom and any adult intervention, the valley oak boys can experiment with the notion of what it means to be male in american society. slaughter is constructed as a folk performance so that the boys can learn how to maintain the balance between being masculine and being a member of society. the game helps them come to terms with significant cultural categories (brady 175). when they play they are learning to be aggressive and individualistic along with learning how to fit into a group. the boys invert adult values of order in the way they play haphazardly and aggressively; they invert adult values of equality in the way that they have a clear leader, choose sides, boast, and taunt each other. the boys also show anxiety in their ability to be masculine; so they invert masculinity by talking like females and 12 riley taunting each other about their sexuality. excitement is heightened because these boys are exploring themes not open to them in the everyday world (mechling 98). the girls at valley oak do not seem to be opposing the adult world of school, which i said earlier stresses the "feminine." instead, their play seems to focus on the tension between what is typically thought to be male and female behavior. the early play of girls was segregated and focused on status and marriage. but girls have shown a steady increase in their interest in the more active games formally played by boys. title ix of the federal education amendments in 1972 mandated equality in sports for girls and resulted in increased changes (sutton-smith 232-233). the women's movement has also resulted in changes in attitudes about what is proper female behavior. but the result of change is often confusion. boy's games are inherently disorderly, aggressive, and hierarchical. when the girls stress order and equality in their games (order by always having the same team members and standing in even row; equality by not taunting or boasting and by looking embarrassed when it is time to take a turn), they address the inherent tension between order and disorder, hierarchy and equality, and ultimately the puzzling contradictions inherent in being a female in modem society. the girls' game of slaughter is purposely framed so that they can address the tensions they have as females, and so that, like the boys, they too can learn how to balance these tensions. what they have to balance is different from what the boys have to balance, so they adopt a different frame. boundaries: risky business according to the regular rules of slaughter, if a boy is "slaughtered" with the ball, he becomes a goalie, and the boy who "slaughters" him becomes "it" but one day i watched the goalie hit a boy named tai squarely in the stomach with the ball. quickly, tai threw the ball back to the goalie, saying, "i have two lives.''2 the group discussed the events for a few minutes and then decided that tai did in fact have two lives and would not be required to be a goalie unless he was "slaughtered" one more time. the next boy to be "slaughtered" also tried to impose the two lives rule, but was not allowed even a period of negotiation. instead, he was handed the ball and motioned to the goalie spot, where he went without complaint. when the girls play slaughter, they never cheat. in fact, when a girl takes a turn, she does it quickly without calling attention to herself. afterwards, she usually joins her teammates in a ritual slapping of hands. the girls then re-form into their team line. frequently, one girl stays behind with the girl who has just thrown the ball, and the two spend a moment smoothing and stroking each other's hair. when the bell rings, many of the team members walk back to their classrooms together, again smoothing and stroking each other's hair.3 these instances of group behavior are quite different from each other, but they both show the way that children deal with dangerous categories and erect boundaries. when boys play slaughter, they seem to understand that power is not equal. some 13 slaughter boys have more "lives," or chances at success. the boys constantly try to negotiate the rules to suit their own needs and therefore push for more power. they seem to understand that real life favors those who possess the dynamism to push against the boundaries of the rules, those who are more socially adept, those who can intimidate, or those who can cheat. by doing so, these boys learn the process of negotiation (sutton-smith 242), the value of creativity, as well as the importance of luck. but this play can be dangerous as well. because the boundaries to slaughter are dynamic, there are those who will push against the rules and be unsuccessful, the result being loss of face. pushing the limits is risky. when the girls play slaughter, they are experimenting with power also. power for these girls is a dangerous activity since girls' play usually places a high value on affiliation and intimacy (sutton-smith 248). when a girl takes a turn in slaughter, she is the most powerful player on the team; she has the ball and can control the game. the ritual hand slapping is the girls' way of rewarding that individual performance. the grooming behavior gives the girls a chance to acknowledge the boundaries, to draw quickly back from their dangerous play. it is the way the girls reassure one another that group affiliation is more important to them than individual performance. the girl with the ball may be reassuring the team members that she still identifies herself as a group member, while the group may be reassuring the girl that they accept her need to experiment with power. it seems significant that the girls stroke each other's hair, the part of their body that is outwardly feminine. the girls may be displaying to themselves and to others that they are females. they may be establishing an "in group" that consists of females and identifying what is appropriate female behavior. the girls erect boundaries about who is in (girls) and also who is out (boys).4 the boundaries that the children erect in their game in slaughter involve both the tension between hierarchies and equality. the boundaries that they erect are different because once again the boys are stressing the hierarchical nature of society, and the girls the egalitarian. throughout their play, they address different anxieties, for the boys being "out" in the hierarchical order, for the girls, being "out" in the female group. the boys' boundaries give them less chance to experiment with intimacy skills; the girls' less chance to experiment with individual performance. fighting: dangerous liaisons one day during a game of slaughter, a boy named billy started to cheat. normally cheating would not be a serious violation, but billy's cheating violated arona's chance to take a turn. arona moved close-up and face-to-face with billy. both boys quickly posed themselves into fighting stances. first billy would take a turn moving in closer, looking threatening while arona mocked and taunted him. next it was arona's turn to be the aggressor. a third boy named jason appointed himself as conciliator, standing nearby and keeping a steady stream of calming talk going while the two boys continued to circle 14 riley around each other. finally jason made a joke. everyone thought this joke was so funny that they had to stop the fight because they were all laughing so hard. the boys resumed play and after a few minutes, billy again started to cheat. arona looked at him. "i can't live with this guy," he said in a comical way. the two boys slapped hands. for the rest of the game, they played as far apart as possible. the girls at valley oak never came close to a physical fight, but one day a girl named sara refused to go out after she was hit with the ball. the girls started chanting, "you're out, sara, you're out," but she ignored them. in order to keep the game going, most of the girls decided to ignore sara's breach, but a few angry girls quit the game and stood next to me, under the tree. "i hate her so much, i feel like smacking her," said one. "she wears ugly clothes," says another. another girl was hit, and the girls instantly cried out, "you're out. you're out." this girl refused to become goalie, citing sara's example. the argument became vehement. one girl turned to sara and said, "everyone hates you because of this." the girls under the tree kept up their gossip. "you should see her temper," said one girl. more girls joined the circle. "she's a pooh head," said another. "you guys aren't playing," yelled out someone. the group still playing started a chant, "play around sara. play around sara." before the situation was anywhere close to resolution, the bell rang. the disputes within both groups can be understood by using turner's model for social dramas (myerhoff 31). each dispute contains turner's first stage--a violation. in both cases the violation was cheating. for the boys, cheating is not a serious offense, but since the individual rights of a valued member were violated, the breach was important. billy had violated important boundaries established by the group, affecting their most important need-the need for a hierarchy within their folkgroup. for the girls, cheating is a serious offense. sara had violated important boundaries established by the folkgroup, affecting their highest need-the need for equality. because their most important values had been violated, each group quickly moved to the crisis stage. for both the boys and girls the game stopped. fighting at valley oak school is a serious offense that results in suspension. arona and billy also looked afraid. clearly the third step in the social drama, that of redress, had to happen or serious punishment and/or loss of face might occur. in the boys' case a conciliator started negotiations. in the girls' case, the drama had to be redressed or the game would end in anarchy. instead of using negotiation as a means of redress, the girls tried at first to ignore sara's breach. when that didn't work, they used exclusionary tactics, which are common in the play of girls (sutton-smith 242). because the girls did not successfully redress their crisis, they never reached the fourth and final stage of restoration. the boys, however, were able to share in a final ritual (the slapping of hands) and therefore, were able to reaffirm their basic system of beliefs. the boys' game of slaughter is more equipped to deal with crisis situations than is the girls' game. because the girls place an enormous value on affiliation, they are 15 slaughter less able to learn negotiation skills. according to sutton-smith, this is common feature of girls play (242). the game of slaughter defines two separate folkgroups at valley oak elementary school. these two groups function differently. each expresses group needs and addresses contradictions that the children see in larger society, most especially the contradictions between order and disorder, hierarchy and equality, and male and female. because the expectations in society are different for males and females, each group stresses different sides of these dialectics: the boys stress disorder, hierarchical relationships, and male behavior while the girls stress order, egalitarian relationships, and female behavior. boys who play slaughter at valley oak seem more adept at negotiation, the girls at intimacy skills. i learned during my fieldwork that children's play is neither good nor bad. i don't believe that the different negotiation and intimacy skills these children obtain from their play are good or bad either. they are simply different and react the present attitudes of society. sutton-smith quotes some who believe that adults should teach girls to play in a way that they can learn proper negotiation skills (253-254). i doubt that it matters what adults think or try to do about children's play. the children at valley oak elementary will continue to play slaughter in their own way because children's games belong to children. notes 1. this boy may be expressing anxiety about a shooting incident that took place in stockton, california, in 1988. a sniper opened fire on a playground, randomly killing several children. 2. the concept of "lives" has probably been used in different ways. the most common use is the cat who is in legend said to have nine lives. these particular boys play nintendo quite a bit, which is a computer game that allows each player three lives. 3. this hair stroking reminds me of the grooming behavior anthropologists have observed in gorillas and chimpanzees. 4. i heard two girls talking about a boy whom they saw playing aggressively. "why stoop to his badness," said one. bibliography brady, margaret k. some kind of power. salt lake city: u of utah p, 1984. mechling, jay. "children's folklore." folk groups and folklore genres: an introduction. ed. elliot oring. logan, ut: utah state up 1986.91-120. myerhoff, barbara. number our days. new york: simon & schuster, 1978. sutton-smith, brian. "the play of girls." becoming female: perspectives on development. eds. claire b. kopp and martha kirkpatrick. new york: plenum, 1979. 229-257. 16 ocr document the state of play: a report on the conference julia c. bishop a conference on "the state of play: perspectives on children's oral culture" took place at the university of sheffield, england, organised by the national centre for english cultural tradition in collaboration with the folklore society. it was a truly international gathering with speakers from australia, israel, north america, and several countries, as well as from all corners of the british isles. we were privileged to have dr. iona opie as guest of honour and our opening speaker. she described how she and her husband, peter, had become interested in children's oral tradition and how they approached their work. in typically modest vein, she stressed that neither of them had any academic training, the onset of the second world war precluding the possibility of attending university at the time. their total commitment to their chosen field, however, had undoubtedly been an inspiration to many in the audience. there were also five keynote addresses during the conference. june factor spoke on "three myths about children's folklore," gwenda davey discussed continuity and change in australian children's traditional play, and simon lichman illustrated the way in which the traditional creativity through the schools project used the study of children's folklore and family traditions to help bring together the arab and jewish communities in israel. allison james, approaching children's playas a social anthropologist, discussed children's oral communication strategies in the negotiation of identity, while john widdowson highlighted the importance of the informal language used in the playground for the acquisition of the formal linguistic skills taught in the classroom. in addition, there was a plethora of stimulating papers on such topics as the effects of the physical environment on imaginative play and games, the influence of the media on playground games, children's story telling, historical aspects of the study of play, and children's music. 54 the state of play the conference seems to have stimulated communication among researchers around the world concerned with children's oral culture. it is hoped that a selection of the conference papers will be published in the near future. to obtain future information on this, please contact the organisers at the address below, or join the e-mail distribution list by contacting julia bishop (j.c. bishop@sheffield.ac.uk). national centre for english cultural tradition university of sheffield sheffield s10 2tn uk tel: 0114-222-6296 (main office) 0114-222-0229 (direct line) 55 ill do~oo~~@@llimil @~d~~[jrnoo~~~@~~@[jrn according to its editors, brian sutton-smith, jay mechling, and tom johnson, the handbook of children's folklore is nearing completion. the latest tentative table of contents looks like this: 1. brian sutton-smith. introduction: who are the children in children's folklore? part i: history, theory, method . 2. sylvia grider: the study of children's folklore 3. rosemary zumwalt: the complexity of children's folklore. 4. john mcdowell: transmission of children's folklore. 5. gary fine: methodological problems of collecting folklore from children. part ii: settings for folklore 6. jay mechling: the folklore of children and adolescents in total institutions: boarding schools, children's hospitals, and correctional facilties. 7. bernard mergen: children's lore in school and playgrounds. 8. diana kelly-byren: folklife in the home and yard. part iii: genres 9. brian sutton-smith: play and games. 10. linda hughes: girls gaming. 11. elizabeth tucker: tales and legends. 12. danielle roemer: riddles and puzzles. 13. marilyn jorgensen: pranks and teases. 14. c.w. sullivan iii: songs and poems. 15. simon bronner: a world of their own making: material folk culture of children. part iv: interconnections 16. elizabeth radin simons: folklore and the schools. 17. priscilla ord: children's folklore and children's literature. 18. sue samuelson: the transition to adolescent lore. part v: bibliography 19. tom johnson the hildren's folklore newsletter c.w. sullivan iii, editor english department, east carolina university greenville, north carolina 27834-4353 the children's folklore newsletter, published three times a year, is sent to all members of the children's folklore section. special arrangements can also be made with any folklore-related organization wishing to receive copies, all materials to be considered for publication should be sent to the editor. issn 0739-5558 published by east carolina university printed 01 the ec u print shop anno uncements (continued from page 1) manuscripts must deal with items that focus on a child as center of the tale, legend, anecdote, joke, riddle, slogan, etc.; or it must deal with items a child enjoys to share with peers on the play territory away from adults or at home. in school, in church or anywhere else in the presence of adults. cww prefers items that have been collected in the process of research, but does not exclude research. research papers, however, should not exceed 1000words (approximately 4-5 pages, typed double spaced). deadline: december 31,1985. forward manuscripts and correspondence with sase (stamped self-addressed envelope) to: brigitta geltrich-ludgate, creative with words publica nons spoofing! (vol. ii, no.2) p. o. box 223226 carmel, ca 93922 @~d~~[jrnoo~~ ~@~lli@[jrn ~dornitijn~ddo j there seems to have been a marked resurgence of interest in children's folklore in britain over recent years, several individuals have been busy with their own fieldwork projects, and its has been suggested that some kind of informal 'childlore' group be formed to aid communication and cooperation between them, it is to be hoped that something on these lines will materialise sometime in 1985. if any non-british researchers would like to be kept informed of developments here or would like to correspond with british enthusiasts, they are welcome to contact myself or georgina boyes, 78 moorgate rd., rotherham s60 2ay, england. some recent articles which may not be known outside our own shores are as follows: jane a. hubbard, 'children's traditional games from birdsedge [yorkshire]; 'clapping songs and their notation' folk music journal 4:5(1982) pp. 246-264; nigel kelsy, 'norman douglas revisted', london lore 1:10 (1983) pp. 117-125; nigel kelsey, 'collecting children's oral lore in london: an interim report,' folk song research 2:3 (1983) pp. 32-34; steve roud, 'random notes from an andover [hampshire] playground: part i: clapping games' downs micellany 2:1 (1984) pp. 21-32; georgina boyes, 'clapping rhymes from newfoundland and sheffield,' folk song research (forthcoming). a longplaying record of children's singing games, recorded by damian webb between 1960 and 1982, was issued by saydisc records in 1983. stephen roud 3 children’s folklo re review volume 35 2013 published by the children’s folklore section of the american folklore society with support from the dean’s office of harpur college at binghamton university contents from the editor 5 preface for special issue of children’s folklore review: mormon children’s folklore tom mould 7 and a child shall lead them: the wise child folk motif in mormon discourse spencer lincoln green 11 winner of the 2012 william wells newell prize: playing with the sacred: lds children’s games for boredom and entertainment jared s rife 31 co-winner of the 2013 william wells newell prize: playing for change: the performative functions of children’s piano play brant w ellsworth 45 children’s folklore section: 2012 annual meeting 57 notes and announcements 59 contributors 61 5 from the editor elizabeth tucker this thirty-fifth volume of children’s folklore review is a special issue devoted to the subject of mormon children’s folklore. i am delighted that we can publish a special issue on this important subject and hope that it will encourage further fieldwork and archival research. this volume includes two essays that have won the william wells newell prize. jared s. rife’s “playing with the sacred: lds children’s games for boredom and entertainment” won the newell prize in 2012, and brant w. ellsworth’s “playing for change: the performative functions of children’s piano play” is one of two winners of the newell prize in 2013. the other newell prize-winning essay, semontee mitra’s “‘children have their own world of being’: an ethnography on children’s activities on the day of saraswati puja,” will be published in the fall of 2014. congratulations to all three winners! i want to thank tom mould very much for writing a preface for this special issue. his preface puts the three articles in the context of previous scholarship and helps us understand the richness and depth of mormon children’s folklore. all back issues of children’s folklore review except the most recent one are available on the internet on indiana university’s scholar works web site. it is great to know that the research published by our journal is accessible to anyone who has a computer. i want to thank the dean’s office at harpur college of binghamton university, which generously supports children’s folklore review. i am also very grateful to kathy buchta for her excellent work on layout/design and to sheridan press for its fine printing and mailing service. submissions and comments are always welcome. please feel free to contact me any time: ltucker@binghamton.edu. thank you very much for your support of children’s folklore review. 7 preface for special issue of children’s folklore review: mormon children’s folklore tom mould this special issue on the study of children’s folklore among latter-day saints signifies an important contribution to the study of mormon folklore. it is from this perspective—mormon folklore rather than children’s folklore—that i first approached these papers when i served as a discussant at the annual meeting of the american folklore society in new orleans in 2012 when brant ellsworth, spencer green and jared rife first presented their work. it is with that same lens that i introduce their articles here. the study of mormon folklore has been fairly consistent over time but inconsistent in its attention to certain topics, genres and groups. the supernatural has received more attention than the mundane, oral genres more than customary or material, and white u.s. westerners more than non-white, international or east of the mississippi mormons. in terms of the most commonly studied folklore genres, legends have dominated, with the three nephites and j. golden kimball serving as the poster children of lds folklore. i use that cliché intentionally if ironically. neither the three nephites nor j. golden kimball are ever depicted as children. and a survey of the verbal, material and customary lore of latter-day saints reveals a similar vacuum when it comes to children. to be fair, j. golden kimball could be accused of treating many of his fellow saints as children in his frequent chastising, and occasionally, he unleashed his wrath on young as well as old, as when he was discussing the worth of an individual and turned his attention to his son: “kimball said that he had a son—the finest son in the world—really a marvel—and that he wouldn’t take a million dollars for him. and, he added, he wouldn’t give ten cents for another like him” (eliason 2007, 114). in fact, his critiques regularly treated youth and adult indistinguishably, as in the story boyd k. packer related in his book teach ye diligently: “the story is told that someone stopped elder j. golden kimball on the street on one occasion. there had been a little difficulty in elder kimball’s family that had become publicly known, and whoever it was who stopped him, no doubt with a mind to injure, said, ‘brother kimball, i understand you’re having some problems with one of your children.’ his answer was, ‘yes, and the lord is having some problems with some of his, too’” (1975, 287). in this story, j. golden kimball suggests that the category of children is dynamic and contextually defined, a reminder that defining children, and children’s folklore is not as easy as it may first appear (sutton-smith 1999, 3). more obviously, but in some ways more interestingly, kimball also references common imagery of mortals as god’s children, an image understood as literal rather than metaphoric in mormonism. it is this constellation of beliefs in a pre-mortal life, a god of flesh and blood, and spirit children waiting to become mortal in order to achieve the status of gods themselves that has, perhaps not surprisingly, received significant scholarly attention from folklorists, providing grist for some of the few preface mould 8 studies of mormon folklore that address children explicitly. consider, for example, the study of spirit children narratives, stories that describe revelatory dreams about unborn children (see brady 1987, mitchell 2004, and mould 2011, 268-79). all of these studies have examined the impact of the experience and the subsequent narratives on the adults involved. importantly, these studies also address how children are viewed by both narrator and audience. accordingly, we are afforded a glimpse of children through folklore, if not of the folklore of children. it is within this line of inquiry—children as a topic in folklore rather than children as producers, consumers and performers of folklore—that spencer green situates his study of the wise child in the lds church discourse. green’s work goes one step further towards traditional folklore analysis, however, by considering children not only as a concept within lds theology, personal belief and public performance, but also as a specific motif found in folk traditions around the globe. how, green asks, might our understanding of the widespread motif of the wise child (j120) as it appears in official mormon discourse inform our understanding of mormon worldview? his answer sheds light on how children are viewed and used in religious discourse in ways that highlight paradoxes in church hierarchies. where green follows lds scholarship conventions but diverges from those of most children’s folklore scholarship, rife and ellsworth do the reverse, bringing long overdue attention to younger members of the lds faith by examining the folk traditions and performances of children. the lack of attention to the folklore of children is ironic since theologically, doctrinally and ideologically, children are such a central part of lds religion and culture. further, children are incorporated into church services and service at a very early age. many young children bear their testimonies during fast and testimony meetings long before the still young age of eight, the “age of awareness” among latter-day saints when children are assumed to be mature and competent enough to make at least one choice of their own free will: the choice to be baptized. not all children born into the covenant—that is, born of mormon parents whose marriage has been sealed at the temple and raised in the church—make this choice at age eight, but many do. by age twelve, young men are typically ordained into the aaronic priesthood and help serve the sacrament, and by eighteen, into the melchizedek priesthood, having the full powers and duties of adult men in the church conferred upon them. young women cannot hold the priesthood, but they move through the ranks of young women’s organizations until at eighteen, they too join the ranks of full adult members of the church by becoming members of the relief society. in other words, young people in the lds church are granted responsibility and authority from a fairly young age. yet despite what may seem an accelerated trajectory into adulthood, as rife and ellsworth show, lds children find ample time to play, both outside and inside church meetings. jared rife takes us into sacrament meeting—usually the first hour of a three hour block sunday mornings that comprises the formal church service—to explore both how adults devise activities for children to keep them entertained, and how children devise their own play to stave off boredom. in his survey of these games, rife examines the range of types, origins and functions of games played by toddlers to mould preface 9 teens. while his focus is on how these games function, his work opens up fruitful avenues for analysis in structural taxonomies of lds games, theological cultural constructs of play within the lds church, gender differences, and shifting social norms of sanctioned and unsanctioned behaviors within formal church spaces. brant ellsworth, on the other hand, takes us outside these formal church spaces and into the homes of lds children to consider how “playing the piano” differs from “piano play.” while green and rife provide glimpses into lds culture through children’s folklore, ellsworth provides glimpses of children’s culture through lds folklore. ellsworth notes that while his participants were all mormon, the performances and patterns he observed are likely indicative of children in the u.s. more generally. that said, he does wonder whether the role of the piano in lds church services both domestically and internationally impacts piano play among lds children differently, if perhaps only in scope, than non-lds children where the piano may not have as clear and widely shared symbolic meaning. while these articles are not the first to examine the performances and folklore of children in the lds church—elaine lawless for example takes a brief look at how children’s testimonies compare to adult ones in order to highlight the wellworn patterns recognized and performed by even the youngest members of the church (1984)—they are some of the first to do as their focus. further, many of the themes and topics engaged within these studies of folklore of and by lds children can be read into larger bodies of lds scholarship. spencer green’s work should be read within the deep and rich body of scholarship of lds oral narrative and discourse by authors such as margaret brady (1987), eric eliason (1999), carolyn gilkey (1979, 1994), tom mould (2011) and george schoemaker (1989). jared rife’s work on games and play can at least partially be understood in the context of lds humor by authors such as jan harold brunvand (1970), ed geary (1999), steve siporin (2009) and william wilson (1982 and 1985), as well as in the context of the creative dating invitations of young men and women as studied by kristi young (2005). and brant ellsworth’s study of piano play, while most obviously relevant to children’s folklore scholarship rather than lds scholarship, can nonetheless be understood as part of a deep musical tradition within lds culture, righted noted by ellsworth when he argues that “from their earliest existence, mormons have been a musical people.” folklorists of lds musical traditions have focused primarily on song and ballad—thomas cheney (1968), austin and alta fife (1947), austin fife (1953), gustive larson (1971), jill terry rudy (2013), barre toelken (1959); one can only hope that the attention ellsworth pays to the music, not just the lyrics, will encourage other folklorists and ethnomusicologists to do the same. with the publication of this special issue, the same can be hoped for the study of lds children’s folklore more generally. works cited brady, margaret k. 1987. transformations of power: women’s visionary narratives. journal of american folklore 100(398): 461-8. brunvand, jan. 1970. as the saints go marching by: modern jokelore concerning mormons.” journal of american folklore 83:53–60. preface mould 10 cheney, thomas edward. 1968. mormon songs from the rocky mountains: a compilation of mormon folksong. austin: publications for the american folklore society by university of texas press. eliason, eric a. 1999. toward the folkloristic study of latter-day saint conversion narratives. byu studies 38(1):137–50. 2007. the j. golden kimball stories. urbana: university of illinois press. fife, austin e. 1953. a ballad of the mountain meadows massacre. western folklore 12:229–41. fife, austin, and alta s. fife. 1947. folk songs of mormon inspiration.” western folklore 6:42–52. geary, edward a. 1999. sanpete county humor: the tales and the tellers. aml annual 1999: papers from the annual meeting 28 february, 1998, 12:10111. edited by lavina fielding anderson. salt lake city: association for mormon letters. gilkey, carolyn flatley. 1979. mormon testimony meeting: some aspects of a narrating event.” southwest folklore 3(4):45–59. 1994. verbal performance in mormon worship services. phd diss., university of pennsylvania. larson, gustive o. 1971. orrin porter rockwell — the modern samson. in lore of faith and folly, ed. thomas e. cheney, 179–90. salt lake city: university of utah press. lawless, elaine j. 1984. “i know if i don’t bear my testimony, i’ll lose it”: why mormon women bother to speak at all. kentucky folklore record 30:79-96. mitchell, scott. 2004. “you have no right to do such a thing”: an insider study of entitlement of spirit child narratives in mormon communities. m.a. thesis, english, university of missouri, columbia. mould, tom. 2011. still, the small voice: narrative, personal revelation, and the mormon folk tradition. logan: utah state university press. packer, boyd k. 1975. teach ye diligently. salt lake city: deseret book company. rudy, jill terry. 2013. portraits in song: gleanings from the brigham young folk song cycle. in latter-day lore: mormon folklore studies, ed. eric eliason and tom mould, 337-48. salt lake city: university of utah press. schoemaker, george h. 1989. made in heaven: marriage confirmation narratives among mormons. northwest folklore 7: 38–53. siporin, steve. 2009. for time and eternity: byu coed jokes and the complexity of mormon humor. in folklore in a changing world, ed. jawaharlal handoo and reimund dvideland, 209–27. mysore, india: zooni publications. sutton-smith, brian. 1999. children’s folklore: a source book. logan: utah state university press. toelken, j. barre. 1959. the ballad of the mountain meadows massacre. western folklore 18:169–72. william a. wilson. 1982. on being human: the folklore of mormon missionaries. new york folklore 8(3–4):5–27. 1985. the seriousness of mormon humor. sunstone 10: 6–13. young, kristi w. 2005. “now that i’ve kissed the ground you walk on”: a look at gender in creative date invitations. marriage & families (winter): 10–17. 11 and a child shall lead them: the wise child folk motif in mormon discourse spencer lincoln green prevalent in folktales throughout the world and in popular media in america, the “wise child” whose innocence sees through the deceptions, greed, envy, and ingratitude of his or her elders flourishes in mormon official and lay discourse. paradoxical in its inherent reversal of hierarchies in a religion often noted for its hierarchies, the wise child, rather than challenging adults and exposing adult foibles to mockery, is used to gently remind all members of their shortcomings and encourage greater adherence to church doctrines. since the wise child in folk and popular culture is most often a trickster figure who points out foibles and follies in adults, how has it come to be used so often in mormon discourse by those very adults and authority figures who are usually the butt of its jokes? this paper seeks to look at the significance of the wise child in mormon official discourse, the transformation it has undergone there, and what that has to say about mormon culture. while the wise child is prevalent throughout mormon discourse, this study is limited to the examples in the spring and fall sessions of general conference. general conference is a biannual meeting consisting of five two hour meetings over a saturday and sunday in april and october when church leaders present doctrinal and exhortive talks to church membership worldwide. this has been occurring since 1830 and each general conference is identified by season or month and number ordinal number. my texts then come from the 182nd spring and fall or april and october general conferences of the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints. general conference is a time when the church general authorities address the church as a whole. the general authorities is a term for the highest authorities of the church. at the head is the president or prophet of the church and the first-presidency which includes the prophet, thomas s. monson and his two counselors. beneath them, but still regarded as “prophets, seers, and revelators,” are the quorum of the twelve apostles, who are ranked in order of when they entered the quorum. next comes a presidency of the seventy, a group of 7 men who help direct the work of the first and second quorums of the seventies, known as seventies because of christ appointing “other seventy” to preach the gospel in luke 10:1. there is also a ruling bishopric who take care of church humanitarian efforts, and the different auxiliary general presidencies of the relief society, the church’s women’s organization; the young women and young men, organizations for twelve to eighteen year old members; and primary, organizations for the children of the church. all these presidencies, like local presidencies and the first presidency, consist of 3 members: a president and first and second counselors. general conference is an important part of the year for active lds church members and is often used in lessons and talks throughout the year by members and a child shall lead them green 12 when they give talks in their local, weekly meetings. further study on the wise child’s use in local meetings will certainly reveal local variations, general conference talks represent the church’s most public and widely recognized corpus of doctrine and knowledge beyond the “standard works.” the standard works are the old and new testaments, the book of mormon, the doctrine and covenants, and the pearl of great price. my citations for these scriptures follow the standard lds conventions. the wise child in folklore the wise child, folk motif j120 in the stith thompson motif index, includes tales from many cultures describing how a child’s actions produce knowledge or wisdom in adults. often it is the child’s naiveté that produces the knowledge, and often in the form of a rebuke, in their elders. for example, motif j121 tells of a certain son being reproved by his own son’s imitation of him. after a man gives his aged father half a carpet to keep warm, his own son keeps the other half, telling him that he is keeping it for him when he’s older. sometimes the situation is reversed as when a father tells a son to only drag him to the threshold, but no farther, because that is as far as he dragged his father. the themes of old age, decrepitude, and a simple, naïve sense of justice are all features of these stories. the wisdom produced in these tales comes from both the child’s interpretations of his father’s actions and the father’s subsequent revelation of the justice of his own actions. the child then, knowingly or not, is active in creating the story’s moral (thompson). motifs j122 and j125 follow this pattern. motif j122 features the naïve remarks of children rebuking or uncovering the sins of their parents. in one a forgetful father wonders what he’s forgotten and his naïve son suggests that he forgot to strike mother, as he was an abusive man. in another a seducer is stopped short by a child lamenting that his mother is open to just the crime he aims to commit. in motif j125, children uncover their parent’s misdeeds such as an innkeeper’s wife who has watered down the wine, or the child who innocently reveals that the father’s secretary has been having an affair with his wife. while the targets of the knowledge often changes—though is always composed of adults—the revelation in these stories is also a dialogic act between the child and the adult (ibid.). motifs j123 and j124 don’t rely on the child’s innocence and naiveté to uncover wisdom, nor do they rely on the child’s innocence. here the children can be either a passive object lesson or the agent who actively produces the wisdom in the tale. a king who judges a lawsuit wisely after observing a child’s game and seeing the principles of justice present in the game earns his wisdom on his own without significant participation from the children. here they seem to act more as object lessons rather than being involved in the meaning-making of the tale. but there are also the cases of a clever prince overruling the seemingly just decision of the king with greater wisdom, and the j124 motif which encourages the learning of virtues from children who can exhibit patience when their food is stolen. adults can learn patience when they see the children search quietly for their food rather than crying or getting distressed. in these cases, the child is actually regarded green and a child shall lead them 13 as wise either through having a rare wisdom beyond his years as the prince exhibited, or an innate quality that is seen as desirable in the adult world (ibid.). there seem to be two spectrums at work in creating the central action and conflict in these stories. one is a passive/active spectrum. active children interact with adults in some way to create the moral of the story. passive children’s actions are only significant when the observing adult draws wisdom from the child in a way that might be available to any observer. the other main spectrum is between the naïve and knowing child. again, the bulk of stories feature children who possess their wisdom naively. their sense of justice is innate, or their fears real and guileless, and it is simply in voicing those pure, innocent, and honest values that creates wisdom in the adults around them. in this way they are valued as speakers of widely known but unacknowledged truths as in “the emperor’s new clothes.” the lone instance of the clever prince whose actions are indicative of wisdom in and of themselves without the interpretation or transfer of that wisdom to a corresponding adult is an exception that seems to prove that most of the wise children in folktales rely on being active but naïve. the wise child is a liminal figure that both divides and bridges the worlds of children and adults. a child is often seen as passive and naïve, as an object rather than a subject (de schweinitz 126). as they grow more active, and more knowing, they come to enter more and more the adult world. as such, the best bridge between the two worlds are children who partake of both the childlike and the adult. these wise children exist somewhere between the wholly naïve and passive child of popular imagination and the active knowledge associated with adults and are indeed the most popular in folklore. this would suggest that the knowing, passive child would be the next most common, but there are no examples of passive, knowing children. this could be due to narratives preferring the more dynamic “active” child. tales with passive wise children are more rare than the active because knowledge seems to presuppose or be indicated by activity. in other words, a child can act naively, but a knowing child will show it through his or her actions. finally, the next most uncommon category seems to be knowing and active children as they partake too much of the adult world and or no longer childlike. thus they are no longer liminal, trickster figures who can instruct and delight. it is important to note that these categories are etic constructions and don’t always reflect the use of the wise child motif. the speaker and audience may not care whether child characters are active or passive, naïve or knowing, especially in the context of a didactic discourse such as general conference. within the general conference talks i surveyed, the most common child was an active, naïve child, but there were also numerous examples of the knowing, passive child. the requirements of a good story or performance also influence how wise children are used in mormon discourse. active children are certainly more interesting than passive, while naïve and knowing children both have their narrative uses, and can both create interesting, artistically satisfying, story arcs and turnarounds. other scholars have noticed some of these contrasts at use in mormon culture. kristine haglund harris studied changes in the children’s songbook and found “that early primary songs presume that young people will play significant roles and a child shall lead them green 14 in building the kingdom while later songs try to limit children’s activity (think ‘reverence’) and suggest that children prepare themselves for future contributions” (qtd. in de schweinitz 135). harris found mormon culture favoring passive children more recently, but the use of the wise child in general conference shows that lds still prefers active children for use in official narratives. categorizing wise children in mormon discourse with these traits was sometimes unclear. active or passive traits, while seemingly obvious, were often unclear in context, and naïve and knowing were even less clear, and sometimes less relevant. henry eyring, first counselor in the first presidency , spoke on the seeming difficulty in knowing or perceiving god in the world. in his address he relates the story of his three year old granddaughter visiting an open house of a temple, sacred structures to latter-day saints said to be a house of god. in one of the beautiful rooms, she asks her mother, “mommy, where is jesus?” her mother responds that she wouldn’t literally see jesus in the temple, but could feel his presence. after considering this, the child, eliza, responds with “oh, jesus is gone helping someone.” is this child naïve in taking literally the “house of the lord” title latter-day saints use in talking about the temple, or is she knowing in her realization that this is a physical building where the physical presence of jesus is expected to be found? obviously the child’s mother interprets it as naiveté while president eyring goes on to comment, “no pavilion obscured eliza’s understanding…of reality” (eyring, pavilion), so president eyring obviously sees eliza as a knowing child, and yet the meaning of the story rests on eliza being both a naïve and a knowing child. it is faith that reconciles these two opposing forces. she is innocent and knowing in that her faith, or belief, in what she has been told is literal whereas her parent’s understanding seems more figurative, and yet, with faith, it is the literal that is favored. so the older, wiser-in-the world parent has come to interpret doctrine as figurative instead of literal and thus is not as knowledgeable as her daughter in certain spiritual truths. she has something to learn from her daughter. by including this in his talk, president eyring implies that all latter-day saints have something to learn from this young girl. this dichotomy between worldly and spiritual things in mormon thought is relevant to the wise child and one of the reasons that the mormon variants differ so much from the folk variants. in the book of mormon, the prophet jacob speaks of this dichotomy: “o the vainness, and the frailties, and the foolishness of men! when they are learned they think they are wise, and they hearken not unto the counsel of god, for they set it aside, supposing they know of themselves, wherefore, their wisdom is foolishness and it profiteth them not” (2 ne. 9: 28). paul, in his epistle to the corinthians, echoes the sentiment with “if any man among you seemeth to be wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise. for the wisdom of this world is foolishness with god. for it is written, he taketh the wise in their own craftiness” (1 cor. 3: 18-19). paul’s words seem like they would support the traditional folk use of the wise child, as a figure who reveals the foolishness of its elders through mockery and ‘taking them in their craftiness,’ as it says. the differences become more fully explained if we look at its use in its performance context of general conference. i will discuss this later, green and a child shall lead them 15 but first another example where the division between the naïve and knowing child seems less relevant in the context of the story. russell osguthorpe, sunday school general president, recounts a story of his son calling, wondering why russell hasn’t told them one of his articles was appearing in the church’s magazine, the ensign. russell responds with “i just wanted to see if you were reading the church magazine.” his son says it was actually his daughter who brought it to his attention. “she got the ensign from the mailbox, came into the house, and read it. then she came up to our room and showed us your article.” russell concludes with “my granddaughter read the ensign because she wanted to learn. she acted on her own by exercising her agency. the first presidency recently approved new learning resources for youth that will support the innate desire of young people to learn, live, and share the gospel” (osguthorpe, emphasis mine). it is obvious by his wording that russell sees his granddaughter as an active child, but his wording also suggests she is a passive child. this desire to learn certainly exhibited itself in an active way, reading an entire magazine meant for adult members (young children and teenagers have church magazines aimed more at them), is certainly an active thing, but this desire russell sees as innate, and thus is the source of knowledge coming from what she did, or the innate desire to do it? depending on how one sees children, this granddaughter can be knowing or naive. either she knows that she is doing a good thing, or she is simply doing what she likes, and that thing happens to be an action russell wants his adult listeners to imitate. it is obvious that this action in an adult member would be seen as active and elder osguthorpe is seeking to instill the knowledge of the value of that action, but it seems clear that for children, the assumptions are different. that this is not as volitional, that it is more innate and thus an expression of personality rather than an indication of one’s use of free will. the message seems clear, that a desire to learn is a good thing that adults should learn but which seems to come naturally to children. adults, the message is, be like your wise child. the cultural beliefs inherent in this dichotomy involve religious beliefs in the innate goodness of children and the cultural and religious beliefs that children are blank slates in need of instruction. both of these ideas lead to assumptions in stories that divide how mormons view adults and these wise children. the wise child in mormon scripture and tradition probably the most important example of the wise child culturally is joseph smith who, as a fourteen year old boy, had the wisdom to “ask of god” when he was confused about which religion to join. this act by a fourteen year old boy is often referenced and framed in a way that emphasizes both his youth and his wisdom— particularly as opposed to the religious leaders in his area at the time. other scriptural precedents include many prophets in the book of mormon. nephi, the first writer in the book of mormon, is still a child of his father, a prophet in jerusalem and begins the book of mormon with “i, nephi, having been born of goodly parents (1 ne. 1:1).” later, when recounting his conversion, nephi mentions that he was “exceedingly young” when he came to “believe all and a child shall lead them green 16 the words which had been spoken by my father.” it is significant that he is able to convince his younger brother to also believe, but his older brothers, laman and lemuel, harden their hearts to his, and his father’s, words (1 ne 2: 16-18). alma, a later prophet in the book of mormon, is described as a wicked priest to a corrupt king when he hears the testimony of the prophet abinadi. alma, at the time, is described as “a young man” who “believed the words which abinadi had spoken, for he knew concerning the iniquity which abinadi had testified against them [meaning the wicked king noah and his priests] (mosiah 17:2).” alma believes and must flee the court of king noah and the older, still wicked priests who seek to kill him and put abinadi to death. later still, captain moroni, the nephite leader in some of their most intense wars with the lamanites is mentioned for being “only twenty and five years old when he was appointed chief captain over the armies of the nephites (alma 43: 17).” while 25 can hardly be said to be a child, his youth is certainly emphasized and in the succeeding chapters his wisdom is demonstrated as he prepares the nephites for war against the lamanites led by a rebel nephite. he prepares his soldiers with various armor, and constructs ditches, walls and fortifications around their border cities ensuring those cities which had been weakest were now strongholds. the invading lamanites are at first too scared to attack these heavily fortified cities. finally using a combination of spies and prophecy, moroni traps the main lamanite army as they cross a river and completely defeats them (see alma 43:17-44:24). when war returns a few years later, moroni is again instrumental in securing peace from war and the stability of their main government. while the war moroni is engaged in is started by a nephite dissenter, it is the sons of lamanite converts that help turn the tide. these converts are called the people of ammon and, after their conversion, make an oath to never “tak(e) up arms against their brethren (alma 53: 11).” when the war against the lamanites gets long, they consider breaking their vow for the greater good. they are “moved with compassion” at seeing “the danger, and the many afflictions and tribulations the nephites bore for them… and were desirous to take up arms in the defence of their country (alma 53: 13).” their spiritual leaders urge them not to, and they send, instead, 2000 of their sons, “who had not entered into a covenant that they would not take their weapons of war to defend themselves against their enemies,” so they are mobilized instead, and join the war under the command of their spiritual leader, helaman (alma 53: 16-18). are these good examples of the wise child? their youth is certainly a vital part of their identity. rather than the wisdom, or cunning, exhibited by captain moroni, it is often their faith that is seen as praiseworthy and what continuously saves them. they are promised by their mothers, “that if they did not doubt, god would deliver them,” sure enough, in their first battle, “not one soul of them [had] fallen to the earth (alma 56: 47, 56).” in a later battle, while casualties mount on both sides of the conflict, their faith in their mother’s words are confirmed again when “there was not one soul of them who did perish; yea, and neither was there one soul among them who had not received many wounds (alma 57: 25).” while this may green and a child shall lead them 17 not qualify as “wisdom,” according to the worldly/spiritual split mentioned earlier, the youth are indeed being set up as figures whose actions and faith adults can and should learn from. the bible has its wise children too. before joseph becomes second only to pharaoh in egypt, he is the second youngest of 12 brothers, loved by his father, and envied and hated by his brothers. at 17, “the lad” tends sheep with his older brothers. he dreams dreams which indicate his parents and brothers will bow down to him. it may not be seen as wise to share those with said brothers, but in the end, the dreams come to pass, and joseph is vindicated (see gen. 37, 39-41). samuel is promised by his mother, hannah, to serve the lord, and so she gives him to the high priest of the time, eli. eli, while a good man we are told, allows his sons to mismanage the sacrifices of israel, and so, eli’s house is condemned. samuel, while still a child, is called of god in the night time. he finally responds “speak; for thy servant heareth,” and is finally told the calamities that will befall eli and his sons and is set to be the next prophet (1 samuel 3). young samuel, is remarkable in receiving revelations from lord at a time when “the word of the lord was precious in those days; there was no open vision (1 samuel 3: 1).” samuel however is innocent and good and honest. he even reveals god’s word of destruction towards the current prophet, eli, when asked to do so (1 samuel 3: 19). samuel is instrumental in anointing david as the king of israel after saul sins and loses his mandate to rule god’s people. when samuel sees david’s oldest brother, eliab, he thinks he must be the future king of israel, but the lord counsels him to “look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature; because i have refused him: for the lord seeth not as a man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the lord looketh on the heart (1 samuel 16: 7). this is even a “scripture mastery” scripture that is one of 25 in the old testament emphasized in seminary, a daily spiritual study class many mormon youth of high school age take. seminary students will focus on and often memorize scripture mastery scriptures. as for david’s wisdom, his encounter with goliath is telling. while all the armies of israel fear the mighty philistine goliath, david asks “for who is this uncircumcised philistine, that he should defy the armies of the living god?” (1 samuel 17: 26) david, in opposition to his older brothers and king saul who notes “thou art but a youth, and he a man of war from his youth,” but david insists on his ability to defeat their champion and, without the traditional armor and weapons favored by the more experienced, he approaches goliath with his staff, “five smooth stones,” and his sling (1 samuel 17: 40). goliath is insulted, david, undaunted, tells goliath he’s about to die and that david comes in the “name of the lord of hosts,” and that “this day will the lord deliver thee into mine hand; and i will smite thee, and take thine head from thee…that all the earth may know that there is a god in israel (1 samuel 45-46).” david does so, and is set up as a model of exemplary faith. finally, jesus is a prime example of the wise child when, at only 12 years old, he is left behind in jerusalem after a passover feast and is found, finally, “in the temple, sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them, and asking and a child shall lead them green 18 them questions. and all that heard him were astonished at his understanding and answers (luke 2: 46-47).” jesus is a wise child who is wise beyond his years and astonishes those around him at his understanding of the scriptures and the law. further, he is the source of many teachings that emphasize what people can learn from children. in matthew 18: 2-4 “jesus called a little child unto him, and set him in the midst of them, and said, “verily i say unto you, except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven.” in matthew 19: 14, “jesus said, suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven.” the emphasis on wise children in general conference may reflect this precedent and desire to emulate jesus christ’s example, and align themselves with his teachings. the wise child that jesus speaks of, and that appears most frequently in scriptures, is strikingly different from the wise child of the folktales. these scriptural variants of the wise child share some similarities with the folk variants. the folk variants and the scriptural variants both emphasize rebuking elders, though those elders are less often parents. in the case of nephi, it’s his older brothers, david rebukes king saul, joseph smith rebukes the religious leaders of his area, and jesus rebukes his mother. these rebukes are different in that the youths in these examples are both active, and knowledgeable although they retain a naiveté as well. they are able to be both knowledgeable and naïve by being naïve to worldy things, and knowledgeable about spiritual things. as such, they come across as less caustic than the folk examples in their efforts to instruct and exhort people on spiritual things. the child in mormon and american culture scholars of american culture have identified two contrasting views of childhood: as a “tabula rasa” in need of “acculturation,” protection, or shelter, and the child as “specula naturae,” the mirrors of nature, or a type of noble savage. gary cross notes the connection between the romantic era and the idea of the pure, innocent child. he quotes wordsworth as saying children come “fresh from the hand of god.” mormon speakers in general conference are fond of wordsworth and have quoted his ode: intimations on immortality which includes “our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:/ the soul that rises with us, our life’s star, / hath had elsewhere its setting, / and cometh from afar: / not in entire forgetfulness, / and not in utter nakedness, / but trailing clouds of glory do we come / from god, who is our home: / heaven lives about us in our infancy!” this quote has been used in general conference two or three times a decade over the past three decades, twice by president monson in 2012 and 2007. it portrays the child not as a blank slate, but a noble, pure, innocent being close to heaven and divinity. the rise of mormonism during the romantic movement supports this connection, as do numerous mormon scriptures. rebecca de schweinitz also sees evidence of an aristotelian view of children where “the child is important, not for herself or himself, but for his or her potential” (136-7). green and a child shall lead them 19 support for this idea in mormon doctrine is surprisingly hard to find. if asked for scriptures that indicate children’s innate goodness, many members might quote the prophet mormon condemnation of infant baptism. however, his reasons don’t necessarily indicate it is because children are good, but because they are innocent and unaccountable for their actions. mormon writes that “their little children need no repentance, neither baptism…but little children are alive in christ…for the power of redemption cometh on all them that have no law” (moroni 8: 11, 22). other reasons include the injustice of a god that would condemn innocent children to hell for failure to do something they have no knowledge of or power to do. his reasons focus not on children’s goodness, but their innocence or, the term i’ve been using, naiveté. there is, however, some scriptural support for the idea that children are innately good. christ encourages his disciples to “become as little children,” and “humble himself as this little child” (matt. 18: 3-4). invoking the difference between the natural (or worldly) sphere and the spiritual, king benjamin says that all men are enemies to god and in a fallen state “unless he yields to the enticings of the holy spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of christ the lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father” (mosiah 3: 19). looked at as a syllogism, if saints should be good, and saints should be like children, children must be good. the difficulty of differentiating between good and innocent children is still present however because the examples here, and elsewhere in latter-day saint scripture, could still be read as seeing children not as acting righteously, but as being innately righteous. while much maligned by other christian sects as ‘trying to save ourselves through works,’ mormon theology does require knowledge to act righteously and places prime importance on agency or free will. while mormon theology asserts that “salvation was and is and is to come…through the atoning blood of christ (mosiah 3: 18), joseph smith reveals that “it is impossible for a man to be saved in ignorance” (d&c 131: 6). the goal seems to be a fusion of the inherently good qualities of a child—especially those of submission to a heavenly father—fused with the understanding, knowledge, and decision-making ability of an adult. the problem, finally, with the syllogism is a difference in expectations. children are seen as inherently innocent, and so good or bad applies less to them—forget the conspicuous absence in any scriptures of the crying, willful children filling the pews each sunday—while adults, with full agency, are expected to act good, knowing that those actions are good. the wise child in mormon folklore helps clarify these expectations by presenting the naïve goodness of the child as an example to the knowing, but not always good, consideration of the adults. the child as a blank slate is prevalent in american culture and, if not explicitly stated in mormon theology, implicit in mormon culture. the child of the blank slate needs acculturation, needs guidance, needs protection. gary cross would say the child needs “shaping.” mormon doctrine speaks of a “veil” that has caused people on earth to forget their premortal life where they knew and lived with god and jesus christ. the veil is there so that people can exercise faith, and so that and a child shall lead them green 20 faith and obedience can be tested. the veil of the tabernacle moses erected in the wilderness to “divide unto you between the holy place and the most holy,” is a symbolic representation of this separation between our world and god’s (see ex 26: 33). scriptures speak of a book of mormon prophet, the brother of jared, who was so righteous he “could not be kept from beholding within the veil (ether 3: 19; 12: 19). joseph smith speaks of the veil being “taken from our minds” so that they can behold the lord (d&c 110: 1), and later, explaining perhaps the physical workings of this veil, joseph smith records that “all spirit is matter, but it is more fine or pure, and can only be discerned by purer eyes; we cannot see it; but when our bodies are purified we shall see that it is all matter” (d&c 131: 7-8). while generally the veil is a kind of tabula rasa, a blank slate that erases the memories of people’s premortal existence, it is also used, folklorically, to indicate that children are inherently good—not just innocent—but that they have an “innate connection to spiritual realms” (de schweinitz 134). you can often hear speakers speak of good children and end with something like ‘the veil is very thin for children, who have recently come from god.’ looking at general conference talks, mormons would seem to agree. while the wise child folk motif is the subject of this paper, the protected child who needs shaping and the watchful care of parents is just as, if not more, prevalent in official discourse. “train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it” (proverbs 22: 6), is more than just a proverb in mormon families. after giving moses the law, god commands that these things be taught to their children on multiple occasions (see deut. 4: 10; 6: 7; and 11: 19-21). ephesians, in the new testament encourages us to “bring up [children] in the nurture and admonition of the lord (eph. 6: 4), the book of mormon includes numerous examples of children being taught (like the aforementioned stripling warriors), nephi and enos both reflect on words they were taught by their fathers (see 1ne 1: 1 and enos 1: 1), and lehi preaches to and corrects his children many times (see 1 ne 2: 8-9, 1 ne 8: 37), king benjamin exhorts his people to “teach [their children] to walk in the ways of truth and soberness” (mosiah 4: 15), and the doctrine and covenants include the injunction to “bring up your children in light” (d&c 93: 40), and a warning for parents who do not teach their children (d&c 68: 25).1 in any general conference or sacrament meeting, members hear counsel about the importance of and how to raise their children. beyond that, there are two magazines especially for youth, the friend for pre-teen youth, and the new-era for teens. beyond that, the first presidency—the highest authority in the church comprising the president and his two councilors—has a message at the beginning of each issue of the ensign, a magazine for adult members of the church. the message is meant to be shared in month family visits by pairs of male members known as home teachers. these messages now include special teaching ideas and examples for “youth” and “children.” obviously the training and teaching of youth and children is a high priority for the church, and the members that comprise it. all of which indicate a strong belief in and support of the child as a blank slate, the child in need of acculturation and guidance to become proper adults. green and a child shall lead them 21 methodology while the current lds prophet, president thomas monson, is well known for his use of stories and anecdotes that would include the wise child, i have instead chosen to focus on the use of the wise child folk motif in the last two general conferences of the church when church leaders speak to members all over the world. although the topics and discussions are often familiar, the messages in these biennial meetings represent the most current word of the lord available to church members. i have looked at each talk in these conferences and noted each use of the wise child. the wise child in the folk motif stories were classified based on someone learning something based on the actions of a child, and the person who learned was usually an adult. based on these broad similarities, the criteria for which stories i included as an example of the wise child included two main components. first, the story had to be about a child and secondly the child, knowingly or not, had to be the source of the knowledge the adult gained. thus a story about a child who dies and the family who learns to cope with and overcome trials would not necessarily count as a wise child because the learning comes more from the child’s death, an event, rather than the child herself. there were other border cases. for example, david f. evans spoke of a young man who was not a member of the church but had many friends who were and came to many ward activities as a youth. after high school, he became roommates with an lds friend who had not gone on a mission due to certain issues he was working through. they spoke about it and soon the boy was meeting with the lds friend’s bishop and was baptized. the purpose of the story was to show how conversion can often be a slow process, but many will eventually enter the church through the efforts of friends and church members. the teaching that occurs is from boy to boy rather than child to adult, but later, when the speaker talks of what he learned from this example, and makes the point to share that with church members listening to general conference, it becomes a more obvious example of the wise child, as the actions of a young man are presented as exemplary, and thus something all can and should learn from. even within the narrative when evans remarks “what an invitation!” after the lds boy invites his friend to come meet with his bishop, we see that he is being set as an example, and someone to learn from, a wise child (evans). some cases were not clear-cut. while parts of joseph smith’s story includes moments of the wise child, only references dealing specifically with him as a wise child were included. jesus is an even more complicated example because his “son-ness” is emphasized much more often than the wisdom and learning he had to offer when he was a child. i have not included any references of jesus as a child of god, but have included any references made to his mortal childhood. this dual quality of jesus as father and son, parent and child, will be discussed later in my interpretation of the wise child motif. finally, i have included wise children used in talks aimed at youth or children as well as children as old as missionaries if the youth or “child-ness” of the missionaries was given as a defining feature. if it and a child shall lead them green 22 was important enough to stress, then it seemed fair to include it as an example of the wise child. in looking at the last two general conferences of the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints, there were a total of sixty-seven talks, thirty-two of which used the wise child motif with forty-nine unique instances. so if a story of a wise child started at the beginning of a talk and was references towards the end, it still only counted once. however, if one speaker gave numerous stories about different children who taught or whom the audience could learn from, each instance was counted. so this year, the wise child figured in nearly half of all talks given by general authorities at general conference. the unique instances shows that it can be used numerous times—five was the most—in a given talk and that depending on topic and speaker, it can feature quite prominently in a talk. when a primary president or a young men president speaks, or when the topic is what parents can learn from their children, the speaker often uses numerous examples. general conference: the authoritative/exhortative frame at general conference, leaders of the lds church present talks of varying length to church members around the world and, implicitly or explicitly, to non-members. the purpose of general conference talks is to present doctrine and exhortations to live by gospel principles. conference talks, like many talks in weekly church meetings, include exhortations, scripture quoting, personal experience, the experiences of others, and usually end with a declaration of testimony, or conviction of truth. current events, references to magazine articles, or pop-culture references happen, but are less common. like sacrament meeting talks, general conference addresses are monologic, and are the most public speech act in lds culture. as richard bauman says, in most communicative acts, an interpretive frame sets up how things are to be interpreted (292). while i have defended various aspects of the wise child in mormon discourse on narrative grounds, general conference frames the speech acts as authoritative and exhortative. general conference is set apart as a very special verbal event in mormon life. it happens only twice a year and overrides the usual schedule of weekly meetings. rather than meeting in their regular church buildings on sunday during the regularly scheduled three hour block of meetings, latter-day saints across the world watch online or via satellite the conference center in salt lake city. in supplanting regular worship services, general conference is marked as more important and of more authority than regular worship services. further, it places salt lake and the leadership who reside there as the loci of the lds world. not only is it authoritative, but possesses the most authority. similar to any classroom or auditorium, the leaders of the church sit around and behind the raised lectern from which speakers address their live audience of 21,000 and their televised audience of millions. the general authorities are raised, literally, above the crowd to address the entire church membership. this most authoritative and exhortative frame may be one reason why general authorities employ children to communicate their messages. tom mould notes that green and a child shall lead them 23 the cultural norm for humility in mormon culture. by making the child the source of wisdom, even church leaders, those highest in the hierarchy, are able to achieve a level of humility by learning things from the humblest among us, children. we see this in fact, in the many examples of experiences that involve children in the third world in abject poverty. in terms of humility there is the added implication that even the “greatest” in the kingdom have something to learn from the lowest. a message echoed in the new testament. in one instance, christ tells his apostles “whosoever shall receive this child in my name receiveth me:…for he that is least among you all, the same shall be great” (luke 9: 48). boyd k. packer’s talk in the april session of general conference is a good example of this humility before children and even impoverished children. the title of packer’s talk “and a little child shall lead them,” references the wise child. accordingly, he cites many examples of children he learned something from. he begins his talk with the story of seeing an orphan beggar in japan freezing, dressed in rags, covered in scabies, and holding a rusty tin can and a spoon. he’d knocked on the door of his train. elder packer tried to open the door to give him some money but the train pulled out. elder packer ends the story by commenting “i will never forget that starving little boy left standing in the cold, holding up an empty tin can. nor can i forget how helpless i felt as the train slowly pulled away and left him standing on the platform.” elder packer is not explicit in what he has learned or what he intends his audience to learn at this point, but the idea that children can help us understand and know the purpose of life becomes more clear as he continues. in cusco, peru, another “starving street orphan” enters the meeting house and tries to make for the sacrament bread. a stern look from a woman causes him to leave, but he returns and, when elder packer opens his arms for him, comes to sit on his lap. again, he offers little explanation beyond sharing it with then prophet president kimball, who notes “that experience has far greater meaning than you have yet come to know.” next elder packer tells of a boy in salt lake running around in the winter with no coat. he concludes that story with the moral “at night, when i pull the covers over me, i offer a prayer for those who have no warm bed to go to.” he has learned, or hopes to teach something about compassion (packer). the wise children elder packer tells about in these stories are largely passive. what the children do is less important than who they are, poor, destitute, and children. elder packer’s next example includes a girl in japan at the close of wwii. she goes about “busily gathering yellow sycamore leaves in a bouquet,” seemingly “unaware of the devastation that surrounded her.” elder packer is impressed by her ability to find “the one beauty left in her world,” and adds that thinking of her increases his faith, concluding “embodied in the child was hope.” the child is naïve in the wisdom she produces, which is produced in both active and passive ways. her actions of gathering the leaves are the catalyst for elder packer’s revelation, but his interpreted focuses on an innate quality in the child (ibid). later in his talk, elder packer notes, “one of the great discoveries of parenthood is that we learn far more about what really matters from our children than we ever did from our parents. the role reversal here is obvious, but done very differently than it would be in american culture or even many folk tales. in american culture, and a child shall lead them green 24 there is more conflict and thus more victory for the child and more humiliation for the parent when roles are reversed. the wise child in folktales is also often a trickster figure who will turn the tables on their foolish, stingy, or conniving parents. here the second most senior member in the church, and a father and grandfather himself, cites this role reversal. there is no trace of the trickster, or humiliation for anyone involved, but is presented more as a simple fact of life. parents are not necessarily diminished by it, and yet, children do rise to the role of teacher in the reversal (ibid). this role reversal is well known in scriptures. jesus rebukes his disciples for keeping a child from him and uses the opportunity to teach them that “of such is the kingdom of god,” and “whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of god as a little child, he shall not enter therein” (mark 10: 14-15). the book of mormon also has much to say on the matter. mosiah 3: 19 reads that “the natural man is an enemy of god, and has been from the fall of adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the holy spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of christ the lord, and becometh as a little child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father.” here sainthood, is equated with becoming like a child. and the child indicated is not the tabula rasa but, but the noble savage in direct contrast with the “natural man” who is the carnal aspect of people who prioritize their physical desires. the naturally innocent and pure child must be worked towards once someone has become an adult and their natural desires grow stronger. there seems to be a pre-puberty purity and post-purity tendency towards physical appetite and “the natural man.” as far as the wise child goes, this corresponds to the passive child in the folktypes whose wisdom is outside its own knowledge. the child may have things to teach, but those things are merely attributes of who the child is, and thus the child can teach simply by being a child, good, pure, obedient, etc. some speakers we expect to use the wise child. primary, young women, and young men general presidency members might all be expected to use children as examples of good action because their intended audience are children. ann m. dibb, 2nd counselor in the general young women presidency begins her talk with the example of a fifteen year old girl she saw standing in a line, wearing a shirt that said, “i’m a mormon, are you?” sister dibb was impressed with her confidence in her identity. she was a passive but knowing child. later she mentions a girl who joined the church because she finally found one that taught modesty and standards. sister dibb presents this young woman as having an innate knowledge of the importance of standards and modesty, she had a spiritual knowledge that general members, and other young women, can learn from. she even mentions jesus as god’s son in the garden of gethsemane being obedient and submissive to his father (dibb). other speakers mention wise children similar in some ways to the wise children of the folktales who are naively wise. quentin r. cook, a member of the 12 apostles, mentions a young man who is realizes that society recognizes many things latter-day saints see as wrong, but not when it comes to pornography. this green and a child shall lead them 25 boy is set up as being wiser than much of american society, and cook follows this up by citing himself the boy’s exhortation that primary is not too early to start warning and protecting children from society (cook). here we have a wise child being used by a general authority to evoke the sheltered or protected child in need of educating by parents and leaders. truly a dizzying interplay of authority and subservience. rebecca de schweinitz notes the sentimental use of children in mormon culture and argues that lds culture “(however unconsciously)…link(s) emotional responses to religious beliefs [] to reinforce adult agendas” (135). and certainly that is true. children, especially the impoverished ones used by boyd k. packer, can produce powerful emotional responses, and in the hands of authority figures will not criticize the very people using the trope. further explanation for this interplay comes from the earlier discussion of humility in mormon culture, but it is important to note that the wise child is not just a way to borrow humility, but can also be seen as a democratic expression of heavenly virtues. cook’s talk is a good example. beyond quoting this unnamed 15 year old boy, cook also quotes c. s. lewis—a highly respected and often quoted christian author—past presidents of the church, joseph smith, george albert smith, ezra taft benson, and gordon b. hinkley; scriptures from the book of mormon and both old and new testaments; english poet william wordsworth; new york times columnist ross douthat; wall street journal columnist peggy noonan; and even dr. r. albert mohler jr., president of the southern baptist theological seminary. the inclusion of children into the cannon of both spiritual and worldly greats presents an incredibly democratic cosmology. in the book of mormon, alma speaks of this democratic ideal when he says “and we see that [god’s] arm is extended to all people who will repent and believe on his name” (alma 19:36). i will discuss further evidence and implications of this worldview in the conclusions. craig christensen shares the story of going through a temple open house— before a temple is dedicated, anyone is allowed to go through and view much of the interior. his 6 year old son accompanies him and remarks “what is happening? what am i feeling?” elder christensen’s talk credits his son for the wisdom he exhibited in noting not the fine and beautiful art and architecture which he and others were appreciating, but the spirit of the place, the spiritual importance of it, that was more important (christensen). henry b. eyring shares a similar story about his granddaughter who “illustrated the power of innocence and humility to connect us with god.” she went to the temple open house and asked, “mommy, where is jesus?” as the “house of the lord” she had expected to see jesus. her mother explained that she wouldn’t be able to “see” jesus in the temple, but could feel his influence in her heart. considering this, she decided, “jesus is gone helping someone.” while her naiveté seems evident, elder eyring praises her for not having things obscure or obstructing her view of reality, that god is close, and can be felt by anyone. he adds that she had a good understanding of jesus’s corporeal body, that he can only be in one place at a time, and that what jesus was most often doing, was performing miracles. he adds that “the spirit could reveal to her childlike mind and heart the comfort all of us need and want” (eyring). the point is that the and a child shall lead them green 26 adults listening to elder eyring’s talk should be as childlike in their faith of gospel truths. d. todd christofferson tells the story about a 14 year old boy in india who works two jobs, goes to school, and studies into the night to help support his family and prepare for a brighter future. elder christofferson praises the boy’s “diligence and courage,” and continues, “he is doing the very best he can with his limited resources and opportunities, and he is a blessing to his family.” the boy is wise and very active, an example of work and activity elder christofferson wants church members to emulate regardless of their circumstances. the boys hard work is central to elder christofferson’s talk which repeats numerous times “brethren, we have work to do” (christofferson). clearly, this child is the example priesthood holders should follow. conclusions terryl givens in people of paradox reveals one reason why the wise child may be a popular motif in mormon discourse. givens identifies four fundamental paradoxes in mormon thought, the first two relate to the wise child: authority and radical freedom and searching and certainty. the hierarchical structure of the church and the equating of priesthood power and authority with god’s authority has been examined and criticized by many writers and scholars who see the unquestioning obedience that often results. on the other hand the lay clergy and the emphasis on personal revelation support a radical individuality and disruption of those hierarchies. if any worthy member can hold a leadership position in the church, then there is something of a meritocracy in the power structure of the church albeit a meritocracy based on spiritual rather than worldly values. this mixing of clergy and member, officials and officiated, does establish a hierarchy, but a fluid one, where members can find themselves on either side. a member may be a bishop for a while, and called to the family history center afterwards. the wise child reveals a similar flattening between youth and adults, the knowing and the naïve, as categories are mixed or fluid. the second paradox relevant to the wise child relates to the wisdom of the child. givens notes that joseph smith’s experience in physically meeting god the father and jesus the son, having actual angelic hands placed on his head to confer the power of the priesthood, and translating 50 lb. golden plates imbued him and mormonism with a predilection for certain knowledge. contemporary evidence of this can be seen in the monthly testimony meetings in any ward or branch in the church where members are encouraged to proclaim before their fellow congregants the things they know to be true. the emphasis is more on knowledge than simply belief. general conference also emphasizes certainty as members hear testimonies from “special witnesses of christ.” on the other hand, joseph smith also taught that knowledge and progression were a ceaseless struggle that took not only entire lives but were something to work on “a great while after you have passed through the veil (qtd. in givens 30).” this paradox between certain knowledge in the form of testimonies and ceaseless striving for ever greater knowledge and righteousness extends the green and a child shall lead them 27 spectrum between naiveté and knowledge out to eternity. when using such a measure, even the most elder apostles and prophets giving talks in general conference can be viewed as little more than wise children themselves. wilford woodruff recorded some words of the joseph smith on this subject. at the conclusion of a conference joseph smith stated “brethren, i have been very much edified and instructed in your testimonies here tonight, but i want to say to you before the lord, that you know no more concerning the destinies of this church and kingdom than a babe upon its mother’s lap. you don’t comprehend it” (woodruff). this was the prophet speaking to the whole priesthood of the church at the time. while his comment was specific to knowing the destinies of the church, the comparison of even the highest in the church hierarchy to “a babe upon its mother’s lap,” is an aspect of the doctrine of eternal progression. anyone in mortality can be seen as a child, but hopefully a wise one. seen in this light, the wise child is not necessarily a trickster figure of role-reversals in mormon culture and can be used with gentle humor since members share its naiveté and searching for truth. mormon teaching treats all people on earth as sons and daughters of god and thus spiritual siblings, but also focuses on the importance of the family consisting of a husband and wife, raising and teaching children. in a church where common addresses involve “brother” and “sister,” what is the role of the child in lds religious discourse? for a religion that has been criticized for being patriarchal, and a gerontocracy, what view of childhood emerges from looking at the official statements and faith-promoting stories given out by the church? the democratic nature of mormon cosmology is even more profound. not only are all people brothers and sisters, and not only are all beings on an eternal path of progression, but all have the most grand potential. church president lorenzo snow is often quoted as saying, “as man now is, god once was; as god is now man may be” (snow). joseph smith also stated that “god himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens!” (“god”). latter-day saints believe that this potential is open to all men, women, and children on earth. the prevalent use of the wise child—and possibly even the short shrift given to rowdy children in official discourse—is a consequence of this democratic and egalitarian cosmology. there is a flip side to this egalitarian view. elder packer’s talk, mentioned previously, notes that “the ultimate end of all activity in the church is to see a husband and his wife and their children happy at home, protected by the principles and laws of the gospel, sealed safely in the covenants of the everlasting priesthood (packer).” although husbands and wives, mothers and fathers, are often reminded of the need to protect their children, here they are in need of protection as much as their children. this is not unique. if the sheltered or protected child is prevalent in american and mormon discourse, the protected parent and adult, is just as, if not more prevalent in mormon discourse. scriptures are full of warnings for all people to continually beware temptation’s lure. doctrine and covenants 20: 33 reads “therefore let the church take heed and pray always, lest they fall into temptation;” the same basic sentiment is repeated in d&c 31: 12. d&c 75: 11 and 88: 126 talk about praying always that people “faint not.” matthew 26: 11 and mark and a child shall lead them green 28 14: 38 both exhort to “watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation.” the lord’s prayer includes the plea to “lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil,” again indicating the ever-present nature of temptation and risk of falling to it. the book of mormon prophet, nephi when he is older, laments “the temptations and the sins which do so easily beset me” (2 nephi 4: 18). alma 34: 39 states “yea, and i also exhort you, my brethren, that ye be watchful unto prayer continually, that ye may not be led away by the temptations of the devil, that he may not overpower you, that ye may not becomes his subjects at the last day; for behold, he rewardeth you no good thing.” clearly the danger of sin is prevalent, and the solution watchfulness, prayer, and, as elder packer states, the protection that righteous living offers. all people are like the protected child, in need of shelter and protection. these connections between children and adults go further. other conference addresses note that most things done in the church are begun when we are children. president monson, in april 2012 conference, notes that “in one capacity or another, in one setting or another, i have been attending priesthood meetings for the past 72 years—since i was ordained a deacon at the age of 12” (monson). often, the comparison is made between the newest and most senior members of the priesthood having access to the same or similar power, that it is all based on righteousness rather than age or experience. a great way to teach this basic belief is to use children as examples of power to prove that very point. it deemphasizes age, seniority, experience, other hierarchical structures for one that is more merit-based which, in this religious setting, means merits of morality, goodness, righteousness. julie b. beck, then president of the lds women’s organization, the relief society, shared a similar message. she notes that “every year hundreds of thousands of women and young women become part of this ever-expanding “circle of sisters” [meaning the relief society]” and “wherever a sister lives and wherever she serves, she retains her membership and association in relief society.” at eighteen women go from being in the “young women” organization of the church to the “relief society” (beck). this change comes at the cusp of adulthood and lasts the rest of their lives. further essential rituals and practices of church membership are begun when children are young and continue into adulthood. just as president monson noted that he’d attended, and thus entered and continued in, priesthood since he was 12. according to the “articles of faith” penned by joseph smith, the first principles of the gospel are “first, faith in the lord jesus christ; second, repentance; third, baptism by immersion for the remission of sins; fourth, laying on of hands for the gift of the holy ghost” (1:4). these principles are prerequisites for the ordinances of baptism and confirmation which commonly happen when children turn eight. thereafter, as noted in 2 nephi, chapter 31, the main thing is to “endure to the end.” there are certainly other ordinances and rituals which only adults participate in, but the most basic and essential are done when members are children and simply continue on through adulthood and, as mentioned earlier, into eternity. the wise child is not a real child but a narrative device. as a narrative device, the wise child is based on cultural concepts of childhood and how children green and a child shall lead them 29 differ from adults. the wise child of folklore, the trickster figure who ridicules and confounds adults, has been transformed in lds culture into a common trope on par with almost any other source of wisdom. this transformation indicates mormonism’s egalitarian ideals and cosmology as well as its unique views of children as agents and adults as young in an eternal perspective. in short, the wise child in mormon discourse has been transformed from a trickster figure to a standard authority figure because mormons already see themselves as liminal figures between a spiritual infancy and exalted adulthood. in such a worldview, the child as trickster loses its fangs and settles in as another member of the community. note 1. d&c is the abbreviation of doctrine & covenants, one of the standard scriptures of the lds church. works cited articles of faith. 2013. lds.org. the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints. http://www.lds.org/topics/articles-of-faith?lang=eng bauman, richard. 1975. verbal art as performance. american anthropologist. 77(2): 290-311. beck, julie b. 2012. the vision of prophets regarding relief society: faith, family, relief. ensign. may. https://www.lds.org/ensign/print/2012/05/the-vision-ofprophets-regarding-relief-society the book of mormon: another testament of jesus christ. 1981. trans. joseph smith, jr. salt lake: the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints. cook, quentin r. 2012. can ye feel so now? ensign. nov. http://www. mormonchannel.org/magazines/ensign/2012/11/can-ye-feel-so-now christensen, craig. 2012. an unspeakable gift from god. ensign. nov. http:// www.lds.org/general-conference/2012/10/an-unspeakable-gift-fromgod?lang=eng christofferson, d. todd. 2012. brethren, we have work to do. ensign. nov. http:// www.mormonchannel.org/magazines/ensign/2012/11/brethren-we-havework-to-do cross, gary. 2004. the cute and the cool: wondrous innocence and modern american children’s culture. new york: oxford university press. de schweinitz, rebecca. 2012. where nothing is long ago: child and youth in mormon history. journal of mormon history 38 (2, spring): 125-138. dibb, ann m. 2012. arise and shine forth. ensign. may. http://www. mormonchannel.org/magazines/ensign/2012/5/arise-and-shine-forth the doctrine and covenants of the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints: containing revelations given to joseph smith, the prophet, with some additions by his successors in the presidency of the church. 1981. salt lake city: the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints. and a child shall lead them green 30 evans, david f. 2012. was it worth it? ensign. may. http://www.mormonchannel. org/magazines/ensign/2012/5/was-it-worth-it eyring, henry b. 2012. where is the pavilion? ensign. nov. http://www. mormonchannel.org/magazines/ensign/2012/11/where-is-the-pavilion god the eternal father. 2013. teachings of presidents of the church: joseph smith. lds.org, https://www.lds.org/manual/doctrines-of-the-gospel-teacher-manual/ chapter-3-god-the-eternal-father?lang=eng givens, terryl l. 2007. people of paradox. oxford: oxford university press. hansen, chadwick. 1963. the character of jim and the ending of “huckleberry finn.” the massachusetts review 5 (1, autumn): 45-66. monson, thomas s. 2012. willing and worthy to serve. ensign. may. https://www. lds.org/general-conference/2012/04/willing-and-worthy-to-serve?lang=eng neustadter, roger. 2009. the obvious child. new york: university press of america. osguthorpe, russell t. 2012. one step closer to the savior. ensign. nov. https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2012/10/one-step-closer-to-thesavior?lang=eng packer, boyd k. 2012. and a little child shall lead them. ensign. may. https:// www.lds.org/general-conference/2012/04/and-a-little-child-shall-leadthem?lang=eng scriptures. 2013. lds.org. the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints. http:// www.lds.org/scriptures?lang=eng&cid=rdscriptures thompson. stith. 1955-58. motif-index of folk-literature: a classification of narrative elements in folktales, ballads, myths, fables, medieval romances, exempla, fabliaux, jest-books, and local legends. revised and enlarged ed. bloomington: indiana up. woodruff, wilford. 1898. conference report, apr. 57. 31 playing with the sacred: lds children’s games for boredom and entertainment jared s rife on any sunday throughout the united states mormon (or church of jesus christ of latter-day saints, referred to hereafter as lds) children in formal church meetings usually associated with somber devotion play games not out of a spirit of rebellion but with the social sanction, even encouragement, of the church. although game playing in church is not unique to lds culture, mormons associate the games with their distinctive worship settings. often outside of their awareness, but possibly explaining the use of the play frame within the larger context of the church service, the containment of social paradoxes within the games sanctioned by the local group can serve to undermine the sacredness of faith and devotion in lds youth. this paper will analyze the paradoxes of play enacted within the sacred setting of lds sacrament meetings, and use theories of “play framing” developed by gregory bateson and elaborated by erving goffman, jay mechling, and simon bronner to interpret the messages about mormon cultural belief embedded within games performed in church. a primary setting for game playing is during the sacrament meeting, typically the first hour of a three hour block that constitutes the weekly congregational meeting of the lds church. it is a time where members of the church partake of the emblematic blood and body jesus christ. part of the meeting ritual is the sacrament prayer where members will take upon themselves the name of christ, and recommit themselves to keeping his commandments and the covenant they made at baptism.1 during the service, members are introspective, evaluating their lives and over the previous week and preparing for the week to come. because of its sacred nature of personal worship many participants understand that this is the most intimate and personal ritual performed during the sunday meeting. the remainder of the meeting consists of the singing of hymns and listening to talks given by members of the congregation. it is a time when the outside world can be excluded, and the inner commitment and desire of each member can be laid bare and open as a form of worship. the sacrament meeting where the games are played is considered the main service on sunday. church members (both young and old) have the understanding that while the service is occurring, children and youth are to remain quiet and in the immediate area of the pew. this is out of respect for others in the service that are concentrating on the talks and singing the hymns typical of a sacrament service. an observer, however, might be surprised to find that it is common for children to occupy themselves with a variety of games during this reverent observance. these games range from simple tic-tac-toe and thumb wrestling, to a specific form of bingo that uses either common uttered phrases or individuals as squares to be crossed of en route to winning. the simplest form of the question that this paper will try to address is: why play games during such a sacred time? one answer to that question is a simple one. the games are meant to keep kids occupied and the playing with the sacred rife 32 games themselves have grown since the church placed emphasis upon collective family worship in the post-wwii baby boom. in their seminal work, saints of sage and saddle (1959), austin and alta fife noted that children were not encouraged to attend sacrament meetings, because church leaders wanted a more reverent worship service. in the 1960s this attitude began to soften. the toleration of children was altered completely in the early 1980s when the church moved to its current once-a-week three hour block opposed to what the fife’s observed where the various meetings and organizations of the church meet during the week as well as sunday.2 the physical setting and demographic makeup of a typical individual congregation are also relevant. they typical sacrament room is about 50’ wide and about 80’ long. the usual attendance is around 150 individuals ranging in age from new born to late eighties. there are single adults, families with different aged children, and older couples in the congregation. members of the lds church vary in class, race, region and background. it is not uncommon for wards (local units) and stakes (comprised of eight to fourteen wards) across the united states to have these distinctions apparent through simple observation. in one pew you could find a member from puerto rico, mexico, canada or california. in another pew you could have a surgeon, a prison guard, or a stay at home mom. typical lines of separation and distinction such as race, class, or ethnicity do not exclude games from being played by all the children within the ward, stake, or region. because of this, the extrapolation of this analysis can be applied broadly to the church in the united states.3 although as i will also discuss it does have some overlap into the rest of the non-lds culture, but mostly its interpretations pertain to members of the lds church. the physical setting is also relevant. the room where the games are played is called the chapel. the games are played in a padded wooden pew measuring 8´ long, 20˝ wide, and a height of 22˝ at the seat of the pew, and 34´ at the height of the back of the pew.4 all the pews face forward towards a raised platform and pulpit. the layout of the room is important because it reinforces the idea that there should exist community among the members, both old and young and that the focus of the congregation should be unified. the physical layout also suggests that the chapel and the sacrament service that takes place there encourage a formal and encouraged location for silence, individual contemplation, and communication that at times can be at odds with the children’s games. this emphasis further accentuates the questions raised about letting children play games. the collecting of through fieldwork, i tried to step outside my role as a lifelong member of the lds church, and become an ethnographer that was capable of analyzing the symbolic communication within the frameworks of play. i emphasized this outside observer role to examine the common games that so often are taken for granted as just part of the lds culture. methodologically i approached these games from the standpoint of seeing them as part of an ethnographic analysis. by personal observation, interviewing others, and by securing documents from folk archives, i was able to create a large pool of games from which to make comparisons and draw conclusions. after acquiring a large sample of games certain patterns emerged. aside from inventorying rife playing with the sacred 33 and trying to classify my findings, i wanted to situate the games within the broader lds culture. these games were only played during sacrament meeting and not at other times because of different activates that require more focused participation from the children and youth. the classifications assigned to the different categories are ones that i constructed, and make the classifications more universally understood by a non-lds reader. a lds member would not label or even categorize these games in this way aside from calling them “games,” “church games,” or “sacrament games.” the first was that the games themselves could be divided into three categories. the first was “quiet” games, so labeled because they make no noise when played and thus are not distracting to nearby worshipers. these games are intended to be silent in their nature, with the hope among other things is that they will not be a distraction to other members around the child. for the child these quiet games also have a purpose in that they teach and train the child how they should act but also how they can find success in their worship. the second was games for fun.5 in his work on mormon recreation theory, rex a. skidmore claimed that fun and happiness is the attitude that most lds members feel towards their church.6 although broad in its definition this large group of games is intended for the player’s amusement and to separate and insulate them figure 1. mormon children playing quiet games. photograph by jared s. rife. playing with the sacred rife 34 from the service around them. unlike the quiet games, this category can distract others by participants with noise, but are still relatively quiet. these games are also the ones most likely to involve other children, who may also be in on the humor, jokes, and other forms of social capital shared among children. the amusement can come from the player’s personal sense of humor, or at the expense of others. the third and final category of games is that of games for learning. within the lds culture exists a strong emphasis placed on all types of learning.7 the emphasis on acquiring knowledge both temporal and spiritual. also a drive to receive postsecondary education either in the form of technical training or college degree.8 with this strong emphasis, games that require learning, creativity, or other commonly held beliefs about intelligence and knowledge are tolerated as they serve a larger goal of learning as a lifetime pursuit. another level of analysis that can further shed understanding on the games played is a connection of play framing to age. there are three divisions: children, youth, and teenage. the category of children encompasses the ages of 6 months to eight years. lds theology teaches that children are incapable of sin9 until they reach the age of eight, or the age of accountability. once a child turns eight they can be baptized and become full fledged members of the church. the type of games most played by this demographic is quiet games. the second category of age is that of youth and is from age eight to fourteen. after baptism at eight, a child will continue to be considered a child until they graduate from the primary, the organization in the church is responsible for teaching children in the remaining two hours of the sunday worship block. at the age of 12, children leave primary. the boys enter the young men’s program, and the girls enter the young women’s program. this age group will still play quiet games, but there is more of an emphasis placed upon learning and instructional games. after the initial two years of participation in the young men and young women’s programs at the age of fourteen they move into the third and final category of being teenagers. these moves also correspond with the graduation from a junior high school to a senior high school where the child can now consider themselves closer to adulthood. here they have (or so leaders hope) circumnavigated the early years of teenage awkwardness and are progressing toward adulthood. this final stage may end around eighteen or nineteen when the teenager either leaves for college or for males in the lds church leave to serve a mission two year full time mission. although instances where these games continue on into college their frequency decreases. in this final age group is where most of the games that involve humor are located, although there are still games of learning, it is assumed that by this stage most participants have a grasp on basic beliefs. these three categories allow the division of games and their application to be better understood and dissected within the social expectations of lds culture. identification and annotation of evidence although the games display variation, overall the same types of games are played in different parts of the country. using the categories outlined above, the children’s games come in the form of three different types. the first is quiet books. quiet rife playing with the sacred 35 books come in all shapes and sizes, but their purpose is the same: they keep children quiet through tactile interaction. quiet books are usually handmade, often of felt-like cloth, and each page has an activity that spurs the young participant to action. on one page there could be the face of a young girl, with blond hair made from yarn. the directions on the page would tell the reader to braid the young girl’s hair. another page could have a coat with a zipper that can be zipped up and down. the pages also contain buttons, clasps, or other modules that require the use and energy of hands. some pages have lds content. sometimes the page could ask the young reader to interact with jesus, or another scriptural character. one example located had been used for over thirty years by one family that has been passed down from one generation to the next. this quiet book included an oxen drawn pioneer wagon, lehi (a prophet from the book of mormon) holding an artifact and space for the child to place letters on the page, as well as a mormon match game where children would put together two halves of easily recognizable people or items found in the sacrament meeting itself. other times it could be to give service or aid to a fictional charter in need of accomplishing a specific task.10 the second general activity was felt dolls. these can be homemade or commercially produced. the church i observed and others i have visited have high-wear thread count material on pews, and therefore the backs of the pews make excellent felt boards for these types of games. generally these felt dolls are directed towards young girls, but boys often will play with them too. there are several different types of dolls. some are from famous nursery rhymes and folk tales like the three little pigs, or hansel and gretel. other examples are scenes of land animals in the jungle, forest, or underwater. also more traditional dolls that require clothing to be placed upon them. one set contained girls from european countries and the traditional folk dress was provided for their attire. there exist lds versions of felt dolls that will use dressing up of small children in a variety of outfits. another variation found with felt dolls is homemade and commercially produced scriptural scenes, where children are encouraged to pretend play and act out scenes from the lives of prophets, wars, and other sacred moments found in the lds canon. imagination games require the use of toys. perhaps a small car, action figure, or even lds figurines are used. usually the use of the imagination does not allow for group or multiple participant games to occur but there are occasions when two children from different pews will play together using their imagination. they might recreate something from a television show or movie. other times they might recreate a scriptural science from the bible or book of mormon, and sometimes it is merely as simple as two cars chasing each other on an imagined road. usually the stipulation by the parent placed upon this collective play is that it needs to be done out of the line of sight of those around the children. that means it either has to happen in the space under the pews or it is not able to happen at all. this is perhaps the broadest and non-lds centered game because it allows children to play outside lds centered games. their acceptance in sacrament meeting lends credence to the theory about tolerance for the sacred when small children under the age of eight, that are seen as incapable of sinning, are involved. playing with the sacred rife 36 the next category of games is that of youth games. these games are more learning centered, and unlike the children’s games which intend to occupy and keep the participant quiet and isolated, these games involve others. the first one that is very popular and is not particular to lds culture is the dot game. two people play the game and it is played by first making dots, in neat lines and columns on a blank piece of paper. then whichever of the two is gong first has the chance to connect two of the dots with a straight line. it is then the other youth’s turn to connect two dots with a straight line. the players will alternate turns, until all four sides form a box. the player who forms the box then claims the box by placing their initial or initials in the box and is awarded an extra turn. the back-and-forth nature of the game, with its demand for forethought and stratagem, illustrate a competitive spirit not observed by the youth’s younger counterparts. the next group of games played by youth is puzzles. puzzles generally as a genre are not unique to lds culture, but the types of puzzles that the youth are playing are different. these puzzles are usually of scriptural heroes or particular moments of devotion found in the cannon of scripture. there are two types of puzzles. the first is one is more traditional. it requires that the youth print out and cut up a puzzle. the second is more unusual. it is not uncommon for members of a ward to bring iphones, ipads, and nooks and use them during the three hour church block. this use of technology is aided by most ward buildings having wifi, and these buildings have similar passcodes. the lds church has invested a lot of time and energy in making many of their services available via the internet. the church has made accessible scriptures, talks, lesson manuals, directories, and most importantly for this discussion, puzzles that can be played by small children. these puzzles are much like the paper ones that can be printed and cut out, but do not require the effort to craft them. i will discuss more about the value of both of these formats later in the paper. the final game that many youth play is that of hymnal chase. the lds church has a strong emphasis on singing, music, and performance. it most evident in the formation of the mormon tabernacle choir, that formed and has been performing ever since 1847, a month after the first wave of pioneers entered the salt lake valley. in fact songs are viewed as a form of prayer in the doctrine & covenants.11 with a special connection between prayer and adoration, , one might expect the hymnal to also be treated with care. yet games played with the hymnal. the one game played by this age group is called hymnal hunt. this is where using the meter number associated with a hymn would, like a treasure map, would be circled and would lead to the page of another hymn. on this page the meter would be circled and that would lead to another page until the ultimate message was found. for example on page 181, the meter of 76 would be circled. the searcher would then turn to page 76 where the meter of 79 would be circled and so forth. one such message found was a question to the searcher if they wanted to watch tv later that afternoon at five.12 other such messages like “hello,” “how are you?”, and “i’m hungry/starving” have also been recorded. the last category of teenage games contains the most variation, and exhibits the most subversion of sacredness. the first game is that of testimony bingo. rife playing with the sacred 37 the first sunday of each month, sacrament meeting is reserved for the bearing of the congregation’s testimony. a testimony is the public profession of one’s beliefs about various subjects of lds doctrine and lived experiences. although these openly shared testimonies can often diverge from their intended purpose and become a travelogue or the bearer’s gratitude for roommates or many other such declarations not related to the original purpose. because of the consistent performance of the testimonies within the culture, there can also be phrases that are used again and again. with these variations in mind, teenagers will divide a traditional bingo playing board with either the phrases that are often muttered, individuals that consistently bear their testimonies each month or common themes like travelogues onto the spaces to try to get bingo. this game can be played with other siblings or friends that are nearby.13 often times these bingo boards can be derisive especially if a certain individual continually bears their testimony each month in an almost rote-memory fashion.14 the use of parody for hymns and hymnals is also popular with the teenage group. the parodies often involve sexual and scatological humor. one good example is by taking hymn titles and adding the phrase “under the bed” or “in the toilet” or even “in the bathtub.”15 some hymns and phrases work better than others. but often it can be the hymns that are the some of the most often sung and have historical significance that are mocked. one example of the spirit of god like a fire is burning, upon the cross, or even the christmas favorite o little town of bethlehem. all of these songs have humor in adding the phrases like “under the bed” or “in the toilet” or even “in the bathtub.” another game that can be played with hymns is using the mood markings to act out the singing of the song.16 thus trying to sing a song and act out a hymn “resolutely,” “tenderly,” or “vigorously” becomes a performance for those around the singer. this open mocking of the hymn is especially evident to those immediately surrounding the singer, but also to the chorister who is leading the music at the front of the congregation. due to the apparent irreverence and subversive qualities of these games, it could be assumed they would not be tolerated. yet they are often played quietly by participants so as not to draw attention to themselves. another popular game involves two teenagers writing words on friend’s backs, siblings, or a significant other.17 as sacrament can feel boring to participants they will lean forward with their elbows on their knees as they sit in the pew. the friend, sibling, or significant other will write out messages or words one letter at a time as they try to convey a message to the recipient. part of the fun lies in guessing what is written, and the other part can be especially if the two individuals are dating. the lds church strongly encourages youth not to date until the age of sixteen and these games are played by those who are sixteen and older.18 because of this delayed social interaction with the opposite sex, small physical interactions like touching someone’s back and expressing messages of care and affection are significantly potent. another way that messages can often be shared with a friend, sibling or significant other is by using words found in the scriptures to send a message.19 playing with the sacred rife 38 there is a long history of annotation when it comes to quiet games. george draper’s book school, church, and home games (1923) explores the philosophy that work is the highest form of play, and that children express their imaginations through play leads to their exploring and perfecting of their future professions. this book is a collection of games for beginners to intermediate children, of both sexes, and in the settings of school, church and the outdoors.20 jess bancroft’s work, games for the playground, home, school and gymnasium (1922) is an early folklore collection drawing from archival records as well as ethnographic field reports. the intention of the collection is to be used as an aid for parents, teachers, and recreational leaders to have a variety of games that can be played in diverse places of home, camp, and school. in particular a large listing of quiet games that are both educational and fun and provide an early framework for classifying and categorizing quiet games.21 lastly, george ripley’s games for boys (1920) was another early collection of games that can be played in any setting. the purpose of the book was to give wholesome games that invigorated the mind and body, and were not just for the expression of violence pride. because mr. ripley worked professionally for the boy scouts many of the games mirror the core values found within that organization. his categorization provided a framework to base games that i observed, especially the ones for small children whose goal was to have them be enlightening to the mind.22 figure 2. more quiet games. photograph by jared s. rife. rife playing with the sacred 39 analysis and interpretation evaluating the body of these games there arise paradoxes that both affirm and subvert gospel principles of the lds church. on a basic level the church has always had a strong emphasis on “perfecting the saints” or in other words in helping members to reach their potential both in this life and in the life to come. part of that perfection comes through the gaining of knowledge or intelligence. with the expectation that members of the church are taking part in daily scripture study, attending sunday school and other service oriented organizations, being active in politics at both the community, state, and national levels, members of the church view themselves as well reasoned and well informed. this emphasis begins at an early age when the expectation is that children take an active part in church, school, music, sports as well as family activities held each week in the home where gospel lessons are shared. this weekly meeting, called family home evening, and its intention is to bring families closer together. but its structure is through the teaching of a lesson, singing of songs, service and an activity where each assignment is rotated among family members no matter the age. with this strong emphasis on children participating in a full and perfecting life, the added dimension of having a sense of humor provides an interesting contrast. a factor in the use of play is the association of church leaders with humor. joseph smith was known for his willingness to play games, tell stories, and jokes with others. prominent leader j. golden kimball was known for his colorful language will sharing sermons, but his crass language was excused because of its humorous nature.23 the previous and current leaders of the church, gordon b. hinckley, and thomas s. monson respectively were admired for their playful use of jokes. it is also customary when members of the congregation give talks in sacrament meeting to start their discourse with a joke. with such a strong emphasis on humor, the games children play are seen as participating in honored and cherished form of lds expression. in some ways this provides an excuse for some of the more subversive games; in others it allows for games to flourish because “its just something we do for fun.” it should also be noted that all of these games, whether played by small children or teenagers are tolerated only if they are quiet and do not disturb the worshiping of others around them. if any of these games became loud or distracting, the child or teenager would be pressured to leave by parents, guardians, or other adults in close proximity. the usual punishment involves asking the offender to wait outside in a foyer, which every chapel has, and sit on couches until after sacrament service is over. this may not sound like much of a punishment, but it can be a harsh sentence. to accommodate those who cannot be quiet or reverent during sacrament service, church buildings are equipped with in-house speakers that are placed in several rooms throughout the building. this allows for communications from the pulpit to be broadcast to other rooms, a mothers lounge, and the foyer. once an irreverent child or teenager is removed to the foyer they still listen to what is being shared in the chapel but do not have friends or games to interact with. playing with the sacred rife 40 the seeming paradox of the seriousness of cultivating perfection and at the same time indulging in the unruliness of humor feeds into another paradox of lds culture: that of the scriptural stories of the iron rod and the liahona from the book of mormon. the iron rod was viewed in a visionary dream by the prophet lehi. the iron rod, which is interpreted as the scriptures or the word of god, leads to the tree of life, which is interpreted as the love of god or the gospel. the iron rod is firm and immovable and those who grasp it know in what direction they are headed. on the other hand the liahona another example provided by the book of mormon prophet lehi, was a compass-like ball of fascinating design. after lehi had left jersulem to journey to the america’s or as he and his family were told the “promised land” the liahona was given to them to be a guide. the liahona worked according to the faith and diligence lehi and his family displayed towards the keeping to the commandments and statues given them by god. it led them on a circuitous journey through the sinai peninsula, over the oceans and eventually to the promised land. upon arriving in there, lehi and his family were able to flourish and prosper. the story teaches current members of the church that if they lead a god fearing life they can be lead through trials and tribulations. this form of sojourn provides for personal guidance that might differ from one member to the next. this seeming paradox of knowing the answer to life’s difficulties versus seeking and searching for it is also evident in the ways that children play their games. on one hand they are expected to know how to act or learn how to act through play, especially during a sacred service like sacrament meeting. on the other hand children are given the latitude to play games that often mock other members of the church or make light of sacred rituals.24 another interpretation of these games comes from the common phrase of “being in the world, but not of the world.”25 lds members feel a certain hesitation about how their belief system often openly conflicts with their peers outside the church. ideas about marriage, homosexuality, and drug use are some of the more recent ideas that in main lds theology that have conflicted with broader societal views. due to this conflict, members are encouraged to take part in as many “normal” non-lds activities as possible to give non-lds a more personal and human touch on a widely misunderstood religion. thus a high percentage of lds members actively serve, volunteer, and work openly in their respective communities. this is part of the reason that games enter into a sacred space of sacrament but by the use of the church frame the message of “this is play (or profane)” is altered to “this is mormon.” by entering the “world” to take part in it, the reverse is also true. the “world” is able to enter into an individual’s life, and this is manifest in the way that children play games during sacrament. this is also manifest in the strong correlation of children that use their parents (or in some cases their own) electronic devices when playing puzzles and other games that the church provides on their website. by playing these games they literally bringing the world (or in this case the world wide web) into their lives and their sacred spaces.26 the final point of this frame analysis is how church games treat the contexts of sacredness and reverence in an enactment of play. with the slow progression of children’s games that instruct and teach to the eventual teenage games that rife playing with the sacred 41 openly mock and criticize others the question must be asked how this influences the progression of membership in the church. in my opinion these games create a divide, an obstacle that teenagers must face. how do they respond to the paradox of playing games when those around them are trying to have meaningful communion with their deity? they must make a decision about whether to remain observant during the the sacred and reverent parts of the sacrament, and by extension they decide whether the sacred and reverent aspects of their religion are something to be taken seriously or are a game. it is no wonder that at the age of eighteen, internal church statistics show that the teenage years are the critical period when individuals decide to either fall away from the church or continue to be lifelong members.27 the games that these children are playing are a huge part of that decision. conclusion games played by the children, youth, and teenagers of the lds church celebrate the good and the bad of lds culture. individuals are expected to be smart, funny, and interactive with the lds and non-lds community. but this leeway leads, for some, to the eventual dismissal of lds teachings and membership in the church. this paradox of frames reinforcing prized character traits as well as religious knowledge versus the criticism of religious expression during sacrament helps to address the anxiety and uncertainty of the lds faith for concerned youth. at the same time these frames create a space where the paradox can be contested.28 further questioning should be done on other games that are played during three hour blocks, or during other activities that occur during the other days of the weeks. these activities played in sacrament meeting are part of (excuse the pun) the game changer if whether or not membership will be a lifelong activity or only one of their youth. notes 1. see doctrine in doctrine in covenants 20:77, 79, http://www.lds.org/ scriptures/dc-testament/dc/20.75-84?lang=eng for a copy of the prayers that are read as well as the particular wording. 2. fife, austin and alta. saints of safe and saddle. bloomington: indiana university press, 1956, 3. 3. many of these games have been personally observed, as well as recorded all over the united states including massachusetts, pennsylvania, texas, arizona, arkansas, california, oregon, washington, and of course utah. 4. due to the regulations of the lds church, pictures are not allowed in the chapel or during worship services. the pictures included in the report are either taken from the internet or from the personal collection of the collector that were taken in his home. 5. during the academic year, 1935-36, elder john a widtsoe delivered a series of lectures at the university of southern california in a class on mormonism. playing with the sacred rife 42 an excerpt from the published copy reads as follows: “the aim of the church, organized for the human good, is to make men happy. it could not be otherwise, it usefulness to a man is the function of religion. this doctrine has been delivered in sacred literature.” 6. skidmore, rex a. mormon recreation in history and practice: a study of social change. philadelphia: university of pennsylvania, 1941, 89. 7. see doctrine and covenants 88:79, http://www.lds.org/scriptures/dctestament/dc/88.79-80?lang=eng, for the direct command to learn about things both spiritual and temporal. 8. brigham young university, a lds owned and operated university, where nearly 96% of the student population is lds recently noted that it was number one in grads from a high-research doctoral institution (a category that includes byu) who earned phds in the last five years studied. byu was 5th for all 264 doctoral institutions in a general category. although we cannot draw conclusions about the entire lds church through this statistic, the importance of education and the acquiring of knowledge is evident. 9. see moroni 8:8, http://www.lds.org/scriptures/bofm/moro/8.8?lang=eng, which claims that children are incapable of sin until the age of 8. 10. see photos in appendix 1. 11. see doctrine and covenants 25:12, https://www.lds.org/scriptures/dctestament/dc/25.12?lang=eng for this correlation. 12. this item was submitted by an anonymous individual to the william wilson folk archives at brigham young university, september 14, 1980. 13. there are numerous examples of this occurring. four types are recorded by jenna allen holt, david joel becksted, christina m. cuthbert, and jennifer holly slemp all at the wilson folk archives in section 5.1.2.1. 14. there are also several examples found online where the practice of families sharing with other families and the familiarity of the game is clearly understood. for example, “testimony bingo,” http://emp.byui.edu/marrottr/testimonybingo. html and “modern mormon men,” http://www.modernmormonmen.com/2012/03/ testimony-bingo.html. 15. examples collected by lorraine anderson, paul abbot, eric nelson, dell blair, linda hansen, joanna gardner, and david becksted can be found at the wilson folk archives in section 5.1.1.2. 16. this example was relayed by spencer lincoln green, march 16, 2012. 17. this game is widely observed in many meetings by the author, as well as shared by spencer green on march 16, 2012, as well as rachel rife on march 20, 2012. 18. see the pamphlet “for the strength of youth,” https://www.lds.org/youth/ for-the-strength-of-youth/dating?lang=eng for this explanation. 19. this example was relayed by spencer lincoln green, march 16, 2012. 20. draper, george o. 1923. school, church, and home games. new york: association press, vi-vii and 44-54. 21. bancroft, jessie h. 1922. games for the playground, home, school and gymnasium. new york: macmillan, 2-24 and 211-242. rife playing with the sacred 43 22. ripley, george s. 1920. games for boys. new york: henry holt and company, 39-43. 23. see eric a. eliason’s book the j. golden kimball stories, university of illinois press, 2007, 186. 24. terryl l. givens people of paradox : a history of mormon culture. new york: oxford university press, 3-18. 25. see a recent address given by elder l. tom perry of the council of the twelve entitled “in the world,” http://www.lds.org/ensign/1988/05/in-theworld?lang=eng 26. see “games and activities” on lds website http://www.lds.org/friend/ online-activities/activities?lang=eng. 27. see “mormons in the united states 1990-2008: socio-demographic trends and regional differences” rick phillips and ryan t. cragun. also available at http://commons.trincoll.edu/aris/files/2011/12/mormons2008.pdf 28. bronner, simon j. framing folklore: an introduction. western folklore (california folklore soc., long beach) (69:3/4) summer/fall 2010, 275-297. works cited bancroft, jessie h. 1922. games for the playground, home, school and gymnasium. new york:macmillan. bronner, simon j. 1988. american children’s folklore. little rock: august house. _________. 2010. framing folklore: an introduction. western folklore 69 (3-4, summer/fall): 275-297. draper, george o. 1923. school, church, and home games. new york: association press. eliason, eric. 2007. the j. golden kimball stories, university of illinois press. fife, austin and alta. 1956. saints of sage and saddle. bloomington: indiana university press. foster, lawrence. 1981. religion and sexuality: three american communal experiments of the nineteenth century. new york: oxford university press. givens, terryl. 2007. people of paradox : a history of mormon culture. new york: oxford university press. ostling, richard n., and joan k. ostling. 1999. mormon american: the power and the promise. new york: harper collins. ripley, george s. 1920. games for boys. new york: henry holt and company. skidmore, rex a. 1941. mormon recreation in history and practice: a study of social change. philadelphia: university of pennsylvania. wilson, william a. 1991. personal narratives: the family novel. western folklore 50: 127 49. wilson, william a. 2006. “teach me all that i must do”: the practice of mormon religion. in the marrow of human experience: essays on folklore, ed. jill t. rudy, 253-260. logan: utah state university press. wilson, william a. 1989. the study of mormon folklore: an uncertain truth. dialogue: a journal of mormon thought 22: 95-100. playing with the sacred rife 44 appendix a a pioneer picture from a quiet book lehi’s liahona letters from a quiet book mormon match game from a quiet book 45 playing for change: the performative functions of children’s piano play brant w ellsworth in an iconic scene from the 1988 film, big, actors tom hanks and robert loggia leap from key to key on an enlarged foot-operated electronic keyboard as they perform in duet two piano pieces: “chopsticks” and “heart and soul.” for hanks, playing the role of a 12-year-old boy magically transformed into a 30-yearold adult after wishing “to be big,” the performance represents an outward manifestation of the inner-turmoil brought on by pre-pubescent sizeand ageanxiety. as a child suddenly trapped within an adult’s body, this form of play, i call “piano play,” also represents a brief moment of liberation wherein for the first time in the film, hanks appears comfortable negotiating the complexities of the incompatible worlds that he is trapped in, and yet, torn between: the world of childhood, characterized by carefree innocence and play; and the world of adulthood, characterized by work and responsibility. this scene is effective at conveying hanks’ inner-turmoil because similar impromptu concerts are performed daily, flash-mob style, by children at pianos around the world and are recognized, around the world, as children songs. search results on the popular video website, youtube.com, include pages of shaky home videos of children teaching, performing, or improvising versions of “chopsticks,” “heart and soul,” or “the knuckle song.” such results are consistent with my personal experience and observations made as a student of the piano, as an instructor in south korea, as a father, and as a boy scout leader. for example, in 2003 i was teaching english at a south korean hagwon (academy) when two boys snuck out of class and into an adjacent, unoccupied piano classroom. when discovered, the boys gave me a mischievous smile and only came back to class after playing a variation of “chopsticks.” more recently, while monitoring the chaos of a recently concluded cub scout den meeting, i watched as young scouts ran around in unorganized play. a scout made his way over to a piano, sat down, and began hammering an “f’ with his left hand and a “g” with his right hand. the repeating notes reverberating throughout the meeting room were the same notes i heard in the south korea hagwon and that i watched tom hanks play on big. as the boy finished his version of “chopsticks,” he barely had time to stand up before being pushed aside by another boy who sat down and played, in classic oneupmanship, the same song, although this time faster and much, much louder. the universality of this type musical performance brought to my mind many questions. is this folklore? is this a musical performance, a form of play, or both? why do children, especially children without formal piano training, learn and perform these songs on the piano? if these children are musically illiterate, a characterization that suggests the songs are not learned through music primers, how then are these songs transmitted from child to child, group to group? who do these “pianists” intend to be the audience—in the case of the observed cub scouts, the other scouts or the adults in the room? finally, what are the performative playing for change ellsworth 46 functions of “piano play” and how do children use “piano play” to negotiate their social standing among friends, family, and society? before continuing, i should clarify what i mean by the term “piano play” and how this term is different from the more common phrase, “playing the piano.” by “piano play”, i do not mean the physical act of using fingers to depress notes on the piano. instead, “piano play” is the act of engaging in play through the piano. while for some children “playing the piano” is a requirement set by authority figures, a chore, or a mandatory form of work, “piano play” is voluntary, improvised, and fun. i am not the first to wonder about the meaning children ascribe to their play. over the course of many decades, folklorists have demonstrated how children use “play” as a mode of education, as a method of negotiating social groups, and as a form of entertainment. while children may use “piano play” for those same reasons, certain aspects of “piano play” appear to be unique and warrant additional query. for example, if there are rules that govern who (those who have learned or are learning) and how the piano is to be played (think about the mother chiding her son to stop pounding piano keys, “that is not a toy!”), than is “piano play” a form of musical protest wherein children skirt parental authority through engaging in prohibited activities? the piano is not a toy, but yet, in my observations, it is being used as one. hanks’ character in big is clearly using “piano play” as a means of coping with inner-turmoil and as an outlet for self-expression, but is there anything significant about his choice of songs? does the use and performance of common piano duets like “chopsticks” and “heart and soul” represent an additional layer in his complex ventilation of anxiety? identification and annotation in order to answer these questions, i observed and interviewed a group of children at play on april 7, 2012 at an informal church function at the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints in harrisburg, pennsylvania.1 while many of the adults sat in the gym eating and socializing, some of the children ran around the church in small groups playing games. some of these children entered the primary room, a familiar room wherein they gather for sunday school during church. in addition to being a room of spiritual learning and edification, the primary room is also a designated space for play as evident by the boxes of toys stacked neatly in the corner. like many rooms in the church, the primary room is equipped with a full-size, upright piano. sitting down, i asked if any of the children could play the piano. one boy, totten christensen2, age 9, said that he had taken piano lessons for two years but that he was not very good. the other chidlren, brady nelson (age 9), triplets adam, tyler, and nathan bryner (age 8), gracie oaks (age 10), and mattie lewis (age 10) all said they could not. when i pressed them to clarify if they could play any song on the piano, each said they knew some songs but did not take formal lessons or know how to read piano music. i asked if they would play a song for me and they agreed. brady nelson was the first to sit down at the piano. after opening the keyboard, adjusting the seat, and looking at his friends nervously, he began to play a song he called “bubblegum.” i had never heard the song title before but as soon as he ellsworth playing for change 47 began playing, i recognized a familiar tune that i had called, in my childhood, “the knuckle song.” brady made his right hand into a fist and rolled his knuckles from left to right over the trio of black keys (f#, g#, and a#) in one sweeping motion. keeping his hand in a fist, he hammered down twice on the next black key (c#). he repeated this series again, before reversing the direction and playing the trio of black keys from right to left and then hammering twice on the lower black key (b#). the direction was reversed yet again before brady concluded the song with a quick series of staccato notes played with his index finger. as soon as brady finished, nathan bryner slid onto the piano bench and told brady that he played the song “wrong.” nathan demonstrated the “correct” method by likewise making a fist and rolling it along the black keys but then using his elbows instead of his fist to pound the c# and b#. aside from the method of playing, the song was identical to the one brady played. i asked nathan what he called the song and neither he nor his brothers could recall a title. they said they learned the song from their cousin, caleb, age 10, while visiting caleb’s family in utah. other variations i found on youtube include a boy playing the song while lying upside down on the bench with his head beneath the keys, a child piano prodigy who began his performance by rolling his fists across the keys, playing homage to the familiar and simple, only to diverge into a complex, improvised variation of the “knuckle song” as the audience cheered wildly, and a young boy playing the song as a duet with his grandfather. i asked my informants if they had ever heard of the song “heart and soul” and looked down at a group of blank faces. when i hummed a few bars, eyes lit up. “oh, i know that song,” said gracie oaks. “that song is easy!” sliding onto the piano bench, gracie sat towards the lower half of the piano and encouraged mattie lewis to join her. bashfully, mattie whined about not wanting to play the top hands. reluctantly gracie conceded and scooted over on the bench to make room for mattie who sat to gracie’s left. after flexing fingers and cracking knuckles, mattie began playing the familiar call and answer of the song. with her left hand she played c – a – f – g while her right hand completing the cord, one note at a time (c – e – g, a – c – e, f – a – c, g – b – d). as mattie started the sequence a third time, gracie began playing a harmony in tempo with her right hand. like the popular children’s song, “this is the song that never ends,” where the ending of one stanza is the beginning of another, “heart and soul” is written in an infinite-loop motif. the song continues indefinitely, stanza after stanza, until one of the children quits. the repetitive nature of the song aids in mastery and encourages variation as a means to ward off boredom. mattie was the first to experiment in her playing. instead of playing the c-, a-, f-, and g-chords one note at a time, she began playing the chords at once in a syncopated, rocking rhythm. mattie then experimented with other notes, rhythms, and patterns. meanwhile, gracie played a jazzy harmony in the upper-octaves. the melody was very lyrical and, unlike the rhythms mattie was playing, gracie’s harmony had a set beginning and ending. she played the same learned song over and over again. when mattie varied her playing, gracie stopped and watched, trying to pick up the new rhythm. when she felt she had it, she began playing again slightly altering her rhythm to match mattie’s. the girls continued, gradually increasing playing for change ellsworth 48 in tempo and volume, until the notes began to blur and the harmony became unrecognizable. suddenly, the music stopped and the giggles began. when the laughter quieted down, gracie began mimicking a professional pianist by sitting upright and pretending to play a series of arpeggios with her left-hand while quickly playing nonsense notes with her right. the charade received high-praise from her young audience who laughed with glee at the spoton impersonation. having won the approval of her peers, gracie scooted off the piano bench to make room for totten, the one child who had taken piano lessons. not to be outdone, totten began to play “cherokee dance,” the song he had learned and memorized for a piano recital. the song was more complicated than those previously played; totten maintained a steady drum-like beat with his left hand while the right hand played an unfamiliar, tribal-esque song. although clearly an accomplished pianist, the more difficult yet unfamiliar tune did not elicit for totten the same cheers or laughs as did gracie’s tomfoolery. with a determined smile, totten opened up a nearby hymnal and began playing a fast-paced church hymn. while the song was certainly familiar to the children, again totten’s talents overshadowed the performance. he slid off the bench, clearly the best pianist of the bunch. what totten demonstrates is the difference between “piano play” and “playing the piano.” while his friends appeared to be having fun on piano, totten could not separate himself from his learning and as a result, his playing the piano exhibited a different function than the others. instead of “piano play,” totten seemed to focus on aspects of performance and ability. adam and tyler bryner were the last two to take a place at the ivories. both boys stuck out the index fingers of their hands and began playing the song “chopsticks.” the children erupted in muted exclamation as they recognized the song and confirmed to me, each slightly louder than the other, their own ability to play it. adam and tyler played the song by repeatedly hammering f and g notes six times in succession, followed by the eand gnotes six times, the dand b notes six times, and concluded by striking cnotes in harmony. the song repeats this pattern once more before resolving into a melody composed of thirds. once the boys concluded their song, i asked questions about their method of learning and when these songs are performed. gracie and mattie both admitted they learned to play at a friend’s home. gracie’s friend had a piano in the house and, while playing together a few years earlier, the friend taught her. the triplets, adam, tyler, and nathan, all admitted learning “the knuckle song” from their cousin in utah. they learned “chopsticks” from their mother. i asked if one of the boys could teach me to play “chopsticks” and i was quickly instructed to form imaginary chopsticks with my index fingers and told to play “these white notes like this.” at this point, nathan demonstrated the “correct” way of playing the song. following his lead, i copied the song phrase by phrase until nathan told me i had mastered it. i actually had learned to play this and other songs through my interactions with friends when i was a child. this is also the case with some other adults i interviewed. the transmission is often through a combination of oral explanation and physical demonstration. ellsworth playing for change 49 i next asked the children why they played the piano. mattie said, “because it’s fun!” “well, what’s so fun about it?” i responded. “it’s just fun to play. i like to listen to music and make music with my friends. it’s just fun to work together and see who messes up first.” mattie’s answer suggests that the piano is a place for children to engage in “piano play.” totten disagreed about the piano being “fun.” each morning before school, totten explained he must play the piano for thirtyminutes, practicing his scales and learning the assigned songs for the week—tasks that totten considers boring. playing the piano was a chore, a required task he was forced to complete. while other children saw the piano as something they got to play, for totten, the piano was something he had to play. i asked totten why he started taking piano lessons. he explained how everyone in his family “was forced” to play an instrument and he selected the piano. his choice in wording suggested this was something he did against his will. i asked if he was happy he knew how to play the piano. “yeah, i guess so. i really like playing for my friends and with my family. sometimes our whole family plays together as a big band. i think that’s cool.” for totten, the piano is not a place for “play” as his encounters with it are not with friends but alone and forced. analysis and interpretation/explanation folklorists have been chided in the past for failing to offer meaningful explanations for the folklore that define the nature and character of child life. for decades, collections of children folklore sat unexamined and unexplained, providing few hints to what the collected items meant for the children who use them (see sutton-smith 1990, 17 and dundes 1998, 119). however, scholarship in recent years, including works by simon bronner, libby tucker, and brian suttonsmith, have demonstrated how fruitful the study of children’s folklore, specifically children’s folklore of play, may be by demonstrating how play helps children develop a sense of personal and communal identity and mediate their standing in a complicated vertical and horizontal social order. in the following paragraphs, i explore folkloric aspects of “piano play” and suggest a few possible functions unique to “piano play” that may provide a framework for understanding its meaning. in a chapter examining the historiography of children’s folklore, john h. mcdowell defines children’s folklore as encompassing many verbal and nonverbal activities that incorporate “playful or artistic motives with some standing in community tradition” (mcdowell 1983, 314). for mcdowell, the distinction between the two motives, playful and artistic, is important. he stresses these motives are not “coterminous” and children’s folklore is one or the other. such a binary definition is troublesome when examining “piano play” as it appears to blend the playful and artistic motives of children’s folklore, creating perhaps a hyphenated third motive: playful-artistic. mcdowell defines the playful motive as producing a sense of make-believe through the “allocation of a special play space, or by a reversal of real-life contingencies, or by some other factor.” the artistic motive differs in that it is geared towards the “collective preoccupations” of the child and is intended for public consumption (mcdowell 1983, 314). playing for change ellsworth 50 given these definitions, “piano play” uniquely provides children with both the environment (piano space) and tools (piano) to enter into a secondary reality (that of a talented pianist) while simultaneously encouraging expression intended for the consumption of horizontal and vertical social groups. in so doing, piano play opens up avenues of understanding of how children compete and collaborate with each other and use these functions as a way to mediate the anxiety associated with performance. in his foundational observations on folklore, bascom suggests folklore has four basic functions: to entertain, to educate, to stabilize society, and to serve as a release for anxieties (bascom 1954, 343 – 346). in my experience and through my observations, i propose that, depending on the scenario, “piano play” fulfills each of these functions for the child participant. by situating “piano play” side-byside with other forms of “musical play,” such as hand-clapping rhymes, jump-rope rhymes, and play-ground chants/songs documented in simon bronner’s american children’s folklore, we can see how “piano play” is an outlet for entertainment, self-expression, and cooperative play. for some of the children i interviewed, entertainment was the primary purpose for “piano play”—“it’s fun!” in her study of children at “musical play,” patricia shehan campbell points out that on the playground and in the classroom, musical play unites children in purpose and solidifies social groups. by demonstrating knowledge of the music through chants, rhythms, songs, or other means, children form common playgroups and create bonds of solidarity (campbell 2010, 25 – 30). this solidarity was evident, for example, in the “hear t and soul” duet performed by gracie and mattie. as they began playing, the two adapted their performance to fit the tempo, style, and rhythm of the other. in this impromptu collaboration, each performer took turns experimenting and improvising on a musical instrument neither really knew how to play. as one would attempt to embellish their part, the other would diminish the volume of their part. it was as if there was one mind controlling four hands. however, as the song continued, gracie and mattie began showing signs of disengagement—the song itself was no longer challenging and the girls had exhausted their repertoire of variation. with no clearly delineated ending, the girls seemed resigned to playing indefinitely or until someone quit. at this point in the song, the performance turned into a competition of endurance to determine who could outplay and outlast the other. when it became apparent that neither would quit, a nonverbal agreement was made and the performance suddenly became a competition of skill. traditional rules that governed the performance of the piano piece, such as the suggested tempo, rhythm, and sound dynamics, were ignored. in fact, not only were these rules ignored, but also success in the competition hinged upon the participant doing the opposite of what the rules suggested. in this makeshift game, the faster, the louder, and the more non-traditional the piano play, the better. having an extensive knowledge of proper piano playing technique or a repertoire of songs was not as important as being able to subvert rules, parody expectations, and ultimately have fun. as a result of these improvised rules, the tempo and volume of gracie and mattie’s version of “heart and soul” gradually increased until gracie could not keep up and was forced to ellsworth playing for change 51 quit. what had begun as a cooperative performance ended as a competitive game with a clearly defined winner and loser. after winning, mattie turned to me and provided insight into her perspective, “i like to listen to music and make music with my friends. it’s just fun to work together and see who messes up first.” in other words, mattie celebrated the opportunity to make music with her friend because it provided a shared experience for social bonding while allowing for social stratification and the development of hierarchies. another aspect of gracie and mattie’s performance that was shared by other performers was their reliance on variation. on multiple occasions, the children attempted to surprise their audience through the unanticipated or unorthodox variation of a familiar form or method. for example, instead of playing a note with their finger, some children opted instead to use their fist or elbow. other variations include using one’s head, forearm, or bottom. this type of variation calls attention to the performance and to the performer. an analysis of children musical variations conducted by bronner in american children’s folklore provides insight into possible motives. children often alter the lyrics of common songs to include obscene, macabre, or violent language and scenes. for example, the song “jingle bells,” whose lyrics once celebrated the joy of a winter sleigh ride, is altered by children to describe the odors of superheroes and the egg-laying-abilities of their sidekicks. likewise, children alter the lyrics to “joy to the world” to celebrate school burning and teacher killing/disembodiment. as children become aware of social norms, these changes in lyrics allow them to dramatize and experiment with the limits of these taboos (bronner 1988, 81). the changes in these lyrics are intended to elicit reaction from the audience—to make them cringe in disgust or cover their ears. these reactions place the performer in a position of power over the audience. as controller of the medium, the child determines whether to continue or to stop. variation is also a way of displaying creativity or feigning mastery. for example, when brady sat at the piano to play “bubblegum” or “the knuckle song,” the audience expected him to play in a manner they had grown accustomed to over time and experience—they expected him to play the piano “normally.” by using his fists instead of his fingers, brady surprised the audience with his variation of form. brady was performing a song in a unique way, drawing additional attention to the song, his playing style, and ultimately to himself. “bubblegum” is not a difficult song to play, but by altering the form, brady made the song appear more difficult. in so doing, he intended for his audience to perceive him as having more skill than he actually possessed. skill is associated with time and practice. for someone to possess “skill,” it is requisite that they must practice for an extended period of time. skill, therefore, becomes equated with age. if someone possesses skill, they must also be old. by feigning to possess more talent than he actually has, brady is suggesting he is older than he really is. for children, “piano play” is a way to pretend to be something they are not, typically older, wiser, stronger, essentially, more adult-like. gracie demonstrated this aptly after finishing her rendition of “heart and soul.” in her demeanor, posture, and performance, gracie the 10-year-old was transformed through the piano into “gracie the great,” an accomplished pianist performing on stage at playing for change ellsworth 52 carnegie hall. the purpose of “piano pretend play” falls in line with other forms of pretending games played by children. for example, in their collection of children’s folklore, children’s games in street and playground, peter and iona opie document a long history of children “pretending games” going back to ancient rome that similarly show children attempting to take “shortcuts” to seem older or more adult-like than they really are. the opies’ study includes games where children pretend to be mothers and fathers, schoolteachers, criminals, war heroes, and celebrities (opie, 1969 330 – 344). likewise, in her children’s folklore: a handbook, elizabeth tucker writes that she observed children in new york during the 1990s pretending to be firefighters, police, teachers, doctors, native americans, and film and television stars (tucker 2008, 32). piano variation is likewise an allowed means of experimentation within the boundaries set by societal norms. often, the children will establish the right way to play first and then increased variation comes later to highlight specific skills. as nathan told brady after brady finished playing “the knuckle song” with his fist, “that’s the wrong way to play it” and then demonstrated the elbow as a variant. in each child’s mind is the notion that foundationally there is a right and a wrong way to play a song. the complexity grows as we assume the child also knows that the audience knows there is a right and wrong way to play a song. the wrong way and the proper way to play are often the same and the right way is often in opposition to the proper way. by altering the piano performance in song, posture, clothing, and form the child is subverting expectations thereby experimenting with the boundaries of what is socially tolerated and socially unacceptable. the children found through the reactions of the audience that some variation, like playing with fists instead of fingers, to not only be tolerated but celebrated. returning to bascom’s original four functions of folklore, how does “piano play” function to provide a release for anxieties? the answer is somewhat paradoxical for performing on the piano, whether for family, friends, or at a concert recital, usually does not alleviate or release anxiety, but, in fact, causes anxiety. imagine the young child walking to the isolated piano on a lit stage, performing a challenging piece from memorization in front of an audience when the risk of error and public humiliation is high. although the setting of this piano performance in a concert hall and the “piano play” that takes place in the living room may be different, performance anxiety is likely to exist in both settings as there exists elements of risk and vulnerability. however, in “piano play,” the fun, the opportunity for attention, and the opportunity for one-upmanship overpowers shyness and the risk of ridicule. variation in piano play allows children to sidestep the need to appear competent in order to be successful. instead, variation makes room for physical comedy, farce, and irony. it allows for and encourages imagination, freedom of expression, and collaboration. working together to create or compete, children find these positives work to reduce anxiety. mormon folklore although the children i interviewed are all members of the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints (mormon), i do not feel that their piano play experiences ellsworth playing for change 53 are unique only to children of this specific subgroup. mormon children are first and foremost children and by tracing repetition and variation of piano play among other children, my analysis suggests a universal performative function. i distance my subjects from their religious affiliation in order to argue for broader implications, but i should note that in so doing i do not mean to devalue the importance of their religious identity. these children as mormons are members of a recognized ethnic and religious subculture, and, as such, piano play does play an important role in the construction of their identity different from their peers. an examination of piano play within a mormon religious folklore context allows us to pull back additional layers of functionality. mormon folklorist bert wilson wrote of the importance of reflexive studies in religious folklore. he recognized great value in looking, “not just at a body of abstracted beliefs but at actual behaviors, at the process of believing, at how religious people, latter-day saints and others, enact their convictions in daily life” (2006). in this paper, wilson explored the practice of giving service among mormons, suggesting that such experiences hold greater significance in mormon religious living than do other more popular supernatural legends like the “three nephites.” i add to this list the central importance of music among mormons. from their earliest existence, mormons have been a musical people. only days after the first official conference of the church in june 1830, joseph smith, the church’s founder, recorded a revelation that directed his wife, emma, “to make a selection of sacred hymns, as it shall be given thee, which is pleasing unto me, to be had in my church” (doctrine & covenants 25:11). years later, brigham young continued this musical traditional by directed the church to dance. such fondness for music and dance led some to call the mormons, “the dancing puritans.” since their origins in 1852, the mormon tabernacle choir has become an american institution. mormon music historian michael hicks writes, motab has been “the object of presidential commendations, the focus of a reader’s digest record anthology— endorsed by billy graham—the topic of a widely distributed commemorative volume, and the even the subject of a u.s. postal stamp” (hicks, 166). more recently, the popular success of mormon singers like donnie and marie osmond, david archuleta, gladys knight, the neon trees, and brandon flowers, frontman for the killers, has cemented this musical stereotype into american popular consciousness. even in an episode of south park, mormons as a musical people is featured prominently. this stereotype is stressed in the television show south park. in the episode, “all about the mormons,” a mormon family moves into town and introduces themselves to the neighbors. the father immediately encourages his five children to play a song. each child, including an infant, picks up an instrument and begins singing and playing. the crawling infant selected the piano. without a paid lay ministry, mormons from the congregation are asked to voluntarily give of their time and talents in order for the church to function. among these “callings” are many that focus on the musical abilities of the member. these calling include a choir director, chorister, organist, and the pianist for one of the many auxiliary groups. with a worldwide membership of over 12 million and nearly 29,000 congregations, the need for musical talent is high. for this reason, many mormon parents require their children to study a musical instrument—piano playing for change ellsworth 54 being the most common. as a child, my mother expected me and each of my three siblings to learn to play the piano, specifically hymns. she explained that by learning the piano, i could provide a great service to people around the world as a missionary. this is the case for many mormon men and women who serve missions to remote countries around the world, countries where members do not have the same opportunity for learning musical instruments. mormons are also frequently taught the importance of discovering and developing talents. these lessons begin at a young age. for example, as a primary teacher, the church provided me a manual from which i could develop my lessons for the five-years-old. chapter 26 of this lesson manual is called, “the parable of the talents,” and uses teachings from the new testament to encourage these fiveyear-olds to find and use their talents. the manual suggests that i, as the teacher, ask, “what do you think jesus was trying to teach us by telling the parable of the talents?” i am then to, “help the children understand that the lord has given us talents, abilities, and opportunities (such as belonging to his church). he expects us to use all these things to make our lives better and to serve others” (primary 7: new testament, 1997). by developing their talents, mormon children are taught that they can serve god. conclusion widely disseminated through oral tradition among children, this paper examines the performative functions of “piano play” and three specific children piano pieces, “chopsticks,” “heart and soul,” and “the knuckle song” and argues that, during a liminal period, “piano play” provides children with a play-frame and space to negotiate age-anxiety. my analysis describes and expounds on the many ways i have documented that this negotiation occurs. childhood is a challenging period of life and many children do not have access to the tools that are needed to help them deal with these challenges. left to their own devices, many unconsciously turn to the world of verbal and non-verbal folklore for help in coping with challenges and anxieties. as the boundaries of childhood become more constricted and contested, as evidenced by the popularity of socially constructed age-groups like “teenagers” and “tweeners,” we will continue to see children seek shelter in the safety of shared folklore. notes 1. although the children i interviewed are all members of the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints, i do not feel that the experiences i document within this paper are unique to children of this subgroup. to the contrary, i believe continued ethnographic study will show these performances are generally common for most children. 2. the names of the children have been changed to protect their privacy and identity. ellsworth playing for change 55 works cited bascom, william. 1954. four functions of folklore. journal of american folklore 67: 333 – 349. bauman, richard. 1992. folklore, cultural performances, and popular entertainments: a communications-centered handbook. new york: oxford university press. bronner, simon j. 1988. american children’s folklore. little rock, ar: august house inc. campbell, patricia shehan, 2010. songs in their heads: music and its meaning in children’s lives. new york: oxford university press. the doctrine and covenants of the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints: containing revelations given to joseph smith, the prophet, with some additions by his successors in the presidency of the church. 1981. salt lake city: the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints. dundes, alan. 1998. bloody mary in the mirror: a ritual reflection of prepubescent anxiety. western folklore 57: 119 – 135. givens, terryl l. 2007. people of paradox: a history of mormon culture. new york: oxford university press. hicks, michael. 2003. mormonism and music: a history. urbana, il: university of illinois press. kapchan, deborah a. 1995. performance. journal of american folklore 108: 479 – 508. marsh, kathryn. 2008. the musical playground: global tradition and change in children’s songs and games. new york: oxford university press. mcdowell, john h. 1983. children’s folklore. handbook of american folklore, ed. richard m. dorson. bloomington, in: indiana university press. 314 – 322. opie, iona and peter opie. 1969. children’s games in street and playground: chasing, catching, seeking, hunting, racing, dueling, exerting, daring, guessing, acting, pretending. london: oxford university press. tucker, elizabeth. 2008. children’s folklore: a handbook. westport, ct: greenwood press. turner, victor. 1969. the ritual process: structure and anti-structure. ithaca, ny: cornell university press. ____________. 1987. betwixt and between: the liminal period in rites of passage. in betwixt and between: patterns of masculine and feminine initiation, ed. louise carus mahdi, steven foster, and meredith little. peru, il: open court publishing. 3 – 22. sutton-smith, brian. 1990. the future agenda for child study and the implications for the study of children’s folklore. children’s folklore review 17 – 22. van gennep, arnold. 1961. the rites of passage. chicago: university of chicago press. wilson, william a. 2006 “teach me all that i must do”: the practice of mormon religion. the marrow of human experience: essays on folklore, ed. jill terry rudy and diane call. logan, ut: utah state up. 253 260. 57 minutes of the children’s folklore section meeting thursday, october 25, 2012 in attendance: kevin cordi: cordik@ohiodominicon.edu priscilla ord: pord@mcdaniel.edu irene chagall: ichagall9@gmail.com jared rife: jrife@psu.edu trevor blank: blanktj@potsdam.edu john mcdowell: mcdowell@indiana.edu kathyrn mccormick: kategro@yahoo.com spencer green: slg310@psu.edu simon bronner: sbronner@psu.edu brant ellsworth: bwe5027@psu.edu business: 1. 2012 aesop award – presented by kevin cordi from the aesop award committee a. aesop award winner which side are you on? by george ella lyon b. accolades given to rand burkert’s mouse & lion, eric walter’s the matatu, and timothy mclaughlin’s walking on earth and touching the sky: poetry and prose. c. the committee asked for clarification on “what qualifies as folklore for the aesop award?” and “would collections of folklore, such as mclaughlin’s book, qualify for the award?” d. president spencer green and those in attendance agreed that the aesop award committee should make those decisions and then present guidelines back to the section. 2. suzy grinford was elected to the aesop award committee with an unanimous vote though she will need to pay dues to official join the children’s folklore section. 3. opie prize – presented by john mcdowell from the opie prize committee a. as the opie prize had not been awarded since 2006, the opie prize committee decided to award two prizes this year: one for books published between 2007 and 2010; the second for books published between 2010 and 2011. b. opie prize pre-2010 was awarded to kathryn marsh’s the musical playground: global traditions and change in children’s songs and games c. opie prize 2012 – 2011 was awarded to anna beresin’s recess battles: play, fighting, and storytelling minutes of the children’s folklore section meeting 58 4. 2012 financial statement – presented by priscilla ord a. the section showed an increase in the total balance with funds totally $11,990. however, this total does not reflect the recent payouts of the newell award to the last three recipients or the awarding of two opie prize winners. b. also of note, the price of award seals has doubled and priscilla ord agreed to price check other publishers 5. editor for the children’s folklore review a. as this is libby tucker’s last year as editor, president spencer green asked for recommendations for the next editor. a few names were floated and president green agreed to contact potential editors to check on interests and feasibility. the editor’s school would need to be willing to cover $2500 in newsletter printing costs. 6. election of new section convener a. spencer greed completed his two year term and jared rife, of penn state harrisburg, was unanimously elected as the new convener 7. children’s folklore review website a. the section approved a measure to purchase a domain name for the children’s folklore review. president jared rife agreed to spearhead this project. 59 notes and announcements newell prize the children’s folklore section of the american folklore society annually offers the william wells newell prize (which includes a cash award) for the best student essay on a topic in children’s folklore. students must submit their own papers, and published papers are eligible. instructors are asked to encourage students with eligible papers to enter the competition. papers must be double-spaced and submitted as a word document. on the first page, include the author’s name, academic address, home address, telephone numbers, and e-mail address. deadline for this coming year’s competition is september 1, 2014. please submit papers to jared s. rife, jsr5238@psu.edu. book reviews children’s folklore review is seeking book review submissions for its next issue, to be published in october of 2014. this is an excellent opportunity for graduate students interested in building their writing credentials and demonstrating breadth in folklore, literature, and childhood studies. books are selected for review in children’s folklore review according to their relevance to the field of children’s folklore and their year of publication (within the past two years). if you would like to request a book for review, please contact the editor, elizabeth tucker (ltucker@binghamton.edu). book reviews should not exceed 750 words. 61 contributors brant ellsworth is a ph. d. candidate in american studies at penn state harrisburg. he alternates academic masks during the week, working as an instructor in the history and political science department at york college of pennsylvania and in the humanities department at penn state harrisburg. he is grateful to simon bronner, jared rife, spencer green, tom mould, and eric eliason for providing mentoring and insightful feedback on early drafts of this essay. finally, brant wishes to thank his wife and two daughters for inspiring this work. spencer lincoln green is completing a ph.d. in american studies at penn state harrisburg. his dissertation examines online trail journals of appalachian trail thru-hikers to better understand their community and identity today. he is a past president of the children’s folklore society and past winner of their w. w. newell prize for best student essay on children’s folklore. spencer researches what he knows and loves, so most of his publications include various combinations of children’s folklore, narratives, hiking groups, technology, and mormon culture. tom mould is associate professor of anthropology at elon university, director of the honors program, and director of percs, elon’s program for ethnographic research and community studies. he is the author of three books—choctaw prophecy: a legacy of the future (2003), choctaw tales (2004), and still, the small voice: revelation, personal narrative and the mormon folk tradition (2011)— and co-editor of two more—the individual and tradition (2011) and latter-day lore (2013). his current project examines the impact narratives about the welfare system in the u.s. have on shaping public opinion and policy. jared s. rife is a doctoral candidate and instructor of american studies in the american studies program at penn state harrisburg. his dissertation examines the experiences and state of mind of college-aged men’s and women’s culture during the years 1936-1941. he also serves as the convener of the children’s folklore section. 7 manipulating play frames: the yo momma joke cycle on youtube steve stanzak despite their prevalence on school playgrounds, the internet, and mass media, modern forms of the dozens have garnered surprisingly little notice from folklorists. this lacuna is particularly unfortunate considering the important role played by folklorists such as roger abrahams in bringing this verbal dueling tradition to the attention of the scholarly community. abrahams’s seminal 1962 study, based on his fieldwork in a philadelphia ghetto, examined the dozens as performed in urban african american communities. when “playing the dozens,” abrahams tells us, participants direct ritual insults at their opponents’ family, most often their mothers. these insults are often highly stylized, contain sexual or obscene themes, and are sometimes rhymed, as in this dozen collected by abrahams: i f----d your mother in a horse and wagon, she said, “‘scuse me, mister, my p---y’s draggin’”1 (1962, 216). other dozens are less stylized and more likely to be recognizable to a modern audience, as in the dozen below, recorded in the 1960s. your mother’s so skinny, about that skinny, she can get in a cheerioat and say, “hula hoop hula hoop!” (labov 1972, 133). although a version of the above dozen is still told among children today, there are still significant disconnects in both content and performance between the dozens that were observed by abrahams and those of contemporary children and adolescents. little ethnographic or analytical work on the dozens tradition has been conducted in the past several decades, despite their continuing presence in the social life of children and adolescents. my goal here is to demonstrate that not only have the dozens survived and done well, but they have also adapted to changing social and technological contexts. this goal will be accomplished by examining one particular subgenre of the dozens that remains exceedingly popular among children and adolescents: the yo momma joke. first, i will identify both the connections and disjunctions between the dozens described by earlier scholars and one iteration of the dozens—the yo momma joke cycle—so that a tentative formal and functional definition of the yo momma joke can be offered. second, i will analyze yo momma jokes on the video social networking website youtube, which has emerged as a key site for their performance. while the content of yo momma jokes is usually traditional, youtube offers innovative new ways for participants not only to manipulate jokes’ performance contexts, but also to create new contexts entirely. many yo momma jokes on youtube are no longer functional ritual insults; instead, they have been embedded into virtual folk dramas cfr_2012.indb 7 10/19/12 9:25:31 am manipulating play frames stanzak 8 in which performers act out hypothetical verbal duels. these mock-duels engage with the yo momma joke’s traditional form and content in ways that interrogate notions of play and seriousness. method the most attention to yo momma jokes comes in the form of published joke collections and amateur websites. however, the jokes in these collections remove the performance elements of their original joking sessions and thus lack the contextual data necessary for this study. my research of yo momma jokes on youtube takes into account those performance contexts absent from these collections. youtube is a website that provides a digital space for internet users to view, share, and comment on videos uploaded by anyone with access to a web connection and a device capable of recording video. most users of youtube only use the website for watching videos, but others create an account with the site in order to post their own videos, comment on existing videos, or “subscribe” to their favorite video producers. for active users, youtube provides an arena for extended interaction with a diverse range of social groups. one of the most persistent problems i encountered while collecting data for this project was the transient nature of the materials. too frequently in the early stages of my research did i return to a video i had recently viewed, only to find it removed by the user. i can only speculate on the reasons why users remove their videos or even delete their accounts entirely, but i suspect that it has to do with how children constantly refashion their identities on the internet. a video that inspired pride or amusement at age eleven might be seen as embarrassing at age thirteen. on the other hand, many of the videos i surveyed for this project have been on youtube for several years. still, after several frustrated experiences with removed videos, i began transcribing those videos i used for my research. as will be seen in several instances below, these transcripts have been useful in cases in which videos have since been removed. for my data collection, i informally surveyed several hundred videos that their creators had identified as containing yo momma jokes.2 this method had some inherent limitations, as i could only find videos that were correctly labeled with this information. patricia lange, who has extensively studied social networks on youtube, describes how video producers on youtube manipulate tags and titles to control access to their videos (2007). in my searches, i was only able to find videos that were publicly identified as containing yo momma jokes. my search still revealed several thousand videos containing the search term “yo momma” or one of its variant spellings. the sample i use here was not arrived at randomly; it was limited by my choice of keywords and biased by the order videos were displayed by the youtube website—i was much more likely to view videos that showed up in the first few pages of my search results than videos buried in the thirtieth page of search results. from these videos i found in my keyword searches, i sought out those that presented actual people performing yo momma jokes. i excluded a number of videos that were commercially produced (either from commercials, television shows, or movies) and videos that were simply yo momma jokes written cfr_2012.indb 8 10/19/12 9:25:31 am stanzak manipulating play frames 9 in text on the screen, often accompanied by background music. also excluded were a number of videos that dubbed yo momma jokes told by professional comedians, usually george carlin, over some other scene.3 the use of internet data raises ethical questions that have been insufficiently addressed by folklorists. in my own research, i have treated youtube videos as broadcasted, published materials. the site itself promotes this view; comparisons to television are contained in both its logo and its name, as well as the site’s slogan “broadcast yourself.” although the internet is by and large a public venue, there is still a range of privacy expectations held by internet users (lange 2007). users have means by which to limit access to their videos, and many seem to have either removed or limited the audience of their videos between the research period and publication. however, all videos examined for this project were available to public viewing at one point and accessible to search engines through creators’ use of appropriate tags and titles. where possible, i have identified participants by first name. when real names are not identifiable, i use the username if it can be safely assumed that the performer is the same person as the video producer; otherwise i use descriptive identifiers. i have included user name and web addresses for all videos still online at the time of publication. arriving at a definition of contemporary yo momma jokes i will attempt to distinguish yo momma jokes from the dozens based on my tentative observations, but an exact classification is difficult. the dozens are a genre of ritual insults that encompasses a wide range of diverse forms, including the form now called the yo momma joke.4 these jokes are marked by a particular structure that has remained relatively stable over time. despite this formal conservatism, contemporary yo momma jokes often differ significantly from those collected in the 1960s and 1970s. thus, arriving at an updated definition of the yo momma joke must entail a reckoning with its history and a disentangling from the larger dozens tradition. one notable discrepancy between the dozens as collected and analyzed by earlier scholars and those yo momma jokes performed by youth today is the identity of their performers. although some scholars acknowledge that the dozens were also performed among white adolescents (ayoub and barnett 1965; labov 1972, 140-41), most analyses of the dozens emphasize their function in the social and psychological lives of urban african american communities. john dollard suggests that the insults act as a pressure valve to relieve some of the psychological anxiety felt by african americans. he theorizes that this anxiety is displaced from the actual target of hostility onto the safer target of the peer group, where it is framed as play and made safe (1939, 20-21). roger abrahams partially rejects this hypothesis and offers two others. the first hypothesis centers on the typical family structure observed by abrahams in south philadelphia in the 1960s, which he classifies as a matriarchy. in this type of family structure, african american boys must struggle to form a masculine identity and in doing so are rejected by the family. abrahams argues that forming this identity requires a violent shift from feminine to masculine values. this transformation is enacted through playing the cfr_2012.indb 9 10/19/12 9:25:31 am manipulating play frames stanzak 10 dozens, which not only attacks the feminine as embodied in the mother but also affirms the participants’ masculinity (abrahams 1962, 213). abrahams also touches upon a social function of the dozens, theorizing that they contribute to the development of verbal skill essential to the successful social life of adult african americans. later scholarship on the dozens emphasizes this social function rather than the psychological model favored by dollard and abrahams. harry lefever proposes that the dozens act as a nonviolent means for social control, in which african american men learn how to control their temper while under verbal assault (1981, 76). lefever argues that performing the dozens among peers hardens african american men to obscene and vulgar insults that might have been directed at them by antagonistic whites. ayoub and barnett, examining instances of verbal insults in a white high school, suggest that playing the dozens is important in establishing one’s identity within a peer group because the insults emphasize that peer group bonds are more important than protecting one’s mother from verbal attack (1965, 341). many of these functions theorized by scholars of the dozens must be reevaluated, as they largely posit race as the primary factor in their telling. yo momma jokes have been common among non-blacks for decades,5 and although race still plays a role in contemporary yo momma jokes on youtube, it is a much diminished one.6 most of the yo momma joking sessions on youtube were performed by white adolescent males, although african american, latino american, and asian american performers were also represented, as well as women, younger children, and young adults. the performance of yo momma jokes today must be disassociated on some level with research done by previous scholars working within completely different contexts, and new functional explanations should be investigated. the function closest to the surface seems to be the entertainment value of the jokes themselves. although the dozens were certainly performed for entertainment, their competitive, dueling function seems to have been foregrounded. performers of contemporary yo momma jokes, however, have reversed this emphasis, instead highlighting the role of yo momma jokes in providing amusement to both participants and audience. yo momma jokes on youtube are often a performative event in which participants collaborate rather than compete.7 in all cases, these performances offer participants an opportunity to showcase not only their verbal skills, but also their ability to create a framework for performance. most videos i observed were not candid recordings of spontaneous yo momma joke sessions, but rather framed as planned performances for a particular viewing audience. several participants emphasized their role in constructing these yo momma joke sessions: mike: “peace up.” sean: “woooord.” sean: “alright. today, we’re going to do some mama jokes.” . . . . . sean: “um, so basically, we’re gonna go now. hope you enjoyed the video and we’ll see you later.” cfr_2012.indb 10 10/19/12 9:25:31 am stanzak manipulating play frames 11 mike: “peace out to all my youtubers, myspacers.” sean: “oh yeah!” mike: “let’s go” sean: “let’s go myspace!” (scpafc 2007) teenage girl: ok people, we’re going to teach you some good your momma jokes.”8 these performances are set apart from ordinary discourse by the very fact of their medium: the participants intentionally chose to record their joking sessions and post them on youtube with titles and tags referencing yo momma jokes. in addition, participants frame these events as joking sessions through announcements of their intentions and their intended audience. in both examples, it is obvious that the joking session is planned rather than spontaneous, even though what happens within the joking session may be less scripted. although entertainment and performance concerns lie at the forefront of contemporary yo momma jokes, scholars have also proposed other functions. a cognitive function is intimated by benjamin bergen and kim binsted, who theorize that such jokes provide children with an introduction to verbal play and assist in the formation of conceptual relations between objects and people (2003). with yo momma jokes, the mind must work to grasp the relationships between the different constituent elements of the joke and in doing so grapple with linguistic devices such as hyperbole, understatement, imagery, and metaphor. in addition, these jokes are formulaic, built on structural models of varying complexity. although linguistically simple to repeat, they are difficult to successfully create.9 a socialization function has also been suggested. as noted above, ayoub and barnett hypothesize that playing the dozens emphasizes peer bonds over familial ones. similarly, yo momma jokes emphasize friendship bonds that are tested and stretched through the creation of a play framework. labov and lefever both claim that the dozens are told largely among members of the same in-group, and my own research on contemporary yo momma jokes reinforces this assertion.10 children may play yo momma jokes because it is a social activity that may be done among friends and even, counter to expectations, among family members. these performances acknowledge the shared social framework of the participants. in addition, children may find this joking form fascinating because of the referential content of the jokes themselves. numerous scholars have pointed out the prevalence of obscenity and subversion in children’s folklore (for an overview of this scholarship, see mcmahon and sutton-smith 1999, 300-08), and yo momma jokes certainly possess both features. the obscenity in these jokes not only challenges adult conceptions of taste but is often attributed to the mother herself, disrupting her stereotypical role as defender against the obscene. simon: “well listen, yo mama’s so fat when she’s on toilet she need a map to find her asshole” (halfcastkid 2008). alex b.: “yo mama’s so manly her balls are bigger than yours!” (bbumps123 2008) cfr_2012.indb 11 10/19/12 9:25:31 am manipulating play frames stanzak 12 obscenity is not the only subversive feature of yo momma jokes. a joke from four-year old aaron shows how yo momma jokes can subvert traditional family power structures: your mama’s so fat that she went and threw the fish tank in the car that she broke the, the like, she broke the shade with the part and said she said, “mom, dad, i broke my shade part” and then she went to the living room and changed again, had to stay home (thecomputernerd01 2007). the mother here is presented as the very embodiment of excess, hardly discernable from the four-year-old child who tells the joke. the mother of the joke has no control over her body, emotions, or environment. she throws a fish tank in the car, which causes her own parents to punish her. by effectively transforming the mother into a child, aaron creates through his joke a world turned upsidedown, one in which he is in control through his verbal skill and his mother is the one who is unrestrained and punished for it. the structure of yo momma jokes in regard to form, yo momma jokes are distinct, stable, and easily identifiable. attempts to define yo momma jokes on the basis of form have been recently undertaken by bergen and binsted, who classify yo momma jokes under the category of “scalar humor.” briefly, scalar humor is defined as a subset of humor that manipulates ambiguous conceptual relations of scale in order to highlight incongruous relationships between objects or ideas (bergen and binsted 2003). bergen and binsted formulate a linguistic blueprint for scalar humor that follows the construction: “x is so y that z.” although yo momma jokes utilize this formula, it is also used by non-humorous expressions, as in this example: “it was so cold in the arctic circle that we found frost on the lettuce” (2003, 6). here, the relationship between the first clause and the second is sensible. the first clause sets up a scenario (“it was so cold in the arctic circle”) that is fulfilled in the second (“that we found frost on the lettuce”). this statement is not funny because the relationship between the two clauses is logical and expected. for this construction to be considered humorous, the implied relationship between the first clause and the second must fail to be fulfilled. this is accomplished by a number of rhetorical devices that manipulate or distort the implied relationship, such as hyperbole, understatement, polysemy, metaphor, or imagery. consider the scalar joke “yo’ mama’s so fat, when she was diagnosed with a flesh eating disease, the doctor gave her 5 years to live” (bergen and binsted 2003, 7). like the previous example of the lettuce, this joke also uses the “x is so y” construction. however, unlike the last example, this one is humorous because the second clause disrupts the logical relationship of scale implied by the first clause: the doctor’s prognosis is nonsensical except in the world of humor, where mothers of extraordinary weight reside. humor results from the “x is so y” construction when there is a “mismatch cfr_2012.indb 12 10/19/12 9:25:31 am stanzak manipulating play frames 13 between the hearer’s expectations about the utterance and its actual realization” (bergen and binsted 2003, 3). although bergen and binsted offer a thorough examination of scalar humor based on linguistic analysis, they do not take performance contexts into account. here, i wish here to make several modifications to their structural framework based on my own observations of yo momma jokes in performance. i propose four key constituent elements that contribute to the structure of yo momma jokes. the first and most characteristic element of these jokes i label the introductory formula. this element contains the formulaic opening that gives the joke cycle its name: “yo momma so,” containing both the subject of the insult as well as the required intensifier “so.” the introductory formula is the primary framing device for the joke; it signals to participants that a framework for play is being constructed and that the discourse within the frame is not to be taken seriously. the following failed start of a yo momma joke told by alejandro11 illustrates several key features of the introductory formula: yo momma’s so fat she— your momma’s so ugly— [alejandro’s mother walks into the room] sorry sorry sorry. this is a momma joke. don’t— run away. if you’re a mom, please run away.12 as can be seen from this example, alejandro constructs a play frame using the introductory formula that gives him license to tell a yo momma joke. however, alejandro has several concerns about the effectiveness of the frame. either he doubts that this licensing given by the frame is adequate enough to allow telling of the joke in front of the actual insult target (a mother), or he is unsure that adults hearing the joke will understand the play framework that he constructs. in either event, alejandro makes the play frame explicit to his audience, emphasizing that that what he’s saying “is a momma joke.” the presence of this overt declaration is perhaps due to alejandro’s young age and his insecurity with the joke form; it is doubtful that older children would have found such distancing maneuvers necessary in this context. although alejandro firmly establishes this framework through the introductory formula and an unambiguous explanation, alejandro still warns all mothers listening to “run away” while he tells his joke. the introductory formula as a framing element is crucial to successful performances. variations upon this formula are possible, but were rarely found in the videos observed. the intensifier “so” is critical to the effectiveness of the joke because it sets up the incongruity between scalar relationships that must be resolved by the audience. therefore, the intensifier must always be present in the opening formula for a yo momma joke to be told successfully. the insult subject, however, is variable. a change in the insult subject to father or grandmother is found in some of the dozens collected by labov, but mothers were by far the most popular cfr_2012.indb 13 10/19/12 9:25:31 am manipulating play frames stanzak 14 target. this was also the trend in my examination of contemporary yo momma jokes on youtube.13 some notable exceptions appeared in my research, particularly in the jokes told by four-year old aaron, who tells yo momma jokes to an older relative behind the camera. aaron struggled with the joke structure, but firmly grasped the introductory element. not only does the introductory formula define the yo momma joke cycle, but it is also formulaic, concise, and rarely variable—in other words simple and memorable enough for young children to learn easily. although aaron comprehended that this element was crucial for the reproduction of this joke type, he had considerably less competence in the other structural parts of the joke. when your momma’s so fat that spider-man was so fat that spider-man comes down his web and he was scared that he was fat and then he said “what happened to me?” and then he was fat on my shirt so he popped out of my shirt (thecomputernerd01 2007). although this joke demonstrates a limited competence of the yo momma joke, it suggests a developing understanding of form. the introductory formula is present, but the statements that follow do not relate to this formula. once aaron has established a play framework with the introductory formula, he changes the insult subject from a mother to spider-man. the point of the introductory formula here is not to logically connect to the rest of the joke, but rather to signal the presence of a play framework. aaron’s joke is much more dynamic than typical yo momma jokes, which are largely conservative and formulaic. lost in this transcription are the environmental cues that aaron draws upon in his own joke creation: aaron is wearing a shirt bearing a depiction of spider-man. although aaron has not yet developed a repertoire of conventional yo momma jokes, he improvises using stimuli immediately present. although he is not successful in his attempts to tell a yo momma joke, his attempts show a beginning understanding of form. the second structural component in the yo momma joke cycle is what i label the modifying element, that term which limits and clarifies the excessiveness of the subject denoted by the “so” intensifier in the introductory formula. the most common modifier in yo momma joke cycle is “fat,” but others are possible, such as “poor,” “ugly,” “black,” “dirty,” “old,” and even “short.” the main function of the modifying element is to define the type of scalar relationship that will be presented in the next section of the joke. in engaging with the joke structure, aaron attempts to change the common modifying element “fat” to “ugly,” but is unsure how to do so effectively. the following example demonstrates a change in the modifying element that is immediately followed by a retreat back to the original “fat.” the insult subject is also modified, as above. cfr_2012.indb 14 10/19/12 9:25:31 am stanzak manipulating play frames 15 your momma’s so fat that she ride a horse and the horse is so ugly, that the horse was so fat. the first line is consistent with the standard introductory formula and modifying element. however, in the second line aaron introduces a horse to the joke that quickly becomes the subject of the joke, which is first called “ugly” and then goes back to the original “fat.” the next two elements operate together in a cause-and-effect relationship that is informed by the modifying element. the causal component introduces a normative and neutral scenario to the joke that has not yet been influenced by the modifying element or intensifier of the introductory formula. as such, the causal component acts as a bridge between the first part of the joke (“yo momma’s so fat”) and its punchline. simon: “your momma’s so fat she need a boomerang to put on her belt” (halfcastkid 2008). the elements of this joke do not quite match the structure i outline here, but can easily be standardized: “your momma’s so fat that when she put on her belt, she needed a boomerang.” the causal component here is the mother putting on a belt, which is presented as a neutral scenario that should be easily possible. however, yo momma jokes are characterized by exaggeration and absurdity. thus, the mother presented here is so excessively fat that she defies normalcy and the plausible scenario presented in the causal component is negated by the introductory formula and modifying element. the last structural element to be considered here is the consequential component: the punch line of the yo momma joke that synthesizes the other joke elements. the consequential component is the result of applying the excessively modified mother subject to the normative scenario depicted in the causal component to produce an image of the mother in which she is unable to operate within the world, effectively reversing the causal component. her inability to function in this world renders the subject foolish, obscene, and even deviant. this example, collected from sean and mike, exemplifies this phenomenon. sean: “your momma’s so poor that when i ring the doorbell she says ding.” mike: “sean.” sean: “i shouldn’t have said that. sorry.” mike: “sean. sean, yesterday i came to your house, and that’s what you did.” sean: “i didn’t do it.” cfr_2012.indb 15 10/19/12 9:25:32 am manipulating play frames stanzak 16 mike: “yeah.” sean: “i can’t afford a doorbell.” mike: “how you gonna make fun of my mom if you do it too?” sean: “you’re horrible.” mike: “get out of here” (scpafc 2007). the scenario set up in the above joke is one in which a doorbell is rung and, due to the presentation of the mother subject as being excessively poor, a situation emerges which lies outside the range of logical possibilities and is seen as ridiculous. this particular joke is a well-known example of the genre and thus not particularly original. however, the participants here carry the humor of the joke beyond the scenario presented by the joke’s structure through verbal maneuvers that position them further within the joking framework. both boys play off each other, deliberately misinterpreting the joke as truth, despite its absurdity, and opening up an arena for verbal play that is at once part of the joke and yet outside it. genre and play frames like the dozens, contemporary yo momma jokes reside where jokes and verbal duels intersect. despite this similarity, contemporary yo momma jokes still inhabit a distinct subgenre separable from the dozens in particular and verbal duels in general. my observations have shown that contemporary yo momma jokes on youtube, unlike the dozens, emphasize the joking framework much more than the dueling framework. although it is not uncommon for yo momma jokes on youtube to take the form of a verbal duel between two participants,14 it is just as common for a video to feature just one person reciting a yo momma joke to the camera,15 or even just to display jokes in the form of written text on the screen. even when a dueling framework between two or more participants is present, this framework is often radically different than those created in traditional verbal duels. often, the duels are staged rather than spontaneous, and the number and identity of participants are manipulated by skillful digital editing. as a form of verbal duels, contemporary yo momma jokes share many features with the dozens. john mcdowell defines verbal duels as “the competitive use of language within the confines of a game structure with rules that are codified and available to participants” (1985, 203). the content of verbal duels is often framed in formulaic patterns with a definite structure and generic content. although some of the yo momma jokes i observed were obviously improvised, especially those told by younger children, most of the jokes were traditional. the same jokes were often heard in different joking sessions, performed by different participants. even the jokes that were apparently improvised aligned themselves to the structural patterns defined above. hence, these joking sessions can then be seen as highly ritualized and engaging with a generic pattern of verbal exchange. a principle crucial to verbal dueling and to the examination of yo momma jokes considered here is what mcdowell terms the “conservation principle.” briefly, the conservation principle recognizes that verbal dueling is a discursive cfr_2012.indb 16 10/19/12 9:25:32 am stanzak manipulating play frames 17 process in which participants pattern their responses based on previous utterances. yo momma joking sessions on youtube often follow this conservation principle, allowing for a constant give-and-take between participants, or, as i also observed, between a single participant interacting with objects in his environment. an example from two adolescent brothers illustrates the conservation principle. brother 1: “your momma’s so fat people jog around her for exercise!” brother 2: “your mom’s so fat that when i jog around her for exercise she went ‘stop it, you’re making me dizzy, yah.’”16 two jokes told by the youngest informant, four-year-old aaron, demonstrate the conservation principle as enacted between the solo participant and his environment. this first joke was told in the beginning of the session: your mama’s so fat that she looked into the mirror and she saw it and the mirror cracked and then it went into the living room, but it slide, it slide into the living room (thecomputernerd01 2007). the following joke was told closer to the end of the session, when his cousin amanda entered the room where he was conducting the joking session. your mama’s so— no amanda, don’t come in. your mama’s so fat that she saw a mirror was blue and orange and pink so amanda was in the mirror. considering these two jokes as a progression within the same joking session, we see that aaron conserved elements of the first joke (the mirror) and incorporated that element into a later joke that also incorporated amanda, who encroached on his play space. although this move is not as dialogic as the first example of the two brothers, it does indicate a move towards the direction of conservation between participant turns that allows for effective dueling. although yo momma jokes share certain features with verbal duels, the form of such duels in the dozens and contemporary yo momma jokes differs in several important respects, particularly in how each constructs frameworks for play that structure the discourse that occurs within it. these frames free the joke teller from responsibility for the content of the joke and signal to the audience that what is to be said is not to be taken seriously, that the performer is “just joking.” this frame is central to most human cognitive and behavioral processes, but manifest in contemporary yo momma jokes in particular ways. erving goffman describes frames as devices that organize and represent experience (1974). frames accomplish this task by arranging discourse into cfr_2012.indb 17 10/19/12 9:25:32 am manipulating play frames stanzak 18 demarcated spaces set off from other discourses through framing devices. play is marked by particular framing behaviors, identified by gregory bateson as “interactive sequence[s] of which the unit actions or signals [are] similar to but not the same as those of combat” (1972, 179).17 play is signaled through metacommunicative messages that indicate to participants aware of such messages that the next actions are not to be interpreted and evaluated as they normally would outside the frame. goffman makes a similar observation: “playfulness and other keying may be involved which sharply reduce personal responsibility; that often what the individual presents is not himself but a story containing a protagonist who may happen also to be himself” (goffman 1974, 541). all communicative acts involve a certain level of framing and are subject to interpretation by the receiver of the message. the dozens and other verbal duel forms are framed in a number of ways that establish and maintain the play frame. labov writes: “since responses to sounds [i.e., dozens] are so automatic and deepseated, we must pre-suppose a well-formed competence on the part of members to distinguish ritual insults from personal insults” (1972, 153). the formulaic character and the high stylization of the dozens serve to remove the insults from the context of normative speech acts and instead place them into the category of ritual speech. in addition to the formal structure of the dozens, their referential content also frames them as play. abrahams recognizes that the rules formulated for playing the dozens seem to say “‘you can insult my family, but don’t exceed the rules because we are dealing with something perilously close to real life’” (1962, 211). labov echoes this sentiment, emphasizing that the situations in which insults move from the ritual to the personal occur when the insults approach too closely to actual life. to create dozens that are safe, therefore, requires a move from the probable to the “bizarre and unlikely” (1972, 157). this strategy also holds true for contemporary yo momma jokes, although performers on youtube often exploit the ambiguous distinction between personal and ritual insults. the participants involved are also an important consideration for understanding the framing of verbal duels. dozens are often told among peer-group members who occupy the same in-group. this performative context allows for metacommunicative actions signaling the play frame to be understood by all participants as well as providing a safe verbal battleground for the dozens to be played. playing the dozens requires participants to make themselves vulnerable to a certain amount of verbal abuse. this voluntary exposure to attack is a risk taken in all gaming activities and involves an assumption that all participants will play by the rules and that ritual insults will not give way to personal insults. however, there are situations in which this play frame breaks down. labov notes that “with strangers it is considerably harder to say what is a safe sound, and there are any number of taboos that can be broken with serious results” (1972, 158). as a result, playing the dozens is most often done between in-group members, and outside of this group this activity is usually intended to provoke a fight. lefever notes a similar occurrence: “fighting is associated more with the dozens when it is played between exclusive out-group members, when it is played in regimented and restrictive settings and when it is played by adults” (1981, 80). in these breakdowns, a failure or an unwillingness to recognize the play frame results cfr_2012.indb 18 10/19/12 9:25:32 am stanzak manipulating play frames 19 in a literal interpretation of the insult. for playing the dozens to be successful, participants must operate within the same metacommunicative framework and be able to recognize the verbal acts that signal the play event. as verbal duels, contemporary yo momma joke performances on youtube look much different than the dozens collected in past decades. although humor and play were certainly part of the dozens, contemporary yo momma jokes emphasize the play and joking aspects to a much greater extent. i have classified yo momma jokes as “jokes,” and they are popularly referred to as such, but this generic distinction presents some inherent problems. as jokes, contemporary yo momma jokes do contain humor at their core and attempt, whether successfully or not, to provoke a laughter response. this attempt may be accomplished in a variety of ways, but yo momma jokes most often accomplish this by word play, absurd imagery, or the reversal of societal norms or expectations. these rhetorical maneuvers have been discussed above, and are most often inherent in the content of the jokes themselves. however, my observation of yo momma jokes on youtube shows that participants are finding dynamic ways to revitalize jokes that are often seen by audiences as boring and clichéd.18 performers on youtube accomplish this through innovative framing techniques, such that the source of humor is less in the joke content itself than in the framework in which the joke is performed. i have identified three techniques utilized by performers of contemporary yo momma jokes on youtube to innovate this traditional joke form: obscuring participant identities, taking seriousness playfully, and taking play seriously. obscuring participant identities framing necessarily requires a different interpretation of events. in play frameworks, relationships that are not central to the play may be temporarily obscured so that the participants may engage in a joking session that would otherwise be unable to occur. often, the relationships that are obscured are familial ones. in the following example taken from two adolescent brothers, their familial relationship is ignored for the sake of the play: brother 1: [interrupting] “your mom’s so fat she goes into a restaurant, looks at the menu—” brother 2: “hey.” brother 1: “—and says ok!” brother 2: “your mom’s so fat, no wait, dude. your mom’s my mom.” brother 1: “oh shit.”19 this exchange closes the joking session and ends the video. the relationship between the brothers has been temporarily suspended so that they can tell yo momma jokes to each other; once reinstated, such jokes can no longer be told effectively. several joking sessions between siblings follow this basic formula, with the main humor of the video deriving from the family relationship that is revealed at the end of the video. cfr_2012.indb 19 10/19/12 9:25:32 am manipulating play frames stanzak 20 one video that uses this technique (perhaps unintentionally) sets up the joking framework in the typical manner: jimmy: “yo mama fight!” alex: “your mom’s so poor i saw her kicking a can down the street and i said ‘hey, whatcha doing?’ she said, ‘moving.’” jimmy: “yo mama’s so fat that she brought a little tiny spoon to the super bowl” (bbumps123 2008). whereas the previous examples relied on the revelation of familial relationships to provide the video’s humor, such a device within the video itself is unnecessary here because the two participants are identical twins.20 the humor here results from the obvious irony of the framework; the act of watching identical twins insult each other’s mother approaches the surreal. the identities of the participants cannot be obscured, only temporarily ignored by the audience. still, the very constructedness of this joking framework is emphasized in several places. one commenter seems to either miss the point or is making an ironic joke of her own: “hello retards u have the same mama so u cant make a joke about ur mama.”21 the relationship between the twins is further identified by the video’s title, “when brothers fight 3” and metacommentary at the end of the video: hope you enjoyed sadly this is our last video with violent stuff because our dad said no more but please comment and we will show our dad thank you and comedy ideas by jimmy and alex m as demonstrated by these examples, jimmy and alex m. do not require a grand revelation at the end of their video to point out the presence of a play frame and the obscuring of participant identities that resulted. these twins are able to both obscure and reveal their identities at the same time through the use of intersecting and contradictory frameworks. another video that plays with the idea of obscured familial relationships presents two siblings acting out a yo momma battle. it begins with the two sitting at a table. the older sister is playing a handheld video game when she is interrupted by her younger brother: brother: “yo momma’s so stupid that she thinks one plus one equals elephant.”22 at this point, music appropriate to verbal dueling begins playing in the background as the sister turns off her game and menacingly stands up from the table: sister: “let’s handle this the mature way.” cfr_2012.indb 20 10/19/12 9:25:32 am stanzak manipulating play frames 21 what follows are typical yo momma jokes told back and forth between the participants in dueling fashion. despite the silly content of their jokes (e.g. “[your momma’s] so ugly she looked in the mirror and thought it was a picture of michael jackson”), the siblings adopt an appearance of seriousness that complements the dramatic music. the trope of taking these jokes seriously appears again and again in these videos, which serves to highlight their very playfulness. for these two participants, the video’s production implies, the yo momma battle has high stakes. the revelation of their obscured familial relationship occurs at the end of their video, after the sister levies an insult that causes her younger brother to cry: sister: “yo momma’s so ugly that the storeowner uses her picture to keep the rats away.” after this insult, the sister approaches her little brother and puts her arms on his shoulders in a manner meant to suggest consolation. however, this action too is pretense: sister: “um, little dude. uh, your mom is still ugly.” at this point, the sister runs away as the camera pans to an older woman, presumably their mother, coming out of a doorway. in a raised voice, she begins: “what the f—.” here, the video conveniently ends, letting the audience’s imagination supply the rest of her outburst. from the video’s editing, it is obvious that the mother’s arrival is part of the performance, but it still serves to break the play framework these siblings have constructed by foregrounding the familial relationship between all the participants. her invective at the end is a reply not only to her children’s fighting, but also to her place at the center of their duel as the target of their jokes. family relationships are not the only ones obscured by contemporary yo momma joke sessions. in several videos observed, the selfhood of the participant(s) is also concealed. through video editing, some participants stage a joking session between themselves. in many, but not all, instances, this fact is obvious. user spectator24 posted a video featuring his favorite yo momma jokes because he was “feelin’ real funny today.” although spectator24 is the only participant in the video, he still decides to frame it as a verbal duel between two participants. he accomplishes this through video editing, cutting back and forth to himself in different poses. one “participant” faces right to his assumed opponent, who faces left. no other attempts are made to disguise the self-identity of the participant(s). his imitation of an actual dual, however, is effective—there is even evidence of the conservation principle: spectator24 (facing right): “yo momma got one toe and one knee and they call her tony, heh heh heh heh heh.” cfr_2012.indb 21 10/19/12 9:25:32 am manipulating play frames stanzak 22 spectator24 (facing left): “dude, that’s not funny, that’s a serious problem. she can’t even wear sandals, you asshole” (spectator24 2007). some videos use more advanced video editing techniques and costuming to disguise the fact that there is only one participant. one particularly skillful example is a video by user azaelive (2009). many of azaelive’s videos feature his alter-ego persona, an outrageously crude woman named monikka who sports long black hair and wears an excessive amount of black lipstick on her lips, under her eyes, and in her eyebrows. azaelive’s yo momma video pits monikka against “the other guy,” both played by azaelive. the jokes they tell are largely traditional, but what is innovative here is how azaelive edits the video so that both participants occupy the shot at the same time. both participants are edited to be sitting next to each other on the same couch, giving the impression of an actual dual in real-time. taking seriousness playfully a number of youtube videos portray yo momma jokes inserted in the course of normal conversation, where a joking framework is not present. instead, the performers pretend that their play is real life. of course, this absence of a play frame is a fiction, as the video itself is a staged performance. these videos often offer an evaluation and commentary of the yo momma joke format, highlighting their simplicity. one video by user lulu615 plays out another instance where seriousness is taken playfully when one girl uses an insult that is too true to life: natalie: “you know, speaking of big-ass mommas, you know how i know yo’ momma’s fat? because she irons her drawers on the driveway.” alex: “well, yo’ momma’s so fat when her beeper goes off people think she’s backin’ it up.” natalie: “you know how i know yo’ momma’s so fat? because people jog around her for exercise.” alex: “well, yo’ momma’s so fat she weighs 800 pounds” [mournful violin music begins in the background] “she got a clogged artery, had a triple bypass surgery, she died.” natalie: [slaps alex across the face] “not cool.”23 the two girls here have created a play framework that allows for the telling of yo momma jokes, but alex’s last joke clearly breaks that framework by using serious events for the content of a joke. of course, as is usually the case in yo momma jokes on youtube, this seriousness is actually part of the joke; natalie’s mother presumably does not suffer from the afflictions alleged by alex. this video indulges in a “what if” scenario that details what might happen “when simple jokes go wrong,” which is the video’s description. by acting out the breakdown of cfr_2012.indb 22 10/19/12 9:25:32 am stanzak manipulating play frames 23 a play framework, alex and natalie’s video draws attention to those features that are integral to its construction. a video titled “so is yo momma!” by user alexdh92 emphasizes the fact that yo momma jokes can be easily inserted into the course of everyday conversation. like azaelive’s video discussed above, this video consists of only one performer who plays two parts. the entirety of the video consists of one character (whom i’ve labeled alex 1) making a statement, followed by a mother insult spoken by another character (alex 2). alex 1: [looking into a mirror] “god, i’m so ugly.” alex 2: “well so is your momma!” alex 1: “this t.v. is so big!” alex 2: “and so yo’ momma’s boobies!” alex 1: “this show is so stupid.” alex 2: “well, so is yo’ momma!” alex 1: [holding up a piece of paper] “i’ve got testicular torsion!” alex 2: “well, so does yo’ momma!” alex 1: [playing a video game] “you’re a s– [bleeping noises] little f– [bleeping noises]!” alex 2: “well, so is yo’ momma!”24 the insults spoken here are highly abbreviated and unsophisticated when compared to standard yo momma jokes. the jokes here are left to the audience to parse and reconstruct. the first joke in the above transcript could be expanded to fit the structure: “yo momma’s so ugly that she’s as ugly as you.”25 this clumsy joke is neither complex nor original, but that is precisely the point of the video. alex’s performance highlights the simplicity of the yo momma joke structure by demonstrating how easily the joke can be constructed in almost any speaking context. even the joke about testicular torsion works on some level despite its impossibility due to both its humorous incongruity as well as its insinuation of masculinity. the video ends by testing the limits of the yo momma joke’s applicability to non-play frameworks. alex 1: [talking on a cell phone] “what, she’s dead?” alex 2: “and so is yo’ momma!” alex 1: “no, no, not now, my mum’s just died in a horrible car crash.” alex 2: “ooo, that’s awkward.” alex 1: “not as awkward as yo’ momma!” this humorous turn reverses the roles played by the two participants throughout the video. here, alex 1 sets up a serious scenario that resists the imposition of a cfr_2012.indb 23 10/19/12 9:25:32 am manipulating play frames stanzak 24 play frame by his double; alex 2 recognizes that he has transgressed the boundary for appropriate play. however, in this instance the situation that establishes this boundary is imaginary, part of a play framework designed by alex 1. alex 2’s response “ooo, that’s awkward” denotes his disengagement from play. it is at this moment that the participants’ roles are reversed; it is now alex 1 who turns seriousness into play. a video by user zksbrothers also exploits the simplicity and wide applicability of yo momma jokes, but employs a more dramatic method of conveying this commentary. the description for this video summarizes the main plot: after watching “yo mamma” jokes for many hours, stephen becomes obsessed, and can’t stop making his own jokes (zksbrothers 2007). the video includes a cast of five older teenage boys and is comprised of a number of scenes in which stephen goes to extreme lengths to interrupt normal, non-play speech and activities, including sleeping, getting dressed, talking on the phone, and fishing. throughout, stephen hides nearby, waiting for the appropriate opportunities to interject. in one scene, stephen runs to a group of three boys in order to tell them, “that’s what your mother said last night.” the last thing said in the video was “see you later,” but stephen was too far away to possibly hear this, implying either that stephen has preternatural hearing or commenting on the applicability of this insult to a wide variety of contexts. in another scene, stephen hides himself on the roof of a house and listens in on a conversation between two of the boys. boy in brown shirt: “sorry i was late coming over here. i, uh, was driving and there was this crazy kid that came out and he was screaming yo mamma jokes and it was really weird.” chris: “yeah, that was probably stephen. he stayed up all night on the internet watching those stupid yo mamma jokes and now he can’t stop.” stephen: “your mother can stop…last night!” [laughs] chris: “where is he? where is he? what now?” stephen: [jumps off the roof] chris: “oh my god! oh my god! are you all right?” stephen: “ah, yeah, i’m fine. but your mom wasn’t!” [laughs] the video contains several other scenes that follow this general pattern. in each, stephen disrupts seriousness with play and irritates his companions. the video ends when the other boys, provoked by stephen’s antics, beat him up (during the beating, stephen shouts, “your mom was this aggressive!”). the jokes in the above two videos are incredibly simplistic, even by yo momma joke standards, but this simplicity is evaluated and manipulated by the videos’ creators. as seen in these examples, serious actions are quite easily cfr_2012.indb 24 10/19/12 9:25:32 am stanzak manipulating play frames 25 appropriated for play activity by these abbreviated yo momma jokes. although these videos rely on these simplified yo momma jokes to drive the action, the creators are actually rejecting them as a legitimate source of humor. the humor in these videos comes not from the jokes themselves but rather from their performance contexts, the stuff that happens around the jokes. by devising the intricate framing techniques used in these videos, the creators add complexity to the traditional joke form and showcase their talents as innovators of play. taking play seriously another technique used to create humor in yo momma jokes on youtube is to deliberately ignore the play framework necessitated by joking. of course, this disregard of frames is feigned by participants; no actual people were offended in the making of these jokes. by pretending to ignore these play frames, participants actually draw attention to them, highlighting the act of performance rather than the jokes’ actual content. this maneuver was used in a large number of the videos studied. one extended example from sean and mike takes the referential content of the jokes themselves as being real events: mike: “man. man, i’ve got to tell you something. your momma’s so fat her senior picture, was taken aerial view. aerial? you know. that that that’s fat.” sean: “that’s where i was, that’s where my senior picture was taken. yeah.” mike: “you’re pretty fat. whew. man, your momma’s so fat, so so so fat she used a sock—. [laughing]. i’m joking, i’m joking. your momma’s so fat, she used a pillowcase as a sock.” sean: “oh shit, i think that’s what i have on. oh yea, that’s what i have. uh oh.” mike: “fatness. whew. [inaudible]. it’s ok, it’s ok. it’s alright, it’s alright. man, your momma’s so fat that the doctor went to cut her leg open and gravy started flowing out, just flowin’ like a volcano.” sean: “that happened to me two weeks ago.” mike: “are you serious?” sean: “yeah.” mike: “you are pretty damn fat.” . . . . . sean: “your momma’s so fat [whispering] that we’re in her right now. shhh, don’t wake, don’t wanna wake up her fatness.” mike: “what, what’s that stuff covering you?” sean: “poop? poopie poopie poopie” (scpafc 2007). cfr_2012.indb 25 10/19/12 9:25:32 am manipulating play frames stanzak 26 these jokes are not original (several commenters even accuse them of reading the jokes off a screen),26 but the metacommentary surrounding the jokes is. these two performers attempt to increase the humor of the jokes’ content by emphasizing their absurdity and insisting on their reality. these jokes move back and forth between play and seriousness. this movement is largely done through the selfidentification of one participant with his mother, who is being insulted by the other. the pretense of ignoring the play framework allows these two boys to gain extra mileage from traditional yo momma jokes by imagining their excessive effects as present in the real world. although other videos show performers ignoring the presence of a play framework, most take a much different course than the one above. one video that utilized this technique is a direct parody of the mtv television show yo momma. this program, which ran in 2006 and 2007, brought together the best verbal duelers from different urban neighborhoods to face off in verbal battles facilitated by celebrity host wilmer valderama. in a cyclical process typical of many folklore genres, the yo momma television show drew from folkloric dueling traditions, but was then re-appropriated by folk culture as in the parody video below. the yo momma battle in this video begins as expected: zero degrees kelvin: “yo. yo momma is like a brick. she’s dirty, she’s flat on both sides, and she always get laid by mexicans. [crowd cheers] lil’ mufasa: “what’d you say about my momma?” (lutopiansociety 2008). at this point, however, lil’ mufasa pulls out a gun and shoots zero degrees kelvin, killing him. lil’ mufasa has misinterpreted the joke as a real insult, but the audience then interprets his action as a legitimate response to the first joke. the crowd responds with the typical noises that follow an insult, and then the performer playing wilmer valderama consults with the judges and returns with a decision: wilmer valderama: “alright, so, i had a tough decision to make. uh, you both were good, but, um, i did feel that one of you stepped up the most and that one of you was dead-on with your jokes. so, now, we decided, and the winner is…zero degrees kelvin.” wilmer then speaks to the dead kelvin and presents him with his thousand-dollar prize. the video begins with an instance of play taken seriously but ends with seriousness taken playfully. not only does the video toy with the differences between play and seriousness, but also with those between life and death; the participants are unable to distinguish between both conceptual categories. cfr_2012.indb 26 10/19/12 9:25:32 am stanzak manipulating play frames 27 the last video i wish to consider is sophisticated in terms of both performance and editing. like the previous video, “gaelen and paul’s first fight” also hinges on a joke that is taken seriously by another participant. it begins with the two performers conversing while playing video games together: paul: “hey, hey. dude. i got a joke. i thought about this earlier today. yo momma is so fat—” gaelen: “what’d you say about my momma?” paul: “come on man, it’s just a joke.” [lightly shoves paul] gaelen: “what? did you just exercise physical contact in my bubble?” paul: “what?” gaelen: “did you just touch me?” paul: [stands up] “what does it matter, mr. sensitive?” gaelen: “i’m packing heat.” paul: “me too, bub.” gaelen: “tomorrow. downtown. high noon.” paul: “no, no, i can’t do it then. i’m going downtown to see a movie with joseph.” gaelen: “wait, why didn’t you invite me?” paul: “i don’t know, you’ve been kind of annoying lately. the whole bean thing.”27 gaelen: “you gave me those! you, you know what? ten minutes, front yard!” [long pause] paul: “man, we’ve got ten minutes to burn”28 the two resume playing video games together, and thirty minutes later (indicated by an on-screen message) they meet outside. in an imitation of a classic westernmovie dueling scene, gaelen and paul stand back-to-back before pacing off in opposite directions. both the background music and close-up shots of each participant’s eyes also bring to mind other western-movie genre conventions. the music suddenly changes to epic choral music as the two draw their guns and shoot. both of them are hit, shown by spurts of blood that are digitally edited into the shot. gaelen comes out on top, however. the scene ends with gaelen standing over paul, his gun pressed against paul’s head. he speaks, “i never liked comments about my momma.” this video is particularly sophisticated in the ways it draws upon western genre conventions to play with the idea of retribution, in this case for a joke taken seriously. however, at the same time that these performers are employing these conventions, they are also subverting them through parody and play. the end of the video reveals the playfulness of this western-style gunfight explicitly, while at the same time imposing an additional play framework upon the entire video. after the end of the last scene, when gaelen is just about to shoot paul, the scene abruptly changes to show the two in a bedroom, looking over pages of paper, presumably a script: cfr_2012.indb 27 10/19/12 9:25:32 am manipulating play frames stanzak 28 paul: “and that’s it! wouldn’t this be the most awesome movie idea you’ve ever read?” gaelen: “this is good stuff!” paul: “hey, hey. your momma’s so fat—“ gaelen: [menacingly, in slow motion] “what?” even in this scene, in which the viewer assumes that the play framework is not operating, is shown to be subsumed in yet another framework, as a yo momma joke is again taken seriously. this entire video contains several nested play frameworks that consistently interact with and interpenetrate each other. the viewer can never be quite sure in what framework the participants are operating at any time and this ambiguity is exploited by the two participants. conclusion although original ethnographic work on the dozens has declined in the last three decades since labov’s treatment, this gap in the scholarly literature is not indicative of a decline in its performance. the dozens have undergone significant changes since abrahams and labov conducted their fieldwork, but there are also telling similarities that demonstrate a continuity of form and content across generations of children and adolescents. a strictly textual study comparing the dozens collected in the 1960s and 70s with those collected today might emphasize such continuity as evidence for the power of tradition. analysis of performance contexts, however, shows that although the jokes remain the same, the message has not. i have identified here one key site where yo momma jokes continue to be told among peers to an audience that evaluates their performance. my survey of contemporary yo momma jokes on youtube shows that this form of the dozens is still vital among youth who have adapted this traditional joke genre to changed social and technological contexts. here, digital video technology has provided contemporary youth with means by which to innovate and reinvent a somewhat stale joke form, and internet sites like youtube have facilitated the communication of these creations with a wider audience. however, this study is far from conclusive. the videos here are only a sampling of those available on youtube, and youtube is only one website where such jokes are shared, reinvented, and performed. i have identified three techniques by which performers innovate yo momma jokes, but further research of a wider sample of jokes would undoubtedly uncover a wider range of maneuvers. ethnographic work on yo momma jokes told offline would go far in identifying ways that internet performance contexts shape the content, structure, and execution of jokes. this study points to the rich and vital possibilities of internet folklore, but much work remains to be done by folklorists in the realm of vernacular culture on the internet. cfr_2012.indb 28 10/19/12 9:25:32 am stanzak manipulating play frames 29 notes 1. this text is censored in the original article. 2. alternately spelled yo momma, yo mama, yo mamma, and yo moma. in video transcriptions, i have used the spelling “yo momma” unless other spellings are specified in the video’s tags or title, in which case i use that spelling. i use the grammatically incorrect “yo momma” rather than “yo’ momma” as an emic classification; no youtube videos surveyed for this project used the contracted form in their tags or titles. 3. one video dubbed a skit by weird al yankovic over the children’s cartoon “naruto” (a video that has since been taken down due to a copyright violation) and another dubbed yo momma jokes from the blue collar comedy tour over a world of warcraft video (krooltee 2008). 4. labov identifies ten different forms the dozens can take, based on form. see labov 1972, 128-42. 5. in 1972, labov briefly discussed dozens performed among white peer groups. notably, he observed that performances of the dozens by white peer groups were largely restricted to a limited set of insult routines. one of these is what labov calls the “you are so x that y type,” which includes yo momma jokes (140-42). 6. one consistent connection to urban black culture that finds its way into yo momma jokes on youtube consists of those videos inspired by the mtv television show yo momma, which ran for three seasons between 2006 and 2007. this show took place in large cities (los angeles, new york, and atlanta), emphasized urban culture, and pitted two people against each other in a verbal battle. the winner received a cash prize and advanced in the competition. the structure and content of these battles differed significantly from their vernacular counterparts, but it is obvious that some youtube videos observed took inspiration from the television show. 7. however, sometimes the pretense of competition is maintained, although it is obvious to viewers that such competition is scripted. this is particularly true of those videos that take inspiration from the yo momma television show, which maintains a strong competitive element. i will touch on such staging later in this paper. 8. this video has since been removed by the user. 9. although bergen and binsted use traditional yo momma jokes that are fully formed and divorced from performance contexts, my own ethnographic work with yo momma jokes on youtube supports their cognitive function. as will soon be seen, young children are capable of grasping the structure of yo momma jokes, but often struggle with providing content that successfully manipulates scalar relationships. 10. indeed, i could find no yo momma joking sessions performed between participants who did not know each other. this is not particularly surprising, as most of the sessions i observed on youtube were videotaped and hence selfselected for participants that knew each other. however, there are many other videos on youtube that are recordings of spontaneous rather than scripted events cfr_2012.indb 29 10/19/12 9:25:32 am manipulating play frames stanzak 30 observed by the recorder, and my survey did not turn up any recording of an impromptu yo momma joking session between strangers. scholarship on the dozens also largely upholds this trend, and i speculate that further ethnographic evidence on yo momma jokes in particular would uphold this claim. one notable exception is in the mass media. the yo momma television show on mtv pits participants from different neighborhoods against each other, but these battles are planned by producers for a mass media market. 11. although i could not identify alejandro’s exact age, he appears to be between five and eight years of age. 12. this video has since been removed by the user. 13. of course, this trend is partly the result of the search terms i used in this study. however, a brief search for phrases such as “yo daddy,” “yo sister,” and “yo brother” returns videos that feature mostly yo momma jokes. jokes with targets other than a mother are comparatively rare, and usually told at the same time as yo momma jokes. 14. as will be seen later, however, sometimes this duel framework is artificially created. for example, several videos constructed a dueling relationship through clever editing, thus pitting the participant against himself. this phenomenon will be explored later in the paper. 15. in some cases, the participant clearly intends for his audience to be the target of these jokes and invites video responses and comments as replies to his verbal attacks. one notable example of this type of video by youtube celebrity shane dawson garnered several hundred video responses and more than 100,000 comments as of september 2012, four years after the original video was posted (shanedawsontv 2008). 16. this video has since been removed by the user. 17. the idea of play as faked combat is especially pertinent to verbal duel forms, as much of the tension inherent in such duels revolves around maintaining this distinction. 18. remarks on the unoriginality of the jokes themselves is one of the more frequent responses to yo momma joke videos on youtube. users often critique the video for using videos taken from somewhere else, although others often respond that yo momma jokes by their nature are unoriginal. 19. this video has since been removed by the user. 20. the conclusion of this joking session ends logically enough with simulated violence when one brother takes offense to a joke, which is another technique employed by performers of contemporary yo momma jokes to increase the humor. 21. comment by user ilovejustin2525, found on the page for the video when brothers fight 3. 22. this video has since been removed by the user. 23. this video has since been removed by the user. 24. this video has since been removed by the user. 25. this kind of reconstructive work is modeled on labov, who also looked at the structure of these abbreviated dozens of the “x is so y” type. for examples of how labov reconstructed these abbreviated dozens, see labov 1972, 154. cfr_2012.indb 30 10/19/12 9:25:33 am stanzak manipulating play frames 31 26. the comment by user astalavista123321 is indicative of the general tone and language of other such comments: “ok that was so gay that gay people laugh at you for being gayi mean,wtf dude,the yo momma’s so fat, she fell in love and broke it and i think there was one more that was actualy funny, ok, but why the hell must you act like that? and the kid on the right side of the screen was fucking retarded..i mean,he kept forcing himself to laugh.and as many others have said,i even found the site were you were reading the jokes from, so bloody come up with one and take credit for it.” 27. this refers to another video by the two posted a month earlier, in which gaelen eats some beans. his ensuing flatulence causes an explosion. the purpose of the video, other than entertainment, was for the pair to experiment with software that creates special effects. this video has since been removed by the user. 28. this video has since been removed by the user. works cited abrahams, roger d. 1962. playing the dozens. the journal of american folklore 75 (297):209–20. ayoub, millicent r., and stephen a. barnett. 1965. ritualized verbal insult in white high school culture. the journal of american folklore 78 (310):337–44. azaelive. 2009. yo mama jokes! battle. youtube; 2 min., 16 sec.; video. http:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=okos-bfekpm. bateson, gregory. 1972. a theory of play and fantasy. in steps to an ecology of mind, 177-93. new york: ballentine. bbumps123. 2008. when brothers fight 3. youtube; 1 min., 47 sec.; video. http:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=-v_tkse8d7i. bergen, benjamin, and kim binsted. 2003. the cognitive linguistics of scalar humor. in language, culture, and mind, ed. m. archard and s. kemmer, 1-13. stanford: csli publications. dollard, john. 1939. the dozens: dialect of insult. the american imago 1 (november):3–25. goffman, erving. 1974. the frame analysis of talk. in frame analysis: an essay on the organization of experience, 496-559. boston: northeastern university press. halfcastkid. 2008. extreme funny yo mama jokes. youtube; 1 min., 30 sec.; video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scjfwwp9f4e. krooltee. 2008. world of warcraft yo mama fight, horde vs alliance. youtube; 2 min., 38 sec.; video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zs98ly2pkiy. labov, william. 1972. rules for ritual insults. in studies in social interaction, ed. d. sudnow, 120–69. new york: the free press. lange, patricia g. 2007. publicly private and privately public: social networking on youtube. journal of computer-mediated communication 13 (1). http://jcmc. indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/lange.html. lefever, harry g. 1981. “playing the dozens”–a mechanism for social-control. phylon 42 (1):73–85. cfr_2012.indb 31 10/19/12 9:25:33 am manipulating play frames stanzak 32 lutopiansociety. 2008. yo momma (final cut). youtube; 3 min., 58 sec.; video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6n2nysi4sym. mcdowell, john h. 1985. verbal dueling. in handbook of discourse analysis, ed. t. a. van dijk, 203-11. london: academic press. mcmahon, felicia r., and brian sutton-smith. 1999. the past in the present: theoretical directions for children’s folklore. in children’s folklore: a source book, ed. b. sutton-smith, j. mechling, t. w. johnson and f. r. mcmahon, 293–308. logan: utah state university press. scpafc. 2007. funny yo mama jokes. youtube; 4 min., 22 sec.; video. http://www. youtube.com/watch?v=rexd1k5aogo. shanedawsontv. 2008. yo momma youtube battle! youtube; 4 min., 59 sec.; video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsukwnteb8k. spectator24. 2007. my top yo momma jokes!!! youtube; 4 min., 28 sec.; video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrn7mpdbubi. thecomputernerd01. 2007. yo mama jokes ((( 4 year old edition ))). youtube; 3 min., 19 sec.; video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syriaka_oxa. zksbrothers. 2007. zks brothers: yo momma! youtube; 8 min., 48 sec.; video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wf8-eapiceq. cfr_2012.indb 32 10/19/12 9:25:33 am cfr_2012_part2 cfr_2012_part3 cfr_2012_part4 cfr_2012_part5 cfr_2012_part6 pages from cfr_2012_part7 ocr document gopher guts and army trucks: the modern evolution of children's folk rhymes josepha sherman the objective of this paper is to show that while the basic forms of north american children's folk rhymes have remained the same throughout the century the content has been continually altering, revealing children's awareness of changing cultural and societal mores, and that therefore the rhymes represent a vital and living aspect of folklore. this paper is an offshoot of fieldwork done from 1992 to 1994 in the united states and canada during the preparation of a book, greasy grimey gopher guts: the subversive folklore of children, co-written with t.k.f. weisskopf and published by august house in 1995. the majority of informants were children between the ages of five and sixteen, though adult contributions were also solicited to show how the rhymes have altered over the years.1 the method of collecting involved giving informants such key phrases as "great green gobs of greasy grimy gopher guts," which generally quickly triggered folk rhyme responses. some rhymes were collected in schools or libraries, others were solicited over the internet; the latter process let us reach otherwise unreachable informants in alaska and hawaii. certain rhymes, including "the hearse song," also known as "the worms crawl in, the worms crawl out," and "glory, glory hallelujah/teacher hit me with a ruler," were known by all informants and date to at least the beginning of this century. variations have, of course, emerged over the generations as rhymes are heard, misheard or misremembered, then passed on to other children, who do their own mishearings and misrememberings. as the rhymes were collected, one not unexpected fact about these variations emerged. as is true of more formal teaching tales, the folk rhymes, in addition to being entertaining, help children deal with an increasingly volatile world. therefore, the more modern the alteration to the rhyme, the more graphic the violent content of the rhyme becomes or the more vivid the sexual imagery. granted, such alterations are not necessarily a recent process, and a certain amount of national mindset does seem to come into play, a case in point being the world war ii era children's rhyme based on the song, "whistle while you work," from the 1937 disney movie, 17 sherman snow white. in britain and in at least one example we collected from an informant whose father was from nova scotia, the children's rhyme parody was usually the relatively tame: whistle while you work, mussolini bought a shirt. hitler wore it, britain tore it. whistle while you work. in the united states, perhaps reflecting this nation's more outspoken nature, the rhyme became more violent and sexual. this example was cited by numerous informants from new york, pennsylvania, florida and texas, follows: whistle while you work, hitler is a jerk. mussolini bit his weenie. now it doesn't work.2 it might be noted that world war ii references, though they persevered into the early 1980s, have almost totally faded from current children's rhymes. while the cuban missile crisis of the early 1960s did spark a few rhymes, they were not long-lasting and do not seem to have been replaced by references from later wars. however, the 1960s, which was a time of so much unrest and radical societal changes, do appear to mark the beginning of the trend of accelerating violence and sexual content in children's rhymes: the first clue that children are, indeed, more aware of the world around them than parents might believe. in the violence category, anti-teacher children's rhymes are the most common—not surprising when one considers how much of a modern child's life is spent in school, where he or she is forced to obey adult rules. there have been relatively violent anti-teacher rhymes since at least the beginning of the twentieth century, but a specific example of the more recent trend towards increased violence can be seen in one very popular anti-teacher folk rhyme, "glory, glory hallelujah." versions dating up to the late 1960s generally include only slapstick violence, such as "i bopped her on the bean/with a rotten 18 gopher guts and army trucks tangerine." some of these more innocuous versions were collected from informants from ohio and massachusetts, who'd heard them in the 1950s, and from informants from colorado, maryland, and new york, who'd heard them in the early and mid-1960s.3 by the late 1960s and through to 1994, the imagery has been changed to the more explicitly violent, such as "i met her at the door with a loaded .44," collected in new york, ohio, massachusetts, virginia and connecticut. in 1994, a nine-year-old boy in new hampshire contributed the equally graphic versions, "i met her in the attic/with a loaded automatic," and "i met her at the bank/with a u.s. army tank.”4 the gentle folksong, "on top of old smokey," has also been turned into a violent anti-teacher song, portraying the teacher, possibly due to the influence of horror movies, as an undead monster who is difficult to kill. we collected several versions in 1994 from children ranging in age from seven to eleven; these versions include progressively more vicious means of killing a teacher. a prime example, which we collected in very similar versions from preteen girls in connecticut and new hampshire, a preteen boy in new york, and a preteen boy and girl in north carolina, follows: on top of the schoolhouse, all covered with blood, i shot my poor teacher with a forty-four slug. i went to her funeral, i went to her grave. some people threw flowers, i threw a grenade. i opened her coffin. she wasn't quite dead. so i took a bazooka and blew off her head.5 the jungians among us will delight to note that the teacher monster needs to be killed a ritual three times! but not all modern alterations of the rhymes are so negative-or so violent. while racist rhymes were very much a part of children's folk culture until the mid-1960s, we collected no racist rhymes from 19 sherman anyone under the age of fifteen; this wasn't from a reluctance on the informants' part to repeat such rhymes but, in most cases, from a genuine lack of knowledge by the informants that older, racist versions existed of such now innocuous rhymes as "eenie meenie minie mo/catch a tiger by the toe." the ritualized rhyming combat by insult known among inner city children as "snaps" or "doubles" do contain some blatant ethnic slurs-but they are used only within that ethnic group and never by outsiders. continuing on the theme of social change, children who admitted to difficulty in memorizing school lessons were still able to flawlessly recite such intricate rhymes as "miss lucy had a steamboat," one of that very ancient category of rhyme in which each line almost ends in a dirty word, i.e.: miss lucy had a steamboat, the steamboat had a bell, miss lucy went to heaven, the steamboat went to hello, operator, give me number nine...and so on. this rhyme, with its reference to the steamboat and telephone, dates to the first quarter of this century. what makes it relevant in this context is the version collected by us in 1994 from two unrelated eight-year-old new york area informants, in which "miss lucy" became "ms. lucy." a small point, perhaps, but what made it notable was the matter-of-fact mention by the informants: they took the replacement of "miss" with "ms" for granted.6 changing sexual mores are also clearly reflected in children's rhymes. although parents may want to believe their youngsters are still innocent, or perhaps naive, when it comes to sexual knowledge, the rhymes we collected show that children are very much aware of--if not actually experienced in--the basics of this most fascinating human subject. these rhymes range from the relatively mild, such as the following, which was delivered in a matter-of-fact fashion: one and one are two, two and two are four if the bed collapses, do it on the floor.7 20 gopher guts and army trucks all the way to the relatively explicit, such as the following: sex, sex, sex is the law, law, law. when a guy gets a girl on the floor, floor, floor. he sticks his information in the girl's communication which increases the population of the younger generation. would you like a little demonstration? this rhyme was collected in similar versions from informants from new york city, new york state, new hampshire and california. one eleven-year-old girl from hastings, new york, confided in the author that she had been nine when an eleven-year-old boy forced her to listen to it. when asked how she dealt with this early form of sexual harassment, she replied with satisfaction, "i hit him!"8 yet another reflection of changing sexual mores is revealed in the replacement by children of blatantly anti-gay rhymes, which often reflected adult sensibilities, with those lacking any openly hostile element. an example of the earlier, more hostile (and fearful) type of rhyme follows: we don't go out with the boys anymore, we don't intend to marry. we go with the girls in our block. whee, i'm a fairy this rhyme, which dates to 1952, was collected in illinois from an informant who added the additional folkloric data, "on thursday you couldn't wear yellow or green or you'd be saying you were a fairy." the use of "fairy" to describe a homosexual has been gradually slipping out of usage; why it should ever have been applied is a matter for speculation, although the fairy folk are traditionally supposed to be wildly sexual beings. that the wearing of a certain color should brand an individual as homosexual--a concept that was used to identify other 21 sherman minority groups or "undesirables" in the past-says a great deal about homophobia in the united states.9 but no such hostile rhymes were collected from younger informants, who were more likely to relate more tolerant rhymes such as the following: i love you, you love me homosexuality. with a slap on the butt and a kiss from me to you. don't you wish you were horny, too? this rhyme, collected from a twelve-year-old boy in wisconsin in 1994, has a parallel in one collected from an eleven-year-old girl in new hampshire in the same year, in which the singer concludes: you may think we're ordinary friends, but we're really lesbians. in both cases, neither informant was particularly shocked or embarrassed by singing the rhyme, nor was there any sense that the rhymes were meant to be malicious. indeed, the only person shocked was the wisconsin boy's mother!10 but perhaps the most telling modern elements appear in hostile rhymes about the television character, barney. some of these rhymes have definitely been inspired by adults--often by parents who cannot bear another glimpse or mention of that too-cute purple dinosaur--and may be merely excuses for a release of violent emotion. the adult rhymes tend to parody the "happy family" concept right from the first line, i.e. "i hate you, you hate me," children take the rhymes on to true violence: i hate you, you hate me, let's get together and kill barney with a nine millimeter and shoot him in the head aren't you glad that barney's dead? or: 22 gopher guts and army trucks i hate you, you hate me. together we can kill barney. with a knife in the stomach and a bullet in the head aren't you glad that barney's dead? there is a seemingly endless series of similar versions in which barney meets a violent end.11 but some anti-barney rhymes reflect a deep social awareness. one prime example, collected from elevenand twelve-year-old girls in new hampshire, follows: i love you, you love me. barney has got h.i.v. barney jumped on baby bop one time. that's called rape and that's a crime. at first, this rhyme sounds like a parental nightmare. but when the girls were asked if they knew what it meant, they said that they knew h.i.v. had to do with aids and that rape was a bad thing. other children who recited similar rhymes showed an awareness that forced sex was indeed a crime and that unprotected sex could lead either to pregnancy or aids.12 clearly children's folk rhymes do reflect the changing mood of the country. they give us a warning in their increasingly graphic depictions of violence, but they also show a healthy awareness of sexual morality. children are using them, quite unconsciously, as teaching tools. in short, children are saying in their rhymes things of worth both to folklorists and to society in general and it's up to both folklorists and parents to listen to what children have to say. notes 1. greasy, grimey gopher guts, by josepha sherman and t.k.f. weisskopf, little rock: august house, 1995. 2. the first, more innocuous version was collected from peter, who learned it from his nova scotian father, who learned it during world war ii. the second, more violent version, was collected from tappan, florida, and sue, 23 sherman brooklyn, new york, 1960s, jeanne, pitmann, new jersey, and darryl 1970s, and austin, fort worth, texas, 1981. 3. the informants who knew only the "tangerine" version include susan, boardman, ohio, and alan, boston, massachusetts, 1950s, cindy, denver, colorado, claire, silver spring, maryland, ellie, queens, new york, and valerie, modina, new york, ca. 1960s. 4. the earliest examples we collected of the "met her at the door" version come from adult informants elissa, syracuse, new york and jim, bedford, new york, who dated them to the late 1960s. later versions were collected in 1994 from such informants as deborah, honolulu, hawaii (who dated her version to the late 1980s), and nine-year-old brendan, colebrook, new hampshire. 5. this horror story in rhyme was collected in 1994 from informants katzi, nine, colebrook, new hampshire, david, seven and his cousin jennifer, ten, celo, north carolina, and gregory, eleven, bohemia, new york. 6. the "ms." version was collected in 1994 from jessica, age eight, who learned it at camp in new york state, and michael, age eight, mamaroneck, new york. other versions were contributed by lindalee, manitowoc, wisconsin, ca. 1959-60, tina, bronx, new york, late 1950s, deborah, u.s. army base, west germany, 1960s, and caroline, huntsville, alabama, 1970s. 7. contributed by sharon, thirteen, boston area, massachusetts, 1994. 8. informants included lisa, elementary school bronx, new york, 1960s, "d.b.," eleven, california, ca. 1972, a sixth-grade girl "who wished to remain anonymous," new hampshire, 1992, sue, brooklyn, new york, 1980s, and colleen, age eleven, hastings, new york, 1994. colleen, who hit the boy who told her the rhyme, prefaced her recitation with a warning that this rhyme was "really, really bad" 9. collected from caryl rockford, illinois, ca. 1952. a similar version was collected from sue, brooklyn, new york, ca. 1967-75. 10. both rhymes were collected in 1994. the gay male version was collected from josh, age eleven, wisconsin, while the lesbian version was collected from katherine, age eleven, new hampshire. a similar version of the latter was contributed by caroline, huntsville, alabama. 11. some of the many informants, all of whom contributed their anti-barney rhymes in 1994, include alexis, eleven, bronx, new york, decarlo, myekia, and brenda, eleven, north little rock, arkansas, and joanna, eight montreal, canada. 12. the informants all preferred to remain anonymous. 24 e-contributions the following came to me as an e-mail discussion among andy arleo, julia c. bishop, and marc armitage with their permission, i have edited the materials down for publication. [editor] there was an article in the international herald tribune, ca. 1-15 november 1998, on children's playtime. a large-scale study carried out in america, involving thousands of informants filling out detailed diaries of their daily activities, has concluded that children have far less time to engage in informal play like tag. (arleo) the express, 4 november 1998, reports that scientists have found that depriving children of playtime during the school day and not allowing them to mix with their friends can cause emotional problems. the article draws attention to the increase of cases of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in britain and on a massive increase in prescriptions for the drug ritalin used to treat the condition. various causes for the condition have been suggested, and new research is blaming lack of playtime which is being cut back to find time to cope with the demands of the national curriculum. professor jaak panksepp, ohio neuroscientist, is quoted as lamenting recourse to drug treatment when children so treated are "probably children that are simply wanting to play in the wrong places." the article also refers to the work of tony pellegrini and an international team examining play in schools that regards the "epidemic" of disorder in the us as a gross mis-diagnosis. more lessons and less play does not increase the academic performance of children. an experiment with primary school children in georgia in which they were deprived of playtime led to their becoming more inattentive and more active, although this applied to boys more than girls. dorothy einon, a london child psychologist, is also quoted as seeing a direct correlation between a lack of opportunities for children to let off steam and the increase in adhd. (bishop) as a part of a series on time, abc world news tonight (usa) broadcast a short report on children's free time on 12 january 1999. some quotations follow: "the university of michigan study found that 25% of an average child's day is considered free time, after eating, sleeping and going to 25 e-contributions school. that's down 40% since 1981, and even so-called leisure time has become more hectic." "too many families see playtime as wasted time." "unstructured play helps spark a child's imagination and through play children learn how to make up their own rules, resolve conflicts, and be independent thinkers." according to the report, play is under pressure due to concerns about safety and also to "achievement-oriented parents." children's schedules are full of organized sports, music and dance lessons, etc. one of the children interviewed said, "i don't have enough time to be a kid." (arleo) i think it is very likely that the amount of time available for children to play has been reduced in the last 25 years, although frankly i doubt if it is by as much as claimed in this research--it all adds up, though. if you are taken to school by car instead of walking with your friends, then there's a lot of play time gone; time allocated to freelychosen play at school (playtime/recess, lunchtime) has been reduced by as much as half in england and wales since 1971; and a growing number of children in the uk go straight from school to a care-scheme or homework club at weekends and holidays, we also have the growth of homework clubs and "summer schools" combined with an increase in family use of commercial leisure facilities-out comes the car again and what effect might the reduction of family size have, i wonder, not just on siblings but on a lack of same-age play-mates? in these respects, i think the summary that andy [arleo] gave is quite correct. concerns of safety may be a (small) contributory factor to this, but to be honest this has nearly always been there. the "object" child may have some value, too. but i think that this misses the central point: these are changes to children's play caused by an increase in direct and indirect adult involvement in that play and what (adults see as) leisure time. if play is intrinsic and is carried out by children who have no control over the desire to do it, this must be because it is a natural and intrinsic process that does not need adults to be involved with it. if adults impinge on this natural process too much (even by just reducing the time available to do it), it interferes with a natural process 26 e-contributions our bodies must know this: how else could we explain the fact that adults consistently fail to notice their children at play and have not the faintest idea of play--even though they did it too! i think the answer is because adults uninterest in play is also intrinsic--it is a mechanism to allow children to do what they do naturally--we interfere with this at our peril (armitage) andy arleo is a children's folklorist in st. nazaire, france (aarleo@club-internet.fr); julia c. bishop is at the national centre for english cultural tradition, university of sheffield (jcbishop@sheffieldacuk); marc armitage is an independent children's play consultant who works under the name playpeople (marc. armitage@playpeople.karoo.co.uk). 27 ocr document knowing what children believe: believing what children know c.w. sullivan iii children's folklore is an age-bounded folklore which circulates among children up to about age twelve. the official study of american children's folklore is generally considered to have begun with w.w. newell, a president of the american folklore society and an editor of the journal of american folklore. early studies by newell (games and songs of american children, 1883) or alice b. gomme (the traditional games of england, scotland, and ireland, 1894-1898) and those who immediately followed focused first on games and game rhymes, and the study of children's folklore expanded slowly from that beginning. in the second half of the twentieth century, however, the study of children's folklore has expanded more rapidly and now includes examinations of all of the genres or sub-genres identified as folklore and has also expanded to include the folklore of adolescents. but the collecting of children's folklore presents some problems unique to that subject matter and the informants from whom it is collected, problems which stem from the fact that, for the most part, it is adults who are doing the collecting. in "children's folklore," chapter 5 of elliott oring's folk groups and folklore genres: an introduction, children's folklorist jay mechling comments: the white, male folklorist recognizes that he will never really know what it means to be a black woman, but we all think that we know what it means to be a child. (91) the implication, here, is quite significant. mechling suggests that folklorists who collect from children—or, perhaps worse, those who collect from other adults their memories of what they did when they were children-fail to recognize that they are collecting materials from members of a significantly different culture and must proceed accordingly. and while many children's folklorists have, like mechling, commented on this situation, no one has, thus far, attempted to delineate the ways in which or the reasons why the adult culture has become and is now separate from that of the child. i want to examine this situation and the assumptions upon which this and other comments mechling makes in his article are based. cultural worldview is something into which members of a 19 sullivan culture are educated, not something that comes with birth; and it takes only a few examples to illustrate the assertion that children see the world differently from adults. children's literature critic and reading theorist peter hunt recounted to me [although he wrote it up differently] an evening's reading to his daughter, felicity, of shirley hughes' up and up. one page was divided into three separate vertical panels: the first showed a little girl holding a bunch of helium balloons, the second showed her being lifted off the ground, and the third showed the balloons being burst by an over-hanging tree branch. felicity studied the page for a moment, pointed to the second panel, and said: "that girl still has her balloons!" where the adult reader saw a continuum of events happening to the same character as the text moved from left to right across the page, the child seems to have seen three discrete pictures about three different individuals. as i have commented elsewhere, "most adults in hunt's position would have misinterpreted felicity's reading as a mistake rather than what it actually was—an alternate interpretation of an available text" (18). in western culture, we are taught to read from left to right, and that is true for a series of pictures as well as a series of words; felicity had not yet learned that reading skill. not only do children have to be enculturated into the process of reading literature, they also have to learn how to interpret the literature they read. once, when our older son was small, my wife read him a story about a little duck with a misshapen leg. the duck was, of course, an outcast for much of the book but won his acceptance in the end—a traditional story pattern. my wife, thinking this a good opportunity to discuss tolerance and physical handicaps, asked jason what he thought of the little lame duck in the story. jason, after thinking a moment, commented that having a leg like that must have caused the duck to swim around in circles. the point that the author had intended and that my wife had seen was lost on this child who is now working on a masters degree in engineering. the third example comes from children's traditional play. a number of years ago, when our younger son was a second or third grader, a neighbor called with what she thought was "a funny story." it seems that aaron and her daughter had been playing house, and after "breakfast," her daughter "went off to work" while aaron "stayed home and took care of the house." as a folklorist, i found the story interesting—and understandable. my neighbor had seen the children's playas a violation, perhaps, of the norm as she understood it; i, however, knew the source—at least from my son's point of view. at that time, my wife was teaching in a county school and carpooling with three other women. as a result, she left the house as the boys were getting ready for school. i made sure they were ready for school and got them onto the bus. then i went to teach my classes at the university. i had also 20 knowing what children believe arranged my schedule to allow me to return home before the public schools let out for the day, and so i was there when the boys came home. my wife came home later. my son was, thus, playing what he saw at home: his mother going off to work and his father staying home (even though he knew i worked at the university). what sense it made to angela, his playmate, i do not know. the enculturation process not only educates children into the ways in which their culture views the world as they grow older, it also seems to encourage them to forget however they saw the world when they were children. there is a great deal of evidence that a lot of adults do not remember what it was like to be a child (or, perhaps, had much more protected childhoods than most). when the opies were collecting material for their landmark the lore and language of schoolchildren (1959), they were in a school lunchroom and heard one child respond to the question, "what's for lunch?", with the answer, "s.o.s!". recognizing folk speech, they asked what "s.o.s." stood for and were told, "same old slush" (162). even though that is the proper interpretation for a child to give to an adult (authority figure), most contemporary children's folklorists would not have been satisfied with that answer, as the opies appear to have been, knowing that alternative meanings include "same old slop," "same old stuff," "same old shit" and "shit on a shingle" and that those meanings are available to and circulate among grade school students. there are other and more sinister situations of adult forgetfulness, ignorance, and, perhaps, idealism. the australian children's folklore newsletter recently recounted two. acfn, in reporting the situation to be discussed next, reminded its readers that ian turner's cinderella dressed in yella (1969) was initially declared obscene by an australian postal official, and for a time, the publishers were not allowed to use the normal book preferential postage rate (2). more frightening still is acfn's account of phil burrows, whose photographs of girls playing "f1intstones, flintstones," in which three of the five girls flip their dresses up to show their underpants when the rhyme says, "pebbles shows her knickers," caused him to be charged with "three counts of indecent dealing, suspended from teaching, and smeared [in the press] as an actual or potential child molester." after six months, the case was brought to court and immediately thrown out. borrows was paid back salary, but at last report was still on "sick leave" (1-2). closer to home, when the children's folklore newsletter published gary alan fine's collection of little league baseballers' folk speech in the 1980s, a public school superintendent wrote administrators at the editor's university criticizing the university for supporting a publication which distributed such obscene materials to children (cfn, 11.1 through iv.3). in each of these cases, the adults doing the accusing failed to realize two things: first, that this material was being 21 sullivan distributed to other adult scholars for whom it would have intellectual interest and value; and second, that this material was the property of the children themselves, collected from them and not being distributed to them. this separation of childhood from adulthood is a relatively recent phenomenon. to some extent, the romantic movement was an initiator of this attitude, and the locus for it may well be wordsworth's "ode on the intimations of immortality" in which he depicts the child entering life nom heaven and "trailing clouds of glory" (line 64) and in which the child loses that connection with heaven but gains knowledge of the world, wordsworth's "philosophic mind" (line 186). the overriding perception of human development as a movement from innocence to experience, as blake first articulated it for the romantics, was one of the central tenets of the romantic movement and could certainly be interpreted as a part of the move from childhood to adulthood. later in the same century, folklorists and anthropologists studying children followed the romantics' lead and added to it the influence of the darwinian evolutionary model; they saw children as a separate culture, a culture representative of the early stages of human and societal evolution. as mechling argues, "consequently, the study of children had the same rationale as the study of american indian cultures-namely the collection and preservation of the representatives of the savage stage in human evolution" (92). this combination of romantic and the darwinian elements, however, has led to a view of childhood as a time of innocence and to a view of children as the innocent; as romantic innocents, children have no knowledge of good and evil, while as darwinian innocents, they have no knowledge of what are considered the more advanced stages of civilized development. from there it is but a brief step to seeing children, as most people do today, as innocents who must be protected nom the "real world." how often do we tell children that this or that activity or topic is "for adults" or that they will "learn about that when they are older"? the division of material into what is acceptable for children and what is not, a division perpetrated by adults, of course, explains why there was such official shock at the materials in cinderella dressed in yella, phil burrows' photographs, and the children's folklore review. there is, however, a great deal of traditional material passed on by and among children which adults might fiind offensive and which has only recently been available in such collections as herbert and mary knapp's one potato, two potato (1976), sandra mccosh's children's humour (1976), and simon bronner's american children's folklore (1988), among others. these three collections alone illustrate the wealth of what adults would call offensive, if not outright obscene, material circulating among the children. and the children know how adults feel about this material, and so they do not often allow adults—who 22 knowing what children believe seem to have forgotten it-to know of its existence. this ignorance, then, reinforces the adult belief that children are innocent or, at least, that their own children are innocent of such material. this view of children as innocents, especially, has also led to what mechling calls the "trivialization of childhood. . . trivial, in this view, to the extent that it is merely an indication of the past or a potential for the future, not something whole and meaningful in its own right. this 'triviality barrier' continues to plague the inquiry into the nature of children's folklife" (92). mechling might have gone on to say that this triviality barrier pertains to virtually every aspect of the intersection of professional adult activities and the lives and culture of children. certainly children's literature is as trivialized as children's folklore and childhood itself. as ursula k. le guin comments, "there is seldom big quick money in kiddylit. . . . but the economic discrimination is only an element, as usual, of the real problem; a reflection of a prejudice. the real problem isn't the money, it's the adult chauvinist piggery" (44). the same is true of elementary school teachers; how else can you explain the fact that elementary school teachers are among the most overworked and under-paid professionals who deal with children? the situation for day care and preschool workers is even worse. and it is almost pointless to discuss the way that the social and economic evaluation of someone who "merely" stays home and takes care of children has changed in the last four decades. it is only in medicine, a sacred cow of another kind, where those who deal with children have a status in the general society equal to the status of their peers who deal only with adults. they are "doctors," after all. not only does our culture see childhood as a trivial time and time of innocence, it also sees it a stage which must be out grown and left behind. the attitude is evident in our folk speech and in the way we speak to children. we tell our children: "don't talk baby talk," "act your age," "grow up," "stop acting like a baby," "you're not a baby anymore," "you're older now, and you've got to start taking more responsibility," "that's kids' stuff," and "you're too old for that." sometimes, we give them mixed signals, telling them that they're old enough to be responsible for cleaning their rooms but too young to go to the beach for the weekend with their friends. moreover, our society has made a number of privileges age-related rather than awarded by ability or responsibility; and many of those privileges-especially those having to do with cars, alcohol, and relationships with members of the opposite sex-are much anticipated. children, themselves, recognize this necessity to age and castigate an unfortunate peer who acts, in their estimation, younger than his or her years, using "baby" or "cry baby, cry" as derisive terms. it is unfortunate, as c.s. lewis says, that we imagine growing up as a train which leaves one station for the next (26). 23 sullivan how well does the adult remember the child that he or she was? the recent t-shirt which proclaims "the older i get, the better i was!" suggests that we do not remember all that well, and jay mechling argues that folklorists must "approach children's folk cultures as [they] would any unfamiliar culture" (93). my comments in this paper suggest that the problems adult collectors have with both the collecting and publishing of children's folklore stem not only from misperceptions of a folkloric nature, but from misperceptions within the culture as a whole. in fact, i believe that it is safe to say that the adult cultural worldview, into which children are educated, also educates them out of their own cultural worldview-and out of their own culture. thus, it is not just the study of children's folklore which is made difficult by this naive adult view of children as innocents, it is virtually every aspect of adult-child relations and some aspects of adult-adult relations as well. it can be quite difficult, then, to really know what children believe and believe what children know. east carolina university notes this article was read as a paper at the 1995 american folklore society meetings and is a distillation of three hours of lectures i gave at the fife conference, utah state university, june 1995. works cited "folklore censorship." australian children 's folklore newsletter. 26 (june 1994): 1-2. le guin, ursula k. "dreams must explain themselves." the language of the night. ed. susan wood. new york: berkley, 1979. 37-46. lewis, c.s. "on three ways of writing for children." of other worlds. ed. walter hooper. 1966. new york: harcourt, 1975. 22-34 mechling, jay. "children's folklore." folk groups and folklore genres: an introduction. ed. elliott oring. logan: utah state up, 1986. 91-120. opie, peter, and iona opie. the lore and language of schoolchildren. london: oxford up, 1959. sullivan, c.w., iii. "learning the structure of traditional narrative." children's folklore review. guest ed. judith haul. 15.1 (1992): 17-23. 24 an exhibition and publication program. section members with comments or additional suggestions should contact simon bronner (folklore and american studies, pennsylvania state university, middletown, pa 17057). gary alan fine then suggested that the section consider sponsoring an international children's folklore conference held in the united states but not necessarily as part of the centennial celebration. archivist/ historian dick meyer (address above) asked members to send him copies, offprints or xeroxes of children's folklore papers they have published or papers they have delivered at professional meetings. in addition, he asked members to be on the lookout for papers appearing in journals or at meetings outside the folklore field. finally, instructors are asked to contribute copies of student papers to the archives. priscilla ord (r.d. #9; box 511-e, carlisle, pa 17013) reminded section members to send her items for the children's folklore bibliography. in concluding discussion, it was suggested that the section contact journal editors outside the folklore field who might receive submissions dealing with children's folklore. the editors would be advised of section members who could serve as resource personnel in the jurying or editing of these submissions. to establish a list of resource personnel, sue samuelson volunteered to develop a questionnaire querying section members on their relevant skills and interests. the questionnaire will be inserted in a forthcoming issue of the newsletter. the members present then passed a motion to hold the children's folklore section meeting at the 1984 afs meetings. it was suggested that this be a breakfast gathering, but no formal action was taken on the proposal. the meeting was adjourned at approximately 1:30 p.m. submitted by danielle m. roemer secretary i treasurer 1 ~@rn~ ~~w~~~ uj[jd~~~ dean lapp, a june graduate of penn state capitol campus, recently received a national award for a research paper he completed while he was a student at capitol. lapp, of akron, pa., received the william wells newell prize for the best student paper on children's folklore. the prize is awarded by the children's folklore section of the american folklore society. his prize-winning paper reported on a computer analysis he did of children's jumprope rhymes. this analysis was completed as an independent study under the direction of dr. simon j. bronner, assistant professor of folklore and american studies. lapp's receipt of the newell prize was announced at the annual meeting of the american folklore society, which was held in nashville in october. a cash award accompanies the prize, according to dr. bronner. lapp was graduated from capitol with highest distinction and next spring will begin graduate study in educational psychology at penn state's university park campus. while at capitol campus he served as vice-president of the social science honor society delta tau kappa. at graduation he received the society's academic scholarship award, which recognized him for outstanding academic achievement and for university and community involvement. @llijrnrn~~ljrn~~~ffirn@rnj~~~~~@lj~@~~ a collection of childlore from pennsylvania high school students by simonbronner and hannelore wertz when hannelore wertz, a high school teacher of german, came to me and told me that she wanted to collect folklore, i asked her about the possibilities of questioning her class. here would be a chance to record the entire repertoire of a class. if the idea that folklore travels in curricular age networks is true, then the form and content of the material should be consistent and common. that turned out to be the case. every student answered with lore and repeated forms such as "grosser than gross" (covered in detail in my "what's grosser than gross? new sick joke cycles" for midwestern journal of language and folklore, 1984),dead baby jokes, and other formulaic lore. the material was collected in april 1982from 25 students in york county, pennsylvania. they are white, lower middle class, suburban, in what is considered a conservative area politically. the collection captures the breadth of material circulating in the school, and probably other schools. although the reverence for collectanea has diminished in the published literature, they still help us in grasping the significance of what is being said and how. lore cycles work more quickly than ever today and textual collections still are a first step to identifying folk behavior, style, and creativity. simon j. bronner the pennsylvania state universitybeliefs if you let any limb of your body hang over the edge of your bed past midnight, the hairy hand will get you. if you play with matches, it means you are sexually frustrated. if you like to chew icecubes, you are sexually frustrated. girl, grade 9; source: ? "everybody knows that" lift your feet off the ground when someone tells a lie. if you go to bed singing, you will wake up crying. girl, grade 9; source: not given if you have sex standing up, you can't get pregnant. you shouldn't kiss a girl in a bathing suit, she may get pregnant. if you break a mirror, you'll have seven years of bad luck. it is bad luck to walk under a ladder. it is bad luck if a black cat crosses your path. if you sit in a chair the same color of one a girl sits in, it means you're in love. boy, grade 10; source: not given if you set a dead snake on newspaper and burn it, you will never see another snake around the house. if little kids play with fire, they will wet the bed. if you cuss when planting tomatoes, they won't grow. to get rid of warts: on may i, before talking to anybody, wash your face in the morning dew. or steal your mother's dishrag and bury it in the garden. if you kill a toad, your cows will give bloody milk. girl, grade 9; source: not given (the only one of the informers living on a working farm) silly stories ladies and jellybeans, reptiles and crocodiles! i stand before you to sit behind you, to tell you something, i know nothing about. there will be a meeting tomorrow evening, right after breakfast, to decide which color to white-wash the church. there is no admission, so pay at the door; there are plenty of seats to sit on the floor. there was this drunken sailor who, when he was walking home one night, heard this bumping noise behind him. he looked behind, and saw a white coffin bumping along, down the road after him. immediately, he became sober from fright and ran into his house. he locked the door. but the coffin bounced up on the porch, waited a few seconds, then, with a terrible crash, burst through the door. the man ran up the stairs, grabbed a chair, and threw it at the coffin. something knocked it away, and it broke into a thousand pieces. then the coffin started up the stairs-one step, two steps, three steps, more. somehow, the sailor knew that if it got all the way up, he would be doomed! suddenly, he got an idea. he ran into his bedroom, grabbed a small box and ran back to the steps. he took out a coughdrop, threw it at the coffin, and the coffin stopped! boy, grade 9 source; not given ladies and gentlemen, hobos and tramps, cross-eyed mosquitoes, and bow-legged ants: i come before you to stand behind you, to tell you a story, i know nothing about. late thursday night, early friday morning, an empty truck full of bricks pulled into my front yard, killing my cat in the backyard. that same night, two dead boys got up to fight. back to back, they faced one another. a deaf policeman heard the noise, came, and shot the two dead boys. if you don't believe this lie is true, ask the blind man! he saw it too. boy, grade 9 source: not given a guy and a girl in a little canoe when the moon is shining all around. they paddled, meddled the little canoe and they didn't even make a sound. they talked and they talked til the moon grew dim, she told, he could kiss her, or get out and swim. so what cha gonna do in a little canoe when the moon is shining all around. well, i took my guy in a little canoe when the moon was shining all around. we paddled, meddled the little canoe and we didn't even make a sound. we talked and we talked til the moon grew dim. i told him, he could kiss me, or get out and swim. so what cha gonna do in a little canoe when your man is swimming all around? get out and swim! girl. grade 9; source: not given (this collection of childlore to be continued in the next issue of the children's folklore newsletter) c. w. sullivan iii, editor children's folklore newsletter department of english east carolina university greenville, n.c. 27834 the hildren's folklore newsletter non-profit org. u.s. postage paid permit no. 110 greenville, n.c. winter83_vol6no3_part3 winter83_vol6no3_part4 the lost manhood of the american girl: a dilemma in early twentieth-century girl scouting laureen tedesco in the late teens and early 1920s, when the girl scouts incorporated were sending field workers across the nation to train troop leaders and establish the growing organization's reputation, girls and boy scouts of america scoutmasters tackled the problem of girl scout training in their own way: the scoutmasters, independently or at the request of local girls, taught the girls the basics of boy scout training and then wrote to national girl scout headquarters for help. the letters often expressed urgency on the part of the girls who had asked the letter-writers to get girl scout materials for them. one letter asks, "would you kindly reply by return mail as the girls want to get their uniforms as soon as they pass their test" (whitehead 22 nov. 1920). a birmingham, alabama, scoutmaster justified his involvement as "a duty that i owe these girls," who had recruited his help (edmy 27 nov. 1921). the father of a boy scout in davenport, iowa, reported to boy scout headquarters that eighteen girls had called at his home to ask him to find out whether girl scouts existed in this country (the letter was forwarded to the girl scouts) (andrews 14 oct. 1918). a largo, florida, scoutmaster addressing girl scout staff members as "dear co-workers" reported that local girls wanted "some organization similar to the boy scouts of america" (roberts 19 nov. 1921). some of these men volunteered to lead girl scout troops themselves (see, for example, parkins 10 mar. 1922). others asked for help in finding a woman leader who could build on the foundation they had laid. these boy scout workers' perception that the separately run boy scout and girl scout institutions were doing essentially the same work mirrored a popular perception that persists today. the scoutmasters' willingness to give girls the apparently universal "basics" of scouting highlights a central question about the founding of the girl scouts: how much was founder juliette low seeking to offer girls the same program, broadening the scope of activities available to girls and women, and how much were she and early girl scout officials softening or "feminizing" the core scouting material?1 the men who wrote to girl scout headquarters either missed the gendered adaptations that low had made and that british boy scout founder robert baden-powell had earlier built into the girl guide program, or they understood the shared (masculine) heritage of the girls' and boys' programs. to some degree, the adults who sponsored girl scout troops, allowed their daughters to join them, and provided the infrastructure needed for camping and service projects saw the common scouting tenets and activities as transcending gender differences, or as relevant to girls the lost manhood of the american girl tedesco as well as to boys. and the girls' eagerness to get their uniforms underscores the appeal and novelty of the military-inspired features of the program in the world war i era. while at the national level, the separately run boy scouts of america emphasized its distinctly masculine identity and sought distance from the girl scouts inc., the girls' organization often highlighted the similarities between the two programs, pursuing parallel activities and health training for girls. girl scouting before the 1930s drew on both feminine gender codes and masculine symbolism, its gendered status complicated by the organization's borrowings from the boy scouts, low's deliberate re-appropriation of boy scout forms and symbols, and the mixture of male and female iconography used in the first four handbooks.2 girl scout handbooks appropriated the figures of the pioneer and the soldier, offered girls male examples from the frontier era and the great war, and chose as their exemplary women those who excelled in nontraditional endeavors, though emphasizing the homemaking skills of the most famous, louisa may alcott. in this essay, i examine the masculine heritage of the girl scouts, as well as the program's seemingly genderless emphasis on exercise and public safety, in the 1920 girl scout handbook, scouting for girls, the organization's longest and most military instruction manual. the handbook's army analogies were particularly attractive during and just after the great war, when american girls and women had turned out for war work in record numbers.3 the military models offered to girls and adult women-at a time when they could not join the armed forces enabled an imagined identity that was strong, capable, and rewarded. the program's relatively new outdoor activities for girls-camping, hiking, and military drill-passed muster with adults because they met a perceived need for health and outdoor exercise in the nation's future mothers. the pioneer-life aspects of the girl scouts' camping, nature study, and woodcraft skills assuaged fears that technology would rob young americans of resourcefulness. at the same time that it allowed girls to play with hatchets and send coded messages with signal flags, scouting for girls trained girls in efficient "modern" ways of handling the historically feminine provinces of home, sick relatives, and children. girls learned traditional morality, such as an emphasis on sexual purity, in more up-to-date packaging. before the girl scouts began in the united states in 1912-13 (first as girl guides and a year later rechristened as girl scouts), british girls had appropriated the activities described in baden-powell's 1908 scouting for boys (mitchell 119). girls' public appearance at baden-powell's crystal palace inspection of the boy scouts, however, spurred baden-powell to develop a tamer girls' program, the girl guides, to entice girls away from boy scouting. still, scouting-style activities for girls got some 90 tedesco the lost manhood of the am erican girl endorsement from adults on both sides of the atlantic, and even badenpowell's more "womanly" program, developed with his sister agnes, allowed girls to follow tracks across the moors, practice signaling, and bandage imagined victims of severe injuries. one british girls' reader editor praised scouting as "'a wholly fresh phase of woman's activity,' for 'healthy, open-air, adventure-loving young women, who go about their work of tracking, spying, signaling and what-not with a zeal and intelligence that may well set an example to their male confreres'" (qtd. in mitchell 122). on this side of the atlantic as well, fresh-air adventure for girls received hearty adult approval, via "woodcraft" organizations such as the camp fire girls (1912), the girl scouts, and the ywca's girl reserves (1918). outdoor adventures akin to scouting appeared in american girls' series fiction of the 1910s, with outdoor girls, pioneer girls, wide-awake girls, red cross girls and a host of heroines with their own series taking overnight trips, rescuing accident victims, and hiking outdoors. the unofficial camp fire girl and girl scout series by various authors further capitalized on the contemporary climate for girls' outdoor activities, also apparent in lina and adelia beard's, on the trail: an outdoor book for girls (1915). sally mitchell places the scouting phenomenon in britain in a chapter of the new girl, devoted to "being a boy," exploring turn-of-the (twentieth)-century girls' adoption of male personae. the girl scouts-like the slightly tamer girl guides-used the foundation of baden-powell's initial scouting program for boys, with its models of organization, awards, and moral pledges as well as its "scouting" or wilderness survival training. the feminine overlay included extensive homemaking training, moralistic injunctions to do only those things that could comfortably be exposed to group scrutiny, and an emphasis on childcare and female health. girl scouts earned more home-making badges than outdoor ones and had to demonstrate childcare, nursing, and personal health skills to achieve the highest rank, first class. still, girl scouts wore khaki uniforms visually echoing the boy scouts', could earn military inspired lifesaving medals, learned the signaling codes used by the army and navy, and marched in patriotic parades during the great war. recommended reading for girl scouts and their officers included the boy scout and scoutmaster handbooks (1920, 540, 544-45).4 the girl scout organization benefited from a growing public belief that boys and girls should have similar recreational opportunities. although the boy scouts' chief executive campaigned against the girl scout name for seven years through letters and social pressure for the girls' group to become camp fire girls or girl guides, his workers in the field sometimes missed the message that girl scouting must differ from boy scouting for the boys' program to remain "manly." the instructional texts emphasized 91 the lost manhood of the american girl tedesco the "womanly" character of girl scout training, but girl scout officials politely, but steadily, resisted boy scout executive james e. west's pressure to change the name,5 expressing in internal communications their commitment to offering equal experiences to girls. their belief in separate spheres-in a woman's domain of influence through good home and social management-seems at times incongruously balanced with their insistence that girls be offered some of the same experiences as boys. the incongruity can perhaps be explained by the conservative character-training program that scouting activities for both boys and girls framed. the underlying program sought to restrain precocious sexuality and instill ardent patriotism and civic service. as mary rothschild and georgeanne scheiner note, in the 1920s "girl scouting saw itself as a conscious promoter of 'up-to-date womanhood' but also as a bulwark against flappers and american moral decline" (317). girl scout organizers sought to preserve the sexual mores and domestic focus of traditional womanhood, with a modern recognition of career opportunities and voting powers. they also, however, offered novel experiences to preteen and adolescent girls, experiences that included trying on the independence and self-reliance expressed in the group-sanctioned uniforms. the mature expression of early girl scouting's dual impulses towards appropriately feminine training for girls and gender parity appears in the 1920 girl scout handbook, scouting for girls. prepared during world war i, drawing from the nation's experiences at war, scouting for girls reflects shifting expectations of what girls "can do to help their country," as the title of the earlier handbook puts it. the 1920 handbook outlines ways to give social and government service, includes pictures of the military-style insignia and life-saving medals a girl could earn, and depicts girl scout camps with tent-lined streets laid out in military-camp formation and a bugle-accompanied flag-raising at dawn. the instructional and motivational text challenges girl readers to develop the physical stamina necessary to climb a high mountain and draws analogies between soldiers in the great war and girl scouts saving lives. its 558 pages contain articles by experts on home nursing, nature study, and outdoor living, attempting to transmit to the 10 to 18-year-old girl scout the knowledge and experience needed to earn badges on citizenship, pioneering, star gazing, and telegraphy, as well as the more traditionally feminine child nursing, cooking, and gardening. in addition to group badges for scout aide, woodcraft scout, scout neighbor, and land scout, all of them including components of health or homemaking, there are instructions for military drill, with variations in the types of marching steps and orders to give so that the groups of girl scouts will pivot and file off in columns. these activities are presented as means to discipline and impressive displays for the public. 92 tedesco the lost manhood of the am eric an girl no subsequent girl scout handbook has held so much information, expected so much of the reader, or supplemented so thoroughly the traditional expectations of girls with physical challenges and the tools for outdoor exploration. written at the time of a peculiar conjunction of progressive-era interest in social welfare through play and a war-expanded need for everyone's help, scouting for girls spoke to the 10 to 18-yearold girl as a capable, efficient being who could prepare herself to have the only cool head in an emergency. its admonitions to her appealed to her desire to make large contributions to society, presenting personal hygiene, safety knowledge, and physical fitness as preparations for hero(in)ism. this instruction manual was the organization's first to develop technical pictures of girls saving the drowning and using semaphore flags, instruction which, in the two earlier books, 1913 and its revision in 1916, used drawings of boy scouts (1913, 24) or soldiers (1916, 77) for signaling and of boys for lifesaving (1913, 92-93; 1916, 122-23).6 the 1920 handbook represents the organization's increasing adaptations to its audience of girls, but it also displays the girl scouts' continued appropriation of the uniform color, insignia, and opportunities of the unaffiliated boy scouts of america. low and her first national secretary wanted to use the boy scout emblem, the fleur-de-lis, as the girl scout symbol, but chief scout executive james west politely objected, suggesting instead the trefoil, or three-leafed clover, that baden-powell had assigned to the british girls' program (west, letter to johnston, 9 july 1913).7 the boy scouts of america at the national level jealously guarded its uniform, name, and insignia with patents, trademarks, and legal action against imitators (macleod 156-57). the organizational similarities, the breadth of the handbook, and the image of girl scouts as near-adults lasted only as long as this handbook was in effect: the 1927 revision of scouting for girls cut the length by 94 pages and removed many of the analogies to soldiers. by the time of the minor 1929 revision of the handbook, the uniform color had become grey-green, the handbook itself featured a green rather than a khaki cover, and troop "officers" (lieutenant and captain) had become "leaders" (girl scouts of the usa, highlights 10). in their early incarnations, though, the captain, lieutenant, optional second lieutenant--a girl 16 or older--and corporal, or assistant patrol leader, represented the military values of authority and obedience. the pseudo-military appearance of the khaki-clad girl scouts and their khaki-clad handbook were a passing phenomenon, a reflection of an unparalleled moment in women's and girls' history. at a time when women did not serve in the u.s. armed forces, the program's inclusion of drill and military uniforms opened an imaginary portal to a realm of ritual and service from which women were excluded. general public acceptance of 93 the lost manhood of the american girl tedesco the military features of the program suggests that its values outweighed american conceptions of gender norms. the girl scout program, like the analogous one for boys, used pledges and laws-a series of statements about the positive character traits of all members-as the repeated, spoken affirmations that accompanied the girls' ceremonies and weekly meetings. these laws asserted the honor, loyalty, helpfulness, friendliness, courtesy, obedience, cheerfulness, and thrift of the girl scout, as well as her kindness to animals and her physical and moral cleanliness. initial entrance as a "tenderfoot" required memorizing the girl scout motto, slogan, laws, and promise, and leaders were to incorporate these statements of faith into their regular activities. in consequence, seemingly values-neutral girl scout pastimes carried the ideals of the national organization. the motto and slogan, "be prepared" and "do a good turn daily," conveyed an ethic of service, as did the promise, "on my honor, i will try: / to do my duty to god and my country. / to help other people at all times. / to obey the scout laws" (1920 [xii]). service in the promise is religious, patriotic, and social. it is left to the individual to determine what counts as service to god, country, and others, and when one is doing one's best. however, the rest of the handbook, and, one presumes, troop leaders' instruction, gives a context to the kinds of preparation and service that "count" in the girl scout ethos. the badge and rank ceremonies prescribed in the handbook echo military rites and underscore the ideology of the program. for example, the presiding girl scout official tells first class candidates, "'you should thoroughly understand by now the meaning of duty to god and country, the privilege of helpfulness to others, and the seriousness of the scout laws'" (50). the first class girl scout promises to pay back "in generous service" the effort that many people contributed to her achievement of first class (51). when a girl scout meets the requirements for scouting's highest award, the golden eaglet--now obsolete--the girl scout official emphasizes to the golden eaglet "'that you understand now even better than the average girl scout that your great principles of duty to god and country, helpfulness to others, and obedience to the scout laws, are lessons that no scout can fully learn as long as she lives'" (53). this understanding stems from the girl scout "training." recurring themes in the handbook clarify the focus of girl scout preparedness: girl scout training can prevent accidents or rescue people involved in them; girl scout activities such as camping and hiking ensure girls' physical health; and members of the organization learn efficient methods of housecleaning and childcare. the handbook represents membership in the girl scouts as strategic preparation for womanhood in the twentieth century. it calls for a return to the broad-scale usefulness of pioneers, but wants girls to combine old-style resourcefulness with the 94 tedesco the lost manhood of the am erican girl new household efficiency and civic action expected of twentieth-century women. the woman of tomorrow, while doing some of the same activities as the woman of yesterday, has a new self-confidence and pride of accomplishment: the girl scout makes bandages and clothes, bathes babies, or gets meals "quick[l]y and cheerfully," and takes pride in her badges and "the sense of independence that comes from all this skill with her hands" (35). first aid gives the girl scout "a real glow of pleasure to feel that... she may be able to save a life some day," and invalid cooking and nursing "may make her a valuable asset in case of any great disaster or epidemic" (35). girl scouts did, in fact, help during the flu epidemic of 1918. i am emphasizing in this article the adventurous and nontraditional aspects of the 1920 girl scout handbook, but the adventurous sections of the handbook are interspersed with more routine expectations of girls. the grandly named scout aide designation, for example, goes to girls who earn a group of badges in home economics, child care, first aid, home nursing, public health, and personal health. the text seeks to establish the primacy of these skill sets: this badge will probably be regarded by the outside world as the most important decoration the girl scouts can win, and all scouts who will try for it should realize that those who wear it will represent the organization in a very special sense and will be eager to prove their practical knowledge and ability in the important subjects it stands for. (105) household economics, the "scout aide" section of the handbook asserts, is "the great general business and profession of women" (105). the text optimistically expects girl scouts and voting women to wield power over home and health issues: "practical knowledge of personal health, public health and child care will add to the efficiency and happiness of this nation, and the women of today have a better chance to control these things than ever before" (105). the organization's domestic feminism, and its emphasis on intelligently handled home management, place it firmly within the home economics movement.8 at the same time, the text challenges the reader to prepare herself physically and mentally for whatever circumstances might require. the preparation primarily involves safety knowledge, first-aid training, and physical fitness, as well as developing keen observation skills and visual judgment of distances, heights, and bulk measurements. the motivational text calls the attitude of being a giver rather than a taker "the spirit that makes the older scout into a fine, useful, dependable woman, who does 95 the lost manhood of the american girl tedesco so much good in her community that she becomes naturally one of its leading citizens, on whom everyone relies, and of whom everyone is proud. it may end in the saving of a life, or in some great, heroic deed for one's country" (6). while the latter phrase sounds like war service, the reader is reminded that life-saving and grand patriotic acts are simply "bigger expressions of the same feeling that makes the smallest tenderfoot try to do at least one good turn a day" (6; emphasis in original). even so, lifesaving is one of the goals of girl scout preparation enumerated in section ii, "principles of the girl scouts." the girl scouts is also preparing for "the big duties" (presumably marriage and children) and training her body to be "the fine machine it was meant to be" (3). personal health and vigor, home efficiency, and emergency preparedness are the stated goals of girl scouting. community service is also a version of "do a good turn daily" (3). as the text explains: this is the spirit that makes the older scout into a fine, useful, dependable woman, who does so much good in her community that she becomes naturally one of its leading citizens on whom everyone relies, and of whom everyone is proud. it may end in the saving of a life, or in some great, heroic deed for one's country. (6). the hope of performing a grand act is continually dangled before the girl scout, but she is also trained for the mundane daily tasks that are more likely to be her lot. the scout: a pioneer ideal for the twentieth century the handbook's central metaphor for the girl is the scout, the (male) handyman of the frontier. the passages on scouts and their hardiness refer to an idealized pre-technological era when men and women could fend for themselves. these passages' references to the resourcefulness of earlier americans offer a key to the cross-gendering of the model for the young girl. worries about the rising generation's self-sufficiency trump concerns about appropriately gendered behavior. section iv, "who are the scouts?" invokes the tougher pre-machine-age past: although "[o]ur pioneer grandmothers might have been frightened by the sight of one of our big touring cars, for instance, or puzzled as to how to send a telegram, ... they knew an immense number of practical things that have been entirely left out of town-bred lives, and for pluck and resourcefulness in a tight place it is to be doubted if we could equal them today" (17). the text decries the laziness and helplessness bred by the attitude embedded in the kodak advertising slogan "you push a button and we do the rest" (17). 96 tedesco the lost manhood of the am eric an girl on the frontier, "there was no button to press, as we all know, and nobody to 'do the rest': everybody had to know a little about everything and be able to do that little pretty quickly, as safety and even life might depend on it" (17; emphasis in original). the anxiety that technology is edging out practical knowledge reflects the same concern that fueled john dewey's educational philosophy. while scouting for girls offers several young girls as examples of grit and determination on the frontier, its foundational models of the self reliant person are male, "the old 'scouts,' of whom natty bumpo, in cooper's famous old indian tales is the great example" (17). the frontier scouts were explorers, hunters, campers, builders, fighters, settlers, and in an emergency, nurses and doctors combined. they could cook, they could sew, they could make and sail a canoe, they could support themselves indefinitely in the trackless woods, they knew all the animals and plants for miles around, they could guide themselves by the sun and stars, and finally, they were husky and hard as nails and always in the best of health and condition. (18) this romanticized image of the scout--living, incidentally, without women's contributions--is the central metaphor of baden-powell's boy scouting and appears "whole" in the 1920 girl scout handbook. the 1927 edition regenders the passage, making it refer to "our pioneer grandmothers" (14) rather than to men. because the american program echoed the "scout" name in the second year of its version of "girl guiding," the 1920 passage on male "scouts" presents the same standards for girls. while one might view girl scouting as "softer" than boy scouting, the 1920 text enables a self-vision for girl scouts that relies on further male examples, the scout as policeman, and the cowboy. the scouts "had to act as rough and ready police (for there were no men in brass buttons in the woods!) and be ready to support the right, and deal out justice, just as our 'cow-boys' of later ranch days had to prevent horse stealing" (18). the handbook makes its transition from "scouts" to girl scouts via examples of nineteenth-century "brave, handy girls, who were certainly scouts if ever there were any" (21). these girls include the quebecoise magdeleine de verchères, who fended off an indian attack with the help of her younger brothers for eight days (21), pioneer and future suffrage leader anna howard shaw (25-26), and wilderness guide sacajawea (21-22). the girl scouts could also gain inspiration from the handbook's 97 the lost manhood of the american girl tedesco accounts of russian girls assisting in the russian revolution by delivering state secrets for revolutionary leaders (30). seemingly endorsing the revolution, the text recommends similar readiness on the part of american girl scouts: "all we have to do is to fix scout habits in our hearts and hands, and then when our country calls us, we shall be as ready as the little russian scouts were" (31). in the same way that folklorist jay mechling yearned for life-saving opportunities as a young boy scout (36), girl scouts could hope for opportunities for bravery or helpfulness during a war: "instances like these are very exceptional; they could not occur to one in ten thousand of us; but we stay-at-homes can always remind ourselves that it was the obedience, the quickness, and the skill learned in quiet, every-day scouting that made these few rise to the opportunity when it came" (31). camping and the twentieth-century girl the handbook emphasizes camping and hiking as the means to health and as preparation for patriotic service. the aspects of camping highlighted in this handbook are those that recover a supposedly lost connection to nature and those that build stamina. as the section on "girl scout camping" puts it, "a girl scout likes to hike and camp. she learns to know the stars and becomes acquainted with the plants and animals about her. she gains independence from her ability to help herself, and health and strength from exercise in the sunshine and fresh air" (313). camping's development of self-reliance is particularly touted in the passages excerpted from the writings of baden-powell and his wife olave. a girl guide handbook passage entitled "how camping teaches the guide law" tells of a man going naked into the american woods to learn to supply all of his needs-including clothing-for himself: in this way, he lived for over a month in the wild, and came out in the end very much better in health and spirits and with a great experience of life. for he had learned to shift entirely for himself and to be independent of the different things we get in civilization to keep us going in comfort. (robert and olave baden-powell, qtd. in 1920, 36). the baden-powells use this story to explain the frequent camping in the boy scouts and girl guides: '''[i]n camp life we learn to do without so many things which while we are in houses we think are necessary, and find that we can do for ourselves many things where we used to think ourselves helpless'" (baden-powells, qtd. in 1920, 36). the passage hints 98 tedesco the lost manhood of the am erican girl at robert baden-powell's anxiety about "softness," or race degeneration, an anxiety that fueled the eugenics movement that sought to breed a genetically superior generation.9 it wasn't only the british baden-powell who sought to recover lost reserves of physical and moral strength. the relatively new sport of leisure camping via girl scouting resonated with early twentieth-century americans seeking simplicity and a connection to the past. horace kephart, whose camping and woodcraft manual is liberally excerpted in the "camping for girl scouts" section of scouting for girls, specialized in wilderness survival. kephart moved to a remote mountainous region of western north carolina after a nervous breakdown, a crisis in his marriage, and the loss of his job as a library director, seeking to "realize the past in the present" (ellison 352). his 1906 camping and woodcraft, drawing on his backwoods experiences, "became in time the standard work in its field" (352-53). kephart's attempts to recover his equilibrium through outdoor life are akin to the 1920 handbook's laments over a fading pioneer heritage and its admonitions to the reader to learn to shift for herself outdoors without mechanical aids other than a compass. kephart's inclusion in the girl scout manual suggests--as does the handbook's reference list of camping manuals aimed at girls as well as boys10--that camping for girls was becoming an accepted part of american culture as city dwellers increasingly retreated to nature, even if they didn't stay there. the girl camper gets to perform novel duties and carry dangerous equipment. the camping group is advised to carry a hatchet (341), and the wood scout, the youngest girl in the eight-member girl scout patrol, "carries a spade, pick axe and cutting axe" (326). the "handy scout" oversees all tools and makes furniture and bridges, as well as being "field engineer, carpenter, ... the general maker, mender, patcher, splicer and tinker," repairing tents and clothing as well (326). the "lighter" "has care of the lamps, lanterns, candles, matches, oils, and all 'leaky' stuff' and "must keep the camp well illuminated" (326). she also is responsible for sending telegraphs and solving electrical problems. the camping experience simultaneously offers new responsibilities and the fun of playing with dangerous things. since girls had not typically gone on hunting trips, these experiences were newer for them than for boy scouts. also, the instructions expect independence of the girls, with no males and no adults other than the captain and lieutenant on hand. drawing on male-authored texts, the camping material emphasizes physical toughness. for example, the "camping for girl scouts" section opens with walt whitman's poem "the open road": "henceforth i whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing, / strong and content, i travel the open road..." (313). like the kipling poem "the red gods" that appears in the mountain-climbing section, the whitman poem 99 the lost manhood of the american girl tedesco celebrates physical vigor and knowledge of outdoor lore. while "the red gods" features unnamed male protagonists, the girl scout material advises girls to adapt themselves to the demands of camping. clothing choices also come into play: "when living out of doors, one may make shift for shelter, or even go hungry for a space, but there is no substitute for comfortable clothing that is safe to use if one would keep well" (317). instead of wearing skirts, which dangerously limit hikers' range of motion, the girl scout should wear "knickerbockers or bloomers" (314). the girl scout is advised how to care for her feet so she can endure hikes: she is to change her socks daily, never wearing damp ones, and to wear sensible shoes (315) because "no army is stronger than its feet" (316). to cover ground more quickly in the country, the girl scouts are to use the scout's pace of alternating a fixed number of steps running and the same number of steps walking. they are to commit to the girl scout training to learn some simple camping rules and build strength and outdoor know-how by hiking, missing their hikes for only "the worst weather"; even "soft rain or snowstorms are very pleasant to hike in" (314). apart from this advice to hike in light rain or snow, the camping instructions enable girl scout officials to present health advice in an adventure context. for example, the girl-scout-sponsored text suggests, "keep the feet straight when walking. if a girl scout notices the tracks of an indian, the first hikers in this country, she will find them invariably straight forward" (316). this advice to girls on posture uses a presumably male indian as its model and follows up the point with a military reference: "scientists have invariably agreed that the dancing school habit of turning out toes is one of the causes of flat feet, which disqualified so many men for army service" (316). mountain-climbing represents the crowning achievement of the accomplished girl scout camper and hiker. in a section entitled "mountain climbing" by eloise roorbach, we learn that mountain climbing is the final test of a girl scout's perseverance in following a trail, in endurance, courage and woodcraftmanship. . . . no girl scout's education is complete until she has seen mountain peaks like waves of the sea flashing with snow white foam, piercing the blue sky as far as the eye can reach; clouds forming below her feet; breathed rare air found only in high places drunk from the pure source of rivers, and heard the mighty roar of waterfalls. a climb to a high mountain top is an experience that will enrich and influence the entire after life of whoever has had the hardihood and wisdom to accomplish it. (367) 100 tedesco the lost manhood of the am erican girl as elsewhere in the handbook, this text challenges the girl scout to develop the needed strength and endurance for the task. before tackling "this last test of scouting," one should "be in perfect physical trim, be able to sleep on the ground, have learned to live simply" (367). the author's own mountainclimbing trip to the new roosevelt national park there "found her in better physical trim, vigor, strength, and with keenness of vision and joy of life increased daily" (370). the considerable space the handbook devotes to practical instruction in outdoor recreation demonstrates the social acceptability of these vigorous sports for women. being prepared for emergencies throughout the handbook, safety, particularly related to new technologies, arises as a concern. the girl scout is to learn safety measures on her own account and must be prepared to rescue the drowning, provide artificial respiration, and put out fires or give first aid. readying herself for these practical needs establishes the girl's scout identity: "if the scout with the badge keeps her head and shows herself steady, reliable and willing, when called upon to help in illness or emergencies, she proves herself a true scout who is living up to the scout motto of 'be prepared'" (217). baden-powell suggests that the well-trained girl guide (or scout) can avoid the hysteria and revulsion that some people exhibit in an emergency: '''when you see an accident in the street or people injured in an air raid, the sight of the torn limbs, the blood, the broken bones, and the sound of the groans and sobbing all make you feel sick and horrified and anxious to get away from itif you're not a girl guide. but that is cowardice: your business as a guide is to steel yourself to face it and to help the poor victim'" (baden-powell, qtd. in 1920, 29). while they appeal to the reader's self-importance and thirst for adventure, the girl scout writers are serious about the safety information and about a sense of modernity that is curiously nostalgic in its model of womanhood. the girl scouts, in fact, with other youth organizations, became an important conduit of safety knowledge. among the rather routine safety advice in the handbook are admonitions to pay attention to one's surroundings on the street and to avoid strange dogs. the girl scout is also to prevent fires at home by keeping cloth, paper, and fabrics away from flames and keep stairs and hallways clear, and redressing "innumerable other careless things which will occur to you" (166). the modernization of america, with its burgeoning cities, produced the need for advice about using public transportation: "in getting off [street]cars you should face in the direction in which the car is going. a simple rule is to get off by holding a rod with 101 the lost manhood of the american girl tedesco the left hand and putting the right foot down first. this brings you facing the front of the car and prevents your being swept off your feet by the momentum of the car" (165). readers also get information on preventing and treating electric shock (198-99), preventing and extinguishing fires fueled by kerosene, gasoline, or benzene (202), and avoiding natural gas fires (202). if there is a fire in the building, the girl scout is to "[k]eep cool, in order to remember what to do, and do it quickly" (200). she is given not only knowledge but authority: "turn in a fire at once. send someone else if possible who may not know what to do to the fire" (200). the girl scout, presumably, will know because of the handbook she has studied. she is, though, to follow the instructions of the firefighters when they come because "they know exactly what to do" (201). she should "keep the doors and windows closed if possible to prevent draughts from fanning the flames to fiercer effort" (201). if she must enter a burning building she should "leave some responsible person guarding the door, in order that it may not be left open by some one in excitement and the flames fanned beyond control" (201). the child or teen is apparently making the decisions about who is responsible. whether real situations ever worked out this way, girls in the text are presented as potential rescuers and people in charge. the girl scout handbook simultaneously gives children additional rules to follow and admits them into a world of adult knowledge and superiority that many children covet. the rescue charge is empowering and genderless. the child learns what to do for a rather thorough list of accidents. she is to "give the most help and relief immediately, before expert help can arrive, and to have the victim in the best condition possible for the doctor when he comes, in order that he may not have to undo whatever has been done before he can begin to give the patient relief from his suffering" (166). the text details the now-familiar first aid procedures, such as keeping the crowd back, loosening the patient's clothing, turning the head so the patient won't choke on his or her vomit, and arranging to move the person by fireman's lift, a seat of four arms and hands, or an improvised stretcher (167-69). the girl scout learns to deal with heat exhaustion, choking, and dislocations and fractures (17678), and she learns to make a range of bandage types and determine which body part each bandage works best for. the current saturation of red cross teaching makes these concepts familiar to us; the idea of children and teens providing such care was radical in the world war i era and the 1920s. the rescue material presumes a fit, capable girl reader, or encourages her to become that, and the technical instructions take the girl reader seriously. 102 tedesco the lost manhood of the american girl monitoring the young girl's health in addition to caring for the health of the people around her, the girl scout was to monitor and safeguard her own health. the health messages in scouting for girls represent a core value that i believe made girl scouting's less traditional activities for girls acceptable to parents and volunteers. the text recommends outside play to give the body the air, heat, and sunlight it needs (263), and suggests when in a day to drink six glasses of water. to earn the "health winner" badge required for the scout aide designation, girls had to fill in a health chart to track their growth and ensure that they had daily bowel movements, twice-weekly baths, and daily exercise, outdoor work, and play (271). the girl was to compare her height and weight to a national standard for her age, and if she were underweight, she could follow the advice in the manual (269-70). although one might argue that the girls are being protected as potential mothers of the nation, girl scouting's approach to health is the same as boy scouting's and offers the same remedies: outdoor exercise, active games, and self-monitoring. a 1924 school health textbook by physician woods hutchinson offers the same advice of cultivating play for health, suggesting that girls read the boy scout handbook as well as joining girls' groups (156). the text recommends that girls practice daily setting-up exercises--a series of stretches (65). the girl reader is introduced to the setting-up exercises as a way of "oiling and testing" the machine of the body (273). if one neglects this, "the machinery gets rusty and clogged, or the instrument gets out of tune and makes horrid noises" (273). the text suggests a morning tune-up "before you put on your clothes" and at night to "rest the tired parts and exercise the parts that have not been used, so you can even things up" (273). setting-up exercises, like much else in girl scouting, have a military origin. the oxford english dictionary defines the "setting-up drill" or "setting-up exercise" as "a course of gymnastic exercises used to give an erect carriage"; its first entry, a military system of gymnastic exercises (1862) by archibald maclaren, refers to "the setting up and position drill of recruits." another military-derived drill, marching maneuvers, had health benefits and helped captains to handle troops "in an orderly and dignified manner" (84). drill, used in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries for boys' physical fitness classes, offered adult instructors control. the 13 pages devoted to "girl scout drill" praise drill formations as ways to give "an erect carriage, alert habit of obedience, and ability to think or act quickly" (84). tenderfoots learn to stand at attention, mark time, march, and do half-step, side step, and back step, all in quick time or double time (88). they learn to march by flank, move to the rear, and change step. the more complex second-class drill includes "oblique march," in which 103 the lost manhood of the american girl tedesco girl scouts march at an angle in two facing columns, and turning on fixed and moving pivots (94). the even harder first-class drill includes diminishing the front of a column of squads. at the weekly meetings, while lined up for drill, the girl scouts underwent military inspection. the captain checked the girls "for posture, and for personal appearance, which should be neat and clean in every particular, and uniform, which should be correct as to style, length, placing of insignia, etc." (56). traditional expectations of good grooming and posture for girls thus assumed the novelty of soldierly training. conclusion girl scouting of the early twentieth century provided a blend of separate-spheres thinking with attempts to offer girls the same outdoor opportunities available to boys. the organization was committed from its founding to instructing the girls in the details of traditional domesticity, but low and other leaders insisted on procuring for girls the hiking and camping experiences, exercise, and military-style uniforms that boy scouts enjoyed, albeit in an altered fashion. the women who re-made the girl scout program from boy scout and girl guide models found ways to combine boys' pursuits with those more traditionally offered to girls. in doing so, they created a uniquely twentieth-century venture that has twenty-first-century resonances. whatever their gains outside the home, most american women still have responsibility for work within the home, and the girl scouts continue to offer a girls-only program that addresses questions of genderequity as well as providing some training in domestic tasks. as historian leslie paris has said of girls' summer camps, girl scouting's "capacity for allowing girls to reinvent themselves was an important part of [its] power and appeal" (49). the 1920 handbook allowed girls to reinvent themselves as "male"--capable, independent, leaders--while at the same time fitting into the culture in which they were raised and meeting the expectations of their families and peers. today, when girl scouting focuses on addressing problems commonly facing girls and seeks to expand girls' opportunities in math, the sciences, and technology, the anachronistic lessons in signaling and knot-tying still address those early fears that technology would replace american's ability to fend for themselves. the scouting game cloaked traditional messages for children's and girls' behavior, but it also opened some new imaginative possibilities. notes 1 charles e. strickland praises low's perseverance in overcoming her "southern belle" upbringing to create new roles, noting her private championship 104 tedesco the lost manhood of the american girl of women's suffrage though the organization remained silent on the matter before 1920. mary aickin rothschild argues that girl scout officials promoted domestic feminism, deliberately widening girls' opportunities within the context of marriage expectations and an updated version of the well-prepared homemaker (115). sherrie a. inness, on the other hand, sees the program's active aspects as promoting a "fleeting sense of agency" masking its conservative agenda of pointing girls toward marriage and motherhood that terminate careers (234). julia kirk blackwelder contends that the girl scouts in the teens and twenties taught girls to expect a career as well as marriage and children, noting that middle-class girls--scouting's largest audience--could afford that novel expectation (86). 2 katie kent briefly notes the contradictory impulses in the girl scout organization of "an emphasis on patriotism, duty, religiosity, and purity" and "the establishment of a social sphere for women in which they could wield power, assume male military titles, aid in national defense, and participate in physical activities formerly denied them" (353). 3 for an account of women's organized efforts during the great war, see william j. breen, chapters seven to eight. 4 the 1920 handbook urges captains and lieutenants to read the leaders' handbooks of what it dubs allied organizations, the boy scouts, girl guides, ywca girl reserves, and girls' clubs of the national league of women workers (545), which show that despite differing terminology, "our ultimate aim and our broad general principles are precisely the same" (544). 5 see rothschild's "to scout or to guide?" for a discussion of west's opposition to the girl scout name and the to-him overly boyish nature of the girls' scouting activities. 6 for ease of reference, i cite the handbooks by their publication years rather than their authors' names. the three different authors and two different titles of the four manuals cited make the usual reference by author or author and brief title difficult for the reader to follow. the 1913 handbook, how girls can help their country, lists savannah naturalist w. j. hoxie as its author, though anecdotal evidence suggests that juliette low revised the girl guide material that formed its core (see schultz and lawrence 320). the 1916 handbook of the same title lists low as the copyright holder, but the title page names only robert and agnes baden-powell, as the authors of the text adapted for the american book. the 1920 handbook, scouting for girls, names "girl scouts" as its author and "girl scouts inc." as its publisher, as does the significantly abridged 1927 handbook of the same title. 7 the girl scouts did, in fact, adopt the shamrock, or trefoil, as their insignia. 8 rima d. apple and joanne pas set link girl scouting and high school home economics classes in an illuminating way to examine girls' socialization into domesticity. 9 michael rosenthal examines at length baden-powell's and the british government's worries about the deterioration of the british "race" in chapter 5 105 the lost manhood of the american girl tedesco of the character factory: baden-powell and the origins of the boy scout movement. 10 the recommended camping books include camping and hiking, campward ho!, the boy camp manual, the camp fire girls' vacation book, and camp kits and camp life as well as wilderness homes. the range of this list and the inclusion of other organizations' resources as well as works on the playground movement indicate that girl scout officials saw themselves as participating in a broader recreational movement whose proponents had similar aims. works cited andrews, howard r. letter to colier [colin] h. livingstone. 15 oct. 1918. "boy scouts of america—controversy; comments—local scouts; alabamawisconsin." file box. girl scout archives. national historic preservation center. girl scouts of the usa, new york. apple, rima d., and joanne passet. "learning to be a woman: lessons from girl scouting and home economics, 1920-1970." defining print culture for youth: the cultural work of children s literature. ed. anne lundin and . westport, ct: libraries unlimited, 2003. 139-54. beard, lina, and adelia beard. on the trail: an outdoor bookfor girls. new york: scribner's, 1915. blackwelder, julia kirk. now hiring: the feminization of work in the united states, 1900-1995. college station: texas a&m up, 1997. breen, william j. uncle sam at home: civilian mobilization, wartime federalism, and the council of national defense, 1917-1919. contributions in american studies 70. westport, ct: greenwood, 1984. edmy, j. b. letter to girl scout national headquarters. 27 nov. 1921. typescript copy. "boy scouts of america—controversy; comments--local scouts: alabama-wisconsin." file box. girl scout archives. national historic preservation center. girl scouts of the usa, new york. ellison, george. "kephart, horace sowers." dictionary of north carolina biography. vol. 3, h-k. ed. william s. powell. chapel hill: u of north carolina p, 1988. 352-53. girl scouts inc. scouting for girls: official handbook of the girl scouts. new york: girl scouts inc., 1920. _______. girl scouts inc. scouting for girls: official handbook of the girl scouts. abridged ed. new york: girl scouts inc., 1927. hoxie, w. j. how girls can help their country. 1913. facsim. ed. new york: girl scouts of the u.s.a., 1972. hutchinson, woods. building strong bodies. the woods hutchinson health series. boston: houghton-riverside, 1924. inness, sherrie a. "girl scouts, camp fire girls, and woodcraft girls: the ideology of girls' scouting novels, 1910-1935." continuities in popular culture: the present in the past and the past in the present and future. ed. ray b. browne and ronald j. ambrosetti. bowling green: bowling green state u popular p, 1993. 229-40. 106 tedesco the lost manhood of the am erican girl kent, katie. "girl scouts." oxford companion to women’s writing. ed. cathy n. davidson and linda wagner-martin. new york: oxford up, 1995. 352-53. parkins, j. h. letter to sybil m. gordon. 10 mar. 1922. typescript copy. "boy scouts of america--controversy; comments--local scouts: alabamawisconsin." file box. girl scout archives. national historic preservation center. girl scouts of the usa, new york. roberts, g. c. letter to girl scout headquarters. 19 nov. 1921. typescript copy. "boy scouts of america--controversy; comments--local scouts: alabamawisconsin." file box. girl scout archives. national historic preservation center. girl scouts of the usa, new york. rothschild, mary aickin. "to scout or to guide? the girl scout-boy scout controversy, 1912-1941." frontiers 6.3 (1981): 115-21. rothschild, mary, and georgeanne scheiner. "girl scouts." girlhood in america: an encyclopedia. vol. 1. ed. miriam forman-brunell. santa barbara, ca: abc-clio, 2001. 316-20. schultz, glady denny, and daisy gordon lawrence. lady from savannah: the life of juliette low. 1958. new york: girl scouts of the usa, 1988. strickland, charles e. "juliette low, the girl scouts, and the role of american women." woman’s being, woman’s place: female identity and vocation in american history. ed. mary kelley. boston: hall, 1979.252-64. whitehead, george. letter to mary c. clendenin, 22 nov. 1920. "boy scouts of america--controversy; comments--local scouts: alabama-wisconsin." file box. girl scout archives. national historic preservation center. girl scouts of the usa, new york. 107 cfr_2004-2005_part29 cfr_2004-2005_part30 cfr_2004-2005_part31 cfr_2004-2005_part32 cfr_2004-2005_part33 cfr_2004-2005_part34 pages from cfr_2004-2005_part35 ocr document contents from the editor ...................................................... 2 featured article "tradition from the perspective of children's traditional games" brian sutton-smith ............................................. 3 cfs: 1991 annual meeting ..................................17 reviews the skit book by margaret read macdonald jay mechling ............................................................ 21 "of related interest: children's music" judith haut ....................................................... 23 notes and announcements .................................... 28 cover: hobby-horse riding from bruegel' s children's games (1560). 1 from the editor. . . if cfr 14.2 has arrived a bit later than expected, it is for good reasons. the primary reason is that tina moore, my secretary and cfr's associate editor left the english department at the end of january for the college of arts and sciences. while she is certainly missed, i have been fortunate to have been able to find laurie evans. the english department agreed to hire her as tina's replacement, and she has already made herself invaluable as cfr's new associate editor. other reasons for the delay of this issue are the usual ones in academe. this issue is somewhat special in that it features an article by brian sutton-smith (reprinted by permission of de vroede, e, and r. renson, eds., 1992, proceedings of the second european seminar on traditional games [leuven, belgium, 12-16 september 1990], leuven: vlaamse volkssport centrale, 81 p.). brian felt that the article might reach cfs members more effectively through this journal than through the proceedings and asked that it be reprinted here. two reviews and the minutes from the annual meeting round out this issue. we were a small group in newfoundland last fall, but hope to have a larger representation of the cfs membership at the jacksonville meeting this fall. as always, we encourage you to spread the word about the section and the journal; and now that cfr is a journal, your university library should be willing to place an order. c. w. sullivan iii 2 tradition from the perspective of children's games brian sutton-smith introduction in the conclusions adopted by the participants in the 1988 european seminar on traditional games, children's games were included. since i have been studying children's traditional games for the past 40 years both in my country of birth, new zealand, and in my adopted country, the u.s.a. (games of new zealand children, folkgames of children, history of children' s play), i thought it might be useful to convey to you the results of those studies which throw light upon the categories of games you are using in your collections and upon the concept of the traditional game itself (cfr. topology for the classification in appendix, renson, manson & de vroede, 1991). unless otherwise stated, therefore, all mention of historical items in this paper are from colonial new zealand in the past and present centuries. this whole paper might be considered something of a colonial commentary on the history of traditional games. i will frame my remarks in terms of your eight categories: ball games, bowl and pin games, throwing games, shooting games, fighting games, animal games, locomotion games, and acrobatics. the first thing to note is that the first two categories refer to agencies of play: the ball, the bowl and the pin; the rest of the categories refer to actions: throwing, shooting, fighting, locomotion, and acrobatics-excepting animals which refers, one might say, to one type of play actor. not knowing the thought that went into this conceptual organization of traditional materials i hesitate to to raise issues that you may well have already considered and wisely put to one side. but in case it might be helpful a widely known approach to this kind of problem, that of kenneth burke in his grammar of motives (1945), suggests that when approaching such a problem one should always consider not only types of agencies and types of action but also types of actors and their types of interaction, as well as types of spatio temporal organization. i will keep these organizational considerations in mind as i proceed. 1. ball games i am immediately struck by the paradox that using the ball as the major category of agency is essentially a twentieth-century attitude. as far as children's traditional games are concerned, balls were very scarce prior to this century (pig's bladders being more 3 sutton-smith easily available). the major agencies of play then were quite diverse, including prominently knives (stagknife, whittling and play constructions) and nuts (conkers), grass (soldiers), tops, whips, strings (cat's cradle), tip cats, collections, stilts, kites, hobbyhorses, catapults, wooden whistles, flowers (chains), marbles, etc. the most complex games of the nineteenth century in colonial new zealand were not ball games but were the team games of running and capture such as the paper chase, prisoner's base, hares and hounds, bar the door, chibby, chevvy chase, etc. there is evidence also that even in the middle ages the most complex games were often similar running games (opie & opie, children's games 146). that is to say, the twentieth century professional sports which make the use of balls so important are in no way representative of the major sports of earlier times. in case it is helpful i tentatively question, therefore, whether ball games should be the only name for this category of agency, even though in our century balls are indeed associated with many of the most highly professionalized sports (football, cricket, baseball, hockey, basketball). might it not be more relevant to have a category in which to describe the amazing diversity of agencies in traditional games. might it not be simply a category of game agency? although not specifically relevant to traditional games, it is useful to recognize that although the ball has become the central agency for professional sports in modem society, the diversity of agencies for children in play now operates largely under the quite different guise of commercial toys. in addition, whereas the majority of traditional agencies (marbles, knives, hoops, stilts etc.) were largely a part of collective activities the majority of modem toy agencies are a part of solitary play and as such are a part of the great modem leisure shift away from social towards solitary activities. this is a shift of considerable duration as the history of toys over the past several centuries indicates, mass toys rising in the midst of the twentieth century (1850 plus) reflecting the dissemination of this kind of solitariness to all social classes. and if one takes the even more radical shift of toys these past two decades into electronics (computers and video games), it becomes clear that the increasing hegemony of this kind of play in childhood, at least, fortells a completely different future for games than does the traditional past. whereas traditional games and modem professional games so clearly involve player to player interaction about some critical actions as their essential components, the new event in history is clearly this increasing dominance of the solitary player interacting with an electronic object. this shift to the electronic object (which parallels the kind of shift from collective manual work to solitary non manual desk work which is the mark of modem bureaucratic civilization) emerges as a totally disjunctive event in the history of mass human play. it also casts a more important light on the history and key role of agency in all prior play adding to my suggestion that your traditional category of agency not be confined to balls but be an exploration of the gradual emergence of this phenomenon 4 perspective of children's games of agency. we need a better sense of the kinds of agency that have devel oped throughout history and what it was they meant in historical context. 2. bowl and pin games this is a difficult category to comment on from a childhood viewpoint. although bowling is a traditional adult game in many forms throughout europe as well as a major modem form of entertainment in bowling alleys and associated professional tournaments, one must look hard to find child counterparts of high frequency today. in the last century about the only bowling game in which children engaged regularly was marble board, in which marbles were bowled through a board with holes in it and numbers above the holes indicated how much the player should be rewarded. although this is not exactly a game of chance, given the incompetence of the players, it is not exactly a game of skill either. it is a game of luck in which being rewarded for lucky shots makes it very much like a game of chance. there were other games of the day which were strictly games of physical skill and chance in which a die (as in dice) was put on top of a stick, and when the stick was knocked over by the rolling (or pitched) marble, the player received in return a number of marbles, the same as the number on the upturned side of the fallen die. a strict game of chance is defined as one in which the outcome must be determined only by a die or roulette wheel, etc. no physical skill need be involved. but children's games are seldom so pure. another example is pitch and toss with horseshoes, where ringing a peg placed upright in the ground at distance led again to a reward of marbles. this was more like marble board insofar as only the reward made the game like a game of chance. pitch and toss in which money was thrown against a wall and the winner who landed the closest to the wall took all the money was similar. in these games it is not easy to tell whether we are talking of physical skill, luck (meaning an accident), chance (use of dice etc.), or gambling (which is concerned with getting a reward for the right choice or right action). and as far as the physical skill is concerned, it is not easy to know whether the games involve a bowling action or a pitching action. in general these mixed games did not survive the last century in school playgrounds largely because of their association in the pedagogic mind with gambling, though pitch and toss with money continues to survive amongst adolescents. what was important about them in the mind of authorities was the element of chance not the elements of bowling or pitching, though they perhaps found a certain idleness in these actions contrasted with the vigorous throwing, running, and hopping of other skill games. and at this point i would like to enter an undoubtedly unpopular brief on behalf of studying these combination games of luck or chance or physical skill or gambling. games of pure chance were a very early invention in human history, preceding the invention of games of strategy 5 sutton-smith but apparently subsequent to the development of games of skill. thus you did not in the past century find them amongst australian aborigines, but you did find them throughout the americas and africa. in the most extensive analyses of games cross culturally in contemporary research, of the most elementary as well as more advanced tribal societies, there are 67 societies with games of physical skill alone, 61 with games of physical skill and games of chance in the same society, 22 with physical skill games and strategy games alone, and 30 with physical skill, chance and strategy (roberts & sutton-smith). the items of physical skill and chance combined in the same game-as in marble board or pitch and toss with a die described above--have not been studied in cross cultural research. games of chance alone usually figured such artifacts as the roulette wheel or the dice by themselves. but games of physical skill with chance built into the game-as in the illustrations i have given before-were probably widespread, and do i think deserve your attention as traditional games of special uniqueness. the other phenomenon in which physical skill outcomes are treated as a luck determinant today is in the widespread gambling on most sports. on one estimate currently in the u.s.a. the annual expenditure for all of these kinds of chance (pure chance games alone, physical skill and chance in the same game, and gambling on physical skill) come to 250 million, about the same as the military budget, or about 6% of the gross national product. i do not think that the true history of human game play is helped by ignoring this most essential form, even if as a group mainly concerned with physical skills your organization focuses only on those combination forms of physical skill and chance that i have mentioned. there is a very real case to be made for the view that games of chance have been and still are the most important games in city societies ancient and modem where very few of the people have the opportunity to earn their living or gain prowess by personal body skill or by the kind of higher level strategies required of and supported in leaderly elites. the game of chance models the life of the non privileged and non warrior everyman more adequately than does any other game. this is especially true when we recognize that throughout most history games have been obligatory social forms in which appropriate gender and age ranks had to participate and in which other cultural purposes such as sacred and ritual decisions were served, so that the element of chance in those games was intrinsically a spiritual element indicating the wish of the gods. games of chance were not in any way an element of optional self destruction as compulsive gambling has often come to be phrased in modem times. there is nothing more traditional about games than relying on elements of luck or chance to indicate the way that the gods or spiritual sources wish events to eventuate especially in such cultures as believed the gods to be benevolent. where the gods were thought to be malevolent, it is true, such forms of divination tended not to be used. as a final note i should add that there were in nineteenth century new 6 perspective of children's games zealand also a number of pure skill pitching games having nothing to do with luck or reward-egg cap, rotten egg, toddle 'em buck, skittles and quoitswhich have not survived in regular games of childhood. bowling and pitching actions seem to have little rationale in the children's world today. historically, however, the connection of these actions and the varieties of chance is a part of very substantial game traditions and of ways of life in which it would be quite false to imagine that physical skill could be separated out from the issues of good or bad fortune. it is a disservice to history to make such a complete separation no matter how much it emphasizes contemporary cultural values. 3. throwing games there are a host of throwing games of the last century no longer present. these include peg tops, whip tops, duckstones, ducks and drakes, dead man's dive, throwing hats, stagknife, chibby, cunning joe, tip cat, knucklebones, kites, etc. in which all kinds of objects were thrown or hit in all kinds of ways (sutton-smith, games of new zealand children 121 123). some of these (tip cat, etc.) might better be called hitting than throwing games, and some perhaps called tossing games (knucklebones and kites) than throwing games. although nothing of this diversity survives today, throwing as in rugby, cricket, softball and baseball, and lacrosse has become a regular part of organized games for modem children. the nineteenth century team game of throwing caps and keeping them away from the other team is closely paralleled to today's game of team frisbee. the key skill here has undoubtedly a modem rationale in military hand grenades and the javelin throwing, tossing the caber and putting the shot. perhaps the important story to be told here is about the gradual elimination of most of these more dangerous games from the repertoire of children's play. one might note that philippe ariés famous work centuries of childhood (1962) is for two thirds of its content about the brutal way in which schools were used to bring children under civic governance. this history of childhood is also in part the history of the domestication of children's play with organized games playing a major role in that mollification of their energies (mangan), although the more strict exercise of this domestication only began with the supervision of playground play and the implied danger of legal liabilities from 1900 onwards. the above games in which children threw stones at other stones (duckstones) while one child guarded those stones (a game i saw being still played in apple village near beograd, yugoslavia, in 1987 though a ball was thrown), games in which children hit cats (or sharp pieces of wood) into crowds of children, or threw knives into the soft ground threatening the feet of other children, or whipped tips which flew about the playground and through windows when so hit, were quickly banned, as were many games of shooting and fighting in our next two categories. 7 sutton-smith in part here also we are talking of the vast confinement in play space which arrives with the urbanization of society and the dominance of the city over the country way of life. the shift from traditional to modem games owes much to both the modem organization and formalization of space and time in play and the decay of the role of natural seasons. all of which teaches us the lesson that any study of traditional games requires some knowledge of the cultural contexts to which they were relevant. the same game in different parts of europe might feasibly have served quite different purposes, just as the same purpose could be served by quite different games. the study of traditional games regardless of cultural context is unfortunately not a very high level of scholarship. i do believe that that is the verdict which one must bring against a great deal of the folkloric study of games over the past 100 years (and i have contributed to this so am as indictable as the rest) which has often yielded massive descriptions of the games but told us little of how they were used, by whom, when, where, and to what end. such antiquarianism presumes a psychic unity of causation which has very little to recommend it in modem social science. 4. shooting in modem educational discourse it is almost a sacrilege to talk of shooting games. the notion that the school playground of childhood in general should be a place for bows and arrows, blowpipes, pea shooters, slings, catapults, clay shooters, popguns or snowball fights, as it was in the last century, is simply unacceptable. even plastic toy guns appear to be universally disallowed in nursery and elementary schools even though they are sold in great numbers commercially. in recent surveys i have done (with students) of hundreds of schools in the u.s.a. this was the case, even though on the adult level the united states, with its gun lobbies, permits guns at the adult level in what many see as an entirely excessive way. it is estimated that over half the homes in the u.s.a. contain guns. in recent years there have also been serious efforts to ban war toys and claims have been made that play with such toys is associated with later adult violence, though at present there seems no substantial evidence for this proposition (sutton-smith "war toys and childhood aggression"). shooting play then is an anomalous form in high modem societies where what might be called civilized or feminist values increasingly dominate the world of childhood. on an adult level, however, there seems to be no lack of such kinds of recreation and in fact a constant evolution of novel forms of adult shooting play increasingly reflect new laser, computer, and video possibilities. given that the present debate over weapons only continues the much longer one in which peasants were often required to play games with military useful weapons (bows and arrows and not footballs), it would seem reasonable to suggest that any study of traditional shooting requires a study also of the history of warfare and of hunting-just one more specific case of the 8 perspective of children's games importance of studying social context 5. fighting obviously from the above account children tend these days to be discouraged from fighting. playground supervision has put an end to the regular playground fighting, initiations, and fighting arena which were characteristic of the last century (sutton-smith, history of children's play chap 6); it has even spelled the end to many very physical and rough games like punch king, sacks on the mill, cockfighting, bull in the ring, no man standing, lazy stick, or king of the castle. even the classic pretence fighting or playfighting (cops and robbers), in which there is no realistic combat, is now under attack by those who see it as one of the major sources of male sexism. oddly enough, children's verbal fighting with each other through teasing and insults does not seem to have abated. their folklore, their cruel jokes, parody, nonsense, gross rhymes, dead baby jokes etc. in which they fight imaginatively with siblings, peers, teachers, the other gender, or the other race, shows no surcease (bronner). imaginary fighting with others still fills the airwaves and the humors of the world. the biggest childhood shift in play terms, however, is from older world physical fighting to modem world symbolic fighting using video games and computers or using strategy as in board games. in my recent study of new zealand children contrasting their play in 1950 with their play in 1990, the biggest change was in the great increase in this latter kind of strategic and video fighting. much of this fighting also takes place in solitariness with no other visible or physically real opponent a concentration only on physical fighting in traditional games and a neglect of the history of games of strategy is fated to miss out on the gradual interpenetration of the two throughout history and the gradual replacement of the physical by the strategic. having suggested the unpopular idea that this organization should look at the role of chance in physical games, i now add that it should look also at the role of strategy in these games. there are very few games of simply physical skill left; most sports now contain important components of strategy. a study of traditional games that does not look at the evolution of the strategic component has to be seriously faulted. furthermore, any study of physical fighting requires i think considerable attention to the interactional context of this fighting, whether it be: 1. solitarily with objects, 2. dyadic (as in boxing and wrestling), 3. central person (sutton-smith "two cultures of games") as when every man fights for himself against every other as in buzkashi of afghanistan, a game in which men on horseback compete with each other to lay a dead calf at the feet of the king; or more simply as in a game of hopscotch, 9 sutton-smith 4. or some form of team play in small or large groups, (a) the latter being relatively role undifferentiated as in most early tribal play or (b) highly specialized as in many modem professional sports. in my studies, the critical interactional break: in history between traditional and modem games comes when equally matched team games high in role specialization are substituted for central person mob games in which every one competes for himself alone--god for all and everyone for himself ("dieu pour tous et chacun pour soi")--or are substituted for team games involving two mobs against each other with little role differentiation. 6. animals the role of animals in traditional games is generally as predators, scapegoats, competitors, or as opponents. the role of animals in modem children's play is increasingly that of pets. in the latter capacity the animals' role has been increasing inversely with the decrease in family size and the loneliness of its members. if this category is to persist, it could perhaps become a part of a larger category of imaginary companions who have been played with throughout history, a category that today would certainly include ghosts, monsters, and ninja turtles and in earlier times might well have included witches, fairies and devils. more seriously though, i believe this category is your actor category and should include the names of all the players on the stages of game history which today means quarterbacks and coaches and referees and judges. i have elsewhere written of the gradual differentiation of these play actor roles throughout history (sutton-smith "development of folklore and games in the pacific"). one finds relatively little such actor differentiation in the play of aborigines and amerindians but a great increase in the role differentiation of pacific islander play with their tournaments and parades and judges. 7. locomotion the only category of traditional games which has persisted as a highly diverse and frequent group in children's unorganized locomotive play is that of chasing, though modem children do not develop these games into the more complex and formal team forms as did their predecessors. some of the older team forms are referred to above, such as prisoner's base or hares and hounds. in earlier play these chasing games more often took place in a formal patterned way with the use of circles, bases, holding hands, dancing, and song. today, only the most informal have survived. however, just as children once chased each other on sledges, in sacks, on stilts, with hobby horses, with hoops, with whip tops etc., modem children chase each other on bicycles, roller skates, skateboards, canoes, yachts, and snowmobiles. the contrast just made also demonstrates the increasing role of vehicles in children's locomotorplay. 10 perspective of children's games a second and somewhat lower frequency class of locomotion is racing and running which has a more pronounced place in modem sport professionalization than in earlier times though the consequences for ordinary children and their relative prowess in relation to their forbears is uncertain. obviously more children receive specialized training than in earlier times, but those not trained may well be less capable because of the sedentary nature of modem living. jumping games were prominent traditionally as in leapfrog, fly the garter, cap it, buck buck, saddle the nag, johnny on the pony, or monkey on the bridge, but none of these have survived. propelling oneself over the backs of others seems not to be a modem proclivity. hopping games, particularly hopscotch, have survived although many older forms have not -including hopping base, bumpers, hop peg, and hop the hats. the boys' games have not survived; the girls' games have. in this as in a number of other cases, the girls have retained traditions which the boys with their greater opportunities for modem sports have given up. similarly many traditional games are still preserved amongst the lower socio-economic groups and similarly reflect their lack of modem opportunities. skipping games or jump rope has survived, though in new zealand its place has been largely taken by elastics in which players hop in and out of an elastic encircling the legs of two others, or one and a table, at successively higher levels. the chief difference from traditional games in this case is that a game once dominated by males has in this century been taken over by females. another small class of locomotor games played by girls in their own traditional formation is that in which one girl controls the movements of the others who try to approach and take her place as in creeping up, steps and stairs, mother may i, etc. this group of games developed in variety and frequency throughout the twentieth century and now seem to be fading from the scene as girls participate increasingly in hitherto male sports like soccer. their presence throughout earlier history is uncertain. considering the variety of forms of play action that have here been compressed under the title of locomotion and their different gender and socioeconomic correlates one has to wonder what advantage such compression has over the clearer terms chasing, racing, jumping, hopping, skipping and creeping. a study of each kind and its context is in order surely. 8. acrobatics this category may also suffer from having to compress too many odd variations within this one kind of action. for example, there is the whole group of girls' games that involve dancing and singing, which might be excluded from consideration because they involve dance, but are in fact the most distinctive form of girls' traditional games over the past several 11 sutton-smith hundred years; so they are hard to eliminate. we know that in the middle ages these games were danced by young teen age couples as a part of their mating rituals, but that with the growth of church and civic suppression they became an almost singularly unsophisticated childhood girl concern, particularly after about 1800. there are some signs that boys are again showing an interest in the quite modem forms where the girls dance in an pantomime way singing their rock music derived songs to an admiring boys' audience (opie & opie singing game). the organization of the games as chain singing and circle games is, however, today at the simplest levels. in the past century these games were often played by older girls in teams or as couples. as well as these girls' games, there are others involving handclapping and ball bouncing which are likewise notable for their graceful and sometimes dance like movements. these too are usually accompanied by songs or chants. like the singing game category they are really not acrobatics or gymnastic in the general sense of the term, but they do fit the definition provided that they should be "performances requiring skillful control of the body." it is also a part of the anomaly of the modem playground that girls also spend more time in their spontaneous play than boys do in working on gymnastic playground apparatuses (bars, swings, trampolines) and in doing handstands, cartwheels, or imitative body postures (statues) in ways that are clearly gymnastic. all of these become a part of their own competitive games, so even if the above activities of handclapping, ball bouncing, and singing games do not seem to be entirely gymnastic, they are played by the same gender that specializes in childhood gymnastics. conclusion adopting the game categories of this european seminar (see appendix) and using my own information from childhood changes in games traditional and otherwise, i have sought to provide a commentary on the categories. my major problem has been with finding these particular actions, agencies, and actors sufficiently diverse in themselves to manage the phenomenon, and in having considerations of interactive forms and spatio temporal dimensions as well as the cultural context completely left out. still, i realize how difficult it is. no given set of categories is ever sufficient in an of itself except in terms of the declared purposes of the conceptual system, which in this case is to make a break between the traditional and the modem and to focus on the physically based traditional activities. my recommendations would be: 1. to consider the characteristic interactional character of these games. traditional team games are more diffuse without much role specialization and often they are group games in which one central player takes on everyone else, often players vie with each other for that position. the shift to our kind of team sports with role differentiation is a major break in game 12 perspective of children' s games history (sutton-smith "two cultures of games"); 2. to consider the way in which the dominantly rural character of traditional play affected both its spatial deployment (often between villages) and temporal occasioning (as affected by natural seasons); 3. to consider the names of titles of the different kinds of players in each game (clowns, fools, cats, dogs, etc.) and the kinds of linkages between such game player roles and actions. that is a history of game actors; 4. to consider the types of game actions as presently provided but with provision for the other differentiations (hitting, skipping etc. suggested in the above commentary) with attention to their gender and social correlate; 5. to create a category devoted entirely to game agencies and consider what earlier artifacts have been replaced by the modem ball, the modem electronic game, the modem toy, and modem card and board games; 6. to give due consideration to the elements of chance and strategy in physical skill games as these linkages were even most characteristic of earlier historical periods than they are today. the metaphor of the game of life is modelled more by games of chance for the peasants of modem masses than it is by either physical or strategic games; 7. to take a lesson from the history of the relatively useless antiquarianism and survivalism in folklore and not be satisfied simply with game descriptive collections. appendix: games as traditions the games that you will be recording were the customs of earlier people; they were not usually their traditions. the concept of tradition adds the additional notion of self conscious recognition by the people that the game they are performing enhances some other values that they believe they have in common. it introduces the notion of history to the notion of custom, or if you will the self-consciousness of history to the praxis of custom. in general, the concept of tradition as it applies to play, comes to us from the romantic era of western society and involves such names as rousseau, kant, goethe, schiller, wordsworth, coleridge, pestalozzi and fröbel etc. there is in all of these writers a sense that certain kinds of games and plays brought with them certain kinds of valuable spiritual or creative qualities from nature. when schiller says we are only wholly human when we play, he is thinking not of the folkgame practices of children in the muddy streets of eighteenth century mainz, germany; he is thinking of the reputedly amateur athletes of ancient greece. or if it is rousseau, he is not thinking of playful mental fantasies but of groups of parochial players in their villages who control each other through their physical sports. if it is wordsworth he is thinking contrarily of adults made creative by their own imaginings of things infantile. and if it is kant, he is thinking of the history of science and the role of the subjunctive mode of playful thought in invention, in aesthetics and in morality. and fröbel, of course, is thinking 13 sutton-smith of the spiritual significance of toys in childhood. there are all of these and many other ideas gathered together at the beginnings of the nineteenth century to create that game self-consciousness which turns games into traditions rather than their being just mere practices. games as traditions along with folktales or fairy tales or dances as traditions were in the first place all written about to enhance the national, cultural, or individual status of those who had once played them and perhaps should continue to play them. when alice b. gomme made her massive collections of english, scottish, and irish children's games at the end of the nineteenth century, she was as much concerned to reintroduce them into praxis as she was to record their extinction, although the folkdancing societies of the day were generally more successful in this regard than were the folkgame scholars. but gomme in 1891 brought a group of children to the international folk lore congress to demonstrate their games. it is said that her singers and dancers were the hit of the congress. by that time as the opies. have said, the philanthropic classes had become convinced that poor children needed to be taught how to play these "traditional" games. they had supposedly lost or had never had these games as customs and were now to be given them as traditions (bronner 22). in 1985 i attended a meeting of the third rainbow week international in toulouse, france, where children had been brought from many third world countries to demonstrate their games. the intention of the organizers was that these "traditional" games should be preserved and should act as a counterbalance to the spreading influence of televised sports and olympics which were destroying these traditional physical activities (they were including games, dances, initiation rites, motor activities, massages etc.). speakers spoke of the authenticity of the traditional games, their exemplary moral status as compared with the stereotypic character of international sports. in general, they proposed that schools in their countries should be given the task of their preservation. the parallel between gomme in 1891 and toulouse in 1985 is obvious. we have been losing or rather replacing game customs constantly over the past few hundred years. what was a european plight, as urbanization and industrialization increased dramatically in the 1700's and which led to the romantics attention to play, is now the plight of the whole world. tradition is another name for loss and another name for the attempt to preserve us from that loss. this preservation is usually sought in terms of self conscious moral or aesthetic or physical values. but in fact these values are newly invented in the contemporary cultural situations and are used as a selective device for pruning from tradition those aspects of it that are currently thought to be undesirable. neither lady gomme in 1891 nor the contemporary rainbow movement sought to cherish and to teach in schools multiple aspects of the savagery, cruelty, and brutality war preparation and 14 perspective of children's games sexual preparation which were often endemic parts of traditional games (gomme). what they did wish to do was teach in schools those games which they personally valued, and of course in the gomme's case as in the toulouse case, these were the more co-operative and less bellicose games. but teaching games thus self consciously by novel social agencies, games which had in the past always been a part of the collective inheritance and its own inherent means of transmission, makes them into performances rather than customs. most folkloric preservation has been of dances, stories and games taken out of their original contexts and turned into performances by the folk or abstracted from their original conditions or taken by professionals who now present these materials quite out of their original contexts and who create new contexts of dancing, storying, and playing for them. it is no surprise that the greatest shift in folklore theory in this century has been away from some form of "survivalism" where the games are seen as containing remnants of times past, to varieties of performance theory which examine the way in which the folk materials are presented aesthetically to their audiences (bauman). the inherently aesthetic value claimed for tradition by the early romanticists has now become the focus of how performances create their own aesthetics. in modem folklorists' hands tradition has largely become a contemporary and existential pursuit rather that a pursuit of ancient essences preserved into the present. all of which leads up to the position that tradition, perhaps formerly about loss, is now about the assertion of contemporary value and the use of selected earlier customs to heighten that value. thus the members of this conference whose own major interest is in sports choose to look only at the physical games of the past, not the chance of strategic or dancing games. as i have shown, the concentration on ball games and on physical actions to the relative exclusion of patterns of interaction and spatiotemporal contexts and varieties of players reflects that value system. in addition, the effort to find what european countries have in common in such traditional physical games just as apparently seeks new values in such selected commonalities as well as putting in the center of such new found values the physical actions that are the hallmarks of their profession and own future. in this light, traditions are the reflexive selections and transformations of those aspects of past customs which create identity and value for those engaged in this preservation. tradition is the reflection of how we wish to think about ourselves and to be accepted by others. tradition is a rhetoric of our own identity. final conclusion these few remarks on the selective character of "tradition" as well as my prior remarks on the selectivity of the categories that have been chosen need not, i believe, make any difference to your actual choices which do probably reflect your own values quite fairly. my remarks suggest, however, 15 sutton-smith that even if you are not responsive to some of the suggestions i have made, you are, i believe, required in scholarly terms to be more explicit about your own presuppositions, about how you have presupposed traditions. i hope in that respect my remarks have been helpful. they are meant to be clarifying rather than critical. university of pennsylvania works cited ariés, philippe. centuries of childhood. new york: knopf, 1962. bauman, richard. verbal art as performance. illinois: waveland, 1977. bronner, simon. american children's folklore. little rock: august house, 1988. burke, kenneth. a grammar of motives. new york: prentice hall, 1945. gomme, alice b. the traditional games of england, scotland and ireland. london: nutt, 1894. mangan, i.a. the games ethic and imperialism. new york: viking, 1986. opie, lona, and peter opie. children's games in street and playground. oxford: clarendon, 1969. __________. the singing game. oxford: oxford up, 1985. renson, r., m. manson, and e. de vroede. "typology for the classification of traditional games in europe," in e. de vroede and r. renson (008.), proceedings of the second european seminar on traditional games (leuven, belgium, 12-16 september 1990), leuven: vlaamse volkssport centrale, 63-81. roberts, i.m., and brian sutton-smith. "cross cultural correlates of games of chance." behavior science notes 3 (1966): 131-144. sutton-smith, brian. "the development of folklore and games in the pacific." international conference: history of sport and physical education in the pacific region (proceedings of international conference). dunedin, nz: u of otago p, 1978. _____________. the folkgames of children. austin: u of texas p, 1972. _____________. the games of new zealand children. berkeley: u of california p, 1959. _____________. a history of children' s play. philadelphia: u of p, 1981. _____________. "introduction of play as performance, rhetoric and metaphor." play and culture 2 (1989): 189-192. _____________. "the two cultures of games." aspects of contemporary sport sociology. ed. g. kenyon. chicago: athletic institute, 1969. _____________. "war toys and childhood aggression." play and culture 1 (1988): 57-69. 16 children's folklore section: 1991 annual meeting children's folklore section: 1991 annual meeting the annual meeting of the children's folklore section was called to order at 7: 11 a.m. by president tom johnson on saturday, 19 october 1991, in the hotel newfoundland, st. john's, newfoundland. the minutes were discussed; joe edgette moved to approve, and chip sullivan seconded. minutes were approved. treasurer's report: tom johnson gave the treasurer's report although she was unable to attend, danielle roemer provided the background notes. the budget looks very good. we have three lifetime members. because the interest on our money is only 5% through the afs/aaa, we briefly discussed putting our money in a separate account. as of july 1991 our balance was $12,327. 91. of that amount, approximately $7600.00 is in an account solely for the newell prize. the new journal has had a positive effect on membership. we are up to 122 members. we still need to encourage libraries to subscribe. the change in membership dues did not get to the computer on time. the change, which should have been on the afs membership list as of 1 july 1991, requires a $10.00 membership fee. life memberships are available for $200.00. (you'll get the journal forever your life or ours!) vice president's report: judith haut reported that the children's folklore section sponsored a panel, "children as narrators," at the 1991 afs meetings. archivist's report: simon bronner said that there is still no letter on file acknowledging the opie prize. we still have not created a certificate for the prize. jay was to have looked into that issue. simon also reminded everyone that there is an archive maintained for the children's folklore section's materials as part of the folklore archives at the center for pennsylvania culture studies at pennsylvania state university, harrisburg. the galley proofs and mockups of our 17 children's folklore section journal, children's folklore review, will eventually be housed in the archive, thus facilitating any possible reissues. simon explained that sue samuelson's family has donated a computer to the folklore archives. it will be used first for the general folklore archive material, then for the children's material. such use reflects sue's work in folklore studies and in children's folklore. chiwren's folklore review report: chip sullivan called our attention to the small error in the dates for officers in the last issue of the journal. circulation is improving. chip has placed notices in other journals around the country and has received numerous requests for some samples and a few subscriptions. the current issue (fall 1991) ran to 52 pages; it cost between $650 and $700 to print. east carolina university provided funding and also picked up the mailing costs for this issue. joe edgette suggested that a letter of thanks be sent. chip will supply the appropriate names. chip is still looking for someone wishing to advertize in the journal. finally, the 1991 children’s folklore section sponsored panel, "children as narrators: literature, media and ethnography," will be published in a special issue of the journal. opie prize report: priscilla ord sent out notices and received three books. the prize for 1991 was awarded to amanda dargan and steven zeitlin for city play. president's report: tom johnson first discussed the newell prize. for 1991, $100.00 was presented to patricia meeley for her paper, "adolescent legend trips as teenage cultural response: a study of lore in context." in 1992, the prize will be $400.00 for the best student paper written in 1991. an anonymous endowment has provided funding for the increased prize. old business: i. elections: the membership elected and reconfirmed the officers. priscilla ord, nominating committee chairperson, received affirmation from danielle roemer. joe edgette has been nominated for vice-president/president-elect. priscilla also received affirmation for the current president-elect, judith haut. chip moved to accept the slate by acclamation. carole carpenter seconded. the members approved. ii. revision of the constitution: there was a typographical error in the 18 1991 annual meeting amendment that went out last year. bill ellis moved that there be a point of clarification, the book review editor is not to be on the executive board. joe seconded. approved. iii. aesop prize: gary alan fine and linda morley are on the committee. the executive commitee has approved the criteria for nomination. the first prize may be awarded in 1992. following a brief editorial revision, priscilla ord moved to accept the criteria. chip seconded. approved. the criteria for nomination are as follows: 1. the use of folklore should be central to the book's contents and, if appropriate, to its illustrations. 2. the folklore as presented in the book should honestly reflect the cultural worldview of the people whose folklore is the focus of the book. 3. the presence of the folklore should enrich the book and enhance the reader's understanding of folklore. 4. the book should reflect the high artistic standards of the best of children's literature with strong appeal to the child reader. 5. folklore sources should be fully acknowledged and annotations accurately referenced within the bound contents of the publication. joe edgette moved that the outgoing president appoint the various prize committees at the meeting, subject to approval, with one continuing member from the previous year. chip seconded. approved. all nominated books should be sent in duplicate to chip sullivan. iv. the handbook: still in process. needs to be put on the computer (kind of like waiting for godot). garland has announced its forthcoming publication. jay mechling needs updated addresses for authors. simon noted that garland is promoting the book with the title, handbook. but he recalls a discussion in which the title was changed. the articles are surveys. tom will speak to jay about the title. new business: judith haut i. 1992 section panels: joe edgette will try to get a notice in the af s newsletter soliciting papers. if the author of the newell prize paper will be at the meeting, an effort should be made to accomodate it in the "official" children's folklore section panel. simon bronner proposed that the meeting site should have some impact on the topic of the c.f.s. panel. after some discussion it was proposed that the topic for the jacksonville meeting might be either children and ethnicity or multicultural education. for the eugene meeting, we discussed a topic on adolescent folklore or on regional children's folklore. ii. a proposal was made to separate the publication of the membership list 19 children's folklore section of the section from the review as a "directory of researchers in children's folklore." chip sullivan moved that the editor of the review look into the possibility of compiling and publishing a separate directory of members. joe edgette seconded. the members approved. iii. judith haut asked about the need for a policy statement on items to be reviewed in the journal. what would be of most use to the membership? the reviewing of tape recorded songs and stories was discussed. but no decision on policy was reached. it was decided that only books about children's folklore and not books of folklore for children should be reviewed. after some discussion it was also decided to ask the aesop prize committee to contribute a review of the submissions for the aesop prize to cfr as a single review article. iv. lifetime achievement award: priscilla described the presentation of the medal to iona opie. the library of congress was very supportive. the award is meant to be an occasional one. we still need to get a [mal bill for the casting of the medal. prsicilla moved that an appropriate person be named to write and request a bill by 31 december 1992. chip seconded. approved. three people were considered for the award this year. joe edgette moved that the award be presented to a maximum of one scholar per year. carole carpenter seconded. approved. the membership decided to present the 1991 award to edith fowke and the 1990 award to dorothy howard. v. as the meeting had extended past the allotted time and members were anxious to attend various panels, the meeting was adjourned. respectfully submitted, judith haut and tom johnson for danielle roemer 20 macdonald, margaret read. the skit book: 101 skits from kids. harnden, ct: linnet books, 1990. 145 pp. $ 15.00pb. skits, the "folk theater" of children and adolescents, show us both sides of what gary alan fine has called "newell's paradox," the simultaneous conservatism of children's folklore formulae and the remarkable dynamism of the folklore's content. macdonald has collected 101 skits from suburban seattle kids, who learned the skits at their fifth grade "outdoor education" campout and at other camps, including scouts and ymca camps. the "camp skit," she explains, is short, requires few props, is improvised around a simple and humorous plot outline rather than scripted, and is performed without much rehearsal for a group who knows the players well. she showed her list to a number of "key informants" and (by mail, through the american camping association) to a number of camp counselors and directors, both to test the inclusivity of her sample of skits and to test their geographical distribution beyond the seattle area. the book arranges skits into twelve groups by a typology of formula and content, such as "skits with trick ending" (25 items), "skits using wordplay" (6 items), "tricking the dupe" (11 items), "grossies" (6 items), "mixed-up body skits," and "skits from stories" (5 items); the author gives some brief instruction or advice as an introduction to each section. above all, macdonald wanted to create a book "by kids and for kids," and she encourages the young readers to change the skits "to suit yourself and your friends." macdonald also hopes that the children's folklorist will find something useful in the collection, and i agree the book is worth examining. the folklorist recognizes in the categories and in the skits some recurring themes of children's folklore. children's preoccupation with wordplay, with the body, with "gross" bodily excretions, with television commercials, and with "catch" humor run throughout these skits. the interpretation of the meaning of a particular skit in its full social context, of course, must be accomplished through fieldwork, but macdonald's book provides a number of interesting text outlines and reminds us how neglected is this genre in even the most recent collections of children's folklore. one suspects that the neglect is due to the genre's "taint" of appearing most often in the highly rationalized and controlled setting of camps, schools and other formal organizations, where (according to the folklorist's bias) children are much less free to engage in spontaneous, creative play. much to the contrary, children's camp skits show just how creative 21 mechling children can be in taking approved organizational genres and turning them to their own uses. jay mechling u of ca, davis 22 of related interest: children's music judith e. haut not surprisingly, most of the music submitted to our review section as "children's folklore" came from record publishers who create audio materials for the children's market. to folklorists, this again points up the difficulty in convincing others that children's folklore refers to the behaviors and interactions of children, usually with other children, largely outside (or in spite ot) the planned intervention of adults. though some children may learn, and in some way use, songs and expressions from these recordings, these materials do not themselves constitute children's folklore or the study of children's folklore. this is not to say that the artists do not make use of childhood experiences. bill harley, for example, creates stories out of his own memories of childhood; bill wellington relies on his interactions with children. children also participate in the actual recording. but although children's voices are heard on most of the recordings, we are not told whether we are hearing the children's own words or (as i strongly suspect) their rendition of a script. to the extent that any of this is children's folklore, it is folklore refracted through an aesthetic lensperhaps no more or less distorting than some early published and edited collections of children's folklore. for these reasons, i can not review these materials as i would review a study of, for example, girls' gaming or a collection of children's jokes. therefore, i have reviewed them with the intention of providing some information to those of you who have dealings with children or an interest in what is being marketed for children. this review may also provide some idea as to how recording companies regard children as a marketing group and what material is deemed appropriate for children. perhaps the major question to be asked regarding the notion of appropriate materials for children concerns the meaning of the didactic emphasis in many of these recordings. are we asking children to take up the burden left by our own failings to deal adequately with issues of civil rights, pollution, and peace; or are we responding to children's own needs and abilities to participate in the workings of the communities around them? in compiling these summaries i have relied on my own 23 judith e. haut reactions as well as those of my children and their friends. i also tried to take into account where and when children are likely to listen to music specifically labelled "for children." in our household, at least, we play these tapes during long car trips or on inexpensive cassette players, optimistically placed in the privacy of our children's rooms. in other words, i find that children's tapes are usually played within earshot of parents; therefore, a good tape must manage to appeal to a broad range of ages. finally, a good tape needs to be of sufficient quality to sound decent without being played on expensive equipment timmy abell. the farmer's market. upstream productions, up 885, 1989. cassette. selections include "jimmy crack com" (traditional), "the unicorn song" (shel silverstein), and "mail myself to you" (woody guthrie). although the press release materials which accompany the cassette tell us that abell has been performing "traditional music and stories for children" since 1977, it is out of the immediate purview of this brief review to assess whether this cassette is an example of folk music. it is, nevertheless, a gentle tape, employing a variety of instruments such as a hammered dulcimer, penny whistle, and mandolin to lend a subtle texture. unfortunately, perhaps the attempt to maintain this gentle cast is sometimes at the expense of fidelity. the treble dominates and, at least on our test equipment. sounded lispy at the high end. bill harley. come out and play. round river records, 107, 1990. cassette ______________. grownups are strange. round river records, 106, 1990. cassette. bill harley mixes storytelling and singing. many of his tales have the feel of reminiscence in the hands of a polished storyteller. indeed, the liner notes state that some of the story characters are people harley knew as a child, including his third grade teacher, mrs. nottingham, whose birthday he describes on grownups are strange. his narrating "grandma vs. the headless man," introduces us to a colorful personality and her use of such phrases as "i'll fix his wagon." come out and play includes "stay up" (do you remember trying to stay up all night as a child?) and harley's narrating of "what's in fox's sack." of all the tapes in this review, both of these received the most play and discussion time among several five to twelve-year-olds. the production values are strong, and the entertainment bears up well under repeated listening. furthermore, harley's observations and illustrations of child-tochild conversations about such issues as scary stories and the importance of 24 children's music age ("how old are you?" "seven." "yo, i'm seven and a half." "actually i'm seven and three quarters.") ring true. bill, harley, producer. i'm gonna let it shine: a gathering of voices for freedom. round river records, 401, 1990. cassette. as the press release states, the intent of this recording is to remind adults of, and introduce children to, the emotional impact of the civil rights movement and contemporary struggles. the singers include singers/ activists and songwriters such as sally rogers, charlie king, and south mrican poet solly makholiso. a group of middle school students from providence, rhode island, also participated in the recording. it all comes together in a powerful, melodic record. wgbh radio, boston, aided in the recording. all the songs are performed a capella. this cassette is appropriate for school and family use; harley writes, "take [these songs] and sing them. that's why they're here." a booklet of the songs and suggestions for activities and other reference materials accompany the cassette. kathy kallick. what do you dream about? kaleidoscope records, c-5001, 1990. cassette. the selections include kallick's own compositions as well as the traditional "buffalo gals," "casey jones," "hey diddle diddle / three little monkeys" and "sweet betsy from pike." instrumental backup includes acoustic guitar, mandolin, dobro, violin, etc. kallick's daughter and other children participate in some selections. the musical styles range from bluegrass to caribbean steel drum. this is an enjoyable cassette and will probably remain so after repeated playing. although some of the songs are issue-oriented (dealing with anger, equal worth of all work), they manage not to be heavy-handed. leo mckern, host. bring on the brass. cond. bobby herriot. the hannaford street silver band. mark rubin productions, mrp c 108, 1990. cassette and cd. host leo mckern introduces children to the history and variety of brass instruments. includes all-brass renditions of "my grandfather's clock," "irish washerwoman," and joplin's "stoptime rag." now i know the difference between a tuba and an euphonium. the music is grand, but i don't know how many times i would want to hear the narration repeated. lisa marie nelson. bright smiles and blue sides: positive music for today's kids! bright ideas productions, 1989. cassette. 25 judith e. haut yes, we want something positive for children, but maybe this is a little too positive. these songs so directly promote the positive that there is no room for a listener, adult or child, to feel that she has had any part in deducing the message. consider the lyrics of "my cool guy." set to a sprightly tune, the singer describe her healthy, right-living guy: "he's my new guy / he's a cool guy / he'll never order fries / he'll just have carrots on the side." i have no quarrel with the message or the values espoused in these songs, i just like my sermons to be a little oblique. (we all deserve french fries sometimes.) the cassette is also a little skimpy, containing six songs on one side and the instrumentals to the same songs on the other side. an illustrated booklet with the lyrics accompanies the cassette. tom paxton. the marvelous toy. pax records, pax 408, [1974] 1991. cd and cassette. _____________. peanut butter pie. pax records, pax 006, 1990. cd and cassette. the songs on the first album were originally recorded in 1974; some of you may remember "the marvelous toy." in our house, we've had lively discussions over what that toy might have been. both albums are full of whimsical, well-produced selections. the arrangements by milt okun are characteristically smooth. the songs are entertaining and cover a broad range of musical styles. paxton's voice is easy to listen to. these tapes could cover a lot of mileage in my car. sally rogers. piggyback planet: songs for a whole earth. round river records, rrr 301, 1990. cassette. these thirteen songs are all geared to awakening interest in the earth's plight. from the plaintive "what have they done to the rain" to her own counting song, "over in the endangered meadow," rogers sings about global problems of near-extinction and pollution. she includes songs and melodies from navaho and chinese sources. a few of the lyrics verge on the didactic, as in "then gather up your garbage and sort, sort, sort! / put the cardboard in here, that's box number one / don't get tired 'cause you're not done ..... " (however, my children insist that this is a terrific song.) far more successful, to my mind, is "what did the dinosaurs say!, whose lyrics and melody, composed by sally rogers, make the point that extinct is forever. the chorus asks, "what did the dodo birds say / when their mothers sent them out to play? / did they peep, did they chirp, / did they growl or burp? / what in the world did the dodo birds say?" this is an upbeat album. the production values are high, and i wouldn't mind listening to it more that once. bill wellington. woof: songs, tales and tunes from the world of 26 children's music folklore. well-in-tune productions, 1990. cassette. wellington situates his narrating and singing in the intercom of an elementary school. his material includes riddles, a shaggy dog story ("it's only a knicknack, give the frog a loan") and a rendition of "the viper." he gets off to an interesting start, performing his own rollicking version of "buffalo gals." unfortunately, it is difficult to assess just what wellington meant to accomplish with this cassette. he opens with a characterization of folklore, saying that it is "older that a thousand years and younger than tomorrow./ something you can never own but you can borrow." he then provides his own versions of what i presume he meant to be examples of folklore, including his own compositions set to tradition fiddle tunes. some of his material was developed in conjunction with his work with elementary school children in the richmond, virginia, area. in some respects, then this cassette is closest to falling in the category of children's folklore. but the full cassette does not live up to the potential provided by his opening frame; by the second listening several of the narratives begin to sound overly contrived and strained. judith e. haut cfr review editor 27 notes and announcements the children's folklore section of the american folklore society offers the w.w. newell prize (which includes a cash award of $400.(0) each year for the best undergraduate or graduate student essay on a topic in children's folklore. students must submit their own papers, and published papers are eligible. instructors are asked to encourage students with eligible papers to enter the competition. papers must be typed, double-spaced, and on white bond paper. on the first page include the author's name, academic address, home address, and telephone numbers. deadline for each year's competition is march 1st. submit papers or write for additional information: tom johnson, chico folklore archive, department of anthropology, california state university, chico, ca 95929-0400. oxford university press has announced the u.s. publication of the oxford children's encyclopedia. published last september in england, the encyclopedia is the product of ten years' general research and six months' of research with children ages 8-10. the oxford children's encyclopedia consists of five volumes, a-z, a biography volume, and an index volume. there are more than 1500 articles, 650 biographies, and 3000 illustrations; the total word count is approximately 700,000. reviews in the sunday times, the times educational supplement, the observer, and elsewhere have been excellent; and in november of 1991, the encyclopedia was #1 on w.h. smith's children's bestsellers list. for additional information contact: annie stafford, oxford university press, 200 madison avenue, new york, ny 10016. penguin books has announced the publication of australian childhood: an anthology, edited by gwyn dow and (cfs member) june factor. the volume draws on memoirs, oral histories, letters, and literary works to present a picture of australian childhood from the colonial settlement to the recent past. for additional information contact: marketing department, penguin books australia limited, 487 maroondah highway, ringwood, victoria, 3134. 28 notes and announcements the bantam doubleday dell publishing group has compiled a folklore bibliography: fables, fairy tales. folk tales. legends. and myths. this is a bibliography of books for children up to the sixth grade level. us teachers, educators, folklorists, and others may receive a free copy of this bibliography by writing: lyda schuster, education and library division, bantam doubleday dell, 666 fifth avenue, new york, ny 10103 among the sessions at the augusta heritage center this summer is performing for young audiences, 2-7 august 1992. open to anyone who enjoys working with children, the class will explore the full range of the performer's art. led by singer/songwriter marcy marxer, actress/educator valerie bayne carroll, and musician sue ribado, the class will include sessions in repertoire building and dramatic techniques, class critiques, and a variety of opportunities to work with children for information contact: the augusta heritage center, box fl, davis & elkins college, elkins, wv, 26241-3996. this year's old songs festival, 26-28 june 1992, at the altamont fairgrounds (20 miles west of albany, ny) will feature traditional family music and present several families dedicated to passing the legacy of traditional music and dance down through the generations. a special "families performing with families" workshop will be held featuring singing, dancing, and storytelling. for information contact: old songs inc., p.o. box 399, guilderland, ny, 12084. 29 cfr will accept manuscripts on 3 1/2" disks if the manuscript was typed using microsoft word or macwrite on a macintosh computer. we request that, if possible, authors using typewriters or dotmatrix printers have their manuscripts redone and a laser printed copy made. this will enable us to scan the copy, thereby eliminating rekeying the manuscript. please send manuscripts to: c. w. sullivan iii, editor children's folklore review department of english east carolina university greenville, nc 27858-4353 children' s folklore review is published twice a year and sent to all members of the children's folklore section of the american folklore society. published by east carolina university issn: 0739-5558 copyright @ 1992 children's folklore section printed by morgan printers, inc. rn@@[k)~0 rn@@[k)~0 rn(id@[k)~0 rn@@[k)~ anderson, rachel, and david bradby (bob dewar, illus.). reynard the fox. new york: oxford up, 1986. harrison, michael (tudor humphries, illus.). the curse of the ring. new york: oxford up, 1987. harrison, michael (tudor humphries, illus.). the doom of the gods. new york: oxford up, 1985. middleton, hayden (anthea toorchen, illus.). the island of the mighty. new york: oxford up, 1987. these books are the first four in the oxford myths and legends before our time," and after the last battle, "new land rose out of series. oxford claims that these books "retell" traditional myths the waters," "birds and beasts covered the land," and "new men and legends and that each book contains "full color and black and and women spread over the land and a new father ruled the white illustrations [which] combine with the text in appealing to heavens." this christian ending is not in the original. younger readers while retaining the power of poetry of the old the island of the mighty is perhaps the most disappointing of stories" (jacket blurb). the four. it selects welsh tales from the mabinogi and elsewhere, there is great need for books which will introduce young making sure to include one with king arthur in it and another readers to myths and legends other than those from greece and with merlin and dragons but with little or no thought as to how rome. western european myths and legends, especially the scandiwell they fit together into a whole. the second branch of the navian and celtic, have been shortchanged for generations, attractmabinogi is retold without reference to the other three branches, ing popular attention only in such publications as thor comic and nisien, the brother of efnisien is missing from the story. books and various fantasy novels or as a part of the arthurian these retellings seem to be less an attempt to introduce young legends respectively. unfortunately, these books promise a good readers to ancient myths and legends and more an attempt to deal more than they deliver. capitalize on the inherent ability of myth and legend to attract reynard the fox is perhaps the best of the lot because it readers even in such skimpy versions as these. if these were attempts so little. it is a pleasant collection of some of the more really introductions for young people: i) stories would be told popular tales of the traditional french trickster figure, reynard faithfully, and many of them, especially in the norse and celtic the fox. a number of the stories feature reynard's prodigious books, are not; and 2) there would be support materials appetite, and all of the stories show the trickster at his sly best. introductions and afterwords, maps, and bibliographies. except the curse of the ring is a retelling of the volsunga saga, for reynard the fox, which has an afterword that discusses the probably more familiar as wagner's ring cycle of operas, containsource materials as well as the history and nature of the reynard ing the stories of sigurd the forging of the sword, the slaying of stories, not one of these books has any secondary materials in it. fafnir, and the rescue of brynhild. the strength of this book is what happens to the child who wants to find out more about that it is a fairly complete retelling of the ring story. these materials? one expects better scholarship from oxford the doom of the gods attempts to present norse mythology university press. in its 80 pages. the collection begins with "the wall of asgard," includes most of the popular stories, and concludes with "ragnarok." but the stories of the norse gods are set in "a time c. w. sullivaniii 6 c. w. sullivan iii, editor children's folklore review department of english east carolina university greenville, n.c. 27858-4353 non-profit org. u.s. postage paid permit no. ito greenville, n.c. the hildren's folklore review ocr document tradition from the perspective of children's games brian sutton-smith introduction in the conclusions adopted by the participants in the 1988 european seminar on traditional games, children's games were included. since i have been studying children's traditional games for the past 40 years both in my country of birth, new zealand, and in my adopted country, the u.s.a. (games of new zealand children, folkgames of children, history of children' s play), i thought it might be useful to convey to you the results of those studies which throw light upon the categories of games you are using in your collections and upon the concept of the traditional game itself (cfr. topology for the classification in appendix, renson, manson & de vroede, 1991). unless otherwise stated, therefore, all mention of historical items in this paper are from colonial new zealand in the past and present centuries. this whole paper might be considered something of a colonial commentary on the history of traditional games. i will frame my remarks in terms of your eight categories: ball games, bowl and pin games, throwing games, shooting games, fighting games, animal games, locomotion games, and acrobatics. the first thing to note is that the first two categories refer to agencies of play: the ball, the bowl and the pin; the rest of the categories refer to actions: throwing, shooting, fighting, locomotion, and acrobatics-excepting animals which refers, one might say, to one type of play actor. not knowing the thought that went into this conceptual organization of traditional materials i hesitate to to raise issues that you may well have already considered and wisely put to one side. but in case it might be helpful a widely known approach to this kind of problem, that of kenneth burke in his grammar of motives (1945), suggests that when approaching such a problem one should always consider not only types of agencies and types of action but also types of actors and their types of interaction, as well as types of spatio temporal organization. i will keep these organizational considerations in mind as i proceed. 1. ball games i am immediately struck by the paradox that using the ball as the major category of agency is essentially a twentieth-century attitude. as far as children's traditional games are concerned, balls were very scarce prior to this century (pig's bladders being more 3 sutton-smith easily available). the major agencies of play then were quite diverse, including prominently knives (stagknife, whittling and play constructions) and nuts (conkers), grass (soldiers), tops, whips, strings (cat's cradle), tip cats, collections, stilts, kites, hobbyhorses, catapults, wooden whistles, flowers (chains), marbles, etc. the most complex games of the nineteenth century in colonial new zealand were not ball games but were the team games of running and capture such as the paper chase, prisoner's base, hares and hounds, bar the door, chibby, chevvy chase, etc. there is evidence also that even in the middle ages the most complex games were often similar running games (opie & opie, children's games 146). that is to say, the twentieth century professional sports which make the use of balls so important are in no way representative of the major sports of earlier times. in case it is helpful i tentatively question, therefore, whether ball games should be the only name for this category of agency, even though in our century balls are indeed associated with many of the most highly professionalized sports (football, cricket, baseball, hockey, basketball). might it not be more relevant to have a category in which to describe the amazing diversity of agencies in traditional games. might it not be simply a category of game agency? although not specifically relevant to traditional games, it is useful to recognize that although the ball has become the central agency for professional sports in modem society, the diversity of agencies for children in play now operates largely under the quite different guise of commercial toys. in addition, whereas the majority of traditional agencies (marbles, knives, hoops, stilts etc.) were largely a part of collective activities the majority of modem toy agencies are a part of solitary play and as such are a part of the great modem leisure shift away from social towards solitary activities. this is a shift of considerable duration as the history of toys over the past several centuries indicates, mass toys rising in the midst of the twentieth century (1850 plus) reflecting the dissemination of this kind of solitariness to all social classes. and if one takes the even more radical shift of toys these past two decades into electronics (computers and video games), it becomes clear that the increasing hegemony of this kind of play in childhood, at least, fortells a completely different future for games than does the traditional past. whereas traditional games and modem professional games so clearly involve player to player interaction about some critical actions as their essential components, the new event in history is clearly this increasing dominance of the solitary player interacting with an electronic object. this shift to the electronic object (which parallels the kind of shift from collective manual work to solitary non manual desk work which is the mark of modem bureaucratic civilization) emerges as a totally disjunctive event in the history of mass human play. it also casts a more important light on the history and key role of agency in all prior play adding to my suggestion that your traditional category of agency not be confined to balls but be an exploration of the gradual emergence of this phenomenon 4 perspective of children's games of agency. we need a better sense of the kinds of agency that have devel oped throughout history and what it was they meant in historical context. 2. bowl and pin games this is a difficult category to comment on from a childhood viewpoint. although bowling is a traditional adult game in many forms throughout europe as well as a major modem form of entertainment in bowling alleys and associated professional tournaments, one must look hard to find child counterparts of high frequency today. in the last century about the only bowling game in which children engaged regularly was marble board, in which marbles were bowled through a board with holes in it and numbers above the holes indicated how much the player should be rewarded. although this is not exactly a game of chance, given the incompetence of the players, it is not exactly a game of skill either. it is a game of luck in which being rewarded for lucky shots makes it very much like a game of chance. there were other games of the day which were strictly games of physical skill and chance in which a die (as in dice) was put on top of a stick, and when the stick was knocked over by the rolling (or pitched) marble, the player received in return a number of marbles, the same as the number on the upturned side of the fallen die. a strict game of chance is defined as one in which the outcome must be determined only by a die or roulette wheel, etc. no physical skill need be involved. but children's games are seldom so pure. another example is pitch and toss with horseshoes, where ringing a peg placed upright in the ground at distance led again to a reward of marbles. this was more like marble board insofar as only the reward made the game like a game of chance. pitch and toss in which money was thrown against a wall and the winner who landed the closest to the wall took all the money was similar. in these games it is not easy to tell whether we are talking of physical skill, luck (meaning an accident), chance (use of dice etc.), or gambling (which is concerned with getting a reward for the right choice or right action). and as far as the physical skill is concerned, it is not easy to know whether the games involve a bowling action or a pitching action. in general these mixed games did not survive the last century in school playgrounds largely because of their association in the pedagogic mind with gambling, though pitch and toss with money continues to survive amongst adolescents. what was important about them in the mind of authorities was the element of chance not the elements of bowling or pitching, though they perhaps found a certain idleness in these actions contrasted with the vigorous throwing, running, and hopping of other skill games. and at this point i would like to enter an undoubtedly unpopular brief on behalf of studying these combination games of luck or chance or physical skill or gambling. games of pure chance were a very early invention in human history, preceding the invention of games of strategy 5 sutton-smith but apparently subsequent to the development of games of skill. thus you did not in the past century find them amongst australian aborigines, but you did find them throughout the americas and africa. in the most extensive analyses of games cross culturally in contemporary research, of the most elementary as well as more advanced tribal societies, there are 67 societies with games of physical skill alone, 61 with games of physical skill and games of chance in the same society, 22 with physical skill games and strategy games alone, and 30 with physical skill, chance and strategy (roberts & sutton-smith). the items of physical skill and chance combined in the same game-as in marble board or pitch and toss with a die described above--have not been studied in cross cultural research. games of chance alone usually figured such artifacts as the roulette wheel or the dice by themselves. but games of physical skill with chance built into the game-as in the illustrations i have given before-were probably widespread, and do i think deserve your attention as traditional games of special uniqueness. the other phenomenon in which physical skill outcomes are treated as a luck determinant today is in the widespread gambling on most sports. on one estimate currently in the u.s.a. the annual expenditure for all of these kinds of chance (pure chance games alone, physical skill and chance in the same game, and gambling on physical skill) come to 250 million, about the same as the military budget, or about 6% of the gross national product. i do not think that the true history of human game play is helped by ignoring this most essential form, even if as a group mainly concerned with physical skills your organization focuses only on those combination forms of physical skill and chance that i have mentioned. there is a very real case to be made for the view that games of chance have been and still are the most important games in city societies ancient and modem where very few of the people have the opportunity to earn their living or gain prowess by personal body skill or by the kind of higher level strategies required of and supported in leaderly elites. the game of chance models the life of the non privileged and non warrior everyman more adequately than does any other game. this is especially true when we recognize that throughout most history games have been obligatory social forms in which appropriate gender and age ranks had to participate and in which other cultural purposes such as sacred and ritual decisions were served, so that the element of chance in those games was intrinsically a spiritual element indicating the wish of the gods. games of chance were not in any way an element of optional self destruction as compulsive gambling has often come to be phrased in modem times. there is nothing more traditional about games than relying on elements of luck or chance to indicate the way that the gods or spiritual sources wish events to eventuate especially in such cultures as believed the gods to be benevolent. where the gods were thought to be malevolent, it is true, such forms of divination tended not to be used. as a final note i should add that there were in nineteenth century new 6 perspective of children's games zealand also a number of pure skill pitching games having nothing to do with luck or reward-egg cap, rotten egg, toddle 'em buck, skittles and quoitswhich have not survived in regular games of childhood. bowling and pitching actions seem to have little rationale in the children's world today. historically, however, the connection of these actions and the varieties of chance is a part of very substantial game traditions and of ways of life in which it would be quite false to imagine that physical skill could be separated out from the issues of good or bad fortune. it is a disservice to history to make such a complete separation no matter how much it emphasizes contemporary cultural values. 3. throwing games there are a host of throwing games of the last century no longer present. these include peg tops, whip tops, duckstones, ducks and drakes, dead man's dive, throwing hats, stagknife, chibby, cunning joe, tip cat, knucklebones, kites, etc. in which all kinds of objects were thrown or hit in all kinds of ways (sutton-smith, games of new zealand children 121 123). some of these (tip cat, etc.) might better be called hitting than throwing games, and some perhaps called tossing games (knucklebones and kites) than throwing games. although nothing of this diversity survives today, throwing as in rugby, cricket, softball and baseball, and lacrosse has become a regular part of organized games for modem children. the nineteenth century team game of throwing caps and keeping them away from the other team is closely paralleled to today's game of team frisbee. the key skill here has undoubtedly a modem rationale in military hand grenades and the javelin throwing, tossing the caber and putting the shot. perhaps the important story to be told here is about the gradual elimination of most of these more dangerous games from the repertoire of children's play. one might note that philippe ariés famous work centuries of childhood (1962) is for two thirds of its content about the brutal way in which schools were used to bring children under civic governance. this history of childhood is also in part the history of the domestication of children's play with organized games playing a major role in that mollification of their energies (mangan), although the more strict exercise of this domestication only began with the supervision of playground play and the implied danger of legal liabilities from 1900 onwards. the above games in which children threw stones at other stones (duckstones) while one child guarded those stones (a game i saw being still played in apple village near beograd, yugoslavia, in 1987 though a ball was thrown), games in which children hit cats (or sharp pieces of wood) into crowds of children, or threw knives into the soft ground threatening the feet of other children, or whipped tips which flew about the playground and through windows when so hit, were quickly banned, as were many games of shooting and fighting in our next two categories. 7 sutton-smith in part here also we are talking of the vast confinement in play space which arrives with the urbanization of society and the dominance of the city over the country way of life. the shift from traditional to modem games owes much to both the modem organization and formalization of space and time in play and the decay of the role of natural seasons. all of which teaches us the lesson that any study of traditional games requires some knowledge of the cultural contexts to which they were relevant. the same game in different parts of europe might feasibly have served quite different purposes, just as the same purpose could be served by quite different games. the study of traditional games regardless of cultural context is unfortunately not a very high level of scholarship. i do believe that that is the verdict which one must bring against a great deal of the folkloric study of games over the past 100 years (and i have contributed to this so am as indictable as the rest) which has often yielded massive descriptions of the games but told us little of how they were used, by whom, when, where, and to what end. such antiquarianism presumes a psychic unity of causation which has very little to recommend it in modem social science. 4. shooting in modem educational discourse it is almost a sacrilege to talk of shooting games. the notion that the school playground of childhood in general should be a place for bows and arrows, blowpipes, pea shooters, slings, catapults, clay shooters, popguns or snowball fights, as it was in the last century, is simply unacceptable. even plastic toy guns appear to be universally disallowed in nursery and elementary schools even though they are sold in great numbers commercially. in recent surveys i have done (with students) of hundreds of schools in the u.s.a. this was the case, even though on the adult level the united states, with its gun lobbies, permits guns at the adult level in what many see as an entirely excessive way. it is estimated that over half the homes in the u.s.a. contain guns. in recent years there have also been serious efforts to ban war toys and claims have been made that play with such toys is associated with later adult violence, though at present there seems no substantial evidence for this proposition (sutton-smith "war toys and childhood aggression"). shooting play then is an anomalous form in high modem societies where what might be called civilized or feminist values increasingly dominate the world of childhood. on an adult level, however, there seems to be no lack of such kinds of recreation and in fact a constant evolution of novel forms of adult shooting play increasingly reflect new laser, computer, and video possibilities. given that the present debate over weapons only continues the much longer one in which peasants were often required to play games with military useful weapons (bows and arrows and not footballs), it would seem reasonable to suggest that any study of traditional shooting requires a study also of the history of warfare and of hunting-just one more specific case of the 8 perspective of children's games importance of studying social context 5. fighting obviously from the above account children tend these days to be discouraged from fighting. playground supervision has put an end to the regular playground fighting, initiations, and fighting arena which were characteristic of the last century (sutton-smith, history of children's play chap 6); it has even spelled the end to many very physical and rough games like punch king, sacks on the mill, cockfighting, bull in the ring, no man standing, lazy stick, or king of the castle. even the classic pretence fighting or playfighting (cops and robbers), in which there is no realistic combat, is now under attack by those who see it as one of the major sources of male sexism. oddly enough, children's verbal fighting with each other through teasing and insults does not seem to have abated. their folklore, their cruel jokes, parody, nonsense, gross rhymes, dead baby jokes etc. in which they fight imaginatively with siblings, peers, teachers, the other gender, or the other race, shows no surcease (bronner). imaginary fighting with others still fills the airwaves and the humors of the world. the biggest childhood shift in play terms, however, is from older world physical fighting to modem world symbolic fighting using video games and computers or using strategy as in board games. in my recent study of new zealand children contrasting their play in 1950 with their play in 1990, the biggest change was in the great increase in this latter kind of strategic and video fighting. much of this fighting also takes place in solitariness with no other visible or physically real opponent a concentration only on physical fighting in traditional games and a neglect of the history of games of strategy is fated to miss out on the gradual interpenetration of the two throughout history and the gradual replacement of the physical by the strategic. having suggested the unpopular idea that this organization should look at the role of chance in physical games, i now add that it should look also at the role of strategy in these games. there are very few games of simply physical skill left; most sports now contain important components of strategy. a study of traditional games that does not look at the evolution of the strategic component has to be seriously faulted. furthermore, any study of physical fighting requires i think considerable attention to the interactional context of this fighting, whether it be: 1. solitarily with objects, 2. dyadic (as in boxing and wrestling), 3. central person (sutton-smith "two cultures of games") as when every man fights for himself against every other as in buzkashi of afghanistan, a game in which men on horseback compete with each other to lay a dead calf at the feet of the king; or more simply as in a game of hopscotch, 9 sutton-smith 4. or some form of team play in small or large groups, (a) the latter being relatively role undifferentiated as in most early tribal play or (b) highly specialized as in many modem professional sports. in my studies, the critical interactional break: in history between traditional and modem games comes when equally matched team games high in role specialization are substituted for central person mob games in which every one competes for himself alone--god for all and everyone for himself ("dieu pour tous et chacun pour soi")--or are substituted for team games involving two mobs against each other with little role differentiation. 6. animals the role of animals in traditional games is generally as predators, scapegoats, competitors, or as opponents. the role of animals in modem children's play is increasingly that of pets. in the latter capacity the animals' role has been increasing inversely with the decrease in family size and the loneliness of its members. if this category is to persist, it could perhaps become a part of a larger category of imaginary companions who have been played with throughout history, a category that today would certainly include ghosts, monsters, and ninja turtles and in earlier times might well have included witches, fairies and devils. more seriously though, i believe this category is your actor category and should include the names of all the players on the stages of game history which today means quarterbacks and coaches and referees and judges. i have elsewhere written of the gradual differentiation of these play actor roles throughout history (sutton-smith "development of folklore and games in the pacific"). one finds relatively little such actor differentiation in the play of aborigines and amerindians but a great increase in the role differentiation of pacific islander play with their tournaments and parades and judges. 7. locomotion the only category of traditional games which has persisted as a highly diverse and frequent group in children's unorganized locomotive play is that of chasing, though modem children do not develop these games into the more complex and formal team forms as did their predecessors. some of the older team forms are referred to above, such as prisoner's base or hares and hounds. in earlier play these chasing games more often took place in a formal patterned way with the use of circles, bases, holding hands, dancing, and song. today, only the most informal have survived. however, just as children once chased each other on sledges, in sacks, on stilts, with hobby horses, with hoops, with whip tops etc., modem children chase each other on bicycles, roller skates, skateboards, canoes, yachts, and snowmobiles. the contrast just made also demonstrates the increasing role of vehicles in children's locomotorplay. 10 perspective of children's games a second and somewhat lower frequency class of locomotion is racing and running which has a more pronounced place in modem sport professionalization than in earlier times though the consequences for ordinary children and their relative prowess in relation to their forbears is uncertain. obviously more children receive specialized training than in earlier times, but those not trained may well be less capable because of the sedentary nature of modem living. jumping games were prominent traditionally as in leapfrog, fly the garter, cap it, buck buck, saddle the nag, johnny on the pony, or monkey on the bridge, but none of these have survived. propelling oneself over the backs of others seems not to be a modem proclivity. hopping games, particularly hopscotch, have survived although many older forms have not -including hopping base, bumpers, hop peg, and hop the hats. the boys' games have not survived; the girls' games have. in this as in a number of other cases, the girls have retained traditions which the boys with their greater opportunities for modem sports have given up. similarly many traditional games are still preserved amongst the lower socio-economic groups and similarly reflect their lack of modem opportunities. skipping games or jump rope has survived, though in new zealand its place has been largely taken by elastics in which players hop in and out of an elastic encircling the legs of two others, or one and a table, at successively higher levels. the chief difference from traditional games in this case is that a game once dominated by males has in this century been taken over by females. another small class of locomotor games played by girls in their own traditional formation is that in which one girl controls the movements of the others who try to approach and take her place as in creeping up, steps and stairs, mother may i, etc. this group of games developed in variety and frequency throughout the twentieth century and now seem to be fading from the scene as girls participate increasingly in hitherto male sports like soccer. their presence throughout earlier history is uncertain. considering the variety of forms of play action that have here been compressed under the title of locomotion and their different gender and socioeconomic correlates one has to wonder what advantage such compression has over the clearer terms chasing, racing, jumping, hopping, skipping and creeping. a study of each kind and its context is in order surely. 8. acrobatics this category may also suffer from having to compress too many odd variations within this one kind of action. for example, there is the whole group of girls' games that involve dancing and singing, which might be excluded from consideration because they involve dance, but are in fact the most distinctive form of girls' traditional games over the past several 11 sutton-smith hundred years; so they are hard to eliminate. we know that in the middle ages these games were danced by young teen age couples as a part of their mating rituals, but that with the growth of church and civic suppression they became an almost singularly unsophisticated childhood girl concern, particularly after about 1800. there are some signs that boys are again showing an interest in the quite modem forms where the girls dance in an pantomime way singing their rock music derived songs to an admiring boys' audience (opie & opie singing game). the organization of the games as chain singing and circle games is, however, today at the simplest levels. in the past century these games were often played by older girls in teams or as couples. as well as these girls' games, there are others involving handclapping and ball bouncing which are likewise notable for their graceful and sometimes dance like movements. these too are usually accompanied by songs or chants. like the singing game category they are really not acrobatics or gymnastic in the general sense of the term, but they do fit the definition provided that they should be "performances requiring skillful control of the body." it is also a part of the anomaly of the modem playground that girls also spend more time in their spontaneous play than boys do in working on gymnastic playground apparatuses (bars, swings, trampolines) and in doing handstands, cartwheels, or imitative body postures (statues) in ways that are clearly gymnastic. all of these become a part of their own competitive games, so even if the above activities of handclapping, ball bouncing, and singing games do not seem to be entirely gymnastic, they are played by the same gender that specializes in childhood gymnastics. conclusion adopting the game categories of this european seminar (see appendix) and using my own information from childhood changes in games traditional and otherwise, i have sought to provide a commentary on the categories. my major problem has been with finding these particular actions, agencies, and actors sufficiently diverse in themselves to manage the phenomenon, and in having considerations of interactive forms and spatio temporal dimensions as well as the cultural context completely left out. still, i realize how difficult it is. no given set of categories is ever sufficient in an of itself except in terms of the declared purposes of the conceptual system, which in this case is to make a break between the traditional and the modem and to focus on the physically based traditional activities. my recommendations would be: 1. to consider the characteristic interactional character of these games. traditional team games are more diffuse without much role specialization and often they are group games in which one central player takes on everyone else, often players vie with each other for that position. the shift to our kind of team sports with role differentiation is a major break in game 12 perspective of children' s games history (sutton-smith "two cultures of games"); 2. to consider the way in which the dominantly rural character of traditional play affected both its spatial deployment (often between villages) and temporal occasioning (as affected by natural seasons); 3. to consider the names of titles of the different kinds of players in each game (clowns, fools, cats, dogs, etc.) and the kinds of linkages between such game player roles and actions. that is a history of game actors; 4. to consider the types of game actions as presently provided but with provision for the other differentiations (hitting, skipping etc. suggested in the above commentary) with attention to their gender and social correlate; 5. to create a category devoted entirely to game agencies and consider what earlier artifacts have been replaced by the modem ball, the modem electronic game, the modem toy, and modem card and board games; 6. to give due consideration to the elements of chance and strategy in physical skill games as these linkages were even most characteristic of earlier historical periods than they are today. the metaphor of the game of life is modelled more by games of chance for the peasants of modem masses than it is by either physical or strategic games; 7. to take a lesson from the history of the relatively useless antiquarianism and survivalism in folklore and not be satisfied simply with game descriptive collections. appendix: games as traditions the games that you will be recording were the customs of earlier people; they were not usually their traditions. the concept of tradition adds the additional notion of self conscious recognition by the people that the game they are performing enhances some other values that they believe they have in common. it introduces the notion of history to the notion of custom, or if you will the self-consciousness of history to the praxis of custom. in general, the concept of tradition as it applies to play, comes to us from the romantic era of western society and involves such names as rousseau, kant, goethe, schiller, wordsworth, coleridge, pestalozzi and fröbel etc. there is in all of these writers a sense that certain kinds of games and plays brought with them certain kinds of valuable spiritual or creative qualities from nature. when schiller says we are only wholly human when we play, he is thinking not of the folkgame practices of children in the muddy streets of eighteenth century mainz, germany; he is thinking of the reputedly amateur athletes of ancient greece. or if it is rousseau, he is not thinking of playful mental fantasies but of groups of parochial players in their villages who control each other through their physical sports. if it is wordsworth he is thinking contrarily of adults made creative by their own imaginings of things infantile. and if it is kant, he is thinking of the history of science and the role of the subjunctive mode of playful thought in invention, in aesthetics and in morality. and fröbel, of course, is thinking 13 sutton-smith of the spiritual significance of toys in childhood. there are all of these and many other ideas gathered together at the beginnings of the nineteenth century to create that game self-consciousness which turns games into traditions rather than their being just mere practices. games as traditions along with folktales or fairy tales or dances as traditions were in the first place all written about to enhance the national, cultural, or individual status of those who had once played them and perhaps should continue to play them. when alice b. gomme made her massive collections of english, scottish, and irish children's games at the end of the nineteenth century, she was as much concerned to reintroduce them into praxis as she was to record their extinction, although the folkdancing societies of the day were generally more successful in this regard than were the folkgame scholars. but gomme in 1891 brought a group of children to the international folk lore congress to demonstrate their games. it is said that her singers and dancers were the hit of the congress. by that time as the opies. have said, the philanthropic classes had become convinced that poor children needed to be taught how to play these "traditional" games. they had supposedly lost or had never had these games as customs and were now to be given them as traditions (bronner 22). in 1985 i attended a meeting of the third rainbow week international in toulouse, france, where children had been brought from many third world countries to demonstrate their games. the intention of the organizers was that these "traditional" games should be preserved and should act as a counterbalance to the spreading influence of televised sports and olympics which were destroying these traditional physical activities (they were including games, dances, initiation rites, motor activities, massages etc.). speakers spoke of the authenticity of the traditional games, their exemplary moral status as compared with the stereotypic character of international sports. in general, they proposed that schools in their countries should be given the task of their preservation. the parallel between gomme in 1891 and toulouse in 1985 is obvious. we have been losing or rather replacing game customs constantly over the past few hundred years. what was a european plight, as urbanization and industrialization increased dramatically in the 1700's and which led to the romantics attention to play, is now the plight of the whole world. tradition is another name for loss and another name for the attempt to preserve us from that loss. this preservation is usually sought in terms of self conscious moral or aesthetic or physical values. but in fact these values are newly invented in the contemporary cultural situations and are used as a selective device for pruning from tradition those aspects of it that are currently thought to be undesirable. neither lady gomme in 1891 nor the contemporary rainbow movement sought to cherish and to teach in schools multiple aspects of the savagery, cruelty, and brutality war preparation and 14 perspective of children's games sexual preparation which were often endemic parts of traditional games (gomme). what they did wish to do was teach in schools those games which they personally valued, and of course in the gomme's case as in the toulouse case, these were the more co-operative and less bellicose games. but teaching games thus self consciously by novel social agencies, games which had in the past always been a part of the collective inheritance and its own inherent means of transmission, makes them into performances rather than customs. most folkloric preservation has been of dances, stories and games taken out of their original contexts and turned into performances by the folk or abstracted from their original conditions or taken by professionals who now present these materials quite out of their original contexts and who create new contexts of dancing, storying, and playing for them. it is no surprise that the greatest shift in folklore theory in this century has been away from some form of "survivalism" where the games are seen as containing remnants of times past, to varieties of performance theory which examine the way in which the folk materials are presented aesthetically to their audiences (bauman). the inherently aesthetic value claimed for tradition by the early romanticists has now become the focus of how performances create their own aesthetics. in modem folklorists' hands tradition has largely become a contemporary and existential pursuit rather that a pursuit of ancient essences preserved into the present. all of which leads up to the position that tradition, perhaps formerly about loss, is now about the assertion of contemporary value and the use of selected earlier customs to heighten that value. thus the members of this conference whose own major interest is in sports choose to look only at the physical games of the past, not the chance of strategic or dancing games. as i have shown, the concentration on ball games and on physical actions to the relative exclusion of patterns of interaction and spatiotemporal contexts and varieties of players reflects that value system. in addition, the effort to find what european countries have in common in such traditional physical games just as apparently seeks new values in such selected commonalities as well as putting in the center of such new found values the physical actions that are the hallmarks of their profession and own future. in this light, traditions are the reflexive selections and transformations of those aspects of past customs which create identity and value for those engaged in this preservation. tradition is the reflection of how we wish to think about ourselves and to be accepted by others. tradition is a rhetoric of our own identity. final conclusion these few remarks on the selective character of "tradition" as well as my prior remarks on the selectivity of the categories that have been chosen need not, i believe, make any difference to your actual choices which do probably reflect your own values quite fairly. my remarks suggest, however, 15 sutton-smith that even if you are not responsive to some of the suggestions i have made, you are, i believe, required in scholarly terms to be more explicit about your own presuppositions, about how you have presupposed traditions. i hope in that respect my remarks have been helpful. they are meant to be clarifying rather than critical. university of pennsylvania works cited ariés, philippe. centuries of childhood. new york: knopf, 1962. bauman, richard. verbal art as performance. illinois: waveland, 1977. bronner, simon. american children's folklore. little rock: august house, 1988. burke, kenneth. a grammar of motives. new york: prentice hall, 1945. gomme, alice b. the traditional games of england, scotland and ireland. london: nutt, 1894. mangan, i.a. the games ethic and imperialism. new york: viking, 1986. opie, lona, and peter opie. children's games in street and playground. oxford: clarendon, 1969. __________. the singing game. oxford: oxford up, 1985. renson, r., m. manson, and e. de vroede. "typology for the classification of traditional games in europe," in e. de vroede and r. renson (008.), proceedings of the second european seminar on traditional games (leuven, belgium, 12-16 september 1990), leuven: vlaamse volkssport centrale, 63-81. roberts, i.m., and brian sutton-smith. "cross cultural correlates of games of chance." behavior science notes 3 (1966): 131-144. sutton-smith, brian. "the development of folklore and games in the pacific." international conference: history of sport and physical education in the pacific region (proceedings of international conference). dunedin, nz: u of otago p, 1978. _____________. the folkgames of children. austin: u of texas p, 1972. _____________. the games of new zealand children. berkeley: u of california p, 1959. _____________. a history of children' s play. philadelphia: u of p, 1981. _____________. "introduction of play as performance, rhetoric and metaphor." play and culture 2 (1989): 189-192. _____________. "the two cultures of games." aspects of contemporary sport sociology. ed. g. kenyon. chicago: athletic institute, 1969. _____________. "war toys and childhood aggression." play and culture 1 (1988): 57-69. 16 ocr document developing and appreciation for the cultural significance of childlorel carole h carpenter part of the responsibility of contemporary scholars of childlore rests in their actively promoting a genuine appreciation for children's own traditions so as to counteract the continuing perception of such material as merely the charming, nostalgia laden ephemera of innocents. childlore would seem by its very persistence in the modern age to merit serious investigation, for in a world of considerable cultural change that which endures ought to acquire particular significance and its uses, meanings and function in contemporary society should command attention. rather than dismissing childlore as culturally irrelevant, then, it is quite arguably more responsible to highlight this material and consider the impact of these durable traditions on the development and expression of individual, group and national identity. there are several reasons for assuming this responsibility, namely: 1. this approach potentially affords considerable illumination of the dynamics of cultural acquisition, generally and during childhood in particular; 2. there is a necessity given the complexity and demands of contemporary multicultural circumstances to gain as full an understanding as possible of the cultural milieu of children in order to shape and plan judiciously for their future; and 3. it is desirable to combat the persisting popular tendency to disregard the holistic humanity of children as equal, fully human beings—even to the extent of their having meaningful culture. by taking on this responsibility, folklorists can more adequately meet their ethical obligations to their young informants while contributing to a richer understanding of perhaps the single most important yet culturally neglected minority group in north america—our children. widespread popular belief as well as solid clinical evidence support the idea that childhood experiences are central to the development of our personalities. it might benefit our understanding of the acquisition and dynamic operation of culture (whether individual, group or national) if we were to consider seriously the 19 carpenter possibility of childhood cultural experiences having a similar formative influence on each person as a cultural being. to date, even the best discussions of childlore have paid limited attention to such enduring effects of experiences with the cultural artifacts of childhood. factor's captain cook chased a chook (1988) certainly points to, but does not elaborate upon, the possible influence of experiences during childhood in enabling empowerment and in effecting a given stance vis-a-vis culture and its manipulation. in one potato, two potato (1976), the knapps argue for recognizing the manipulation of childhood traditions as a primary means to acquiring valuable life skills. and some studies (e.g., kirshenblatt-gimblett's work on language and sutton-smith's on folk stories)2 do comment upon the significance of folklore experiences in cognitive and linguistic development. yet, even such fine discussions of the function of childlore stop short of documenting in detail the long-term impact of particular experiences with specific cultural artifacts of children's own culture. the persisting effects on perceived and operative identity associated with and expressed through such artifacts are scarcely ever recognized let alone analyzed in depth. alexander chamberlain called for an anthropological interpretation of children's culture as early as 1896 in the child and childhood in folkthought. yet, his was a developmental focus on the lore of childhood as a means to understanding culture generally, allowing as this material did examination of the past and the future, "for children as a semiliterate society inherit the oral tradition of the past and use it to shape the future" (bronner 47). the legacy of the gilded age has not ultimately directed academe or the general public to consider children's own traditions fully as culture-the dynamically interrelated process and product shaping orientation on existence (worldview) both affecting and effecting identity and, hence, overall way of life. the finest study of which i am aware relating early childhood cultural experiences to subsequent identity is a historical work, elliot west's growing up with the country: childhood on the far western frontier (1989) which, because of the author's orientation, does not highlight children's own traditions quite as a folklore study might. this paper seeks to address this evident lack in cultural scholarship and childlore studies. it explores the enduring influence of children's own expressive culture and of childhood cultural experience amongst five groups of modern canadians marginalized by various circumstances so that identity has been a particular issue for them, specifically: 1. residents of saskatchewan when it moved from territorial to provincial status in 1905; 20 developing and appreciation 2. newfoundlanders during the transitional period from ww ii through to the province's entering canadian confederation (1949); 3. montrealers living in a bilingual environment prior to official bilingualism in canada (before the late sixties); 4. the offspring of mixed ethnic group marriages before the adoption of the federal multicultural policy (1971); and 5. aboriginal canadians who attended residential schools before 1960. the data employed in this discussion are drawn from field as well as archival and library research conducted over the past four years. of special concern in this effort to reconstruct childhoods of times gone by and determine their impact on identity has been hearing the child's own voice, which is singularly absent from relevant "storying of childhood," to paraphrase rex and wendy stainton rogers (1992). therefore, appropriate adult informants were asked to re-member their childhood culture and to reflect upon its contribution to their identity. however tinged by nostalgia or warped by selective recall these memories might be, themes and recurrent patterns in them were considered as justifiably indicative of the actual historical situation. pilot fieldwork was conducted in saskatchewan (concerning group 1), b .c. (concerning groups 1 and 4), and ontario (concerning 3, 4 and 5). there is extensive documentation of the newfoundland situation in the memorial university of newfoundland folklore and language archive (munfla) which was selectively consulted. as well, some data were incorporated from the collection of questionnaires in the saskatchewan archives (regina) conducted in 1955 and pertaining to pioneer experiences,3 one set of which was specifically entitled "folklore." last (and actually least given the extant publications), information was obtained from ethnographic accounts, journals and memoirs of childhood. in group 1, the children concerned were of a broad range of ethnocultural heritage and mostly recent firstor second-generation immigrants to canada. a substantial number did not speak english in their homes, but were required to do so in school and, through peer pressure, on the playground. since pioneer saskatchewan was a rural agrarian society, most of the children were isolated on farms except when at school or during the harvest. at school, they strongly perceived a dominant anglo norm reflecting in part the contemporaneous british/empire orientation strong in their classrooms, but 21 carpenter also the desired orientation of their parents, the lingua franca of the children and the overall childhood cultural dynamic which elevated conformity. the following recollections explicate this cultural milieu: according to hilbert kreutzweiser (age 92), one morning in his fourth year he left the home of his birth in englefeld, saskatchewan "a wee fella who spoke german" and came back up the farm lane that afternoon "a real canadian lad"much to his parents' delight. (collected in saskatoon, 1992)4 frances kanuit, looking back as an 84-year old, chuckled about the playground of his youth in macoun, saskatchewan, saying: "to keep all the others from laughing at my name, i palled up with another guy—a kid with an accent, too—and together we beat everyone up. then i could play all the games and be just like them." (collected in kelowna, b.c., 1992) informants typically saw the long-term effects of their childhood cultural experiences to be a general homogenization of tradition outside the home which, in some instances, distanced them from their families. their identification was stronger beyond the region than within because of the immediate cultural disparities and the anglo norm which came (however much willingly adopted) from outside. in later years, shared agricultural/economic concerns promoted local identification which fed off the perceived dominance from outside and produced a certain antagonism to canadian (especially central canadian/ontario) authority and cultural dominance. the subordinate situation-real and perceived—of the prairie region had profound and enduring socio-cultural impact.5 according to my informants, their own cultural experiences resonated with this subordinate situation resulting in their viewing the rise of socialist parties in saskatchewan as a logical response to what they considered to be central canadian (and overall governmental) authoritarianism. further, in later life, many of them—staunch and patriotic canadians almost without exception— have regretted the fact that their parents and they, themselves, did not preserve more of their heritage traditions for subsequent generations. to a certain extent, then, they have welcomed the recent ethnification of canadian culture as a means of recapturing that lost heritage which, as children, embarrassed and marked them as outsiders. 22 developing and appreciation by considering the impact of childhood cultural experiences in pioneer saskatchewan then, one can better appreciate the reasons for the cultural prominence of socialism in the prairie region. also, the development of the seemingly conflicting intense ethnic sentiments alongside federalist identity are understandable as the logical consequences of the early childhood situation for many saskatchewan residents. let us turn now to group 2, consisting of newfoundlanders who were children during world war ii and up to 1949 when the former crown colony entered confederation with canada. there was a considerable commonality amongst children throughout newfoundland where the population was predominantly of english or irish background. they mostly shared a common language-indeed, a common dialect of that language which had developed amongst them6—and economic conditions in that the greatest number were from fishing families living in small, isolated villages. there was strong identification with britain across well-defined classes and throughout the island, accompanied by little knowledge of or involvement with canada. the experience of the outside increased greatly as a result of world war ii, during which newfoundland played a particularly strategic role especially as a result of the north atlantic convoys. the war tended to heighten "britishness" for children—an identity which was directly reflected in their songs, parodies, rhymes (many of which in munfla closely parallel the topical rhymes and other material in the opies' the lore and language of schoolchildren, chapter 7 in particular). personal awareness of a cultural other came to many of the children through american servicemen stationed in newfoundland. one informant (interviewed in toronto in 1992) recounted how airmen at the argentia base sought contact with local children as surrogates for their own families, and they used childhood traditions to do so. but, she said, their traditions were different, which made the local children recognize their own distinctiveness. besides, some of the servicemen were black—the personification of "the man in black," the "stranger," or "foreigner" who occupied a boogey-man/ frightening figure role in newfoundland childhood cultural tradition, as documented by john widdowson in if you don't be good (see especially page 275). childhood lore then served as a boundary maintenance device between the locals and the "come-from-aways" (as newfoundlanders call people from off their island). the schools meanwhile reinforced the inherent britishorientation as well as separation of distinct sub-groups, given that all schools then were church-operated. official childhood lore—as presented for instance in school texts or other books for children—promoted a britishoriented newfoundlandiana, both more regional and more connected to the 23 carpenter "old country"? than contemporaneous childhood lore elsewhere in canada (for instance, in vancouver between the 1920s and the 1960s as indicated by sutherland and confirmed in my recent fieldwork). over the long-term, these newfoundland children grew up with a sense of separateness, of being other but of being together in their identity. today the british connection remains for many of them, now amongst the older residents of the province, rather stronger emotionally than their attachment to canada. it is present in contemporary lore such as the popular saying in st. john's that one can go out on cape spear (the most easterly point in newfoundland) and come back with an irish accent.8 most people who were youngsters during world war ii have maintained a certain sense of being foreign within canada in good measure because of their childhood cultural experiences. the children of group 3 existed in three distinct groupings: the francophones, the jews, and the english canadians, the latter two together with other non-francophones comprising "les anglais," so-termed by the french-speaking majority in the province. children were separated on the streets by language and into schools by religion (the jews mostly attending protestant owing to discriminatory circumstances prohibiting their own religious schools).9 in keeping with the common cultural response in francophone/anglophone encounters throughout most parts of quebec, very little macaronic lore apparently developed here. the extant documentation of such traditions in canada is remarkably limited and pertains primarily to adults (see posen).10 . according to my informants, there was a macaronic tradition of jests or jeers in the montreal of their childhood, and this lore functioned for them primarily as a social boundary maintenance device, though its overt use was to bridge the linguistic barriers. there was very little non-institutionalized shared communication, though many of the children grew up able to speak both languages as a result of formal schooling and broad experience in the bilingual/bicultural city that was montreal in those days. with limited communication came almost no shared childhood traditions, so that while the linguistic communities were not geographically divided, child groupings were virtually mutually exclusive. the children's own lore was antagonistic to the perceived other, or focussed inward because of linguistic boundaries. here then was a miniature version of the situation described by lord durham in his 1840 report to the british government on the state of the canadian colony: "two nations warring within the bosom of a single state" (one might read street in the case of these children). the long-term manifestations of this childhood cultural situation are evident in the strong cultural protectionist sentiments in quebec today—both 24 developing and appreciation separatist and english-canadian. most of the leaders of quebec are fluently bilingual, but they developed throughout their youth, and today retain allegiance to and primary identity with, the particular culture of their childhood homes. their experiences in the popular culture have prompted many—especially though not exclusively the francophones—to react against bilingualism as a negative, a move towards losing one's own culture. there is, as a result, a demand (supported by legislation in the instance of the dominant francophones) for unilingualism to protect "threatened" culture. this perception of threat is directly traceable to the eyes of the child beholders from decades past. according to the 1991 census data, the majority of contemporary canadians are, like the members of group 4, of mixed ethnic extraction. prior to official multiculturalism (1971), those of such background mostly existed in some form of cultural amalgam within their homes and as nothing evidently distinctive culturally outside of them. largely they blended into the mainstream of childhood culture, becoming invisible often by conscious design (witness many offspring of japanese-canadian/caucasian marriages after the incarcerations of world war ii). they accepted the strong anglo norm in effect amongst children's groups (as demonstrated in neil sutherland's research in vancouver as well as in my later research on multicultural playgrounds in toronto in 1975-76 and 1986-87).11 over the years, such children developed no clear tie to any particular ethnic traditions unless one aspect of their heritage was dominant in their homes. they were, by virtue of their families' active nonparticipation in ethnic-oriented culture and consequent activities, usually excluded from the child-directed, child-focussed process whereby youngsters passed ethnicbased traditions amongst themselves and over the generations. as they matured, canada adopted multiculturalism and ethnicity flourished while mainstream traditions were down-played. consequently, many reported feeling that in having no overt ethnicity they had no culture.12 some embarked on a "rediscovery" of ethnicity, but most developed a profound sense of cultural alienation-the mosaic of cultural rhetoric did not embrace their identity; in fact, it denied status to their cultural reality. this situation is a major contributing factor to the on-going quest for identity that plagues modern canada.13 the final group is that on which i have done least fieldwork, but for which there is abundant documentation of the significance of childhood cultural experiences for native people who as children attended residential schools up into the 1960s when they were finally closed. essentially, the oral traditions these native children shared helped them preserve their indianness, becoming (along with their memories of home and family/community) their 25 carpenter focus of identity. this childlore was consciously rejected by some children who purposefully tried to fit in, to some extent out of fear of punishment by their non-native custodians. but most of the youngsters themselves recognized the oral traditions they shared as a means of defiance and rebellion and actively used them as such. this circumstance is vividly represented in shirley sterling's my name is seepeetza (1992), a recent award-winning fictionalized journal of life in a residential school located in the interior of b.c. the young narrator, called martha stone at the school, recounts an instance in which she is given one of several dolls donated by the local community. recalling dolls made for her by her mother, she promptly buries it and looks up to discover an older girl looking on: she said she was a grandmother, and she had stsa-wen. i was surprised to hear her say that word. it means dried fish. i thought only we knew that word from home. she handed me an old dried piece of pine wood and told me to sit on the ground to eat my stsa-wen. we sat cross-legged on the ground facing each other near an old log so we could keep warm. the tumbleweeds were rolling past and the wind was kind of moaning. (37-38) the many testimonials from contemporary adult native people bear witness to the long-term effect of their schooldays which was cultural suppression at the very least. those i interviewed (in the muskoka region of ontario) evidenced a profound militance to preserve their heritage for themselves and by themselves as, it must be emphasized, they have come to perceive it. in large measure gone is the nostalgia for times past along with any substantial concern for traditional veracity to be replaced with a dedication to reject the appropriation of their voice and to be heard where once they were silenced. one such informant characterized the current status of her people's traditions through recalling a circumstance from her own childhood: towards the end of the month, just before my grandparents could buy new batteries—they could only afford them once a month when their cheques came in—the sound from the radio would get weaker and weaker. there would be something you really wanted to hear, but it was fading away from your grasp. (1993) 26 developing and appreciation some (like basil johnston, long an ethnographer with the royal ontario museum in toronto) have tried to educate the non-native society and in so doing have supported cultural self-determination (see indian schooldays). in all, most of my informants showed many cultural commonalities with other suppressed/oppressed peoples. there is a rejuvenation of indianness amongst youth (in a contemporary guise, often with little direct reference to the historical traditions and sometimes of a pan-indian nature).14 this cultural revitalization involves the employment-deployment might actually be the better term-of native traditions as they were used during the natives' childhoods, that is, as weapons-both to protect and to do battle against the threatening cultural milieu. excellent examples of this cultural stance or orientation with respect to traditions include the armed confrontations at oka in 1991 between mohawks and first, quebec provincial police and then, canadian military forces as well as powerful non-violent activity through the numerous native council houses established in recent years as veritable cultural rehabilitation centres. this cultural articulation derives from a form of romantic nationalism, similar in nature and goals to the many 19th-century movements centred around folk traditions. already the socio-political products of a native movement bred in substantial measure through the cultural (mis)treatment of children are obvious in the greater evidence of the native voice in canadian politics, widespread support for the natives' demand for self-government, the recent commencement of the dismantling of the department of indians affairs and the realization of a native to such an understanding of childhood culture through themselves giving children's lore thoroughly scholarly attention, discouraging romantic and sentimental treatments of it and promoting full appreciation of its significance especially amongst those who work with as well as for children. york university, north york, on, canada notes 1. an earlier version of this paper was presented at the american folklore society meeting in eugene, oregon, october 1993. i am grateful to linda morley, priscilla ord and ruth stotter for their helpful comments and criticisms. 2. sutton-smith, the folkstories of children (philadelphia, 1981) and kirshenblatt-gimblett, speech play (philadelphia, 1976). 27 carpenter 3. this series of questionnaires was undertaken as part of the fiftieth anniversary celebration of the province's entry into confederation in 1905. at that time, a substantial proportion of those who experienced the transitional period as children were alive and able to contribute significantly to the documentation of their past. 4. all the interviews cited are included within my collection on deposit in the ontario folklore-folklife archive of the ontario folklife centre located at york university, north york, ontario. 5. as noted by the prominent canadian historian w. l. morton, amongst others. morton directly associates this socio-historical circumstance with a marked distinctiveness about the political climate, "the bias of prairie politics," which supported, he argues, the growth of grass-roots socialism amongst other things. i discovered morton's article (in transactions of the royal society of canada, vol. xlix, series iii, section two [june 1955], 289-300 and variously reprinted) after my original presentation of this paper in eugene. queries raised at that time challenging the linkage i reported led me to seek corroboration of my informants' contentions, which morton more than adequately provides. 6. as extensively documented in g. m. story, w. j. kirwin and j.d.a. widdowson, eds. dictionary of newfoundland english. toronto: university of toronto press, 1990 (1982). 7. the reference to great britain most commonly used in english-speaking canada at the time and well into the sixties. 8. personally collected several times over three decades, most recently in october 1991. 9. as documented in mary ashworth, children of the canadian mosaic, chapter 6 "jewish children," 57-68. 10. the few scholarly references to macaronic children's lore in canada include an unpublished paper by gerald thomas concerning the french in newfoundland's port-au-port peninsula presented at the american folklore society meeting in 1987; my own work on "ethnic joke-telling among canadian children," culture and tradition 7(1985): 31-41; and some brief remarks by margaret bennett knight in "scottish, gaelic, english and french: some aspects of the macaronic tradition of the codroy valley, newfoundland," regional language studies. . . newfoundland 4(1972): 25-30. 11. as reported in several papers to the american folklore society (1976 and 1987), the american anthropological association (1976), and the american culture association (1984) and published in my article cited in note 10. 12. as reported in several articles in stella hryniuk, ed. twenty years of multiculturalism: successes and failures. (winnipeg: st. john's college press, 1992), the proceedings of a conference in which this circumstance surfaced as an emotionally-charged issue. see in particular richard ogmondson, "on the right to be a canadian," 45-55. 13. as argued in my paper "folklore as a tool of multiculturalism" in hryniuk (1992): 149-160. 14. an excellent example is the homogenized nature of drumming, the lighting of supposed council fires as symbolic protest, and the omniprescence of bald eagle feathers as speaker's tokens. 28 developing and appreciation works cited ashworth, mary. children of the canadian mosaic: a brief history to 1950. toronto: oise, 1993. bronner, simon. "expressing and creating ourselves in childhood: a commen tary." children's folklore review 15.1 (fall 1992): 47-52. chamberlain, alexander. the child and childhood in folk-thought. new york: macmillan, 1896. factor, june. captain cook chased a chook: children's folklore in australia. ringwood: penguin, 1988. johnston, basil. indian school days. toronto: key porter, 1988. kirschenblatt-gimblett, barbara. speech play: research and resources for study ing linguistic creativity. philadelphia: u of pennsylvania p, 1981. knapp, mary, and herbert knapp. one potato, two potato: the folklore of american children. new york: norton, 1976. opie, iona, and peter opie. the lore and language of school children. london: oxford up, 1959. posen, sheldon. "english-french macaronic songs in canada-a research note and query." canadian folklore canadien 14.2 (1992): 35-43. stainton rogers, rex, and wendy stainton rogers. stories of childhood: shifting agendas of child concern. toronto: u of toronto p, 1992. sterling, shirley. my name is seepeetza. vancouver: douglas & mcintyre, 1992. sutherland, neil. '''everyone seemed happy in those days:' the culture of childhood in vancouver between the 1920s and the 1960s." history of education review 15.2 (1986): 37-51. sutton-smith, brian. the folkstories of children. philadelphia: u of pennsylvania p, 1981. west, elliot. growing up with the country: childhood on the far western frontier. albuquerque: u of new mexico p, 1989. widdowson, j .d.a. if you don't be good: verbal social control in newfoundland. st. john's: iser, memorial u, 1977. 29 ~rnj~~[idwrn~9~~(id~m~(idwrn~rn~lf~(id~~rn~rnrnw~rnj~[p jean day alexander 257 g st. sw washington, dc 20024 shirley arora dept. of spanish & portugese ucla los angeles, ca 90024 shirley baird 404 n. morris street shi ppensburg, pa 17257 mary jo sanna barron quincy house e-25 harvard university cambridge, ma 02138 caroline feller bauer 6892 seaway circle huntington beach, ca 92648 edna garrido boggs 536 altara ave. coral gables, fi 33146 carole boughter director, folklife center international house 370 i chestnut st. philadelphia, pa 19104 simon bronner american studies pennsylvania state univ. capitol campus middletown, p a 17057 arnold e. burkart keeping up with music ed. p.o. box 2717 muncie, in 47302 pack carnes dept. of anthropology univ. of california berkeley, ca 97420 john cech english department university of florida gainesville, fl 32611 mary gay ducey 2808 hillegass berkeley, ca 97405 joseph edgette 509 academy ave. glenolden, pa 19036 bill ellis pennsylvania state univ. hazleton campus highacres hazleton, p a 1820 i gary alan fine department of sociology university of minnesota minneapolis, mn 55455 mrs. j. w. gaither 1130 west imhoff norman, ok 73072 michelle mahan gautsch 108 w. 39th st. #w-io baltimore, md 2121.0 libby tucker gould 136 meeker road vestal, ny 13850 sylvia grider english department texas a&m university college station, tx 77843 maryellen hains english department western michigan university kalamazoo, m i 49008 judith haut 2733 halsey road topanga, ca 90290 kay hill 95 olive street new haven, ct 06511 karen hirsch spo 1163 sewanee, tn 37375 linda hughes rd #2, box 67 cochranville, pa 19330 ted humphrey 421 baughman ave. claremont, ca 91711 nancy j. johnson 2900 northwind drive, #515 east lansing, m i 48823 thomas johnson chico folklore archive california state university chico, ca 95929-0400 brigitta ludgate 24665 cabrillo st. carmel, ca 93923 amy mcclure 8751 craighton ct. dublin, oh 43017 margaret macdonald 1507 n e 104th kirkland, wa 98033 marsha macdowell 212 n. harrison bloomington, in 47401 jean m. maclaughlin 107 e. dunedin rd. columbus, oh 43214 jane madsen 530 hillside avenue state college, p a 1680 i priscilla manwaring 4040 grand avenue bloomington, in 47401 phyllis m. may 1833 summit pi., nw #103 washington, dc 20009 alan mays 1212 nissley rd. lancaster, pa 17601 jay mechling american studies 822 sproul university of california davis, ca 95616 richard e. meyer dep!. of humanities western oregon state college monmouth, or 97361 linda morley 308 sagamore street manchester, n h 03104 john niles english department university of california berkeley, ca 94720 nancy nystrom 180 claywell dr. san antonio, tx 78209 priscilla ord english department longwood college farmville, va 2390 i sandra peck 24 cedar tree irvine, ca 92715 barbara reed old quarry guilford, ct 06437 danielle roemer language and literature northern kentucky univ. highland heights, ky 41076 sue samuelson 205 revere hall harrisburg, pa 17104 kathleen scholl dept. of elementary ed. suny-new paltz new paltz, ny 12561 alvin schwartz 505 prospect ave princeton, nj 08540 elizabeth simons 969 hilldale ave berkeley, ca 94708 ruth stotter 2244 vistazo e. tiburon, ca 94920 c. w. sullivan iii english department east carolina university greenville, nc 27858-4353 brian sutton-smith department of ed ucational psychology school of education university of pennsylvania philadelphia, pa 19174 ray turner p.o. box 333 ary, ky 41712 richard van dongen curriculum & instruction college of education university of new mexico albuquerque, nm 87131 barbara walker archive of turkish oral narrative texas tech university p.o. box 4185 lubbock, tx 79409 hilda webb 2833 hyde park place cincinnati, oh 45208 mark i. west english department unc-charlotte charlotte, nc 28223 william a. wilson english department utah state university logan, ut 84322 ***** central serial records university of kentucky libraries lexington, ky 40506 cooper library serials department clemson, sc 29631 folklore archives english department university of oregon eugene, or 97403 indiana university libraries serials department indiana university bloomington, in 47407 museum of international folk art museum of new mexico box 2087 santa fe, nm 87504-2087 joyner library east carolina university greenville, nc 27858-4353 ralph brown daughton library serials dept/ labw9561 mell street auburn university alabama 36849 wheelock college library 132 riverway boston, ma 02215 gift & exchange copies association of folklorists in the south folk & intercultural studies western kentucky university bowling green, ky 4210 i blue ridge institute newsletter ferrum college ferrum, va 24088 children's literature quarterly perry nodelman, editor english department univ. of winnipeg winnipeg, manitoba canada r3b 2e9 center for southern folklore jude duffell 1216 peabody avenue p.o. box 40105 memphis, tn 38105 folk arts coordinator folklife program state arts council, rm 640 jim thorpe building oklahoma city, ok 73105-4987 folklore archive 448 purdy library wayne state university detroit, m i 48202 folkpatterns (newsletter) the museum michigan state university east lansign, m i 48824 folksong in the classroom (newsletter) laurence i. seidman, editor 140 hill park avenue great neck ny 11021 state documents assistant documents unit j. murrey atkins library unc-charlotte charlotte, n c 28223 joseph c. hickerson, head archive of folk culture library of congress washington, dc 20540 gift & exchange division library of congress washington, dc 20540 motif (newsletter) department of english ohio state university 165 west 17th avenue columbus, oh 43210 north carolina folklore journal appalachian state university boone, nc 28608 phaedrus (newsletter) james fraser, editor farleigh dickinson university madison, nj 07940 serials librarian country music foundation library and media center 4 music square east nashville, tn 37203 southwest folklore keith cunningham, editor english department northern arizona university flagstaff, az 860 ii southwest folklore center 1524 east 6th street tuscon; az 85721 canadian & overseas members australian children's folklore newsletter cj -le.c.d. 4 madden grove kew, 3101, victoria australia 7 melbourn college of advanced education librarian, le.c.d. p.o. box 210 kew, vic 3101 australia barbara tobin 25 bernedale way duncaring 6023 western australia australia u ni versitei tsbi b liot heek -k ul lvol mgr. ladeuzeplein 21 b-3000 leuven belgi urn carole h. carpenter 172 roselawn avenue toronto, ontario m4r i e6 canada delf hohmann folklore/ memorial univ. st. john's, newfoundland aic 5s7 canada june factor iecd madden avenue kew, victoria 310 i australia edith fowke 5 notely place toronto, ontario m4b 2m7 canada canadian museum of civilization library asticou centre block 1600 ottawa, ontario kia om8 canada danmarks paedagogiske bibliothek tidsskriftafdelingen lersl> parkalle 10i dk-2100 copenhagen ii denmark erik kaas nielsen rypevaenget 16 2600 gelostrup dk denmark ruth canonicowebster 15 park street crediton, dexon exi73eq england lona opie westerfield house west liss hampshire gu336jq england stephen roud 18 amberley grove addiscombe surrey cro 6nd england paul smith laburnum house main street west stock with doncaster dn 10 4h b english akateeminen kirjakauppa periodicals department p.o. box 128 sf-ooioi helsinki 10 finland library of the society of finnish literature hallitusk i sf-00170 hkl 17 finland andy arico chemin d u bignon baguet 44600 saint-nazaire france niedersaechische staatsund universitaetsbibliothek zugang ii a-zss prinzenstr. 1 3400 goettingen west germany rainer wehse kapitan-lehmann-str. 6 3400 gottingen west germany ase enerstvedt etn-folkloristisk instituit olaf ryesvei 19 postboks 23 5014 bergenuniversitet norway northern college of education the librarian hilton place aberdeen a b9 if a scotland christer dominder horngatan 21b s-602 34 norrkoping sweden bengt af klintberg vendevagen 13 18131 lidingo sweden per peterson timmermansgantan 6f s-753 33 uppsala sweden dr. maria osorina dept of general psychology leningrad state university universitetskaya nabereznaya leningrad ussr tecwyn vaughan jones welsh folk museum st. fagan's, cardiff cf5 6xb wales paul smith laburnum house main street west stock with doncaster dn 10 4hb england menna lloyd williams children's literature research centre castell brychan aberystwyth sy232jb wales ren's folklore newsletter the . i volume ii, number 2 t:llere we go, 'round again" the children's folklore section has changed the subscription rate policy; subscription rates will now be assessed for the calendar year instead of the academic year. because of this change, the children's folklore newsletter will readjust its volume and number designations. starting this calendar year, the spring issue will be volume iii, number 1;the fall issue will be number 2; and the winter issue will be number 3. tentative deadlines for submission of materials to be published in the newsletter: spring issue march 30 fall issue september 30 winter issuedecember30 c. w. sullivaniii editor lill~~@od~@rn~rn~lj~1 subscription dues notice . at the october 1979 meeting of the children's folklore section in los angeles, the annual subscription ra te for the newsletter was set at $5.00/ year. subscription notices for 1980 have already gone out. any person wishing to subscribe to the newsletter should send a check for $5.00 to: gary alan fine, chair children's folklore section department of sociology universityof minnesota minneapolis,minnesota55455 children's folklore section constitution . the constitution committee of the children's folklore section is currently preparing a draft to be discussed at the 1980 meeting. anyone wishing to make suggestions at this time should address them to: thomas w. johnson department of anthropology california state university, chico chico, california 95929 -l winter 1979 minutes, children's folklore section meeting, 1979 the children's folklore section of the american folklore society met on friday, october 26, at the los angeles hilton. before the election of officers, we discussed the question of annufll dues: should the present amount of $5.00 be changed? we decided, in view of the newsletter expenses and the possibility of other publications, to retain the same amount. one possible publication, a journal of the children's folklore section, was discussed at some length. we agreed that it would be premature to found such a journal at this time, though it might be a worthwhile project for the future. a vote was taken to reappoint the present steering committee for one year, in the following positions: gary alan fine, chair elizabeth tucker, secretarytreasurer sylvia grider, archivist c. w. sullivan iii, editor in the future, the terms of officers' service will be staggered. gary alan fine, who had served as treasurer during the past year, presented a financial report. the balance of the children's folklore section, as of october, 1979, is 253.94. several members suggested that the time had come to draft a constitution for the children's folklore section. with the approval of all present, a four-person constitution committee was formed. sue samuelson, karana drayton, and tom johnson will work together on the constitution, with another participant ex officio (to be. decided by the section officers). maryellen hains made a motion to have a draft of the constitution in the hands of the membership thirty days before the next meeting. this motion was approved. linda morley then suggested that the newsletter call for members to contribute to the efforts of the constitution committee. gary alan fine told of his meeting with marilyn braunstein of greenwood press, who had contacted him after seeing the newsletter's first issue. as a result of their discussion, three possibilities have emerged: a children's folklore handbook, an annotated bibliography, and a motif index of children's games, stories, or other material. another editor, from the garland publishing house, has expressed interest in a children's glossary. barbara walker suggested tbe shoestring press as another alternative. several questions were raised about (conlin~d on page z) minutes. continl/ed. . . the handbook: should it come first, before other publication possibilities? would it be a handbook along the lines of dorson's folklore and folkl(fe?would royalties come to the children's folklore section? kenny goldstein reminded us that no publication can be published by a section without approval of the afs editorial board. publications of the afs now go through the university of pennsylvania press. elizabeth tucker suggested that all of these logistics be carefully considered before making any commitment. it was suggested, and unanimously approved, that an ad hoc publications committee be established. the members nominated for this committee were: barbara kirshenblatt-gimblett tom burns priscilla ord linda morley barbara walker kenny goldstein carol carpenter a motion was made that all of these members be elected (plus one member ex officio) subject to the approval of the two absent members. this motion was accepted by acclamation. under new business, linda morley brought up the need for librarians and teachers to be informed what folklore is. could the children's folklore section sponsor a one-day conference in pittsburgh prior to the next afs meeting? the library association would be likely to cooperate. if one year would not be enough for preparation, then the conference could be held in 1981. sylvia grider said that one year would not be enough to prepare such a conference, which must be brought to the attention of the executive board. priscilla ord suggested that members of the school of library science could be invited to join us; linda morley replied that it would be better to have a workshop. maryellen hains proposed looking into the possibility of a summer institute. barbara walker said that cooperation from the acls and ala would be likely for such a project. kenny goldstein suggested another possibility: to go and do panels at librarians' meetings. the section could pick its best spokesman to attend meetings ofiibrarians. gary alan fine concluded that it was probably too late to prepare a conference for the pittsburgh meeting, and that kenny goldstein's idea was more immediately feasible. a committee should be formed to discuss feasibility, with a tentative goal of the san antonio meeting. maryellen hains proposed the formation of a speaker's bureau; the lack of payment for possible speakers was brought up to counter this proposal. tom johnson suggested that linda morley investigate what might be done. katharine briggs stated that there were good ideas, but the constitution should be formulated first. the elizabeth gaskell room should be formally suggested for the pittsburgh meeting. gary fine nominated sylvia grider, linda morley, and priscilla ord to look into the possibility of meeting with librarians. this is not yet a formally constituded committee. priscilla ord announced that the children's literature association was accepting paper proposals until nov. 15 for its march meeting in waco, texas. the popular culture association was also accepting calls for papers until nov. 15 for its spring meeting in detroit. chip sullivan and gary alan fine were commended by the section members for their fine work with the newsletter and publicati°!l i~quiries, respectively. elizabeth tucker secretary-treasurer lj[}{]~ @ [}{]~~[id 00~ [k]9~ @j~@~~ffioov in each issue we hope to publish a list of items offolk speech used by children in the course of their informal speech. words should be defined according to their definition in use. also, where possible, part of speech, age of users, location in which the words were heard and collected, and other background information available should be noted. contributors should use the glossary form in the journal, american speech. hopefully, if this section of the newsletter proves to be a success, after several years we can consider afull compilation of all terms collected in a published glossary. contributors should attempt not to contribute words or phrases used by both children and adults with similar meanings, although this distinction is never a clear one. pre-adolescent male slang ii gary alan fine universityof minnesota the following examples of folk speech are derived middle class suburb of minneapolis, minnesot~, consistfrom participant observation research in five american ing of a large number of modern mass-produced homes, communities during the period 1975-1977: (i) beanville, and (5) maple bluff, studied by harold pontiff, an urban, an upper-middle class professional suburb of boston, upper-middle class, professional area ofst. paul, minnemassachusetts; (2) hopewell, an exurban township outsota. boys were between the ages of ten and twelve. side the providence, rhode island, metropolitan area, terms included in the glossary were all part of the consisting of a string of small towns, beach-front land, active vocabulary of male pre-adolescents during the farms and a campus of the state university; (3) bolton years studied. however, it is probably true that several of park, an upper-middle class professional suburb of st. these terms are also used by females and those of other paul, minnesota,-similar to beanville except for geograages. the most obvious examples of adult folk speech phical areas; (4) sanford heights, a middle-to-iowerhave been eliminated from this list. 2 winter79_vol2no2_part1 winter79_vol2no2_part2 the . i spring 1987 volume x, number 1 folklore newsletter ill~~@rnj~@rn~rn~lf~ the children's folklore section of the amercian folklore society announces competition for the 1987 w. w. newell prize the children's folklore section of the american folklore society announces competition for the 1987 w. w. newell prize. a $100 cash award for the best student essay on a topic in children's folklore will be awarded. the paper must have been written by an undergraduate or graduate student within the 1986-1987 academic year. papers published by students within the same time frame are also eligible. students may submit their own papers; instructors are asked to encourage students with eligible papers to enter the competition. papers must be typed, double-spaced, on white bond paper. on the first page include the author's name, academic address, home address, and telephone numbers. the winner will receive a $100 award at the annual meeting of the american folklore society in albuquerque, nm, in october, 1987.the winning paper does not have to be read at the meeting but entrants are encouraged to submit abstracts of their papers to the afs program committee. if the winning paper is read at the meeting it will be identified as the winner of the newell prize. deadline for submissions is july 1, 1987. send 2 copies of each entry to: priscilla ord vice president, cfn department of english longwood college farmville, va 23901 . new members wishing back issues of the newsletter can still purchase them. volume 1, number 1,edited by tom burns, is available only in xerox copies; there is a small stock of all other numbers. . anyone preparing a panel or presenting a paper on any aspect of children's folklore at the 1987 american folklore society meeting in albuquerque is asked to send a brief description to the newsletter for publication in the fall 1987number. . there is a carrot in my ear, reviewed in cfn v:2, and more scary stories to tell in the dark, reviewed in cfn viii:1,both by alvin schwartz, have been published in harper trophy editions, (paper) by harper & row. . the maryland storytelling festival will be held on the campus of western maryland college on june 5 & 6. featured tellers will be jon spelman, mary carter smith, and tom wisner. for information, write: carroll county public information/ tourism 225 north center street westminster. md 21157 . the storyteller's calendar (for 1988)is offering a preorder special. order one calendar before 1july 1987for $10.00 including shipping and handling (a $2.00 saving) or five calendars for $40.00. make checks payable to: ruth stotter. this is a full-color calendar with pictures of objects relating to storytelling. for information, write: stotter-storytelling calendar p.o. box 726 stinson beach, ca 94970 . augustaheritagefestivalfrom july 12to august16 features some 85 intensive classes in various aspects of folklore on the campus of davis & elkins college. for a free, 36-page brochure, write: augusta heritage festival box fp davis & elkins college elkins, wv 26241 the hildren's folklore newsletter c. w. sullivan ill, edilor english department, east carolina university greenville, north carolina 27858-4353 the children's folklore newsletter, published three times a year, is sent to all members of the children's folklore section. special arrangements can also be made with any folklore-related organization wishing to receive copies. all materials to be considered for' publication should be sent to the editor. issn 0739-5558 published by east carolina university printed at the ecu print shop friendship bracelets, continued used in usually called embroidery, cross stitch, or floss thread. as with all of the materials used to make all of the friendship bracelets through time, these materials are very inexpensive to purchase and come in a variety of colors. i concentrated this research on those friendship bracelets made by children from grade two to grade nine, but the bracelets now in fashion are worn by people age six through forty and are made by people in the same age groups. the tradition of wearing and giving friendship bracelets will certainly continue among children for generations to come. making the bracelets will be an activity to keep children from boredom in a dull class, on a rainy day when they cannot head out to play, or on those dreaded days when they are kept at home as punishment. the bracelets will vary in materials used, in design, and in the shape of the finished product; but they will all serve the same purpose. these bracelets will be something inexpensive to make for friends and to be worn as a fashion statement. catherine klutz ~[jfj~rn[j[jfj~~d@[jfj~~mj~~g][j@olj[jfj~ill~~@@d~oo@[jfj for those of you who weren't at the last children's folklore section, ip a stands for the international playground association who now calls itself the international association for the child's right to play. it is an advocacy organization devoted to the safety of playground activity and design. for the folklorist, the work of the ip a can be of interest to those of us interested in the material culture of children as well as the creation of environments for children's traditions. at the last children's folklore section meeting, i described the work of the ip a and was then asked to report on the activities of the organization. here is what the december newsletter was about. the december issue was dedicated to the ipa/ usa meeting that took place in cincinnati in january of 1989,a short article on adventure playgrounds, announcements of meetings and call for papers, and summary of resolutions passed at the ipa conference in 1986and in november of 1988. i. the resolutions passed at the above meetings are all associated with the creation of standards for safe and well monitored playgrounds. these resolutions call for the use of equipment endorsed by the consumer product safety commission, and for playgrounds designed with children's desires and needs in mind. the resolutions also call for trained play leaders and a closer relationship with the american association for leisure and recreation (aalr) 2. debra a. johnson's paper on adventure playgrounds was published in this newsletter. "adventure playgrounds in after school programs" surveys the history of adventure playgrounds from their beginning in scandinavia in 1943 to their presence in the united states today. an adventure playground is based on the observation that children like to play with scrap materials on construction sites. the adventure playground is an outdoor environment in which these scraps are "transplanted" so that children can play in a safe place. they are also monitored by play leaders who are trained to advise without usurping the child's creative energies and abilities. 3. announcements a) meeting: association of childhood education international, 5-8 april 1989, indianapolis, hyatt regency hotel. contact: jerry odland, association for childhood education international 11141 georgia avenue, suite 200, wheaton, md. 20902 (1-800-423-3563) b) call for papers: for a special issue of environments quarterly on "the design of community and family environments for children with disabilities." contact elaine ostroff, adaptive environments center, 621 huntington avenue, boston 02115, or call (617) 739-0088 c) news from the consumer product safety commission: on a suit settled between the miracle recreation equipment company and people affected by the dangerous design of certain equipment. d) plae, inc. has launched" the playful city" "a national effort to create guidelines for the development of urban communities to support the needs of children, youth and their families. the program is funded by the national endowments for the arts." the guidelines are to be developed at a workshop-conference to be held at stanford university in the fall of 1989. for more information, contact plae, inc., 1824 fourth street, berkeley, ca. 94710, or call 415-345-7523 anyone interested in joining ipa may contact: helen stapel, 36 deerfield lane, simsbury, ct. 06070, 1-800-553-2446. jan rosenberg ~~~ [k1a]rnllijo~rn[j@~ [poo~~d@g)nd@ou@ simon bronner. american children's folklore. little rock, ar: august house, 1988. a survey/study of contemporary children's folklore. also available in an annotated edition. contains a picture of five-year-old simon bronner. bengt af klintberg. "black madame, come out!" scandinavian yearbook of folklore 1988(44): 155-167. a study of the spiritual; seance in which the black madame is called out of a mirror. c. w. sullivan iii. welsh celtic myth in modern fantasy. westport, ct: greenwood, 1989. a study of several authors' use of welsh celtic myths and legends in literature. 5 ocr document "i hate you, you hate me": children's responses to barney the dinosaur elizabeth tucker since the spring of 1992, public television has given american viewers regular glimpses of a large purple dinosaur named barney who teaches preschoolers how to brush their teeth, recognize colors, and make new friends. although barney seems at first glance to be thoroughly bland and harmless, he has become the focal point of a raging controversy between lovers and haters of his tv persona. schoolchildren have given barney a violent death in song parodies and mock-beatings; adolescents and adults have created their own song parodies, written humorous articles, and spread rumors about barney's evil intentions on the internet. while there is a strong thematic unity between children's and adults' attacks on barney, i will not try to cover the whole range of expressive behavior here. children's barney songs and mock-beatings constitute an important body of folklore in themselves, reflecting a larger cultural phenomenon in which fear of coercion, rebellion against authority, and anger toward blandness are dominant issues. a background check on barney reveals that he first came to television in 1988 as star of the small-scale "backyard show" in texas. cheryl leach, a former teacher and the mother of an active two-yearold, wanted to create a character who would capture young children's attention. with help from a friend and capital from her father-in-law, who owned a video studio, leach began a campaign to boost awareness of barney in nursery schools and daycare centers. the breakthrough came when four-year-old leora rifkin found a barney tape in a connecticut video store and watched it, as her father said, "over and over and over" (lawson; fitzpatrick). since leora's father was executive vice-president for connecticut public television, he was able to launch barney on pbs in april of 1992. the show got off to a slow start and pbs threatened to cancel it, but a write-in campaign from parents and children kept the show on the air. within a year, barney had become a household word. news anchorman peter jennings called him "a rage," and others started to use the words "cult" and "mania" (fitzpatrick). barney and friends surpassed sesame street as the highest rated pbs series for children, and the na tucker tional pbs preschool audience rose by 30%. barney-lovers made up 45% of the pledges in connecticut public television's first fundraiser since the beginning of the craze. and barney merchandise, including dolls, slippers, bedsheets, and clothes, rose into the hundreds of millions in sales (forest). statements of support by psychologists, parents, and children have shown that the rapid escalation of barney's popularity hasn't just come from artificial publicity; many people truly do love and appreciate barney. dorothy singer, co-director of yale's family television research and consultation center, says, "barney represents the type of person a lot of people wish they had in their lives-someone who is always loving and approving and really nice whenever he or she is around you" ("secret"). singer's explanation gains credibility from tributes like this one from three-year-old laura carroll: "i like barney, he's so nice. i want to give him a great big hug" (fitzpatrick). some of the most dramatic statements about barney come from parents of preschoolers and children in the first and second grades. one young mother told me that her eighteen-month-old daughter, while ill with chickenpox, wanted to do nothing but watch barney tapes. with wide eyes fixated on the antics of her purple friend, the little girl had just one word to say: "more!" another mother said that her seven-year-old son, after seeing a tv commercial for a local barney performance, turned to her with disturbingly vacant eyes and asked in a singsong voice, "can we go? can we get front-row seats?" this apparent mesmerization of young children has troubled their parents. terms related to drug use and abuse have arisen in critiques of the barney show. "my daughter's addicted to him!" was the claim of one reporter (ferguson). another writer referred to barney as the "drug of choice" for a legion of preschoolers (forest). despite these disturbing, semi-humorous references to drug-induced conformity, many parents have been happy to see their children becoming happy and quiet—one writer used the term "immobilized"—when barney's show is on ("pacifier"). the age at which young barney-lovers become barney-haters seems to vary. in most cases, the shift seems to occur around the second grade. after getting through the first year of elementary school, children start looking for ways to establish their status in the school's hierarchy. no longer the youngest, they look for ways 26 "i hate you, you hate me" to assert their superiority to new recruits. making fun of barney, beloved icon of the preschool set, serves the purpose of establishing superiority very effectively. parodies of barney songs began to emerge when the show achieved national recognition. these parodies peaked in the fall of 1993; at that time, children on playgrounds across the united states delighted in sharing barney songs they had heard, and some children also enjoyed inventing new versions. my data sample of barney songs comes from children in new york, pennsylvania, and california; all of these songs were collected in 1993 and 1994. the songs spread with lightning speed and also faded relatively quickly, as is common with topical song parodies (opie; knapp). my collection of children's barney songs falls into three subtypes: simple parodies of the main theme song, parodies of the same song that accentuate hiv, and two-line parodies of another barney song. while other experiments with poking fun at barney in song have occurred, these three subtypes appear to be the most common. the first kind of barney song involves a simple inversion of the barney show's theme song, which goes like this: i love you, you love me, we're a happy family. with a great big hug and a kiss from me to you, won't you say you love me too? sung to the tune of the song "this old man" (well established in schoolrooms and on playgrounds since the 1950s), this theme song introduces each "barney" broadcast. in 1993, an eight-year-old boy gave me this version: i love you, you love me, let's hang barney from a tree. with a shotgun, boom, barney's on the floor. no more purple dinosaur. variations of this song spread rapidly through the united states, with barney experiencing various deaths—all through violence and aggression. the variety of invitations to kill barney showed plenty 27 tucker of creativity: "let's throw barney in the sea!" "let's go out and shoot bar-nee!" usually the songs ended in gunshots, with barney dead, bleeding, and gone forever. one version of this subtype (taught to a three-year-old by her older sister) found its way to print in the new york times in april of 1993 ("regarding barney"). the text is as follows: i hate you, you hate me, let's go out and kill barney and a shot rang out and barney hit the floor no more purple dinosaur. the author of the opinion piece in which this barney song appears expresses concern about the focus on violence: "the goal—getting rid of barney—was admirable. the solution seemed, even in jest, excessive. almost as though, schooled by the usual tv fare, the kids had to supply the missing element: a gun" ("regarding barney"). both the publication of this text and the commentary on its meaning had a significant impact on readers of the new york times. reciting the song and worrying about what it signified, parents and other concerned adults found it to be evidence of decaying social values and lack of impulse control. while some adults enjoyed the song, sharing the exuberant rebelliousness of its composers, others decried it as a sign of increasingly violent behavior. children, however, tend to have quite different explanations of their own parodies. when i asked several kids why they liked to sing barney songs, they gave me short answers: "because they're fun!" "because i hate barney!" "because i like to make songs like this up!" the last of those three responses reminds us how joyful the process of parody composition can be for a child. inversion of an annoying song written for children puts the creative power right back where the children want it: under their own control. writing about parody, iona and peter opie made an observation that fits the barney backlash beautifully "it is as if children know instinctively that anything wholly solemn, without a smile behind it, is only half alive" (87). the bland, carefully affectionate didacticism of the large purple dinosaur becomes a target 28 "i hate you, you hate me" for obliteration in the barney song parodies, with children wielding the weapons of mass disapproval. whether the destruction of barney within a song text shows a disturbing trend toward violent solutions deserves careful consideration. instances of aggression in schoolyards have become more common in this decade, with the result that recess has sometimes been removed from school schedules (beresin). parents have questioned whether violence on television begets violence in real life, and the likelihood of some children imitating aggressive role models seems high. on the other hand, rhymes about shooting and killing have been prevalent in children's folklore for many years. the opies include a "mary had a little lamb" parody in their collection that features a gun-toting father: "mary had a little lamb, / her father shot it dead,/ and now it goes to school with her/ between two chunks of bread" (90). closer to the barney song pattern are the numerous songs about murder and mayhem in schools, including the version of "the battle hymn of the republic" that i learned in the 1950s: "mine eyes have seen the glory of the burning of the school. / we have tortured every teacher, we have broken every rule." a version of "oh, little enemy" (a parody of "oh, jolly playmate") that i collected in 1976 ends with the words "i'll poke your eyes out, i'll make you bleed to death. / and we'll be enemies forevermore, more, more-more-more-more!" perhaps limited familiarity with children's folklore makes adults worry more about the barney songs. when violent behavior seems to be increasing, song texts can be viewed as bad influences and harbingers of worse things to come. less violent than the first kind of barney song is the "hiv" subtype, sung to the tune of the same theme song: i hate you, you hate me, barney died from hiv we called the doctor and this is what he said: "sorry, kids, barney's dead." in this song text, nobody kills barney; the children seem to be sad witnesses to his demise from "hiv" (or aids). the last lines of the song remind the listener of jump rope rhymes in which a doc 29 tucker tor is summoned (abrahams). since aids is such a pervasive and frightening plague, it is no wonder that it has found its way into barney song parodies. in the above text, barney seems to be the victim of a sudden, mysteriously fatal disease. the song reflects both children's and adults' perplexity in the face of such a swift-moving, incomprehensible killer. it is also possible that the "hiv" songs about barney make him a target for homophobic feelings. just as tv viewers have speculated about whether bert and ernie of "sesame street" are gay, they have wondered whether barney's bright purple color signifies homosexuality. the most recent subject for such debate has been tinky-winky of the popular children's show teletubbies. participants in an internet chat group have recently asked whether the purple color of both barney and tinky-winky confirms that they are homosexuals (alt.tv.teletubbies). people who view barney as homosexual may regard his death from "hiv" as a reasonable consequence. while contemporary awareness of aids has moved beyond the stereotype of "the gay man's disease," there is still a linkage between hiv/aids and homosexuality in popular humor. jokes about aids were classified as "homosexual" humor in blanche knott's truly tasteless jokes iv (1984). however, this seems to be a preoccupation that primarily arises from the folklore of adults rather than the folklore of children. the children whom i interviewed did not seem especially worried about "hiv" or interested in barney's sexuality. to them, the obliteration of barney was the main point; "hiv" was just one more opponent to bring barney down. in contrast to the "hiv" texts, the third kind of barney song is a simple couplet. its tune is that of "yankee doodle," and its focus is not on death but on mental incapacity. the words are as follows: barney is a dino ' saur with lots of imagination. just one thing he has a problem with, it's retardation. this brief, succinct parody of the first two lines of a popular barney song fits the pattern of children's taunts and jeers that has been well documented since the publication of iona and peter opie's lore and language of schoolchildren. anyone who has spent time 30 "i hate you, you hate me" on the playground of an american public school knows how frequently many children use the term "retard." this politically incorrect epithet does not always criticize a person's intelligence; sometimes it derides social ineptitude, slowness, or dullness. children have found barney to epitomize all of these undesirable characteristics. when asked why they hate barney, children have told me: "because he's stupid." "because i can't stand him." "because he's such a lovable jerk." adults have drawn similar conclusions in witty statements such as this one from a new yorker columnist: "barney is a six-foot-tall magenta dinosaur. . . who when he rocks back and forth giggling compulsively in a tone of unequalled feeblemindedness—'ohh-ohh-oh'—jiggles his lumpish body like an overripe eggplant" ("pacifier"). both adults and children have made it clear that barney is not very smart and deserves all the taunts he gets. as the butt of jeers in the schoolyard and on the pages of highprofile magazines, he has received an impressive amount of well publicized hostility. another part of the barney phenomenon has taken the form of ritualized physical attacks on barney merchandise. i have watched children grabbing barney dolls, pommelling them, and jumping up and down upon them. one of my students watched a seven-year-old girl in toys r us beat up a four-foot-tall stuffed barney, then revive it with cpr. a nine-year-old boy, at his first sight of a barney tub toy, asked eagerly, "oh boy, can i take it in the tub and drown it? can i rip its head off with a knife?" newspaper reports and urban legends have told of barney being mobbed in a shopping mall, poked and prodded by hostile youngsters. and on college campuses, fraternities have beaten up effigies of barney in fund-raisers and party games. why have both children and adults so enthusiastically beaten up barney? their attacks are only mock-violent, as barney dolls feel no pain. however, playful violence can indicate problematic hostility. barney provides not just a target for specific scorn, but also an outlet for strongly aggressive feelings. while children are not generally allowed to hit their parents or teachers, sometimes they have permission to beat a grinning purple doll representing a bland, sanctimonious authority figure. beating up barney has given some children the chance to let off steam, but it has also lent legitimacy to the idea of attacking those that one does not like or 31 tucker respect: an approach frequently found in cartoons and on tv shows watched by the young. it appears that children are acting out quick and violent solutions within a framework of humorous response, often receiving applause from both adults and other children. since i started writing this article, the massacre of schoolchildren in littleton, colorado, on april 20, 1999, has caused many people to look closely at evidence of violent and aggressive behavior among american schoolchildren. both barney song parodies and ritualized attacks on barney dolls certainly involve aggression, with an emphasis on mockbeating and killing. do these verbal and physical attacks on barney signify healthy rebellion against authority figures, as so many other song parodies have done in the past? or do they represent a dangerous preoccupation with violence that will yield destructive consequences? the answer to both questions may be "yes." in any case, children's folklore provides an excellent index of what young people are really thinking and feeling. barney songs and mock-beatings have delighted many people; they may prove to have educational value as well. works cited abrahams, roger d. jump-rope rhymes: a dictionary. austin: u of texas p, 1969. alt.tv.teletubbies. april 11, 1999. beresin, ann richman. '''sui' generis: mock violence in an urban school yard." children’s folklore review. 18.2 (1996): 25-35. chambers, joseph r. "barney: an abomination unto the lord." harper’s. 288 (1994): 30-31. ferguson, andrew. "barney backlash." national review. 45 (nov. 29, 1993): 80. fitzpatrick, jackie. "who's barney? ask any 4year-old, silly." new york times. 25 apr. 1993, sec. 13: 21. forest, stephanie anderson. "wouldn't you like to knock the stuffing out of barney?" business week. 19 aug. 1993: 34. gorman, james. "of all dinosaurs, why must this one thrive?" new york times. 11 apr. 1993, sec. 2: 14. knapp, mary, and herbert knapp. one potato, two potato: the secret education of american children. new york: norton, 1976. knott, blanche. truly tasteless jokes iv. new york: pinnacle books, 1984. 32 "i hate you, you hate me" lawson, carol" why young children scream." new york times. 3 dec. 1992: cio. mitchell, w.j.t. "dino-mite." university of chicago magazine. feb. 1998: 20. opie, iona, and peter opie. lore and language of schoolchildren. oxford: oxford up, 1959. "pacifier." the new yorker. 3 may 1993: 37. "regarding barney." new york times. 15 sept. 1993: a26. "the secret of barney's appeal." working mother. mar. 1995: 22. 33 ocr document bedtime stories joann conrad conventional ethnographies portray a reality with limited complexity—from the singular perspective of the ethnographer observing the object engaged in events external to the observer. the multiple voices or personalities of the ethnographer are never invoked nor is the complex relationality of the object(s) and the ethnographer(s) to each other and to their situatedness in a context that is dynamic and dependent on their presence. in contrast to such ethnographies, in this article it is the process of investigation into the central question—the puzzle concerning the nature of the mother-child relationship—that is the main diegesis. this is a description; an investigation into the parallel, complex emotional relationship between a mother and child; an unfolding of the intertwined development of two characters' feelings and sometimes conflicted emotions, probing into the nature of the relationship of the characters in which the historical and psychological depths of that relationship are revealed. in unraveling the nature of this relationship, the rigid, separate and hierarchical polarity of other and self (ethnographer) is deconstructed. there is, in fact, no simple monolithic self to act as a referent to an equally monolithic other. the revelation undermines the construction of such an other and uncovers the dilemma inherent in the entire ethnographic enterprise which masquerades as representation. the inevitable categorization, distillation and oversimplification of reality in any such representation belies its complexity. in this ethnographic enterprise, the mother's questions on the nature of close relations parallel, reflect, and illuminate the son's stories. the development of the sensibilities of the characters in the piece is brought out in their juxtaposition—reflecting as well as motivating one another. following the search for understanding into the deepening sensibilities of both characters is the main story line—anchored in no time or space other than that of the characters themselves. here time and space are reorganized to maximally illustrate the search, and yet the puzzle that is the nature of the relationship remains unsolved. rather that being provided with a description or portrait of "reality," we have in the multi-layered interaction between 43 conrad mother and child a powerful analogy for the complexities and unresolved questions that are, perhaps, the nature of existential reality. in the play of surface and depth, the particular and apparently trivial moments of story telling are transcended, and through the allegory of the local and incidental lend substance to another level—the anecdotes themselves and the descriptions of story telling episodes overflowing their own boundaries. * * * it's early morning. i lie awake in bed staring at the wall opposite me. something is wrong, something out of place. . . on any other morning i'd be in bed with mommy, after pop has left for work. . . but mommy is not in bed. my door is closed, but i can hear voices, a lot of voices on the other side in the living room. they are hushed, and i can't make out any words, just strained, worried sounds. . . . is someone crying? . . . why is george out there? he never wakes up this early. . . . something is . . . pop is dead. i'm not getting up. . . i'm not getting out of the bed or moving at all. as long as i stay here and don't go out there he's not dead, it's still part of last night and i've just gone to bed first. . . they just haven't gone to bed yet. i'll just stay here and things won't change. i shuffle down the hall and the living room opens out in front of me. faces turn and expand and fill the space. my mom is all red..."oh, josie . . . there's something i have to tell you. . ." conrad-george fredrik, on dec. 14 born in kaiserslautern, germany. chief engineer, coronado ferries. survived by wife, mary rita, two sons and one daughter. services at sacred heart catholic church, coronado, 10:00 am. * * * 44 bedtime stories "whew, hee, hee, hee. whew, hee, hee, hee. whew, hee, hee, hee." the pain is rising up from the base of my abdomen, rising and taking me with it. i try to resist, to stand my ground, but it's useless. quickly, in rapid succession, nothing, nothing, then screams, arms flying, mouth foaming, eyes rolling, dry heaves. . . ok, ok, it's over again. "her blood pressure is going up; let's get her to lie down." "nooo. please, it hurts too much to lie down!" before i'm fully supine, the pushing starts and the pressure is relieved. push, push, push, hurt, hurt. . . and then. . . emptiness, relief. . . and a tiny cry. a wet mass is placed on my breasts. placental blood is caked on his hair, but his eyes are bright and he is perfect. . . but where did he come from. . . ? can it be possible that this beautiful creature caused so much pain? petraborg— conrad fredril, on may 15,12:20 pm at alta bates hospital, to parents guy petraborg and joann conrad of berkeley. a circle is closed. i try to understand what love is, how it shapes the ones it touches. i know that there is an intimacy i shared with conrad, and for me, part of it is shaped by the physical link i alone have with his creation and initial nurturing. but does this mean that his father cannot access this intimacy, or that conrad even reciprocates it? how does that reconcile with my own bonding with my father, however short-lived? no, . . . i think motherhood provides access to such feelings, but they are not immediate or necessarily forthcoming. does a child experience love differently? is it dependency? does it derive from a need for pleasurable experiences? what constitutes an utterly un-selfconscious love? and can the pain of separation ever not be implicit in such emotions? 45 ,..,._u. conrad 46 ok, now the lights are out, and we're finally winding down. why do they portray going to bed as such a quick process in the movies? the mom and dad just come in, tuck their kid in, kiss him goodnight and close the door. no hysterics, no crying. . . what planet does that happen on? lying down and talking to conrad once he has settled down is so much fun. . . it makes me feel guilty at the same time because i can like him so easily in these non-trying times. god, i wonder how many parents actually lie down with their four-year-old kids... and fall asleep with them? maybe it's a big conspiracy. . . everybody does and nobody admits to it. it's like the tv versions of delivery. . . women looking radiant—yeah, right. "hold still, you wiggle-worm!" he still fits neatly into the curve of my body when we lie together. i have my head resting on his outstretched arm in a gesture that seems almost paternal on his part. i really want to be quiet, i want to fall asleep this way, even though i'm supposed to get him to sleep and go out and do some work. but he wants to tell stories. he wants to keep this going, afraid of going to sleep. is he afraid of this transition to the unknown? or is he just trying to test the limits imposed on him, to see how set they really are? oh man, this fat cat fred is back on the bed between my legs. . . . now i'm pinned in between him and conrad. i can feel my neck twisted in an unnatural and uncomfortable position and i want to move, but fear my movement will get conrad worked up again. . . . i'll have a crick in my neck in the morning. "turn on the light, mommy." "no, i'm not turning the lights on, it's bedtime." "but i can't hear with the lights off. i need the lights on." bedtime stories light comes into the bedroom from the living room beyond, faintly illuminating the forms and figures in the room. the lights from cars passing by in the street outside penetrate the space between the window frames and the shades, and large shards of light pierce the space and travel in circular patterns across the walls. the central bed, heaped with small figures and stuffed animals, is surrounded by the vestiges of day-time activities: art projects, clothes, clean and dirty intermixed and strewn about, puzzle pieces, books, ropes, balls, chairs, a small table. . . their indistinct shapes occasionally sharpened and given color by the lights from the street. i'm settled in under the covers of conrad's double bed, lying on my side facing him. he is lying on his back, with his legs over the covers. he's still wiggling around and is physically engaged in the story telling. i like to watch his profile with the upturned nose and the full cheeks. i like the warmth his body gives up, and try to get closer to enjoy that, while not getting a stray arm or leg in the face. this warmth has gained conrad a number of nicknames: "warm-bug," "heater," or, perversely, "the human worm." i luxuriate in his smell, my favorite aspect of our intimacy. . . it smells of young skin, wet hair, light sweat, and faintly of soap. later in the evening, after he has been asleep for some time, thrashing about in his bed, i'll tuck him in again, and the freshly-washed sweetness will have been replaced with a stronger scent, one that i much more emphatically associate with my son. the sweetness of my intimacy with conrad, the luxury of his soft skin, shared conversation and baby smell is heightened by its fleetingness. this is the final act of a regularly enacted ritual that includes a bath, nude dancing, acrobatics on the bed, diapering under duress, putting on pjs, brushing teeth, drinking water, reading stories in bed, and finally, lights out with a long period of 47 conrad talking and storytelling in the dark. the stories unfold slowly, interspersed with conversation about the day's routines. initially the narratives are informed by cartoon figures and plots, but conrad quickly begins to fill in with his own story lines, which open up aspects of the world of his thoughts that are otherwise unarticulated. he wants to tell these stories, partly because he wants not to go to sleep, but also because they are a means of communication for him. they are encoded messages for me to decipher, if i expend the effort to really listen to what he is saying. i don't want to tell any stories. i just want to go to sleep. i hope he tells me one soon. "hey mom, you know what?" "what?" "ahmad got a beetle-man and him gonna share with me at school." "cool! so, why don't you tell me a story?" "i don't know any stories. . . " "well you do. . . ." "ok. one a time, [a]laddin, urn . . .genie, and a who? abo and what is that birdie name?" "yago?" "and what is the green one's name?" "oh, i dunno . . . that bird?" " yeah." "oh, yeah, i dunno." "yes you do." "no." "you saw it afore." "i know but i never knew the name." "why? it's yago's mommy, really." "oh, ok." "her talk to yago. the mommy. . . " conrad slows down here, pauses, and then speeds up, and delivers the following in a much quicker, louder and more assertive tone. 48 bedtime stories "and yago have the daddy and a mommy. cause, after, um, yago didn't have a mommy and a daddy. . . ? " yeah?" (said as if crying himself)"him be crying." "yeah. . . ?" (sympathetically). "and after him have a mommy and a daddy. . . him said, 'yeah! yeah! yeah!'." (conrad's arms are raised over his head, and he jubilantly shouts.) 49 oh god! he's stressing over the transitions, anxious about our separations. we try to squeeze in too much. . . school, jobs, commitments. . . there is no time to do anything as a family. our schedule is erratic. no wonder he is telling these stories, no wonder he drags out going to bed. it may be our only set routine, and he exercises some control over the situation. but isn't he doing more than that. . . it's too easy to say he's anxious. . . he's trying to get a grip on the whole thing. . . his relationship with us, with the rest of the world. . .trying to figure out how he fits in to all of this. it is just ego gratification to dismiss this as separation anxiety. . . do kids really depend on us as much as we want them to? he's dealing with the conflicting emotions of dependence and independence. his stories reflect this. having us around is not always so great. conrad sighs. "tell me a story. . . hmm . . . my story is short." "it's good though." "one upon a time a snake came, and got [a]laddin on him back. and yago and. . . ate all the other guys. . . (smacks his lips and pretends to eat for ten seconds). and when [a]laddin got all the way to him face, the snake ate him. and princess jasemin came up, "shweh", the snake. . . . hey, what is that moving? the house is moving. . . ." "really? i didn't feel anything. . . " "i feel it moving. (big sigh) and then her, princess jasemin came all the way to him face, 'swish, bedtime stories also). then them went back home. and then the school was open and it was fixed. and then the gargoyles came back and saw it was fixed and they wrecked it again. that's it." here i am trying to resolve my contradictory feelings towards conrad, and it looks as if he is trying to do the same thing. he is trying to balance his feelings of dependency and love with those of a desire to be independent and to extend his social sphere beyond just us. in the first story school is a good place. the kids are sad when they can't get in, and happy when they can get in to play-without the teachers. this is wish fulfillment, freedom within a safe, familiar environment. the second story complicates the vision of school. school is the site of the most traumatic transition and separation on a routine basis. it is the separation from me that conrad loathes, not the social interaction at school. seen as the source of this separation anxiety, school is therefore the logical target of some pretty heavy aggression, and a desire to see the source of the enforced separation eliminated—permanently. "mom, when did you get married?" "oh, a long time ago." "well i don't want you to be married." "why not?" "because when you're married you talk with one voice, you're one person." "no, honey, i'm always mommy. what do you want?" "i want there to be mommy, and daddy and conrad." although i know that i can't grasp the full intention of his statement, the depth and profundity of them strike me, undermining my initial musings on his stories and exposing my patronizing attitudes towards his narratives in reducing them to such simplistic, formulaic interpretations. conrad recognizes human complexity and the complexity of human relations. his articulation of this perception in turn sharpens my own. his desire not to be subsumed into a unifying experience or relationship echoes the attempt to interject complexity into ethnographic 51 conrad description, to eschew essentializing, simplifying accounts and analyses. "ok, it's time to go to sleep now. turn over and go to sleep." "i want you to sleep with me." another separation, compounded with being scared of the dark. i hate the separation as well and would rather stay in bed with him, but i feel that i should have him go to sleep by himself. am i afraid of the closeness, or am i following the dictates of society that assigns a certain stigma to a mother-son relationship perceived to be too close. i want to rebel, to act as my impulses direct, but something gnaws at me that he is too old, that the long term consequences are not good. why? i turn over and close my eyes. conrad turns towards me, press his face up to mine and kisses me. "good night, mom." "good night, boo-boo. i love you." "i love you too." * * * conrad and i began telling stories to each other naturally. these stories were in addition to and quite separate from reading books. the stories were often in collaboration, and at the very least provoked response, criticism, and correction. they were dynamic and tended to revolve around everyday events, retold in dramatic, exaggerated form. for a long time, my interest in these stories was entirely personal: i liked to encourage conrad's ability as a storyteller, i physically preferred to tell or listen to a story rather than read one, and it gave us a special context of shared intimacy. i began to become intellectually interested in conrad's stories during my investigations into the various theories on the formation and transmission of folk and personal narratives. was there a deeper structure inherent in narratives that could be seen to have parallels in children's own stories, in the same way that deeper language structure was inferred in the processes of first language acquisition? would it be possible to extrapolate, as botvin and sutton-smith have 52 bedtime stories suggested, narrative structure from children's narratives? contrary to the expectations embedded in these questions, however, in the course of our storytelling events it became obvious that both thematically and structurally conrad's narratives were already quite formalized, and that extrapolating a deeper, inherent narrative structure from those of an as yet "uncontaminated" or "pure" narrative form of a child was an exercise with a flawed premise. what did emerge, as the writing and analysis of the project unfolded, was that embedded in such small, specific narratives and their telling was a much more complicated macro-narrative: the mother-son relationship. there are many stories within stories. michel foucault has claimed that the "author function" serves to disperse simultaneous, plural selves, which exist nonhierarchically (112-13). in this experimental and impressionistic piece, both the subject and the object are multiple and shifting, and in the shifting of voice and the laminations of time we discover an erasure of the boundaries inscribed by the categories themselves. subject and object are not only multiple, they are constantly invoked and intertwined, and as their sensibilities unfold in patches and chunks of scenes and variations in texture, so the reader is drawn into these sensibilities. in this manner interiority flows from exteriority; the reader breaking through the opacity of the individual narratives into a reality to which she has only partial access. works cited botvin, g.j., and brian sutton-smith. "the development of structural complexity in children's fantasy narratives." developmental psychology 13 (1977): 377-88. clifford, james. "on ethnographic allegory." writing culture: the poetics and politics of ethnography. ed. james clifford and george marcus. berkeley: u of california p, 1986. 98-121. foucault, michel. "what is an author?" the foucault reader. ed. paul rabinow. new york: pantheon, 1984. 101-20. vanmaanen, john. tales of the field: on writing ethnography. chicago: u of chicago p, 1988. white, hayden. tropics of discourse: essays in cultural criticism. balti more and london. johns hopkins up, 1978. young, katharine. taleworlds and storyrealms:the phenomenology of nar rative. dordrecht, boston, nijhoff. 53 l]'[][]~ @[][]~~[idm~m~~oo~oo~@§lrnw in each issue we hope to publish a list of items offolk.speech used by children in the course of their informal speech. words should be defined according to their definition in use. also, wherepossible, part of speech, age of users, location in which the wordswere heardqlldcollected. and other background information available should be noted. contributors should use the glossaryform in the journal. american speech. hopefully, if this section of the newsletter proves to be a success, after several years we can consider afull compilation of all terms collected in a published glossary. contributors should attempt not to contribute words orphrases used by both children and adults with similiar meanings, although this distinction is never a clear one. pre-adolescent male slang v gary alan fine univenlty of minnesota the following examples of folk speech are derived from participant observation research in five american communities during the period 1975-1977: (i) beanville, an uppermiddle class professional suburb of boston, massachusetts: (2) hopewell, an exurban township outside the providence, rhode island, metropolitan area, consisting of a string of small towns, beach-front land, farms and a campus of the state university; (3) bolton park, an upper-middle class professional suburb of st. paul, minnesota, similar to beanville except for geographical areas; (4) sanford heights, a middle-to-lower-middle class suburb of minneapolis, minnesota, consisting of a large number of modern massproduced homes, and (5) maple bluff, studied by harold pontif, an urban, upper-middle class, professional area of vt hit (as in "nailing" a car by throwing an egg at it) hw,sh adj obscene, "dirty", "rude" (bp) adj excellent, good (bp,sh) n.pl breasts (usually preadolescent girl's breasts) (sh) 5. nifty adj excellent, good (bp) 6. nigger lipstick oil stain on clothing (sh; white usage) 7. nigger knocking prank, involving ringing doorbell and running beforeowner opens the door (also known as "ring and run" and "ding dong ditch") (sh; white usage) absolutely not (mb) n stupid or foolish boy (hw) athletic supporter (sh) scrotum, "balls" (bv, hw, bp,sh) general obscene interjection, apparently has no specific denotation (sh) adj weak, incompetent (sh) n effeminate boy (sh) adj old, ancient (mb) n small boy (bp) n penis (bp,sh) vi urinate (hw,sh) n small boy (hw) placing a pencil up a boy's anus or girl's vagina (obscene usage) (sh) n boy who is considered a "sissy", excessively obedient (as in teacher's pet) (sh) easy (bp) n i. ugly or disliked girl (bv) 2. policeman (sh) vi urinate (hw,bp) adj excellent, good (bv) i. nail 2. nasty 3. neat 4. nickels 8. no way 9. numbskull 10. nut cup ii. nuts 12. ppsh 13. palsy 14. pansy 15. past-tense 16. peanut 17. pecker 18. pee 19. peewee 20. pencil prange 21. pet 22. piece of cake 23. pig 24. piss 25. pisser st. paul, minnesota. boys were between the ages of ten and twelve. terms included in the glossary were all part of the active vocabulary of male pre-adolescents during the years studied. however, it is probably true that several of these terms are also used by females and those of other ages. the most obvious examples of adult folk speech have been eliminated from this list. terms included herein are defined through their usage in context. abbreviations employed in this report include: bv beanville (research conducted 1975-1976); hw hopewell (research conducted 1976); bp bolton park (research conducted 1977); mb maple bluff (research conducted 1977). n awkward, uncoordinated boy (probably related to "spaz", "spastic") (sh) n tampon (sh) angered, annoyed, pissed off (bv) device made by taping several tennis ball cans together, drilling a hole in the side of the bottom can, placing a tennis ball in the cans, placing lighter fluid on the hole, attaching a string wick to it, and lighting the wick. the explosion causes the tennis ball to shoot out from the cans like a cannonball. (sh) 30. polish rope trickprank involving two boys pretending to hold a rope or string across a street at dusk, hoping that cars will stop (sh) excrement (sh) i. vi run slowly (sh) 2. n police (sh) toilet (sh) vt engage in sexual intercourse, obscene (as in "prange me") (sh) 35. prang boy boy considered effeminate (sh) 36. prima-donna n boy who is considered to be a show-off (mb) effeminate boy (hw) trick, deceive (mb) n disliked or ugly girl (from "prostitute") (sh) n effeminate boy; homosexual (hw) n boy who is considered excessively wild; boy whodrinks or smokes (negative implication) (bp) n disliked boy (possible effeminate implication "pussy") (bv,bp,sh) n disliked boy (possible effeminate implication; derivation from slang for cunnilingus) (bp,sh) 26. plasmo 27. plug 28. p.o.ed 29. .polish cannon 31. poop 32. pork 33. potty can 34. prang 37. prissy girl 38. psych out 39. prostie 40. puff 41. pugie 42. puss 43. puss lick 3 (continuedonp.4) (children's glo_y, continued) 55. rip off 56. rip roaring flying mountain lion ahem flatus, "fart" (euphemism) (bv) 57. roadmap face boy with acne (bp) 58. rocky mountains breasts (usually preadolescent girl's breasts) (sh) 59. roger dodger phrase signifying agreement between two boys; "ok" (bv) adj bad, poor, "stink" ("this rots") (hw) n wild, disobedient boy, one who drinks or smokes (used both positively and negatively) (bp,sh) 62. royal patoon older boy who protects a younger boy from trouble (sh) 63. rude obscene, "dirty," "nasty" (bp) 64. rumble n fight (bv,hw) 65. ruminant remaindisliked or ugly individual (general insult term) (bp) adj unsatisfactory, bad, poor (bv,bp,mb, sh) adj unsatisfactory, bad, poor (bp,sh) i. vt smoke ("let's go schmedley") (mb), 2. n weird or disliked boy (sh) n incompetent or disliked boy (mb) vt beat, cheat, deceive (sh) idle, loaf ("goof off") (bp) adj crazy, weird, insane (bp,sh) n disliked boy (general insult) (sh) n lucky boy (also "scuzzy" as adj) (bp,sh) adj lucky, fortunate (sh) angry outburst (sh) scared, frightened (sh) tough, aggressiveboy (complimentary) (hw) an insulting interjection, meaning "go away" ("shove it up your ass') (mb) small boy (hw,sh) shut up, be quiet (bp) interj disgusting, gross (sh) n. disliked boy (bp) n effeminate boy, boy who is considered too obedient (hw,mb) shut up, be quiet (mb) 44. pussy lip 45. quake 46. queer 47. queero . 48. quibby 49. raga 50. rash 51. razz 52. retarded 53. retread 54. ring and run 60. rot 61. rowdy 66. sad " "'61. scabby 68. schmedley 69. schmuck 70. scorch 71. screw off 72. screwy 73. scum 74. scuzz 75. scuzzed-out 76. shit fit 77. shitting bricks 78. shit kicker 79. shove it 80. shrimp 81. shut your face 82. sick 83. siff 84. sissy 85. sit on it disliked boy (effeminate implications) (sh) i. adj excellent, good (bp), 2. vi engage in sexual intercourse, obscene (see"prang") (sh) n homosexual, effeminate boy (used also as adj) (bv,hw,bp,sh) n homosexual, effeminate boy (bv) n quarterback in football (from abbreviation "qb') (sh) n large, awkward, uncoordinated boy (bv) n disliked boy (as in "you rash") (bp) vt insult, tease (sh) adj stupid, foolish (bp) n stupid, foolish boy (possibly from retarded') (bp) prank, involving ringing doorbell and running before owner opens the door (also known as "nigger knocking" and "ding dong ditch") (bp) steal (bv,hw,bp,sh) for reason oj lock oj space the jouowing items were omitted jrom the giossluyin volume iii, number 3 issue oj this newsletter. i. log 2. looper 3. lucked out 4. m.o. n feces (bv) n stupid or disliked boy (sh) got lucky (bp) make out; sexual activity (generally kissing and petting) (bp) n disliked boy (seems related to "faggot") (bv) challenge from one boy to another (see "head me") (sh) . n penis, male genitals (sh) n stupid boy (sh) adj crazy, insane (sometimes with violent overtones) (bv,hw,bp,sh) adj good, excellent (also "mint city') (bp) n homosexual (see "homo'') (bp,sh) n small boy (mb) n ugly boy (short for "monkey") (hw) bruise which comes from one boy holding another's arm and rapping it (a prank) (sh) n. pulling down trousers, while facing away from traffic (a prank) (bv,sh) n stupid or disliked boy (also "mooper"; see "looper") (sh) 17. moron n stupid boy (mb,bp,sh) 18. motormouth n boy who talks constantly (bp,sh) 19. muff-muff n stupid or disliked boy (bp) 20. mumbo-jumbo n nonsense; meaningless talk (bp) 21. munchkin n small or young boy (affectionate) (sh) 22. mutt n disliked or ugly girl (bp,sh) 5. maggot 6. mar me 7. meat 8. meathead 9. mental 10. mint ii. mo 12. mole 13. monk 14. monkey bump 15. mooning 16. moop i ~(idlm~~ oooo~[lli~~~i . while observing some children "playing house" recently, i noticed an interesting role reversal. the boy (husband/ daddy) stayed home, while the girl (wife/ mommy) went off to work. if anyone else has observed a similar situation among pre-school or early grade-school children, i would like to hear about it. c. w. sullivan iii english department east carolina university greenville, nc 27834 . i am completing a bibliography on adolescent folklore. of anyone has some obscure reference or information about forthcoming/ in press articles and books, please send them to: 4 sue samuelson 614 s. 48th street philadelphia, pa 19143 spring81_vol4no1_part3 spring81_vol4no1_part4 vol. 18 no. 1 fall 95.pdf cfs meeting, 1987 minutes, continued chip sullivan reported that he has made initial inquiries about afs support for non-american children's folklore scholars to attend the afs centenhial meetings. members present proposed additional scholars that the section might invite. linda morley proposed "a retrospective look at children's folklore" as the topic of a section-sponsored panel at the 1988afs meetings. members present discussed this and alternative topics. jay reminded members to notify the section's vice-president of afs panels, papers, etc., on children's folklore, since coordinating and circulating news of such events is one of the vice-president's duties. jay then asked for suggestions as to future section-sponsored forums on children's folklore (e.g., that held in 1986on girl's play). libby tucker volunteered to look into a forum on ethics in children's folklore study for the 1988 meeting. with the approval of the members present, the meeting was adjourned at 8:25 a.m. respectfully submitted, danielle m. roemer secretary/treasurer m@w ~@[fi]j]~@[fg)i ill~~[f@g)g)@g) michele mahan gautsch 108 w. 39th st., #w-io baltimore, md 21210 indiana university libraries serials department bloomington, in 47405 libby tucker gould 136 meeker road vestal, ny 13850 linda morley 308 sagamore st. manchester, nh 03104 delf hohmann folklore/ memorial univ. st. john's, newfoundland aic 5s7 canada ly[}{]~@uj~~ ujw~~~ the children's folklore section of the american folklore society invites submissions of books for its opie prize for 1988. the prize carries with it a $200 award. the prize honors the late peter opie, internationally recognized author of books on children's folklore, and will be awarded for an outstanding contribution to the understanding of the folklore and folklife of children. edited volumes, collections of folklore, and authored studies published in english during 1986 or 1987 are eligible. authors or publishers should submit 2 copies of the book before april 1, 1988, to c. w. sullivan iii, english department, east carolina university, greenville, nc 27858-4353. the winner of the prize will be announced at the american folklore society's annual meeting in boston, october 25-30, 1988. 8 c. w. sullivan iii, editor children's folklore newsletter department of english east carolina university greenville, n.c. 27858-4353 the hildren's folklore newsletter non-profit org. u.s. postage paid permit no. 110 greenville, n.c. children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39019/ the texas children’s folklore project a retrospective richard bauman indiana university, emeritus in this introductory essay, i present an overview of the historical and institutional context, the motivating ideology, the methodological framework, and the research foci of the texas children’s folklore project, conducted from 1973-1976 by a team of faculty and graduate students from the university of texas under the auspices of the southwest educational laboratory. from 1973-1976, i directed a research project on children’s folklore under the auspices of the southwest educational development laboratory (sedl) in austin, texas. the project yielded a number of publications that suggest the principal frames of reference that guided our work1 but not necessarily the motivating factors that led me to undertake it in the first place or the elements of time, place, and organization that gave it shape and direction. this essay, then, is intended to fill some of those gaps, though at a remove of more than 50 years and in the absence of concrete records that would allow for more detail and precision. those files, alas, fell by the wayside in the course of several moves and office clear-outs, but memory, conversations with surviving participants, and the published record bring back at least the basic contours of the enterprise. the politics of education in texas in the early 1970s texas, like other southern states with a long history of segregation, was conspicuously resistant to the kinds of efforts at integration mandated by brown v. board of education in 1954 and the civil rights act of 1964. nevertheless, notwithstanding the foot-dragging of top-level administrative officials, there were a few https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39019 6 children’s folklore review children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39019/ staunch staff members at the texas education agency (tea) who made efforts, beginning in the late 1960s, to respond constructively to the need for redressive and compensatory measures to overcome the deeply detrimental effects of a century of segregated schooling. one such effort, organized by mary galvan of tea in partnership with rudolph troike, a linguist in the university of texas english department, was the east texas dialect project, launched in 1967 with funding from the elementary and secondary education act (esea), signed into law in 1965 by president lyndon johnson. among its wide-ranging provisions, the law provided federal grants to state educational agencies to improve the quality of elementary and secondary education. the substantive focus of the project in east texas was “to study the language patterns which exist in texas, particularly the phonology and syntax which have most bearing on learning” (galvan and troike 1972[1969]:298). a critical turning point in the project’s development was the discovery by fieldworkers of “extralinguistic” factors (i.e., factors beyond the initial focal elements of phonology and syntax) that seemed to have significant implications for understanding language use on the part of african american children. specifically—perhaps unexpectedly—the fieldworkers began to amass a corpus of children’s folklore forms—“rope-skipping rhymes, game songs, and narrative accounts” as well as “verbal contests”—the dynamics of which could not be grasped satisfactorily in formal linguistic terms. as recounted by the principal investigators, “about this point, the project was fortunate in acquiring the consultative services of another university of texas staff member, a folklorist with a specialty in negro culture, whose role was to explain many cultural patterns of behavior to staff members. his contribution became larger as time passed and is at present [i.e., in 1969] equally important as the linguists’” (galvan and troike 1972:299). that folklorist was roger abrahams, troike’s colleague in ut’s english department. african american children’s https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39019 vol. 42, no. 1 (2024) 7 children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39019/ folklore was a significant component of roger’s dissertation research in south philadelphia (abrahams 1962) and at the time he joined the east texas dialect project team he was at work on jump-rope rhymes: a dictionary (1969). roger’s contribution, and that of américo paredes who joined up in the next phase of the project as it expanded into mexican american south texas, cemented the place of folklorists in subsequent compensatory efforts on the part of tea. all this is to say that just as the ut folklore program was getting fully under way with the establishment of the center for intercultural studies in folklore and oral history (“the folklore center”) in the spring of 1968 (see bauman 2020), children’s folklore was becoming a significant component of the intellectual environment for ut folklorists. in the aftermath of the east texas dialect project, tea established a consulting committee, including roger and américo, to assist in the development of intercultural education programs but the politics of culture in texas and the continued foot-dragging on the part of top-level leadership at tea precluded any real progress. pressures increased significantly, though, in 1971 with the handing down of civil action 5281, a federal court order issued in response to a lawsuit challenging continued efforts to circumvent integration (the school desegregation in texas policy research project 1982). sweeping in its scope, encompassing the entire state, the order contained multiple provisions addressing demographic and administrative problems and policies, but one section addressed “curriculum and compensatory education” and placed tea in charge of monitoring and enforcement. this responsibility provided an impetus to elevating the consulting committee, now under the rubric of the “confluence of texan cultures,” with a charge that included “the provision of programs to compensate students for the ill effects of previously segregated schools” and “the development of a statewide design to educate the disadvantaged.”2 membership on the committee, as it turned out, was not without its frustrations as efforts to slow-walk the process within https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39019 8 children’s folklore review children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39019/ tea and to circumvent its implementation out in the state at large persisted, but for the time being, into the mid-1970s, children’s folklore remained of at least professed interest to the agency as a resource that would serve the interest of compensatory program development and acknowledge the cultural heritage of “the disadvantaged.” it is important to recall that this period in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s was the heyday of deprivationist ideologies on the part of educationists and psychologist—even liberal ones—concerning the verbal and cognitive abilities of working class and minority kids and their low performance in the nation’s public schools. in the pithy critical summary offered by joan baratz, the educators were the first to contribute a statement about the language difficulties of these children, a statement that amounted to the fact that these children were virtually verbally destitute—i.e., they couldn’t talk and if they did, their speech was deviant and filled with “errors.” the next group to get into the fray—the psychologists—reconfirmed initially that the children didn’t talk, and then added the sophisticated wrinkle that if they did talk, their speech was such that it was a deterrent to cognitive growth. [baratz 1969:87] to folklorists even superficially familiar with the kinds of verbal, cognitive, and interactional skills—even virtuosity—that these very children were able to display out in the schoolyard, the neighborhood, and the home, these deprivationist portraits simply did not ring true. the interventionist efforts that those of us at ut and our colleagues elsewhere sought to bring to bear were based on our understanding that what kids knew and could do with regard to language and the associated skills demonstrated in their play activities would provide a critical corrective to notions of verbal and cognitive disability and a basis for enriching educational programs that would compensate for and redress the damaging effects of segregated schooling. https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39019 vol. 42, no. 1 (2024) 9 children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39019/ at the same time that roger and américo were engaged in these state-focused efforts, i became involved in similarly motivated project sponsored by the american speech and hearing association (asha), the national professional organization of speech pathologists and audiologists in the u.s. collegial connections with faculty and graduate students in speech and hearing at ut drew me into a consultative role with asha as it too attempted to come to terms with linguistic and cultural diversity and overcome a deeply entrenched bias toward monoglot standard english and the ideologies that sustained it. my efforts, in a 1970 workshop and subsequent article (bauman 1970), were directed at suggesting the productiveness of a relativist, ethnographic perspective on language as a critical corrective to the ethnocentric biases that prevailed among the vast majority of speech pathologists and speech therapists engaged with school-aged children. in particular, i advocated for the value of children’s folklore as a vantage point on what minority children knew and could do with language. the texas children’s folklore project the foregoing overview is prologue, but it suggests why i should have been receptive when bob randall came to see me as director of the ut folklore center, sometime in the fall of 1972. bob was the head of the early childhood program at the southwest educational development laboratory (sedl), one of a network of research and development centers and regional educational laboratories authorized in 1965 under title vi of the esea, the same agency that funded the east texas dialect project, and subsequently transferred to the newly created national institute of education (nie) in 1972. the early childhood program was charged with research and program development for children in kindergarten through third grade, roughly, 5-9 years old. bob’s own interests centered on informal learning, that is, learning that takes place https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39019 10 children’s folklore review children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39019/ primarily outside or in the margins of formal educational institutions and without formal instruction. children’s folklore was on texas educators’ radar by this time and bob wanted to explore with me the possibility that sedl might sponsor a research project in the area with the potential to serve a basis for educational programs that built on the verbal, cognitive, and interactional energies and strengths of cultural forms that were child-initiated and directed and pleasurable to the participants. moreover, given that the children’s folklore forms were rooted in their own communities, they might provide a mechanism for the kids to work out their own adaptations to multiculturalism in newly integrated schools. the outcome of our conversation was that i agreed to direct the project that bob envisioned under the auspices of sedl. for me, the venture was multiply appealing: it was an opportunity to put my money where my mouth was, doing primary research that was at the same time oriented to important applied ends and it was a way to support ut graduate students and get them involved in fieldwork that was socially engaged, motivated at least in part by real world social problems. during the spring of 1973, sedl administrators and i worked out the arrangements and launched the project. i would teach a graduate course on children’s folklore that would serve as a venue for recruiting and training potential fieldworkers as well as exploring foci for research that would suit their interests and those of the overall project and include kids from the three predominant ethnic groups in texas: african american, anglo american, and mexican american. during the academic year of 1973-74, i would take a leave of absence from ut to work full time on the project. our responsibility was primary research, defined in scholarly terms. sedl would handle all the bureaucratic work, mediate between us and nie, provide leads to austinarea schools that would allow us to work with their kids, and do the work of adapting our findings to school-oriented programs when the time came. altogether, seven ut https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39019 vol. 42, no. 1 (2024) 11 children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39019/ graduate students worked on the project: meg brady, rosalind eckhardt, john mcdowell, andrea meditch, danielle roemer, beverly stoeltje, and dorothy stroman. meg and beverly were experienced teachers, returned to ut as doctoral students in folklore and beverly had kids of her own, which enhanced her participation in the project. as the project developed, solicitational routines (riddles, knock-knock jokes, catches), ring games, line plays, and handclaps emerged as the principal substantive foci of our research. project guidelines and research foci the guidelines for project research were shaped by the conceptual and methodological principles of the ethnography of speaking, then entering what amounted to the second major phase of its development. following on the programmatic phase of the 1960s, a cadre of young researchers had carried the approach into the field as a framework for their own primary research and by the early 1970s they were ready to report on the results of their efforts. at the time of my involvement in the tcfp, i was engaged, with joel sherzer, in the organization, conduct, and aftermath of the conference on the ethnography of speaking, held at ut in april of 1972 to bring these researchers together and followed by the publication of explorations in the ethnography of speaking (bauman and sherzer 1974) and a review essay of the field (bauman and sherzer 1975). at the same time, in a related effort, i was engaged in formulating a concept of performance as a display of virtuosic skill and efficacy, presented initially in the american anthropologist in 1975 and in expanded form in the book version of verbal art as performance (bauman 1975, 1977). there are abundant bodies of literature on the ethnography of speaking and performance so there is no need to recapitulate their founding principles and subsequent development here. a few key points may be useful, however. first, the https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39019 12 children’s folklore review children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39019/ notion of performance was central to the tcfp in two fundamental senses, both rooted in the ethnography of speaking: (a) performance as practice, that is, the social use of communicative forms in the conduct of social life, with a focus on acts, events, participant roles and structures, emergent outcomes; (b) performance in the more marked sense of virtuosic display, especially important as a critical corrective to deprivationist models. second, our focus was developmental, attentive to the acquisition of competence in the use of the folklore forms in the children’s repertoires. how did children acquire and manifest the knowledge and ability to use these forms in socially appropriate and intelligible ways? this concern required that we record and analyze what amounted to incompetent as well as fully competent attempts to engage in riddling or perform handclaps as novice performers tried them out on the way to being able to accomplish and evaluate fully competent performances and ultimately to attain reflexive awareness of how the various forms are made, used, evaluated, and even, perhaps, parodied or subverted in inversive counterplay. the standard of social appropriateness that guided our work was child-centered: if participants judged and responded to a performance as skillful, enjoyable, and engaging, it was socially appropriate, even if, by strict adult or school-centric terms it was obscene, scatological, or otherwise transgressive. third, again consistent with the charter of the ethnography of speaking, our assumption was that engagement in children’s folklore was crossculturally variable and to be discovered ethnographically. thus, as noted earlier, we built into our research protocol fieldwork with children from all three of the major ethnic groups in texas, anglo american, african american, mexican american. finally, in addition to variation by age and ethnicity, we were attentive to gender variation in repertoire, participation, and development. outcomes https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39019 vol. 42, no. 1 (2024) 13 children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39019/ it’s difficult to know whether or to what extent the research findings produced by the tcfp made their way into early elementary education. by the terms of our arrangement with sedl, we submitted our materials and reports to them and they were to take over from there in developing educational programs based on what we provided. i do recall a mockup of a booklet of riddles drawn from our corpus, but i’m unsure whether it ever found a publisher or made its way into schools. the lab did support the production of two brief books, one consisting of essays by meg and rosalind on african american girls’ participation in a variety of play forms, at times in interaction with their anglo and mexican american classmates (brady and eckhardt 1975), and one by beverly on handclaps (stoeltje 1978). both works combined scholarly documentation and analysis with teacher-oriented explication and feedback to the authors indicates that some teachers, at least, found the works interesting and useful. just how they were used, who knows? i need hardly say that the lab people paid no attention to the transgressive materials that we collected. some were even a tad suspicious of data that suggested that children manipulated forms like counting-out rhymes or engaged in inversive clowning against the grain of orderly performances considering that those materials somehow compromised the mainstream ideology of childhood innocence. for the graduate-student researchers who worked on the project, there were a number of clear payoffs, even beyond the financial support they received for their work. several went on to do further research on children’s folklore. danielle and john produced ph.d. dissertations based on the research they carried out under the auspices of the project (mcdowell 1975; roemer 1977). meg extended her engagement with children’s folklore in her subsequent dissertation research and book on navajo children’s skinwalker stories (brady 1984). danielle, john, meg, and beverly all went on to teach courses devoted to children’s folklore or including a significant component of https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39019 14 children’s folklore review children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39019/ children’s folklore in more general courses, such as american folklore. and for all participants, i believe, the project offered a focused initiation into the world of socially engaged scholarship. i know that for all those participants who went on to teach, bringing that engaged stance into the classroom had a multiplier effect. over the decades since the early ‘70s, the work of the tcfp colored the educational experience of a lot of college students. we can hope that it made a difference in their understanding of the strengths and challenges of cultural and linguistic diversity and what they might offer to a humane multicultural society. in the end, i believe, no one who has considered closely the semantic intricacy of a children’s riddling session can doubt their cognitive abilities; no one who has analyzed the poetic and kinesic intricacy of a handclap session can doubt their capacity for verbal virtuosity; no one who has observed the structural acuity of a schoolyard clown in his inversive parody of a line play, can question his capacity for reflexive awareness; and no one who has witnessed the social finesse of a girl leading a ring play can deny her rhetorical skill and effectiveness in managing complex interaction. richard bauman is distinguished professor emeritus of folklore and anthropology at indiana university, bloomington. the principal foci of his research include narrative, oral poetics, performance, genre, and language ideologies. among his publications are verbal art as performance (1977), let your words be few (1983), story, performance, and event (1986), voices of modernity (with charles l. briggs, 2003; sapir prize 2006), a world of others’ words (2004), and a most valuable medium (2023). bauman has been a guggenheim fellow, a fellow of the american academy of arts and sciences, recipient of the lifetime scholarly achievement award of the american folklore society, and the franz boas award for exemplary service to anthropology of the american anthropological association. references cited abrahams, roger d. 1962. negro folklore from south philadelphia: a collection and analysis. ph. d. dissertation in folklore, university of pennsylvania. _____. 1969. jump-rope rhymes: a dictionary. austin: university of texas press. https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39019 vol. 42, no. 1 (2024) 15 children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39019/ baratz, joan. 1969. “language and cognitive assessment of negro children: assumptions and research needs.” asha 11(3) :87-91 https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ed022157.pdf bauman, richard. 1970. “an ethnographic framework for the investigation of communicative behaviors.” asha 13:334-340. _____. 1975. “verbal art as performance.” american anthropologist 77(2): 290-311. https://www.jstor.org/stable/674535 _____. 1977. verbal art as performance. rowley, ma: newbury house. _____. 2020. “the texas school.” in folklore in the united states and canada: an institutional history, patricia sawin and rosemary zumwalt, eds., pp. 129-141. bloomington: indiana university press. https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv16h2ngc.14 bauman, richard and joel sherzer, eds. 1974. explorations in the ethnography of speaking. cambridge: cambridge university press. _____. 1975. “the ethnography of speaking.” annual review of anthropology 4:95-119. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2949351 brady, margaret. 1984. “some kind of power”: navajo children’s skinwalker narratives. salt lake city: university of utah press. brady, margaret and rosalind eckhardt. 1975. black girls at play: folkloric perspectives on child development. austin, tx: southwest educational development laboratory. galvan, mary and rudolph troike. 1972. “the east texas dialect project: a pattern for education.” in language and cultural diversity in american education, ed. roger d. abrahams and rudolph troike, pp. 297-304. englewood cliffs, nj: prentice-hall. mcdowell, john 1975. the speech play and verbal art of chicano children: an ethnographic and sociolinguistic study. ph.d. dissertation in folklore, university of texas, austin. roemer, danielle. 1977. a social interactional analysis of children’s folklore: catches and narratives. ph.d. dissertation in folklore, university of texas, austin. stoeltje, beverly. 1978. children's handclaps: informal learning in play. austin, tx: southwest educational development laboratory. the school desegregation in texas policy research project. 1982. school desegregation in texas: the implementation of united states v. state of texas. lyndon b. johnson school of public affairs policy research project report no. 51. austin, tx: lyndon b. johnson school of public affairs. https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39019 https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ed022157.pdf https://www.jstor.org/stable/674535 https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv16h2ngc.14 https://www.jstor.org/stable/2949351 16 children’s folklore review children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39019/ 1 see the tcfp bibliography (page 147) in this issue. 2 l. harlan ford to américo paredes, 9/17/71. américo paredes papers, nettie lee benson library, university of texas, austin. https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39019 announcements, continued research papers, however, should not exceed 1000words (approximately 4-5 pages, typed double spaced). deadline: december 31,1985. forward manuscripts and correspondence with sase (stamped self-addressed envelope) to: brigitta geltrich-ludgate, crea nve with words pu blicanons spoofing! (vol. ii, no.2) p. o. box 223226 carmel, ca 93922 ffi~~~rn~~@~~dij~rn~ @(])[f[fffi@no(])00~ i @~@lj~@~~~~lj~~@i maryellen hains 512 n. prairie ave kalamazoo, mi 49007 diana kelly-byrne graduate school of education 3700 walnut street university of pennsylvania philadelphia, pal 9104 jean m. maclaughlin 107 e. dunedin rd. columbus, oh 43214 linda morley p.o. box 348 henniker, nh 03242 ruth stotter 2244 vistazo e. tiburon, ca 94920 the children's folklore section will meet for a business session and a continental breakfast from 7: 15-8:30 a.m., friday, october 18th, during the american folklore society meeting in cincinnati. if you plan to attend the meeting/ breakfast and have not alread y notified simon bronner, please do so. simon bronner, american studies, pennsylvania state university, capitol campus, middletown, pa,17057. the hildren's folklore newsletter there will be a forum on the handbook of children's folklore on saturday, october 19, 1:00-3:00p.m. purpose: to discuss the conceptual organization of the handbook. c.w. sullivan iii, editor english department, east carolina university greenville, north carolina 27834-4353 the children's folklore newsletter, published three times a year, is sent to all members of the children's folklore section. special arrangments can also be made with any folklore-related organization wishing to receive copies. all materials to be considered for publication should be sent to the editor. i @[p~@~ffi~~~~lj~~@i issn 0739-5558 published by east carolina university printed at the ecu print shop ffiti tido~~@rn~ffi~@ ~~~ti~~@ paper session #71: the folklore of children and adolescents, saturday, october 19. 8:30-10:15 a.m. phyllis m. may, aesthetic dimensions of afro-american play. janet m. cliff, "mamma's in the whorehouse':' adolescents' rebellious folksongs miriam camitta, the written parodies of urban adolescents elizabeth radin simons, "all right! we've got a substitute!':' the study of teenage folklore in a high school classroom eric d. walborn, camp legends-oral and dramatic: spellbinding or horrific? priscilla a. ord, an examination of children's folklore in the little house books of laura ingalls wilder other papers of interest: rosemary levy zumwalt, the child as savage: cultural evolutionary theory and metaphor. session 30: thursday, october 18.4:30-4:55 p.m. jan roseberg, approaching children's experience by being-in-the-school. session 68: saturday, october 19. 8:30-8:45 a.m. peggy gerds, the secret realm of children's cancer. session 68: saturday, october 19. 8:45-9:05 a.m. diana kelly-byrne, intimate play: a mix of multiply negotiated realities. session 68: saturday, october 19. 9:05-9:20 a.m. ocr document children's folklore review volume 25 numbers 1 and 2 2002-2003 published by the children's folklore section of the american folklore society with support from the english department at east carolina university contents from the editor .................................................................................... 5 "mean girls": the reclassification of children's and adolescents' folklore elizabeth tucker………………………………………………………7 expanding a traditional ballad: tam lin in the picture book fantasies of jane yolen and susan cooper janis dawson , ............................... ... ............................................ ……..23 polar: the most famous bear of them all! j. joseph edgette ................................................................................. 39 in our own image: the child, canadian culture, and our future carole h. carpenter ......................................................................... 47 "life for me ain't no crystal stair"; readin', writin', and parental (il)literacy in african american children's books neal a. lester......................................................................................... 75 ideas for inquiry: "exhibiting children" simon j. bronner ................................................................................. 101 annotated bibliography: children's folklore review, volumes 1-24. c. w. sullivan iii .................................................................................. 105 cfs: 2002 annual meeting .............................................................. 115 notes and announcements ........................................................ 118 about the contributors…………………………………………119 on the cover: reproduction of the cover of w.w. newell's games and songs of american children. from the editor the volume of children s folklore review that you hold in your hands is the 25th anniversary volume. i do not know about you, but i find it somewhat hard to believe that i have been editing cfr (née children’s folklore newsletter) since volume i, number 2 (volume i, number 1 was published by tom burns, university of pennsylvania). a more detailed history of this publication can be found in "from cfn to cfr: the editor's perspective," 20: 1&2 (1998): 63-65, the 20th anniversary issue. i believe that this volume contains articles that display the range of children's folklore inquiry and show the field to be a rich one that is still growing and adapting to the times. libby tucker's "mean girls" is a straightforward collection of oral folklore dealing with a topic that has recently risen to such prominence that the sunday new york times magazine devoted a major article to it. in "expanding a traditional ballad," janis dawson discusses what happens when folklore is placed in service to children's literature. joe edgette looks at the conflation of popular culture and material folk culture in "polar: the most famous bear of all!", a look at the "life" of a particularly famous teddy bear. carole carpenter examines the enculturation of children and what that means for the future of canada. neal lester discusses the history of african american literacy and looks at the traditions behind portrayal of illiterate parents in african american children's books. simon bronner's comments from the "exhibiting children" panel at the 2002 afs meeting, created in conjunction with the strong museum, rochester, new york, show that children's folklorists and museum officers share similar concerns about the representation of children's traditions in museum environments. and i have included an updated and annotated bibliography of articles published in the first 24 volumes. the volume concludes with the minutes of the 2002 meeting of the children's folklore section, notes and announcements, and brief biographies of the contributors. as always, send your articles to me and encourage your students to collect and analyze children's folklore. no newell prize was given out this year because there were no submissions from students. also, encourage your libraries to subscribe; at $10:00/year (usa) or ($15.00/year (non-usa) it's the best deal around. c.w. sullivan iii "mean girls": the reclassification of children's and adolescents' folklore elizabeth tucker in the winter of 2001, ashley, a fifteen-year-old ninth-grader in a catholic girls' school in nashville, tennessee, starts to have trouble with her classmates. "you're barbie," her friend marcia tells her. "i hate your blonde hair and your clothes." marcia and two other girls send threatening emails to ashley; between classes they stand near ashley's locker, muttering, "barbie, barbie!" in singsong voices. following her mother's advice to ignore these mean girls, ashley deletes their e-mails and turns away when they speak to her. then all the name signs around ashley's locker, colorful posters made by her closest friends, disappear overnight. "it's as if she's lost all her spirit," ashley's mother tells me on the phone. "the name-signs were the last straw. she doesn't smile any more. we're thinking of moving her to a different school." insisting on staying at her familiar high school, ashley tries to ignore marcia and her friends. her parents have a talk with the assistant principal, but their talk has little impact. marcia and her friends stop targeting ashley's locker, but their e-mails intensify. when ashley changes her e-mail address, marcia and her friends figure out her new address and start using it. they look for new ways to get ashley's attention. their harassment is long-term, unyielding. during that same winter, ashley's fourteen-year-old cousin nathan is also having trouble with classmates: eighth-grade boys in a public middle school in a small town in upstate new york. noticing nathan's nervous habit of pulling his hair, his friend eric has started chanting "puller! puller! puller!" eric and several other boys get into the habit of chanting "puller!" on the bus ride home every afternoon; nathan says nothing in response. between classes, when no teachers are around, the boys throw paper at nathan; occasionally eric tries to push nathan into his locker. nathan's parents have a talk with the assistant principal, who says that if the situation worsens, a video camera on the school bus can be used to gather evidence. when nathan tells eric to stop bothering him, eric laughs and chants some more. finally, nathan finds eric after school, just outside the school grounds where fighting is prohibited. he grabs eric by the collar and punches him, hard. other kids "mean girls" tucker cheer. eric's nose is broken; he has to miss a half-day of school to go to the doctor. nathan's problems with bullying are over. these two stories from my own circle of family and friends illustrate gender differences in bullying, a phenomenon that has recently received much media attention. a special issue of children s folklore review in 2002 examined aftereffects of the columbine school shooting. since that tragedy and others, adult have learned that bullying can lead to catastrophe. once hidden in the childhood underground, bullying is now national news. definitions of bullying have evolved over time. the oxford english dictionary defines the word "bully" as "a blustering 'gallant'" or "a tyrannical coward who makes himself a terror to the weak"; this definition, with literary examples dating back to 1688, is more recent than" a term of endearment and familiarity," which goes back to 1538. according to an article in the gale encyclopedia of childhood and adolescence, recapitulated on a popular website, bullying "usually involves an older or larger child (or several children) victimizing a single child who is incapable of defending himself or herself" (http:// www.faeriebelievers.com/gnomenews/2002/bullying.htm ). since the early 1990s, people have tended to view bullying as repetitive verbal and physical harassment; the act of bullying has become more significant than the age or size of the bullies, which varies widely. because of the broad age-range of bullying, from first grade through high school, it is necessary to view bullying as a process that begins in childhood and mutates into new forms in adolescence. name calling, injurious pranks, rituals of exclusion, and physical pummeling are among the behaviors of bullying that can be found in the annals of children's and adolescents' folklore. how can the study of folklore help us to understand bullying? the media have given more attention to boys' bullying than girls': a natural choice, since the perpetrators of the columbine massacre and other school shootings were boys. since the winter of 2002, some media attention has shifted to the bullying patterns of girls in this essay i want to examine bullying by girls and, to some extent, bullying by boys, using information from children's folklore studies, the popular press, and a discussion group for parents and educators. i also want to explore how parts of children's and adolescents' folklore have been reclassified: instead of being viewed as traditions belong ing to young people, they have become known as negative behaviors prohibited by school regulations and public policy. this reclassification has major implications for those of us who teach folklore and work with children and adolescents in the public sector. 8 tucker "mean girls" folklore studies before 1999, when the columbine school shootout occurred, folklorists did not devote much attention to children's derisive language and behavior; narratives, play, and games were more common focal points for scholarly studies. as marilyn jorgensen points out in her chapter on teases and pranks in children’s folklore: a sourcebook, folklorists have published sample texts, but "interest in the genre seems to have stopped short of an in-depth analysis of the many possible meanings and functions of taunts" (1995: 224). in the lore and language of schoolchildren (1959), iona and peter opie devote an entire chapter to "unpopular children: jeers and torments." they distinguish between taunts of a general nature, from which recipients can "take little harm," and jeers for particular offenses, which are characterized by "piercing exactitude" (175). the first example of a specific jeer comes from a group of girls expressing their derision toward a girl who seems unfriendly: i know a little girl sly and deceitful, every little tittle-tat she goes and tells the people. long nose, ugly face, ought to be put in a glass case. if you want to know her name, her name is heather lee. please, heather lee, keep away from me; i don't want to speak to you, nor you to speak to me. once we were friends, now we disagree, oh, heather lee, keep away from me. it's not because you're dirty, it's not because you're clean, it's because you've got the whooping-cough, pooh! you awful thing! (175). this rhyme, sometimes used for skipping, describes both offense and punishment. because heather lee is a sly, deceitful, and unattractive tattletale, the other girls will refuse to speak to her. as the opies explain, excluding a child from normal social interaction is often called "sending to coventry." a ten-year-old girl says: "when someone does something most of the class disagrees with, we send that person to coventry which means we never speak to them. sometimes one or two people hold their noses with their fingers and say that the place smells where they have been. another name for this is "giving them a cold shoulder" (199). 9 "mean girls" tucker sending a classmate to coventry can be traced back to british school stories as early as 1795; its apparent origin is the parliamentary practice of sending royalist prisoners to coventry to keep them safe. the opies make it clear that girls send each other to coventry much more often than boys do. boys bump or dump an unpopular fellow on the ground; they pull his arms and legs, make him march backward through mud and bushes, and jump roughly upon him, yelling "pile on" (199201). bullies are frequently subjected to these kinds of physical torture, as bullying tends to "arouse the desire for physical retribution more strongly than any other offender of the juvenile code" (192). from the wealth of examples in the opies' collection, readers can see that juvenile justice is a self-regulating system. both boys and girls call each other names, but the girls' jeers are especially varied and colorful. for example, girls may call a classmate who seems conceited a "swankpot," "swanky liz," "swanky lanky liz," or "swanky pants" (182). echoing the opies, mary and herbert knapp state in one potato, two potato (1976) that "the cruelest epithets are those which are the most specific" (66). their list of cruel jeers includes "pipe-neck, platypus, fishlips, beaver-teeth, mush-mouth, bubble-head, spider-legs, candy-grabber, buger-peeler" (66). focussing on the efficacy of children's self-education, the knapps explain that jeers "enable children partly to control situations that would otherwise be almost unbearably frustrating" (59). although they refrain from saying that verbal duels are always beneficial, they are firm in saying that "the traditional ways children have devised for dealing with feelings are better than most of us realize" (68). although most of the knapps' coverage of children's jeers is not genderspecific, their description of slam books shows that girls are in charge: "girls 'keep' these books, but boys and girls alike write in them" (79). comments about an unpopular child in a 1969 slam book include '''scago la vomit,' 'stupid' (three times), 'gross' (twice), 'ugh!' (three times), 'not nice,' 'show off,' 'stinks,' 'dumb dope,' 'scab,' 'pu pu,' 'ugh boo"'(79). analysis of these hurtful comments takes a generally positive direction: this is scapegoating, and it is appalling. but slam books have redeeming features. children who write in them discover that writing is good for something besides homework, and they learn a lot about the perils and pleasures of judging other people. they need to be surprised when they are misinterpreted, to be shocked as they discover what others think of 10 tucker "mean girls" them, and to find out all those complicated things one learns from quarrels and reconciliations, from secret agreements, treaties, and alliances (79-80). the underlying assumption here is that children, when left to their own devices, teach themselves good things that will prepare them for adult social interaction. this credo can be traced back to rousseau's emile, first published in 1762, in which the child becomes an independent, self-directed learner who makes healthful choices. in american children's folklore (1988), simon bronner lists a number of derisive rhymes, including this one from an eight-year-old girl: mary, mary, is no good chop her up for firewood . if the fire does not burn throw her in a butter churn if the butter turns to cheese georgie, georgie will give her a squeeze (75). bronner explains that jeers clarify children's norms, such as cleanliness and cooperation; they also initiate social drama and elicit information or an emotional reaction from the child who is teased (74). this approach explores what a child can learn from derisive folklore without trying to identify all functions as educational and productive. an early study of adolescent folklore, millicent r. ayoub and stephen a. barnett's "ritualized verbal assault in white high school culture," discusses the popularity of sounding, also known as playing the dozens, among white high school students in the mid-1960s. citing roger abrahams' deep down in the jungle, ayoub and barnett suggest that playing the dozens spread from african-american culture to white culture after world war ii. offering examples of typical mother-sounds ("your old lady is a fag," "your old lady gives green stamps"), ayoub and barnett make several points that are significant for folklorists studying verbal duels and taunts today. sounds begin in elementary school and gradually become more sophisticated as children grow older (339). what looks to outsiders like a serious exchange of verbal abuse can seem harmless to in-group members, who insist that "it's all in fun" (340). girls playa name game related to the dozens but deny that they know about the dozens itself, even though they seem familiar with it. ayoub's and barnett's study conveys the same general message as the opies' and knapps': young people's folklore regulates itself. 11 "mean girls" tucker in his recent essay "redwood grove: youth culture in a group home," published in children's folklore review (2002), jesse gelwicks describes how children use storytelling and teasing to form a social hierarchy outside the control of adults. according to gelwicks, "adults can intervene and impose control based on behavior charts and points, but the social hierarchy framed by the boys is also a very powerful force in shaping the children's experiences" (77). this affirmation of children's hierarchies is an important reminder of what children can accomplish on their own, even in an era when youth culture seems to be fraught with danger. reclassification since april 20, 1999, when the columbine school shootout occurred, the view that children and adolescents can regulate their own society has radically changed. knowing that children with guns can exact retribution for verbal derision makes the derision itself seem much more dangerous. high schools, middle schools, and even elementary schools have tightened their regulations; parents have become more watchful, and the power of words in youth culture has gained new respect. before columbine, however, a change in attitude was already emerging. in 1991, a teenager in duluth, minnesota discovered that her name was listed among "sexually degrading graffiti" on the boys' bathroom wall. after the school refused to erase the graffiti, the girl's parents filed charges with the minnesota department of human rights, and a cash settlement of $15,000 was awarded "for emotional damages as a result of sexual harassment" (strauss). graffiti, often considered verbal and pictorial art by folklorists, had become grounds for a lawsuit. in 1993, susan strauss published an essay in the vocational education journal that gave examples of sexual harassment. among these were graffiti, slam books, pranks such as "spiking" or "de-pantsing" and "wedgies," and "name calling: from 'honey' to 'bitch' or worse." more than half of the offenses listed in strauss's essay came from children's and adolescents' folklore. what used to be part of the culture of childhood, occasionally noticed by parents and teachers, had entered the language of legal prohibition (http:// www.straussconsult.com/article2.htm). a survey of middle school and high school handbook available on the internet shows how school administrators have tried to outlaw behavior that might prove to be dangerous. rule 8 at new lebanon middle school in ohio specifies that there should be no language 12 tucker "mean girls" "deemed inappropriate or obscene by any staff member, either written or verbal, to annoy or humiliate others or to disrupt the educational process" (http://www.newlebanon.ki2.oh.us/handbook ). at st. david's school in miami, with students from preschool to eighth grade, regulations prohibit rudeness, roughness, and "vile, vulgar or indecent language." one rule specifies that "slam books (derogatory writings) will not be tolerated. students participating in slam books will be disciplined accordingly" (http://www.saintdavid.org/school forms/handbook). in hartford, connecticut, high schools and middle schools have adopted a "zero tolerance" approach to fighting and dangerous pranks. the mother of a boy who was in sixth grade in the hartford area told me: michael put plant food in the teachers' coffee pot after his teacher told the class about kids substituting salt for sugar. the police came; they told him that if a teacher had been pregnant, she would have lost her baby after drinking the plant food. before this prank, michael was a wonderful kid. afterwards, he was on the middle school's "most wanted" list. he was suspended. i always thought it was the teacher's fault, because he told the class about that substitution prank (martin). the boundary line between pranks and crimes has changed, and educators' roles have been called into question. could a parent file a complaint against a high-school teacher because a traditional prank was mentioned in class? as the above story suggests, describing a prank could precipitate a grievance. the state of connecticut is currently holding legislative hearings on public act number 02-119: "an act concerning bullying behavior in schools and concerning the pledge of allegiance." defining bullying as "repeated, overt acts by one or more students on school grounds or at a school-sponsored activity that are intended to ridicule humiliate, or intimidate another student," this bill requires all school boards to develop an antibullying policy. connecticut's commission on children has announced that erika harold, miss america 2003, will work with connecticut students to help launch an anti bullying platform (http://www.cga.state.ct.us/coc). colorado and other states have already developed laws against bullying; connecticut's recent efforts should have an impact on the way bullying is received in the northeastern united states. 13 "mean gjrls" tucker "mean girls" on february 24, 2002, the bright pink cover of the new york times magazine displayed a doll-like teenaged girl, punctured with blackheaded pins, held in the fist of another girl who was clearly her tormentor. the headline: "mean girls and the new movement to tame them." this essay by margaret talbot immediately drew nationwide attention. teachers, parents, and internet chat groups mobilized to answer talbot's questions: is it possible that girls are more aggressive than boys? and if so, how can their damage be controlled? talbot's essay gives the reader a glimpse into the "girl world" of rosalind wiseman, a thirty-two-year-old woman who presents programs and seminars on relational aggression, date rape, and other issues that worry parents and teachers of girls. the founder of a nonprofit organization known as the empower program, wiseman works with groups of girls to help them take responsibility for their actions and develop, as her handbook explains, "strategies to interrupt the cycle of gossip, exclusivity and reputations" (40). talbot's description of rosalind wiseman makes her sound like an infiltrator who has studied girls' gestures and folk speech: when wiseman catches sight of you approaching, she knows how to do a little side-to-side wave, with her elbow pressed to her hip, that is disarmingly girlish. she says "totally" and "omigod" and "don't stress" and "chill" a lot and refers to people who are "hotties" or "have it goin on" (40). in fact, wiseman has studied girls' customs and chooses her wardrobe with the help of a seventeen-year-old girl: her sister zoe. she interacts with her girl clients much as an older sister would, but she is an entrepreneur hired to intervene. other programs like hers include the ophelia project in erie, pennsylvania and genaustin in austin, texas. helping girls to avoid hurting each other has become big business. does the prevalence of these relatively new programs show that girls are tormenting each other in new and alarming ways? on the contrary: the examples talbot offers reveal patterns from children's and adolescents' folklore. when wiseman holds an apologies day, girls who have been mean to each other are told to write down feelings of contrition. the girls who resist this exercise most are the ones wiseman calls alpha girls, r.m.g. 's (really mean girls) or queen bees; their victims are wannabes and messengers. interestingly, the written apologies often hold new insults for the original victims. one girl writes, "i'm sorry i told everyone you had an american girl doll. it 14 tucker "mean girls" really burned your reputation" (26). another girl writes a longer note: dear 'friend,' i'm sorry that i talked about you behind your back. i once even compared your forehead/face to a minefield (only 2 1 person though). i'm really sorry i said these things even though i might still believe them (26). devious though these apologies may be, they sound familiar. unflattering, insulting analogies have been common for as long as children's folklore has been recorded. the apologies written by girls in wiseman's group are like slam book entries; the writer is allowed to record comments that will make the recipient furious. another genre of "meanness" common among wiseman's girls is the custom of three-way calling. two girls call up a third girl, but one of the two does not reveal that she's on the line. the girl who is speaking encourages the third girl to say terrible things about her silent partner. this is a phone prank resembling the traditional girls' game truth or dare, in which a player must share shocking truths. with the technology of three-way calling, the potential for inflicting pain is more advanced than it would be otherwise. one especially painful process is the ritual of exclusion. the custom of sending to coventry, noted by the opies, is just one of many for the same purpose. an apology note written by one of wiseman's clients gives a few details: "dear b. i'm sorry for excluding you and ignoring you. also, i have said a bunch of bad things about you. i have also run away from you just because i didn't like you" (26). one reason for exclusion is failure to follow a clique's dress rules, such as "you cannot wear jeans any day but friday, and you cannot wear a ponytail or sneakers more than once a week"(28). rigid self-generated dress codes are typical of adolescents. while folklorists, psychologists, and sociologists have attempted to figure out why such rituals are so common, more research seems to be necessary. rosalind wiseman's book queen bees and wannabes: helping your daughter survive cliques, gossip, boyfriends and other realities of adolescence was published in the spring of 2002. two other books on the same subject came out at that time: emily white's fast girls: teenage tribes and the myth of the slut and rachel simmons' odd girl out: the hidden culture of aggression in girls. the era of "mean girl" analysis has arrived. this publishing trend was preceded, perhaps inspired, by several books by scandinavian scholars. dan olweus's bullying at school: what we know and what we can do (1993) compares boys' and girls' bullying; it also compares bullying in sweden with bullying in nor 15 "mean girls" tucker way. other variables studied by olweus include class size, school size, physical weakness and strength, and supervision at recess and lunch time a book that more specifically addresses girls' aggression is kaj bjorkqvist's of mice and women: aspects of female aggression (1992). with an interdisciplinary approach, bjorkqvist asks whether females of all species are less aggressive than males. his focus on patterns of female aggression has opened up the subject for scholars in other fields. another valuable resource is the nature of school bullying: a cross-cultural national perspective (1999), edited by olweus and others. global village while looking for information about girls' bullying on the internet, i discovered an informative website: http://www.bullying.org. designed by a canadian teacher to help children and their parents and teachers, this website contains pictures, poems, and stories from children who have suffered from bullying in countries around the world. many of the poems, including this one by eleven-year-old dani, show the torment of bullying: when will it stop? i hope one day it does. i want, i need a life. my life. the one i had before you set onto me. before i walked down that hall in fear. before i saw that note you gave to all of them. before i was told i was nothing. before i was spat on. some day i'll be free and i will walk far away from you, so far you'll never find me. according to the proverb that hillary clinton used as a book title, "it takes a village to raise a child" (1996). sometimes it takes a global village, a group of people from various countries connected to each other through e-mail, to find solutions to a problem as serious as bullying. when i joined bullyingsupport@yahoogroups.com, recommended by the "bullying.org" website, i felt i had found that kind of village. at first, never having belonged to such a group, i didn't know what to expect. would group members welcome my queries about children's folklore, or would they find those questions intrusive? i needn't have worried. two teachers and a parent replied immediately, sending me information and asking me to tell them more about my 16 tucker "mean girls" interests. the ongoing dialogue was lively and interesting. within a few days, i had heard from teachers and parents in canada, various parts of the united states, and australia. one teacher at a public junior high school in alabama assured me that name-calling was part of both bullying and everyday discourse: ". . . believe me the use of "ho," "yo mama," and "b" (bitch) are said every day 24-7. both male and female students use them as a defense mechanism when they are upset without thinking" (reese). a teacher in australia wrote that "the most common form of bullying for both sexes is verbal. this includes teasing, harassment and name calling. it is the most painful" (tamer). just as the opies found in collecting jeers for unpopular children, i discovered that there was a wide range of taunts for both girls and boys. more compelling, though, were the stories of personal experience shared by parents of children who had suffered. jill, who had learned about the support group from a television special on bullying in indiana, shared details about what had happened to her eleven-year-old daughter: she makes the honor roll and has long beautiful blonde hair (not from me. lol). several of the girls that have had trouble with grades, 1 in particular that was held back. . . was always telling my daughter that she is stupid and pulling her i keep trying to tell my daughter that this little girl just wishes she made better grades and had her hair. but when your daughter cries herself to sleep and does not want to go to a slumber party because of this other child, it is hard. others replied to jill, offering consolation and advice. two teachers suggested that jill should ask administrators at her daughter's school to buy videos on bullying; several parents agreed. school administrators mentioned community conferencing and spinclusion, both of which are designed to enhance dialogue and empathy. lynn zammit, the coordinator of choices for youth programs in kitchener, ontario, wrote about the restorative justice process, a conferencing model that brings the offender and victim together with school staff and community members. this process has been effective in dealing with gangs, school violence, bullying, truancy, and other difficult issues involving criminal charges (zammit). another important idea that emerged from the group was to read what students have to say in "what can be done about bullying? students speak out," by ruth rees (2002). student-generated ideas include treating fellow students as one would like to be treated one 17 "mean girls" tucker self, sticking up for fellow students, quickly reporting bullying incidents, and running year-long bullying programs; if nothing else works, a change of classrooms or of schools is recommended. teachers should stick to the rules, monitor public spaces, handle troubling situations immediately, and impose progressively severe penalties (5-7). at times the dialogue on this internet support group became ideological. julia, a miami resident who grew up in russia, wrote: in russia, sure there is a lot to be improved, but kids are being taught from the very beginning by teachers and parents and everybody around you should treat everybody equally no matter what, nobody is better than you are, nobody deserves to be hurt, everybody deserves to be treated friendly, etc. here in the us i found out a lot of things that amaze me. 1. schools do what's convenient for them, not for parents or children. 2. you can buy spongebob squarepants video for $10 and "words can't hurt me," the one that really every school needs to see, is $70! (rivers). one day later, ana, who grew up in cuba, expressed a different viewpoint: "the communist ideology did not protect in a special way anyone... i remember many bullies empowered by the ideological system" (faya). it was clear that there was potential for more politically oriented dialogue, as well as more personal experience stories from diverse cultures. two mothers, cindy wesley and fern trithart, were central figures in the bullying support group. their own stories were wrenching, powerful, and difficult to read. both cindy and fern had lost their children because of bullying. cindy's daughter, dawn-marie, died at age fourteen on november 10, 2000, in mission, british columbia. reports of this tragedy were available on the internet, but cindy sent our group a more personal account: on november 10, 2000 our youngest son found his sister who had hung herself. in her suicide note she named three girls who had bullied her at school, one being a police officer's daughter. for the first time in history bullies were charged. during the trial i sat through having to listen to how these girls tormented our daughter. the last words that our baby heard were "dawn-marie you are fucken dead." am i thankful that the judicial system seems to be owning their part in this 18 tucker "mean girls" out of control situation" (wesley). cindy's story deeply saddened us all; this was the worst outcome that a bullying situation could produce. many of us sent messages of sympathy. faced with the starkness of this story, at first i did not want to analyze it as a folklore text; such analysis seemed disrespectful. however, as i read several renditions of cindy's story, i realized that her narratives had become an important vehicle for activism. cindy is the founder of pave, parents against violence everywhere, which has been a strong advocate for children's rights. describing other parents' judicial challenges, she explains that "the process is very lengthy and parents usually give up midway" (wesley). her own story, telling of successful prosecution, gives strength and hope to other parents seeking justice in the courts. fern trithart's story about the loss of her son is equally wrenching. tyler trithart died at the age of sixteen on may 25, 2001, in chestermere, alberta, canada. he got into a fight with another teenaged boy over a girl, and the first punch was fatal. sixty students watched the fight, which took place in a remote area where parents and teachers could not intervene. although a trial was held, the boy who threw the first punch was not charged. fern's recollections of tyler's life are suffused with memories of bullying: losing a child to violence is different from losing someone. we had to endure a trial that blamed everything on tyler not the boy or girl who dragged him into their issues. tyler had a learning disability, he was not mean or violent, he was just an easy target to become involved in these kids' issues (trithart). since tyler's death, fern has become an activist; she maintains a website on which she tells her son's story, urging young people not to engage in violent behavior (http://www.iaredstory.com/tyler.html). on this website, tyler's death is described as a "bullycide." fern regularly participates in the bullying support group, offering advice and encouragement to many people. her courage, like the courage of cindy wesley, is extraordinary. conclusion i began this essay with stories about two teenagers, ashley and nathan, who were tormented by their peers in the winter of 2001. after two months of interaction with my bullying support group, i 19 "mean girls" tucker found it appropriate to conclude with the stories of dawn-marie and tyler, who did not survive being bullied. these stories provide eloquent proof of the need for more effective intervention and education. folklorists, aware of the long-standing traditions of children and adolescents, can approach this crisis with an understanding of how young people's hierarchies function. as ruth rees's essay explains, asking students themselves to come up with solutions is a promising approach. community conferencing also gives students a voice but tends to be managed by adults. in the "global village" of the internet, parents and educators can discuss intervention techniques, sharing their opinions about what works and what doesn't work. several types of children's and adolescents' folklore have undergone reclassification. bullying can be prosecuted as a crime; writing in slam books and planning dangerous pranks can result in suspension from school; name-calling can lead to sexual harassment charges; and exclusion rituals can cause school administrators to hire professional interveners like rosalind wiseman. will the recently published folklore of "mean girls" result in policy changes in the future? by gathering stories and other kinds of data, folklorists can seek answers to that question and others. in the midst of social change, storytelling is one of the most powerful problem-solvers we have. binghamton university binghamton, new york note i would like to dedicate this essay to the memory of dawn-marie wesley, 1986-2000, and tyler james grant trithart, 1984-2001. dawn-marie's memorial website is http://www.missioncity.ca/pave/dawnmariewesley/dawnmariewesley.htm. tyler's memorial website is http://www. jaredstory.com/tvler.html. works cited abrahams, roger. deep down in the jungle. hatboro, pennsylvania: folk lore associates, 1964. ayoub, millicent r., and barnett, stephen a., "ritualized verbal insult in white high school culture." journal of american folklore 78 (1965): 337-44. bjorkvist, kaj. of mice and women: aspects of female aggression. san diego: academic press, 1992. bronner, simon. american children’s folklore. little rock: august house, 1988. 20 http://www.missioncity.ca/pave/dawnmariewesley/dawnmariewesley.htm tucker "mean girls" clinton, hillary. it takes a village to raise a child and other lessons chil dren teach us. new york: simon and schuster, 1996. faya, ana julia yanes. "re: about russia vs. miami." groups.com (19 nov. 2002). gale encyclopedia of childhood and adolescence, ed. susan gall. new york: gale group, 1997. gelwicks, jesse. "youth culture in a group home." children’s folklore review 24: 1-2 (2002): 65-87. jill. "re: girls' bullying: a query." bullying-support@yahoogroups.com (14 nov. 2002). jorgensen, marilyn. "teases and pranks." in children s folklore: a source book, ed. brian sutton-smith, jay mechling, thomas w. johnson, and felicia r. mcmahon. new york: garland, 1995. 213-24. knapp, mary, and herbert knapp. one potato, two potato: the folklore of american children. new york: norton, 1976. martin, amanda. personal communication. 2 oct. 2002. nature of school bullying: a cross-national perspective, ed. dan olweus, phillip slee, yohji morita, richard catalano, peter k. smith, and josine junger-tas. new york: routledge, 1999. olweus, dan. bullying at school: what we know and what we can do. new york: blackwell, 1993. opie, iona, and peter opie. the lore and language of schoolchildren. new york: oxford up, 1959. oxford english dictionary, 2nd edition, vol. 2. oxford: clarendon press, 1989. 645-46. rees, ruth. "what can be done about bullying? students speak out." international electronic journal for leadership in learning 6:23 (octo ber 18, 2002): 1-15. reese, janet. "re: hi—let me introduce myself!!" bullying-support @yahoogroups.com (25 nov. 2002). rivers, julia. "re: some thoughts to share." bullying-support@vahoogroups.com (18 nov. 2002). rousseau, jean-jacques. emile. london: everyman, 1993. simmons, rachel. odd girl out: the hidden culture of aggression in girls. new york: harcourt, 2002. strauss, susan. "sexual harassment in the schools." vocational education journal (march 1993). available http://www.straussconsult.com/article2/ htm. talbot, margaret. "girls just want to be mean." the new york times maga zine (february 24, 2002): 24-65. tamer, caroline. "re: bullying." bullving-support@vahoogroups.com (12 nov.2002). trithart, fern. "re: why are kids so cruel?" bullying-support @vahoogroups.com (7 nov. 2002). wesley, cindy. "re: bullying-support digest number 106." bullying support@vahoogroups.com (10 nov. 2002). 21 mailto:bullying-support@vahoogroups.com "mean girls" tucker wesley, cindy. "re: bullying-support digest number 123." bullying support@yahoogroups.com (3 dec. 2002). white, emily. fast girls: teenage tribes and the myth of the slut. new york: scribner, 2002. wiseman, rosalind. queen bees and wannabes: helping your daughter survive cliques, gossip, boyfriends, and other realities of adoles cence. new york: crown, 2002. zammit, lynn. "re: bullying-support digest number 109." bullving support@vahoogroups.com (17 nov. 2002). 22 expanding a traditional ballad: tam lin in the picture book fantasies of jane yolen and susan cooper janis dawson o i forbid you, maidens a,' that wear gowd on your hair, to come or gae by caterhaugh, for young tam lin is there. there's nane that gaes by caterhaugh but they leave him a wad, either their rings, or green mantles, or else their maidenhead. janet has kilted her green kirtle a little aboon her knee, and she has broded her yellow hair a liitle aboon her bree, and she's awa' to carterhaugh. as fast as she can hie. -tam lin (child 39a)1 tam lin is one of the better known of the traditional scottish fairy ballads. this highly romantic story of a young woman who rescues her lover from the fairy queen was noted in written sources as early as the sixteenth century. although the ballad itself, set in the wild border lands of scotland, appears to be unique to the scottish people, folklorists have connected the story with greek popular traditions older than homer (child 336)2 the story has also been linked to other traditional ballads and tales, including thomas the rhymer, the faerie oak of corriewater, alice brand, the king’s daughter jane, and beauty and the beast, and it has been described as the canonical ballad ("legends"). in more recent times, the story has continued to inspire artists, writers, and musicians.3 tam lin has even entered the electronic age with an extensive web site devoted to the discussion and interpretation of the ballad.4 expanding a traditional ballad dawson romance aside, however, tam lin is a dark, violent and highly complex story that in its various manifestations deals with rape, abortion, abduction, torture, and human sacrifice. it also draws on primal fears of abandonment, darkness, madness, and the power of evil. this is adult material, to be sure; nonetheless, the ballad has inspired a number of fantasy stories and novels for children and young adults including the gold of fairnilee (1888) by andrew lang, thursday by catherine storr (1971) the queen of spells by dahlov ipcar (1973), the perilous gard by elizabeth marie pope (1974), and fire and hemlock by diana wynne jones (1984), as well as illustrated children's books by jane yolen (1990) and susan cooper (1991)5 many of these authors have been drawn to the character of the determined young woman who redeems her lover from the fairy queen.6 indeed, the fair janet, or margaret, as she is variously known, has been represented as a kind of protofeminist in a number of modern discussions of the ballad. john niles writes that in its portrait of janet, a young woman willing to venture her life in defiance of all restrictions in an attempt to win her lover back to human form, the scottish ballad reflects an ideal of feminine behavior which is refreshingly unlike that which is reflected in most polite literature of recent centuries. the ballad itself has no use for pale, passive princesses. it shows us a spunky and defiant young woman who is both willing and able to help herself. the song is rooted in rough soil, and its protagonist shows the kind of toughness necessary for survival in such terrain. (346). colin manlove expresses a similar view, noting that, "it must be said that there is a strong 'feminist' element to many scottish (not gaelic) fairy tales" (22). manlove seems to see feminism as women pitted against one another, however, for his discussion is as much about the fairy queen as janet. "the whole tale is a picture of feminine resolution-and even dominance," he writes, "for tam is the slave of the fairy queen and cannot escape by himself" (32). not surprisingly, authors who have used this ballad to structure their own works have emphasized female strength, boldness, perseverance and indepen dence.7 this search for the female hero, at the expense, perhaps, of other elements in the traditional story, naturally raises the issue of how authors use traditional literature in the creation of fantasy for young readers. however, as c. w. sullivan iii notes, "little attention has been given to the work of authors of fantasy for children and 24 dawson expanding a traditional ballad adolescents who have drawn directly on traditional plot structures upon which to expand and build whole novels" ("traditional ballads" 145). sullivan has identified three major ways in which authors have used traditional materials to structure or help structure their novels: expanding, interweaving, and inventing (welsh celtic myth x)8 it is understood that regardless of the method used, a careful writer will use the materials conscientiously and respect the essence of the traditional work. for the purposes of this paper, however, i will refer to sullivan's first method, expanding, in my discussion of modern versions of the ballad by jane yolen and susan cooper. the version of the traditional ballad that will serve as the reference point for this examination will be the one listed as number 39a in francis james child's collection of english and scottish popular ballads published between 1882 and 1898. child's 39a appears to be one of the oldest printed versions of the ballad.9 according to sullivan, expanding refers to the way in which a modern author "expands upon the original material-adding, as it were, flesh to the skeleton [. . .]." in this manner, the modern author "adds detail and texture, filling in the background, developing major and minor characters more fully, borrowing from other compatible sources, and creating new material that complements the original" (welsh celtic myth 13). jane yolen and susan cooper, both well respected authors of fantasy for children, have followed the traditional ballad closely in their respective works, but each has expanded the ballad in interesting ways. both publications are illustrated and designed for younger readers. in addition to expanding the ballad, however, both yolen and cooper have chosen to omit some traditional material because they are writing for a younger audience. the ways in which these omissions affect the retelling of tam lin will be discussed in this paper. although there are some fifteen versions of the ballad (including fragments) in child's collection, the general story line may be described as follows: a young man (tam lin)10 haunts a wild area (carterhaugh)11 threatening young maidens by demanding things of value including rings, green mantles, and even their maidenheads. one young woman, janet or margaret,12 refuses to heed the warnings and proceeds to visit the dangerous place. she plucks a rose, thereby summoning the young man. he challenges her, but she declares her right to be there because it is "my ain, /my daddie gave it me." she dallies with the young man, and when she returns home, she is with child. she returns at a later time, summons him again by plucking a rose, and asks his identity. he explains that many years ago, he was 25 expanding a traditional ballad dawson abducted by the elfin queen (or queen of the fairies), but now he is about to be given up as a "tithe to hell" unless the young woman agrees to save him. the young man's instructions are explicit: she must meet him at the crossroads on halloween night (or midsummer's eve) when the queen and her court ride abroad and pull him from his horse. she must then hold fast to him while he undergoes successive terrifying changes of shape ending in a burning rod of iron. once he has returned to his human form, she must immerse him in a body of water and then wrap him in her mantle. the young woman follows her lover's instructions and thereby wins him for herself. yolen begins her retelling of tam lin not with the familiar warning to maidens but with a description of a ruined castle, "strange and forbidding," set on "a weedy piece of land called carterhaugh." readers are told that, "many years had passed since humans had lived there," and that "now all the children were warned against it." yolen has thus expanded the ballad to include an eerie atmosphere and a warning to all children, not just maidens she alters the warning still further by having older boys go secretly to carterhaugh on dares, "leaving tokens of their passing-garlands or rings, and once a fine green mantle." while yolen's addition of atmospheric detail enhances the supernatural aspects of the tale and effectively prepares the reader for the appearance of the enchanted knight and the faery queen, her alterations are, in effect, omissions-tam lin does not demand a toll and there is no reference to the loss of maidenheads (rape or seduction)-and they deprive the story of its ability to function as a cautionary tale. these changes, dictated, one must assume, by the fact that yolen is writing for a younger audience, also affects the nature of the relationship between tam lin and the young maiden called jennet. yolen expands jennet's character by describing her beauty and emphasizing her boldness. yolen also makes jennet's determination to claim her inheritance the motivation for her otherwise unexplained journey to carterhaugh in defiance of the warning: jennet always had a mind of her own, even as a wee girl. the villagers all said she would never marry, no matter that her father was chief of the clan. no man would want her, even for all her beauty and her father's name. for she always spoke what she thought. and what she thought was never quite proper for a young lady. "i will go," jennet said, "for i am not afraid. i will go when i am old enough to win back carterhaugh for our clan." 26 dawson expanding a traditional ballad in the ballad, however, jennet's reference to her inheritance is presented simply as her defiant answer to tam lin's demand to know why she is plucking a rose at carterhaugh: carterhaugh, it is my ain, my daddie gave it me; i'll come and gang by carterhaugh and ask nae leave at thee. (child 39a verse 7) yolen has thus expanded the original narrative to make janet's actions more understandable and to present her as a determined, strong-willed young woman—a female hero. yolen also gives jennet a last name which further identifies her as a strong woman determined to claim her rights. true to her promise, yolen's jennet goes to carterhaugh on her sixteenth birthday to claim her inheritance. yolen embellishes the ballad's reference to jennet's dress and again emphasizes her reason for going to carterhaugh: on the day she turned sixteen, the day she came into her inheritance, jennet twisted her long, red-gold hair into a braid and pinned it to the top of her head. she put on her brand new birthday gown, as green as a young willow. she fastened the mackenzie plaid across her shoulder and secured it with a golden brooch. [. . .] jennet pulled the plaid up over her hair. she put on her walking shoes, tucked her skirts above her knees, and bounded up and over the heather hills toward the tumbledown towers of carterhaugh. once at carterhaugh, "in a voice that was strong, though the echo of it trembled," jennet announces her claim to carterhaugh before she plucks the rose that will summon tam lin: this reversal of events allows yolen's jennet more power in her encounter with tam lin; she is in a less vulnerable position than her counterpart in the ballad. a further significant addition is jennet's claim that carterhaugh was stolen from her ancestors by the fairies. by plucking the rose, jennet states that she is making a pledge that she will "take back carterhaugh and restore it to humankind." there is, of course, no sexual encounter between jennet and tam lin, and yolen's jennet has no need to make a second journey to carterhaugh to either confront her lover or gather herbs to induce a miscarriage (depending on the version of the ballad used). jennet and 27 expanding a traditional ballad dawson tam lin quickly fall in love, and as in the traditional ballad, he describes his enchantment and tells her how she can win him away from the fey. yolen follows the ballad closely up to jennet's victory over the faery queen, combining details from different versions that require jennet to carry holy water and earth from her own garden as additional protection from the power of the fey.13 however, rather than end the story with the queen's angry curse, shame betide her ill-fared face, and an ill death may she die, for she's taen way the bonniest knight in a' my companie. (child 39 a verse 41) yolen's tam lin laughs at the queen's curse, and dismisses her power: "we stand here protected by a circle of earth, with holy water upon our heads. your curses return from us to thee, o queen of the everfair. and look!" he pointed to the horizon where the sun was just dawning. "your power is over. be gone." yolen then provides a fairy tale conclusion: and so jennet and tam lin were married. it is said in selkirk that they lived a long and happy life together in the great stone castle jennet restored and renamed carter hall. and that their children's children's children lived there happily ever after. by ending her book in this way rather than with the curse, yolen removes the possibility that the queen will return to harm jennet, tam lin, or their future offspring. where the ballad leaves the reader or listener conscious of the lingering threat of evil and danger, yolen provides a "happily ever after" picture. this removes the tension and upsets the fine balance in the ballad which begins with a warning and ends with a threat. tam lin's original audience would have understood that the queen's threat was no idle utterance; it is powerful and malevolent, and it carries with it the weight of traditional lore rich in stories of changelings, stolen children, faery possession, and human sacrifice. in terms of jennet herself, the ending seems to diminish her character as if her struggle with the fairy queen has robbed her of her essential boldness and vigour. the image of jennet at the end of the book is inconsistent with the strong-minded young woman yolen establishes in the opening paragraphs. 28 dawson expanding a traditional ballad evelyn perry argues that yolen's ending diminishes the ballad by downplaying the struggle between good and evil that is an essential part of the story. in perry's words, "the fairy queen's final threat to the couple, the understanding that we must never relax our fight against evil, and the touching appeal to the hero in all of us, have been plowed under by the promise of happily ever after and the distillation of evil" (40). unfortunately, however, perry, preoccupied with the hero's journey, is less than clear about what this good and evil might represent, and consequently her critique of yolen falls short. if the ballad is read through its symbolism, however, good and evil are not vague and amorphous; what is represented is a struggle between christianity and the still powerful ancient gods and spirits of nature. the symbols are janus-like; they may be christian or pagan, and this creates a powerful tension in the ballad. the rose, the central image here, represents virginity, passion and seduction, but in christian symbolism, it also represents the blood christ shed on the cross. the thorn, as dominant in the illustrations as the rose itself, also recalls christ's crown of thorns. the christian symbolism, indeed, cannot be downplayed without violating the integrity of the ballad. in the ballad, janet's action turns on her desperate hope that her lover is a mortal and a christian. pregnant with their child, she returns to carterhaugh to confront him: o tell me, tell me, tam lin, she says, for's sake that dies on tree, if e' er ye was in holy chapel, or christendom did see. (child 39a verse 21) once she receives the assurance she seeks, she is prepared to follow his instructions. this sequence is important because it helps to explain janet's action from this point forward. janet is motivated not just by love but also by her real need for a christian union for the sake of her unborn child. although yolen has reduced the ballad through her happily-ever-after ending, in her defense, it must be said that she has, nonetheless, preserved a sense of the religious struggle at the heart of the ballad by having jennet bring a bottle of holy water (blessed by the priest) and earth from her garden (earth from a christian precinct) to her meeting with the faery queen. in yolen's retelling of the ballad, the holy water and the earth playa crucial part in the redemption of tam lin. tam lin, in thrall to the dark powers of the faery queen, is indeed a 29 expanding a traditional ballad dawson fallen man; by claiming him from the queen, jennet, a christian woman, redeems not only his body but also his soul. his immersion in the holy well is his baptism. charles mikolaycak's full page lavish illustrations are well suited to yolen's retelling of tam lin and contribute in their own way to the expansion of the ballad. his illustrations, in fact, provide the sexual imagery that yolen's text omits. he uses strong lines and bold and vivid colours that complement and emphasize jennet's strong character. gray and black are used to emphasize the darkness of the story and the eerieness of the setting, but red and green predominate, reinforcing the christian and celtic symbolism in the story: red for the rose that symbolizes virginity, seduction, passion, fertility, and the blood of sacrifice; green for fertility, renewal, envy, and deceit. green is also the colour traditionally associated with the fairy folk. the central image in the ballad, the rose, becomes a focal point in mikolaycak's illustrations, expanding from a small rosebud crushed in an old woman's hand, to a full blown rose in the wilderness at carterhaugh. it is the full-blown rose that jennet picks to summon her lover; it also signals her deflowering. the thorn joins the rose as a dominant image in the illustrations, representing not only the blood and passion of christ, but also untilled soil, and by association, virginity. in christian symbolism, "christ's crown of thorns celebrates the marriage of heaven with the virgin earth"; it is "the wedding ring of the word—the son of man—and the earth, virgin and still to be made fertile" (chevalier and gheerbrant 990). the colours are woven into the lovers' clothing, reinforcing the dual nature of the symbolism of the ballad. jennet's gown is green and her mantle is a red and green plaid when she first goes to carterhaugh; when she returns to confront the queen, she wears a rose/blood red gown and a green mantle. tam lin's plaid is black and white; his colours recall the black thorn, but in the final illustration of the text, the artist has added the colours of jennet's plaid. through colour imagery, the union of jennet and tam lin represents the marriage of heaven and earth and the victory over the dark forces represented by the faery queen.14 susan cooper's retelling of tam lin is based on several versions of the ballad rather than on the better known child 39 a. here jennet is called margaret, and she is presented as the king's daughter rather than the daughter of a clan chieftain. cooper follows the outline of the traditional ballad closely, but like yolen, cooper expands the ballad by adding details that provide atmosphere and texture and contribute to the development of the young woman's character. cooper begins, as yolen does, not with the traditional warning, 30 dawson expanding a traditional ballad but with a description of the setting; however, cooper's setting is pleasant rather than eerie and forbidding: the clouds marched over the blue summer sky, and the cloudshadows slid purple and grey across the hills of scotland, as margaret sat beside her window, sewing. she was not fond of sewing. she longed for adventure. but because she was the daughter of the king she was supposed to set a good, gentle example to all the other girls. every morning they sat with her in the great tower of her father's castle, sewing, listening to the stories told by margaret's old nurse and waiting to be married. true to the spirit of the ballad, margaret is presented as bolder than other girls, but cooper's maiden seems to lack jennet's vivacious manner. the soft tones of warwick hutton's watercolour illustrations contribute to this impression of a less confident, more subdued character for margaret; unlike mikolaycak's jennet, she strikes no bold poses. her sudden decision to go to carterhays is prompted not by her determination to claim her estate, as in yolen's retelling, but rather by her rebelliousness. she does not want to sit and sew and listen to instructions about maidenly behaviour. "rub your skin with cucumber for softness," said fat jana, the steward's daughter. "behave modestly with young men," said soft-voiced alison, "as is fitting for a maid." the old nurse nodded in approval. "and never travel the roads alone, or go near carterhays." "i don't see why not," margaret said. "carterhays is the pret tiest wood in my father's kingdom. roses grow there. we rode by it last week." "but it's haunted!" jana said. "the elfin knight waits there, to trap young girls!" "tam lin," said margaret. "yes. but have you ever seen him?" "if once you saw him it would be the end of you," the old nurse said sharply. "no man would marry you then." margaret jumped up impatiently. "marry, marry, marry! can't you think about anything else?" she flung down her em broidery and ran out of the room. "where are you going?" cried the old nurse in alarm. "to pick roses!" margaret shouted back up the curving stairs. "at carterhays!" 31 expanding a traditional ballad dawson cooper's margaret, keeping to the detail in the ballad's refrain, hitches up her green skirts (she wears no bold plaid), loops up her hair, and runs away to carterhays. once there, she enters the wood. "oak, and ash and thorn grew in the wood," cooper writes, introducing or interweaving (to use sullivan's term), details that are not included in the ballad but which are, nonetheless, significant elements in traditional literature and therefore not out of place in her retelling of the ballad. the oak, ash, and thorn, sometimes referred to as "the magical trilogy," are often associated with fairies, spirits, and the supernatural generally (briggs 159).15 the thorn, as already noted, also has christian connotations. cooper describes the old gardens of the former estate where wild red roses ramble up into the apple trees. the rose is the central motif in the ballad, as already noted, but cooper's addition of the apple tree, found only in two lesser-known versions of the ballad (child 39g and k), adds another significant detail from fairy lore. this fruit tree is thought to have particularly magical properties associated with power, knowledge and youth, and, of course, the temptation of eve in the judeo-christian tradition. however, according to traditional literature, there is some danger associated with this particular tree, because a "ymp-tree" or grafted apple tree was considered to be under fairy influence (briggs 160). those who rested or fell asleep under such trees were particularly vulnerable to capture by the fairy folk; sir lancelot and thomas the rhymer are just two examples of fairy capture in this manner. cooper, by referring specifically to magical trees, links her retelling of tam lin to other examples of traditional literature and subtly weaves an atmosphere of enchantment and the supernatural. when tam lin appears after margaret plucks the rose, she is surprised to see that he does not look like an enchanted or "elfin knight," for "he wore a country tunic, and his feet were bare." yolen's knight, on the other hand, is "dressed in velvet and kilt." here the illustrations in each case work to reinforce the descriptions provided by the authors. enhanced by the strong lines and colours of the accompanying illustrations, yolen's tam lin looks every inch the romantic knight while cooper's knight, outlined in pen and washed in soft browns, looks nondescript and even bewildered by his situation. margaret defends her right to pluck roses at carterhays in the usual way, saying, "why should i ask leave of you? [. . .] carterhays belongs to my father the king, and i can come and go as i please. and pick roses." but, in an interesting departure from the traditional ballad, tam lin pulls a red apple from the tree to offer to margaret: 32 dawson expanding a traditional ballad "margaret bit into the crisp, juicy flesh. she smiled back at the young man, quite forgetting that apple trees do not normally bear ripe apples in june." enchanted fruit is a common motif in folklore, and the significance of apples in particular has been noted. but the fact that tam lin offers a ripe juicy apple to margaret is an important detail, for this is, in fact, cooper's method of dealing with margaret's sexual encounter in the traditional ballad. although there is no overt reference to rape or sexual activity here, margaret lingers at carterhays. they spent all day together in the wood, happy with one another, until the sun dropped low in the sky and all at once the daylight was gone—and so, in a flash, was the young man with the golden skin and curly hair. sorrowful, margaret ran home through the glimmering twilight [. . .]. margaret arrives home to find that the household has been looking for her not just for one day but for a week; time passes differently in the other world according to fairy lore. margaret's enchantment is consistent with one version of the ballad (child 39g). here the sexual encounter is described, not just implied: when he had got his wills of her, his wills as he had taen, he's taen her by the middle sma, set her to feet again. she turned her right and round about, to spier her true-love's name, but naething heard she, not naething saw, as a' the woods grew dim. seven days she tarried there, saw neither sun nor meen; at length, by a sma glimmering light came thro the wood her lane. (child 39g verses 8-10) in the ballad, margaret is presumed to be pregnant sometime after she returns home; in a number of versions (child 39a, b, i, k), she is actually described as looking "as green as onie glass" (a,b) and "pale and wan" (i). the household is concerned, prompting "an auld grey 33 expanding a traditional ballad dawson knight" to express his fear that "we'll be blamed a'." margaret denies that anyone of her father's men is the father of her child. because no sexual encounter, real or implied, occurs in yolen's tam lin, there is no need for any discussion with members of the household. cooper, however, recreates the scene with the old grey knight. since margaret has stayed with tam lin for a week, she has disgraced the household and cannot expect to marry any man in the kingdom. cooper has managed to remain faithful to the spirit of the ballad without stating outright that sexual activity has occurred and that a child is expected. cooper's margaret returns to carterhays to see tam lin and question him about his history. he tells her that, when he was just three years old and asleep in his father's garden, he was stolen by the elfin queen. hutton's hunched and furtive looking elfin queen, represented in the accompanying illustration, presents a striking contrast to mikolaycak's proud and commanding queen of the fey. cooper's detail of tam lin's abduction, while consistent with three versions of the ballad (g; i, k),16 also links tam lin to traditional lore about changelings and lost children. yolen's tam lin, by contrast, was older when he was carried off by the fairy queen after falling from his horse. after hearing tam lin's history and learning how she might save him from being sacrificed to hell, margaret returns home. although cooper follows various versions of the ballad closely through to margaret's confrontation with the elfin queen, she does make one notable change. in the various child versions of the ballad, halloween is given as the occasion of the fairy ride and the sacrifice,17 but in cooper's retelling of the ballad, the ride takes place on midsummer's eve. there seems to be no reason for this change apart from consistency; the descriptions of scenery-the summer sky outside margaret's window, the green fields, the old orchard at carterhays—all suggest midsummer. however, because midsummer's eve was, like halloween, a significant celtic festival and a time when the fairy folk were abroad, cooper has remained faithful to the sense of the ballad. cooper emphasizes the regenerative aspects of the ballad in the final scenes of her book. tam lin's emergence from the well following his final transformation is clearly a resurrection: then light was growing in the eastern sky, and tam lin was climbing out of the well where margaret had dropped the [burning] iron. his hair dripped wet and he wore no clothes; he was naked as the day he was born. she swung her mantle 34 dawson expanding a traditional ballad from her shoulders and he wrapped it around himself, and through the greyness of the night the cloth shone suddenly brilliant green, as the sun rose behind the wood and brought color back into the world. margaret looked down at her hands. the palms were pink and clear with no sign of any burn at all. tam lin said, "you have brought me to life again. one day we shall have a child, you and i, as naked and glad as the knight born today out of this well." "we'll teach her to pick roses," margaret said. cooper, like yolen, chooses a happy ending for tam lin. without even a hint of a curse from the elfin queen, tam lin and margaret ride back to the castle, "through carterhays wood and the green fields of scotland, as the clouds marched over the blue summer sky and the cloud shadows slid purple and grey across the hills." by returning to her opening sentences, cooper tells her readers that the story has come full circle. bringing the story back to the beginning in this way, however, has the effect of diminishing the ballad in cooper's work. cooper's conclusion seems to contradict entirely the significance of margaret's struggle, and, as perry might argue, it ignores or dismisses the tension between good and evil that is an essential aspect of the ballad. hutton's water colour washes in soft earth and pastel tones give a dream-like quality to cooper's tam lin and this has the effect of further diminishing the ballad. although cooper's tam lin is more complex than yolen's in terms of the ways in which she deals with the traditional materials, cooper's work is far less compelling. neither the prose style nor the illustrations seem to adequately represent the elemental power of this traditional ballad. both yolen and cooper attempt to present their heroines as strong female characters that dare to challenge traditional female roles and expectations, but neither character is very successful as a feminist model because the happily ever after endings that both authors adopt rob their female protagonists of any power they might have acquired through their struggles with supernatural forces. jennet and margaret live happily ever after with their respective tam lins. but there is still another reason why these characters do not work as feminist heroines. while yolen and cooper have remained faithful to the outline of the ballad, they have failed to adequately represent the real nature of the young woman's heroism that relates to her sexual encounter with tam lin and her resulting pregnancy. yolen and coo 35 expanding a traditional ballad dawson the real nature of the young woman's heroism that relates to her sexual encounter with tam lin and her resulting pregnancy. yolen and cooper have given readers twentieth-century female characters who may be admired for speaking their minds and flouting convention, but the traditional janet, a sixteenth-century woman, must worry about more fundamental problems. she is pregnant and unmarried and she must deal with the moral and social consequences of her boldness. she has violated the norms of her society not only in terms of her pregnancy, but also by her dalliance with an enchanted knight, she has had commerce with the dark side; this puts her at serious risk of being named as a witch. will she abort her child and risk censure by the church and her community, or will she dare to struggle with dark powers to redeem its father? what if her courage fails? will she damn herself and her unborn child to hell? in the end, janet's strength and courage prevail and she does redeem tam lin from hell, but the there is no happy ending because the faery queen's curse lingers even after janet's victory is acknowledged. yolen and cooper have provided faithful outlines of the ballad, but they have failed to capture its essence and complexity. in terms of their ability to represent janet's sexual encounter, both authors are constrained by the consideration that their books are directed toward younger readers, and this raises the inevitable issue of the appropriateness of the ballad for this audience. but even more troublesome is the fact that in their determination to see janet as an assertive modern female hero, they have removed her from her historical context, glossed over her religious and moral struggles, and misrepresented her character and her achievement; they have, in effect, reduced her and remade her as the heroine of a romantic story. notes 1. these first verses are taken from francis james child's five volume collection, english and scottish popular ballads, first published between 1882 and 1898. tam lin appeared in the first volume as ballad no. 39 with ten versions (a j). some of the versions collected by child are fragments. further additions and corrections to the ballad were included in later volumes. 2. child connects the ballad to a cretan fairy tale "through the principal feature in the story, the transformation of tam lin" (336). 3. two of the better-known recent recordings of the ballad are by steeleye span and fairport convention. 4. see "the tam lin pages" by abigail acland (<tam-lin.org>). this site makes no claim for accuracy, but it includes useful references and links to 36 dawson expanding a traditional ballad other sites dealing with fantasy, folklore and mythology. it is probably the best place to begin to investigate this ballad. 5. related works by pamela dean, ellen kushner, and patricia mckillip, though not marketed as young adult novels, have also attracted the interest of young readers. 6. see, for example, jones's essay, "the heroic ideal-a personal odyssey. " 7. a feminist interpretation of the ballad is adopted by ethel phelps who includes the story as "janet and tam lin" in tatterhood and other tales, a prose collection of feminist folk and fairy tales published by feminist press that portrays "active and courageous girls and women in the leading roles." according to phelps, "the protagonists [in tatterhood] are heroines in the true and original meaning of the word—heroic women distinguished by extraordinary courage and achievements, who hold the center of interest in the tales "(xv). 8. expanding refers to the way in which modern authors add "detail and texture" to a traditional narrative (sullivan, welsh celtic myth 13); interweaving refers to the way in which authors select materials from a tale or from a group of complementary tales and then "weave these materials together into a cohesive whole" (35); and inventing refers to the way in which authors create their own plots and characters but use traditional materials "to give their novels mythic and legendary depth and texture" (x). 9. version a was collected in johnson's museum (1792). 10. variously known as tom-lin, tam lien, tam lane, tom line, tomlin, tam o linn, tam blain, thomas, true tammas, earl thomas, and lord robinson's only child. variations on the names of the characters and setting are summarized by john niles in "tam lin: form and meaning in a traditional ballad." 11. also kertonha, charter's ha', cartershay, charter's wood, chester's wood, chaster's wood, gordon's wud, moorcartney, the greenwood. 12.also jennet, lady margaret, leady margat, fair margret, may margery, may, the maid of katherine's hall. 13 although these symbolic items are not mentioned in child 39a, refer ence is made to holy water in versions d, g, and j. 14. mikolaycak created the tartans for the story because, as yolen writes in her background notes, "a faery tale demands its own colours and plaids." the plaids emphasize the fact that tam lin is a scottish ballad. 15. briggs provides an extensive discussion of these magical trees and others, including apple trees, under "fairy trees" in her encyclopedia of fairies, hobgoblins, brownies, bogies, and other supernatural creatures (159-161 ). 16. in child g, three-year-old tam lin falls asleep under an apple tree. 17. in child g, tam lin refers to halloween as the night of the fairy ride, but acland suggests that the last verse of the story places the activity in may based on her reading of the lines: 37 expanding a traditional ballad dawson she borrowed her love at mirk midnight, bare her young son ere day, and though ye'd search the warld wide, ye'll nae find sic a may. (verse 59) see her notes at <http://tam-lin.org/storyline.html>. it seems more likely that "may" is a textual error or a misreading on acland's part. there is no other reference to may in the ballad. nonetheless, may eve, also known as beltaine, was an important celtic festival (briggs 108). works cited child, francis james, ed. the english and scottish popular ballads. 1882-1898. new york: dover, 1965. acland, abigail. "the tam lin pages." 3 july 2000 <http://tam-lin.org>. briggs, katharine. an encyclopaedia of fairies. hobgoblins. brownies, bogies, and other supernatural creatures. new york: pantheon, 1976. chevalier, jean, and alain gheerbrant. the penguin dictionary of symbols. trans. john buchannan-brown. london: penguin, 1996. cooper, susan. tam lin. illus. warwick hutton. new york: mcelderry books, 1991. dean, pamela. tam lin. new york: tor, 1991. ipcar, dahlov. the queen of spells. new york: viking, 1973. jones, diana wynne. fire and hemlock. 1985. london: harper, 2000. _______. "the heroic ideal-a personal odyssey." the lion and the unicorn 13.1 (1989): 129-40. kushner, ellen. thomas the rhymer. new york: tor, 1991. lang, andrew. the gold of fairnilee and other stories. ed. gillian avery. london: victor gollancz, 1967. "legends-ballads and broadsides-tam lin." 20 june 2000 <http://legends.dm.net/ ballads/tamlin.html>. manlove, colin. scottish fantasy literature: a critical survey. edinburgh: canongate,1994. mckillip, patricia. winter rose. new york: ace, 1997. niles, john d. "tam lin: fonn and meaning in a traditional ballad." modern lan guage quarterly 38 (1977): 336-47. pope, elizabeth marie. the perilous gard. 1974. london: penguin, 1992. perry, evelyn m. "the ever-vigilant hero: revaluing the tale of tam lin." children’s folklore review 19.2 (1997): 31-49. phelps, ethel johnston. tatterhood and other tales. new york: feminist, 1978. storr, catherine. thursday. london: faber, 1971. sullivan, c. w. iii. "traditional ballads and modern children's fantasy: some com ments on structure and intent." chla quarterly 11.2 (1986): 145-47. _______. welsh celtic myth in modern fantasy. westport, ct: greenwood, 1989. yolen, jane. tam lin. illus. charles mikolaycak. new york: hbj, 1990. 38 polar: the most famous bear of them all! j. joseph edgette the story of polar, the titanic bear, is one that has resulted from a careful blending of history, folklore, legend, and children's literature with an appropriate sprinkling of oral narrative and verifiable testimony and documentation. it is a tale that evolved from a "real life" event that was later set down in writing by daisy spedden, the mother of the child whose experience this account recalls. had it not been for the accidental discovery of an old trunk in the barn of l. h. coleman, esq. by his grandson in august of 1982,1 the life of polar never would have been told and, subsequently, become known. the purpose of this article is to present the background, evolution, chronology, and afterward of the story of polar, the titanic bear. before relating the details leading up to the event that catapulted the five-by-two-and-a-quarter-inch stuffed toy into the realm of titanic lore, it is necessary and appropriate to start many years prior even to titanic's own inception as well as polar's creation. the year was 1902, the town was giengen an der brenz, germany, and the creator of the first teddy bear was a young inventor, innovator, and dreamer named richard steiff. he had studied art and was intrigued and captivated by the bears he would observe while sketching them at the stuttgart zoological gardens.2 he worked in his aunt's small toy factory, the steiff company. after much effort and pleading, he finally convinced margarete steiff, a loving but very strong-willed and determined woman, to approve plans to produce his bear. the prototypes were considered to be too large and heavy, not to mention the fact that the mohair used to make them was difficult to obtain. however, later that same year, "friend petz" was put on display at the leipzig toy fair in 1902 to test the interest of toy buyers, but it was deemed a complete failure by most who had seen and inspected the newly created stuffed bear toy. buyers of toys were just not interested it. this setback would eventually be reversed thanks to the creativity and foresight of the american toy giant, f. a. o. schwarz. frederick august otto schwarz, known today as f. a. o. schwarz and probably the most famous seller of toys in the world, emigrated to the united states from westphalia, germany, in 1857, settling in bal polar: the most famous bear of them all edgette timore, maryland, where he operated a small toy shop until 1870. moving on to new york, he began in humble quarters on broadway, opening the schwarz toy bazaar; but by 1880, he had moved to the city's fashionable union square business district housing such companies as tiffany.3 schwarz quickly established a reputation as having a "toy store with distinction."4 with the help of his three brothers, schwarz kept in constant touch with the major toy sources in europe. while attending the leipzig toy fair in 1902, f.a.o. schwarz, unlike other buyers, found the steiff bear a fascinating toy that had much potential for sales in the united states. according to jorg junginger, steiff's manager of development and steiff family member, schwarz "placed an order for 3,000 bears and changed the name to 'teddy' to help the stuffed animal appeal to american children"5 according to folklore, there are two explanations for the origin of the name 'teddy' as it applies to the toy bears. in the first it was said that schwarz had changed the steiffgiven name to 'teddy' because he was inspired by the president and believed that children who have a greater affinity to the toy with such a moniker. a second origin has been attributed to the u. s. navy. it was reported that president theodore roosevelt accompanied by a few friends went to mississippi to hunt wild animals. having found none a guide came across a small bear. asked to shoot the bear, the president refused and instructed the guide to release it. word of this kindness on mr. roosevelt's part spread throughout the country. in fact, not long after, political cartoonist clifford berryman drew a cartoon depicting the event.6 further, and this is the probable connection to swartz's origin, it was said that a brooklyn toy store owner saw the cartoon and asked permission to name the toy bears in his shop "teddy's bear." this was to serve as a reminder of roosevelt's good deed. permission was given by president roosevelt. both of these origins are plausible and are actually connected. as american folklorist horace beck has a habit of saying, "you pays your money, you takes your choice." according to steiff company records, by 1907 they had produced over 974,000 bears, most of which were sold in the united states through the f. a. o. schwarz toy company of new york. in addition to teddy bears in all sizes and kinds, many ancillary items were also made available. these included bear games, clothes, cars, carts, boats, and the like designed for teddy bears. in terms of popular culture, there are currently collectors' organizations and clubs that boast of large memberships. the teddy bear still ranks high among those best sellers in the toy industry. 40 edgette polar: the most famous bear of them all exactly, how did polar become such a notable toy bear? the story continues. tuxedo park, new york, was a very upscale community during the early 1900s. one of this community's leading citizens and wealthiest of the families living there included frederic spedden, his wife, daisy, and their son robert douglas, who would be known as "douglas." mr. spedden was heir to a very sizeable banking fortune. this young couple devoted their lives to douglas, their travels, and their pastimes. during the spring, frederic tended to his business, summers were spent in bar harbor, maine, autumns spent at home, and winters used for travel. such a routine was not uncommon among wealthy american families during the edwardian age. it should be noted that mrs. spedden was heiress to the corning glass fortune as well as an equally lucrative shipping fortune.7 daisy spedden's sister, nan, was very fond of little douglas. in late 1911, the family had decided to visit algiers and had booked passage aboard the steamship caronia. prior to her seeing the speddens off at the docks, aunt nanny had visited the f.a.o. schwarz company in manhattan where she purchased a small white steiff polar bear for douglas. before leaving the ship as visitors were asked to disembark, she presented her bon voyage gift to the child and asked what he might name it. he responded that it would be called polar. later, the famous bear would be known as polar the titanic bear.8 the spedden's trip to algiers was a lengthy one that would take them through the panama canal area. little douglas and polar were inseparable throughout the journey. the family stayed a few months on the island of madeira, near portugal. by mid-march they had arrived on the south coast of france and stayed at monte carlo. in early april, mr. spedden decided it was time to return home to america. they had booked first class passage aboard another steamship rather than the adriatic whose scheduled departure was cancelled as a result of a coal strike in england. instead, mr. speddin was able to secure first class accommodations aboard the titanic, a new ship that was described as being the greatest ship ever to sail the ocean. mr. and mrs. spedden and douglas together with daisy's maid, helen wilson, and douglas' nanny, elizabeth burns,9 arrived in paris the first week in april. then, by a special train, they made their way to cherbourg from where they would depart for home aboard the titanic. as first class passengers, the spedden family shared the company of many other very wealthy american families aboard the "millionaires express." some of the more notable family names were widener, astor, guggenheim, straus, brown, cardeza, carter, millet, and butt, the last being personal attaché to president william h. taft. 41 polar: the most famous bear of them all edgette there is only one photograph in existence of little douglas and his father aboard the titanic, and that shows the boy on deck playing with a spinning top, another toy he had acquired while traveling abroad.10 the photo was taken during the first day enroute to new york, the final destination that they would eventually—but not aboard the titanic. another passenger, father frank browne, s.j., had been given a birthday present from his uncle—a ticket aboard the titanic from southampton to cherbourg to queenstown. he left the ship in the irish seaport as the doomed vessel continued its journey to new york. during his time on the titanic, father browne managed to shoot nearly a hundred photos. these pictures are the only ones in existence showing the interior of the great ship and views of life aboard her. little douglas was captured on film while playing on deck as his father watched. the tragic event that transpired on that fateful night of 14 april 1912 off the coast of newfoundland in the icy waters of the north atlantic is now history. the major account is well known and has been told and retold for nearly ninety-one years now. it was this foundering of the largest luxury ship of its day that would figure dramatically into the escalation of polar's notoriety unbeknownst to anyone save his owner, mrs. spedden, and a crewman aboard the rescue ship carpathia. testimony given before the united states senate, as part of their official investigation into the loss of the titanic,11 produced revealing information about the sinking that would eventually impact on the story of polar and douglas. once the alarm had been given following the iceberg impact, most of the passengers began to leave their cabins and assemble at or near their predetermined lifeboat stations. the speddens and their servants were assigned to lifeboat 3, located on the starboard side of the ship.12 it became the responsibility of nanny, elizabeth burns, whom douglas called "muddie boons," to care for the young boy during this anxious and fearful experience. (the child had difficulty pronouncing his nanny's name; thus, the variation.) it has been said that his nanny woke the sleeping child and told him they were going to take a trip to see the stars and that he would therefore need to wear warm clothing. once all women and children had been placed safely into the limited number of lifeboats, the men were permitted to join them. frederic spedden was one of the fortunate few who was able to join his family aboard lifeboat 3 that fateful night. based on witnesses who were passengers in lifeboat 3, it was reported that douglas slept through the night cradled in the arms of his nanny. when he woke at dawn, he saw the icebergs all around them and excitedly, as only a child could do, exclaimed, " oh, muddie, look 42 edgette polar: the most famous bear of them all at the beautiful north pole with no santa claus on it."13 by 4: 15 a.m. the morning of 15 april 1912, the rescue ship carpathia commanded by captain frederick rostron had arrived at the site and began the careful process of rescuing the survivors. lifeboat 3 was supervised by able-bodied seaman george alfred moore, and it was he who would later place young douglas into a net that would raise the child to the deck level of the rescue ship.14 nets were used to raise the children from the lifeboats for fear they might fall in their attempt to climb the ladders. it would not be until later that morning douglas would soon realize that polar had not made it. he had the stuffed toy bear with him in the lifeboat at the time they entered and gotten under way; however, now it was missing. the grieving child shared his sad realization with his nanny and his mother. a couple of the crew from the carpathia also tried to comfort him, but it was to no avail. as was standard procedure aboard any rescue vessel, captain rostron ordered all of the then empty lifeboats to be brought aboard and stowed safely for the long, arduous trip to new york. a hook on the end of a line was put through the eye bolt at the front of a lifeboat, and it was then hoisted aboard the ship. in so doing, each of the miniature boats would stand on end while being raised through the air. many of the articles would fall from the boat into the water below; however, when lifeboat 3 had cleared the railing and was being lowered into its new position, a small water soaked stuffed toy rolled out onto the deck at the feet of a crewman.15 according to mrs. spedden's later conversation with the man, he leaned down, picked it up, squeezed the excess water from it, and stuck it into his pocket. he had intended to take it home to his child. later that day, the crewman came across douglas who was still upset at the loss of polar. in a conversation with the boy the crewman suddenly realized what he had retrieved from the deck beneath lifeboat 3. douglas and polar had been happily reunited. he too had been saved. mr. spedden sent a marconigram (the newest type of wireless telegram of its day) from the carpathia to relatives in connecticut on the 18th of april that informed them the family was safe and would be arriving in new york the following night.16 once having arrived at the white star line wharf in new york, the family was taken to the waldorf astoria, along with many others from first class, to spend the night before departing for tuxedo park the next day. it is interesting to note that the astor family arranged transportation from the ship's terminal to their hotel for many of the first class passengers that were rescued by the carpathia. later, mr. spedden would participate in the awarding of a silver trophy to captain rostron and silver medals to mem 43 polar: the most famous bear of them all edgette bers of his crew in appreciation for the kindness and professionalism they showed during the terrible tragedy that had befallen them on the titanic. once the family had returned to their home, life returned to the normalcy they had had prior to their most recent catastrophic trip. daisy took a photograph of douglas at christmas in 1912 showing him standing next to a table on which can be seen polar. they planned to travel again after the holidays that year and then return to maine that following summer. the next year as a christmas surprise for douglas, his mother decided to write a small book that would feature polar (the titanic bear) recounting his own creation, purchase, and life with douglas including his fate by nearly becoming a titanic victim. she entitled it my story, christmas 1913. in addition to the text she did the illustrations herself. this short manuscript would be published as a children's book in 1994, eighty-one years later.17 daisy and frederic would experience one more great tragedy, perhaps the worst imaginable, the death of douglas in the late summer of 1915 at grindstone neck winter harbor, maine. according to the death certificate, the cause of douglas' death was "concussion of the brain-struck by automobile."18 as a matter of fact, douglas was the first recorded fatality resulting from an automobile accident in the state of maine. according to the accident report, the youngster attempted to retrieve a tennis ball, emerging suddenly from some thick shrubbery close to the side of the road. when he did, he collided with the car. unconscious, he was taken to his home where he succumbed to head injuries sustained from the accident. the boy died on the 8th of august, 1915, at the age of nine years, eight months, and nineteen days. he is buried in the corning family plot at greenwood cemetery, brooklyn, new york. it has been said that daisy never again had the same zest for life following the tragic loss of her son, douglas. in 1947 her husband frederic died of a heart attack while diving into a pool in palm beach, florida. his body was cremated.19 following his death, daisy discontinued keeping her diaries, but she did continue her interests in photography and travel. three years later daisy died at her home in tuxedo park on february 11, 1950, at age 78, following a brief illness.20 she was interred in the corning family plot at greenwood cemetery along side her son robert douglas. following the death of daisy, a trunk containing her diaries, ephemera, and 24 photograph albums was left to her cousin, jane foster coleman. the trunk was stored in the barn on the family farm and actually forgotten21 (jane was the grandmother of l. h. coleman, iii.) 44 edgette polar: the most famous bear of them all l. h. coleman, esq. asked his grandson l.h., iii to clean out the old barn. the trunk was given to the younger coleman on his 21st birthday in 1985. earlier, in 1963, the titanic historical society was founded in part to preserve the history of the titanic and ocean liner travel in general. aware of this mission, young coleman donated copies of daisy's story along with some photographs of family members to the society in august of 198522 by 1992 it was suggested to young coleman that the story would make a great book for children. the title was changed to polar the titanic bear, and it was published in 1994. since then it has sold more than 250,000 copies.23 to help launch the release of the book, the strieff company produced 1912 replicas of the polar bear, together with a certificate of authenticity that the original was once owned by douglas spedden. the book will ensure that the memory of this child will live on just as the memory of the titanic never fades. from its origin in germany to its home in america and subsequent adventures, a little stuffed toy polar bear became the impetus for the story of polar the titanic bear. it is a piece of non-fiction that has successfully and creatively blended history, legend, folklore, and children's literature while simultaneously presenting a human interest story of top quality. notes 1 "stories from the titanic: douglas spedden." geocities. 04 january 2003. www.geocities.com/athens/ agora/6683/spedden. 2 "the first teddy." tripod. 04 january 2003. www.members.tripod.com/ -sunbear 2/history. 3 "history of f.a.o. schwarz company." f.a.o. schwarz. 04 january 2003. www.fao.com/aboutfao/history.cfm. 4 "about fao schwarz." macromedia. 04 january 2003 www.macro media.com/macromedia/prom/pr/2 00 l/fao schwab». 5 "the first teddy." 6 "origin of the teddy bear." factmonster. c. 2002 family education network. 04 january 2003. www.factmonster.com/ipka/a0872806. 7 "the boy with the bear: the story of douglas spedden." stories from the titanic. 04 january 2003 www.geocities.com/athens/agora/6683/spedden. 8 daisy corning stone spedden. polar the titanic bear. new york:little, brown and company, 1994. 9 "robert douglas spedden." encyclopedia titanica. 04 january 2003. http://www.encvclopedia-titanica.org/bio/p/ 1 stlspedden rd.html. 10 e.e. o'donnell, sj. the last days of the titanic. dublin: roberts rinehart publishers, 1997, p.66. 11 tom kuntz. the titanic disaster hearings: the official transcripts 45 polar: the most famous bear of them all edgette of the 1912 senate investigation. los angeles:new star publishing, 1998. 12 judith b. geller. titanic: women and children first. new york:w.w. norton, 1998, p.73. 13 "douglas spedden "a life cut short for a boy with a bear." the real titanic. 04 january 2003. http://www.expage.com/douglasspedden.html. 14 "george alfred moore." encyclopedia titanica. 04 january 2003. http:/ /www.encyc1opedia-titanica.orglbio/c/a/moore ga. html. 15 daisy corning stone spedden, p. 46. 16 marconi corporation pic archives. 17 "polar the titanic bear genealogy and chronology." spedden family genealogy. 04 january 2003. http://www.polarthetitanicbear.comgenepage. html. 18 "state of maine record of death." titanica document archive. 04 j anu ary 2003. www.encyclopediatitanica.org/documents/spedden rd cert.html 19 "mrs. frederic spedden." titanica document archive. 04 january 2003. www.encvclopedia-titanica.org/documents/suedden fo 048247. 20 "mrs. frederic spedden." titanica document archive. 04 january 2003. www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/documents/spedden fo2 1025. 21 "spedden family chronology." p.3. 22 "spedden family chronology." p.3. 23 douglas spedden "a life cut short for a boy with a bear." 46 in our own image: the child, canadian culture, and our future carole h. carpenter foreword originally published in 1996, the following text was presented as the ninth annual robarts lecture when i was the john p. robarts professor of canadian studies at york university for the academic year 1994-95. it was well received and excited considerable commentary given that it was perceived as a radical gaze on contemporary childhood. yet little came of it in terms of any concrete action; indeed, the position of children and their culture within canadian culture has, if anything, worsened. more children are now living in poverty than in 1996; children are more controlled and manipulated than ever; they evidence increased passivity (through escalating youth obesity, for example); and anger dominates their environments as never before. hence, the call for a new vision of child and childhood is all the more necessary today in order to offer them a chance at a future they own. a generation ago, the social historian peter laslett noted that: in the pre-industrial world there were children everywhere; playing in the village street and fields when they were very small, hanging round the farmyards and getting in the way, until they had grown enough to be given child-sized jobs to do; thronging the churches; for ever clinging to the skirts of women in the house and wherever they went and above all crowding round the cottage fires. given such ubiquity of youth, it is not at all surprising that the "perpetual distraction of childish noise and talk must have affected everyone almost all the time." an estimated forty-five to fifty per cent of all people alive in stuart england were children, according to laslett's figures which, as he indicates, accord with circumstances in twentieth-century third world communities. it is, then, more than a little surprising that: these crowds and crowds of little children are strangely absent from the written record, even if they are conspicuous in our own image carpenter enough in the pictures painted at the time, particularly the outside scenes. there is something mysterious about the silence of all these multitudes of babes in arms, toddlers and adolescents in the statements men made at the time about their own experience. (104) children per se are not really absent from the record; rather, real children are—their cultural existence is, in effect, a veritable silencing of the lambs. we know very little about what it was actually like to be a child anywhere in the world in times past, especially from the perspective of children themselves. this general suppression of children as a cultural presence persists today; a circumstance that is by no means unique to canada, though it certainly is characteristic of this country. despite a promising increase in scholarly interest recently, canada definitely has not showcased childhood as an aspect of its culture as have some other countries of late: for instance, australia, where an extended and expensive scholarly anthology on childhood sold out soon after publication1; or britain, which, along with producing many other relevant publications, dominates the 1988 collins anthology, childhood edited by penelope hughes-hallett, a work that contains not one canadian item in its 450 pages despite broad coverage of time, space and cultural groups worldwide. children do appear in a variety of "stories of childhood" in canadian culture, that is, the range of discourses and gazes that deal with child and childhood, from anthropological considerations to literary and artistic representations. the anthropological sources are amazingly spare until relatively recently, especially given the vast accumulated data on canada's first nations, but then most of the early documenters were men and, often, priests; children were simply not within their purview, as the noted huronia specialist conrad heidenreich observed (personal communication, dec.1993). the absence of children from franz boas' monumental northwest coast work is even more telling given that he was one of the founders of the american folklore society which, at the time of its establishment in 1888, specifically identified children's traditions as one of its primary foci of interest. the native people were already marginal; their children-far from marginal within indigenous societies-were largely ignored by outside scholars whose gaze tended to exclude them. at best, indigenous children were heard of, but certainly not from. the storying of childhood as the native people actually experienced it has only emerged since the late 1960s as part of their cultural 48 carpenter in our own image reclamation. and then it has poured forth-suppressed voices release into a post-colonial discourse, seeking validation and respect. the result is many extraordinary oral life histories, memoirs and autobiographical novels (see, for example, the works of blackman, johnston and campbell). childhood is effectively a metonym for the overall oppression of the native people, for it is as children that they have been most marginalized, silenced and robbed of their cultural selves by canadian culture either through omission or relentless commission. prevailing paternalist thought and policies essentially transformed all indigenous people into voiceless children and, by so doing, purposefully dismissed them. this is not to suggest that canada's first nations should be treated as children nor that children are actually to be equated with the indigenous people, but rather that canadian society has treated them both comparably. investigation of the positioning of such different groups at the margin illuminates some key concepts and orientations within our culture. it is also worth noting that since the late 1960s, the native peoples have often served as a bellwether of canadian concerns; hence, their contemporary cultural circumstances may presage the future of our nation's youth. the denial of voice to children generally is simply part of the adult world's control over them. as rex and wendy stainton rogers note in their extended deconstruction of the knowledging of childhood, stories of childhood: one voice has been largely missing. . . that of children themselves. this is not accidental; it very much reflects a general dismissing of such texts in our culture. (104) the stainton rogers' argument was not constructed using canadian examples, though it easily might have been. children have an historical cultural presence in canada, but their cultural present has been largely ignored and they themselves have not typically been heard. very little indeed has been made of their existence as cultural beings, of their real or imagined significance in cultural terms, or most particularly, of their own culture. most discourses pertaining to canadian children come from education and the social sciences (particularly sociology and psychology), and consider them largely in the context of various institutions, social processes or roles. some folklore studies assume a humanistic approach focussing on aesthetics and creativity; or child-centered cultural dynamics and meaning. otherwise, virtually all analyses of 49 in our own image carpenter culture in relation to canadian children deal primarily with its acquisition through socialization and its operation in families, schools, community organizations and the like. even the finest works available on the history of canadian childhood, such as joy parr's edited collection, childhood and family in canadian history, tend to concentrate mainly on what comes passively to children from the adult world and their gradual adjustment to the established social orders in which they live. seldom is consideration paid to children's active creation and manipulation of their environments through cultural means; their philosophical encounters with things, people and concepts; and the position of their own thoughts and traditions in their grappling with life. noteworthy exceptions are neil sutherland's article, "'everyone seemed happy in those days': the culture of childhood in vancouver between the 1920's and the 1960's" and the study from which it emerged, the canadian childhood history project conducted in the 1980s at the university of british columbia. the best-known works on canadian children's traditions, such as edith fowke's handsome bestseller sally go round the sun (1969), tend far more to description than analysis so they have done little to counter popular opinion that such cultural artifacts are passing phenomena-charming, delightful and amusing, perhaps, but in the final analysis, not very significant. fowke's book was selected 1970 children's book of the year by the canadian library association. this recognition, though arguably welldeserved, has had somewhat detrimental results in terms of the appreciation of children's lore as legitimate culture, for the work enables and, through its popularity with teachers and librarians has promoted, an approach to children's traditions as adult-directed entertainment over their actual operation in child-focused situations. dr. fowke assuredly did not directly intend this outcome and ought not to be faulted for it, since she both recognized the value and import of children's culture and was recognized for contributions to its appreciation.2 * * * the traditional behaviors and the intangible and tangible artifacts of canadian children continue to be viewed primarily as the embodiment of the timelessness and universality of childhood, which itself is conceived of as a state we must survive in order to emerge as people. children in this country are, then, effectively perceived and hence treated as pre-cultural or protocultural beings and, therefore, because culture is a defining characteristic of human beings, as not fully hu 50 carpenter in our own image man. canadians certainly are not alone in possessing or implementing such ideas, but the situation has particular relevance to us because of whom we think we are and should be. in many respects, children today can be seen to occupy a position in our culture not dissimilar to that which native peoples endured from contact through into the second half of the 20th century. children are a recurrent image, a central concern, even a national symbol, but they are not considered to be people like or, more to the point, quite equal to other people. rather they are treated to a greater or lesser extent as objects—possessions or commodities to be manipulated at will. presumably with the best intentions, adults treat them paternalistically, claiming that they act only for children's own good. but that good is determined by outsiders to the group and children rarely have any opportunity to express their own truth. the canadian nation has come to recognize the folly of its historical treatment of the native peoples and the necessity to deal in contemporary, post-colonial times with a resultant complex tangle of human anguish and irreparable damage; just demands for reparations; cultural guilt; and a search for moral justice through self-determination. yet, we have not mended our ways for, prevented by our laws and consciences from subjugating the "childlike primitives" we once supposed the native peoples to be, we canadians persist in enacting the same imperialist scenario with today's children. let us explore the similarities. strong societal images of the child and childhood are reflected in their many and varied representations throughout this country over time. these images are certainly not exclusive to canadian, but then, exceptionally little of what characterizes us (or, for that matter, any other contemporary nation) is unique. we came by many of our images quite honestly through our heritage of western civilization and christianity, namely: the biblical child as innocent, pure and good; the romantic child as visionary, closer to nature and hence to supreme understanding; john locke's child as tabula rasa or blank slate; and the calvinist child as evidence of original sin and so evil by nature, though sometimes salvageable through nurture. some images we fashion into a distinctive, that is, truly canadian mould, for the representations reflect as well as shape us. one such image is the child as worker or extra hands. for a period in the latter nineteenth and early twentieth century, a child (specifically a needy one in care) was thought to be a highly desirable immigrant-viewed as malleable, biddable, capable of much-needed labor and bound to be grateful for the rewards that would certainly come his or her way. as a 51 in our own image carpenter result of this image, nearly 89,000 children were brought to canada from dr. thomas barnardo's homes and similar institutions in britain between 1865 and 1925, many to be abused and made virtual slaves, treated worse than the farm animals they frequently tended. this disparity between the imaginary child as hands and the reality is vividly presented in a 1990 documentary, welcome home, which juxtaposes historical evidence, government propaganda and the commentary of one home child. the population of canada now includes well over a million descendants of such children—an enormous debt to an image. the child of nature, as natural creature, which is another significant image, takes on special meaning in this country given the mythic connection with the land that underlies our identity, be it local, regional or national. the child of the canadian imagination is not merely a part of nature, but is one with nature, assuming an almost pan-like quality. two excellent examples are the stop-frame, frozen children in jean-paul lemieux's portraits of the quebec landscape (often in winter) and the young ben, a real boy who embodies the spirit of the prairie in w. o. mitchell's classic novel, who has seen the wind (1947). the image goes much further back, however, to charles g.d. roberts' 1921 publication, children of the wild, and some of his other books, as well as to ernest thomas seton's late 19th-century works of naturalist animal stories that established this distinctively canadian contribution to international children's literature. the persistent image is one of a "sensuous little savage," as wallace stegner characterizes it in wolf willow (1962), his storying of the last plains frontier, the pre-world war i saskatchewan milieu of his childhood. the profound impact of calvinism on canadian culture (jansenism in french canada) is evident in our distinct take on the child as, on the one hand, evil (at least potentially) and, on the other, supremely good. the single most famous folktale of canadian origin that centers on a child is rose latulippe also know as the devil at the dance (fowke, 1979: 83-87). in this story, a young girl disobeys her parents' and societal proscriptions and sneaks out (sometimes wearing a red cape, no less) to go dancing: a handsome, dark stranger appears at the dance and leads our rose into a whirl of temptation, only to be recognized for the evil one himself, sometimes by a babe in arms who cries out or by a passing priest who eventually exorcises him away. rose is marked indelibly in this encounter: visibly as scars of the devil's claws on her hands and spiritually as a necessity to dedicate her lift to the church. a pointed message to all rebellious youth! alex colville, an internationally renowned canadian artist, once asserted that he preferred to paint subjects that were "wholly good"; 52 carpenter in our own image consequently he turned his highly controlled magic realist vision to the task of portraying children and animals.4 similarly, in creating the first of his many renderings of children's games on the canadian prairies while hospitalized in england following a nervous breakdown, william kurelek used childhood then as later to discover goodness and worth in himself and to proclaim a message of christian virtue as the means of confronting the moral dilemmas of modern life. this image of the canadian child is very widespread and popular, for kurelek's illustrated book, prairie boy's winter (1973) has won more awards than any other canadian publication and, together with his other three works specifically for children (1974, 1975, 1976), has sold in excess of half a million copies worldwide. briefly, there are some other perhaps more immediate images: first, child as redeemer or savior is ever-present as third-generation figures in our immigrant literature—noah in mordecai rich1er's son of a smaller hero (1955) or young moses in adele wiseman's the sacrifice (1956)—let alone in the daily lives of countless thousands whose sacrifice of home and heritage their children carry as a sentence from which they redeem themselves and their families through success in this, the new land. second, the child as helpless dependent is widely evident in advertising-what's riding on those michelin tires, for instance, or appealing for moderation in drinking from posters in your local liquor store asking "do you need a better reason?" and child as victim is a vivid image in such compelling modern works as the boys of st. vincent's (1992) back to perhaps the best-known visual image of child in canada, paul peel's "the tired model" painted in 1889 and regularly on exhibit at the art gallery of ontario. working out of a victorian sensibility which elevated the child's form to a consideration now deemed almost pathologically voyeuristic, peel painted several youth nudes including" a venetian bather" (1889) about which the noted art historian dennis reid has said: it was probably the first nude to be publicly exhibited in toronto. viewers who normally would be outraged at the display of such seductive flesh were enabled by the innocence of the young subject in her exotic setting to luxuriate in the delicious curves and soft glow and to savor pleasure for its own sake. such obvious exploitation of the young brings us to a singularly appropriate point to conclude this section on imaging children in canada. in general, these representations demonstrate how we have fashioned 53 in our own image carpenter children in our own image, for our own purposes and how, in so doing, combined with the silence of the child's own voice, we have lost sight of the real living child. this cultural imaging and its relevance throughout our culture over time will receive the fuller discussion it merits in a book-length study-the direct result of my robarts chair research—on "images of child and childhood in canadian culture." what is pertinent to this discussion is the impact of such imaging on the lives of contemporary children. * * * fine studies by scholars such as daniel francis (1992), terry goldie (1989) and leslie monkman (1981) pertaining to images of native people in canada indicate the extent and impact of this storying of our aboriginal peoples, their stereotyping along the pesky redskin/noble savage dichotomy, and the consequent failure to represent their multifaceted real cultural and human nature. the resultant situation is one of subjugation, alienation and marginalization and sentimentalization, exploitation and fossilized preservation among the image-makers. such is the case as well for canada's children, who remain suppressed in spite of the postcolonial, feminist, multicultural, and human rights movements of today. they are a special kind of human being sentenced to a status as "a mixture of expensive nuisance, fragile treasure, slave and super-pet," in the words of the educator and commentator on childhood, john holt (1975: 18). just as the images of native people, their way of life and their cultural artifacts have been drawn into service to represent canada and canadianness at home and abroad, so too have children and childhood been used, as is evident by a glance at the most famous canadian child of all—anne (with an "e") of green gables. in her particularly insightful book, children’s literature in canada, elizabeth waterston describes anne as operating in a distinctly canadian way: the fictional anne shirley uses idealism, imagination, humor, and independent thought to tame society's emphasis on unremitting work, social propriety, and religious conformity. waterston goes on to state that emily carr3 dealt with life in a similar manner, and to argue that: characters [of contemporary children's literature] are armed with the same weapons as the fictional anne shirley and the real emily carr: 54 carpenter in our own image humor, intense feelings, the will to survive, honesty and essential kindness. canadians believe these qualities represent national values.(4) later in her work waterston says: canadian children's books fix an image of the country that will endure and that may well affect international relations in the future. the true image of canada is a composite of savagery and sweetneslike literature, like childhood. (11) if any book has worked in this manner, it certainly is lucy maud montgomery's classic, translated into dozens of languages and variously commodified overtime throughout the world (especially in prince edward island where not a summer passes but that the play is staged for tourists who make pilgrimages to anne's home, cradled on the waves of the gulf of st. lawrence). anne encapsulates many of the key canadian child images: she is an orphan, sought as extra hands (by mistake since they wanted a boy, about which much more deserves to be said); she is good (and does good, not least for matthew and more especially marilla cuthbert, for whom she is a savor, brining nurturing love into an emotionally arid existence); she is unquestionably sensuous and certainly wild or savage in the sense of being untamed, but far the better for that; and above all, she is not merely close to nature, she is the essence of that particular place. we canadians frequently conceive of ourselves and present our essence as child-like, offering up our supposed youth as a nation as an excuse for our perceived or felt cultural immaturity. when our prime minister sir wilfred laurier proclaimed late in the nineteenth century that "the twentieth century belongs to canada," some canadians seem to have believed that we would one day grow up, become a world power and have real guns rather than toy pistols (or the popular chicken cannon devised by the royal canadian air farce4). some canadians still harbor such beliefs despite the modern postnational condition. it is not merely by chance then, nor does it seem unfitting, that the 1984 canadian volume in the a day in the life of [various countries] series carries a photograph of a young boy and girl as a symbolic representation of our nation comparable to the cowboy used on the american volume. as a people we seem to conceive of ourselves, of our essential being, in terms of the best that child represents—that sublime and natural goodness, simplicity and faith in people and life for example, the ojibway artist arthur shilling wrote in 1986: 55 in our own image carpenter children are my island, my innocence. they are the spirit of forgiveness. children are the giving and forgiving part of god in me. (80) a central underlying canadian conception of child, then, is as our conscience as a people, which made it quite natural for federal government under brian mulroney to chair the 1990 united nations summit on the child. this national identification of ours with and through children renders all the more remarkable the fact that as a group, children are, without doubt, culturally the least advantaged—indeed, most oppressed5—people in canada today for they do not even have recognition, let alone status, as a cultural group. at the same time, children are not merely important in our cultural expression as already discussed, but central to our contemporary daily existence and (not insignificantly) to our economic activity. kids constitute a huge market (estimates predict that by 2011 there will be 3.5 million children and youth in ontario alone). kid-stuff involves large sums of money: toys alone were a $1.2 billion canadian industry in 1990; revenue from children's camps across the nation in 1993 was almost $110 million; and primary and secondary education combined now gobbles up over $30 thousand million canadian dollars annually. childhood itself is a major commodity, to be preserved individually, in specially purchased grandmothers' remembrance books for instance, or collectively in museums (akin to the famous museum of childhood in edinburgh)6; to be nostalgically exhibited in our homes through those objects of great pride—our family photographs—or sold in art galleries.7 as well, childhood artifacts and expressions are regularly circulated internationally in campaigns aimed at tugging our heartstrings to loosen our purse strings in support of various causes. one particularly notable canadian commodification of children's expression is ben wicks's 1995 compilation of young people's letters and drawings, dear canada/cher canada: a love letter to my country, which is unabashedly intended to enlist children's voices in promoting national unity.8 canadians have a particular angle on the commodification of childhood in that children's music is easily one of our most successful cultural exports. from over twenty years of performing, recording and publishing, sharon, lois and bram as well as raffi and fred penner have emerged as icons of childhood, in canada and beyond our borders. they are all canadians rooted in a long tradition of folk singing 56 carpenter in our own image for children fostered by the cbc around mid-century and sir ernest macmillan's arrangements of traditional music for school children dating from the inter-war period (for extended discussion see posen, 1993). it must be noted that this industry almost exclusively involves music produced for children by adults rather than the music children sing and pass on by themselves, that is, their own culture. * * * children's culture itself conjures up images-of youngsters singing, skipping, clapping, playing and sharing together a rich lore passed down over the generations and occasionally recorded by dedicated collectors such as the american, william wells newell, in his late nineteenth-century study, games and songs of american children and britons, iona and peter opie following world war ii (see, for instance, their first major work, the lore and language of schoolchildren. in part we story our childhood years through such imagery, recounting our past-times, our experiences on the streets and in the playgrounds of yesteryear, often in the process nostalgically lamenting their passage and the other concurrent transformations we perceive in society, the environment and everyday activities during the intervening years. but, today the streets are the preferred playgrounds for relatively few children; parks are frequently favored haunts of pushers and perverts; schoolyards are by intention orchestrated into adventure playgrounds and adult-supervised activities or patrolled by peacemakers, adult-designated peer troubleshooters. surface evidence might easily lead one to presume that the demise of children's lore has come, having been predicted virtually since the name in 1846 of the discipline of folklore which studies such oral-based culture. one might claim, in keeping with neil postman's argument presented in the disappearance of childhood (1984), that much more than the lore, the very state of being a child has vanished, its passing hastened along as (in the manner outlined by david elkind in the hurried child [1988]) we determinedly hurry our children through a brief, youthful apprenticeship for supposedly real life. would we dare suggested that old age is comparably an apprenticeship for the next phase of the life cycle—death? in a certain spiritual sense the golden years may indeed serve such a preparatory function, but surely that would command greater not less respect for this period. the political correctness emergent from gerontology demands the social recognition and just treatment of our seniors as full human beings with all the attendant rights, feelings, interests and so on. why not similar recognition and treatment 57 in our own image carpenter for those at the other end of the life cycle? after, as a childhood friend of mine wisely remarked many years ago, "babies are wee people."9 we in contemporary western society significantly orchestrate our children's existence. in good part our of fears for their physical safety and security now or in the future: we institutionalize them early—age three was recommended in the "for the love of learning," the report of a recent ontario royal commission on learning; we structure their free time into endless classes or organized activities, often of our choosing for their good, or for our good so we can fulfill the demands of our lives; we direct them towards success as we define it; we instruct them variously and continuously as we perceive they require; we manipulate their environments to reflect our ideas; we censor their cultural experiences and expressions according to our aesthetic sensibilities, and we generally seek to control and direct them so as to produce children as we think they ought to be, that is, in our own image. in assuming as our right this extension of ourselves onto and through our children, surely we ought to accept responsibility for the contingent messages we convey to the young. yet, there is little to suggest that we give much more than passing thought to those messages or how they are received. comparable were the messages we communicated explicitly or implicitly to our aboriginal peoples in the course of their colonization. now, faced with the consequences, we recognize that the native people generally felt belittled and demeaned; came to view themselves as being inferior and forced to undergo radical transformation in order to benefit from, let alone participate in, mainstream culture. large numbers ended up believing that they had lost control of their existence and, far too often, that their lives were not worth living. culture was both medium and message in this communication, which we now dub cultural genocide while engaging in a communal mea culpa. but does the guilt feel so good that we wish to repeat it? it would seem from our actions that singularly appropriate representations are to be found in the haunting portraits of the young amongst edward s. curtis's documentary photographs of "the vanishing race" included in his magnum opus, the north american indian, published in the early 1900s. during their colonization, native people were encouraged away from their cultural traditions, sometimes purposefully 58 carpenter in our own image impeded and/or prohibited from practicing and transmitting them by outsiders who did not really understand or appreciate the cultures. are not the cultural circumstances of canada's children similar? * * * as elsewhere in the world, the culture of childhood in canada must be seen to comprise three different, though inter-related aspects. the first of these is the predominantly oral culture shared amongst children themselves, that is, their folklore-folklife, which includes material they appropriate from the world around and make their own; the second is all those cultural artifacts considered appropriate to children and/or to which they are intentionally exposed; and the third, the concept of child as storied and applied in the culture which necessarily both bounds and enables the existence of a culture of childhood. in this child-centered era, it is the latter two aspects that have mushroomed in presence so as to overshadow the child's present, which comprises his/her own take on the world, interpretation of circumstances, creative expression and the like embodied in children's own cultural artifacts not only preserved from the past but also shaped from and to contemporary life. in order to have such cultural artifacts of their own, children need time to be together, to explore the natural, social and personal worlds in which they exist, and to share their ideas and experiences. they need to encounter trials, be surprised, experiment, manipulate their surroundings, fail and master. in other words, they need to develop their cultural fitness through relevant exercise just as they should develop physical fitness by using appropriate muscles. the "cultural muscles' appropriate to children are rhymes, jokes, riddles, games, taunts, songs, parodies, gestures and much more that young people operate with and through amongst their peers, thereby manipulating, creating, negotiating, absorbing, reacting within a vital, interactive and, in a healthy way, subversive10 cultural matrix. it is such experiences that validate their existence as child, make worthy their very being (rather than their becoming), and underscore their joy in living. the dynamics of contemporary life are such that relatively few children are encouraged or enabled to spend extended periods in child-focussed, childdirected environments engaged with children's own culture. indeed, not a few responsible adults seem to view such circumstances with suspicion or derision. rather than being respected as their right to privacy and freedom of expression, the secret world of children alone together is frequently equated with dark or sinister 59 in our own image carpenter behaviors, and as contributing to violence on the playgrounds, or to racial and gender stereotyping, or to "mischief" in its various aspects from sexual exploration to drug use. either out of necessity or, in good calvinist fashion, to ensure that their time is spend more wisely, the adult world increasingly restricts children's free time to be children. but children's lore is far from dead, as demonstrated by the ease with which virginia caputo collected some 300 songs in oral circulation among urban schoolchildren in just six one-hour sessions.11 a forum i organized for the 1994 american folklore society meeting on "children's folklore in the media age: assessing the field" concluded that the tradition, while transformed, notably persisted but also continued to display dynamic creativity. very young children today may sing along with an animated purpose dinosaur they see on television but, as documented by panelist elizabeth tucker, they readily come to manipulate the barney theme song in order to comment on the media or on human interrelationships, especial friendship and homosexuality.12 when the adult world turns its gaze upon children's own culture, it is commonly with pragmatic intent. specialists from many fields recognize the benefits to children of engaging with their own culture, including: developments in terms of motor control, physical fitness, linguistic acumen, social skills, cultural stances or orientations, and understanding of abstract concepts such as justice as well as basic life skills. play is good for children, psychologists tell us; it enables the proper unfolding of individuality that permits people to control their own lives. fair enough, but such ideas do place emphasis on the becoming rather than the being in terms of culture. adults typically want to ensure that the unfolding is, indeed, proper, and hence tend to intervene. let us consider an example: contemporary playground observations indicate that some children playa form of tag in which it has and can pass on hiv upon learning of this game, many adults react in horror in one of two ways: either proclaiming (on the basis of their moral precepts or sentimental images) that youngsters should not play with aids, or demanding that children be taught the real facts of aids. the game should, then, be banned or attached through appropriate instruction. few would let it be, allowing that the game is children's means of coping with the existence of this real-life terror through exerting control over it in the relatively sage microcosm of life that their culture, in effect, really is. during the second world war, british children are reported to have played similarly with hitler and nazism (see opie & opie) in an effort to understand and to maintain the sense of 60 carpenter in our own image control over surroundings necessary to emotional well being. also, one of the hypothetical origins for "ring around the rosie" suggests that this game, too, developed among youngsters in their efforts to assert control through play over another terror, the black death.13 the world around seldom seems to view children as knowing, having, doing but rather as needing, lacking, emerging. little if any intrinsic value appears to be placed on the state of being child. how to encourage self-worth, then? much of children's own culture has been around a very long time: it should be obvious that it is of significance, that it works and has real meaning for children since it truly has been strong enough to be remembered by them. by what right then do we endeavor to change it? and with what effect? take some modern (politically correct) rewritings of nursery rhymes, for instance: "georgy porgy, puddin' and pie, kissed the girls and made them cry. . ." becomes "georgy porgy, what a shame, kids call you such a silly name . . ."14 children who use the first rhyme know that georgy did something he should not have done and made girls cry, so name-calling is georgy's just dessertsretributive justice, an idea generally favored by children; youngsters who hear the second verse recognize it for the over, preaching didacticism it is and will not embrace it in their tradition so the adult's intent is foiled. which is really in the cultural best interests of the child? the liberties we take with children's culture demonstrate our unwillingness to accept the young for who they are, to recognize their differences and to celebrate their distinctiveness. these familiar phrases are the demands of multiculturalism, enshrined in the laws of the land, expressive of the fundamental freedoms of all (presumably younger and older) canadians as specified in our charter of rights and freedoms and at the heart of canadianness. cultural self-determination is the cry of our times, yet our children are less culturally empowered than any other distinctive minority. while children in care have the right to their religious freedom, the right to maintain their own culture and various other rights guaranteed under provincial legislation (for instance the child and family services act in ontario), there is no similar statement of rights for a child not in care, who is, therefore, much at the mercy of his/her parents culturally. the phenomenal cultural reality experienced by many youngsters seriously infringes upon their rights, namely, to freedom of expression and freedom of thought, conscience and religion as specified in articles 13 and 14 of the hague convention, the unesco convention on the rights of the child adopted in 1989, of which canada was a major supporter and signatory. 61 in our own image carpenter children are such cultural pawns that it comes to some as a genuine revelation that their lives are actually their own. jean little, one of canada's most famous authors for children, recounts her awakening at age nine following upon an aesthetic reaction to orange segments arranged as "a line of glowing orange boats": for the first time i saw my world and my life as something that belonged to me and began to put small scraps of time away in a place where i could take them out and look at them whenever i needed.(92-93) ms. little's marked success despite being legally blind is undoubtedly linked to this empowerment that refuses victimhood. substantial numbers of canada's children never are personally empowered culturally and assuredly suffer variously as a result, just as the native people have. many of the significant youth problems of today are notably similar to the a-social and anti-social behaviors exhibited by native people that are commonly traced to colonization, for instance, low self-esteem, substance abuse, increased violence, inter-generation conflicts, rootlessness and lack of identity and, most alarming, a dramatic rise in the suicide rate. some psychologists and youth psychiatrists offer perspectives from their disciplines that may be adapted to a cultural understanding of this situation. in particular, alice miller presents in he drama of the gifted child and the search for the true self (l983) a concept of loss of authentic self during childhood which derives from the abandonment or repression of aspects of children's personality deemed unacceptable in an effort to seek approval from parents or society-at-large. the result if a false self that requires external validation: in effect, a young person who is highly vulnerable and without internal direction. it is evident that growing numbers of children are experiencing a similar loss of their true cultural selves to which they may respond in several ways. some develop a false cultural being that meets with parental, peer group and/or societal approval but is seldom richly satisfying in terms of providing a firm sense of identity and ownership. others may rebel culturally, seeking solace in the highly subversive youth pop culture, which can lead them away from the security of local identifications into the consumerism and anonymity of international media and often into selfdestructive or anti-social actions. still others exist in a cultural void, estranged and without commitment or purpose. the notable rage evident among contemporary youth owes partly to the suppression of this authentic cultural self which an individual 62 carpenter in our own image normally would. come to realize by actively manipulating culture to include self in relation to various groups, their traditions and artifacts. what we have, then, is growing numbers of young people who are suffering because they do not know who they are or where they belong as a result of being unable to engage actively with culture—any culture, let alone our national culture which could be seen to need their involvement. there seems to be little joy in life for many of our youth, but why? an absence of fulfillment through joy, as opposed to amusement or thrills, can be directly linked to a stifling of the play-element in modern childhood. today's children certainly play, but they generally do so under the scrutiny of adults as in daycare or during school recess, unless they are in the aerobics classes now being scheduled by some schools to utilize this time to (supposedly) greater effect in promoting fitness. such efforts may foster physical, but not emotional fitness. children need the freedom to develop emotional well-being, too, which is facilitated more through the interpersonal connectedness of their oral traditions and through observation and imitation amongst themselves than through intellectual activity or instruction under adult control.15 adults authoritatively make certain that children are well controlled and supervised to ensure that their play is good for them, that no one gets hurt, that no one bullies or name-calls or teases or . . . copes in. manipulates and masters the natural and social world around or the emotional world within, so it is that our children are culturally deprived and become disengaged. marginalized and repressed while young, they do not personally appreciate culture as a concept, a process or a set of products. hence they become prey to manipulation as passive recipients of, rather than creative participants in, the larger cultural matrix beyond their limited experience-a retrograde state for any nation, let alone for one so tentative about identity as our own. the recognition of the culture of childhood within canadian culture today and in the future has implication for the overall cultural well being of our nation's citizens. our own image for children may not be in their cultural best interests or in canada's best interests culturally. it remains a challenge to determine and pursue these cultural best interests of the child (cbioc), but doing so is imperative. only by actually, rather than merely rhetorically, recognizing the full rights of children will canadians act in accord with their cultural ideals and enable future generations to continue the pursuit of excellence in being human that rests at the core of canadianness. to do so requires that the child's own voice not only be heard but also be taken on advisement. 63 in our own image carpenter for young people to come to possess canadian culture, they must first manipulate and master culture as children. they must know that they themselves own culture and realize the self-validation and self-esteem attendant upon the acceptance of that culture as equal to all others recognized under multiculturalism. paradoxically, while children's rights in some, especially legal, areas are being supported (see wilson), the respect for children's way of being, and therefore their culture, is lessening. key to promoting better child-adult interaction is the promotion of children's enablement rather than their containment, which first demands appreciation for the cross-cultural communication involved as a two-way process. simply put, such a situation means that we adults have much to learn about children from children themselves. the knowledge children bring to any situation bears consideration, for no more than members of any other cultural group are children neutral receptacles disposed to received and be shaped entirely from outside. heritage is naturally a prime concern relating to the cbioc. it behooves us as responsible adults to consider whether we are doing children any favor by imposing our heritage baggage on them, especially given the emergence of mixed ethnicity as the defining characteristic of the largest single group of canadians. is it not right and in keeping with canadian ideals that any child should have a say in heritage-related matters within the family just as that child would be heard in a custody dispute? according children such a voice (and hence increasing their control) would, however, necessitate major restructuring of engrained cultural concepts of child and childhood, parent, child rearing and more. but such a restructuring is needed to liberate canada's children and to ensure their just treatment today as well as their ownership of their futures. in surviving as indians: the challenge of self-government (1993), menno boldt poses five carefully argued imperatives to effect a just future for indians in canada (see p. x). four of these are, with adaptation, applicable to a just future for children in canada, as follows: l. moral justice for children; 2.canadian policies that treat children's rights, interests, as pirations and needs as equal to those of other distinctive cultural groups in canada; 3.child-focussed leadership that is committed to eliminating the colonization of children and to empowering young people; and 64 carpenter in our own image 4. the assurance of appropriate circumstances for children to maintain and pursue their cultural traditions with other children. boldt's fifth imperative concerns economic self-determination which, in the case of children, should be replaced by the security of the necessities of life provided by the adult world. but how are we as a people to move toward this just future for children? first, adult canadians must make evident a certain humility with respect to youngsters, what they know, what they have, what they want, what they can best teach themselves and so on. if manipulate we must, then let it be the environments not the children. in particular, we ought to consider carefully whether our agendas of child concern and the resultant environments we impose on children are really in their (and ultimately, then, the canadian peoples') cultural best interests. of the many questions this presentation raises, the most central concern is how to achieve the goals it establishes. as a single example we might consider the desirability of children having free time to play. if we in our communities made such playtime a priority, we could direct resources towards ensuring safety on playgrounds by employing students or seniors (armed with cell phones) as discreet supervisors, or to establishing block networks for after-school play in homes or yards, using the extant model of babysitting cooperatives. what is required is the communal will; appropriate methods will follow apace. throughout canada we must recognize that dealing with children is comparable to relating to members of any other cultural group. in the interests of developing better child-adult communication (and hence, mutual understanding), it is time, as kathleen mcdonnell argues, that "we called a truce in this thankless, no-win war with out kids"(18) and learn to do more than just censor and rage against their cultural preferences (20). today's kid culture, as she terms children's own culture, contains a fair dose of material appropriated from or strongly influenced by popular culture. we clearly ought to recognize the legitimacy of children's chose cultural expressions— we demand the same for other cultural groups. but, cultural tolerance seemingly extends much more easily to diverse traits of distinctive others than to the sometimes wild, anarchic behaviors, attitudes and artifacts of our own children which challenge and disturb the established order. they are subversive-no more, no less than children's own traditions have always been and rightly so. in don't tell the grown-ups (1990), alison lurie makes a powerful argument that: 65 in our own image carpenter we should take children's literature seriously because it is sometimes subversive; because its values are not always those of the conventional adult world (xi) the argument applies equally to children's culture, for it is through the manipulation, rejection and re-creation of their cultural world that young people simultaneously search for and validate their voice and so situate themselves culturally. while deserving of recognition as a distinct cultural group, children are decidedly different from other such groups, since they do grow our of their child-focussed culture. yet, that cultural world can be, after tolkien's claims for the secondary world of faerie, a key means of coming to terms with the larger reality while offering fantasy, recovery, escape and consolation in the same manner as fairy stories do. as children we can be closer than perhaps at any other time of our lives to our authentic selves in our personal cultural operations. the cultural of childhood remains with us in memory as adults, a secondary reality to be revisited as burden or release, depending on our empowerment through it. such revisitation may illuminate the primary reality of our true (as opposed to ideal or actual) selves-a scenario played out effectively in such scenes from canadian literature as that in gabrielle roy's novel, the cashier, where the constrained and unfulfilled protagonist, alexandre chenervert, "sees" an image of himself as a playful child who looks upon the actual adult he is to become quizzically, in seeming startled disbelief(104). to more fully appreciate the authentic child, we should recognize the limitations of our cognitive map regarding childhood, cease appropriating the child's voice and admit the complex, multi-dimensional reality of child, embracing in particular the darker side, which we all know from personal experience does exist. only by so doing will be enable children to reappropriate their full voice and be the true subject of their own discourse. let us return to wallace stegner's sensuous little savage and consider part of his account of the savage (darker) aspect, the portrait of a real child for sure: i learned dirty words and dirty songs from the children of construction workers and from the. . .cowpunchers. with others, i was induced to ride calves and engage in "shit fights" with wet cow manure in the. . .corrals. then or later i learned to dog-paddle, first in the irrigation ditch, later in the river. . .we put.22 cartridges or blasting caps on the tracks ahead of approaching handcars or 66 carpenter in our own image speeders, and once we got satisfactorily chased by gandy dancers. around christmas we all watched the first soldiers go off to the [first world] war, and then and afterward we had trouble with some canadian kids who said the united states was too yellow to fight. (164-65) this picture of the child is not wholly admirable, perhaps (and that is without the scatological ending), but it is human-the real-life experiences of living children which deserves recognition and valorisation. the ideal child of our imagination must cease to silence the real child so that the actual lives children lead in this country accord with their truly, fully human nature. * * * 1975 was the international year of the woman, a commemoration that drove the women's movement forward around the world. 1979 was the international year of the child, but children have neither here nor abroad yet achieved a cultural position or voice comparable to that of contemporary women, for they have no political presence and require advocates. recently, concentration on the image of child as victim (of abuse in particular) has engendered considerable genuine empathy for children and prompted many to speak out for them. these victimization accounts may serve canada's children as the guilt literature of the seventies did the native people. they should prod us forward toward what we know we ought to do: stop doing to our children and let them do and be themselves while accepting and respecting them in the process. our cultural ideals, our cultural superego, confront us-a child, whose voice needs to be heard, whose existence as a child must be validated, whose freedom to be demands affirmation, whose full humanity must be recognized. not only must we let our children be, we must also enable them (gradually as they are capable) to assume control over their existence, actively cope with life and, potentially, triumph over rather than passively become victims of the adversity they surely will encounter. according to a popular saying, frequently cited in contemporary popular culture as an african proverb, "it takes a whole village to raise a child"16 we need to provide effective villages-spaces in our culture where children can come into themselves, surrounded by and connected with supportive adults. childhood must not be "something we live to recover from," as historian william westfall recently termed it.17 to this end, young people everywhere 67 in our own image carpenter should be freed to experience the sheer, immediate joy in living and be able, each and everyone individually and collectively, to assert that joy. if, as johann huizinga suggested, the best designation for humans is "homo ludens," we will be most human and best realize our ideals as canadians when we let the culture of children reverberate through our lives. we are all but fellow-travellers along life's weary way; if any man can play the pipes in god's name, let him play.18 afterword in the years since i gave this lecture, some encouraging changes of orientation to child, children's culture and childhood have occurred, notably within academe. numerous calls for a more holistic and child-focussed approach to the study of children and their worlds (variously defined) now emanate from many disciplines. europeans have spearheaded this trend and recently produced a body of singularly illuminating research that demonstrates the merits of the approach. north americans have more recently, but quite vociferously, joined the movement to appreciate children's culture and legitimize the area of "children's studies." in an insightful article, kenneth kidd discusses "this new enthusiasm for culture as representing continuity as well as innovation."(147) certainly it opens the door to curricular developments that may have long-range impact. at york university in toronto where i teach, the appetite for interdisciplinary courses on child-related topics appears to be insatiable. the enrolment in my first-year humanities offering, "the worlds of childhood" has more than doubled within five years and the course ranks amongst those with the highest unmet need in our faculty of arts which, with almost 10,000 students, is larger than most universities in this country. the course aims first and foremost to "hear the voice of the child" and demands that each and every student undertake fieldwork with this intent. it is a revolutionary experience for most, who bear the imprimatur of the developmentalist hegemony, but it is indisputably the most rewarding assignment on the course for most participants. the demands for more study along this line escalate every year with the result that we are now in the process of mounting an interdisciplinary undergraduate "children's studies" program, the first of its kind in canada. 68 carpenter in our own image like many other interdisciplinary programs, this one will be housed in the division of humanities, itself an interdisciplinary unit which, along with the divisions of social science and natural science, has provided among its offerings the core general education (now foundations) courses since york's establishment over forty years ago. the children's studies program will have most in common, however, with women's studies—a highly developed area at york, offered through the school of women's studies. students will have many options through children's studies, but basically each will major or minor in a discipline (from arts, environmental studies or fine arts) and take a series of four core interdisciplinary courses plus electives in children's studies. of the core, one course is planned as a practicum or internship involving placement in a child-focused setting in the larger community (a library, publishing house, community center, heritage site...as relevant to each student individually). one other will be a course in the ethics and methodologies of working with or for children. students will, then, be able to graduate with a spectrum of concentrations from writing for children (creative writing/children's studies) to advocating for/with children (social work/children's studies) to appreciating children's interface with the natural world (environmental studies/children's studies). in each case, the emphasis will be on hearing from children, on liberating their voices and on making them authorities on childhood. a research unit, the canadian children's culture collection, has been established to support the program. already the repository of many past student projects, the cccc will facilitate further research by students, faculty and, as appropriate, community members. it will also pursue the development of its resource collections of children's art, hand-made toys, books and relevant secondary sources. one of its primary aims will be to disseminate research results in order to develop greater understanding of children's culture and to effect changes in the condition of being child in canada and beyond. it is hoped that the program (planned to begin in fall 2004) and its allied research unit (well established and soon to open for use) will therefore contribute significantly to achieving the goals laid out in the preceding paper. york university toronto, canada 69 in our own image carpenter notes 1 gwyn dow and june factor, eds. australian childhood, 1991. 2 in 1986 she received the vicky metcalf award given annually by the canadian authors association for a body of work deemed inspirational to canadian youth (in her instance, folklore of or for children). further, in 1993 she was the recipient of a life achievement medal from the children's folklore section for her contributions to the field. 3 a canadian painter who lived from 1871-1945. she is best known for her representations of the northwest coastal forests and the tangible artifacts of the native people who inhabited the region. 4 a weekly comedy program shown in prime time by the canadian broadcasting corporation (cbc) and known for its sociopolitical commentary. 5 for instance, a section (albeit contested) of the canadian chart of rights and freedoms specifically allows for disciplining children by physical means, whereas no other canadian can lawfully be hit by another. 6 one of the models for the proposed toronto museum of child hood. 7 just one example being an exhibit at harbourfront in toronto of works by spring hurlbut incorporating french children's beds, march-april 1995. 8 this was during the threat of strong separatist sentiment in que bec that threatened the canadian union. 9 i am grateful to robert graham who does not know how much his comment has influenced my thinking in the intervening years. 10 a point frequently made in such works on children's folklore as one potato, two potato: the secret education of american children (1976) by herbert and mary knapp and captain cook chased a chook: children's folklore from australia by june factor (1988). 11 in this research, undertaken in the early nineties for her dissertation in social anthropology at york, dr. caputo was replicating the fieldwork done by edith fowke some thirty years earlier in the same toronto schools. 12 for instance, the text of one parody collected by dr. tucker in binghamton, new york and also reported to me in toronto turns the first lines of the barney theme song, "i long you, you love me, we're a happy family" into "i love you, you love me, homosex-u-al-i-ty." 13 it is worth noting that when this lecture was first published, the paragraph received more commentary than any other part of the work. 14 from lansky & carpenter, the new adventures of mother goose (1993), as reported by dale anne freed in "georgy porgy cleans up his 70 71 carpenier in our own image act," toronto star, 7 february a994, section e, 1 & 3. 15 northrop frye maintains in "the cultural development of canada" that our most important learning and that which stays with us longest comes through such interpersonal communication (p. 16), a position long held by folklorists. 16 similar in meaning to the recorded bantu proverb, "the child of your neighbour is yours" which is listed in s. g. champion, racial proverbs (new york: barnes & noble, 1963), p. 597. 17 personal communication, 1994 18 john bennett, p. 21 bartlett s familiar quotations. works cited bennett, john. excerpt from year book, poetry society of south carolina (1921); reproduced in john bartlett, ed. familiar quotations, 13th ed. boston, toronto: little, brown & co., 1955. blackman, margaret b. during my time: florence edenshaw davidson. a haida woman. seattle:u of washington p, 1982. boldt, menno. surviving as indians: the challenge of self-government. toronto: u of toronto p, 199x. the boys of st. vincent s produced by les productions tele-action inc. in coproduction with the national film board of canada in association with the canadian broadcasting corporation, 1992. 92 min. sd. col. directed by john n. smith. campbell, maria. half-breed. toronto: mcclelland & stewart, 1973. canadian childhoods: a tundra anthology. montreal: tundra, 1989. children of canada. dea canada/cher canada: a love letter to my country. toronto: ben wicks & associates, 1995. curtis, edward s. the north american indian. (1907-30). 20 v.; rpt. new york: johnson reprint, 1970. dow, gwyn and june factor, eds. australian childhood: an anthology. ringwood, aus: mcphee gribble/penguin, 1991. elkind, david. the hurried child. don mill, on: addison-wesley, 1988. factor, june. captain cook, chased a chook: children s folklore in austra lia. ringwood, aus: penguin, 1988. fowke, edith. folktales of french canada. toronto: nc press, 1979. ______. sally go round the sun: 300 songs, rhymes and games of canadian children. toronto: mcclelland & steart, 1969. francis, daniel. the imaginary indian: the image of the indian in canadian culture. vancouver: arsenalpulp press, 1992. frye, northrop. "the cultural development of canada." australian-cana dian studies. 10.1(1992): 9-16. goldie, terry. fear and temptation: the image of the indigene in canadian, australian and new zealand literature. montreal: mcgill-queen's up 1989. in our own image carpenter holt, john c. escape from childhood. toronto: clarke, irwin, 1974. hughes-hallett, penelope. childhood: a collins anthology. london: collins, 1988. huizinga, johann. homo ludens: a study of the play-element in culture. (1944) boston: beacon, 1951. johnston, basil. indian school days. toronto: key porter, 1988. knapp, mary and herbert knapp. one potato, two potato: the folklore of american children. new york: norton, 1976. kurelek, william. lumberjack. montreal: tundra, 1974. ______. a prairie boy's summer. montreal: tundra, 1975. ______. a prairie boy's winter. montreal: tundra, 1973. lansky, bruce and stephen carpenter. the new adventures of mother goose: gentler rhymes for happy times. new york: meadowbrook, 1993. laslett, peter. the world we have lost. new york: charles scribner's sons, 1965. little, jean. little by little: a writer's education. markham, on: penguin, 1987. lurie, alison. don't tell the grown-ups: subversive children's literature. boston, toronto, london: little, brown and co., 1990. mcdonnell, kathleen. kid culture: children & adults & popular culture. toronto: second story press, 1994. miller, alice. the drama of the gifted child and the search for the true self london, boston: faber and faber, 1983. mitchell, w. o. who has seen the wind. toronto: macmillan, 1947. monkman, leslie. a native heritage: images of the indian in english-cana dian literature. toronto: u of toronto p, 1981. montgomery, lucy maud. anne of green gables. boston: page, 1908. newell, william wells. games and songs of american children. (1883); rpt. new york: dover publications, 1963. ontario. royal commission on learning. for the love of learning. 4 v. toronto: the royal commission, 1994. opie, iona and peter opie. the lore and language of schoolchildren. ox ford: clarendon, 1959. parr, joy, ed. childhood and family in canadian history. toronto: mcclelland & stewart, 1982. posen, i. s. "the beginnings of the children's (folk) song industry in canada." canadian folk music journal 21 (1993): 19-30. postman, neil. the disappearance of childhood. new york: delacorte, 1982. reid, dennis. a concise history of canadian painting. 2nd ed.; toronto: o up, 1988. roberts, charles g. d. children of the wild. new york: macmillan, 1921. roy, gabrielle. the cashier. trans. harry binsse. toronto: mcclelland & stewart, 1955. royal canadian air farce. cbc television program since 1993; produced by the canadian broadcasting corporation; written by gord holtam, rick olsen and john morgan. 72 carpenter in our own image schilling, arthur. excerpts from the ojibway dream (tundra, 1986) in ca nadian childhoods. montreal: tundra, pp. 78-81. seton, ernest thompson. wild animals i have known. new york: scribner, 1898. smolan, rick and david cohen, eds. a day in the life of canada. don mills, on: collins, 1984. stainton rogers, rex, and wendy stainton rogers. stories of childhood: the shifting agendas of child concern. toronto: u of toronto p, 1992. stegner, wallace. "finding the place" in clams backes, ed. growing up west ern. new york: alfred a. knopf, 1990, pp. 161-85. _______. wolf willow: a history, a story, a memoir of the last plains frontier. new york: viking, 1962. sutherland, neil '''everyone seemed happy in those days:' the culture of childhood in vancouver between the 1920's and the 1960's." history of education review 15.3(1986): 34-51 tolkien, j. r. r. "on fairy stories," tree and leaf. london: george, allen & unwin, 1975, pp. 11-70. waters ton, elizabeth. children’s literature in canada. don mills, on: max well macmillan, 1992. welcome home. produced in association with the canadian broadcasting corporation, national film board of canada, p.a.f.p.s. program (ontario centre) tvontario. published by cue films, 1990. 27 min sd. col. wilson, jeffry and mary tomlinson. wilson: children and the law in canada. toronto: butterworths, 1985. i wish to express my gratitude for continued support from the robarts centre for canadian studies at york university who gave permission to republish this work. 73 "life for me ain't no crystal stair"; readin', writin', and parental (il)literacy in african american children' s books neal a. lester learning would spoil the best nigger in the world. now. . . if you teach that nigger. . . how to read, there would be no keeping him. it would forever unfit him to be a slave. -frederick douglass (1845) mass literacy is a relatively new social goal. a hundred years ago people didn't need to be good readers in order to earn a living. but in the information age, no one can get by without knowing how to read well and understand increasingly complex material. -newsweek (22 november 1999) literacy as democratic ideal while frederick douglass's important narrative of the life of frederick douglass, an american slave, written by himself (1845) demonstrates an individual's alleged personal liberation spiritually and psychologically through reading and writing, the narrative equally forwards a culturally chauvinistic agenda that privileges the printed word. proposing to show his learned northern abolitionist, primarily white male audience that access to reading and writing transforms him from his perceived animal barbarism to civilized humanhood, douglass impressively and eloquently details human bondage and his release from it through elaborate rhetorical strategies: symbolisms, ironies, allusions, parallelisms, ambiguities, repetitions.2 indeed, douglass's liberation from his enslavement comes less from his physical freedom than from his ability to read and write: though conscious of the difficulty of learning without a teacher [his master's wile, mrs. auld], i set out with high hope, and of a fixed purpose at whatever cost of trouble to learn how to read. (667) he learns indirectly from mr. auld how threatened masters were of "life for me ain't no crystal stair" lester slaves' becoming literate—among other things, they might write their own passes to freedom literally and figuratively—and this knowledge fuels his intense determination to become literate by any means necessary: what he [mr. auld] most dreaded, that i most desired. what he most loved, that i most hated. that which to him was a great evil, to be carefully shunned, was to be diligently sought; and served to inspire me with a desire and determination to learn. in learning to read, i owe almost as much to the bitter opposition of my master, as to the kindly aid of my mistress. (668) douglass's learning to read from mrs. auld's instruction and from manipulating little white boys so that he could write what they wrote is fundamental to douglass's newly realized selfhood. douglass's copyingphysically mimicking "white literacy" –speaks to a cultural binary that exists between literacy and illiteracy in the western world. although douglass clarifies that slaves' physical and psychological survival was also connected to slaves' "reading" masters' behaviors and motives, he feels completely human and humanized largely because he can read and write. in a broader sense, "formal" education generally and alphabetical literacy were believed to be keys to african american liberation from economic, social and political oppression. as violet j. harris explains in "african-american conceptions of literacy: a historical perspective," african americans hold many of the same views [on the sacredness of education as white american citizens]; they, too, maintain an unstinting belief in the power of literacy to effect essential political, cultural, social, and economic change. in the past, and to some extent now, education was a privilege, albeit a privilege literally acquired through blood, sweat, tears, and enormous economic sacrifice. unquestionably, acquiring access to literacy for african americans has involved continuous struggle, in the face of unrelenting opposition from segments of the planter aristocracy, politicians, clergy, and ordinary citizens.3 hence, to connect individual worth and selfhood, as does douglass, with the ability or inability to read and write—one dimension of lit 76 lester "life for me ain't no crystal stair" eracy—is not uncommon, however problematic, in a western culture that is, as harlem renaissance writer jean toomer describes, "hypnotized by literacy." according to the 1992 national adult literacy survey, literacy is the ability "to use printed and written information to function in society, to achieve one's goals, and to develop one's knowledge and potential."4 buried in this definition is the ideal of literacy as realized personal goals, social worth, and fullest self-potential, implying that illiteracy constitutes failure on any number of personal and social levels. despite its obvious language bias by specifying "standard" english as the definitive marker, the national literacy act of 1991 broadens this definition of literacy by adding orality to the equation: literacy is "an individual's ability to read, write, and speak in english and compute and solve problems at levels of proficiency necessary to function on the job and in society, to achieve one's goals, and to develop one's knowledge and potential."5 personal goals and social values are again emphasized, literacy underscored as a prescribed personal and social ideal and standard. neither definition, however, acknowledges literacy as a multitude of practices that legitimize realities and communicate diverse and varied experiences. if in fact literacy grants opportunities to achieve various ideals, those unable to read and write are perceived and treated as being socially handicapped and personally burdened. while nancy n. rue, in coping with an illiterate parent, maintains that "literacy is not a single skill" (38) and has little to do with the moral and ethical decency of a non-reading individual (19), she nevertheless writes of this issue with extreme pessimism and oversimplification, maintaining that illiterate parents are most often "trapped in a nowhere job, imprisoned by a sense of inferiority, shamed by the inability to give [a child] everything [that child] needs intellectually and socially and emotionally because he/she can't read and write competently"(emphasis added 11). rue implies that illiterate parents are in some ways less than complete and upstanding social individuals fully capable of maintaining satisfying familial and social relationships and leading productive lives. even the book title itself—"coping with an illiterate parent"—suggests that illiteracy is a kind of social disease or illness with which a child has to deal until a "cure" or "treatment" is found. literacy idealized and moralized surprisingly or unsurprisingly, few children's texts address the issue of parental illiteracy. the treatment of illiteracy in a picture or 77 "life for me ain't no crystal stair" lester storybook for those learning to read seems on the surface oxymoronic, perhaps even absurd from the perspective of a publisher wanting to sell books. the idea of illiteracy i examine here is not about glorification of nonreading and non-writing. rather, my concern is that books that dare to deal with parental illiteracy at all present parental illiteracy as a shameful secret, always to be hidden from the world of the parents' children. eve bunting's the wednesday surprise (1989) presents an elderly, presumably white grandmother learning to read as a "gift" to her adult son on the occasion of his birthday. dick king-smith's the school mouse (1995) deals with the issue of non-reading parents in the racially and cultural neutral world of mice: young literate flora "saves" her illiterate parents from eating poison. both dolores johnson's papa's stories (1994), now out-of-print, and vashanti rahaman's read for me, mama (1997) deal specifically with african americans and parental illiteracy. in all of these books, the parent/ adult-as-teacher role is reversed, and parents are led to literacy by the efforts of and responsibilities to a child. in these texts, literacy is idealized and those who can read idolized; literacy also—according to these accounts—allegedly signifies personal and social value and measures adult self-esteem and selfworth. with minimal complexity and compassion for individual circumstances even for or especially for children's texts, all of these treatments of illiteracy create artificial, culturally biased binaries that further marginalize those unable to read and write. children's texts that celebrate being able to read and write are not problematic in and of themselves. problems arise however when such texts presume and forward the position that parental illiteracy is simple personal choice and not a series of complicated circumstances almost always beyond individuals' control. for example, my 79-year-old grandfather, with whom i spoke recently about his own illiteracy when i was mulling over ideas for this project, does not read and write, and to my knowledge this reality has never been an issue of family concern or discussion. it was an understood and rarely spoken fact, and clearly evident when, for instance, other family members read father's day and birthday cards to him. the whole tenor of my conversation with him was one of apology from him for this inability to read. he had a third grade education when his parents died and was forced to leave school to help work for the livelihood of his other five siblings. my grandfather and his older preacher brother were the only two who had minimal reading and writing skills. others managed to continue studies along the way. with my ph.d. in english, i felt awkward, embarrassed, and invasive talking about something the family had never 78 lester "life for me ain't no crystal stair" broached in such a manner. my conversation with my grandfather about his illiteracy was a lesson for me in his personal history and circumstances, a lesson of which i had no previous knowledge.6 in children's texts that deal with the subject of non-reading and writing parents but the non-reading and writing parents are not in fact the subjects, the circumstances of illiteracy—be they environmental or social, emotional, psychological, visual or even neurological as in dyslexia ("a disorder that makes learning to read extremely difficult")7 are unaddressed. instead, literacy is celebrated at the expense of parental embarrassment, shame, and even morality. literacy is championed with near religious fervor in vashanti rahaman's read for me, mama, wherein a young seven or eight-year-old african american boy is the instrument of his mother's "salvation" from illiteracy. rahaman's story perpetuates class and race stereotypes, equating illiteracy with dirtiness, personal shame, even sin, and literacy with moral cleanliness and spiritual enlightenment. the story polarizes joseph's ideal school/library experiences and the drudgery and mundane nature of his seemingly less than desirable home environment. the school librarian—older, wiser and proportional in weight—is almost god-like because of her professional authority and joseph's adulation of her; she inspires joseph with her engaging story reading. in fact, joseph wants to emulate mrs. ricardo as a story reader. while joseph's mother's storytelling is as exciting as the librarian's story reading, rahaman's text affords the librarian and literacy an idealized position of power and authority not realized in joseph's home life. race and class stereotyping occurs in other textual details. in fact, rahaman makes illiteracy the source of these stereotypes. the overweight, late twenty-something african american woman, also a single parent—the text affords no clues to how this circumstance came to be—is trapped financially in two janitorial jobs. she has no independent means of transportation—she rides a bus or walks wherever she goes—and lives in an apartment next to empty lots of garbage and in a neighborhood with broken sidewalks. while these images alone are not distinct class markers, contextually, they render this less than ideal family unit as limited and existing in less than ideal american middle-class circumstances. again, images of dirtiness and cleanliness are synonymous with illiteracy and literacy respectively. the illiterate mama cleans hotel rooms, dirty dishes, the dirty apartment, and presumably white mrs. holder's apartment. these clean/dirty images appear in the illustrations as well. the literate librarian is either a light-skinned ethnic minority or a white person. the illiterate mother 79 "life for me ain't no crystal stair" lester is dark-complected.8 the university student who reads to joseph at the laundromat is also non-african-american. because of the mother's illiteracy, the text suggests, her participation in society is limited to working two jobs, doing laundry, shopping for groceries, and attending church activities. the implication is that the mother wants more or should want more or deserves more from life than these social rituals afford when in reality, some individuals, whether literate or not, may be quite satisfied in these circumstances.9 while leaving joseph's mother unnamed in the text affords some degree of character universality in treating this issue of illiteracy, it also suggests that an illiterate parent may not warrant the authority of an identity, a name, not even the ability or opportunity to name herself. recall that frederick douglass's consummate mark of selfhood and manhood comes in his ability to name himself, to "subscribe [him] self frederick douglass," suggesting the power and authority of one who can name or possess a non-generic name. surely, there is more to this individual's identity than her named motherhood identity, an identity that is neither personalized nor individualized. all of the other literate characters, even the son joseph, are privileged with a named identity: ms. ricardo (librarian), mr. beharry (university student), and old mrs. holder. that joseph's mother finds literacy through her church might easily be connected with the role black churches played historically in educating african americans during and after slavery. as leo mcgee and harvey g. neufeldt note in education of the black adult in the united states: an annotated bibliography, "[t]he black churches, most noteably [sic] the african methodist church, took the lead in providing educational opportunities for blacks of all ages" (92). yet this historical note is not revealed in the story but rather the notion that literacy is a "gift" from god. just as a mysterious and seemingly divine presence puts a "pot of geraniums. . . in the deep hole in the sidewalk" in joseph's neighborhood, the preacher and the congregation at mama's church pray fervently to god for her to become literate, and god answers their collective prayers with evening adult reading courses and tutorials for mama. one of the last images in the book shows joseph and his mama reading together as though their mouths are reading in unison. this image of open mouths even suggests singing as at mama's choir practice or church revival service. indeed, the illustration and the final words—"slowly and carefully, mama's voice stepped from word to word, page after page. mama was reading!"—resound with the religiosity of singing, shouting, and celebration. with mama's newfound literacy, she is presumably no longer desperate and 80 lester "life for me ain't no crystal stair" blinded by personal shame, deception, and inadequacy. she rather cryptically explains her illiteracy before her "conversion": "i have to learn to read. . .. my boy needs a mama who can read. but i never practiced up my reading, never learnt it good in school, and it all got lost from my mind, all got lost" (emphasis added). notice that the mother equates literacy with good parenting. importantly, the book's title, "read for me, mama" (emphasis added), rather than "read to me, mama" (emphasis added), further suggests that this parent's becoming literate is a response to her son's desperate plea, a plea that goes beyond the son's leisure entertainment: if mama does not respect herself enough to be literate, then certainly she will become literate for her child. notice also that mama's spoken language is mangled and awkward, and presumably once she learns to read, she will be a better parent and will speak correct "standard" english. indeed, literacy brings light and enlightenment to mama. in this sense, the final open mouthing might well be the words read or sung of the popular folk hymn "amazing grace": amazing grace how sweet the sound/ that saved a wretch like me. i once was lost but now i'm found. was blind but now i see. rahaman's text associates illiteracy with "wretchedness," being "lost," and being "blind"; literacy, in contrast, with sight and moral purity. while illiteracy may be perceived as a blindness, it is nevertheless one dimension ofa person's life experience, not a whole human condition. hence, although mama may already know the words to the hymn as she does the hymns she knows well in her church choir, she can now read other unfamiliar verses and other less familiar hymns.10 with literacy, the book contends, mama is a soldier armed to conquer the world. armed with literacy, the author contends, this mother and by extension this family will break from its personal and social shackles. even the book jacket reiterates this religious romanticizing of literacy as "salvation": "vashanti rahaman's story of how a mother and son face the challenge of literacy is told with warmth and sensitivity, while [the illustrator's] bold and beautiful oil paintings light the pages with images of hope and love." the message of read for me, mama oversimplifies even for a child audience the issue of illiteracy. we see mama's life of drudgery before she becomes literate and are to believe that her daily busyness as a single parent will either change or cease and that she will have more time for her son. indeed, while the mother may not spend time avoiding reading to her son, perhaps too much of the relationship between 81 "life for me ain't no crystal stair" lester a mother and her son is connected with her (il)literacy. the message presumes that mama will not arrive home from work late if her work times are changed because she will be able to read announcements about revised schedules. the story avoids the reality that even literate persons misread or do not always read carefully. and how likely is it that mama's work place would present revised schedules and have no verbal announcement or discussion so that mama and others might at least hear about the schedule change? the final lesson of the book also suggests that mama's literacy will change the quality of the relationship between this mother and her child. while reading to a child is an unquestionably important act that can be a bonding experience between a parent and a child, there is no reason to believe that the quality of this family's life overall or needs to change significantly. although joseph admits that his mother is a great story teller—"mama was the best storyteller in the world. her voice danced and played with the words. she could make the most ordinary things seem not so ordinary after all" –her storytelling is not really celebrated.11 indeed, the book makes clear that mama's stories are interesting to joseph because mama is an engaging storytelling performer: she uses interesting voices to make stories come alive. but while mama is a great storyteller, even better than mrs. ricardo and the university student mr. beharry, mama's storytelling—to which joseph has undoubtedly been exposed long before he goes to school and hears a librarian read to him—ranks second in importance and value to mrs. ricardo's, the librarian's, story reading: "mrs. ricardo, the librarian, was the best story reader in the world. she could make her voice loud and soft and squeaky and growly. she could sound angry and happy and oh, so very sad. she knew all of the great big words in the books. joseph wished he could read like that." the librarian, because of her literacy performance, is idolized. joseph's mother's storytelling performance is as exciting and actually comparable to mrs. ricardo's animated performances, yet what distinguishes the librarian from the mother in this context is the librarian's ability to "know great big words." surely, literacy is more than decoding big words. mama's conversion to literacy furthers the primary bias that literacy exempts individuals from limitations and creates false hopes: "literacy," one source claims, "arouses hopes, not only in society as a whole but also in the individual who is striving for fulfillment, happiness and personal benefit by learning how to read and write. literacy. . . means far more than learning how to read and write. . . the aim is to transmit. . . knowledge and promote social participation."12 while literacy allegedly "saves" mama from public and personal shame. read 82 lester "life for me ain't no crystal stair" for me, mama does little to move what can be the painful realities of illiteracy to a deeper understanding. rather, it maintains and even perpetuates faulty assumptions that illiteracy determines one's self worth and the quality of one's personal relationships. the text confirms nancy n. rue's assertions that "illiteracy is considered by our society to be a shameful thing-certainly not something that is volunteered in the course of casual conversation. . . if [adults] tell people they can't read, they're likely to lose jobs, friendships, and even the respect of their kids" (9). that mama wears a pair of heart-shaped earrings prominently positioned in the illustrations just before her "true confession" before the church congregation and during and after the "conversion" further presents literacy as a divine "gift" from god, suggesting once again that literacy directly impacts on the loving relationship between a parent and child. with the mother's literacy also comes a seemingly newfound church community rallying around the new "convert." was there no community around mama before this moment? perhaps rahaman works too hard to idealize literacy with assumptions that can surely undermine parental authority and individual self-respect. perhaps she tries too hard to present a "happily ever after ending" to a story and circumstance that are more complicated than she realizes or dares to explore. perhaps the story would achieve a greater impact if it explored some possible or probable causes of mama's illiteracy beyond her cryptic explanation in the church. perhaps rahaman's reading audience might be better served by using mama's illiteracy to discuss the cultural bias and social marginalization of those who do not share the same abilities, talents, opportunities, or even reading levels. the book might have been an occasion to educate both reading parents and children that there are degrees of functioning literate practice, that joseph's mother's inability to read his library books, her church hymn books, or her work schedule announcements does not mean that she can not differentiate between cleaning supplies, shop for groceries, read numbers on her paycheck, or pay bills. perhaps the book might have included some awareness on the author's part of the social, historical, and political history of illiteracy specifically among african americans since according to jonathan kozol, in illiterate america (1985), "[illiteracy] figures for the younger generation of black adults are increasing. forty-seven percent of all black seventeen-yearolds are functionally illiterate. that figure is expected to climb to 50 percent by 1990" (2). although the national education association reports that among the total population of adult non-literate in english—41 % are english speaking whites, 22% are english speaking african ameri 83 "life for me ain't no crystal stair" lester cans, 22% are spanish speaking, and 15% are non-english speaking people"the actual numbers of white non-readers is twice that of the number of african american and hispanic non-readers, dispelling the myth that illiteracy is not a problem among whites. "13 still, kozol further urges the rightful need to address illiteracy specifically within a particular cultural context of race politics: when nearly half of all adult black citizens in the united states are coming out of public schools without the competence to understand the antidote instructions on a chemical container, instructions on a medicine bottle, or the books and journalistic pieces which might render them both potent and judicious in a voting booth, who can pretend that literacy is not political? (92) while kozol's comments are fundamentally sound, his call for urgency certainly warranted, perhaps he, too, overestimates the alleged "saving" powers of literacy. joseph's mother seems not to have endangered her life or joseph's or suffered any devastating trauma as a result of her inability to read. nevertheless, the need to historicize illiteracy in any such discussion is clear: the politics of literacy are nothing new. long before the politics of racial segregation in the schools came to the national attention, long before woodrow wilson argued for the merits of class stratification in the public schools, long before laws throughout the nation made it a crime to teach black people how to read and write, long before the u.s. constitution measured the black citizen as three-fifths of a man, one hundred years before the present government existed, a powerful leader, sir william berkeley, governor of virginia, stated his views in clear, unflinching terms. "i thank god," he said, that "there are no free schools nor printing [in this land]. for learning has brought disobedience, and heresy, and sects into the world, and printing hath divulged them..god save us from both!"(93)14 while rahaman's children's story need not be a history textbook, readers might well benefit from a cursory explanation of the richness of the african american oral tradition represented to some extent in the mother's storytelling, a tradition often less valued by a learned people. carl f. kastle farther adds in literacy in the united states: readers 84 lester "life for me ain't no crystal stair" and reading since 1880: for some centuries after the introduction of alphabetic writing, literacy was restricted to a small elite and limited to a few functions. . . . these early developments took place in the contexts of pervasive oral culture. oral culture did not atrophy in contact with written culture; rather, the written word modified and extended communication networks. not only has the great majority of the earth's population been illiterate throughout history, but the great bulk of communication in literate societies is still oral. (6-7) the artificial white literate vs. oral and african american illiterate dynamic speaks largely to the race dynamics more fully understood within the context of social and political history. kastle adds: on all measures of literacy, at all points during the last century, white americans have been more literate than black americans. in 1880, the differences were vast, of course, with american black population emerging from slavery and subject to massive poverty and discrimination. . . . a large, durable portion of literacy differences between black and white americans clearly cannot be explained by measurable economic and family characteristics. in the unexplained portion of the variation lie such elusive but real factors as the effects of prejudice, cultural alienation, discouragement, and differential aspirations, all related to race. (125-26)15 additionally, the various ways in which different races, ethnicities, and even genders experience the world impact on their learning to read and write. for instance, african americans, historically and politically denied access to writing and reading, emerge from and celebrate an aural, oral, and visual culture often at odds with the culture of the written word, authors such as zora neale hurston raising oral rituals of folk culture to high art. "the white man," according to hurston, "thinks in a written language and the negro thinks in hieroglyphics" (50). to offer some commentary that presents parental illiteracy often as the result of varied and complex circumstances is to enlighten readers, young and old alike, rather than perpetuate further ignorance and misunderstanding among the alleged literate. dolores johnson's book on parental illiteracy, papa's stories, comes with mixed and confused messages, again associating illiteracy 85 "life for me ain't no crystal stair" lester with parental love for a child and with individual self-love. emphasizing folktales, fairy tales, and the rich textures of oral traditions, johnson's detail of a father's illiteracy seems incidental, not fundamentally connected with the story's inadvertent final message: that good storytelling is good storytelling whether the story is read, recited, or improvised. perhaps without really intending to, johnson has written a book that celebrates folklore and performance. not only does the narrative engage fairy tale rhetoric and a young kindergartner, kari—her father's growing "princess"—stumbling upon her thirty-something-year-old father and mother's secret of his illiteracy, but the story also romanticizes literacy as a middle-class ideal. while kari's dad does not "read" words in his daily "reading" rituals with kari, he reads the pictures and creates wonderfully exciting stories from those pictures. in the illiterate father's hands, the culturally familiar stories of little red riding hood, snow white, sleeping beauty, and jack and the beanstalk take on new life for kari.16 and since kari herself is not quite a reader, there is no immediate confusion for her about what she sees on the printed page and what she hears her father "reading" to her. the father-daughter reading ritual seems complete until the fairy tale's wicked stepmother or witch figure—kari's older neighborhood friend, jennifer—disillusions kari about her whole relationship with her dad. ironically, it seems that jennifer's literacy threatens the ideal world kari and her papa have created: papa settled into his favorite chair, his skin smelling as fresh as fir trees. kari climbed into his lap and snuggled into the crook of his arm. then papa read her a story. . . . there were times kari and papa got so wrapped up in their reading that mama let supper sit while she joined kari and papa on the porch in the moonlight. or, during winter's chilliest evenings, the whole family would snuggle close together on the sofa and read by the light of the fire. although jennifer's alleged literal reading of the little red riding hood story affords kari an opportunity to discuss her dad's illiteracy with him—the story does not clarify why kari should believe her friend's version over her dad's—the story does nothing to advance an understanding of the issue of illiteracy. that illiteracy seems secondary stems also from the fact that the illiterate father is not presented with any problems particular to his disability: he and his literate wife own a nice house in a pleasant middle-class rural environ 86 lester "life for me ain't no crystal stair" ment, and he presumably has an adequate blue-collar job. johnson is not quite sure what her book is about; its focus seems too fuzzy to know what kari or johnson's reading audience is to glean from the details other father's cryptic explanation of why he is unable to read: "when i was young, i didn't care enough about learnin'. and there was no one who seemed to care about me. when i got older, i didn't love myself enough to even try." might johnson have allowed the family to have an honest discussion of less vague reasons for the father's illiteracy? how young is "young" when this father did not care about learning? did extenuating family circumstances impact on this father's early education? how is learning to read and write fundamentally connected to this father's lack of self-love, and how has this lack of self-love manifested itself in his life as an adult? did this father drop out of school when he was young? is it possible for an illiterate individual, a parent even, to have healthy self-esteem? were the circumstances of this father's illiteracy forced upon or "chosen" by him? what specific lessons might kari learn from her father's reading inability? indeed, as papa "reads" to kari, johnson does not initially make clear that the father is not choosing to improvise. that kari prefers her dad's improvised, more creative versions of stories accentuates the performative nature of good storytelling that in this case is not handicapped by the father's illiteracy. when this father learns to read a little from his wife and is able to read the words on the pages of kari's books, not just the pictures, kari prefers what might easily be considered sillier revisionist versions where "little boys swallowed magic till they were full of beans, and giants. . . were angry because their mustaches didn't fit." at the book's end, kari makes this request of her father: "excuse me, papa. when you finish this book, read it to me again like you always did. i love the extra-special way you read the stories. " it seems odd that johnson foregrounds her text allegedly about illiteracy in fairy tale folklore since fairy tales are part of cultural literacy and even those who may not be able to read them have surely heard of them and know their narrative germs. as folklore, these fairy tales have surely circulated in the father's own childhood whether or not he is the product of a literate family. just as kari and anyone else starts the journey toward literacy by inventing stories from pictures, kari's father has every right to be respected for and confident in his storytelling abilities despite his illiteracy. are story readers necessarily the best storytellers? 87 "life for me ain't no crystal stair" lester beyond the literacy binary many readers and writers take for granted the privilege and authority given those who can do the same. for them, daily tasks such as reading traffic signs, a newspaper or magazine in a doctor's office waiting room, a restaurant menu, telephone books, a child's school progress report, checks, recipes, maps, and medicine bottles are believed fundamental to our social and personal survival. i was starkly reminded of my own middle-class assumptions when i recently assigned to my african american children's literature class an intergenerational oral history midterm project specifically about african american identity and childhood reading experiences. students were asked to interview two individuals—one at least ten years older than they and another between the ages of five and ten—about their reading experiences as african american children. i had expected to get stories from individuals that allowed students to see how images of african americans had or had not changed over generations and how early reading experiences impact on adult identity formations. when one student submitted his project, his younger interviewee was the only instance of twenty who could not read. while i had assumed that all parents are reading to their children before they are put to bed, the reality of non-reading children and non-reading parents became an issue i had inadvertently overlooked in all of my fairly extensive preparations for teaching the class. the young boy, now age ten and in a juvenile jail until age eighteen for various crimes, was never read to and never learned to read; he still acknowledges no value in learning to read as he is the product of a non-reading adult environment. another student submitted a project that revealed an eleven-year-old boy's extreme written and verbal giftedness despite having grown up with totally illiterate grandparents. and just as it is necessary to understand the circumstances of young johnny's inability to read, it was equally important to understand the circumstances of johnny's parents' illiteracy since illiterate children become illiterate adults and illiterate parents. while this project has made no efforts to be exhaustive in its exploration of parental illiteracy in african american children's books, it recognizes the grave misinformation and incomplete information available to children with non-reading parents.17 failure to address parental illiteracy in children's texts in many ways furthers the marginalization of those unable to read and write. treatments here evidenced are rudimentary and grossly inadequate. to equate illiteracy with hopelessness, immorality, lack of self-love, limited quality 88 lester "life for me ain't no crystal stair" family relations, latchkey childhood, parental dishonesty, and limited social participation is to accept the cultural bias associated with literacy and to remain ignorant to complicated realties. as a professor of education clarifies, "the great divide in literacy is not between those who can read and write and those who have not yet learned to. it is between those who have discovered what kinds of literacy society values and how to demonstrate their competencies in ways that earn recognition."18 sojourner truth, an illiterate former slave and one of the first black feminist abolitionists, "protested against discriminatory laws that denied the ballot to women. . . blacks and illiterate citizens. after she was once turned away from a voting booth, she said, 'i can't read a book, but i can read the people."19 indeed, her comment speaks to a dimension of (il)literacy that must be considered in order to eradicate myths and stereotypes used to determine individual self and social worth. my exploration reveals that literate authors can be totally unaware of the complexities of (il)literacy and the multitude of literate practices at the core of social, cultural, and individual identity formations. among african americans, the issue of (il)literacy must be further contextualized not as a way of condoning not learning to read and write but as a way of understanding more fully that non-reading and writing is seldom if ever a simple matter of personal choice. arizona state university tempe, arizona notes i. langston hughes. "mother to son," selected poems of langston hughes (new york: vintage, 1974), 187. this poem is selected and recited by precious jones, sapphire's illiterate teenage african american female in push (1996), as one of her pre-ged adult illiteracy course assignments. the poem is dedicated to her infant son, abdul (112-113). 2. alphabetical literacy and orality need not exist in cultural opposition. even though the "readerly" narrative is a model of rhetorical flourish at its best and meant to be read as a demonstration of "mastering the muster" through mastering the master's language, other rhetorical strategies by douglass-emotional flourishes, metafictive moments, and rhythmic patterns-render the narrative its distinctly sermonic/ "speakerly" textures, its clear connections with orality and african american folk storytelling. robert g. o'meally, in his essay "frederick douglass's 1845 narrative: the text was meant to be preached," comments on the oral "preacherly" dimensions 89 "life for me ain't no crystal stair" lester of douglass's text: the narrative does more than touch upon questions often pondered by black preachers. its very form and substance are directly influenced by the afro-american preacher and his vehicle for ritual expression, the sermon. in this sense, douglass' narrative of 1845 is a sermon, and, specifically, it is a black sermon. this is a text meant to be read and pondered; it is also a clarion call to spiritual affirmation and action: this is a text meant to be preached. . . . but douglass, who grew up hearing sermons on the plantation and who heard and delivered them throughout his life, produced, in this greatest account of his life, a text shaped by the form and the processes of speaking characteristic of the black sermon. this is a mighty text meant of course, to be read. but it is also a text meant to be mightily preached. (dexter fisher and robert b. stepto, eds., afro-american literature: the reconstruction of instruction. new york: mla, 1978, 192-193; 210). 3. violet j. harris, "african-american conceptions of literacy: a historical perspective" theory into practice 31 (autumn 1992): 276. not only does harris provide a rudimentary summary of historical realities facing african americans in their quest for literacy, she also comments on the fact that literacy, depending on the nature of what one becomes literate in or about, can be both "emancipatory and oppressive": literacy serves emancipatory functions when appropriated to reconstruct society and/ or provide individuals with the options needed to participate in all sociocultural institutions. literacy functions in an oppressive manner. . . when curricular materials, educational philosophies, and pedagogical techniques combine to inculcate an ideology that denigrates a group, omits or misrepresents the history and status of a group, or limits access to knowledge that would enable the individual or group to participate in sociocultural institutions. (277). 4. "literacy and life." <http://www.edentek.net/litlife.htm> (26 febru ary 2000): 1. 5. ibid. 6. in circulating drafts of this essay, a couple of african american friends, responding with familiarity to these details of my illiterate father, were compelled to share illiteracy details in their own families. both email accounts show how adult family members' illiteracy impacted on their own educational values. one, an adult literacy volunteer teacher, writes: the men on my mom's side of the family are illiterate. they were not encouraged to do well in school like the women were. so they 90 lester "life for me ain't no crystal stair" didn't. none of my uncles could read or write past elementary school level. survival came from what they learned on the streets and others doing their reading and writing for them. my dad, who was a math whiz, dropped out of school in the third grade to roam around and do nothing. in his fifties, he joined a literacy organization to learn how to read and write. we are proud of his accomplishments. it was never a secret in my family. when my brothers slack, they try to use the excuse that [since] dad made it without an education, why can't they? he sets them straight. one of my students (female) also quit in the third grade to help feed the family. she never really had the opportunity or drive to go back until recently. she is now eighty years old. (personal email, 19 january 2000) another writes of the circumstances other parents' illiteracy: my mother died at the age of forty; she did not get her ged until she was thirty-seven. she was a very smart woman and it was fun when she went to school because we sometimes go to help her with her homework to an extent. my stepfather never graduated from grade school as i can recall; however, he traveled the world in the army. it was not until i was a grown woman that i found out how extremely well his math was, something i suffer with. the point is that neither mom nor dad ever helped us with our homework. there was no doubt that we would go to school and were expected to graduate, but there was never any reading to help us or helping with math so that we could move to the next level. other than school books and the bible, we had no books around our house. there was no money for them and of course we never went to a library. i do however remember them telling stories when the weather caused the lights to go out. that was fun! as you can tell, i sometimes have very mixed feelings about education and its benefits. so many non-formally educated folk have become millionaires. (personal email, 2 february 2000) 7. barbara kantrowitz and anne underwood, "dyslexia and the new science of reading" newsweek (22 november 1999): 72. in their investigation of this disorder that affects about 20% of children, kantrowitz and underwood point out that this inability to decode sounds, essential to reading, results from mixed brain signals; in this case, "reading disorders are most likely the result of what is, in effect, faulty wiring in the brain-not laziness, stupidity, or a poor home environment" (74). they also cite instances of individuals who are successful despite these childhood reading and learning challenges: "indeed, famous and successful dyslexics include tom cruise, artist robert rauschenberg and olympian dan o'brien" (74). although the article obviously does not champion non-reading, it emphasizes that non 91 "life for me ain't no crystal stair" lester readers can succeed, further evidenced in the example of john corcoran: "by sixth grade john corcoran, a severe dyslexic, still couldn't spell 'cat' and could tell men from women on restroom doors only because one was longer. still illiterate as an adult, he taught social studies in high school—by using movies for lessons, inviting guest speakers and having students grade papers. at 48, he registered for a public library literacy program. . . . now 60, he published the teacher who couldn't read in 1994" (78). corcoran's book details his life of deception and riskiness as he successfully moved up the career ladder through elementary and high school, college, and ultimately to his own classroom as a teacher unable to read words on a page. learning how to read was to him like "being set free from almost five decades of bondage." notice the analogy made here between illiteracy as a form of enslavement and frederick douglass's alleged liberation from slavery through his ability to read and write. although not a children's text, sapphire's controversial novel push (1996) is the disturbingly graphic account of an adolescent african american girl's tortured journey to realized selfhood through literacy. the novel demonstrates the complex circumstances-emotional, psychological, social, and physical-that interfere with claireece precious jones's efforts to become literate. because of many complicated circumstances and situations revealed in the novel, precious is sixteen and unable to read and write. in fact, she confesses in her narrative that except for pages with pictures, "the pages look all the same" (48). importantly, literacy is less precious's "savior" from her traumatic life of paternal and maternal incest and two subsequent pregnancies, aids, and social neglect, than her teacher, blue rain, whose approach to helping precious realize her own self-worth despite her past and present circumstances is through reading and writing. the narrative shows precious's spiritual blooming after enrolling in a pre-ged adult literacy class for beginning writers. in addition to mastering alphabetic literacy, precious gains a community of fellow students who respect and care for her as never before. the novel ends with precious reading to her infant son and committing herself to making her son's life better than hers. interestingly, some details of precious's circumstances echo a situation shared in one of the emails from an adult literacy tutor friend that, after reading a draft of this essay, shared an experience with one other student: i had a student once who quit school in the ninth grade. she thought she was stupid because she never did well. it was not until just before we began our lessons that she found out that she was dyslexic. when i started working with her, her kids would make fun of her. when she started improving, they started helping her with her homework. when she was on her way, she got a job in her child's school as an office aide. before, she was on welfare, just passing the time doing much of nothing. i would say she had very low self-esteem. in the two years we worked together, i saw her grow as a person. (personal email, 19 january 2000) 92 lester "life for me ain't no crystal stair" 8. historically, the intraracism that exists within african american communities and households associates light skin with power, authority, and success. dark-skinned african americans were presumed to be, were treated as, and perceived themselves as less socially advantaged. such dynamics emerge from the history of american slavery that rewarded on many levels african americans closest to masters' white ideal in skin color or hair texture. masters' children with slaves often were treated as privileged and socially gifted. see kathy russell, et.al., the color complex: the politics of skin color among african americans (new york: doubleday, 1992). 9. nikki giovanni's autobiographical poem, "nikki roasa," is an adult's perspective on childhood memories often misrepresented or misinterpreted when others impose their values onto another's realities or experiences. despite her family's material lacking and problems with a father who drank too much and too often, giovanni is not necessarily in psychological and emotional denial when she insists that her childhood "was quite a happy one": childhood remembrances are always a drag if you're black . . . and if you become famous or something they never talk about how happy you were to have your mother all to yourself and how good the water felt when you got your bath from one of those big tubs that folk in chicago barbecue in . . . and though you're poor it isn't poverty that concerns you. . . . . . i really hope no white person ever has cause to write about me because they never understand that black love is black wealth and they'll probably talk about my hard childhood and never understand that all the while i was quite happy. ("nikki-roasa." in demetrice a. worley and jesse perry, jr., eds., african-american literature: an anthology, 295) 10. this instance of illiteracy is explored briefly in harper lee's to kill a mockingbird when the narrator scout attends her black maid calpurnia's church and wonders why the congregation is not reading from the hymnals as they sing. coupled with the economic issue of the black church not having sufficient funds to buy enough hymnals for its members is the fact that most of the congregation is illiterate. calpurnia's literacy came from the whites whose house she keeps and she has passed that "gift" of literacy on to her son zeebo who lines hymns—announces the words of hymns for the congregation in a call-and-imitation response format. notice the conversation between scout and calpurnia about this performance: 93 "life for me ain't no crystal stair" lester "how're we gonna sing it [hymn] if there ain't any hymn-books?" calpurnia smiled. "hush baby," she whispered, "you'll see in a minute. " zeebo cleared his throat and read in a voice like the rumble of distant artillery. . . . miraculously on pitch, a hundred voices sang out zeebo's words. . . . (121) it never occurs to scout that folks who can not read as she and others around her can function quite efficiently. scout's naivete highlights again the assumptions of privilege attached to literacy. the reality of illiteracy in her church congregation offers calpurnia the opportunity to explain literacy as something that potentially separates rather than unites her with other blacks socially: jem [scout's older brother] said it looked like they [illiterate congregation] could save the collection money for a year and get some hymn books. calpurnia laughed. "wouldn't do any good," she said. "they can't read." "can't read?" i asked. "all those folks?" "that's right," calpurnia nodded. "can't but about four folks in first purchase [church] read. . . i'm one of 'em." . . . (124) class and race are here connected with literacy. in this moment, lee shows that illiteracy does not mean individuals are unable to function or suffer from low selfesteem because they are unable to read and write. at the same time, the literacy and calpurnia's attachment to her white family further separate her from the "regular" lot of blacks in maycomb county. not only are illiterate church members able to function in literate circumstances, but there are even illiterate preachers who manage effectively as well. my maternal grandfather's older brother is an illiterate preacher and has been all of my life. for those who do not know that he is illiterate, he "performs" literacy quite effectively. he has heard biblical scriptures so often that he has memorized them, giving audiences a sense of his spiritual commitment. he knows familiar songs and the word of god so well that he does not have to read them word for word. since there are so many translations and modifications of the bible for various audiences, his recitations might easily be taken as a modernized revision of scriptural texts. he does open the bible to some text as he recites. those who know him well know how he skillfully manages to avoid situations calling for spontaneous reading on his part. since a number of illiterate black preachers in my childhood were not formally trained in seminaries or other theology schools, they managed quite effectively to preach soul-stirring sermons and to negotiate their leadership, authority, and credibility masterfully. literacy as privilege and a means of separating blacks from the illiterate masses is evidenced in harriet jacobs's slave narrative incidents in the life of 94 lester "life for me ain't no crystal stair" a slave girl, written, by herself. notice the emphasis as in frederick douglass' title when both authors clarify that their narratives were "written by [themselves]." literacy marks their liberation from slavery. jacobs, who allegedly taught herself to read, is more self-confident, arrogant even, because she is literate, unlike the other slaves around her: "i was invited to attend [slaves' churches] because i could read" (emphasis added 45). there is no sense that jacobs/ brent has any other connection, spiritual or communal, with those who share her lot beyond her ability to read to them. she even comments on her ability to pass on news information because others depended on her reading abilities: "they knew that i could read; and i was often asked if i has seen anything in the newspapers about white folks over in the big north, who were trying to get their freedom for them" (45). while literacy puts jacobs/ brent on equal grounds with the white populace, it separates her from her fellow lots of slaves. this middleclass preoccupation with literacy surfaces again when jacobs/ brent is reunited with her nine-year-old daughter ellen after seven years of being separated and in bondage. although jacobs/ brent is concerned about ellen's unkempt appearance, she is most bothered by daughter's inability to read: "when she [ellen, the daughter] was placed with mrs. hobbs, the agreement was that she should be sent to school. she had been there two years, and was now nine years old, and she scarcely knew her letters. there was no excuse for this, for there were good public schools in brooklyn, to which she could have been sent without expense" (166). at the same time, brent/ jacobs's concern for her daughter's literacy might seem any literate parent's desire that her child receive an education that will aid in living a "better" life. 11. story reading and story telling need not be as dichotomized culturally as this narrative presents. in other words, reading stories is certainly not any more important than good story telling. for instance, angela johnson's tell me a story, mama (new york: orchard books, 1989) is an african american children's book that celebrates a storytelling tradition. when a young daughter requests that her mother tell her a story as she is being tucked into bed, the young preschool girl clarifies which story she wants her mother to tell by ultimately telling the story to the mother as the mother has told her. the narrative re-creates the mother's childhood story through the daughter's retelling. whether or not the mother is literate does not influence this equally important parent-child ritual. two other children's texts importantly present talking and storytelling as a source of communal celebration: deborah m. newton chocolate's retelling of the ashanti legend, talk, talk (mahwah, nj: troll associates, 1993) and angela shelf medearis's too much talk, a west african folktale (cambridge: candlewick press, 1995). 12. "quotations about literacy."<http://www.literacytrust.org.uk/ database/quote.html> (03 september 1999): 2. 13. "the typical adult non-reader," <http://indian-river.fl.us/living/ services/als/tvpical.html> (26 january 2000): 1. according to a 1987 report, the subtle danger: reflections on the literacy abilities of america’s young adults, published by the educational testing service (princeton, n.j.), "on 95 "life for me ain't no crystal stair" lester the average, african americans perform 20% behind whites on literacy tests and hispanic perform halfway between the two." 14. not only were slaves punished if caught learning to read and write, but whites that assisted in slave learning were also subject to legal consequences. describing feminist abolitionist lydia maria child's crusade against slave illiteracy in child's an appeal in favor of americans called africans (1833), cecelia mccall, in her essay, "a historical quest for literacy," recounts the deliberate obstacles to slave learning: [lydia maria child] reports that various laws were enacted to maintain illiteracy. for instance, south carolina was the first state to order that any person caught instructing a slave be fined one hundred pounds. virginia declared that schools established to teach either slave or free black people should be disbanded and each pupil lashed twenty times. anyone caught teaching slaves in georgia was imprisoned for ten days and given thirtynine lashes. by 1837, all states in the slaveocracy had enacted similar laws. . . . in the free north, . . . ohio, for instance, refused to educate "colored" children at the public expense or allow them to attend schools with white children." (4) after slavery ended, literacy continued to be a weapon of white supremacy used against black social and political participation: "literacy or other tests as a condition for voting were suspended by the voting rights act in 1965 initially only in those states in which congress found there had been pervasive discrimination against blacks in registration and in which literacy tests had been specifically designed to disfranchise racial minorities. later, the ban on literacy and other tests was made nationwide and permanent by amendments to the act in 1970 and 1975. the supreme court held the nationwide ban constitutional after concluding that literacy tests had reduced voter participation in a discriminatory manner throughout the country and not merely in those states originally covered by the act" (mcdonald, laughlin. "minority vote dilution: the fourteenth amendment and the voting rights act" <http://www.aclu.org/aclu-e/course3_mcdonald3.html> 4 january 80, 3). 15. recall that frederick douglass, even after being free from slavery and "armed" with literacy, is unable to secure a job as a calker because whites will not work with him: "i went in pursuit of a job of calking; but such was the strength of prejudice against color, among the white calkers, that they refused to work with me, and of course i could get no employment" (mack 714). the myth of frederick douglass's liberation from slavery and racism is perpetuated even in historical texts for elementary students. as if literacy exempts frederick douglass from racial discrimination, karen h. dusek's essay, "frederick douglass, abolitionist writer" boldly asserts: "when frederick douglass was a boy, he wanted more than anything else to be free. believing that he would never be truly free without an education, he learned to read and write. his ability to read and write soon proved to be his most powerful weapon in his lifelong fight against slavery and prejudice" (cobble 96 lester "life for me ain't no crystal stair" stone: the history magazine for young people, 21). neither douglass's narrative nor this essay on him speaks of literacy—the ability to read and write—as a way of personal liberation imaginatively. rather, liberation is ideally connected to overcoming social circumstance. 16. john corcoran, chronicling his life as an illiterate parent and high school teacher, offers a similar experience with the fairy tales he pretends to read to his daughter, also called his "princess." because of the pictures and his familiarity with the fairytales orally, corcoran confidently embellishes the stories of the three little bears and cinderella but is at a total lost when his young daughter requests a story with which he is unfamiliar. he recounts the pain of that experience: the big golden books and their wonderful pictures would stimulate my imagination to weave some crazy yarns. when i told the three bears, cinderella, or another well-known fairy story, they were embellished with all the drama of orson wells or alfred hitchcock. sometimes i cold hear kathy [corcoran's wife] laughing in the kitchen at my tall tales. i had a lot of practice at storytelling. colleen had a surprise for me that night. "read this daddy," she said, snuggling closer to me. she held out a new book, one with smaller pictures and more words. her blue eyes were bright with anticipation. . . . i looked at the first page, hoping there would be a clue. . . i couldn't decipher one word in this preschool children's book. how i wanted to be able to read, to help her [daughter] during those valuable growing-up years before school. parents who can't read can't teach their children to read. my heart was wrenched, knowing that i could not give her what i didn't have. (4-5) 17. eve bunting's the wednesday surprise intends to be a warm, fuzzy middleclass, white family moment celebrated when an elderly grandmother and her sevenyear-old granddaughter, anna, give the adult son a "gift": the grandmother learns to read from the granddaughter's instruction. although the message encouraging everyone to value reading is undeniably important—"it's much smarter if you learn to read when you're young. . . . the chance may pass along with the years"—the story is full of unanswered questions that might explain rather than boldly proclaim without explanation or clear illustration the advantages of literacy. as in other children's books examined in this exercise, illiteracy is synonymous with an individual's lack of self-esteem, poor self-image, and is tainted with presumed immorality. as the narrative moves rather fumblingly, it leaves more narratively unsatisfying questions than answers and explanations: how does the grandmother choose the books from which the granddaughter will teach her? how has the family responded to the grandmother's illiteracy up to the point of this story? what is the grandmother's life like as a nonreader? how and why is grandmother's learning to read such a "gift" to her son? why has the grandmother resisted 97 "life for me ain't no crystal stair" lester her son's insistence that "she must learn to read"? why does the son insist that his mother become literate?: "you were always telling me to go to classes, classes, classes," grandma says to dad." to what extent does the relationship between this mother and son suffer because she is a non-reader? to what extent has the grandmother's illiteracy affected the son's literacy? what are the specific circumstances of the grandmother's illiteracy? to what extent does a seven-year-old read well enough to teach anyone how to read? how long has the granddaughter been teaching the grandmother? why has no adult in the family bothered to teach grandma to read? why and how is grandma's reading "the best gift ever" for her son? while bunting supports the notion that everyone should learn to read when young, her book never explains through the grandmother's experiences why and how reading is important on many levels. once grandmother "performs" her literacy—"this wonderful thing" –before the family at her son's birthday party, how does literacy change her life or the family's? mom will continue to have her office job, dad will continue to work as a truck driver, and sam will continue his sports practice. once grandmother learns to read, will she and anna continue to read during their weekly wednesday night sittings? derek king-smith's the school mouse, a level four reader and chapter book, is the story of a mouse, flora, desperately making herself literate: "by day, she educated herself, and in the evenings she taught her class" of other mice. while the story champions literacy in the very act of the mouse's saving her mouse parents from eating "poison" because she has learned to read—"thank goodness i have learned to read. . . or else i might well have sampled these attractive-looking blue pellets" (28)— the journey toward literacy is both dangerous and lonely for flora. she meets with hostility and resentment from her mouse family who initially have no interest in learning to read. flora's literacy quest begins as and leads to arrogance and alienation from her other mouse family. she says: "i am not an ordinary school mouse. i'm sure i'm not. i'm sure i can learn all sorts of things that no mouse has ever learned before, if only i study hard enough, and then i shall be an extraordinary school mouse" (16). flora has accepted the assumption and cultural bias that literacy elevates individuals from the masses and that that such elevation is socially valued by all. despite her mouse family's initial resistance to flora's "too high an opinion of herself' (15), flora recognizes her literacy acquisition as part other self-esteem in much the same way as does calpurnia in harper lee's to kill a mockingbird: "i am lucky. i don't suppose there's another mouse on the face of the earth that knows as much as i do already. but i can't talk much about my lessons to the others because they wouldn't understand. . . . they're all uneducated. and why? because there's no one to teach them" (104). literacy isolates the questing mouse and she is lonely until she meets another literate male mouse and they live happily ever after. as do the other children's texts, this one misleadingly idealizes literacy through flora's action and proclamation that: ". . . the first and most important thing, for mice and humans, is to learn to read. once you can do that, there is no limit to what you can get into your heads" (108). 98 lester "life for me ain't no crystal stair" 18. "quotations about literacy." <http://www.literacytrust.org.uk/da tabase/quote.html> (03 september 1999): 1. 19. peter krass. black americans of achievement: sojourner truth (new york: chelsea house publishers, 1988),97. works cited bunting, eve. the wednesday surprise. new york: houghton mifflin, 1989. chocolate, deborah m. newton. talk, talk: an ashanti legend. mahwah, nj: troll associates, 1993. corcoran, john, with carole c. carlson. the teacher who couldn't read. colorado springs: focus on the family publishing, 1994. douglass, frederick. narrative of the life of frederick douglass, an ameri can slave (1845). in maynard mack, ed. the norton anthology of world masterpieces. new york: w.w. norton, 1985.646-719. dusek, karen h. "frederick douglass, abolitionist writer." in cobblestone: the history magazine for young people 10 (february 1989):21-23. vanni, nikki. "nikki-roasa." in demetrice a. worley and jesse perry, jr., eds. african-american literature: an anthology. lincolnwood, il: ntc publishing group, 1998. 294-95. harris, violet j. "african-american conceptions of literacy: a historical perspective." theory into practice 31 (autumn 1992): 276-86. hughes, langston. "mother to child." selected poems of langston hughes. new york: vintage, 1974. hurston, zora neale. "characteristics of negro expression," the sanctified church: the folklore writings of zora neale hurston. berkeley: turtle island, 1981. 49-68. jacobs, harriet a. incidents in the life of a slave girl, written by herself cambridge: harvard up, 1987. johnson, angela. tell me a story, mama. new york: orchard books, 1988. johnson, dolores. papa’s stories. new york: macmillan, 1994. kantrowitz, barbara, and anne underwood. "dyslexia and the new science of reading." newsweek. 22 november 1999. 72-79. kastle, carl f. literacy in the united states: readers and reading since 1880. new haven: yale up, 1991. king-smith, dick. the school mouse. new york: hyperion, 1997. kozol, jonathan. illiterate america. new york: new american library, 1985. krass, peter. black americans of achievement: sojourner truth. new york: chelsea house publishers, 1988. lee, harper. to kill a mockingbird. new york: warner books, 1960. "literacy and life." <http://www.edentek.net/litlife.htm> 26 january 2000.1. macdonald, laughlin. "minority vote dilution: the fourteenth amendment and the voting rights act." <http://www.aclu.org/aclu-e/course3 mcclonald3.html> 04 january 1980. 1-8. mccall, cecelia. "a historical quest for literacy." interracial books for 99 "life for me ain't no crystal stair" lester children bulletin 19 (n.d.): 3-6. mcgee, leo, and harvey g. neufeldt. education of the black adult in the united states: an annotated bibliography. westport, ct: greenwood, 1985. medearis, angela shelf. too much talk: a west african folktale. cambridge: candlewick press, 1995. o'meatly, robert g. "frederick douglass' 1845 narrative: the text was meant to be preached." in dexter fisher and robert b. stepto, eds. afro-american literature: the reconstruction of instruction. mla, 1978. 192-211. personal email. 19 january 2000. personal email. 2 february 2000. "quotations about literacy." <http://www.literacytrust.org.uk/database/ quote.html> 03 september 1999. 1-2. rahaman, vashanti. read for me, mama. honesdale, pa: boyds mills, 1997. rue, nancy n. coping with an illiterate parent. new york: rosen, 1990. russell, kathy, midge wilson, and ronald hall. the color complex: the politics of skin color among african americans. new york: doubleday, 1992. sapphire. push. new york: vintage books, 1996. "the typical adult non-reader," <http://mdianriver.fl.us/livmg/services/als/ typical.html> 26 january 2000. i. 100 ideas for inquiry: "exhibiting children" simon j. bronner think about it—while scholars of children's folklore typically report the identification, collection, organization, and interpretation of children's traditions, they also must be aware of the variety of ways that this material is adapted, displayed, even misrepresented, in museums, publications, festivals, web sites, community centers, and classrooms. what are the images of tradition projected of children and childhood in various media? the children's folklore section of the american folklore society sponsored a special forum to take up this provocative theme of "exhibiting children" at the 2002 annual meeting in rochester, new york. conference attendees had the opportunity before the forum to visit the margaret strong museum (including the national toy hall of fame), renowned for its children's material culture collections (see http://www.strongmuseum.org). the opening ceremony of the conference was held in the museum. recognizing discussions of the visual representation and cultural construction of childhood in various disciplines, children's folklore section leaders c. w. sullivan iii and joann conrad working with robert baron of the new york state council on the arts organized the forum as a way to bring this issue to a wider audience of folklorists and museum professionals. i introduced the concept of the forum this way: children rarely have control of their own representation, and yet the exhibition of childhood is usually a key to the understanding of the inheritance of culture from one generation to the next. considering the public debate revolving around the decline of traditional values passed along to children, the hegemonic structures of consumer cultures dictating children's lives, the vulnerability, and danger, of children, and the proliferation of alternative children's subcultures in america, the forum addresses what impact the exhibition of children in media, education, and museums has had on the representations of children's culture, especially folk culture. it necessarily takes up the difference between material and visual ex ideas for inquiry: "exhibiting children" bronner hibitions presented by children and adults. these central questions lead with oral and social genres while popular culture has exhibited the material and visual realm. against the backdrop of exhibitions and collections of childhood by the strong museum, the panel suggests new intellectual directions that can place folklore at the center of scholarly discourse on children, family, and youth as the key to cultural analysis. one such intellectual direction begins at the museum, gallery, and cultural agency interpreting children's artifacts for the public. jon paul dyson, historian at the margaret strong museum, explained the background of margaret strong's collecting and the museum's work in building a cultural interpretation of the collections (see http://www.strongmuseum.org /collection/index.htm). the emphasis has been on the historical development of children's culture, and dyson offered insights into the implications of comparing contemporary practice with victorian children's culture. while the victorian sensibility was on accumulation of artifacts, contemporary practice calls for themes that suggest the meaning of children's lives. the themes presented to exhibit children are: house and home, ideas and images, clothing and accessories, play and work, sight and sound. the museum explains the collection this way: these artifacts embody, illustrate, illuminate, preserve, and enable understanding of the attitudes, beliefs, values, customs, tastes, and traditions that americans have held individually and collectively over the last two centuries and have passed, or are passing, to subsequent generations. these personal, everyday objects help americans to understand who they are and who they believe they are and why. c.w. sullivan iii, professor of english at east carolina university and editor of the children's folklore review, discussed what he and some others perceive as the passing of spontaneous play. children's traditional play, especially the songs and games that folklorists have collected since w.w. newell's games and songs of american children, published in 1884, has long been a central concern of children's folklorists. the songs and games that have, in the not-so-recent past, been collected from children at recess, before and after school, in the neighborhood in the afternoon or evening may soon no longer be available as recess disappears from the elementary school schedule, children are signed up for after-school sports, arts, or academic pro 102 bronner ideas for inquiry: "exhibiting children" grams, and homework for even first graders becomes the primary activity of the evening. in short, children are losing (or having taken away from them) the opportunity to exhibit themselves in game and song. as that happens, is there any way a museum can exhibit games and songs in any way other than photographs and written texts? peter tokofsky, associate professor at ucla, addressed the dissonance between exhibition of and experience of celebrations from the perspective of children. whereas museums tend to display the sacred or special objects associated with these occasions, he pointed out, his observations participating in a "family traditions: linking individuals to cultures" project in los angeles, funded by the national endowment for the humanities, marked objects for memory, which are ultimately not suitable for most museum displays. it might be the foods, spontaneous games, or other ephemera, which serve as the highlights of celebratory occasions for children. jeannie thomas, associate professor of english and folklore at utah state university (see http://english.usu.edu/americanstudies/thomas.html) discussed the ways that children perform and exhibit barbie dolls, the world's most popular doll. thomas's interest in the effects of barbie on popular culture was stimulated by narratives elicited from students in a children's folklore course. one student recalled collecting barbie heads and baking them in the oven. another posed barbie and ken dolls in idealistic "theodore (beaver) cleaver" tableaus when dysfunctional family interaction became too disturbing or painful. for all the controversy and problems surrounding barbie, she maintains her popularity. thomas said she believes barbie encourages creative play, which has helped mattel become a part of contemporary folk culture. the variety of barbies on the market enforces the connection she has with folklore and culture. "i was struck at how mattel commodifies folklore and sells it. there are barbies for holidays, fairy tales, even international barbies. folklore studies places and culture, and mattel markets that in a really superficial way," said thomas (see http://www.hardnewscafe.usu.edu/archive/july2000/0720_barbie. html). the lively response from the audience signaled many of the perspectives opened up by the theme of "exhibiting children." a number of participants remarked on the representation of children's folklore in classroom materials available for basic education. other participants picked up on the tension between commercial culture in the marketing of toys and folk culture in the performances of children with toys. this led to a lively debate over the hegemonic effect that commercial culture has over the folk practices of children. the past-orientation of 103 ideas for inquiry: "exhibiting children" bronner museums also received scrutiny, and discussion ensued on incorporating ethnographic documentation of contemporary culture, or children's views of their own culture, in museums and cultural exhibitions. the session brought out the ways that children's folklore scholarship is an act of representation and construction. in so doing, participants realized the ethical implications of the adaptation of scholarship in various media. 104 annotated bibliography: children's folklore review, volumes 1-24 c.w. sullivan iii the following articles have appeared in the first 24 volumes of the children’s folklore review (originally the children’s folklore newsletter). an asterisk (*) indicates that the article won the children's folklore section's newell prize. arleo, andy. "strategy in counting-out: evidence from saint-nazaire, france." 14.1 (1991): 25-29. an examination of french counting-out techniques and how they contribute to cross-cultural studies in children's folklore. beresin, ann richman. '''sui' generis: mock violence in an urban school yard." 18.2 (1996): 25-35. an examination of the non-violent/violent handball game of "suicide" which argues that the hybridity of the game reflects its para doxical status as a mixed genre and unique cultural marker. berres, allen. "'everybody is their enemy': goths, spooky kids, and the american school shooting panic." 24.1&2 (2002): 4353. discusses the stereotyping that has led school administrators and others to erroneously class all high school students of a particular sub-group as potentially dangerous. branigan, michelle. "blocks and matchboxes: negotiation of a shared reality between two siblings." 16.1 (1993): 3-31. * an examination of an episode of play between two siblings that ob serves the static and dynamic aspects of their interaction. bronner, simon. "expressing and creating ourselves in childhood: a commentary." 15.1 (1992): 47-59. general thoughts on the evolution of the study of children's folklore and reviews of narrative articles in the same issue. ________. "history and organization of children's folklore in the american folklore society." 20.1-2 (1997-1998): 57-62. annotated bibliography sullivan a discussion of the place of children's folklore in the history of the american folklore society. ________."introduction: folklore responds to columbine and ado lescence." 24.1&2 (2002): 7-20. an introduction to the papers from children's folklore section panel at the 2000 afs meetings on folklore, adolescence, and the columbine shootings by the panel's respondent. see also: bill ellis, joann conrad, allen berres, and charlie mccormick. carnes, pack. "arnold lobel's fables and traditional fable features." 15.2 (1993): 3-19. an investigation of the role of traditional elements in lobel's fables and of the relationship between folklore and a literary text. carpenter, carole h. "developing an appreciation for the cultural significance of child lore." 17.1 (1987): 19-29. a study of the ways in which childlore contributes to "the develop ment and expression of individual, group, and national iden tity." chinery, david. "snooping for snipes: america's favorite wild goose chase." 10.1 (1987): 3-1, 10.2 (1987): 3-4. a presentation of variations on the traditional snipe hunt and conjec tures about the continuance of the tradition. conrad, joann. "bedtime stories." 21.1 (1998): 43-53. a preliminary examination of the narrative interactions between a mother and a small child that occur as a part of a regular bedtime ritual. __________."the war on youth: a modern oedipal tragedy." 24.1&2 (2002): 33-41. a discussion of california's "youth crime initiative" and other mea sures designed to deal with rising juvenile crime rates. cox, cynthia anne. "'postmodern fairy tales' in contemporary children's literature." 16.2 (1994): 13-19. an exploration of postmodern elements in new fairy tales: denial of order, antiheroes, the lack of control over human experience and perception, and subjectivity. 106 sullivan annotated bibliography davey, gwenda beed. '''what's for dinner?' 'duck under the table': traditional verbal sayings addressed to children by adults." 19.1 (1996): 13-18. a study of folklore for children and how adults convey their folklore about children through "family sayings." edgette, j. joseph. "'now i lay me down to sleep. . . ": symbols and their meaning on children's gravemarkers." 22.1 (1999): 7-24. an examination, with illustrations, of the symbols commonly found of gravestones for children. ellis, bill. "hitler's birthday: rumor-panics in the wake of the col umbine shootings." 24.1&2 (2002): 21-32. discusses the processes by which unsubstantiated rumors of impend ing violence become "fact" in school communities. fowke, edith. "books for children." 14.1 (1991): 39-44. a review essay of pertinent studies of the folklore of canadian children. freed, shaari. "spooky activities and group loyalty." 16.1 (1993): 33-39. an assertion that intimacy among friends is increased by participation in supernatural beliefs and practices. friel, tara. "'once upon a time' to 'happily ever after': the devel opment of children's narrative skill." 18.1 (1995): 3-52* an analysis of the process by which children learn and develop the ability to tell stories. gelwicks, jesse. "redwood grove: youth culture within a group home." 24.1&2 (2002): 66-87. * a case study of male preadolescent and early adolescent folklore in the controlled community of a group home. grider, sylvia anne. "dorothy howard: pioneer collector of children's folklore" 17.1 (1994): 3-17. some notes on the life and achievements of dorothy howard. groth, susan charles t. '''here we sit like birds in the wilderness waiting for our dessert': the girl scout program and ordering space in camp sacajawea's dining hall/main house." 19.2 (1997): 3-30* an examination of the presence of themes of "domesticity" and "play 107 annotated bibliography sullivan ing indian" in girl scout camping and the way in which a dining hall chant exhibits these themes. haut, judith. "'i believe in santa claus, but i know he's not real': the role of ambivalence in belief." 13.2 (1991): 3-12. an examination of the way uncertainty and degrees of possibility play into distinguishing knowledge from belief. _________. "'i know a story about that': one young child's use and understanding of narrating." 1 5.1 (1992): 3 3-46. a case study examining one child's development of voice and skill in narration. ________. "of related interest: children's music." 14.2 (1992): 23 27. reviews of various collections of "folk" music for children. hurlston, nicola. "who's the boss? a study of power-defining folk lore among children." 13.1 (1990): 10-16. * an analysis of power struggles among young children observed at play in a college daycare program. johnson, sharon peregrine. "'the hare and the tortoise race': eleven variations." 18.2 (1996): 3-24* a comparison of eleven different printed versions of the traditional story that discusses its origins and structure and provides a great deal of comparative analysis. kjaer, bjorg. "childhood narrated and negotiated: children's, parents' and teacher's views on childhood." 21.1 (1998): 3542. a look at the ways in which children, parents, and teachers define childhood. klutz, catherine. "friendship bracelets," 12.1 (1989): 4-5. a discussion of the traditions behind the making and sharing (and not sharing) of friendship bracelets among junior high school girls. lanclos, donna m. "bare bums and wee chimneys: rudeness and defining the line between child and adult." 22.2 (2000): 748. * a examination of rude or "dirty" folklore on belfast playgrounds that compares and contrasts children's understandings and usages with those of adults. 108 sullivan annotated bibliography lapp, dean m. "systematic investigation of jump rope rhymes: computer applications for field collected cultural material." 11.1 (1988): 35, 6.* relates children's psychological development with the folklore, specifically jump-rope rhymes, in which they participate. lenz, millicent. "mythologizing chief seattle: susan jeffers' brother eagle, sister sky or how to make a myth in ten easy steps." 19.1 (1996): 3-11. an inquiry into the responsibility of writers to transmit myths accu rately and without enhancing them. lester, neal a. "nappy happy: a review of bell hooks' happy to be nappy." 22.1 (1999): 45-55. a discussion of the folklore of hair among african americans as it relates to carolivia herron's nappy hair and bell hooks' happy to be nappy. lonnqvist, bo. "the concept 'toy' and cultural research." 14.1 (1991): 31-38. a study of how adults' conceptions of children's reality is reflected in mass-produced toys and how actual child culture has been rela tively ignored. mccormick, charlie. "a fear of adolescent cruising: adult reactions to a tradition that won't go away." 24.1&2 (2002): 55-63. a look at the way cruising has changed over the decades and a discus sion of changing adult attitudes. mcgonnagill, laurie. "preschool protolore." 16.1 (1993): 41-47. an examination of the ways in which children's immature social and cognitive skills explain their brand of prototypical folklore that imitates more developed forms of folklore. mechling, jay. "don't play with your food." 23.1 (2000): 7-24. begins with a look at theoretical perspectives that underlie the study of playing with food and opens up into a discussion of the "diverse meanings and functions of playing with food." meley, patricia m. "adolescent legend trips as teenage cultural re 109 annotated bibliography sullivan sponse: a study of lore in context." 14.1 (1991): 5-24.* a presentation of results from a group study of the "legend trips" of adolescents examined in light of recent scholarship on the topic. _______. "paper power: a search for meaning in the folded paper toys of pre-adolescents." 11.2 (1989): 3-5* an examination of the ways in which the making and sharing of paper toys among children illustrates their need to establish an iden tity apart from adult culture. ord, priscilla. '" curiouser and curiouser!': narration and mimicry in literature about and for children." 15.1 (1992): 5-16. a consideration of the ability of children to narrate, mimic, and reen act, illustrated in characterizations of children in children's stories. perry evelyn m. "the ever-vigilant hero: revaluing the tale of tam lin." 19.2 (1997): 31-49. a description of "current devaluations of folk literature" through close reading of the original text and comparison with contempo rary literary texts for child and adolescent readers. riley, linda. "extremes: how girls play slaughter, how boys play slaughter at valley oak elementary." 13.1 (1987): 10-16. * an argument that the variations on the game's rules indicate shared group meaning and identity for each gender-distinct team. ruppert, erica lynn. "folklore and persistence in lewis carroll's alice s adventures in wonderland." 20.1-2 (1997-1998): 43-55* an assertion that the folklore in lewis carroll's classic story is largely responsible for its continuing popularity. rush, judith. "twin pranks and practical jokes" 10.3 (1987): 3-6* a suggestion that twin' pranks afford them the opportunity to estab lish individuality and to distinguish their personalities. sains, ariane. "the latest teen rage? embroidery." 13.1 (1990): 23 24. a response to catherine klutz's "friendship bracelets," 12.1 (1989):4 5. 110 sullivan annotated bibliography samuelson, sue. "a review of the distinctive genres of adolescent folklore." 17.2 (1995): 13-31. an argument that adolescents create their own distinct folklore to define for themselves the transition from childhood to adult hood. edited and introduced by simon j. bronner. sherman, josepha. "gopher guts to army trucks: the modern evo lution of children's folklore rhymes." 21.2 (1999): 17-24. a discussion of formula and variation over time in some popular children's folk rhymes. staunton, sarah. "riddle use and comprehension in irish school-aged children: a developmental study." 23.2 (2001): 7-100.* an examination of riddling as an indicator of children's language ac quisition and comprehension. stone, kay. "child as story-maker." 16.2 (1994): 3-11. an observation of a child creating stories and a consideration of the relationship between researcher and subject. stotter, ruth. "trick or treat: coyote in children's picture books." 22.1 (1999): 35-43. a look at the ways in which native american mythic and legendary materials are used and misused in children's picture books. sullivan, c. w. iii. "baloney and peanuts: politics among gradeschoolers." 1.2 (1977): 4. an examination of a children's rhyme that equates jimmy carter with foolishness. _______. "folktales, ballads, and high fantasy: an excerpt from research in progress." 5.1 (1982): 2 & 4. a look at the use of ballads and folktales as sources for works of mod ern fantasy. _______. "knowing what children believe; believing what children know." 19.1 (1996): 19-24. an examination of the separation between child culture and adult cul ture and how this is significant to folklore studies. _______. "learning the structure of traditional narrative." 15.1 111 annotated bibliography sullivan (1992): 17-23. an assertion that in experiencing folklore we learn that structure of traditional narrative that we carry to all other aspects of life. sutton-smith, brian. "the future agenda for child study and the implications for the study of children's folklore." 13.1 (1990): 1722. a consideration of current trends in the academic study of children that might impact the study of children's folklore. _______. "a play biography." 20.1-2 (1997-1998): 5-42. a autobiographical essay by one of the century's leading children's folklorists explaining how he came to that discipline. _______. "tradition from the perspective of children's games." 14.2 (1992): 3-16. a colonial commentary on children's games. tillery, randall k. "folklore and children's worlds: nature, place, and belonging in a romantic key." 17.2 (1995): 3-11. an examination of the traditional perceptions of frontier experience which make up much of the "lore" of summer camp. tucker, elizabeth. '''i hate you, you hate me': children's responses to barney the dinosaur." 22.1 (1999): 25-33. a look at children's parodies of barney the dinosaur's theme song. _______. '''text, lies and videotape': can oral tales survive?" 15.1 (1992): 25-32. an argument that children's creativity remains fecund despite the in undation of video-produced stories. tuleja, tad. "the tooth fairy: perspectives on money and magic." 13.2 (1991): 13-22. an examination of the origin of tooth fairy folklore and the integra tion of this lore into modern culture and traditions. van rheenen, derek. "boys who play hopscotch: the historical di vide of a gendered space." 21.1 (1998): 5-34. a discussion of play and the changing role of gender using hopscotch as the focus of the study. watson, laura. "the nature lore of children: functions and varia tions." 16.1 (1993): 49-60. 112 sullivan annotated bibliography an examination of children's lore involving nature and how these beliefs function to enable children to grasp and accept the world around them. wein, elizabeth. "the discipline of play: is there a future for children's lore in academia?" 21.2 (1999): 5-16. an examination of the status of children's traditional "play" as an aca demic discipline over the past 50 years. _______. "show biz: performance and text in the children's show." 13.2 (1991): 23-28. a discussion of the way children's "shows" evolve from improvisa tional to written and rehearsed performances. _______. '''unaware to her ears': when the storyteller cannot speak." 23.1 (2000): 25-39. a look at the storytelling of a young man whose head injury has lim ited his physical and mental development. 113 american folklore society children's folklore section meeting rochester, new york 18 october 2002 minutes president jacqueline thursby called the breakfast meeting to order at 7:05 am in the wilmorite room of the hyatt regency hotel, rochester, new york. a quorum was present. minutes of the anchorage meeting were approved as published in the children's folklore review, volume 24, numbers 1 and 2, fall 2002. reports the opie prize was not awarded this year. the executive board did approve the cash prize of $200 be attached to this prize. we need to be more actively aggressive in soliciting critical books of folklore as they pertain to children. further, we need to be specific as to the deadline for submissions. perhaps we shall use the same deadline we use for the aesop prize of august 15. b. ellis reported that the aesop prize committee (b. ellis, j. conrad, m. macdonald) reviewed a short list of nominations. this year there are two prize winners: can you guess my name? traditional tales around the world. selected and retold by judy sierra. illustrations by stafano vitale. new york: clarion books, 2002. and one time dog market at buda and other hungarian folktales. translated and retold by irma molnar. illustrations by gerogetaelena enesel. north haven, ct: linnet books, 2001. annual meeting aesop accolades went to: head, body, legs: a story from liberia. retold by won-ldy paye and margaret h. lippert. illustrated by julie pashkis. new york: henry holt, 2002. the race of the birkebeiners. written by lise lunge-larsen. illustrated by mary azarian. boston: houghton mifflin, 2001. shakespeare’s storybook: folk tales that inspired the bard. retold by patrick ryan. illustrated by james mayhew. new york: barefoot books, 2001. libby tucker was elected unanimously as a member to the aesop prize committee replacing j. conrad. members are elected for a three-year term. the newell prize will not be awarded this year. the motion to set august 15 as the deadline for aesop prize submissions was passed unanimously. bill ellis will revise the letter that is sent out to solicit entries. he will highlight criterion #5 related to the citing of sources. priscilla ord was named "keeper of the labels" in order that we have a central location for them. she already has the opie medallions. c. sullivan reported on the journal: as is the case across the country, college and university budgets are getting tighter each year. north carolina has agreed to continue its support of the journal at least for this year. volume 24 is a combined issue including numbers 1 and 2. some savings was realized by combining the issues. one volume per year instead of two may help us expense wise. from both financial and aesthetic perspectives we like the change. send any articles for the journal to chip as soon as possible in time for his putting together the next volume in early january. 116 annual meeting the cost of a complete set of the twenty-five years of the cfr is $200. this price was unanimously approved by those present. in his final treasury report j. edgette gave the balance in our general operations fund as $1812.66 reflecting a check to laurie evans for $300 for services related to the journal. the newell prize balance is $7,931.24; the opie prize at $2,898.61; and the life membership fund at $708.54. total section assets = $13,351.05 because our funds are shrinking in the area of general operations, it is imperative that we increase membership. at present we do not have enough money to cover the publication of our next issue of cfr. new business sean galvin was unanimously elected president-elect as was priscilla ord to the position of secretary/treasurer. sean agreed to organize a panel for next year's meeting at next year's meeting in albuquerque, nm (hyatt regency) we shall try to schedule the children's folklore section meeting as a luncheon meeting to see if this change will draw more members. the meeting was adjourned at 8:30 am. respectfully submitted, j. joseph edgette, ph.d. secretary 117 notes and anmnouncements newell prize announcement the children's folklore section of the american folklore society annually offers the w.w. newell prize (which includes a cash award) for the best student essay on a topic in children's folklore. students must submit their own papers, and published papers are eligible. instructors are asked to encourage students with eligible papers to enter the competition. papers must be typed, double-space, and on white paper. one the first page include the author's name, academic address, home address, and telephone numbers. deadline for each year's competition is september 1st. submit papers or write for more information": dr. c.w. sullivan iii, english department, east carolina university, greenville, nc 27858-4353. "masculinity, patriarchy and power: an interdisciplinary conference," university of southampton, 5-7 april 2004. proposals are invited for papers of 30 minutes on any of the conference strands: masculine socialization and childhood, male life cycle/s, patriarchy as an oppressive force in men's lives, male sexuality and reproductive rights, masculinity and material culture, alternatives to the "warrior male" paradigm, virility as a quality, and female masculinity. proposals (preferably bye-mail and including an abstract and a short cv) should be sent to trish skinner (p.skinner@soton.ac.uk) for pre-1700 c.e. topics or julie gammon (j.gammon@soton.ac.uk)for topics post-1700 c.e. in case you are unaware of it (as i was until very recently, ed.), the johns hopkins university press published girls, boys, books, toys: gender in children’s literature and culture, beverly lyon clark and margaret r, higonnet, eds., an examination of the ways in which gender symbolism of children's culture is constructed and resisted. 118 contributors simon j. bronner, phd, is interim director of the school of humanities and distinguished professor of american studies and folklore at the pennsylvania state university, capitol college. he is the author of many books on folklore, including american children’s folklore, which won the opie prize from the children's folklore section, and piled higher and deeper: folklore of student life. he is a fellow of the american folklore society and a former president of the children's folklore section. carole h. carpenter is a professor in the division of humanities at york university where she teaches children's literature and culture, childhood culture studies and folklore. she founded the canadian children's culture collection, a unique resource which includes extensive documentation of children's own voices and their cultural artifacts. currently, she is coordinating the development of the first children's studies program in canada at york. janis dawson is a graduate student in english at the university of victoria in victoria, british columbia. she is also enrolled in the graduate program in children's literature at hollins university in roanoke, virginia. her interests include folklore, fantasy, and eighteenthand nineteenth-century children's literature. she has recently published an article on folklore and irish nationalism in roddy doyle's, "a star called henry" in the journal of the fantastic in the arts, 12.2. j. joseph edgette, ph.d. is currently the director of the teacher intern program and coordinator of graduate education admissions and advisement for the center for education at widener university, chester, pennsylvania. in addition he is the resident folklorist, and he teaches courses in education and folklore at the undergraduate and graduate levels. chair of the cemeteries and gravemarkers area of the american culture association and former trustee of the association for gravestone studies, he has been very active in this field of research. he has been an active member of both the american folklore society and various sections including children's folklore. neal a. lester, a professor of english at arizona state university, teaches courses in african american children's literature, african contributors american short story, african american images in american cinema, african american folklore, and african american drama. the author of ntozake shange: a critical study of the plays (1995) and understanding zora neale hurston’s their eyes were watching god: a student casebook to issues, sources, and historical documents (1999), he has also published on alice walker and womanism, african americans and the race and gender politics of hair, black/white interracial intimacies in popular music, and the absence of "nigger" in african american children's literature. he is currently completing a piece on heterosexual hegemony and coercion in children's texts. elizabeth tucker teaches folklore at binghamton university in binghamton, new york. she is the author of various publications on children's folklore, including the "tales and legends" chapter of the children's folklore sourcebook. at present she is working on a study of college campus ghost stories. she would be grateful for story contributions; her e-mail address is ltucker@binghamton.edu. 120 the fall 1989 . i volume xii, number 1 folklore review i ill~~@rnj~@~~mmr~i the children's folklore section of the american folklore society announces competition for 1989-1990 ~ ~ newell prize the children's folklore section of the american folklore society announces competition for the 1990 w. w. newell prize. a $100 cash award for the best student essay on a topic in children's folklore will be awarded. the paper must have been written by an undergraduate or graduate student within the 19891990 academic year. papers published by students within the same time frame are also eligible. students may submit their own papers; instructors are asked to encourage students with eligible papers to enter the competition. papers must be typed, double-spaced, on white bond paper. on the first page include the author's name, academic address, home address, and telephone numbers. the winner will receive a $100 award at the annual meeting of the american folklore society in october 1990. the winning paper does not have to be read at the meeting but entrants are encouraged to submit abstracts of their papers to the afs program committee. if the winning paper is read at the meeting it will be identified as the winner of the newell prize. deadline for submissions is july i, 1990. send 2 copies of each entry to: priscilla ord vice president. cfs department of english longwood college farmville. va 2390 1 from the editor: the original plan, when the children's folklore newsletter became the children's folklore review a year ago, was to go to a new format with this issue. as you can see, that has not happened. at this point, cfs treasurer danielle roemer and i are investigating the rules and regulations (afs and others) for accepting paid advertising in an afs publication as such additional revenues will be necessary for an expanded publication. we are moving ahead. watch this space for further developments. c.w. sullivan iii editor . anyone wishing to subscribe to the children's folklore review should send a check for $5.00 to: danielle roemer department of literature & language northern kentucky university highland heights, ky 41076 i ~~@lm(ill~~~[ill~~@i the children's folklore section will hold its annual breakfast meeting on 20 october 1989 during the american folklore society's annual conference in philadelphia. meeting time: 7:00 -8:00 am. place: to be announced. ill~~d [p~d~~~@~~~d~ the following sessions at the 1989 afs meeting should be of interest to children's folklore section members: children's folklore i 21 october 1989 paper session: belief and performance priscilla a. ord (chair), judith e. haut, tad tuleja, elizebeth wein, and the 1989newell prize winner. children's folklore ii 21 october 1989 forum: the future agendafor child study and the implications for the study of children s folklore brian sutton-smith (chair), michael zuckerman, viviana zelitzer, richard schweder, william keson, and john broughton. the hildren's folklore review c. w. sullivan ill, editor english department, east carolina university greenville, north carolina 27858-4353 the children's folklore review, published three times a year, is sent to all members of the children's folklore section. special arrangements can also be made with any folklore-related organization wishing to receive copies. all materials to be considered for publication should be sent to the editor. 225 copies of this public document were printed at a cost of$541.8i, or $2.408 per copy. none of this cost was provided by subscriptions. issn 0739-5558 published by east carolina university printed at the ec u print shop ocr document trick or treat: coyote in children's picture books ruth stotter coyote, legendary mediator between the sacred and profane in native american mythology, has increasingly become a mediator between ethnic populations in children's picture books. seemingly simple but culturally complex, trickster figures such as coyote appear in publications written by both american indians and non-native americans. but just as folktales change when they cross geographical and cultural boundaries, so does trickster transform. do non-native authors alter the character rashly, failing to understand and appreciate the complex role of trickster? or do these books provide a valuable bridge between cultures? beverly slapin, author of through indian eyes, recently sent me this ironic memo: eight steps to turn a native legend into a children's book (for fun and profit) 1. go to the library and find a people's legend told to and written down by an anthropologist. don't worry about asking any people's permission to use or change the legend—they may consider it sacred, but it is public domain, and according to white people law, it is yours for the taking. 2. take the legend out of its language, out of its context, out of the values it teaches, and out of its group. be sure to remain oblivious to the language and life ways of the people whose legend you hold in your hands. that way, you can be more objective 3. choose the details you think are important—never mind what is important to the people whose legend you are working on. cut out all references to violence, sex, or anything you don't particularly like or understand. 4. belabor every detail to make it sound more authentic than the original telling. for instance, if the legend reads, "there was no fire here, only stotter far upriver at the world's end," change it to, "long ago, the people had no fire. day and night they huddled in their houses in the dark and ate their food uncooked. oh, they were miserable." 5. improve on the dialogue. let your imagination run wild. 6. find an artist who knows nothing of the legend or its people but knows how to copy details from a museum. 7. if you can, have the manuscript and illustrations checked by non-native anthropologists. make sure to thank them in the introduction. call up a native person too—any native person. even if she hangs up on you, you can thank her in the introduction. after all, she picked up the phone when you called. 8. think of an imaginative title that will make a publisher see income potential. calling the legend a coyote story is good. non-natives like things called coyote stories, even if they're not. if the publisher bites, you can always change the legend and make it a coyote story. are non-native authors, publishers, and illustrators really this ignorant? do parents, schools, and librarians who purchase books care about cultural context or authenticity? many native americans object to outsiders writing their stories, raising issues of ownership of the tales and their adaptation and pointing out that appropriation exploits and commercializes native cultures. lenore keeshig-tobias, a canadian ojibway writer, says that taking these stories for adaptation is not sharing, it is "poaching" (118-19). on the other hand, authors, publishers, and illustrators may feel that they are acting as historians, recording and even contributing to native culture. when native americans tell coyote myths they frequently include tribal sacred truths. reprinted for young children, a story can become a caricature of the culture. coyote is a psychological, folkloristic, and literary archetypal figure. especially in a children's book it is tempting to transform an archetype to a stereotype, an over simplified image that conjures a fixed response and taps ex 36 trick or treat isting attitudes and feelings, usually with derogatory implications. for example, coyote is foolish, and some readers may conclude that this reflects the foolishness of american indians. the trickster archetype, for example, is illustrated by the variety of terms and descriptions folklorists have used to describe coyote. in articles and books coyote has been described as an alienated figure; audacious; beneficent being bringing culture and light to his people and a creature of greed, lust and stupidity; betwixt and between; a braggart; one who breaks taboos; childish; a coward and the essence of courage; creator and destroyer; culture hero; a demigod bringing culture and light to his people; one who dupes others and is duped himself, egotistical; an enemy of the boundaries; one whose function is to add disorder and so make it whole; a figure of the margins, yet somehow at the center; the first creator; one with gamy holiness; gemini; a giver and negator; gross; an inspired handyman; humble braggadocio; an imitator; innocent; one who knows neither good nor evil; a likable rascal; lustful; a marginal figure; a mediating figure; one who merges the secular and the sacred; a negative hero; old man; one who rules by passion and appetite; the spirit of disorder; a tolerated margin of mess; a transformer; an unrestricted ego; vexing; a wandering hero; and my favorite, one who evades academic capture and definition.1 as a result of indifference or lack of knowledge, readers who stereotype lump together all "indians," when in truth american indian nations have different political, kinship, and philosophical systems. native americans also have different trickster figures, and even those who share coyote may assign different functions to his role. in the southwest hopi pueblos in new mexico and arizona, coyote is usually a mischief-maker; for neighboring navajos, he is often a menacing figure playing a role in sacred ritual (stott 92). after one northwest indian told a coyote story to a southwest american indian, the listener commented "he doesn't know coyote. coyote wouldn't eat fish" (toelken 192). reading a story with illustrations is different than listening to a tale being told and creating mental pictures to accompany it. a picture book imposes the illustrator's interpretation. a kindergarten student asked storyteller susan strauss after hearing several coyote stories, "just who is coyote? is he a man or an animal or a spirit?"2 would a child respond in this way after seeing the illustrations in a picture book? 37 stotter story source notes provide an opportunity to give cultural information or information about a story, its characters, source(s) for the rendering of the text, and changes/adaptations made by the writer. source notes in children's picture books, however, are often incomplete or misleading. here are a few examples: in coyote and the laughing butterflies, edited by harriet peck taylor, the acknowledgment states: "i gratefully acknowledge the american folklore society for permission to use this adaptation" (np). the title of the article, author, and publication in which the story originally it appeared are not cited, however. in coyote and the firestick: a pacific northwest indian tale, retold by barbara diamond goldin and illustrated by will hillenbrand, the author notes at the end of the book that coyote is the chief character in the legends of the pacific northwest, as well as in many stories told over the whole western half of north america. in reality, raven is the trickster figure for many native american nations in the pacific northwest, and other trickster figures are common in the southwest, plains, and northeast. interestingly, the illustrator's comments are more informed: "the pacific nw indians who told coyote stories lived primarily in plateau areas of washington, oregon, and in northern california" (goldin np). the illustrator adds cultural information as well. in coyote and native american folk tales, retold by joe hayes and illustrated by lucy jelnick, storyteller-author hayes writes in the introduction: "many american indian stories are sacred. they are part of the religion of the people who tell them, and so belong to just one tribe or sometimes just part of a tribe. sometimes coyote plays a part in these religious stories. but, the coyote stories in this collection are different. they are told for entertainment. they are especially loved by children, who delight in coyote's foolish antics. these stories do not belong to any single tribe. most of them can be found among native peoples throughout the west" (6)3 coyote: a trickster tale from the american southwest, by gerald mcdermott, has extensive notes about coyote but does not indicate the source of this particular story. coyote goes walking, retold with pictures by tom pohrt, is another children's picture book with information about coyote but no source note for the story text. 38 trick or treat in coyote places the stars, retold and illustrated by harriet peck taylor, the author acknowledges using a traditional text and lists several sources, which add authenticity. taylor proceeds to make structural and motivational changes to this traditional text, however, eliminating coyote's first trip to the stars, and changing the motivation for his second trip without noting that she has adapted the story. paul goble is a non-native american author of children's native american picture books acclaimed by both native and non-native reviewers. goble's books have won aesop prize awards from the children's folklore section of the american folklore society. in his introduction to iktomi and the buzzard: a plains indian story, he has fun with the issue of non-indians writing indian folk tales: hi kids! i'm iktomi! and proud of it! don't read this book. that white guy, paul goble, is stealing my stories and making money off of them. this book is ethnically insensitive material about me; its racial epithets just bring me into contempt, ridicule and disrepute. hey! you're g-r-e-a-t kids! i've got my rights; i don't have to put up with this derogatory, disreputable, disparaging, and denigrating slurs and offensive designations. i'm being victimized. i have always been here on this turtle continent. and i'll be the last here, long after all white people have been forgotten. i'm no racist, but i'm excited just thinking about it! i'm nobody's football or baseball mascot! i was the first member of the great lakota sioux nation, born in nihil, sd and etc., etc., etc. . .(np)4 in ma 'ii and cousin horned toad: a traditional navajo story told and illustrated by shonto begay, this native american author's notes add to the text, including the following: "these stories show us proper ways to conduct ourselves. they also explain natural phenomena. but they are also pure entertainment. whenever we come upon a horned toad we gently place it over our heart and greet it, 'ya ateeh shi che' (hello, my grandfather). we believe it 39 40 stotter gives strength of heart and mind. we never harm our grandfather. ma'ii is coyote" (np). a picture book is a compilation of pictures and story text. both contribute to the authenticity of the publication and have the potential to be offensive. beverly slapin and doris seale, in their publication, through indian eyes: the native experience in books for children, cite many books that lack consistency with the story's source and the illustrations. for example, in knots on a counting rope, by dine, the story is identified as taking place in the navajo nation, but slapin points out that the hair styles of the women are similar to those of mandan, piegan, blackfeet, or atsima, and the faces of the men are more northern plains than anything else. while the authors state, "the costumes are a mix of hopi and navajo celebration garbs, because their reservations are so close to each other, the tribes usually participate together in ceremonies." slapin comments, "is it necessary to say that hopi people would not be showing up at a navajo horse race in sacred ceremonial gear?" (183). in the publication, baby rattlesnake, a story attributed to te ata, a chickasaw storyteller living in the oklahoma territory, a chickasaw tale is illustrated with navajo clothing and pueblo dwellings. in addition, the non-native storyteller who is listed as co-author, lynn moroney, changes the traditional ending (which involves death as a punishment) without informing readers of the alteration. slapin disapproves of the illustrations in doctor coyote, by john bierhorst, in which animal characters are dressed as indians. coyote wears blue jeans, a squash blossom necklace and drives a pickup he lives in a shack with a yard full of junk and an outhouse in the back. "given the historical tendency of white people to think of the native population as being somewhere between animals and real human beings," slapin has said, "these pictures, are to say the least, unfortunate" (127). as jon c. stott notes, "a picture book is a marriage of text and illustration and either one can serve to trivialize coyote, using him as a messenger for heavy-handed moralizing or behavior modification" (26). american indian stories are often "owned" by families or nations, much as an author owns a copyright. alexander wolfe, a salteaux storyteller, states, "every family handed down its own trick or treat stories. other stories, belonging to other families, could not be told, because to do so would be to steal."5 telling a story to an anthropologist or non-native friend does not mean granting permission for the story to be published, changed and prettified. in an article in the bloomsbury review, margo thunderbird is quoted as saying "they came for our land, for what grew or could be grown on it, for the resources in it, and for our clean air and pure water. they stole those things from us. and now, after all that, they've come for the very last of our possessions; now they want our pride, our history, and our spiritual traditions. they want to rewrite and re-make these things, to claim them for themselves"(churchill 23). no wonder american indians raise emotional and ethical issues about the publication of "their" stories! toelken writes in his textbook, the dynamics of folklore, "should we stop publishing navajo coyote stories? . . . this is a good example of an irresolvable dilemma, one that has grown more acute through the years because folklore and anthropological field researchers have assumed the right of access to traditional materials and have assumed the right to publish or disseminate these materials however they saw fit without regard to the hesitancies, codes, taboos, and ritual concerns of the real owners of those stories. . . that they [indians] feel dislocated and hurt while we feel only embarrassment is a clear indication of the differences in worldview. it is also testimony to the abuse of power" (284). publishing children's picture books is a business. the floodgates have long been opened, and native american tales will continue to be published as long as parents and libraries buy these books. but these stories were created and meant for oral delivery, and the very process of adapting them for picture book presentation entails remodeling. only with a balance of artistry and authenticity can these stories be maintained through informed rewritings so that they enhance multicultural comprehension. revisions, adaptations, and translation of oral text into literary language can be done with sensitivity and respectboth to the story and to the people from whom the story was obtained. source notes can provide information about where the text was obtained and how it was revised. effort can be made to contact native american storytellers to attempt to find out more about the story. 41 stotter in the last decades, environmental consulting firms have met a need in our society. perhaps a different kind of consulting firma folklore consulting firm-could offer services to publishers, not to hand out a seal of approval, but to guard against inaccuracies. reviewers could ask such questions as: did the authors attempt to talk to anyone from the native american nation about the story? is the story still told? a hopi tale illustrated with navajo hairstyle and coos lodges would be flagged. currently, the implicit presumption seems to be that these stories are fossils, archaic remains bygone cultures. this organization could offer seminars for the publishing industry, discussing the responsibility involved in adapting native american text. since money, power, and ownership are issues, perhaps the publishers could designate a percentage of their profits to the american indian nation or to a native american indian organization. it is seductive to assume that a revised text is an improved text. this is frequently an inappropriate assumption, however. all of us can accept responsibility by writing book reviews and letting bookstores know when we feel a book is objectionable. former american indian movement (aim) leader, russell means, states, "what's at issue here is the question that europeans have always posed with regard to american indians, whether what's ours isn't somehow theirs" (churchill 24). sometimes a joke can make a point better than factual information: do you know what the indians called this country before the europeans arrived? "ours!" notes 1. munro s. edmondson lists trickster figures around the world in an introduction to the science of folklore and literature. new york: holt, 1971. 142. 2. quote here is taken from susan straus' coyote stories for chil dren. 3. the italics here were not in joe hayes' original text. 4. goble is directly quoted here. the "etc., etc., etc. ." was not added. 42 trick or treat 5. m. annette jaimes, author of earth elder stories, quoted by lenore keeshigtobias in "poaching", page 118. works cited ata, te. baby rattlesnake. san francisco: children's book press, 1989. begay, shonto. ma 'ii and the cousin horned toad: a traditional na vajo story. new york: scholastic, 1992. churchill, ward. "a little matter of genocide: native american spiritu ality and new age hucksterism," the bloomsbury review (sept./ oct. 1988): 24. goble, paul. iktomi and the buzzard: a plains indian story. new york: orchard, 1994. goldin, barbara diamond. coyote and the firestick: a pacific north west indian tale. san diego: harcourt, 1996. hayes, joe. coyote and native american folktales. santa fe: mariposa, 1983. keeshigtobias, lenore. "poaching." whole earth review (summer 1991): reprinted in utne (mar/apr 1994): 118-19. mcdermott, gerald. coyote: a trickster tale from the american south west. san diego: harcourt, 1994. pohrt, tom. coyote goes walking. new york: farrar straus giroux, 1995. siapin, beverly, and doris seale. through indian eyes: the native ex perience in books for children. philadelphia: new society, 1992. stott, jon. native americans in children's literature. phoenix: oryx, 1995. straus, susan. coyote stories for children: tales from native america. hillsboro, oregon: beyond words, 1991. taylor, harriet peck. coyote places the stars. new york: simon & schuster books for young readers, 1993. toelken, barre. dynamics of folklore. new york: houghton mifflin, 1979. 43 ocr document "what's for dinner'!" "duck under the table": traditional verbal sayings addressed to children by adults gwenda heed davey children's folklore is one of the most authentic, widespread and ancient of folkloric traditions. it is a tradition which has received considerable research attention in australia, and in 1979 june factor and i established the australian children's folklore collection, now housed at the university of melbourne. the collection includes more than 10,000 card files listing children's games, rhymes, riddles, jokes, superstitions and other kinds of childhood folklore, together with photographs, audio and video tapes, play artefacts, and a number of specialist collections of children's lore. children's folklore can be discussed along a number of dimensions, of which the major categories are folklore of children and folklore for children, depending on whether the main transmitters of the lore are children or adults. only the first dimension of children' s folklore, their own playground lore (or the folklore of children), has been well documented in australia, most recently and notably in june factor's study captain cook chased a chook: children's folklore in australia (1988). this book received the 1989 opie prize from the american folklore society for the best publication in children's folklore in the preceding year. the first major book describing australian children's traditional play lore was however cinderella dressed in yella (1969) produced by the late ian turner, associate professor of australian history at monash university in melbourne. the second major dimension of children's folklore is folklore which adults address to children, namely folklore for children. apart from nursery rhymes and folk tales, this category of children's folklore has been little studied. children's folklore can also be categorised as folklore about children, which includes folk beliefs about children. one example of this type is what are sometimes called "old wives' tales," for example the belief that "if you tickle a baby's feet you'll make it stutter." a final, less clear-cut dimension of children's folklore considers the notion of children as apprentices in the learning of adult folkways. these folkways may range from table manners to participation in religious or secular rituals and ceremonies. folklore for children includes numerous types, some of which overlap, and i am certain that the following list is not exhaustive: 13 davey lullabies (e.g. rockabye baby on the tree top) nursery rhymes (e.g. humpty dumpty) rhymes and chants (e.g. pat a cake) tickling games (e.g. round and round the garden) finger plays and other body games (e.g. here's the church and here's the steeple) bouncing (dandling) rhymes (e.g. ride a cock horse) pencil and paper games (e.g. boxes or dots) proverbs (e.g. too many cooks) reprimands or evasions (e.g. a wig-warn for a goose's bridle) warnings (e.g. if the wind changes...) toys (e.g. peg dolls) tales or "modern legends" (told to older children e.g. concerning public toilets or cinemas and white slavery) superstitions (e.g. don't walk on the cracks in the footpath) fairy tales (e.g. goldilocks and the three bears) home-made stories or reminiscences (e.g. when i was a boy...) rituals (e.g. father christmas or the tooth fairy) jokes (e.g. riddles or knock-knocks) teases (e.g. which hand will you have?) songs (e.g. what shall we do with the drunken sailor?) parodies (e.g. oh x has got a bunion, a face like a pickled onion) prayers (e.g. now i lay me down to sleep) games (e.g. how many buttons etc. in my hand?) misinformation (e.g. where babies come from) drawings (e.g. stick figures) paper dolls (made with scissors) all of these forms of folklore for children are practised by adults for children's amusement or edification. like children's own playground games, much of this type of folklore is of great antiquity and is one of the most interesting examples of the continuity of folk traditions within modem society. a common type of folklore for children involves idioms used in everyday speech, such as threats, retorts, reprimands and other formulaic statements. with the notable exception of widdowson's 1977 study from newfoundland, if you don't be good: verbal social control in newfoundland, there has been little scholarly attention to this interesting type of children's folklore which might be described as "family sayings." some of my own collection of family sayings have been published in snug as a bug (1990) and duck under the table (1991). my collecting has all been in australia, from informants representing three generations, and it includes some items similar to those quoted by widdowson from newfoundland, for example: if the wind changes [while you're pulling that face, etc.] you 'il stay that way. 14 what 's for dinner? if you don't be good, santa won't come. do you want the back of my hand? such similarities are interesting indications of the international spread of verbal folklore in anglophone communities. as well as threats such as the above, verbal folklore used by adults with children includes homilies such as: don't care was made to care, don't care was hung; don't care was put in a pot, and made to hold his tongue. it also includes warnings such as "if you cry on your birthday, you'll cry all the year, " reprimands such as "little pigs have big ears" or "your eyes are too big for your belly, " exhortations to "eat your crusts or your hair won't curl, " pacifiers such as "don't get off your bike" or "don't get your knickers in a knot" and tricks and jokes such as: i'll tell you a story about jack a nory. shall i begin it? that's all that's in it. my collecting has not only been within anglophone communities. australia is today one of the world's great immigrant and multicultural societies, with more than one hundred languages regularly spoken, and i have collected family sayings in a number of different languages. there is a surprising similarity between different language groups, in the jocular and sometimes sharp parental retorts to children's persistent questions such as "what's for dinner, mum?". a greek mother might say "my liver and kidneys!" and a croatian mother "cakes with honey," whereas some englishlanguage answers to "what's for dinner? " are "duck under the table" or "bread and scrape. " i have also collected in australia traditional replies to children's requests to know how old an adult is; "as old as my tongue and as young as my teeth" is anglo-australian and "twenty-five years per leg" is italo-australian. how might these family sayings be understood? widdowson's study has only concerned itself with verbal social control, usually expressed in the form of threats. he describes some of the characteristics of the threats thus: the threats warn of three principal retributive consequences, either singly or in combination. 15 davey 1. the intervention of some real or imaginary external figures, to which responsibility for punishment is delegated and which will take the child or harm him in some way. 2. alienation of parental affection and revocation of familial security. 3. physical punishment by the parent or other adult. (27) i think however that the whole genre of traditional family sayings for children has much wider ramifications than simple social control, and much may indeed be considered as verbal art. while preparing the manuscript of duck under the table, i roughly classified its two hundred items under headings which are listed below, with one example for each: advice, exhortations etc. (e.g. good better best, never let it rest etc.) arguments (e.g. i've got a bone to pick with you) bed time (e.g. come on, hit the sack!) body noises and functions (e.g. child: my hand's itchy! that means you're coming into money) busy (e.g. i'm flat out like a lizard drinking) compliments (e.g. your blood's worth bottling) descriptions (e.g. you look like something the cat dragged in) don 't (e.g. don't bust your boiler) exasperation (e.g. what did your last slave die of?) exclamations (e.g. bob's your uncle!) fatalism, philosophising (e.g. what won't fatten will fill) food, meals (e.g. you must have hollow legs) feelings, health etc. ( e.g. you've got the collywobbles) how (e.g. child: how far is it? twice as jar as from here to there) insults (e.g. you can stew in your own juice) just for fun (e.g. i forgive you, thousands wouldn't) manners (e.g. all joints on the table will be carved) proverbs, moral sayings etc. (e.g. rooster today, feather duster tomorrow) sarcasm, sharp retorts etc. (e.g. i wasn't born yesterday) secrets (e.g. don't let the cat out of the bag) teases (e.g. i can see your poppy show) threats (e.g. i'll come down on you like a ton of bricks) what (e.g. child: what's that? a silver new nothing) what's for dinner (e.g. bread and pullet) what's the time (e.g. time you got a watch) where (e.g. child: where's mum? up the river shooting oysters) why (e.g. because y's a crooked letter and z's no better) a few of these sayings should probably be eliminated from a discussion of folklore for children, since they can also be used between adults. thus an appreciative adult might tell another adult that "your blood's worth bottling." 16 what 's for dinner? nevertheless, most of them, and particularly the responses to persistent questioning such as "what's for dinner?" are only used in adult-to-child interaction. it is true that some of these sayings are used for purposes of social control, as widdowson has asserted. however, i can identify eight functional categories, and believe this type of traditional family verbal lore can involve the following characteristics: direct control evasion or obscurantism comment or reflection bonding or affection enjoyment of verbal display, performance adult mystique tension reduction education, training examples of each are as follows: direct control (if you don't be good i'll drop ya like a mozzie on mt. kozziel)1 evasion (a wigwam for a goose's bridle) comment (money doesn't grow on trees) bonding (you're a sight for sore eyes) performance (two heads are better than one, even if they are only sheep's) adult mystique (little pigs have big ears) tension reduction (what do you think this is, bush week?) education (put your best foot forward) i acknowledge that there is overlap between the categories. i have no belief in infallible systems of classification, but have devised the above as an indication of the possibilities for going beyond widdowson's emphasis on "social control," and for extending discussion of the meaning of this traditional verbal folklore which adults use with children. it is of course possible that the functional analysis should not be taken too seriously, and that all types of traditional family sayings should rather be regarded—and admired—as yet another form of adult verbal art.2 national centre for australian studies monash university, melbourne australia. 17 davey notes 1. "mozzie" = mosquito. "kozzie" is a common abbreviation for australia's highest mountain, mt. kosciusko. 2. this paper was originally presented to the 1995 american folklore society annual meeting at lafayette, louisiana. works cited davey, gwenda. snug as a bug: scenes from family life. melbourne: oxford up, 1990. _____. duck under the table: more scenes from family life. melbourne: oxford up, 1988. factor, june. captain cook chased a chook: children's folklore in australia. ringwood vic (melbourne): penguin books australia, 1988. turner, ian. cinderella dressed in yella: australian children's play-rhymes. melbourne: heinemann educational australia, 1969. widdowson, j. if you don't be good: verbal social control in newfoundland. social and economic studies no. 21. st. john's, newfoundland, ca: institute of social and economic research, memorial university, 1977. 18 ., i @oo~~[idoo~~9~~@~[j3~@oo~~~@1y~@~[~m[~mmoo~oompi jean day alexander 257 g st. sw washington, dc 20024 shirley arora dept. of spanish & portugese ucla los angeles, ca 90024 shirley baird 404 n. morris street shippensburg, pa 17257 mary jo sanna barron quincy house e-25 harvard university cambridge, ma 02138 caroline feller bauer 6892 seaway circle huntington beach, ca 92648 edna garrido boggs 536 altara ave. coral gables, fi 33146 carole boughter director, folklife center international house 3701 chestnut st. philadelphia, pa 19104 simon bronner american studies pennsylvania state univ. harrisburg middletown, pa 17057 pack carnes dept. of anthropology univ. of california berkeley, ca 97420 john cech english department university of florida gainesville, fl 32611 mary gay ducey 2808 hillegass berkeley, ca 97405 joseph edgette 509 academy ave. glenolden, pa 19036 bill ellis pennsylvania state univ. hazleton campus highacres hazleton, pa 18201 gary alan fine department of sociology university of minnesota minneapolis, mn 55455 mrs. j.w. gaither 1130 west imhoff norman. ok 73072 michelle mahan gautsch 108 w. 39th st. #w-io baltimore, md 21210 susan gordon sorehon glen assoc. 4436 jamesville rd jamesville. m 0 21754 libby tucker gould 136 meeker road vestal. ny 13850 sylvia grider english department texas a&m university college station, tx 77843 maryellcn hains english department western michigan university kalamazoo, m i 49008 judith haut 2733 halsey road topanga. ca 90290 bess lomax ha wes 3800 n. fairfax dr # 410 arlington. va 22203 kav hill 95 olive street new haven, ct 06511 karen hirsch spo 1163 sewanee. tn 37375 linda hughes rd #2, box 67 cochranville, pa 19330 ted humphrey 421 baughman ave. claremont, ca 91711 nancy j. johnson 2900 northwind drive, #515 east lansing, m i 48823 thomas johnson chico folklore archive california state university chico, ca 95929-0400 marilyn jorgensen 8083 caribbean way sacramento, ca 95826 judith e. lokenvitz program assistant museum of international folk art p.o. box 2087 santa fe, nm 87504-2087 amy mcclure 8751 craighton ct. dublin, oh 43017 margaret macdonald 1507 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cunningham. editor helsinki 10 indiana university libraries english department.. finland serials department northern amona umversity library of the society of indiana university flagstaff, az 86011 finnish literature bloomington, in 47407 southwest folklore center hallitusk i becky bell 1524 east 6th street sf-00170 hki 17 serials librarian tuscon; az 85721 finland country music foundation canadian & overseas memhers andy arleo 4 music square east australian children's chemin du bignon baguet nashville tn 37203 f ikl n i 44600 saint-nazalre '. 0 ore ews etter france museum of international folk art cj-i.e.cd. museum of new mexico 4 madden grove box 2087 kew, 310 l, victoria santa fe, nm 87504-2087 australia william a. wilson english department utah state university logan, ut 84322 2 niedersaechische staatsund universitaetsbibliothek zugang ii a-zss prinzenstr. i 3400 goettingen west germany rainer wehse kapitan-lehmann-str.6 3400 g6ttingen west germany ase enerstvedt etn-folkloristisk instituit olaf ryesvei 19 postboks 23 5014 bergen-universitet norway norsk senter for barneforskning v j bjerg helgemo universitet i trondheim n-7055 dragvoll norway northern college of education the librarian hilton place aberdeen ab9 i fa scotland christer dominder horngatan 21b s-602 34 norrkoping sweden bengt af klintberg vendevagen 13 18131 lidingo sweden per peterson timmermansgantan 6f s-753 33 uppsala sweden dr. maria osorina dept of general psychology leningrad state university universitetskaya nabereznaya leningrad ussr tecwyn vaughan jones welsh folk museum st. fagan's, cardiff cf5 6xb wales menna lloyd williams children's literature research centre castell brychan aberystwyth sy232jb wales 47 failing to fly, but free falling: jumping as a form of childhood release pamela weintraub throughout my childhood, i was usually the responsible one. indeed, i was that kid — the child who thought about what would happen if we got caught playing ding dong ditch, pointed out how terrible it would be if we got lost in the local nature preserve after night had fallen, explained why we should not go to that keg party at the beach, and so on. part of this was a serious fear of getting in trouble, but another aspect was the fact that i was never allowed to go anywhere or do anything by my extremely overprotective mother, so if i managed to discourage my peers from going to places i wasn’t permitted (out in the neighborhood alone, the preserve, the beach, the mall, what have you), i would be preventing my own inevitable exclusion from such fun. however, despite my mother’s best attempts to keep me safe from the world (i could write an entire paper on that alone), i still found ways to push the boundaries of dangerous play — my jumping games. although prevented from engaging in certain activities at home, while on the schoolyard i was able to experiment with the laws of physics on a regular basis. while it was most definitely not intended, the way in which my elementary school’s playground was built easily facilitated a number of delightfully risky activities. perhaps suffering from what peter and iona opie termed “misplaced audacity,” where children take risks with common objects such as “knives, swings, and roller-towels” (tucker 2008, 36), my friends and i utilized a number of playground structures in our pursuit of thrills. the first of these was a metal, dome-shaped, web-like construction named “the spider hut.” when we were little, our favorite thing to do was climb to the top of the “hut” (which was rather large, in retrospect), and drop our bodies through one of the spaces between the bars, dangling by our hands for as long as we could, and then letting go, falling six or seven feet to the ground below. this was a calmer form of jumping, because really, it was more of a carefully orchestrated drop and carried less risk than the variations we later engaged in. however, it was still quite high up and our parents would have had heart attacks if they had known about it. when we grew older and moved to the “upper grades” section of the playground (since there were designated spaces for k-3 and 4-5), we upped the danger factor significantly. one favorite activity was to climb the acrobatic bars (which were two vertical metal bars with a single horizontal one held between them, and there were several of these structures at varying heights) and to jump, feet first, to the ground. these jumps ranged from three to probably ten or twelve feet in height, and there was concrete below (not a smart move on the school’s part). the higher you were willing to jump from, the braver you were considered to be. that said, it was perfectly acceptable if a person was only willing to jump from so high. however, if people climbed to a higher point, made a big deal about it, and then seemed like they were going to “chicken out” they often found themselves pushed. it was far worse to be pushed because not only cfr_2011_r.indb 47 10/31/11 8:57:38 am failing to fly, but free falling weintraub 48 was it embarrassing (since one lost quite a bit of credibility afterwards), but it was also significantly more dangerous, since there was less time to prepare the jump properly. with respect to my experience, heights didn’t faze me, and the greater challenge was being able to climb the higher structures since i was so short. however, my taller friends were quite helpful in getting me up there, and when it came to jumping off, i was fearless. occasionally i would get a scrape or bruise, and there were one or two of my classmates who got more seriously hurt (more than one sprained or broke a wrist), but that never really deterred us, since accidents usually happened with those who tried to jump from a certain height without experience or had not jumped properly. however, despite the fact we plummeted a full story on a regular basis, this was not the most dangerous variation of “jumping” that we engaged in. that was saved for fifth grade. every recess during our final year of elementary school, there would be a mad rush on the part of the girls (for whatever reason, this variation failed to catch on with the boys) to grab one of the swings at the far end of the playground, away from the eyes of the teacher monitors. the closer swings, well within their view, were not suitable for what we had in mind---swing bouncing. swing bouncing was, and still is, an obsession at forest lake elementary, and strangely enough, a tradition my year started, though i am told it is popular at other schools as well. the idea is to swing in a normal fashion, but at the same time try to swing as high as possible. then, once maximum elevation is achieved, the swinger “bounces” off the seat and flies through the air, eventually landing several feet away. while dangerous in its own right due to the acceleration from the swinging, swing bouncing was particularly dangerous for us because of the five-foot-high metal fence that was set up several feet from the swings, running the length of the area, to protect passers-by from being kicked. although it was a well thought out protective measure in theory, all it actually did was create a challenge for us bouncers. the key was to place your jump short (landing a couple feet before the fence), or long (clearing the fence). however, it was extremely difficult to clear the fence, and only a few of us (mostly the smaller, lighter ones) pulled it off. but the pursuit of this goal was quite fun. yes, people hit the fence on a regular basis, but with the exception of one large dent made by a friend of mine (which is still there ten years later and apparently revered as a warning sign), most people bounced right off of it. the real danger was if one landed on the fence, which never happened while i was there. however, someone from my brother’s grade did break a leg on it four years later, so apparently it was possible. there also have been many attempts on the part of my old school to eradicate swing bouncing, but i still see it on the playground when i pass by during the summer. when i think about why jumping and swing bouncing appealed to me so greatly, i always go back to the feeling that it created. the sensation of flying through the air, hurtling towards the ground, anticipating the impact — it was all exhilarating. there was something about being utterly free while falling that gave me a rush. i think there was the fact that when i jumped, i was completely in charge of myself. my life, my body, literally depended on my ability to land properly. being raised in an environment where i was never in control of anything cfr_2011_r.indb 48 10/31/11 8:57:38 am weintraub failing to fly, but free falling 49 and cooped up beyond all reason (to this day, i cannot walk around my incredibly white bread, suburban neighborhood alone … at least as far as my parents know), there was something wonderful about flat-out defying every single rule of safety and toying with gravity. as mentioned in children’s folklore: a handbook, “dangerous games let children prove their courage and skill” (tucker, 36), and i think that for me, jumping was my way of proving to myself that even if my parents did not believe so, i could handle myself in the outside world. work cited tucker, elizabeth. 2008. children’s folklore: a handbook. westport: greenwood press. cfr_2011_r.indb 49 10/31/11 8:57:38 am ren's folklore newsletter the . i volume ii, number 1 parre/1;at afs according to the program committee of the american folklore society, there are a record five panels at this year's annual afs meeting in los angeles dealing with children's folklore. 0 folklore and children'sliterature october 25 8:30-10:15 am c. w.sullivan iii, chair 0 growing upi: children'sfolklore october 26 8:30-10:15 am teresa keeler, chair 0 growing upii: the folklore of adolescent and pre-adolescent girls october 26 10:30 am12:15 pm elizabeth tucker, chair 0 growing upill' adolescent folklore: from camp to college october 26 1:30-3:15 pm catherii).eswanson, chair 0 forum/workshop: growing up iv: collectingfolklore from children october 26 3:30-5:15 pm gary alan fine, chair lill~~@(ill~@~[ka]~~lj~1 *the annual meeting of the american folklore society will be held in the los angeles hilton hotel from october 24 through october 28. for further information, write: american folklore society 1703 new hampshireavenue nw washington,dc 20009 0 the annual meeting of the children's folklore section of the afs will be held on friday, october 26, from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m. the meeting will be held in the los angeleshilton, specific room to be announced in the afs final program. 0 cantemos records offers a wide selection of folk songs and music from the southwestern u.s., mexico, puerto rico, costa rica, and south america. brief descriptive background fall 1979 notes are provided. for further information, write: cantemos records box 246 taos, nm87571 0 the deadline for papers for the special children's issue of western folklore is december 15, 1979. all inquiries and manuscripts should be addressed to: dr. sylviagrider department of english texas a & m university collegestation, tx 77843 ~@lj~~~ @(ill~oo~~~ 0 i am preparing a dissertation on the comparative study of french and anglo-american counting-out rhymes. i would like to correspond with anyone interested in this subject. i am also willing to exchange tapes of french counting-out rhymes against tapes of american counting-out rhymes. andy arleo universite de nantes laboratoire d' anglais boite postale 1025 44036 nantes cedex france 0 re: collecting in new orleans and vicinity ". . .i have collected variants of jump-rope games,hand claps, counting-out forumulae and ring and line games. some of my tapes have jokes, ghost stories, jacks lore and marbles discussions. i have two tapes which are rambling interviews with older citizens of new orleans who lived before and through the depression. they talk about games they played and ways they entertained themselves along with personal memories of friends and events. i amnow doingthe picture essay showing the folding of a "cootie" and the way the object is used to tell fortunes. and last, i have a collection of twenty-nine cheers from girlsagessevento nineteen, who were not officially cheerleaders. these girls were summer campers, children from my neighborhood, and school girls in new orleans, both black and white. . ." jeanne soileau 2209 licciardi land violet, la 70092 ocr document dorothy howard: pioneer collector of children's folklore sylvia ann grider everyone interested in children's folklore, especially games, owes a debt to dorothy mills howard. her work bridges the gap between the late nineteenth-century collecting of children's games and the current generation of scholars engaged in serious and systematic childlore research, epitomized by iona and the late peter opie, recognized today as the world's leading collectors of children's folklore.l in 1938 dorothy howard's new york university doctoral dissertation, "folk jingles of american children: a collection of rhymes used by children today," was heralded as pioneering and innovative because it departed so radically from previously accepted canons of scholarship. she collected her material directly from the children themselves rather than observing them as an outsider as her predecessors had done and corroborating this secondhand information with adult memories. born july 8, 1902, in rural texas and named dorothy gray mills (which she preferred to write backwards as a sort of alter ego, sllim yarg yhtorod), she vividly remembered her own childhood, which she chronicled in loving detail in her memoir, dorothy's world (1977). she began her teaching career when she was only seventeen years old, in 1920, during the second year of the great international flu epidemic. when a fourth-grade teacher in a nearby community died, dorothy was asked to teach the class for the remaining three months of the school year. her high school teachers tutored her after school, and she graduated on time with her classmates. she knew that she wanted a career in teaching. in 1923, she graduated from north texas state teacher's college in denton, texas. in 1925, she married james howard and had two children, a son and a daughter. from 1923-44 she taught in public schools in texas, new york, and new jersey, and also served as a school principal. from 1931-36 she was director of a public summer camp for girls in westchester county, new york. she became a folklorist almost by accident. as she recalls in a personal, unpublished memoir: from 1930-44 i taught in public schools in new york and new jersey, teaching immigrant children and children of immigrant parents from norway, sweden, finland, latvia, germany, and italy and greek-speaking children from turkey, together with those whose immigrant forbears may 3 grider have come to america on the mayflower or on a dutch ship to new amsterdam. my job was to teach all the children to read, write, and speak the english language and, in addition, to appreciate the beauty of literature in the english language. there was no book to tell me how to do it, and i was frustrated until i discovered that they were learning english faster on the unsupervised playground than in the classroom. consequently, defying all prevailing pedagogic canon law, i brought the bouncing balls, skipropes, and marbles into the classroom where i began to construct a new curriculum based on the children's perfect metric play poetry. i had no thought of ever incarcerating my research into a doctoral dissertation. that happened by chance. howard thus began her research into what she at first called "children's playlore" as a classroom teacher interested in the teaching-learning process. as she relates the experience (in third person): as a wandering school teacher, dorothy in 1930 became a teaching principal in a consolidated rural school in new york state. one problem that soon became her great concern was the fact that most of the children, especially the boys, reached the junior high grades 'hating' poetry. . . . then one spring day at noon she stood at an open classroom window pondering that problem [and] casually watching children play on an unsupervised playground. skip ropes were turning; marbles, rolling; balls, bouncing. gradually she became aware of metaphoric, rhythmic language accompanying the body movements of the children. . . . by the time the bell rang calling the children in, she had counted on her fingers more than a dozen rhymes and formulae; and when the children came to class, rhymes, rhythms, and metaphors of the playground language were discussed. the next day, self-assigned homework was brought in, and by week's end, the class had a collection of more than two hundred playground rhymes. it soon became clear to dorothy that their joy in poetry came from orchestrated body movements, including the voice. one class discussion led to another: metric and cadenced rhythms; kinds of rhymes and sound-meaning (rollicking and frollicking as opposed to cold and bold). discussions led to 4 dorothy howard dramatic choral reading activities, to group creative verse writing, to individual creative writing, and to reading poetry in books, first to limericks, then to 'jabberwocky,' and gradually to serious poems. (dorothy's world, 287-88) as she later observed, her "use of the playground as laboratory distinguished her method of study and would. . . determine the character of the results. her purpose was not that of an antiquarian making a pack rat, museum collection of fossils but that of a school teacher trying to find out what and how children learn and teach each other and why" (293). she further recalled: sometime in 1933 . . . the late dr. walter barnes, professor of english at new york university, heard about my research in conversation with my sister at a cocktail party. he sent word that he wanted to talk with me about it. and when we talked, he told me that children's playlore was 'folklore' (i did not know that). he introduced me to the works of gomme, halliwell, newell and other nineteenth century folklorists and told me that research in children's folklore was a fallow field unexplored since newell. i remember exactly what he said, "i am keen about your project." he urged me to continue the investigation and to keep in touch with him. i continued playing with my schoolchildren on the playground and with my own and neighbor children at home and in the streets. dr. barnes and i continued to meet and talk until sometime in 1934. he suggested that the project should develop into a ph. d. dissertation. with my permission, he said, he would investigate the possibility of persuading the higher powers at n. y. u., and at columbia university, as well as at other universities, to his point of view. i agreed. about a year later he reported. the academic higher powers were unanimous in the view that children's play was not a proper subject for a ph. d. dissertation. however, n. y. u. had recently invented a new degree— the ed. d. he offered to investigate the possibility of getting my project accepted as an ed. d. dissertation, and i agreed. finally, in 1936, dr. barnes' scholarly prestige outweighed and overcame the reluctance of the higher powers 5 grider 6 at n. y. u. i was allowed to take the preliminary examinations for the doctorate. and my project was accepted with the stipulation that it be confined to verbal aspects of children's lore and that it be geographically expanded to include rhymes of children throughout the entire united states. professor barnes was appointed chairman of my sponsoring committee which included professor ambrose l. suhrue and professor hughes mearns (both were sympathetic and cooperative). that first morning when i reported to begin my preliminary examinations for the doctorate, i opened a door into a very large room and saw some five hundred or more people there, for the same purpose. as my eyes wandered over the room, i saw only two other women. in 1936, there were very few women doctors [i. e. doctorates] of any kind. in the beginning my attention had been concentrated on verbal aspects of children's play. but as i spent more and more time on the playground, i became more and more aware that children's voices accompanied other body movements and that children moved in group patterns-not chaotically as i had, at first, thought. then i began to view the playground as an educational institution-as a school operating three feet below adult eye level and invisible to myopic adults. by the time i was a doctoral candidate, i wanted to limit my study to one school and one group and to expand the inquiry to include the context of the verbal lore: the school (playground and classroom); the home (parent-child and sibling relationships); the church; the community. professor barnes had become sympathetic to my view and from 1934 to 1936, he and i searched for then current publications in anthropology, sociology and psychology bearing on my subject. but in those days, physical educationists were in ascendency in the academic community and their prevailing view was: adult-planned and supervised play, only, was worth serious attention. following professor barnes' advice, i compromised and accepted the dictated formula for doctoral study. he said, "get that doctorate. then you can go your own way forever." dorothy howard in a 1937 article in the new yorker, howard published some of the poems and jingles from her research, thus giving readers a new insight into the worldview of contemporary american children. in that article, she explained: the inhabitants of the childish underworld. . . caricature the universe of their elders. they reduce our sophisms to the elementary simplicities-violence, anger, love, and brutal humor. they celebrate the passions which fill their small selves in songs fit for savage races, fit for prehistory. she continued: the child, most indefatigable of jokers, finds all experience an occasion for humor. the whole spectacle of the world is comic. specifically, he finds risible all physical peculiarities, such as fat or ugliness, all offensive smells, sounds, and actions, and love, and intoxication, and wounds and contusions. . . . his art fulfills the definition of art as a criticism of life, for he regards adult experience coldly, transfers it into concepts meaningful to himself, and states them in satirical and critical terms. (32) in addition to the article in the new yorker, howard recalled speaking about her research before the annual congress of the national council of teachers of english and that the talk was written up by the new york press. as a result, she said she received hundreds of letters from readers all over the world, including one from iona and peter opie, who were then a young, unmarried courting couple. she has stayed in touch with the opies, who in the preface to their innovative and influential the lore and language of schoolchildren referred to her as "one of the originators of this field of study (xvi)." howard recalls, "the new york times report also brought a time magazine reporter scurrying to see my dissertation. out of thirteen chapters, she was interested in one, 'taboo rhymes.' and her article in time implied that i was a pixilated, female schoolteacher sitting on a street curb inviting naughty children to whisper naughty rhymes to me when i should have been in the classroom teaching them their three r's."2 in spite of this harsh and naive criticism, she continued throughout her long career to conduct research and publish the results innumerous folklore journals and other professional magazines in the united states and abroad (see bibliography). from 1944-1967 howard was a professor of english at frostburg state teacher's college, maryland, and served as chair of the english department 7 grider from 1942-1962. throughout her teaching career at frostburg, she assigned her students to collect data from local children and to write careful, detailed autobiographical ethnographies of their own playlife as children.3 she retired from frostburg in 1967, and from 1967-1969 she was visiting professor of english at the university of nebraska and special consultant in children's literature and playlore in the cooperative tri-university project (university of washington, new york university, and university of nebraska). she retired from the university of nebraska in 1969 and lived for many years in a pink adobe facing the desert on the outskirts of roswell, new mexico, until advanced age and failing eyesight forced her to make other arrangements. dorothy howard has been a consistent professional voice on behalf of the systematic collection and study of children's folklore. for example, in 1949, recognizing the close relationship between folklore and education, thelma james, president of the american folklore society, appointed a special committee on folklore for children and young people. dorothy howard, with the assistance of eloise ramsey, compiled an annotated bibliography, folklore for children and young people, which was published in 1952 as volume 3 of the afs bibliographical series. because this bibliography emphasized folklore for children rather than by children, it departed from dorothy howard's other work; but it nevertheless reflected the official concern of the american folklore society with the otherwise neglected overall field of children's folklore. dorothy howard continued her research, collecting, and publishing of children's lore through a long and productive career. as her interest in the context of children's play increased, she wanted to limit her attention to smaller and smaller groups in order to observe more thoroughly and to probe more deeply into children's minds. to this end, she increased her direct fieldwork with children playing together naturally in groups. in 1954-55, she enjoyed a fulbright post-doctoral research grant in melbourne, australia, where she was the first to study the traditional play customs of anglo-australian children. when she applied for the fulbright research grant, she intended to study the play life of australian children in one school in one community. the grant, however, was not approved until she agreed to survey play life in the whole of australia, an impossible task for one person during one year's fieldwork. in a presentation she made to the victorian institute of educational research in 1955, she summarized her findings: " . . . over 700 game names; descriptions of about 400 games; 175 skipping rhymes; 40 counting-out rhymes. . .; the words for about 15 singing games (with musical notation for 8); a few riddles, tongue-twisters, trick rhymes; hand, finger, and toe rhymes; rhymes for taunting, swearing an oath, bouncing ball; and nonsense rhymes. 8 dorothy howard all this is folklore-transmitted from children to children without benefit of printed book or adult sponsor." the educators with whom she worked in australia were astonished and fascinated by the extent of her findings. during her stay in australia, she met and encouraged a young researcher and teacher from new zealand, brian sutton-smith, who followed in her footsteps to become an international authority on children and their traditional behavior. as he recalls: dorothy visited me in new zealand in 1954 shortly after i had returned from my fulbright two years in the united states. i remember sitting with her on a wind swept beach on those antipodean islands considering that i had chosen the world's most trivial subject but had chosen it also about as far away from any action as it was possible to get. as they say down under, it seems there like all the rest of the world was invited to a party but new zealand did not get an invitation. in those circumstances, dorothy's own fulbright visit to see me was a infusion of heartening lendlease sufficient to keep me going, until my personal invitation did indeed arrive two years later. (2) dr. sutton-smith came to the united states to study and went on to teach at columbia university and later at the university of pennsylvania. in recognition of dorothy howard's contributions to the field, an archive of children's folklore was established at the institute of early childhood development in melbourne, australia, under the direction of june factor. the institute also publishes the bi-annual australian children's folklore newsletter, which was started in 1981 and modeled after the children's folklore newsletter (now the children 's folklore review) of the children's folklore section of the american folklore society. continuing her international focus, in 1962-63, while on sabbatical leave, howard conducted a sociological study of one year in the life of a twelve-year-old boy in tonala, jalisco, mexico, which was her first opportunity to confine her study to one individual child. in the preface to pedro of tonala, she explained how she chose this subject: i first met pedro in the summer of 1962 when my anthropologist friend, francis gilmore, and i visited her friends in several families, in tonala. i chose pedro asuncion munoz maestro for my study for several reasons: 1) he was the oldest son in his family and an apprentice in the family 9 i visited pedro at home, and on the playground and in the classroom at school; and, with the family, i attended local mercados, fiestas, and church. on later visits, we attended the mercados and walked about the town to see all the changes. but most of our time together we spent sitting on the munoz-maestro patio talking. as a grown man remembering, pedro could tell me things he had known as a child but did not have the words to say as a child. (n.p.) grider pottery industry; 2) he attended the government school; and 3) his family included, in addition to his father, mother, two younger brothers and one older and one younger sister, his grandfather, maestro martiniano, who still spoke the language and retold the legends of his ancient indian ancestors. as a "maestro," he taught the young people of tonala the traditional fiesta customs and he was a master potter, teaching pedro to become a master potter to carryon the family tradition in an ancient pueblo that still clung to tradition. (n. p.) she kept in touch with pedro for many years after that research, visiting with him and his wife and children for the last time in 1977. of her fieldwork, howard said: in 1989 she privately published pedro of tonala, a work she says was consistently rejected for publication by the "powers-that-be" in the professional folklore community because it lacked what they regarded as a viable theoretical base. following her work with pedro, from 1967 to 1969 in lincoln, nebraska, she studied the play life of ingrid, a girl from the age of two to age four. her research technique in this project was to play the roles that ingrid assigned to her. this manuscript remains unpublished. as previously mentioned, she retired from her position as professor of english and chair at frostburg state teacher's college in maryland in 1967. in her retirement she published a personal, autobiographical memoir, dorothy's world: childhood in sabine bottom, 1902-1910, and then turned her attention to a study of the play customs of amish children in western maryland which is tentatively entitled "work and play in pleasant valley." this project was inspired by research she and her students had undertaken several years before when howard taught at frostburg. when she returned to maryland in the early 1980s to conduct fieldwork, many of these 10 dorothy howard former students, now parents themselves, assisted her. this important study is unfinished. her family has encouraged her to write a sequel to dorothy's world, which she has considered calling dorothy's schooldays, but her failing eyesight interferes with continuing these projects. reflecting on her life's work as a woman specializing in the then marginalized and largely ignored field of children's folklore, dr. howard says: before the ratification of the 19th amendment to the u. s. constitution and ever since my success as a high school debater always debating (against boys), "resolved, that women have the right to vote"; and ever since plato introduced me to socrates (in college), i have searched through history books to learn about the position of women and children throughout the history of the human race. the relationship of adults to children has been a preoccupation in my search. no folklorist-as far as i am aware-has made a study of the folklore of pedagogy. reflecting further, dr. howard concludes: professor barnes was wrong when he said, "you can go your own way forever." all those who undertake to study human behavior always find their way paved with circumstances beyond their control. in the academic milieu of the 1930's in which it was my lot to live and begin my inquiry into children's playlore, the circumstances beyond my control were not unlike the circumstances beyond the control of lady alice gomme, a proper victorian lady of the nineteenth century. lady gomme was a non-conformist in her day. so have i been in mine. but, happily for me, children, unlike their elders, have welcomed me—a nonconforming adult. no longer do i call myself a folklorist because i do not fit any definition of the word in the perennial debate among vying a. f. s. members. as a contented maverick, i prefer—if i must be labelled—to be called an eclectic schoolteacher or a mugwump pedagog.4 in recognition of her vast contribution to the study of children's play, in 1981 the anthropological association for the study of play (taasp) presented dorothy howard its first distinguished achievement award. in his presentation remarks, brian sutton-smith summed up dorothy howard's contributions as follows: 11 grider her own story emphasizes the community of kinship relationships and of play. her emphasis (like that of dr. victor turner's to come) is on community. and yet when one looks at her account one is impressed mostly by its intellectuality. . .. there is an early intensive concern with literacy and word meanings. there is a story told with remarkable coolness and rationality. it is a tale of childhood told as if it was a cognitive map. it is written in the way we might have expected piaget to do it. the same reflective rationality and the gutsiness of a little kid who kicks shins and spits in the butter if she doesn't get her way has clearly assisted dr. howard throughout her professional career as a debater, as a union activist, as a member of the aaup and the american civil liberties union. she has had the rare reward of contriving the dismissal of an authoritarian college president while holding her own job as a lowly professor. so why did she find children important enough to go out amongst them? i suspect that dorothy, like many of us, finds in these innocent roots the reminders of that warmth and community of earlier life long gone from much of the modem life of literacy and alienation. in her own writing she protests against that kind of scholarship that buries the study of children's play in academic footnotes and computer output. in her book on pedro she seeks to establish an intensive play record of one child in a community context with a full description of all surrounding phenomena just as she has done for her own life with dorothy's world. though contrary to major scholarly trends, her attempt at such an intensive case study with a specific ludic focus continues to make her as much of a pioneer today as she was in 1931. (6) howard replied, with characteristic spunk: brian praised me for my childhood virtues (kicking shins and spitting in the butter). i kicked four shins (belonging to two older sisters). i spat on people (not in the butter). i was promptly spanked for it and soon learned that spitting on people was not profitable; and i have not spat on anybody since i was four years old. nevertheless, 'til this day (like 12 dorothy howard pavlov's salivating dogs and skinner's trained pigeons) in the presence of some people, i have to swallow hard and fast. this, i hope, sufficiently amplifies my pedigree and my childhood virtues and i shall now stop playing with words. if i have been a pioneer on play research (as brian says), i wish i could have blazed a wider trail through the forests and over the mountains of academic arrogance, ignorance, and indifference for you who now struggle to till the soil, plant and harvest facts and knowledge, wisdom and understanding for the purpose of nourishing and cherishing the young of our land, where children are still chattel property too often unprotected by the supreme court of the united states. all i can say to you today in return for the honor you have bestowed on me, is my blessing. right on! (6-7) in 1990, the children's folklore section of the american folklore society awarded her its lifetime achievement award. bibliography dorothy howard's personal papers, research, and publications have been deposited in the dorothy howard collection of the rare books room, willis library, university of north texas in denton, her alma mater. books 1952. with eloise ramsey. folklore for children and young people: a critical and descriptive bibliography for use in the elementary and intermediate school. american folklore society bibliographical series, volume 3. 1977. dorothy's world: childhood in sabine bottom, 1902-1910. englewood cliffs, nj: prentice-hall. 1989. pedro o ftonala. roswell, nm: hall-poorbaugh. dissertation 1938. "jingles of american children: a collection of rhymes used by children today." new york university: ed. d. dissertation. 13 grider articles 1936. "kite with a rainbow tail." clearing house 11: 451-455. 1937. (with morris bishop) "onward and upward with the arts: songs of innocence." the new yorker 13 (november 13): 32-42. (excerpts reprinted in a treasury of american folklore, ed. b. a. botkin. new york: crown publishers, 796-803.) 1940a. "the bell always rang." elementary english review 17: 262-264. 1940b. "playtime verse." jack and jill (january): 18-19. 1941a. "old valentine verses." jack and jill (february): 52. 1941b. '''our own' in the classroom." story parade (october): 5-6. 1942. "rope skipping." jack and jill (march): 7. 1944. "sidewalk rhymes of new york." in a treasury of american folklore. ed. b. a. botkin. new york: crown, 796-803. 1949. "the rhythms of ball-bouncing and ball-bouncing rhymes." jour nal of american folklore 62: 166-172. 1950a. "folklore in the schools." new york folklore quarterly 6: 99-107. 1950b. "mining lore from maryland." western folklore 9: 162-164. 1953. "children in the folklore market place." midwest folklore 3: 243 249. 1955. "folklore of australian children." the journal of education [victoria institute of educational research, melbourne, australia] 2: 30-35. 1958a. "australian 'hoppy' (hopscotch)." western folklore 17: 163-175. 1958b. "the game of knucklebones in australia." western folklore 17: 34 44. 1959a. "autograph album customs in australia." southern folklore quar terly 23: 95-107. 14 dorothy howard 1959b. "ball-bouncing customs and rhymes in australia." midwest folklore 9: 77-87. (reprinted in a children's games anthology: studies in folklore and anthropology. ed. brian sutton-smith. new york: arno, 1976) 1960a. "counting out customs of australian children." new york folklore quarterly. 16: 131-144. 1960b. "marble games of australian children." folk-lore 71: 165-179. (reprinted in a children's games anthology: studies in folklore and anthropology, ed. brian sutton-smith. new york: arno, 1976) 1960c. "the toodlembuck—an australian children's gambling game." journal of american folklore 73: 53-54. 1961a. "folklore and fakelore in the children's literary market." the newsletter [inter-american schools service, american council on education] 6: 2-10. 1961b. "folklore of childhood." casselman chronicle [the springs historical society of the casselman valley] 1: 7-8. 1961c. "string games of australian children." folk-lore 72: 385-387. 1964. "introduction" to reprint of the traditional games of england, scotland, and ireland by a. b. gomme (1894-98). new york: dover, v-xi. 1965. "folklore of australian children." keystone folklore quarterly 10: 99-115. 1968a. "folklore in the elementary schools." lincoln: university of ne braska curriculum development center. [eric #ed-045-679]. 1968b. "rope skipping games: language, beliefs, and customs." maryland english journal 6: 14-18. 1981. "reply by doctor howard." taasp newsletter 7: 3,6-7. 15 grider book reviews 1954. "folklore, fact, and fancy in recent children's literature." midwest folklore 4: 173-181. 1960. "the games of new zealand children by brian sutton-smith." midwest folklore 10 (1960): 220-222. poetry 1935a. "alien." the lantern 9:2 (march): 3. 1936b. "the bridge is too long." texas poets. n. p.: henry harrison, publisher, p. 154. 1936c. "convocation." american women poets, ed. margery mansfield. n. p.: henry harrison, publisher, p. 301. 1936d. "entreaty." the lantern 10: 7. 1936e. "mist world." texas poets. n. p.: henry harrison, publisher, p. 154. 1936f. "multiple." texas poets. n. p.: henry harrison, publisher, p. 156. 1936g. "tangent." texas poets. n. p.: henry harrison, publisher, p. 156. 1937. "oil." american women poets, ed. margery mansfield. n. p.: henry harrison, publisher, p. 378. 1966. "mass epitaph for polyversity presidents." bulletin [american association of university professors] 52: 56. 1967. "administration in passive voice." bulletin [american association of university professors] 53: 338. notes 1. in recognition of her unparalleled contribution to the field of children's folklore in 1989 the children's folklore section of the american folklore society awarded iona opie its first lifetime achievement award. the best biographical study of the opies and their work is: jonathan copp, "profile: finding out is better," 16 dorothy howard the new yorker 59 (april 4, 1983): 47-50+. see also: leonard marcus, "in search of 'childish things': an interview with iona opie," lion and the unicorn 13:2 (december, 1989): 7. 2. a search of the files of time and the new york times revealed no such articles. 3. many of these collections and essays are in the dorothy howard collection at the university of north texas in denton. 4. this article is based on numerous interviews and conversations with dr. howard and on her brief, unpublished memoir, "acadaemia, 193 i-revisited, 1980." my thanks also to dr. brian sutton-smith, for sharing his files and insights. works cited factor, june. "a forgotten pioneer: dorothy howard." the educational magazine (australia) 37 (1980): 22-24. grider, sylvia. "the study of children's folklore." western folklore 39 (1980): 159-169. opie, iona, and peter opic. the lore and language of schoolchildren. london: oxford up, 1959. rosenberg, jan. "a history lesson in folklore in education: dorothy howard." paper presented at the annual meeting of the american folklore society, oakland, ca, october 1990. sutton-smith, brian. addendum on the life of dorothy howard." taasp newslet ter 7 (1990): 7-8. ______. "t aasp recognition and award presentation to dorothy howard." t aasp newsletter 7 (1990): 2-6. 17 ocr document contents from the editor .......................................................... 2 1996 newell prize paper "here we sit like birds in the wilderness waiting for our dessert": the girl scout program and ordering space in camp sacajawea's dining hall/main house susan charles t. groth………………………………….3 featured article the ever-vigilant hero: revaluing the tale of tam lin evelyn m. perry ...................................................... 31 cfs: 1996 annual meeting ......................................... 51 notes and announcements... ..................................... 55 about the contributors ............................................. 56 cover: photograph of w.w. newell courtesy of harvard university archives. from the editor. . . you may well find this issue of the journal following hard on the heels of the fall issue. that issue, much delayed for a variety of reasons, did not get into the mail until march of 1997, and this issue was being set in camera-ready copy at the same time. two substantial essays grace the pages of this issue. the first, the newell prize-winning paper for 1996, is susan charles t. groth's '''here we sit like birds in the wilderness waiting for our dessert': the girl scout program and ordering space in camp sacajawea's dining hall/main house." groth's essay, which calls to mind some of the materials in randal k. tillery's "folklore and children's worlds: nature, place, and belonging in a romantic key" (cfr 17.2), examines the sources of concepts basic to girl scouting as a background to understanding spatial ordering in the dining hall in particular and the camp in general. evelyn m. perry's "the ever-vigilant hero: revaluing the tale of tam lin" is another essay which, like millicent lenz's "mytholigizing chief seattle: susan jeffers' brother eagle, sister sky or how to make a myth in ten easy steps" (cfr 19.1), discusses the way(s) in which literature makes use of traditional tales. as i have mentioned previously in this column and as you will read in the cfs minutes, we are at the threshold of the 20th anniversary of the section and this journal. at this time, the section is planning a special double issue of the journal, volume 20, numbers 1 and 2, which will appear in the spring of 1998. that issue will contain simon bronner's history of the section, an index to all articles published in the last 20 years, a special essay by brian sutton-smith, and much, much more. c.w. sullivan iii 2 "here we sit like birds in the wilderness waiting for our dessert": the girl scout program and ordering space in camp sacajawea's dining hall/main house susan charles t. groth it is early in the evening sometime in july, sometime in the 1970s, in the dining hall at camp sacajawea, a girl scout camp in sparta, new jersey. dinner has been served and dessert will come out soon. some girls are clearing tables. in the serving room, a meeting ground between kitchen and dining hall, the kitchen staff hands dessert trays to the girls on serving duty; campers are not allowed in the kitchen, and kitchen staff have little need to go into the dining hall (see fig. i). the rest of the girls—at least one hundred and fifty—sit at the tables with their counselors and the other camp staff. a din rises from units at the southeast end of the hall. the scouts pound both hands in 4/4 time on the edge of the table; first the fist, then the thumb, then the pointer and middle fingers together, and last, the pointer and pinky finger (see fig. 2). the fist puts the accent on the first quarter note, sounding vaguely like the tom-toms in g-rated movies about native americans and european-american settlers. the tunes and words, however, are vintage camp song. they go through an abstract lyric, "dum-dumda-da," whose words imitate carefree humming, then switch to a situation-specific favorite, "here we sit like birds in the wilderness": here we sit like birds in the wilderness, birds in the wilderness, birds in the wilderness. here we sit like birds in the wilderness, waiting for our dessert. the last syllable coincides with an accented beat, leaving three beats until the verse starts again. . . and again. . . and again. often annoying the staff and the girls who must serve the dessert, the singing and pounding amuses the girls at the tables and keeps them seated on the benches out of the way of servers and clearers. when i first considered exploring spatial ordering in camp sacajawea's dining hall/main house as an aspect of vernacular architecture studies, such a scene swam up from memory. when at camp, we did not sing that song each night, but often enough for it to qualify as typical of the location. in fact, although we might "practice" the hand motions on makeshift surfaces, we "really" did them only in the dining hall. why did campers do that activity in the 3 groth here we sit like birds in the wilderness groth dining hall? and what did it say about the dining hall? these two questions initiated my scholarly search, taking me outside of my memory to the memories of a former food service supervisor and others connected with the camp, through twenty years of camp brochures, and outside of camp sacajawea for scholarship and popular literature on the american camp experience. in this article, i examine how the girl scouting program is enacted through two specific themes at camp: domesticity and "playing indian," themes that exist in american camping outside of girl scouting. the table-banging i remembered touched on both of these themes, although the roughness of the activity might be considered a counter-statement to the domesticity of the place. in any case, this activity points to the dining hall as a special place in camp. a few practical considerations connect the percussive singing with the dining hall. i have already suggested a functional approach: the activity served1 the purpose of keeping restless campers' attention while waiting for dessert, a situation the lyric narrates. on the other hand, the non-specific lyrics of "dum-dum-da-da" point away from a thematic connection to a musical reason for placing this activity in the dining hall. the beat sounded best on thin-topped tables and with a great number of people at once. few surfaces in camp have the proper edge at the proper height: camp platforms were too low, the waterfront dock, too high. the outdoor "picnic" tables in camp are too think to sound good and too rough on the hands. the indoor tables in buildings such as the nature center and arts and crafts room presented other problems. in the former, the girls could scare the animals; this would violate the part of the girl scout law involving the natural world: "a girl scout is a friend to animals" (law before 1975), or the promise to try to "protect and improve the world around [them)" (law after 1975). in the arts and crafts room, campers could jiggle the table and ruin someone's project. this would violate two parts of the law: "a girl scout is courteous" and "a girl scout is a friend to all and a sister to every other girl scout" (old law); the promises to try to "be friendly and considerate" and "be a sister to every girl scout" (new law). in both the nature center and the arts and crafts center, staff turned campers' attention to individual or small group activities, the wrong frame for an orchestra of fists and fingers. carolyn macdonald provides a reason and a key characteristic of the dining hall without a moment's hesitation. when i interviewed her about her experience as a caretaker for sixteen years (1971-87), and as a food service supervisor for a few years during the 1970s, i asked her about this singing that went on during mealtimes. she remembers lots of singing going on at the tables and the percussive accompaniment, although she could not always hear the words clearly from the kitchen where she worked. considering why this 6 here we sit like birds in the wilderness particular activity occurred almost exclusively in the dining hall, macdonald states, "you weren't all together any place else either." macdonald's assessment of the dining hall as a central meeting place ret1ects literature on camping. in camps: their planning and management, robert e. wilkinson writes: there is a need for a large facility that can be used for allcamp programs. it can be a very simple building with a few distinguishing features. it is generally rectangular in shape so that a variety of indoor court games can be played. at other times, it serves as a theater, chapel, dance hall, meeting hall, craft center, or room for games that require little organization. . . . in the absence of a recreation hall, the dining hall, or even the indoor chapel, may have to be used for these activities. (103) at camp sacajawea, the dining hall provides the structure for large indoor activities. this large rectangular room is attached to the main house, an old farmhouse which houses the kitchen facility, the camp office, and bedrooms used in the past for some of the summer staff. presently campers use the main house as a lodge. the 1957 standards for girl scout camping: guides for better and safer camping requires dining and cooking facilities for established camps and recommends a dining area large enough to accommodate the entire camp at one time (20-21). technically, when camp was at full capacity, all campers and staff could not fit into the dining hall, being just a unit too many. however, some of the units' programs involved frequent off-site trips so that all campers were not on-site at the same time anyway. moreover, indoor all-camp activities (besides meals) were a rarity, necessitated only by severe weather. for mealtimes, capacity posed no problem, but rather became an asset to programming. since cooking and eating out-of-doors was one of the traditions of camp, one or more of the units would cook at their unit over an open fire (carolyn macdonald). yet, if weather or emergency dictated, the staff could accommodate the whole camp for an indoor activity between the dining hall/main house and pocahontas, the large converted barn next door. both facilities had large hearths for indoor campfire activities (carolyn macdonald). in actuality, the dining hall could accommodate everyone present in camp on virtually any day. it was, indeed, where indoor all-camp gatherings took place. serving the whole camp, the dining hall/main house holds an extremely important position as a hub of camp activity. although one can see 7 groth the themes of domesticity and playing indian throughout camp sacajawea, my research suggests that they are acted out uniquely in the dining hall/main house. camping and the principles of girl scouting like the rest of camp, the dining hall/main house serves the girl scouting program. girls practice the teachings and values of girl scouting through their activities in the camp. girl scouts of the usa (gsusa), the national organization to which individual girl scout troops and facilities belong, spells out the broad goals of girl scout camping and how to accomplish those goals through published standards, which they have developed for councils since 1923 (gs standards for girl scout camping 1956,3; hereafter camping standards publications are cited as gs standards with date and page). councils organize girl scouting into regional units, providing administrative and other resources to individual troops. although a couple of facilities are nationally run (such as national center west in wyoming), individual councils run most camps. the delaware-raritan girl scout council, which covers central new jersey from the delaware river to the atlantic ocean, owns camp sacajawea, which lies outside the council in northwestern new jersey. three councils joined to create the delawareraritan girl scout council in the early 1970s. one of these three, the raritan valley council, bought two adjacent farms in the early 1950s from which they created camp sacajawea (carolyn macdonald, kraszewski). the 1965 gs standards make explicit the connection between camping and the girl scouting program: in girl scouting, camping is the girl scout program in the out-of-doors. . . . all program is based on the framework for progression in the girl scout program which is built up the foundation: promise and laws, service, troop management, citizenship, international friendship, health and safety. this foundation permeates all program through activities related to the arts, the home, and the out-of-doors. (gs standards 1965, 8) although aspects of the arts and the home exist at camp, the out-of-doors dominates the camping experience. girl scout camping encompasses three types of situations: troop camping, day camping, and established camping (gs standards 1957,8). troop camping means an individual troop camps for at least one night on a site provided or approved by a council. this usually takes place on weekends, school vacations, or sometimes in the summer. at 8 here we sit like birds in the wilderness camp sacajawea, the dining hall/main house often houses troops during the winter months, serving as a lodge after the tents have been removed for the season. under this arrangement, the dining hall hearth becomes the locus for campfire activity while other activities take place in the main house. where the dining hall provides ample space for active games, it is unheated. between activities outdoors, quiet activities take place in the serving room and kitchen, and the group may opt to sleep upstairs. day and established camping (also called resident camping) occur during the summer months at a site where a council provides both staff and facility. since they purchased the facility in the early 1950s, the council has used camp sacajawea for troop camping, established camping, and councilsponsored family camping weekends. established camp at sacajawea ended in 1987 (kraszewski). presently, the council leases the facility to sussex county, with the agreement that delaware-raritan girl scout troops get first choice of camping sites for troop camping (ruth macdonald, current council president). this article focuses on camp sacajawea's use as an established camp, the situation which has used the dining hall/main house most fully. building on the broad connection between the girl scout program and camping, the 1965 girl scout camping standards outline the following more specific objectives: • to promote the physical, mental, and spiritual well-being of every girl and leader. • to develop resourcefulness, initiative, self-reliance, and recognition of the worth and dignity of each individual. • to provide resources for practices in democratic living. • to develop a sense of responsibility, qualities of leadership, and an awareness of the capacities of all people. • to provide an inner satisfaction, a sense of awe and wonder, and a deep enjoyment for both girl and leader. • to provide a sense of accomplishment. • to stimulate each girl's awareness of the scope of the natural world. to develop the individual's sense of responsibility to conserve the natural world. (gs standards 1965,6) written for the adults who run camps, these objectives dovetail with the old and new girl scout law. while the language differs between the two, both versions of the law emphasize developing an appreciation for the world beyond oneself (other people, the natural world), developing responsibilities to that world, and developing the practical and interpersonal skills with which to fulfill those responsibilities. 9 groth the camp provides the opportunity for girls to practice girl scouting values in an environment where everyone else knows and practices the values, and institutional procedures have been designed with girl scout values in mind. all staff must be familiar with girl scouting. gsusa's 1967 good counselors make good camps lists girl scout values first under "general qualifications for all camp staff members." camp staff must demonstrate" acceptance of and adherence to the purposes and principles of girl scouting as embodied in the promise and laws. some knowledge of the girl scout program" (9). although the title of the book calls attention to the counselor's job, the book applies these general qualifications to all the staff, including administrative staff, special programming staff (waterfront, nature center, arts and crafts), and the food service staff from supervisor to dishwasher. linking social values to camping is not unique to girl scouting; many social organizations, such as religious groups, do the same. in fact, the american camping association (aca), the body which provides accreditation for camps throughout the united states, defines camping by its social objectives as well as its setting. camping is: a sustained experience which provides a creative, recreational and educational opportunity in group living in the out-of-doors. it utilizes trained leadership and the resources of the natural surroundings to contribute to each camper's mental, physical, social, and spiritual growth. (aca 3) a camp volunteers to follow the aca standards and apply for aca accreditation, which includes an on-site visit. the accreditation helps parents and guardians judge whether a specific camp is safe and suitable for their children (moreau 112). although some camps choose not to go through the accreditation process, camp sacajawea maintains its accreditation, advertises it on a sign attached to the main house (which can be seen from the road), and includes its aca status in camp brochures. the dining hall/main house as threshold the lyric "here we sit like birds in the wilderness, waiting for our dessert" appeals because of its humor, the irony of wild birds having dessert. yet, the juxtaposition of a wilderness setting and the civilized activity of eating dessert fits the dining hall/main house, which sits both on the edge of camp and on the edge of the road. as the gateway to the rest of the camp, the dining 10 here we sit like birds in the wilderness hall/main house serves as he threshold or liminal space between this ideal community and the rest of the world. the term "liminal" comes from the latin for threshold (webster); its root is in spatial relationships.2 in several ways, the dining hall/main house has connections to and similarities with both the natural, ideal living conditions of the camp and the world outside where the campers and staff live during the rest of the year. for instance, for most years of resident camp, campers entered camp when buses delivered them to the parking lot by the road in front of the dining hall/main house (later, buses began to use a newer parking lot, still by the road, but closer to the ranger's house than the dining hall/main house). from there, camp staff would organize the girls into groups (units) determined by what program the girls had registered for, and walk them into the heart of the camp, to the sites where they would live for the session. at the end of the session, the buses would meet the girls in front of the dining hall/main house again and take them back to central locations in their home communities. the dining hall/main house serves as a threshold for communication to the camp, as well as the bringing communications to the campers themselves. the mail carrier did not go to each individual campsite, but dropped the mail at the main house. while counselors distributed mail to the girls, each staff member had his or her own mailbox in the downstairs hallway of the main house. a mailbox for outgoing mail, which both staff and campers would use, was hung on the wall of the dining hall. voice communication to campers and staff also entered the camp through the dining hall/main house. the main house contained the camp office and the camp's telephone line. several years' brochures state that parents should telephone campers only in case of emergency and should not expect to speak to the camper directly at that time; messages would be relayed to campers by staff. directly or indirectly (through messages), the dining hall/main house linked the camp with written and oral communication to the outside world. the camp office in the main house provided the work place for the camp director and assistant camp director and place for all camp business. from here, the camp staff would interface with parents, vendors, and others. gwen mitchell's handbook for camp directors and administrators in a girl scout council, a gsusa publication, places ultimate responsibility for food service and other camp services on camp directors, spelling out their duty to maintain connections with the outside vendors necessary to run the camp (16-17). although the camp director was ultimately responsible, carolyn macdonald recalls that it was her duty as food supervisor to order the food and oversee its delivery and consumption. deliveries—most frequently food—entered the camp by way of the main house. food service depended on the outside world and connected the camp with the outside world through 11 groth the dining hall/main house. within the boundaries of the camp, almost all food service activities take place in the dining hall/main house. eating is the locus of activity in the dining hall, the food having been ordered and prepared in the main house. the only exceptions are the snacks and packed lunches eaten on day trips out of camp or the meals planned and prepared by the girls at their units' campfires. yet, even these would be checked for nutritional value by the food supervisor (carolyn macdonald), a practice guaranteed in the camp brochures. eating on the trail or preparing food in the unit is part of imitating native american and pioneer life. following gsusa guidelines, program organizers provide the opportunity for the girls to learn practical skills in food preparation under unusual circumstances, work cooperatively, and appreciate nature together. besides serving as the threshold to the world outside camp, the dining hall/main house lies in symbolic and spatial relationship with the other places within the camp proper. i turn now to two major themes evident in space ordering at camp sacajawea: playing indian and domesticity (playing house). playing indian at girl scout camp "playing indian" has a long tradition at mainstream american camps, and girl scout camps are no exception. in "the tribe called wannabee: playing indian in america and europe," rayna green states that since the invasion of north america by those "red hairy men" in the fifteenth century, non-indians have found the performance of "playing indian" a most compelling and obviously satisfying form of traditional expression. (30) she makes a distinction between playing indian and being a native american when she states that not only did europeans play indian, but that they also made tribal peoples "play indian" so they could "export the performances back to europe" (30). in the imaginary indian: the image of the indian in canadian culture, daniel francis expresses the following distinction between the indian and the native american: the indian began as a white man's mistake, and became a white man's fantasy. through the prism of white hopes, fears and prejudices, indigenous americans would be seen to have lost contact with reality and to have become "indians": that is, anything non-natives wanted them to be. (5) 12 here we sit like birds in the wilderness presently, i will concentrate on the nature of playing indian3 at camp sacajawea and how this activity differentiates the dining hall/main house from the rest of the group. in the scholarly and popular literature, some articles explore playing indian at camp, but most concentrate explicitly or implicitly on the male experience. if mentioned at all, girl scouting is frequently treated almost as if it were just boy scouting in skirts. both green and francis focus their treatment of playing indian at camp on boys' organizations, such as lord robert baden-powell's boy scouts4 and ernest thompson seton's wood craft indians. the woodcraft indians predated and had an early influence on boy scouting, but eventually the two organizations diverged because seton wished to emphasize pacifism while baden-powell wished to emphasize a military metaphor (francis 144-68). green notes the paramilitary nature when she writes of boy scouting: lord baden-powell's para-military outdoor education movement merges with neo-french revolutionary philosophy, and the french passion for natural men comes to be embodied in the indian, who will represent the [boy] scouting ideal of manly independence. learning to walk, stalk, hunt, survive like an "indian," to produce beaded and feathered authentic outfits, to dance and sing authentic music, to produce tools and weapons, are the skills later to become fixed in the order of the arrow, scouting's highest achievement. (40-41)5 green makes the connection between teaching independence, playing indian, and youth programs. learning self-reliance and independence through playing indian may indeed be considered "manly" when looking at the issue from the point of view of boy scouting, but the picture is incomplete. although not emphasizing playing indian to the extent or in the same way as boy scouting does, girl scouting also uses survival skills (hiking safety, lashing and knots, building shelters, knowing which plants are poisonous) with an indian metaphor. in a passing nod to girl scouting, green writes: the [boy] scouting reification of the indian, as scout played him, (note that, by this time [the time of the development of boy scouting in .the 20th century], the indian is a definitely male and be-feathered lord of the plains), affects more variants, some later practiced by the girl scouts and campfire girls, which concentrate, for their dramatic reenactments, less on paramilitary skill and more on crafts and nature worship. (41) the representation of these specific youth organizations appears incomplete, yet green makes a valuable point. on the down side, green's use of "affects 13 groth more variants" and "later" seems to imply a greater influence of badenpowell's program on these other programs than there actually was. as francis writes, campfire girls grew out of seton's woodcraft indians, and it is therefore natural that campfire girls would have a different—not paramilitary—emphasis in its version of playing indian. the girl scouts, too, have an inheritance from seton's program. in the 1929 revision of the 1920 handbook, the preface gives "grateful acknowledgments" to "mr. ernest thompson seton and the woodcraft league, and doubleday, page & co. for the section and plates on 'woodcraft'," as well as to robert baden-powell and others. like much of the general public, green shows limited understanding of the early divergence between girl scouting and boy scouting in the united states (in her defense, girl scouting is not the focus of her article). begun in 1908 in england (webster), baden-powell's boy scout program led to the founding of girl guiding in england, founded and developed by lord badenpowell and his sister, agnes (foreword, "how scouting began," robert baden-powell, scouting for girls [may 1919]). brought to american in 1912 by juliette gordon low, girl guides in america was renamed girl scouts "within a few months" (scouting for girls 13). the organization has operated separately from boy scouts of america from its beginning and began to develop differently from both organizations initiated by lord baden-powell, boy scouting and girl guiding.6 today, girl scouts in the united states honor juliette low's contribution by celebrating march 12th (the day in 1912 when the program began in low's native savannah, ga [eubanks 11]) as the birthday of girl scouting and low's birthday, october 31st, as founder's day (eubanks 31). along with other members of the world association of girl guides and girl scouts, american girl scouts celebrate thinking day or world association day on february 22nd, the birthday of both lord and lady baden powell (lady olave baden-powell took a leadership role in girl guiding early on). a contrast to lord baden-powell's paramilitarism and disapproval of seton's pacifism, thinking day "presents an opportunity for girl scouts and girl guides to reflect on world peace and international friendship" (eubanks 35). girls in the united states are much more familiar with juliette low's leadership than the influence of the baden-powell family. beginning just four years after the boy scouting program and one or two after girl guiding, girl scouting certainly shares roots with the two programs. however, in 83 years of operating independently (over 95% of its history), these programs have developed quite differently. green does not acknowledge the self-reliance and confidence girls develop through learning wilderness survival skills because she interprets those skills as "manliness." however, she makes a valid point about girl scouting's stressing nature 14 here we sit like birds in the wilderness worship. a statement by the national camping committee in april, 1963, makes explicit the spiritual character of girl scout camping: camping must fulfill the needs and interests of [the] young. . . by offering every girl scout camper a fully enriched program and a deeply meaningful social and spiritual experience in the natural world. (gs standards 1965,5) the objectives of camping as expressed above by the girl scout standards attest to the aspect of nature worship with language such as "sense of awe and wonder." these objectives direct awareness toward "the scope of the natural world" and the "responsibility to conserve the natural world" (gs standards 1965, 6). daniel francis also mentions the connection between nature and playing indian, framing seton's woodcraft indian program as a response to growing urbanization. from the point of view of european-americans, the indian retained qualities that "modern man" had lost. if civilization was artificial, frenetic, and soulless, the indian seemed to live a more authentic existence, closer to nature and basic human values. (153-54) in a 1993 column in the new yorker entitled "injun summer," daniel menaker echoes the attitude toward modernism that francis attributes to seton. menaker knows that playing indian is "politically incorrect" as well as being historically inaccurate; however, it implies a code of conduct and a relationship to nature at odds with and superior to the kinds of lives the campers and their families presumed to lead. even a dented and misapprehended ideal is better than no ideal at all. (166) where seton has no awareness of what francis would call the "imaginary" quality of his indian, menaker recognizes the fantasy and embraces it anyway. while valuing nature and playing indian like seton and menaker, girl scouting tends to emphasize looking forward or living in the present, rather than re-enacting the past. the 1929 girl scouting handbook (scouting for girls, revised edition) suggests using the indian metaphor to look forward: the girl scouts of today, while they have no new lands to scout into, can scout in the new ways of life that our changing civilization has brought us. they find that there can be as much joy in 15 groth learning the best ways of doing things in our new era, as there was in our new and undiscovered country. the best way to live, to play, to help others, to build a home may be filled with as much adventure in new york or san francisco today as there was in crossing the ohio or mississippi a hundred years ago. (15) as one would expect of an american youth publication in the 1920s, this passage contains a euro-centric viewpoint. at the same time, it plays indian in a new way, bringing the term "scout" into the present, whereas most views of the imaginary indian relegate the native american to the past. the attitude toward scouting expressed in scouting for girls does not restrict the idea of "scouting" to its military or woodcraft meanings, either. perhaps the downplaying of these two more obvious manifestations of playing indian in girl scouting influences green's emphasis on the male scouting program in her interpretation of playing indian. although concentrating on the male experience, both green and francis suggest that playing indian provides a certain freedom for marginalized groups. green speaks in terms of race and gender: inevitably and eventually [playing indian] draws women, even blacks, into the peculiar boundaries of its performance, offering them a unique opportunity-through playing indian-of escaping the conventional and often highly restrictive boundaries of their fixed cultural identities in gender or race. (31) for green, playing indian is tightly entwined with the male military sphere, yet its manifestation of "other" allows a degree of freedom for females. in a discussion of children playing cowboys and indians, she states that her informal survey revealed that most children wanted to play the cowboy role because they "did not like getting beat." of those preferring indian, the higher percentage were female who "are very clear about what attracts them, that is, the 'costume,' the yelling and 'acting out' which appears to accompany the role, and the 'underdog' aspects the role entails" (54). this "acting out" may factor in the campers' delight in pounding and singing at the table between courses, activities not common and probably not even permitted in most homes or school cafeterias. rather than addressing race or gender issues, francis speaks in terms of power imbalance based on age: too high-spirited and willful to perform the essential business of industrial society, the imaginary indian is the perfect model for youngsters chafing against the rules and duties of the adult world. children love animals; so does the imaginary indian. children 16 here we sit like birds in the wilderness love to roam freely in the woods. so does the imaginary indian. children love secret ceremonies and dressing up in costume; so does the imaginary indian. children yearn to perform brave deeds in combat; so does the imaginary indian. children are in rebellion against the established order. so is the imaginary indian. (144-45) francis concentrates on the connections between children's culture and the perception of the imaginary indian's culture, though he exhibits a touch of androcentrism. where green recognizes female organizations' distaste for military play, francis includes a mention of combat. francis seems to speak more of male children than all children, unless he is including brave acts of self-defense and caring for the wounded. there certainly are girls who enjoy aggressive play and reenacting conflict, but studies such as green's, carol gilligan's in a different voice, and deborah tannen's you just don't understand point to the phenomenon of females (adults and children) valuing conflict avoidance and resolution. where green and francis emphasize the male warrior tradition of playing indian, camp sacajawea embodies another image of the indian, one stemming from european-american perception of the iroquois nations.7 carolyn macdonald states, "see, that's what the names come from, the five nations of the indians of upstate new york." in addition to iroquois itself, other campsites include onondaga, mohawk, oneida, cayuga, and tuscarora. seneca also existed until it fell into such disrepair that the council eliminated it (carolyn macdonald). of the other four campsites, one is named shoshone for sacajawea's tribe, one for the apache, and two reflect resident camp programs (see fig. 3). the placement of the units and the other facilities creates a somewhat cohesive indian nation covering the southeastern side of the camp (most of the land). administrative sites, such as the infirmary, dining hall/main house, ranger's house, and pocahontas, lie along the northern border of camp. on the western side sit the modern sports fields and two units with special interests: girls in the dolphin unit, overlooking the lake, develop water skills; while in the pioneer unit, girls sleep in covered wagons and learn early settlers' crafts. in the southeastern part of the camp, the indian sites stand together, interrupted only by wash houses, the flag pole, and the nature center. totem pole hill, where all-camp campfires took place, lies at the southeastern comer of the camp, anchoring the indian metaphor with a tall totem pole. one might assume that the council named the sites after the iroquois in recognition of the simple fact of proximity. in northwestern new jersey, camp sacajawea lies just south of the iroquois lands. yet, it also lies close to 17 '" , here we sit like birds in the wilderness the lands of the lenni-lenape associated with new jersey, but neither lenape nor the european-derived delaware appear in camp names. the council also chose not to use names, such as piscataway, that reflected native americans associated with the lands near the council headquarters. the connection between the girl scout camp and playing indian iroquois style reflects perceived values held in common: both emphasize the value of peace, safety, democracy, cooperative work, and women. in the iroquois and the founding of the american nation, donald a. grinde, jr., describes the iroquois culture before and coexisting with the european colonies. he traces the process through which deganawidah and hiawatha secured the great peace and established laws so that "individual rights, safety and justice were assured" (8). for instance, vengeful murder (blood feud) was outlawed, and wampum strings and belts were substituted for the life of the murderer as recompense to the family of the victim (8). in "iroquoian culture history: a general evaluation," william n. fenton names four cardinal principles of iroquois policy, all of which foster cooperative living: "(1) health, peace. . . , (2) strength, civil authority. . . , (3) truth, righteousness, . . . (4) the great law, or the commonwealth" (262). fenton emphasizes the pervasiveness of these values: "these themes both exist on a worldly or political level and attain a level of supernatural significance through the deganawidah epic" (262). fenton further demonstrates euroamericans' association of these communal values with the iroquois when he refers to colonist conrad weiser's advice to be truthful, give one's best, and show courage when dealing with them. these iroquois values resemble the girl scouting values that emphasize the strength of the individual and the community. the introduction to the 1965 girl scout camping standards mentions "international friendship, health and safety" (8) as parts of the foundation of the girl scout program, while in the specific objectives for camping, "to promote the physical, mental, and spiritual well-being of every girl and leader" heads the list (6). grinde's work traces the influence of iroquois governing practices on the democratic government developed for the united states.8 as in other girl scout camps and troops (gs standards 1965, 8), camp sacajawea's program emphasizes collective and representative decision-making. in an introduction to the 1976 camp brochure, janet b. cook, then president of the delawareraritan girl scout council, writes that after becoming acquainted with her new surroundings, "the girl becomes deeply involved in the camp and its decision-making through camp council and camp-wide events." collective effort characterizes work in girl scouting and grinde's assessment of the iroquois life. grinde cites collective work ("economic democracy") and collective ownership as characteristic of the iroquois (24-25). 19 groth fenton concurs that "institutional cooperation and poor relief is deeply imbedded in iroquoian culture" (264). the iroquois value of women also makes iroquois names appropriate for camp sites. on a very basic level, the iroquois emphasized the value of women in relation to the value of men.9 while the murder of a man required the payment of 20 strings of wampum, the murder of a woman required 30 strings (grinde 8). although fees were substituted for vengeful murder in european culture, the woman was not worth more than the man. in the case of the anglo-saxon wergeld, literally the "man money," social rank determined the fee and men outranked women. in "eastern woodlands community typology and acculturation," john witthoft emphasizes women's relative importance in the economic life of the eastern woodlands native americans: women's social roles were central, and men's economic roles were subsidiary. male social and political roles were likewise secondary. despite male emphasis on warfare, war lacked major economic motivation. (71-72). similarly, girl scouting encourages women's power in the economic arena by encouraging girls to think of their careers (e.g., scouting for girls handbook [1929 revised edition], worlds to explore handbook [1977]). in addition to economic power, women also held power in iroquois family and tribal government. in this matrilineal system, women headed the clans and their sub-units, the otiianer and the hearth (grinde 1). although women could not serve as chiefs, the heads of the otiianer (women) collectively chose the chiefs (grinde 15). likewise, women appointed the male delegates and deputies who spoke at tribal councils. on an on-going basis, women collectively "formulated issues and questions to be debated and acted upon in the councils" and recommended which position the representative should advocate (grinde 2). fenton also assumes the strong political position of women, although he debates with others the consistency of this strength (266-77). this strength included influence over warfare, despite the fact that women did not battle for lead warriors. when the men called for war, women had the power to prevent or encourage war through their disapproval or approval (grinde 14). although one might question the extent of the iroquois women's power in relation to their male delegates, the system gave far more power to women than did the european culture of the same period. while iroquois women were the only ones to "vote" for representatives, it took another two centuries for female citizens of the united states to get any vote. in terms of influence over war, julia ward howe created mother's day in the united states as a day for 20 here we sit like birds in the wilderness women to speak out against war for the safety of their children. later, even this relatively powerless observance had been subverted into a day to talk about mothers, ceasing to be a day for mothers to speak out as an organization dedicated to developing girls' "resourcefulness, initiative, selfreliance, and recognition of the worth and dignity of each individual" (gs standards 1965,6), the council appropriately associates their place with a people reputed to value women. playing indian in the dining hall camp sacajawea pays tribute to two individual women through naming. pocahontas and sacajawea herself. in terms of spatial relations, these names bring playing indian back to the camp's threshold, the area of the dining hall/ main house. like the dining hall/main house, pocahontas separates the camp from the road. arts and crafts, lodging for kitchen staff, and, for a time, the nature center were housed here. although an indian, pocahontas resided in the "white world" for much of her life, marrying a white man and moving to england, where she died. in "the mother of us all: pocahontas reconsidered," philip young connects her betrayal of her tribe (for instance, she warned captain john smith of her father's imminent attack) with her glorification by whites. according to whites, she was a good indian because she "recognized" the superiority of white culture. young also connects the pocahontas figure with ceres, demeter, and gaea. becoming "a fertilitygoddess, the mother of us all" (408), pocahontas fits the nature worship of girl scouting's version of the imaginary indian. girl scouting has long admired sacajawea even more then pocahontas. in the 1929 revised edition of the 1920 handbook, scouting for girls, scouting equals discovery (see above). the text asks girls to apply this concept to the present; the past just provides models for new adventures. our early history is sprinkled thickly with brave, handy girls, who were certainly girl scouts, though they never belonged to a patrol, nor recited the girl scout laws. but they lived the laws, those strong young pioneers, and we can stretch our hands to them across the years when we read of them. (15) the handbook gives two examples of "brave, handy girls," first sacajawea, then louisa mat alcott the description of sacajawea praises her bravery, ability to resolve conflict ("she induced the hostile shoshones to act as guides" [15]), knowledge of nature, resourcefulness, ability to care for herself and others (performing the role of guide "with her papoose on her back" [15]), 21 groth and making a mark on the landscape: "sacajawea had no maps to study—she made maps, and roads have been built over her footsteps" (16). camp sacajawea is one of many girl scout camps in the united states by the same name; new jersey alone holds two camp sacajaweas. in the camp under study, sacajawea is referenced physically through the campsite named "shoshone" and indirectly in the dining hall through the large cut-out of a bird, the most prominent single decoration in the hall. at first glance, the bird looks like an indian-style thunderbird. it also resembles the eagle, fitting geoffrey turner's research. turner states that many native americans believed that thunderbirds were eagles or at least had the shape of an eagle (50). to the algonkians (from the northeastern region of the united states), the thunderbird, bringer of rain, is a good force (turner 42). the dining hall bird has jagged marks resembling lightning on its chest. one wonders why a thunderbird was chosen by a camp (why invite rain to a camp?) until one remembers that sacajawea means "the bird woman" (scouting for girls 15). another indian image, the war canoe, also hangs in the dining hall. hung in the rafters at the center of the hall for most of the year (and presently on a permanent basis), the canoe was taken down annually. joy kraszewski, the council employee responsible for business related to the camp, has some memories of the war canoe. each year, some staff members would take the canoe down, repaint it, and "redo" it. then the staff would take it out on the water on a special occasion, perhaps during the end of the camp ceremony. for this ceremony, held at the end of each session, every girl in camp would make a small raft (about 6ft by 6ft at the largest) by lashing together small sticks. the girl would affix a candle to the raft, then light the candle and set the raft afloat in white lake. curiously enough, the war canoe appears to have little to do with war. perhaps named to reflect the dominant war-like indian play green emphasizes, the girl scouts subvert the symbol into a ceremony that emphasizes collective work (fixing the canoe) and unity among campers. both the war canoe and the sacajawea/thunderbird image bring playing indian into the dining hall. domesticity and the dining hall/main house one can argue that the dining hall itself is an artifact of playing indian— playing iroquois or lenape specifically. the iroquois linguistic grouping is known as the ganonsyoni, "people of the longhouse" (grinde 1). rather than living spread out in different structures, the iroquois lived with several families, several hearths, under one roof—the roof of the long house. a rectangular structure with a gabled roof, the dining hall resembles the long house physically. speaking metaphorically, the units (named for the different 22 here we sit like birds in the wilderness iroquois nations) coming together to eat in the dining hall echo the different families living together in the long house. rather than having separate hearths, these groups had separate tables. the units did not cook separately in the dining hall, but their food was served by table. a couple of girls from each unit were assigned to help the kitchen staff by bringing the food from the serving room to their units' tables. similarly, the "delaware big house ceremonial" related by elisabeth tooker dictates the use and form of the structure. the end of the sponsor's concluding remarks for the ninth night of the ceremonial also mentions serving practices in the big house ceremonial: "attendants, bring into the house your cooking and your dishes. each one who brings a dish is to be given some hominy and meat" (tooker, native 120).10 tooker notes that the six ceremony attendants represent the three delaware clans, one woman and one man from each (native 106). the dining hall resembles the delaware big house as well as the iroquois long house. also rectangular, the dining hall has entrances at all four directionals. the western entrance has two doorways—in and out—to the kitchen and the main house. the girls serving each night resemble the delaware attendants in that they represent domestic units (the camp units or clans) and their service is temporary, not permanent. while hearths define the iroquoian long house and doors define the delaware big house, the sole hearth and multiple doors in the dining hall dominate this structure. the dining hall's resemblance to the long or big house provides a perfect example of following gs camping standard: "all buildings are simple and in keeping with the objectives of girl scouting (gs standards 1957, 18). appropriately, the manifestation of playing indian in the dining hall-aslong-house emphasizes a domestic metaphor, for the dining hall/main house serves as the locus of domesticity and stability for the entire camp. where the 1965 girl scout standards relate activities to "the arts, the home, and the out-of-doors"(8), the dining hall/main house largely manifests "the home," as much as do the tents where the girls sleep.11 most obviously, architecture reveals the domestic image. the tents are impermanent and the buildings in the heart of camp are more rugged-looking than the dining hall/main house. about ten or fifteen years ago, the naval construction battalion built a shelter (a peaked roof on posts) at each camp site (kraszewski). the walled buildings off the road (latrines, waterfront cabin, nature center, infirmary) appear cabin-like. on the other hand, the main house, like the ranger's house, is a converted farm house. in design, the main house is a side gable, four bay, two storey, double pile construction with two end chimneys, attached to the dining hall on the east end. the council converted this structure to accommodate the large numbers of people 23 groth in an established camp, but the functional use of space is consistent with a farm house. bedrooms are still upstairs. bathrooms are in ordinary locations upstairs and down. the hallways appear original. the kitchen is still the kitchen with added "big stuff' such as institutional grade grills, stoves, and freezer (kraszewski). only the traditional parlor and dining room have been replaced with the camp office (which also houses bunks now) and additional food service rooms: one with a large oven and storage, a small hallway with a storage closet, the serving room and the dish room. a change to the eastern chimney acknowledges that the dining hall replaces the main house's living room/parlor as the structure's primary social space. while the chimney appears attached to the main house like any other farm house, it serves the hearth in the dining hall, not a structure in the main house. the western chimney appears to service some heating device located in the cellar. in addition to having domestic architecture, the dining hall/main house contains much of the camp's domestic element because of its role in food preparation and consumption. in many cultures, food, nurturance, home, and family are metaphorically related. food service both reassures the parents (the children's "real" domestic authority) and establishes the camp's caretaking role through the treatment of food issues in the brochures. most of the brochures have a brief message on food resembling if not identical to the following: "nutritious meals are dietician planned. provision for snacks is made. food packages should not be sent to camp" (1973). as required in the food service director's job description (gsusa, good counselors 18; carolyn macdonald), some brochures additionally assure that while girls learn to plan their own meals, camp staff will not allow them to suffer nutritionally in the process: "menus planned by campers for cookouts and trips are checked" (1974). other brochures impress upon parents that the camp is a wilderness location and that, for this reason, parents need to defer to camp staff at times: "the chipmunks might get the goodies you send" (1975). as an institution serving food, the camp must also reassure legal authorities as to their competence in taking responsibility for the campers' food service. in a restaurant, only public health and safety (e.g., cleanliness, food storage) are at issue because adults order for themselves and supervise their children. a camp, however, also resembles a school in that the food service staff takes responsibility for meeting the children's nutritional needs. in addition to the legal requirements they meet, the camp staff reassures parents that they can take over the food-related domestic duties through their compliance with american camping association standards (earning them aca accreditation) and national girl scouting standards. aca and gsusa standards contain specific requirements for cleanliness, staff training and 24 here we sit like birds in the wilderness qualifications, and food preparation and storage. the girl scout councils use the following statement by the aca insignia printed on their collective brochures: this aca insignia is only given to camps that have been officially visited and approved by the american camping association for meeting all their standards. our camps also meet all gsusa standards and are licensed by their state health department. (1978) thus, the camp references three organizations with authority to prove their qualifications concerning food, an aspect of the domestic sphere. the procedure for serving and consuming food in the dining hall imitates the domestic sphere. according to gs camping standards and other publications (mitchell 16-17), girls with dietary restrictions can expect accommodation at camp: "meals are planned with consideration for the laws of fast and abstinence and for the dietary observances of the various religious faiths represented in the camp" (gs standards 1957, 25). camp staff reinforces religious practices by leading the girls in singing grace. appropriate to camp, favorite graces such as "johnny appleseed" and "back of the bread" include references to nature in the provision of food, resembling the iroquois ceremonials (tooker, native 268-81). starting with grace, the process of a meal in the dining hall resembles a meal in most girls' homes. food is served "family style," meaning serving bowls and eating utensils sit on the table. unlike "cafeteria style," where people choose their food from an assembly line and eat from individual trays, "family style" adds a domestic feel to an otherwise institutional space. conversely, eating in the units had less of a domestic character. although girls could participate in food preparation in the units, they often cooked individual portions (e.g., hot dogs or s'mores over the grill) and would not all find a place at the table at one time. other features of dining hall procedures resembled the world back home. carolyn macdonald recalls a camp sacajawea food custom in which the camp staff played the domestic role of parental authority. when a girl did not like a certain food, she nevertheless was required to eat a small portion, called a "no-thank-you serving." much like sharing duties with siblings at home, girls take their turns setting and clearing the table, and bringing food to the table.12 the meal did not end until a member of staff gave the girls permission to leave their seats-just as many families require children to ask their parents' permission to "be excused." with its sit-down meals, the dining hall demonstrates a formality not seen elsewhere in camp-perhaps with the exception of occasions when 25 groth clergy visited the camp to conduct a religious service. at one time, a clothing practice reinforced this formality. the 1972 brochure instructs girls to bring the official camp uniform,13 which "is the only required item of clothing and is worn on sundays and for evening meals. "on the "suggested clothing list" in the brochure, the word "required" follows "camp uniform." in the 1973 and 1974 "suggested clothing list," the word "optional" follows "camp uniform," and no explanatory sentence details its use at camp. by 1975, the camp uniform no longer appears on the "suggested clothing list" and is not mentioned anywhere else in the brochure. this custom may have paralleled the old custom in many homes of "dressing for dinner." although washing up before sitting at the table is still required of many children at home and at camp, the dress requirement has certainly relaxed in both places. the "civilized" domestic sphere within the camp serves a vital function, yet seems to contradict the nature-based camping narrative. almost twenty years of camp brochures mention the structure only three times and in only two ways: "the attractive dining hall is dominated by a massive fireplace" (1980, 1981) and "our dining hall accommodates the entire camp and a food service supplies well-balanced meals" (1986). most brochures describe food accommodations without reference to where it is usually prepared and served. instead of descriptions of the domestic structures at camp, descriptions of the camp's natural features and the program's activities dominate the literature. the camping terrain is one of open fields, rolling fields [sic], pine woods and lakes. white lake is a natural crater lake used for swimming and boating (including sailing). lake nicholas is used for the study of pond life as well as for fishing; a marsh area surrounds the "edge of pond" habitat. the camp is close enough to the delaware river and the appalachian trail for both to be explored by advanced campers. (1975) daniel moreau's 1988 article, "summer camps: the golden oldies," describes the outdoor experience much like camp sacajawea's brochures. sacajawea's literature follows this more general trend in camp literature of emphasizing natural features and outdoor activities. the absence of the dining hall/main hall in the literature points to its specialness as a counterpoint in the camp at large. necessary for bulk food service and administrative purposes, this structure runs against the natural world aesthetic of youth camping, yet supports girl scout principles of developing girls' skills and responsibilities as citizens through communal living. 26 here we sit like birds in the wilderness conclusion--a special place with tradition as a site for most meals, all food storage, the camp's business office. and the gathering area in case the whole camp needs to come indoors, the dining hall/main house obviously has great importance. as a common space, it is a natural choice for physical tributes to tradition. on the exposed rafters of the dining hall hang tin can lids, one next to the other, all approximately the same 6" diameter. each is the creation of a specific group of girls, most represent groups of counselors-in-training (cits). painted brightly with pictures or words meaningful to the girls they represent, many draw the nature narratives and playing indian into the dining hall. each lid declares the year, going back as far as the 1950s. when i visited the camp on a cold presidents' weekend in february 1995, a troop of cadettes from wareton, nj, were using the main house as a lodge. during the afternoon, they played games from around the world—running games in the spacious but unheated dining hall, sitting games in the heated serving room. meanwhile, one more bright tin can lid sat drying on the serving counter. university of pennsylvania notes 1. at first glance, the mixture of verb tenses here may seem erratic and even arbitrary to the reader. however, i have painstakingly edited the text to reflect the variables in the material. while the structures still exist, summer resident camp ceased in the late 1980s, so i describe many of the practices in the past tense, while descriptions of the building are in the present tense (except where changes in structure occur). in terms of girl scouting in general, some practices still occur while others have been discontinued, and tense reflects each situation. 2. in the ritual process: structure and anti-structure, victor turner contrasts van gennep's use of separation-margin-reaggregation with his use of preliminalliminal-postliminal, saying that van gennep employed the second group "with primary reference to spatial transitions" (166). 3. like francis, i will use the term "indian" to denote the white culture's image of the indigenous american people. when speaking about the actual people, i will use "native american." when quoting others, i will use their terminology. 4. although the boy scouts legally changed their name to scouting usa, i will continue to use the term boy scout for ease of differentiation between the two programs and in recognition that boy scouting is not the sole scouting program in the usa. 5. the order of the arrow is not boy scouting's highest achievement, but rather a fraternity within boy scouting open to both children and adults, which can be 27 groth joined by passing certain requirements (e.g., service and an ordeal) without earning the rank of eagle scout, boy scouting's highest rank:. although eagle scout is boy scouting's highest rank, an eagle scout can also earn the bronze, silver, and gold palms—boy scouting's highest achievement (boy scouts of america, revised handbook 404). 6. unlike the united states, boy scouts and girl scouts in many countries belong to mixed sex troops with girls registering through the world association of girl guides and girl scouts and boys registering through wosum. 7. i thank: robert blair st. george for noting the prevalence of iroquois names on the map of camp sacajawea and suggesting this line of inquiry. 8. although grinde's theory has received some criticism (see tooker, "the united states constitution and the iroquoian league"), the theorized connection between the iroquoian and united states governments has gained popular acceptance. therefore, his theory has relevance to my argument, which traces the popular european-american imitations of native american behavior in girl scouting. 9. i use the past tense to refer to the iroquois here intentionally, but do not intend to imply that the iroquois no longer exist nor have a culture developing in the present. rather, in terms of playing "indian," the image of the native american is based on their past culture, particularly that from the time of european settlement, which grinde describes. 10. this presumably refers to a personal dish, while the first mention of dishes refers to serving dishes. 11. when using the word domestic in the following argument, i intend to denote the permanent homes and communities where the girls in the delaware-raritan girl scout council live, whether urban, suburban, small town, or rural. although not intending to deny the impermanent structures of nomadic peoples the name "home," i do not write about those cultures in this work. webster's definition of "domestic" denotes "belonging to the home or house," "relating to family affairs," and "of one's own country, nor foreign," which i will use to mean "of one's own culture," not geographic area. 12. fulfilling dining hall duties also fulfills an objective of girl scout camping: "to provide training in citizenship through the give-and-take of community living in which each girl has a part in the planning and carrying out of the camping program" (gs standards 1957, 7). 13. the camp uniform includes shorts and camp shirts, rather than a dress or skirt outfit (the official dress uniform). works cited 75 years of girl scouting. new york: girl scouts of the usa, 1986. american camping association. standards for day and resident camps: the accreditation programs of the american camping association. martinsville, in: american camping association, 1990. billard, jules b., ed. the world of the american indian. washington, dc: national geographic society, 1974. 28 here we sit like birds in the wilderness blood-patterson, peter. rise up singing: the group-singing song book. bethlehem, pa: sing out, 1988. "boy scout." the new lexicon webster's dictionary of the english language: encyclopedic edition. 1987 ed. boy scouts of america. revised handbook for boys. 1st ed. n.p.: boy scouts of america, 1937. degenhardt, mary, and john kirsch. girl scout collector's guide. lombard, il: wallace-homestead, 1987. delaware-raritan girl scout council. camping 1972. edison, nj: delaware-raritan girl scout council (drgsc), 1972. (brochure) ______. come alive in '75. edison, nj: drgsc, 1975. (brochure) ______. find yourself at camp in 1976. edison, nj: drgsc, 1976. (brochure) ______. sing a song of summer: camp in 1973! edison, nj: drgsc, 1973. (brochure) ______. summer camp is for you! edison, nj: drgsc, 1980. (brochure) ______. think camp 1974. edison, nj: drgsc, 1974. (brochure) "domestic." the new lexicon webster's dictionary of the english language: encyclopedic edition. 1987 ed. eubanks, toni. ceremonies in girl scouting. new york: girl scouts of the usa, 1990. fenton, william. "iroquoian culture history: a general evaluation." symposium on cherokee and iroquois culture. william n. fenton and john gulick, eds. smithsonian institution bureau of american ethnology bulletin 180. washington, dc: us govt printing office, 1961. 253-77. francis, daniel. the imaginary indian: the image of the indian in canadian culture. vancouver, bc: arsenal pulp, 1992. gilligan, carol. in a different voice: psychological theory and women's develop ment. cambridge, ma: harvard up, 1982. girl scouts, inc. scouting for girls. 1920. revised edition. new york: girl scouts, 1929. girl scouts of the usa. good counselors make good camps: a guide for staffing camps. new york: girl scouts of the usa, 1957. ______. highlights of girl scouting 1912-1985. new york: girl scouts of the usa, 1986. ______. standards for girl scout camping: guides for better and safer camping. new york: girl scouts of the usa, 1957. ______. standards for girl scout camping: guides for better and safer camping. new york: girl scouts of the usa, 1965. ______. worlds to explore: handbook for brownie and junior girl scouts. new york: girl scouts of the usa, 1977. green, reyna. "the tribe called wannabee: playing indian in america and europe." folklore 99 (1988): 30-55. grinde, donald a., jr. the iroquois and the founding of the american nation. n.p.: indian historian, 1977. kraszewski, joy. telephone interview. 17 april 1995. 29 groth "liminal." the new lexicon webster’s dictionary of the english language: ency clopedic edition. 1987 ed. macdonald, carolyn. personal interview. 3 april 1995. macdonald, ruth. telephone interview. 31 january 1995. matsui, connie, and sylvia barsion. "proposing a new girl scout law." girl scout leader (summer 1996): 22-24. menaker, daniel. "indian summer." the new yorker 69 (23 and 31 august 1993): 166. mitchell, gwen. handbook for camp directors and administrators in a girl scout council. new york: girl scouts of the usa, 1967. moreau, daniel. "summer camps: the golden oldies." changing times 44 (march 1988): 107ff. new jersey girl scout councils. girl scout camping 1978. n.p.: new jersey girl scout councils, 1978. (brochure) ______. summer camp: the best part's the fun! n.p.: new jersey girl scout councils, 1986. (brochure) tannen, deborah. you just don't understand: women and men in conversation. new york: ballantine, 1990. tooker, elisabeth, ed. native north american spirituality of the eastern woodlands: sacred myths, dreams, visions, speeches, healing formulas, rituals and ceremonies. new york: paulist, 1979. ______. "the united states constitution and the iroquian league." ethnohistory 35 (fall 1988): 305-36. turner, geoffrey. indians of north america. poole, uk: blandford, 1979. turner, victor. the ritual process: structure and anti-structure. 1969. new york: aldine de gruyter, 1995. wilkinson, robert e. camps: their planning and management. st louis, mo: mosby, 1981. witthoft, john. "eastern woodlands community typology and acculturation." symposium on cherokee and iroquois culture. william n. fenton and john gulick, eds. smithsonian bureau of american ethnology bulletin 180. washington, dc: us govt printing office, 1961. 67-76. young, philip. "the mother of us all: pocahontas remembered." kenyon review 24.3 (summer 1962): 391-415. 30 the ever-vigilant hero: revaluing the tale of tam lin evelyn m. perry in the scots folk tale, tam lin (child ballad #39), a beautiful young knight is captured by the fairy queen when he falls from his horse. the fairy queen takes tam as her lover, to live with the fairy folk until she tires of him. once captured by the queen, tam is no longer a participant in a mortal reality. at times he can be found in the abandoned halls and gardens of carterhaugh, but these visits must be secretive (the queen's hold over him is jealous and powerful), and there is risk and danger involved in his visits to our reality. for when the fairy queen tires of tam lin, or if he becomes irksome to her, he will be given as a tithe to hell. thus, when the hero janet1 falls in love with tam lin and becomes impregnated by him, he is half dead—dead to a human, mortal existence yet alive among the immortal fairy folk. tam lin is "living" on borrowed time, and it is janet's project to save him by pulling him away from the fairy queen's powers, back into the mortal world of carterhaugh and old scotland. should janet fail in this, tam lin will surely be pushed into hell, into an endless death and suffering from which there is no return. the folk tale that bears his name occupies a position in the literary canon not unlike tam lin's position in fairy land. due to a tradition of devaluation, folk tale has been relegated to children's literature and considered peasant fiction fit for juvenile audiences (brockman). that children's literature has been devalued as quality literature (as has been discussed so often and so fervently), and that scots literature continues to be largely ignored by scholars and critics, renders the tale of tam lin powerless. tam lin is half dead, enjoying only occasional visits to the literary canon and in danger of being lost forever. i find myself a frustrated janet on a recent trip to the book store to find research materials. collections of folk tales do not generally come with any critical apparatus and, when they do, the critical readings of folk tales are often done in post-enlightenment, anthropological terms, implying that these tales are ancient artifacts through which we may understand our unenlightened ancestors, but which bear no meaning or relevance to modern audiences. we learn that peasant fiction, generally transmitted orally, served to instruct, to describe social expectations and warn away from transgression. curiously, it is often the transgressor who becomes the hero, in that he or she has broken "the roles" (for good, and to preserve them) and lived to tell the tale. 31 perry revisions of folk tales, frequently directed at a youthful reader, leave out elements of the original tale considered inappropriate for their audience (janet and tam's sexual relationship, for example, and resulting pregnancy). removing elements originally intended for instruction leaves only a description of the hero's journey. and without understanding that there are rules, that serious danger comes in transgressing these rules, and that the hero has transgressed for good (and has won!), the description of the hero's journey is paled. the fears and anxieties that often produce or stand in for good and evil (who stole the soul of my dead child?, why are violent people bad?, etc.) are also paled. to put the matter simply, good loses its force when there is no real threat, no evil, to compare it to. in our devaluation of children's literature and folk literature, we are ultimately underestimating the child audience's ability and overestimating the adult audience's ability to find meaning and relevance in our literary heritage. the intentions of this analysis are to further describe current devaluations of folk literature by performing a lengthy close reading the original tale of tam lin and by assessing, more briefly, the ways in which it has been altered to suit a child audience in jane yolen's tam lin, a young adult audience in diana wynne jones' fire and hemlock, and an adult audience in pamela dean's tam lin. the "original" ballad of tam lin the original tale of tam lin is most easily found in a collection of folk tales, which are often listed by the culture believed to have produced them. while folklore scholars are familiar with this as #39 in f.j. child's collection, the english and scottish popular ballads, the student reader of folklore is more often introduced to the tales through contemporary collections. for this reason, the following analysis is based on the version of tam lin found in the oxford book of scottish verse, chosen by john macqueen and tom scott. while this collection is an excellent resource, including authors from medieval to present-day scotland and arguing against the passing over of scots literature, certain historical and thematic material has been left out. for this, we cannot blame the editorial powers of macqueen and scott, but the form of the collection. the critical apparatus that does appear in the oxford book of scottish verse is generally verse-specific2 and footnoted. the "introduction" to the collection focuses on the location of material, scots pronunciation, and changes made in spelling and grammar. very little bibliographic information and historical orientation is included, and no discussion of the ballad form or of specific ballads is attempted. thus the reader of tam lin must encounter the ballad on his or her own terms. a reader so challenged will 32 the evervigilant hero often fall back on the existing literary valuations to which he or she has been exposed. if critical apparatuses do anything aside from enabling a greater understanding of the text, they assert the perceived significance of that text. a ballad without footnotes implies that there is nothing complicated, and so nothing relevant or important, to be discovered in it. thus, the cultural mores contained in tam lin continue to be unsung, and our valuation of the folk tale remains limited, when we perceive it as obvious or simple. macqueen and scott have done well to celebrate scots literature (thus saving it from being categorized as—at best—anglo-scots literature) and their choosing of folk literature in support of that project is commendable. ironically, it is one component of literary devaluation, the attitude that folk literature helps explain the simple people of a simple time, that allows tam lin to have a place in the collection at all. macqueen and scott's audience receives the ballad of tam lin in its "original" form, as a contemporary audience for the tale would have received it, to aid us in our estimation of ancient belief systems. i have purposely put "original" in quotation marks here, as the need to ascertain author or intention in folk literature is extremely problematic, if at all necessary. folk literature, due to the oral nature of its transmission, the changing abilities of the teller and demands of the audience, earns itself a special privilege. as suggested by the very title of the genre, folk literature can be understood as enjoying a communal authorship. the ballad of tam lin, as it appears in the oxford book of scottish verse, is "original" only in that it has been recorded, that it has been fixed in time, in its oral state. the reader should be mindful that, prior to this recording, the tale of tam lin was shaped by the culture(s)3 that produced it. contribution and augmentation are the life-blood of folk literature. while we appreciate the original tam lin, we should be mindful that retellings keep the tale alive, defy the obsoletion that is the threat of recording and publishing. here we must dance on a very fine line. we must choose between immortalizing the tale by fixing it and making it accessible to a larger public, allowing it to live on, to change and grow through retellings as is its nature, but we must see to it that such retellings do not distill the relevance of the tale and force it into the devaluations inherent in literary categorization. the question is not whether folk literature should be made available, but how it is interpreted and made available, and what that says about current audiences. in the terms of this analysis, the original tam lin not only provides a post-enlightenment reader with a (however incomplete) understanding of a more distant time, but gives us a base from which we can identify and assess the augmentations made during our time. the original tam lin has been recorded as a ballad. i have used the terms ballad and tale interchangeably above, as we receive the story in both forms, 33 perry but the significant differences in form should be noted. ballads are made to be sung which, no doubt, helped them be remembered and repeated as an oral art form. the surviving original tune of tam lin can be found in the nationalist and antiquarian collections of robert burns.4 prior to burns, text was recorded apart from tune; thus, we find the ballad written in a verse form congenial to instrumentation, but without musical notation. the stanza/verse, janet has kilted her green kirtle a little aboon her knee, and she has broded her yellow hair a little aboon her bree, and she's awa to carterhaugh as fast as she can hie. (276) is repeated three times throughout the ballad, suggesting its function as the chorus of the ballad. this ordering differs greatly from modem instrumentation, in that the chorus does not appear after a set number of verses. it seems important that the chorus verse/stanza is six lines long, following an abcbdb rhyme scheme, while the bulk of the verses are four lines long with a simpler abcb rhyme scheme. however, certain other stanzas are six lines long, and the rhyme scheme of both four and six line verses is not consistent. it does not seem that the six-line stanzas are any more crucial to the plot of the tale than the four-line stanzas. inconsistencies of this nature are common to the written version of an oral form and should not dictate our estimation of the ballad as less literary or lacking in quality for resisting the strict forms of poetics. indeed, it is inconsistencies such as these which continue to transmit the oral nature of the ballad, and allow for verbal and musical interpretations and retellings.5 the success with which the plot of the story is transmitted allows tam lin to exist outside of instrumentation, though any retelling requires interpretation. the reteller of folk literature, whether the oral story teller, the musician or the penning author, has been both a reader and a transmitter of the tale. the narrative facts in question, to be held back or elaborated by the author, are contained in this "original" tale. interestingly, the original tale does not open with the chorus verse/stanza as we might expect, but with a warning that piques our curiosity and introduces the dangers with which janet must contend, o i forbid you, maidens a', that wear gowd in your hair, to come or gae by carterhaugh, for young tam lin is there. . . there's nane that gaes by carterhaugh 34 the evervigilant hero but they leave him a wad, either their rings, or green mantles, or else their maidenhead. (276) within these opening stanzas we are warned away from the dwelling of tam lin and the fairy folk. we learn that these are dangerous places not to be tried. we learn also that those who pass near are assured of their safety if they leave an offering for tam lin. these offerings have great value, they are jewels, clothing, and female purity—all monetary tokens bartered or exchanged for advancement. certainly the dangers must be great to demand such loss, though they are not overtly stated. the opening stanzas are followed by the chorus, in which we learn that janet intends to risk a visit to carterhaugh. as yet, we are unsure of her motives for doing so, but the fact that she has "kilted her green kirtle/a little aboon her knee," thus displaying her legs, or that she has called attention to her face by "brod(ing) her yellow hair/a little aboon her bree," combine with the sexual threat of the opening stanzas in suggesting the form of danger involved in a visit to carterhaugh. while unclear as to her motives, her bold flirtation with danger (both literally and figuratively, it seems) introduces us to the quality of janet's character. she comes off as courageous, perhaps foolishly so, strong, determined, and sexually alive. we like janet the way we like many rebels. she is defying authority, breaking somewhat unexamined rules, and we cheer her on from the margins with hope and trepidation. upon reaching the well at carterhaugh, janet pulls "a double rose," which allows tam lin to materialize and to repeat the threat, why pu's thou the rose, janet, and why breaks thou the wand? or why comes thou to carterhaugh withoutten my command? (276) it seems that janet's purposeful destruction of the natural world (through the somewhat rare double rose6) functions as a signal to tam lin. this kind of relationship between the natural world and the unnatural world is a common one in folk literature, and the audience is less surprised by its thematic appearance and use than by janet's defense, 'carterhaugh, it is my ain, my daddie gave it me; i'll come and gang by carterhaugh, and ask nae leave at thee.' (277) 35 perry janet's motives for seeking tam lin at carterhaugh are here revealed. she has claims upon the land which tam lin and the fairy folk keep her from enjoying. her claims on carterhaugh are just, as determined by the rules of her culture. like the true folk hero, she is battling evil (seen as unnatural) with good (natural and deserved). janet is going against the authority of the warning and thus breaking the rules, but she is breaking them in order to preserve order and control. her resistance to the rules is temporary and is performed to allow those rules to be enforced and perpetuated. for this, and for janet's reaction to the arrogance of tam lin, we continue to support her character. janet returns to the court, and it is then that we hear of her pregnancy, out then spak an auld grey knight, lay oer the castle wa, and says, 'alas, fair janet, for thee but we'll be blamed a' . . . 'hauld your tongue, ye auld fac'd knight, some ill death may ye die! father my bairn on whom i will, i'll father nane on thee' . . . out then spak her father dear, and he spak meek and mild; 'and ever alas, sweet janet,' he says, 'i think thou gaes wi' child' . . . 'if that i gae wi child, father, mysel maun bear the blame; there's neer a laird about your ha shall get the bairn's name. (277-78) despite the fact that janet's sexual encounter with tam lin is not detailed or described, we immediately learn of its having taken place. by now, we are not shocked by janet's response to the "auld grey knight" or to her father, for it is in keeping with her impassioned willfulness. we are, however, somewhat concerned with janet's future, as is janet. after describing the fairy marvels surrounding tam, the father of her child, she returns to the well at carterhaugh to summon tam lin by pulling on a double rose. it is by janet's questioning of tam lin and his mortality that we come to know his tale; how he was caught by the fairy queen falling from his horse and, thus caught, is within her powers. our sympathy for tam lin grows while he describes the fairy land and the tithe-system the fairy queen upholds, ‘and pleasant is the fairy land, but, an eerie tale to tell, ay at the end of seven years 36 the evervigilant hero we pay a tiend to hell; i am sae fair and fu o flesh, i'm feard it be mysel. (279) it is further disclosed that janet and tam's affair is very well timed. the tithe to hell is paid, appropriately enough, on halloween night, the very night of this visit to carterhaugh. at midnight the fairy folk will ride, and "they that wad their true-love win/at miles cross they maun bide." janet and tam may win their true loves, thus rescuing tam from the fairy world, procuring janet and her bairn's future, restoring carterhaugh to mortal control, and outsmart ing the fairy queen and the devil both. . the tale of tam lin holds within its frame a series of transgressions made on both sides: on one, janet's visit to carterbaugh, extramarital sex and pregnancy. on the other, tam's visits to the mortal world, and a disruption of the tithe system. and on both sides, outlawed love. the transgressions made against the roles of the natural, mortal world, the good, keep the unnatural, immortal world, the evil with all its dangers, at bay. keeping evil at bay ensures the survival of the good and keeps intact its system of roles. nevertheless, protecting the authority and control of good through transgression, quite symmetrically, requires a transgression of the roles of evil. janet must wait for tam lin at miles cross, pull him from his horse (much as the fairy queen did), and withstand certain tortures before he is fully restored to the mortal world. 'they'll turn me in your arms, lady, into an esk and adder. . . 'they'll turn me to a bear sae grim, and then a lion bold. . . ‘again they'll turn me in your arms to a red het gaud of aim . . . 'and last they'll turn me in your arms into the burning gleed; then throw me into well water, o throw me in with speed . . . ‘and then i'll be your ain true-love, i'll turn a naked knight; then cover me with your green mantle, and cover me out o sight' (281) as these transgressions are performed, and these tortures are suffered, for the benefit of good, they are understood as just. indeed, the transgressions against the roles of evil are hardly seen as transgressions at all. from the outset, the roles of evil are described as something which must be feared and 37 perry avoided, not upheld. for janet to help tam transgress the control of an alternate authority is not perceived and evaluated in the same light as her own transgressions. but the balance and symmetry of these two systems are necessary to our appreciation of the tale. to corrupt the dangers of evil through oversimplification or the tenets of good through purification, upsets the balance that gives beauty to the tale and detracts from janet's ultimate accomplishment: the victory of good over evil. but the original tam lin contains a final warning. the fairy queen will have us understand that the vigilance with which we must battle evil is constant. janet's success is seen as temporary, and an appeal is made to the hero in all of us to help maintain her success. jane yolen's tam lin although i was fortunate in knowing that jane yolen's picture book retelling of tam lin exists, it can be accessed when conducting a research materials search. but it takes a critical janet, a transgressor of canon valuations, to allow a children's version of tam lin into a critical analysis. jane yolen's retelling remains mostly true to the original ballad and provides some delightful expansions on the tale. according to this version, the offerings left at carterhaugh are tokens proving the bravery of boys visiting the enchanted ruins on a dare. jennet goes to carterhaugh on her sixteenth birthday, the day of her inheritance, despite the fears and admonitions of her parents. when she returns to rescue tam lin, she brings with her holy water and dirt from a garden. such aspects of yolen's tam lin all serve to embellish the original ballad. the tokens left by the boys describe the tenuous relationship between the natural world and the fairy world. as young people will, the boys challenge danger and feel obligated to prove their bravery. but, as yolen explains, they do not stay for long, and these expeditions give them nightmares, there was an awful smell to the place, like apples gone bad, or dead mice in the walls, or dirty water in an unused well. and there were moving shadows where no shadows should be. those few who went to visit carterhaugh did not stay for long, and they had bad dreams for many nights after. (2) despite bold resistances to the verity of fairy folk and the unknown, it is asserted that such things do, indeed, exist. it is clear to both the characters and the reader that the elements of danger in this tale, the evil, can only be— at best—cautiously questioned. jennet herself has visited carterhaugh. she feels it is hers by birth-right 38 the evervigilant hero and has taunted the boys for appearing afraid. it is explained that jennet's willingness to visit carterbaugh is in part due to her culture's dismissal of fairy folk. she describes such beliefs as "nursery tales" that do not intimidate her nor dictate her behavior. although she espouses this attitude from her culture, her strong-willed character is, as in the original ballad, not appropriate for her age or gender. her daring is not the harmless daring of the boys, but the very thing that will keep her from marrying and achieving the "proper" role in her world. this tension between what jennet has taken from, versus how she responds to, her society is further detailed. for while jennet is transgressing against her appropriate social role, she brings with her holy water and garden earth, blessed by christianity and firmly rooted in her world, seen and understood as powerful and good. such elements as these, which yolen has taken care to include in her retelling, are true to the story in that they do not force the narrative away from the original and in that they actually emphasize the characterization and thematic concerns of the tale. but lest we forget that her retelling is in the form of a picture book, and intended for a very young audience, it must be pointed out that the sexual aspects of the tale have been entirely left out. the two visits to carterhaugh made by jennet in the original ballad have been collapsed into one in jane yolen's tam lin. this allows the significant meeting of jennet and tam, their love, and tam's story, all to be portrayed to the audience without sex and pregnancy being involved. the most explicit sexual role described is tam's allusion to falling from the fairy queen's favor ("but now she loves another") which explains tam's upcoming doom but does not exactly describe tam as the queen's lover. and though jennet finds pleasure in holding tam's hand, when he embraces her to seal their pact, it is only his voice that "kisses" jennet ("his words were like kiss—cold, distant, and fierce"). the creative way in which yolen implies the touching that romantic love involves does not achieve the actual threat and anxiety motivating jennet and tam in the original ballad. as the two scenes are collapsed and their sexual union is avoided, the love between jennet and tam is rather quickly produced. the reality of their circumstances is minimized. within moments, jennet meets tam, falls in love with him, and agrees to risk herself on his behalf. those symmetrical elements of the tale described earlier, tam's transgressions, and our concern for tam's, jennet's and their child's welfare, are lost. thus we are left with the hero's journey, paled in scope and severity. the delicate balance existing between good and evil is reduced, and this reduction of evil works against our understanding of the power of good. without the sexuality of the original ballad, the socio-literary relevance of tam lin is disastrously undermined, and the balanced beauty of the tale is gone. the effect of the diminished tale is felt most acutely at its conclusion. in 39 perry yolen's tam lin, jennet and tam are married, produce several children, and "live happily ever after." the fairy queen's final threat to the couple, the understanding that we must never relax our fight against evil, and the touching appeal to the hero in all of us, have been plowed under by the promise of happily ever after and the distillation of evil. but the threat of losing tam lin, and all folk tale, to a series of distillations is not the only danger here. modern attempts to historicize and understand the middle ages also suffer. since most folk tales are set in the middle ages, and our reading of folk tales comes mainly from the altered children's version described above, our impressions and reconstructions of that time are likewise altered. our first attempts at historicization7 render the middle ages as intellectually simple, without sex, without real danger (fairy folk and tithes to hell are most certainly not real!). when social constructions of good and evil are not literarily expressed, an understanding of the complexity of medieval morality is lost. yolen's tam lin is set in old scotland. here the classic rendering of the middle ages as sexless and without "real" evil has taken place. this particular picture book, as with many, will introduce an audience—however young—to another time in history and to other facets of human existence. the devaluations of children's literature, folklore and literary history too easily accepted are learned and perpetuated through our first texts. it is important to note that, while yolen includes a brief synopsis and discussion of the original ballad at the end of her book, she includes the same creative avoidance of sex in that discussion as she does in her retelling. a loyal reader of tam lin, yolen pays homage to her source and the beauty of folklore by mentioning it. she explains some historical and geographical references and examines certain plot elements she has expanded or interpreted, but nowhere is there any mention of the sexuality she has avoided. even when quoting stanzas of the original ballad to describe her influences and concerns, those stanzas involving tam and jennet's sexual relationship and jennet's pregnancy, are completely left out. although the synopsis is clearly written for an adult audience, yolen is perpetuating the belief that such things are not for the young and ignoring the structural and thematic relevance they bear on the text. she is ultimately not allowing the adult reader any agency in the interpretation and appreciation of the tale. it is my opinion that yolen's power as reteller could have been especially useful here. for having chosen to dismiss a crucial aspect of the tale, mentioning it and examining her reasons for leaving it out would have allowed her to remain true to current perceptions of children and children's literature (and publish her work) as well as to the original ballad. this final relegation suggests, instead, that yolen has been conditioned by the literary devaluations with which this paper argues. 40 the evervigilant hero diana wynne jones' fire and hemlock presumably, a young adult retelling of tam lin, as we have in diana wynne jones' fire and hemlock, would allow the author to involve more of those original elements denied in jane yolen's tam lin. interestingly, polly, the janet8 of fire and hemlock, is a college-aged woman looking back through her adolescent years. the climax of the novel is written with polly as that older woman. this enables jones to describe her characters' sexuality more accurately. although the sex act is still not a part of jones' retelling, her characters enjoy the sensuality of romantic love in a more realistic manner. polly's physical appreciation of thomas (tam) includes fantasies of his naked back, and her grandmother recognizes polly's physical love-response with concerned understanding. in short, the polly of fire and hemlock is allowed the sexual persona and role denied to her in yolen's tam lin. this allowance of sexuality be seen as being "truer" to the original ballad, but fire and hemlock's retelling of tam lin is rather complicated and the reader should be warned away from oversimplifying the relationship between the novel and the tale. in fire and hemlock, jones uses both tam lin and the tale of thomas the rhymer (child #37). this seems quite right since, as child mentions in his annotations to the ballad, "thomas the rhymer appears in the last lines with very great distinction, but it is not clear what part he has in the story," (335). briefly, in fire and hemlock, the fairy queen has "stolen" thomas from the mortal world by striking a bargain: stunning musical talents for his soul. the queen has power over him, but thomas was willing to barter his mortal freedom (which makes him somewhat less sympathetic but perhaps more realistic a character). polly and thomas' friendship develops over seven years, and together they discover that, just as thomas the rhymer speaks what becomes, thomas has the ability to make the stories they write "turn real." jones relies equally on both tales, and several other literary texts (usually fantasy) playa role in that polly and thomas' friendship is based on a love of books and writing. the books that thomas sends to polly hold clues as to his condition, but due to youth and the bewitchings of the fairy queen, it takes some time for polly to make this discovery. once she learns how to save thomas, she walks to miles cross (in the town square of an english village this time) in order to rescue him. the fairy queen turns thomas into many things while polly perseveres in her love, and again the janet wins. but here polly and thomas' victory is not so neatly established, and the queen's final threat forces them, as the novel closes, to negotiate their language and relationship so that the queen cannot reclaim thomas. they must collaboratively write their reality and be vigilant in maintaining their victory over evil. 41 relying as it does on two tales, fire and hemlock is somewhat harder to find when researching tam lin. i learned of it, rather accidentally, through children's literature specialists.9 the syncretism involved in using folk literatures to produce a "new" text is an endless source of delight for me, as i believe it was for jones. jones does not insist on calling her novel a retelling, but faithfully includes tam lin and thomas the rhymer in an intertextual manner. while plot elements from both tales are used to structure and narrate fire and hemlock, they are also included in their original forms as two texts describing thomas' situation. polly consciously reads the tales and considers how they inform her reality. this allows the tales to exist in the original without offending potential audiences. the way in which these tales are the root of this novel, describe folk literature as the root of all literature—thus reestablishing its importance and vitality. fire and hemlock is set in modem-day england. this brings folk literature forward and asserts its relevance. as c. w. sullivan iii explains in "traditional ballads and modem children's fantasy: some comments on structure and intent," perry jones' fire and hemlock, set, as it is, in the twentieth century more obviously represents a conscientious concern for authenticity. jones had to create a twentieth-century setting into which she could incorporate the essential and the fantastic elements of "tam lin" and "thomas the rhymer" and, at the same time, alter the surface details of those ballads so that they fit into the twentieth-century setting without losing their traditional integrity. (146) that the original tales are included, sex and evil and all, allows the young adult reader to historicize the middle ages more accurately, for it is not being received in a distilled fashion. that the final triumph over the fairy queen is not quite absolute reinforces the understanding that evil does exist, highlighting good, and reasserting the very real nature of both. i believe that sex and evil and "unnatural" behavior have been left out of children's/young adult literature in order to appeal to the current buying audience—an audience trained in judaeo-christian morality. our culture continues to insist that such things destroy the purity and innocence of childhood that we believe in and romanticize. our estimations of preadolescents and adolescents reading young adult literature allow for sexual feelings to exist, but continue to enforce their suppression (hunt). early audiences, who would have heard tam lin in its original, were less apt to romanticize childhood, thus allowing the tale to include these elements as necessary parts of human life. 42 the evervigilant hero it seems quite odd to me that we should try and keep our children ignorant of a world in which we participate by refashioning folk tales, the literary roots of our world. as we distill their literature, we misrepresent the world that children, like adults, are all participants in. as mae durham rogers asserts in "from folklore to literature," i am committed to the idea that even though the tales were not meant for children, although they have listened to them throughout history, the tales belong to children as much as they belong to scholars. we must look at the adjustments and alterations made by retellers and editors. . . . this kind of change, for me, is a form of condescension. and condescension has no place in our work with children. (63-64) the relegation of children, and children's literature, as "other"—as less "real," less relevant for celebrated innocence and less intellectually valuable—underestimates, and undermines, our children's ability to negotiate the world in which they live, and forces folk literature into a misunderstood and unappreciated art form. that our reading of the middle ages is primarily constructed through children's literature and folklore only adds to the argument for more accurate representations and valuations of both. while yolen tells a charming tale, she not a crusader in the positive revaluation of folk literature. i believe that jones, however, has taken an important step forward by honestly examining her sources and methods. ironically, just as the anthropological devaluation of folk literature allowed tam lin to be included in macqueen and scott's collection, the devaluation of children's literature has allowed for jones' fire and hemlock. we do not often find children's literature separated in terms of genre, perhaps because we do not see its audience as being capable of making and understanding such distinctions. thus we find that the relegation of folklore is not as instrumental in the world of children's literature and the successful arguments made by and for jones' fire and hemlock can be accessed by a larger audience. once the devaluation of children's literature has been established, further need for devaluation is unnecessary. so while we turn our noses up at children's literature, we also turn our noses up at a literary world where folklore, science fiction, and realism live side-by-side. adult retellings of folk literature, however, do not enjoy this literary equality. pamela dean's tam lin with the employee of a book store as my guide, i look up t-a-m l-i-n in the store's computer. i am, at this point, more concerned with locating yolen's 43 text, so when i discover that there is another out there, i am especially delighted. "can you give me an author?" i say to the man. perry "the author is pa dean." "pa dean? are you sure? i've never heard of pa dean," i respond. he looks at me as if i have two heads. really, i did not mean to be rude, but pa dean just sounded so hokey, like someone trying to be a fat, cozy storyteller of the old american south. well, that can be useful after all, i think. or perhaps someone's name really is pa dean. i copy the name out onto my notebook and thank the somewhat disgruntled employee. but i have no luck in finding any books by pa dean in the children's section (and i'm afraid it did not occur to me to look anywhere else). finally, i move operations to a more reputable children's book store, where they tell me that they have a p. dean's tam lin, in the adult section. i am overjoyed, folklore for adults! i rush over to the (adult) folklore section. lots of structural anthropology and some collections, but no p. dean. i try mythology, no p. dean. i even try history. no p. dean. back to the customer service desk, only to discover that pa dean is pamela dean. while i am dismayed that no one caught this data entry error, i am more disappointed in myself for not questioning it, and for assuming that the familial "pa" would be an author of children's literature. despite my argument with literary devaluation, i have nevertheless employed it in my research. the powerful tradition of literary devaluation runs deep in all of us. i make a mental note to remedy my own appalling behavior. when i finally locate pamela dean's tam lin, it is in the science fiction section. it is folklore, i think to myself, fantasy at best. and now it's not only been relegated to science fiction (yet another genre of undeserved ridicule), but it has been falsely relegated. still, i am gripping an adult retelling of folk literature in my hands. turning the glossy paper back in my hands, i read terri windling's editorial note on the back, once upon a time... . . . fairy tales were written for young and old alike. it is only in the last century that they have been deemed fit only for children and stripped of much of their original complexity, sensuality, and power to frighten and delight. i couldn't have said it better myself, i think. feelings of warmth and friendship for terri windling and pamela dean well out of my heart. upon reading dean's tam lin, i find that those qualities that have been "stripped" through retellings, have here been reinserted. the "original 44 the evervigilant hero complexity" of the tale, the severity of tam's predicament and janet's pregnancy, return. the "sensuality," physical descriptions of romantic love and sexuality, are explored and detailed. "the power to frighten and delight" in dean's retelling keeps me riveted to the pages of tam lin for three days straight. dean's tam lin has been set on a mid-western college campus. the janet10 of her tale, an entering freshman, stumbles upon a world of mystery. professor medeous, janet's advisor and the director of the classics department, is the fairy queen. medeous has stolen tam in exchange for his immortality. tam's seven-year stint is explained, in the terms of higher education, as having resulted from a continual switch in majors. this kind of unpredictable, somewhat disloyal, behavior has irritated medeous, and she plans for him to be the next tithe paid to hell. students following a major in classics make up the fairy folk, but we learn that several of them have been with us for thousands of years—some are even original players from shakespeare's troupe. certain attitudes towards authors, shakespeare, keats, wordsworth, have developed in the fairy folk depending on the authors' refusal of the fairy queen's offers. the novel is extraordinarily intertextual, as characters discuss and argue the merits of literary history. these discussions, as well as a description of college life, comprise much of the text, and we follow janet into the end of her junior year. following a casual, sexual relationship with one of shakespeare's players, janet develops a friendship with tam. she is impregnated by him in a one-night fling. her situation is revealed to her while she learns of tam's impending doom. janet battles with the decision, finally deciding to go to miles cross (here a wooden bridge on campus) on halloween night and pull him from his horse. in keeping with the original ballad, tam goes through a series of transformations in janet's arms before finally being thrown into a stream and returned to a mortal existence. the climax of tam's rescue, like much of the novel, accurately follows the language of the original ballad. indeed, the language is almost exact and, if it has been altered, it has been added to (never taken from). professor medeous, the fairy queen, responds to tam's rescue as does the original character, "oh, had i known," she said in her own voice, but with a wild note and a wilder accent, scottish flavored with welsh or french or something nobody knew. . . . "tam lin," she said, "what this night i did see," and she looked back at janet, "i had looked him in the eye, and turned him to a tree." . . . 45 perry "there will be two then" said medeous. . . . "in seven years, we shall have two." she looked hard at thomas. "and two dearer," she said, clearly. (450) in her use of the original language of tam lin, and the threat made to janet and her child's future, dean returns the power, the gravity and scope of the original ballad, to her reader. dean's retelling of tam lin, her modernization and expansion, coexist with the beauty and symmetry contained in the original. while her narrative departs from the original greatly, to include current studies in literature and the life of a modern college student, she does not leave out any aspect of the original ballad. this is a retelling that truly adds to and enhances the tale of tam lin without distilling it. unlike jones' fire and hemlock, the tale of tam lin is not a part of dean's intertextuality. in dean's tam lin, the tale is happening for the first time. no references to the tale help janet to save her beloved. but just as jones' reference to the tale legitimizes her selected use of it, dean's sensitivity to the language and themes of the tale allows her retelling to have a respectful vision of the original. it can be said that dean has the license to write in the questionable morality and danger of the original ballad because she writes for an adult audience. that dean is writing for adults is clear, for her novel requires an understanding of literary history and young adulthood. nevertheless, dean is accomplishing something that yolen and jones' texts do not. she is returning the original ballad to adults (a large portion of its original audience) in an embellished state. dean's attention to the original makes an elegant argument for the relevance of folk literature to the adult world. that this argument has been confined and devalued as science fiction is the fault of the tradition of literary hierarchy maintained by both publishers and critics. the preservation of folk tales, like the preservation of good, requires constant vigilance. allowing beautiful tales such as tam lin to visit the literary canon, or appreciating them only for the glimpses they provide of an older time and audience, is simply not enough. the arrogance of current scholarship, in which the relevance and weight of our literary roots are belittled and distilled, keep us from the pleasure and scope those literary roots provide. the devaluation of folk literature, like children's/young adult literature and scots literature, is a threat to our literary heritage and social estimations. our readers are not above devalued texts, they are being robbed of them. to classify such texts as "other," as lacking in literary quality, and to relegate them to shelves and collections outside of prized literature, fixes them as half-dead and superfluous—a fate of which they are most undeserving. 46 the evervigilant hero perhaps the most poignant unrecognized aspect of tam lin, in terms of this analysis, is its appeal to the hero in all of us. as it calls us to action, the beauty of tam lin seems to reach across time and force us to reevaluate the aims and directions of literary scholarship. folklore scholars today must function as "janets." this is not an easy role to inhabit, but that of hero never has been. we must battle the short-sighted ridicule of canon valuation. we must transgress the rules, as i have tried to do in my use of children's literature for a critical analysis and intentional avoidance of the use of critical materials that i feel only add to current devaluation and misinterpretation. such transgressions, as we have seen, serve to preserve the good. this argument has been staged as a call for reassessment and appreciation of literature—the very art form we feel called to defend. in denying folk literature, as well as several other forms, a place in the canon, we are undermining and weakening the whole of literary art. those rules of scholarship (say something useful about prized texts, back yourself up with a multitude of resources, use only the neutral, thesis-driven form of writing...) here being transgressed, are being transgressed in order to preserve a worthy component of literature. whatever successes the "janets" might have are temporary, for the relegation of literature has become a constant and traditional process. thus, we are required to be the ever-vigilant hero. we must be precise in locating the attitudes of devaluation in our own research, as well as in the research of others. we must reclaim our beloved and struggle to defend its position. scholars, critics and authors are, in a very real sense, retellers. it is ironic that the practices of the reteller are celebrated while the retellings themselves are denigrated. a respect for the "original" tale, and interpretations that allow the tale to grow and change according to its nature, serve to keep our literary traditions alive. my hopes are that this paper will also serve as a call to the hero in all of us. university of rhode island notes 1. i am here purposeful in describing janet as a hero (and not a heroine) since i believe that (male) heroes are allowed certain qualities of strength and character denied to (female) heroines. the janet of tam lin is truly a hero as she champions a powerless man by battling another woman. it is a pity that more female characters do not occupy this heroic role and that, when they do, we do not celebrate it equally. 2. by verse-specific i mean simply the explication and location of place names that appear in a given text, of "real life" characters alluded to, and the glossing of obsolete or culturally-specific vocabulary. 47 3. by adding an (s) to culture here, my intention is to broaden the accepted definition of culture to include subcultures-audiences and concerns-that may be regionally or historically specific. 4. burns was among the first to combine text and tune in print. for the tune of tam lin, see burns: poems and songs, edited by james kinsley, 658. 5. one example of a (late) 20th century musical retelling can be found in the fairport convention's recording of "tam lin," in which the chorus verse/stanza is repeated in a more regular fashion. 6. there is reason to believe that double flowers, like grafted trees, due to their rarity or the unnaturalness of their construction, were said to grow near entrances to the fairy world. the queen of "sir orfeo" is stolen away by the fairies when she falls asleep beneath an "ympe" (grafted) tree. 7. much of medieval literature has been relegated to a devalued, juvenile standing (the king arthur and robin hood legends, and other romances, for example). it can be suggested that that which has not been so devalued (chaucer's poetry, monastic manuscripts, dante's visit to the afterlife) are texts in which the realities of human existence are inseparable from the text, or to which the colonizing character of christianity has lent its valuation. pedagogically, it should be noted that students of canon-valued medieval literature are often surprised and frustrated by the need to insert "new" estimations of the middle ages into an existing paradigm informed by altered folk literature. 8. i believe that jones chose these names to help "modernize" the tale, and that it is in keeping with the english setting for her novel and her equal reliance on "thomas the rhymer." 9. i am much indebted to susan p. bloom, cathryn m. mercier, and heather l. walker of the center for the study of children's literature at simmons college, boston, ma for aiding me in this analysis. 10. dean's characters are rightly called by their original names, janet (carter) and thomas (lane). thomas is shortened to tam by the fairy folk of the novel. perry works cited brockman, bennet. "robin hood and the invention of children's literature." children's literature 10 (1982): 1-17. child, f.j., ed. 1892-1898. the english and scottish popular ballads. new york: pageant, 1956. dean, pamela. tam lin. new york: tor, 1991. hunt, peter. criticism, theory, and children's literature. oxford: oxford up, 1991. jones, diana wynne. fire and hemlock. new york: greenwillow, 1985. kinsley, james, ed. burns: poems and songs. oxford, uk: oxford up, 1992. macqueen, john, and tom scott, eds. the oxford book of scottish verse. new york:: oxford up, 1966. roger, mae durham. "from folklore to literature." through folklore to literature: papers presented at the australian national section of ibby conference on 48 the evervigilant hero children's literature. maurice saxby, ed. sydney: ibby australia publications, 1979. sullivan, c.w. iii. "traditional ballads and modem children's fantasy: some comments on structure and intent." children's literature association quarterly 11.3 (1986): 145--47. yolen, jane. tam lin. charles mikolaycak, illus. new york: harcourt, 1990. 49 cfs: 1996 annual meeting president libby tucker called the section meeting to order at 7:33 pm on thursday, 17 october, at the 1996 afs meetings held in pittsburgh, pennsylvania. she passed on greetings to all present from members who were unable to attend. libby then summarized the section's major activities during the preceding year. these included: (a) the aesop prize committee's overseeing the production and distribution to publishers of aesop prize and aesop accolade book stickers, and (b) priscilla ord's and ruth stotter's exploration of an awards ceremony for aesop prize and accolade winners on 8 november 1996 at the library of congress. since only one award-winning author could attend on that date, however, the tentative plans were canceled with the hope that a more convenient format would result in an award ceremony being held in future years. secretary/treasurer danielle roemer then gave her report. as of september 1996, the membership in the section had increased from a previous eighty four members to a present total of ninety one members: seventy two domestic and nineteen non-domestic. nondomestic members are based in australia, canada, denmark, england, finland, france, germany, indonesia, ireland, japan, romania, taiwan, and wales. danielle also reported that, as of 31 august 1996, the section's general operating funds account stood at $2573.41. regarding other financial matters, to date the section has spent approximately $2000.00 on the production and mailing expenses for the aesop prize and aesop accolade book stickers. income from these sales has thus far amounted to $269.34. editor chip sullivan reported that the 1995-1996 volume of the review ran approximately $350.00 over the production funds supplied by the east carolina university english department. chip then raised the possibility of a special double issue of the review tentatively scheduled for may of 1998 and marking the 20th anniversary of the children's folklore section. as presently conceived, this issue would include a comprehensive index for the journal. simon bronner has agreed to write a history of the section for that issue. libby tucker announced susan charles groth (university of penn sylvania) as the winner of the 1995-1996 newell prize for her essay, "'here we sit like birds in the wilderness waiting for our dessert': the girl scout program and ordering space in camp sacajawea's dining hall/main house." this year's prize includes a check for $250.00. libby then presented a report from the opie prize committee chair margaret macdonald, who could not attend the meeting. on behalf of the committee, margaret recommended as the 1995-1996 opie prize winner the volume children's folklore: a sourcebook, edited by brian sutton-smith, jay mechling, thomas w. johnson, and felicia r. mcmahon (garland 1995). 51 cfs: 1996 annual meeting members present approved this as the winning book and then discussed a second recommendation from the committee: that a new category, opie prize honor book, be established. a motion to create this new award was defeated. aesop prize committee chair ruth stotter reported that, of the 120 books submitted, the committee (ruth stotter, carole h. carpenter, sean galvin, and priscilla ord) selected two anthologies for the aesop prize and twelve books for the aesop accolade for 1996. these were: 1996 aesop prize next year in jerusalem. retold by howard schwartz and illustrated by neil waldman. new york: viking, 1996. nursery tales around the world. retold by judy sierra and illustrated by stefano vitale. new york: clarion, 1996. 1996 aesop accolade list medio-pollito/half-chicken. retold by alma flor ada and illustrated by kim howard. new york: doubleday, 1995. the story of the milky way: a cherokee tale. retold by joseph bruchac and gayle ross and illustrated by virginia a. stroud. new york: dial, 1995. mysterious tales of japan. by rafe martin and illustrated by tatsuro kiuchi. new york: putnam, 1996. when the world was young: creation and pourquoi tales. retold by margaret mayo and illustrated by louise bradley. new york: simon & schuster,1995. the turkey girl. retold by penny pollock and illustrated by ed young. boston: little, brown, 1996. how turtle's back was cracked: a traditional cherokee tales. retold by gayle ross with paintings by murv jacob. new yode dial, 1995. the biggest frog in australia. written and illustrated by susan l. roth. newyork: simon & schuster, 1996. the woman in the moon: a story from hawaii. retold by jama kim rattigan and illustrated by carla golembe. boston: little, brown, 1996. the maiden of northland: a hero tale of finland. retold by aaron shepard and illustrated by carol schwartz. new york: simon & schuster, 1996. songs for survival: songs and chants from tribal peoples around the world. compiled by nikki siegen-smith and illustrated by bernard lodge. new york: dutton, 1995. 52 cfs :1996 annual meeting princess florecita and the iron shoes. retold by john warcen stewig and illustrated by k. wendy popp. new york: knopf (apple soup),1995. wicked jack. retold by connie n. wooldridge and illustrated by will hillenbrand. new york: holiday house, 1995 as instructed by a motion passed at the 1995 section meeting, the committee sent out announcements of these winners not only to the respective publishers, but also to school and library journals, newspapers, children's literature publications, and a variety of organizations and internet addresses that focus on children's literature. continuing her report, ruth also made several proposals: (a) that the section's previous directive to the committee that announcements of the winners be sent out within two weeks of the winners' identification be amended to a time period of "within three weeks." the motion passed. (b) that changes be made in the current design of the aesop prize and aesop accolade book stickers, including the addition of a notice of copyright, to make the stickers more saleable. members present voted in favor of amending the respective designs if the money to do so became available. (c) that publishers be allowed to print the prize or accolade sticker directly on the cover of an award-winning book. such printings would give the year of the respective prize and identify the afs children's folklore section as its bestower. the charge would be $100.00. publishers who later reprinted award-winning books could reproduce the sticker free of charge. consideration of the matter was tabled. (d) that the section negotiate with the artist who drew the design for the aesop medallions for the section's right to reproduce the design on its stationery. members present approved this proposal. (e) that certificates of either their prize award or accolade status be sent to all winning publishers, authors, and illustrators. members present approved thus proposal. libby tucker will design these certificates for the 1994, 1995, and 1996 winners. (t) that criterion number 5 for the aesop prize (that is, that "folklore sources [ . . . ] be fully acknowledged and annotations referenced within the bound contents of the publication") be underlined or printed in bold typeface on the call for submissions. this year, nearly onethird of the books submitted for the prize did not meet this criterion. members present approved this proposal. finally, ruth asked section members to contribute additional names of 53 cfs: 1996 annualmeeting persons and/or publishing companies who should be sent the call for submissions in future years. jan rosenberg reported on the death at age ninety-four of folklorist dorothy howard, who passed away during the winter of 1995. june factor, sylvia grider, and jan rosenberg are currently preparing a commemorative retrospective on howard's work, noting in particular the various fields that howard's work impacted on. jan offered this retrospective for inclusion in the review's 20th anniversary special issue. she also suggested that a focus on howard's work be included in the section's panel for the 1997 afs meetings. for personal reasons, president-elect linda morley will not be able to assume the duties of section president during the 1996-1997 year. joe edgette nominated libby tucker to serve as president for the coming year. sean galvin seconded the nomination. members present unanimously confirmed libby in this position. under new business, danielle roemer reported that the editors of children's folklore: a sourcebook—brian sutton-smith, jay mechling, and thomas w. johnson—have generously agreed to donate their royalties from the book to the section for a total gift amount of $682.00 for 1995-1996. members present expressed their sincere appreciation for the editors' generous donation. (pursuant to her arrangement with garland publishing, book editor felicia mcmahon will not receive royalty payments.) during discussion of particular uses for this money, libby tucker suggested donating it to an as-yet-to-be-selected library for the purchase of children's books. sean galvin then proposed that the section sponsor a 20th anniversary panel on children's folklore for the 1997 afs meetings. a possible focus for the panel might be the changing conceptions of childhood. chip sullivan was volunteered to chair the panel. jan rosenberg suggested the possibility of the section's having children's folklore specialists volunteer as discussants on relevant afs conference panels that are not specifically devoted to the discussion of children's folklore. ruth stotter proposed a money-making project for the section involving each member's sending to her the titles of children's folklore books that he or she owns but would be willing to sell. ruth would then type up a list of the titles and distribute it among the section's members. linda humphrey announced the call for papers for the association for the study of play to be held 2-3 apri11997 in washington, dc. the meeting was adjourned at 9:05 pm. respectfully submitted, danielle roemer secretary/treasurer 54 notes and announcements in our own image: the child, canadian culture, and our future, carole h. catpei1ter, york, canada: the robarts centre for canadian studies, york university, 1996. caroleh. carpenter's 1995 robarts lecture "explores the cultural status of children in canada, the relationship of their marginalization to our contemporary identity, and the implications for our cultural future" (preface). this valuable study by a former president of the children's folklore section of the american folklore society raises provocative questions not only about canadian children and culture, but about all children in western culture. the children's folklore section of the american folklore society annually offers the w.w. newell prize (which includes a cash award) for the best undergraduate or graduate student essay on a topic in children's folklore. students must submit their own papers, and published papers are eligible. instructors are asked to encourage students with eligible papers to enter the competition. papers must be typed, double-spaced, and on white paper. on the first page include the author's name, academic address, home address, and telephone numbers. deadline for each year's competition is march 1st. submit papers or write for additional information: margaret macdonald, 11507 ne 104th street, kirkland, w a 98033. the augusta festival 25th anniversary celebration will take place 8-10 august 1997 at the augusta heritage center, davis & elkins college, elkins, west virginia. for information about augusta heritage center programs in general and the anniversary celebration in particular, call (304) 637-1209 or 1-800-624-3157. the 1997 old songs festival will celebrate the organization's 20th birthday 27-29 june 1997 at the altamont fairgrounds, altamont, ny. for information, contact andy spence, telephone (518) 765-2815, or e-mail oldsongs@crisny.org the second annual international festival of arts & ideas will be held 2529 june 1997 in new haven, ct. among the events of interest to children's folklorists are the festival for children and the youth arts summit. for information, contact lynn richardson, telephone (203) 946-3805. the popular culture association in the south and american culture association in the south will meet 16-18 october 1997 in columbia, sc. for information, contact jon crane, program chair, communications studies, unc-charlotte, charlotte, nc 28223, telephone (704) 547-4005. 55 about the contributors susan charles t. groth holds an ma from the department of folklore and folklife at the university of pennsylvania where she will soon begin her dissertation on girl scouting. she works as a folklife specialist for the northwest jersey folklife project and serves on the board of the middle atlantic folklife association. as a girl, she was active in the delawareraritan girl scout council and currently holds membership in that council's alumnae/i network. her girl scouting experience includes local leadership and international exchange activities. she lives in lambertville, nj, with her husband and daughter. evelyn m. perry is a phd candidate at the university of rhode island, where she teaches writing and literature. she is currently at work on her dissertation, tentatively entitled '''and marian was strang'ly attired': dressing up heroism in the legend of robin hood." ms. perry's work has appeared in the journal of american folklore, the leaflet, and simmons college's essays and studies. 56 c. w. sullivan iii, editor children's folklore review department of english east carolina university greenville, nc 27858-4353 the children's folklore review is available only to members of the children's folklore section of the american folklore society. to become a member, send $10.00 yearly dues ($15.00 for non-us members) to danielle roemer, literature and language, northern kentucky university, highland heights, ky 41099-1500. please make checks payable to " afs children' s folklore section." cfr requests manuscripts that are prepared using laser printed text or letter quality text. we request that authors using typewriters or dot-matrix printers have their manuscripts redone and a laser printed copy made. this will enable us to scan the copy, thereby eliminating rekeying the manuscript. please send manuscripts to: children's folklore review is published twice a year and sent to all members of the children's folklore section of the american folklore society. published by east carolina university issn: 0739-5558 copyright ©1997 children's folklore section ocr document contents from the editor .................................................... 2 1989 afs conference papers “‘i believe in santa claus, but i know he's not real’: the role of ambivalence in belief” judith haut .............................................................. 3 “the tooth fairy: perspectives on money and magic” tad tuleja ...............................................................13 “‘show biz’: performance and text in the children's show” elizabeth wein ....................................................... 23 cfs: 1990 annual meeting................................ 29 reviews all in together, girls: skipping songs from regina. saskatchewan by robert cosbey edith fowke ........................................................... 33 sue samuelson (1956-1991) simon bronner…………………………………………34 notes and announcements ................................. 35 cover: this month's cover is the front of the lifetime achievement medal which the children' s folklore section commissioned from artist armond szainer. 1 from the editor. . . as some of you know, the secretary-treasurer and the cfr editor have been less than rigorous about dropping names from the mailing list for non-payment of dues. when we sent out a fourto eight-page newsletter, we could afford to be generous. mailing out a journal, however, is a somewhat more expensive proposition. therefore, we are attempting to do two things: one, advertise the journal in hopes of attracting new members (individual and institutional); and two, update the current list of paid memberships. help us out. if you know of institutions (especially university libraries) or individuals who should be receiving this journal, please encourage them to subscribe. also, if you have been receiving cfr without having been a paid member for a while, please send in your money. even at $10.00/year (see 1990 meeting minutes), cfr is a good deal. the spring 1991 issue contains more papers from the children's folklore paper session at the 1989 afs meeting (see 13.1 for the newell prize papers from that session). these are followed by the minutes from the 1990 meeting of the children's folklore section at the american folklore society meeting in oakland where, as oakland was losing the world series, the members present met to consider some important changes in the way the children's folklore section is structured. this volume concludes with a short version of simon bronner's jaf obituary for sue samuelson, one of the founding members of the children's folklore section, who died in january of 1991. she will be missed. once again, we are encouraging members and others interested in children and their lore to send in materials (see inside back cover for details), and we are open to suggestions for future issues and conference panels. with the second volume in this new format, we become a bit more competent at desk-top publishing. east carolina university has been generous in providing the computer, laser printer, and program for this endeavor and in assigning tina moore, the english department's graduate studies secretary, to this project. the success of cfr depends in no small measure upon ecu and ms. moore. c.w. sullivan iii 2 "i believe in santa claus, but i know he's not real": the role of ambivalence in belief judith haut until my daughter was six years old, she spoke of knowing that santa claus was not real: "it's just someone dressed up, isn't it?" but one december evening in 1987, while we sat watching a television movie about christmas, she made some comments suggesting that she had reassessed her own ideas regarding the physical reality of santa claus. responding to her words, i asked her, "do you believe santa claus is real, or do you know santa claus is real?" without hesitation she answered, "i know santa claus is real." i remember being surprised at her assertion because it was without reinforcement from us; we do not celebrate christmas. more recently i asked my now eight-year-old daughter whether she believes santa claus is real or whether she knows santa claus is real. she said, "i believe santa claus is real." i asked her to explain the difference between the two statements. she answered, "if i say, 'i know' that means i am sure, that i've seen it or something. 'i believe,' that means it's possible.''2 as i will demonstrate in this article, belief is a construct through which people can express a sense of possibility, or perplexity, or personal commitment3 even though they may recognize disconfirming evidence, people can also choose to act "as if" they believe (cf. dandridge 144-146; opie and opie 210; and toelken). any evaluation falling between the extremes of "probably true" and "possibly untrue" may be characterized as an expression of ambivalence: in short, the co-existence in one person of opposing emotional attitudes about an object, phenomenon or concept. ambivalence may be the quintessence of the construct belief. although this inference arises from my analysis of data from individual and group interviews with children,4 i assume that it also applies to adult conceptions. in the following discussion i will account for some of the reasons people might express ambivalence. it may, for example, result from noticing disconfirming evidence; or it may arise out of an awareness of peer pressure or other social expectations. finally, i will hypothesize about the ramifications of ambivalence for belief and folklore studies. first, however, it is important to characterize terms. i use the noun beliefs (or a belief) to refer to people's actual expres 3 haut sions of belief; i.e. statements or actions which the speaker or actor classifies as belonging to the category, belief. belief, like knowledge, is a construct, specifically a conceptual category. belief, like knowledge, is a part of normative mental functioning. as cognitive constructs, both belief and knowledge are subject to the same dynamic, emergent forces underlying any and all conceptualization. but this is not to say that belief and knowledge are indistinguishable. as one twelve-year old girl told me, "facts you are sure of; a belief some people would be sure of and some people wouldn't." in other words, the children i interviewed generally categorized phenomena or ideas as belief not on the basis of topic, but on the basis of two interrelated axes: individual assessment and perception of others' assessments. although the categories belief and knowledge rest on the same cognitive functions, to try to use them synonomously, as black suggests in "belief systems" (511), is to ignore an important emic category for speakers of american english. therefore, i use belief and knowledge as closely analogous constructs representing overlapping classifications; i further assume that an individual's categorization of phenomena or concepts may readily shift between belief and knowledge. of course, once we recognize the role of ambivalence it becomes difficult to study belief as if it were a rigid category. as people's doubts are resolved or their questions are answered their conceptual categories may shift. moreover, when we take ambivalence into account it becomes difficult to study belief as if it were fully represented by isolated propositions, as belief study has so often been approached in the past. philosophers quine and ullian, for example, argue for a direct manner of divining belief or what a person believes: they write, "the criterion is the obvious one: the man assents to the sentence when asked" (5). but how can any person communicate the complex nature of conception simply by assenting or affirming a sentence to be true? let me illustrate the difficulty of this notion. at age eight, simon was one of the youngest children in my study. during my initial conversation with his mother, she told me that she never encouraged her children to believe in things like santa claus or the tooth fairy. her older son lyndon, who also participated in my study, echoed these sentiments. thus, when simon first responded "i do not believe" to my written questionnaire items regarding the tooth fairy, i hypothesized he was expressing his family's overt consensus about such fantasy figures. in a subsequent individual interview, however, simon discussed the tooth fairy within the rubric of belief. during our discussion he told me that he had heard about the tooth fairy from his mother and his friends. he explained, "you're always asleep when she comes." then he added, in what sounded like a puzzled tone, "i'm surprised that you don't get waked 4 santa claus up." he continued, "you could put this bell on top of the door, and then it's tied with a siring on top here; and then they open the door and 'm.' and when it goes down to the bottom, it goes 'clang' and you wake up." i asked, "and that would be a good way to find out what?" he answered, "if the tooth fairy is the tooth fairy." simon's statement--"if the tooth fairy is the tooth fairy"--leads to an inference that simon entertains the possibility, however slight, that the tooth fairy has corporeal existence. i further infer that his conception must have included some uncertainty because there is no reason to posit a test for something about which the individual has no doubt. although anthropologist benson saler also characterizes belief as "a proposition, meaningful to an individual, which the individual affirms to be true" (30), he also acknowledges the useful dimension of uncertainty or doubt. he asks, "in what domains of their meaningful universe do our informants display the greatest toleration for uncertainty? where the least? what might be the significance of the allocation? and what, indeed, might be the social functions of doubt" (33)? doubt, as a component of ambivalence, plays a major role in an individual's construct of belief. ambivalence may result from noticing disconfirming evidence. as such, ambivalence is an outgrowth of experience in the broadest sense of that word and may be the basis for a child's actively wondering. in this sense, ambivalence, or more properly dissonance, is also an incentive or impetus for seeking information or experience or at least being receptive to new information. perhaps ironically, ambivalence may also be the means whereby children can ignore disconfirming evidence. the children i interviewed expressed their uncertainties as they talked about their changing conceptions and the difficulty of squaring those new conceptions with all the information. at times, the children worked arduously and consciously at making new data fit during a group interview, for example, alice, gary, sam and barbara were discussing things that they "used to believe, but don't now." during a discussion about santa claus, barbara turned to gary and asked him, "do you believe in santa claus?" he said, "i used to." i asked, "do you think you still believe a little bit?" he said, "yeah, i sort of do. a little bit." "which tiny bit?" i asked. gary's reply provides an illustration of how he fits "facts," or his concrete experiences, into his changing conception concerning santa's actual existence. he said, "well, see, i don't urn think that much that urn that my mom and dad could wrap all those presents in one night cause they have to go to sleep too." his older sister alice interrupted, "i don't think they do it all in one. sometimes i'll go in their closet months before, and you'll see all these presents wrapped." gary didn't even look at his sister as he continued, "but see they can't do it when we're at school because mom works at school, 5 haut and then they do errands and stuff." alice, her words slightly overlapping gary's, said, "they can do it at night." gary said, "dad's at work." in an aside to me, alice said that she used to tease her brother by saying that santa was not true. she concluded, "so he had a big belief that it was true, because he wouldn't even believe it when i said it wasn't true." it may take an enormous amount of disconfirming evidence before paradigms, personal or otherwise, change. this seems to be the state of affairs in the scientific community, as barnes describes in "paradigms: scientific and social," the members of that profession shoehorn discordant data into existing paradigms until they are moved to change those paradigms because they recognize the growing anomalies or until there is an alternative theory which will serve as a paradigm (100). similarly, people do the same with their individual paradigms. in the discussion i quoted above, for example, gary tries repeatedly to "fit the facts" into his existing conception of santa claus, conception which seemed heavily marked by ambivalence. acknowledging, or at least verbalizing, that santa is not real, gary nonetheless wonders how his parents could possibly be responsible for all the presents. he is working very hard to maintain the possibility of santa claus' existence in the face of the disconfirming evidence which his sister alice presents to him. gary's conceptualization is very much affected by his perception of peers', parents' and other people's assessments of various phenomena and ideas which he might categorize as belief. i suspect that as children grow older, they learn to reject-verbally, at least-age-inappropriate notions about fantasy figures. this is akin to gordon allport's delineation of the stages of prejudice in which the older child verbally accepts but behaviorally rejects other people (292-295). during one interview, for example, one twelve-year-old boy told me privately that he has a lucky penny. he did not want the other children to know, for fear that they would think it was "a little kid thing to do." expressions of this kind of social awareness illustrate the self-awareness that is part of both conceptualization and the children's own responses to their age-peers and siblings. in other words, there is a strong social dimension to ambivalence. other researchers have noticed the ambivalence with which some children discuss fantasy figures. in general these researchers have addressed ambivalence only in terms of the transition between believing and not believing. in their studies of the developmental progression of children's belief regarding imaginery figures such as santa claus, the tooth fairy and the easter bunny, for example, norman prentice, martin manosevitz and laura hubbs categorize a child as being in the transitional stage "when the child was tom between belief and disbelief, presented 'facts' and reasons that 6 santa claus both proved and disproved santa's existence" (620; see also blair, mckee and jernigan). in his dissertation, entitled "on discovering the truth: children's reactions to the reality of the santa claus myth," carl anderson reports the unexpected finding of the "prevalence and impact of the transitional process from belief to doubt to disbelief' (158). the notion of the "transitional child" implies that this is a fixed stage through and out of which a child passes. though that may be a defensible observation of some children, regarding selective specific topics, it fails to address the possibility that ambivalence may not be a discrete stage, but rather a lifelong element of the construct belief. as bern observes, "the consistency theorists. . . have taken the. . . step of postulating that men possess a drive toward cognitive consistency. . .. inconsistency, they seem to be trying to tell us, motivates belief and attitude change" (34). but not all ambivalence is necessarily perceived as dissonance, as motivation for testing hypotheses. doubt is not necessarily denial. for example, during a group session alice described her personal experiences of first doubting, and then entertaining, the possible efficacy of knocking on wood. she said: a couple of years ago, me and my mom were walking along, and we were just talking; and i said like, "i haven't been stung by a bee in two years," and my mom says, "knock on wood." i go, "i don't believe that" and i'm not kidding, the next day i got stung by a bee. and it's kind of coincidental or it's, it's kind of weird. i asked alice, "so would you say it is something that you would believe in now? like would you knock on wood if someone says, 'nothing bad ever happens to me'?" alice answered: yeah, i'll knock on wood, but i'm not positive i'll believe it but i still knock on wood. like last night i was lying in bed just thinking, and i was thinking, i kind of had this weird feeling. i was thinking about dying and stuff, and i said, "i hope i don't die," and i knocked on wood. i had to do it. i was just lying there, and i said, "i don't have to do this." and like ten minutes later i just had to do it." for alice it is not simply a matter of "believing" or "not believing," of unquestioning acceptance or rejection of the advice to knock on wood. her conception seems to include ambivalence, that mixture of doubt and possibility. lying alone in the night, facing her own anxiety about death, she is receptive to considering the possibility that knocking on wood might be an efficacious practice. in short, the assumption that there is a fixed sequence--belief to doubt, 7 haut doubt to disbelief-does not address belief as being a part of complex, transformational, cognitive processes. it is, rather, an approach that is wedded to assumptions about stages of development for individuals and, by extension, for whole societies.5 consider the letter a grown woman left for a shopping mall santa claus in california (thorne 4): "at 50, i get all tingly about santa." isn't it possible that ambivalence, or cognitive inconsistency, is a lifelong characteristic (cf. bern 34)? without exception, all the children in the second and third cohorts of my study answered my questionnaires by saying, "i know there is no santa claus." in fact, when i asked the children during one group session to give me lists of things they "believed" and lists of things they "knew," they chanted as if in a chorus, "i know there is no santa claus," "i know there is no tooth fairy," "i know there is no easter bunny." during that group session the children also described their gradual or shocking discoveries that there was no santa claus. it therefore came as some surprise to me when one participant of that session later told me that she wanted to change some of her questionnaire responses. mary, who had turned nine during the sequence of interviews, said, "well, i believe in santa claus, but i know that he's not real. so, i'll put 'believe' there ........ if i hadn't begged my dad, i would probably still think he was real. i don't know why, i just think he is still real even though i know he's not." i asked if she was sorry that she had begged her dad to tell her. "yeah," she sighed. "it's funner having an imaginary thing. even if it's not real it's still fun thinking of things like that." as part of his characterization of the different stages of belief about organizational symbols and the uses of those stages in organizational research, thomas dandridge delineates his notion of stage four belief. describing how a person who is operating at the fourth stage of belief might react to organizational symbols, dandridge writes, the person now acts only 'as if' he or she believed, because in doing so it is possible to experience closer identification with the organization. . .. such a person might say, "i know the story isn't true, but it makes me feel good when i hear it. . .." [t]he fourth is the imaginative [stage] (144). for both mary and the woman described in the newspaper article, it appears that their willingness, or need, to act "as if' santa were real is a conscious maintenance of ambivalence. even though mary understands the disconfirming evidence, she has constructed a personal assessment that allows her to continue to "believe." mary expresses her ambivalence directly. other children express their ambivalence through stories or through verbalized musings that at first 8 santa claus glance may appear to contain logical inconsistencies, but which i think actually illustrate this "push-pull" attribute of opposing emotional feelings. furthermore, ambivalence may be a dominant feature in younger children's accounts because they have not yet learned to deny their hope or desire that such fantasy figures exist; older children, on the other hand, may not express ambivalence even if they feel it, perhaps because they are aware of the strong social assessment regarding age-appropriate behavior. finally, it is likely that even young children entertain doubts while simultaneously expressing what sounds like certainty or denial. as one of the older children in my study commented, "i'll bet even little kids aren't 100% positive about the tooth fairy." what accounts for this ambivalence? as a fundamental human characteristic, the ability to entertain ambivalence may be related to the ability and the need to be able to deal with uncertainty. ambivalence may be the result or the perception that some notions are untestable. for example, robert a. georges hypothesizes that legends are the "metaphorizations of basic kinds of relationships sets in which one or both parts or the nature of the relationship that is conceived to exist between these parts is incapable of being tested to the satisfaction of every man" (18). i wish to illustrate this point in my last example, where i briefly characterize my observation and interviews with four children regarding their experiments with calling "bloody mary."6 as sam, alice, gary, barbara and i sat discussing the kinds of ideas the children might call belief, barbara related: "if you say at twelve o'clock, if you say, if you stare into the mirror and it's dark and you say 'bloody murder' one hundred times, someone, a lady will come out and chop your head off." the children argued among themselves, discussing just how this was done. they finally decided to try calling bloody mary that night at a sleepover. although i was not present at the sleepover itself, i did return later to talk with the children about their attempt. alice reported that they had indeed tried calling "bloody mary" the night of the sleepover. she said, "gary and barbara ran out of the room when we turned out the light. but we just couldn't do it." i asked with great interest why they decided not to do it. "we just started freaking out with the lights out," alice replied. "it was freaky. not totally scary like falling from the rock you are climbing. . . but i thought of what would happen ifit were true" (emphasis added). i asked her, "so did you think maybe it was true, definitely it was true, or completely wasn't true?" she quickly answered, "wasn't true. but we were still freaky. . .. sam got up to thirty by himself. he wouldn't go up to 100." alice reported in laughter that she had left at the count of two. when i spoke to sam two weeks later, i asked him if he had tried "bloody mary" during the sleepover. significantly, he gave a somewhat 9 haut ambiguous answer: "well, just sort of, because you're supposed to say it a hundred times." perhaps he felt he had not made a full attempt, since by alice's reporting he said it only thirty times. "well, we just said it a couple times and then we got too scared," he said, laughing a bit (perhaps nervously). 1 asked if they had made the room dark. "yeah," he replied. "there's these big mirrors on the wall, and so we, uh, [shudder] too scary." he added that he had tried it alone, then with alice and barbara; gary did not want to try at all. "what made you scared to do it?" 1 asked. sam replied, "i don't know, just the fact that it might be true" (emphasis added). then he laughed. perhaps children entertain the possibility that "it might be true" because the stakes for a full test are so high. who wants to go up to one hundred and risk head-chopping? as michael owen jones, observes, "most of us in daily life have occasion to operate in terms of metaphors and by means of untested, inadequately tested or untestable hypotheses" (3). ambivalence is an outcome of living with untested hypotheses. if beliefs can be thought of as hypotheses, then there may be something in the nature of an untested-or at least as yet not disproved-hypothesis that perhaps contributes to people's expressive continuities through time and space that we study as folklore (cf. georges 18). finally, as 1 have argued, the construct of belief often rests on an individual's recognition of her lack of personal certainty or a lack of social consensus. ambivalence is a significant characteristic of this construct, belief; as such it may be inferred from people's discussions of their sense of the possibility or uncertainty with which they assess various phenomena or ideas. ambivalence is an outcome of experience, of noticing evidence, of living in a social environment. ambivalence is not part of a fixed sequence in an individual's life. the recognition that ambivalence is an integral component of belief may help us understand why speakers of american english do not use the category of belief as a synonym for that of knowledge. university of california at los angeles notes 1. i read a slightly shorter version of this paper at the american folklore society meeting in philadelphia, october 21, 1989. 2. quoted with permission. 3. i want to acknowledge the contribution prof. michael owen jones has had on my thinking and writing about the issues discussed in this paper. 4. my data and analysis derive from my dissertation research with elementary school-age children, topanga, california, 1985-1986. all names are pseudo nyms. 10 santa claus 5. see, for example, erving goffman, interaction ritual (chicago: aldine, 1967) 179, who equates ambivalence with the decline of belief. 6. stories about bloody mary--also known as bloody murder, mary whales and mary worth--are widely reported. see, for example, jan harold brunvand, the mexican pet: more "new" urban legends and some old favorites (new york: w. w. norton and co., 1986) 81; simon bronner, ed., american children's folklore (little rock: august house, 1988) 168-169; bengt af klintberg, "black madame, come out!" scandinavian yearbook of folklore 44 (1988): 155-167; mary knapp and herbert knapp one potato. two potato: the secret education of american children (new york: w. w. norton and co., 1976) 241-242; and janet langlois, '''mary whales, i believe in you, '" indiana folklore: a reader, ed. linda degh (bloomington: indiana university press, 1980) 196-224. works cited allport, gordon w. the nature of prejudice. 1954. garden city: doubleday anchor books, 1958. anderson, carl john. "on discovering the truth: children's reaction to the reality of the santa claus myth." diss. university of texas, austin, 1987. barnes, s. b. "paradigms--scientific and social." man: the journal of the royal anthropological institute 4 (1969): 94-102. bern, daryl j. beliefs. attitudes. and human affairs. belmont: brooks cole publishing co, 1970. black, mary b. "belief systems." handbook of social and cultural anthropology. ed. j. j. honigmann. chicago: rand mcnally, 1973. 509-577. blair, john r., judy s. mckee and louise f. jernigan. "children's belief in santa claus, easter bunny and tooth fairy. psychological reports 46 (1980): 691694. bronner, simon, ed. american children's folklore. little rock: august house, 1988. brunvand, jan harold. the mexican pet: more "new" urban legends and some old favorites. new york: w. w. norton and co., 1986. dandridge, thomas c. "the life stages of a symbol: when symbols work and when they can't." organizational culture. ed. peter 1. frost, larry f. moore, meryl reis louis, craig c. lundberg and joanne martin. beverly hills: sage publications, 1985. 141-153. georges, robert a. "the general concept of legend: some assumptions to be reexamined and reassessed." american folk legend: a symposium. ed. wayland d. hand. berkeley: university of california press, 1971. 1-19. goffman, erving. interaction ritual. chicago: aldine publishing, company, 1967. haut, judith ellen. children's belief: a folkloristic study of conceptualization. experimentation and communication. diss. university of california, los angeles, 1989. ann arbor: umi8918029. 11 haut jones, michael owen. "superstition: the virtuous weed." paper read at the california folklore society meeting. dominguez hills, california, 1973. klintberg, bengt af. "black madame, come out!" scandinavian yearbook of folklore 44 (1988): 155-167. knapp, mary and herbert knapp. one potato. two potato: the secret education of american children. new york: w. w. norton and co., 1976. langlois, janet. "mary whales, i believe in you." indiana folklore: a reader. ed. linda dégh. bloomington: indiana university press, 1980. 196-224. (first published indiana folklore, 11 (1978): 5-33.) opie, peter and iona opie. the lore and language of schoolchildren. 1959. oxford: the clarendon press, 1967. prentice, norman m., martin manosevitz and laura hubbs. "imaginery figures of early childhood: santa claus, easter bunny and the tooth fairy." american journal of orthopsychiatty 48 (1978): 618-628. quine, w. v. and ullian, j. s. the web of belief. new york: random house, inc., 1970. saler, benson. "beliefs, disbeliefs and unbeliefs." anthropological ouarterly 41(1968): 29-33. thome, will. "smart santa: researcher studies beliefs on the job." santa monica evening outlook 5 dec. 1986: a-4. toelken, barre. "the performative aspect of northwest superstition." northwest folklore 4 (1985): 13-22. 12 the tooth fairy: perspectives on money and magic tad tuleja as an embodiment of magical munificence, the tooth fairy is second only to santa claus in the folklore of american childhood. juvenile belief in the figure is as widespread and durable as belief in old saint nick, and the iconic elements of the accompanying ritual-the pillow, the unseen visitor, the transformation of the tooth into money-are as stereotyped in popular culture as the stocking by the chimney or carrots for the reindeer. so firmly does the tooth fairy dominate juvenile fantasy life, in fact, that discovering the "truth" about this shadowy benefactor constitutes a major negation rite in the prepubertal passage out of innocence: to say that someone "still believes in the tooth fairy" defines him as quaintly naive. but while santa claus does not want for scholarly attention, the tooth fairy has been largely neglected. psychologists (blair et al., prentice et al., and scheibe and condry) have provided useful data on her place in children's cognitive development. rosemary wells of the northwestern university dental school has investigated popular representations and conducted a pioneering survey on custom details (1981). "ethnodentist" william carter and his colleagues have produced an extremely useful catalogue of dental folklore. the contributions of folklorists, however, have been scant. leo kanner's classic monograph does not mention the custom at all, and later american researchers do so only in passing. even though american archives find elements of the custom dating from early in this century, no concentrated attempt has yet been made to trace the figure's genealogy, explain how she grew from folk belief to national custom, or analyze her contemporary functional significance. i will address those three issues here. i: an uncertain genealogy relying on katharine briggs's standard work, rosemary wells concludes, by weight of omission, that the dental sprite is "america's only fairy"-a creature "never referred to in european literature," and equally absent from old world folkore (1981). true enough if you are looking for her by name. seek a "tooth fairy" in european indexes of folklore motifs and you will come away disappointed. nor are contemporary european children-with the odd exception in 13 tuleja americanized britain-familiar with the figure or the ritual. wells is certainly right. the stylized ritual of pillow-tooth-and-money is not only american, but of recent vintage; the archives support her reasonable guess of about 1900 as a starting point (1981). but even though the spoor is faint, european precursors, if not prototypes, do exist. i have been no more successful than dr. wells in identifying a clear line of descent, but i have found european customs which suggest the tooth fairy ritual. let me discuss a few of them briefly in an order of ascending probability. a. the tooth coin as an example of "fairv gold." among the commonly cited attributes of english and irish fairies are their affluence and accompanying generosity: the pot at the end of the leprechauns' rainbow and the fairies' double payment of a debt to humans suggest a broad tradition of philanthropic pixies. with this tradition in mind, jacqueline simpson suggests that the tooth fairy exchange may derive from an old british custom of rewarding industrious servant girls with "fairy" coins, left surreptitiously in their shoes as they slept (1973). the structural similarities are clear enough--domestic hygiene is rewarded by a mater familias acting on behalf of a phantom donor--but one critical element, the lost tooth, is conspicuously absent. in addition, the line of descent from shoe to pillow is inconveniently broken since the tooth fairy doesn't reach england until the 1960s. this first candidate thus seems more parallel than precursor. b. the tooth as placation or self-defense. both irish and british folk traditions are rich in doleful stories of fairy changelings: healthy infants who are exchanged in their cradles for sickly, inconsolable pixie clones. although it may seem churlish to suggest so, there are structural links between the tooth fairy ritual and folk practices designed to foil such kidnappers. since teeth have long symbolized imperishability, they function worldwide as talismans against evil. might not the tooth of an innocent child, set near it as it sleeps, be seen both as a kind of "guard-all" and, more complexly, as a surrogate sacrifice--a pars pro toto consolation for spirits who seek to snatch the child itself? this notion, whimsical, as it may seem, is lent credence by two peculiarities of the tooth fairy ritual. one appears in the most common variant of the custom, in which the tooth, instead of being placed beneath the pillow, is set near the bed, in a glass or on a plate, after having been sprinkled with salt. as ernest jones's classic monograph pointed out fifty years ago, salt-probably because of its "magical" preservative properties-has since antiquity symbolized purity, protection, and eternal life. one need not accept jones's freudian conclusion to appreciate the significance of salt as a shield from evil, and indeed it is specifically mentioned by 14 tooth fairy the radfords and by vance randolph as a bane against malevolent pixies. the second peculiarity is that other typical pixie banes also suggest the pillowed tooth. iron has been used for centuries as a means of protection against evil--both in its familiar horseshoe shape and in the form of a cross or a knife. to guard sleeping children against evil fairies, one source suggests a knife under the pillow--and no less an authority than katherine briggs makes the link to the tooth fairy explicit when she cites a knife held in the mouth! (1981). furthermore, surrogate offerings have been made to water spirits throughout northern europe and the british isles, and between at least one water spirit and the tooth fairy there is a linguistically suggestive missing link. i mean lancashire's most famous "nursery bogey," the "cannibal witch," jenny greenteeth. typically, this demon lurks in stagnant ponds, awaiting the arrival of careless children, but in spite of --or perhaps because of--her gruesome nature, she is also sometimes enlisted as a way of eliciting obedience ("go to sleep now or jenny greenteeth will get you") and as a kind of free floating dental assistant. she serves this latter function because the pond scum known as lesser duckweed (lemna minor) is thought to resemble green teeth (simpson and vickery). as rosemary wells has pointed out, modem dentists enlist the tooth fairy for the same hygienic purpose, and in some families the going rate for a baby tooth is reduced for each cavity the tooth contains (muro). c. the italian "tooth fairy": marantega. throughout most of italy, the christmas season benefactor, corresponding to northern europe's saint nicholas, goes by the name of befana. gaunt and toothless, she resembles the stock crone figure of popular legends, yet unlike other witches, she can be kindly to children: it is befana, the old one (la vecchia or la stregha) who dispenses presents to the deserving at epiphany. the venetian version of this witch is marantega, and marantega displays generosity not only at the christmas season, but also when children lose teeth (riegler 1920). a shed tooth is placed under the child's bed or under its pillow, and in the night marantega--thinking, perhaps, of her own toothlessness--exchanges it for a coin. again, the lines of descent here are faint, and admittedly the american archives hardly hint at an italian connection. i mention the venetian figure, even as a dark horse candidate, because the similarity of detail is so remarkable. there is also a possible linguistic link in that occasionally tooth fairy citations name a "witch" rather than the more conventional fairy. d. french connections. similarly isolated, and similarly provocative, parallels appear in french archival material. recall that wells has traced the american custom to about the turn of this century; at least two gallic tooth rituals are roughly contemporary. the first, from 1887, has the child 15 tuleja put the tooth beneath its pillow, and the exchange for money or a toy being accomplished by no less a figure than the virgin mary (daleau). the second, from 1902, has a "good fairy" as the benevolent dental agent, with the reward being not money but candy (carter et al.). chronology favors these french connections, but again the genealogy is hazy. in contemporary french ritual, moreover, it is a mouse, not a fairy, who takes the tooth: in a recent dictionary of french superstitions, the fairy agent is relegated--one might say banished--to uncivilized "anglo-saxon" countries (lasne and gaultier). and, although french canadian children do offer their teeth to a fée (des ruisseaux), it is unclear whether she reached quebec by way of new york or le havre. e. the tooth fairy and the "tooth mouse". finally, the folklore figure whom i consider, in spite of surface dissimilarities, to be the best candidate for the title of urfee: the ubiquitous european "tooth mouse." shed teeth are offered to animals in virtually every region of europe, with the commonest recipients of the teeth being crows, birds in general, and rodents. in the most widespread version of the custom, the child places the tooth in a mouse hole, or behind furniture, or near the hearth or oven; and, with a doggeral formula, asks the mouse to exchange the lost tooth for a better one. disciples of max muller in the 1920s saw this ritual as a survival of offerings to fire gods. they linked the mouse, quite ingeniously, to the sun, and thus explained at one stroke the three commonest methods of tooth disposal: whether the child hurled the tooth into the air, threw it into the fire, or offered it to a mouse, the common element was sun worship (lindsay). in more recent psychoanalytical interpretations, the mouse becomes a phallic symbol, the surrender ritual an act of compensation, both mirroring and dramatically resolving the oedipal fantasy (lewis and russell). as charmingly provocative as such readings may be, i would suggest, pace occam, that the obvious utility of the mouse is homeopathic. whatever they may signify metaphorically, mice in fact are small rodents with great incisors and the good sense to nest in warm, dark places. one surrenders milk teeth to these rodents in the hopes of getting better, that is rodentlike, teeth in return. the logic is preserved, though inverted, in the companion belief that you should never leave your fallen teeth where a dog, or a pig, might come upon them--unless you want dogs' or pigs' teeth in return. at first glance, the candidacy of the tooth mouse seems less solid than that of jenny greenteeth, the virgin mary or marantega. but for three reasons i prefer this to the others. first, the range of the custom. the shilling in the shoe, jenny greenteeth, marantega, even the french virgin--all appear locally, isolated. the tooth mouse, on the other hand, ranges from 16 tooth fairy the baltic to the mediterranean, and also makes frequent appearances in both americas (svanberg and rooth). the sheer body of evidence allows for numerous intersections--on both sides of the atlantic--where the mouse could have, in effect, sprouted wings. second, there are hints in exchange formulas that hard molars and hard cash can be confused. in most formulas, the child asks the mouse for a "better" tooth, and sometimes for a "tooth of iron." occasionally, however, he demands a more valuable tooth--one made of silver or gold (svanberg and rooth). from iron tooth to gold tooth to gold itself does require only a modest leap of logic. third, not only is there evidence, as we have seen, of the switch from mouse to fairy in 19th century france, but there is also what carter lucidly calls a "credible mechanism" for explaining the shift that mechanism, identified in francois loux's fascinating l' oare et la dent, is a popular fairy tale, "la bonne petite souris," written by madame d'aulnoy at the close of the 18th century. in this tale, a nameless "good queen," imprisoned by a nameless "bad king," befriends a mouse which is impressed with her kindness. the creature turns out to be a fairy, and she not only frees the queen from her imprisonment, but also knocks out the wicked king's teeth, hides under his pillow to torment him, and eventually has him assassinated by his palace guard. a 1928 translation of the d'aulnoy story depicts the fairy quite explicitly as a smiling rodent--with wings! does this prove that the tooth fairy was once a mouse? no. but, with range, chronology, and that "credible mechanism" on its side, it's the best candidate i have found. it's interesting to note that three modern childrens' authors seem to agree. a 1976 "history" of the tooth fairy uses the same mouse-to-fairy format as d'aulnoy; in lucy bate's popular little rabbit's loose tooth, the fairy is a rabbit with wings; and in stephen kroll's loose tooth, the children and the fairy (that is, their parents) are bats. perhaps the collective authorial consciousness is finally picking up on d'aulnoy's insight ii. from folk belief to national custom the tooth fairy makes isolated appearances in the united states as early as the turn of this century, but she only becomes nationally established after the second world war. the term "tooth fairy" is first indexed in popular literature in 1949, when a lee rogow story by that title appeared in collier's magazine. rosemary wells takes this as evidence that the custom was "ingrained" by that time; given the sparseness of citations from before the war, it's as likely that the story spurred, not just registered, a developing tradition. in both north america and great britain, "ingraining" only really happens in the 1960s; the best evidence for this is wells's own observation 17 tuleja that the first encyclopedia mention of the custom was alan dundes's 1979 article in world book. but why the 1950s? why this sudden spurt to prominence of a longpracticed but obscure folk tradition? or, to phrase it as a query about genre: what transforms the tooth fairy, around midcentury, from a relatively obscure folk belief into a national custom? let me suggest three factors. 1. postwar affluence. in my informal "field research" for this paper, i asked my father-in-law, who grew up in rural arkansas in the 1920s and 1930s, whether his family had practiced the tooth fairy custom. "we were too poor," he told me. "nickles were hard to come by. you certainly wouldn't waste one on a tooth." it's a telling comment, and i think representative. jacqueline simpson has suggested that before the 1960s in great britain, wealthy households probably knew the custom, but poorer ones could not afford to (hand). that is a useful speculation about america too. it seems likely that the greater availability of discretionary income during the postwar boom may have contributed to the spread of the custom. 2. the cult of the child. childhood, as philippe aries and others have reminded us, is a relatively recent invention, and the notion of catering to one's child is recenter still. that notion enjoyed a heyday in the years just following world war ii, when james dean was canonized for being misunderstood, and all "good" parents knew (because dr. spock told them so) that their proper role was to serve their children's needs, among them the need to fantasize and to feel loved. the dominance of this new, child centered view of the family certainly made the 1950s fertile ground for what wells calls "a symbolic ritual of replacement, born in sympathy, propelled in love and sustained in warmth and care" (dent). 3. media encouragement. in an instructive survey of european fairy traces in the new world, wayland hand calls publication an increasingly significant factor in the consolidation of folk traditions in modem times. the history of the grimm brothers' tales, riot to mention the dime novelists' pecos bill or the santa created by clement moore and thomas nast, bear out his observation. with regard to the tooth fairy, it may also be underlined by madame d'aulnoy's tale and, in the 1950s, by lee rogow's short story in collier's. more significant than these print examples, however, is the example of the movies. i do not think it is merely coincidental that the decade immediately preceding the proliferation of the tooth fairy custom saw the release of four feature mms in which female pixies play a central role. in 1939, american children saw billie barnes, as a shimmering glinda, the good witch of the north, teach judy garland the true meaning of home. a year later, in the disney version of carlo collodi's tale, the "blue fairy" taught pinocchio about truth. in 1950, disney's cinderella was rewarded for her 18 tooth fairy selflessness by a "fairy godmother" who, like, d'aulnoy's character, works magic with mice. and in 1953, the most pixielike of all our fairies, tinker bell, was saved from death by the eternal boy, peter pan. all of these films reached massive audiences. it does not stretch logic too far, i think, to suggest that their influence may have helped prepare the ground-in concert with dr. spock and the gross national product-for the "nationalizing" of the custom (carter et a1.). iii. from magic to money functional analyses of the tooth fairy custom, up to now, have been provided only by developmental psychologists, interested in the meaning for the individual child of this quintessentially domestic ritual. the tooth exchange has been seen, as a consequence, as a psychodrama of fantasy management or of condolence (blair et al., prentice et al., scheibe and condry, and wells 1981). to my knowledge no one has explained the social utility of the ritual, or noted how with precise theatricality it validates specific economic behavior. that the ritual "models" economic behavior, however, is clear from the psychological evidence. clinical students of the custom agree that it is supervising parents, not peers, who introduce the belief to young children (balir et a1. and prentice et a1.). the tooth fairy is an adult creation. given the "lesson" of the ritual, this is not surprising. for the economic message of the custom is an adult and modem one: "produce and sell." this message may be contrasted to the infantile (one might say "primitive") message "produce and hoard." in a primitive, which is to say pre-exchange economy, one may legitimately expect reward for production, and for accumulation of product. we see this static economics in ancient scandinavia, where children were rewarded when they cut a tooth. the nordic "tooth fee" functions appropriately in a hoarding economy, where the mere possession of goods is a sign of value. the market system, on the other hand, cannot function without the continual surrender of hoarded goods: free exchange is its lifeblood. and in such an economy the pithy quaintness of a "tooth for a tooth," even if it's iron (or gold) for bone, must give way ultimately to cash payment. that is the logic of both monetization and the free market, and it is the social lesson that parents teach (albeit unconsciously) when they direct their charges to place their teeth under the pillow. moreover, the tooth fairy custom, like any other free-market ritual, is constantly affected by broad market forces. nothing so clearly shows how the ritual models behavior than the fact of tooth exchange inflation. between 1900 and 1975, rosemary wells has found, the "going rate" for a lost 19 tuleja tooth rose from 12 to 85 cents (wells 1983). granted, that's still a rela tively modest sum, but if the ritual were as innocent as is commonly supposed--if it were merely a vestige of sacrifice or an enactment of parental concern--then a nominal price would point the lesson quite as well. that the fairy's bill consistently rises along with the consumer price index suggests an integration of the custom into domestic economy that belies its common presentation as a "caring" game. or rather, it is a caring game-managed by parents who understand the importance, in a market economy, that their kids know the value of a buck. wells has it right: the exchange ritual, she admits, has a "mercenary aura." it reflects a "reassuring image of good capitalist values" (muro 45) thus magic itself-whose essence is transformation-is itself transformed. we move from an image of the generic "good" fairy, turning bone teeth into nominal nickles, toward an image of the "tooth" fairy (now a specialist), predictably exchanging molars at the market rate. with the encouragement of mortgage-carrying parents, children now grow more than mere teeth: they "grow" the system by putting their products on the market the process of market cooption has long been understood with regard to everybody's sugar daddy, the american santa. the tooth fairy holds a shorter and less visible pedigree than that saint of the second fiscal quarter, but her economic function, in today's society, differs only in degree. in a sense, i suppose, she may even be seen as more rationalized, less personal, than the christmas sprite. santa, after all, still brings presents, while the tooth fairy translates everything into cash. the message of santa claus may be seen as a relatively humanized one: "being good" will get you barbies or a rambo doll. the tooth fairy's message is more direct: anything-even your own bodycan, if you work it right, be turned to gold. that, in its final, reductive wisdom, is precisely the necessary magic of free enterprise. university of massachusetts at amherst a revised and enlarged version of this conference paper appear in peter narvaez, ed., the good people: new fairylore essays, forthcoming from garland press. bibliography bate, lucy. little rabbit's loose tooth. new york: crown, 1975. blair, john, j. s. mckee and l. f. jernigan. "children's belief in santa claus, easter bunny, and tooth fairy." psychological reports 46 (1980): 691-94. briggs, katherine. "some unpleasant characters among british fairies." venetia newall, ed. folklore studies in the twentieth century. woodbridge, suffolk: brewer, 1980: 143-46. 20 tooth fairy briggs, katharine. an encyclopedia of fairies. new york: pantheon, 1981. carter, william et. al. ethnodentisuy and dental folklore. overland park, kansas: dental folklore books of kansas city, 1987. daleau, francois. notes pour servir l'etude des traditions, croyances, et supersti tions de 1a gironde. bordeaux: a. bellier, 1889. d'aulnoy, mme.1a contesse. the white cat and other old french fairy tales. m. planche, trans. new york: macmillan, 1928. dent, penelope. "in search of the elusive tooth fairy." woman's day 16 december 1981. des ruisseaux, pierre. croyances et pratiques populaires au canada francais. montreal: editions du jour, 1973. dundes, alan. "fairy." world book encyclopedia, 7 (1979): 12. granger, byrd h. "of the teeth." journal of american folklore 74 (1961): 47-56. hand, wayland d. "european fairy lore in the new world." folklore 92.2 (1981): 141-48. jones, ernest. (1923). "the symbolic significance of salt in folklore and superstition." essays in applied psychoanalysis. 2 (new york: international universities, 1951): 22-109. kanner, leo. folklore of the teeth. new york: macmillan, 1928. kroll, steven. loose tooth. new york: holiday, 1984. lasne, sophie and andre gaultier. a dictionary of superstitions. amy reynolds, trans. englewood cliffs: prentice-hall, 1984. lewis, harvey. "the effect of shedding the first deciduous tooth upon the passing of the oedipus complex of the male." journal of the american psy choanalytical association 6.1 (1958): 5-37. lindsay, lillian. 'the sun, the saint, and the toothdrawer." british dental journal 5 (1933): 453-65. lindsay, lillian. "influence of the sun on the teeth." journal of the american dental association 21 (1934): 616-22. loux, francois. l'ogre et la dent. paris: berger-levrault, 1981. mcallister, fran, and frank mcallister. the tooth fairy legend. dallas: taylor, 1976. muro, mark. "they believe in the tooth fairy." boston globe 15 july 1981. 45 46. prentice, norman, martin manosevitz, and laura hubbs. "imaginary figures of early childhood: santa claus, easter bunny, and the tooth fairy." american journal of orthopsychiatry. 48.4 (1978): 618-28. 21 tuleja radford, edwin, and mona radford. encvclopedia of superstitions. new york: philosophical library, 1949. randolph, vance. ozark superstitions. new york: columbia, 1947. riegler, richard. "venezianische 'marantega' und verwandtes." archivum romanicum 4.4 (1920): 490-92. riegler, richard. "zahnwechsel und mythus." archiv für religionswissenschaft 23 (1923/24): 162-63. rogow, lee. "the tooth fairy." colliers 124 (1949): 26. rooth, anna. offering of the first tooth. uppsala: ethnological institute, 1982. russell, claire. "a study in the folk symbolism of kinship: the tooth image." venetia newall, ed. folklore studies in the twentieth century. woodbridge, suffolk: brewer, 1980. 365-370. scheibe, cyndy, and john condry. "developmental differences in children's reasoning about santa claus and other fantasy characters." paper presented to the biennial conference of the society for research in child development, baltimore, 23-27 april 1987. simpson, jacqueline. the folklore of sussex. london: batsford, 1973. simpson, jacqueline. eurovean mvthologv. new york: peter bedrick, 1987. svanberg, ingvar. 1987. "the folklore of teeth among turkic and adjacent peoples." central asiatic journal 321.1 and 2 (1987): 11137. tanner, jeri. "the teeth in folklore." western folklore 27.2 (1968): 97-105. vickery, roy. "lemna minor and jenny greenteeth." folklore 94.2 (1983): 247 50. wells, rosemary. the tooth fairv. ed. susan bohn. stevens point, wi: private printing, 1980. wells, rosemary. "tracking the tooth fairy." ca146.12 (1983) 1-8, 47.1 (1983): 18-25, and 47.2 (1983): 25-31. 22 show biz: performance and text in the children's show elizabeth wein when contemplating the play of my childhood in terms of performance, one specific play frame comes to mind over and over again: the "show." a "show" was what my siblings, cousins and friends called any kind of planned display of our play, where parents and other friends were called together and asked to pay attention to what we were doing. the key word is "planned"; shows were not necessarily rehearsed, but they were always discussed ahead of time. sometimes a program would be written, either for us to follow informally, or to be formally distributed to the audience. indeed, a "show" was directly intended to be a performance, with a designated audience and specific keys to indicate where the performance began and ended. a pattern does seem to emerge in the development of these "shows" in my own life; over the years they grow more oriented towards a written text and less towards play. the performance becomes less fluid, more rehearsed, more rigid, more like "a play" than "play." of course, if one looked for it enthusiastically enough, any pattern might emerge. it would be interesting if a truly empirical study were to be carried out concerning the development of children's "shows" other than my own. in order to most effectively communicate the transition from a performance-oriented show to a text-oriented show, it would be best if i defined some of these terms as i understand and use them. my notion of "text" stems from the literary theory of roland barthes. barthes submits that while "the work can be held in the hand, the text is held in language, only exists in the movement of a discourse" (157). ''text'' does not exist on paper, though that is where it is recorded; rather, it exists as a thing in itself, separate and immutable regardless of typeface or individual interpretation. my concept of performance and how it relates to text is based on richard bauman's suggestion that "performance represents a transformation of the basic referential uses of language"; the suggestion that performance sets up, or represents, an interpretative frame within which the messages being communicated are to be understood, and that this frame contrasts with at least one other frame, the literal. (9) "performance" i take to mean any interpretation of the 23 wein unchangeable, luminous text. thus every performance of hamlet is a unique interpretation of the actual text; any reading of hamlet, even if it is read over again by the same person, is also a unique interpretation of that text. more to the point, a performance of the last chapters of the lord of the rings (one of the later shows performed by me and my cousins) is a unique interpretation of that particular text. in the platonic sense, the performance is the shadow of the real text, and the real text of a work of written literature can never actually be approached. ideally, however, text and performance should be one and the same: unique, not interpretative but complete and irrecoverable. barthes claims that "the text is experienced only in an activity of production" (157; ital. barthes); performance is just such a production, and the synthesis of text and performance can be achieved in the young child's "show." the earliest version of the show that i can reconstruct from my own childhood is a performance of "little red riding hood," when i was four years old. the story was acted out in our living room; there were simple costumes and basic props. my father was acting the part of the wolf, and i was little red riding hood. there was no rehearsal or preparation; both i and my father knew the story and the expected text, and we were going to perform for an audience that consisted only of my mother and two year old brother, who knew the story also. my father and i often acted out stories. the reason this particular occasion was memorable is that it was a conscious attempt at performance. my father and i enacted stories and poems that i knew; i can remember waiting under a lilac arbor in trepidation, "sword" in hand, while my father came "whiffling through the tulgey wood" towards me in the person of the jabberwock. i "feared" the approach of the "monster" my father enacted; we had no audience except each other. i became the character i was playing. in our performance of "little red riding hood" i was acting out a prescribed character whose feelings did not overlap with mine, and there was a designated audience. i was not afraid of the wolf, as i had been of the jabberwock, but i was "afraid" of the audience. because of the presence of an audience, no matter how informal, my attitude towards the performance changed, and this in turn changed the text. when the "wolf' questioned, "what's your name, little girl?" i began squirming self-consciously and answered not "little red riding hood" but "poofy snooze." i do not remember if the exercise in performance had been intended as an object lesson ("don't talk to strangers") or merely as an experience in drama, but the effect of my answer was to channel the performance toward humor. we started the show seriously enough, but after the heroine introduced herself the rest of the play became comedy and parody. our performance of "little red riding hood"--or "poofy snooze"--is an example of text and performance as a unique, integrated existence, completed on a single evening 24 show biz in 1969, and unrepeatable. another example of a scripted performance that went awry occurred when i was seven. in this case, a group of friends and i decided to put on a show that was based on a story i was writing at the time. my four year old younger brother, jared, was cast as the younger brother of a character in the story. at a critical moment i was supposed to inform him that his "sister" had been kidnapped. we rehearsed this several times, and jared was fairly bored with the scenario by the time we presented it to an audience-a group of about ten neighborhood children. when i told jared, "your sister's gone!" he said disgustedly, pointing offstage to where his "sister" was hiding, "so what? she's over there." because of this departure from the script we had to improvise the rest of our carefully rehearsed production. for different reasons, jared did exactly the same thing to the performance that i had done in "little red riding hood" when i was his age. he changed the performance by changing the text, and created a performance free of any text except its own. all my shows were in some sense oriented towards a script, as these first two examples indicate. if there were no younger players to find the script unnecessary or uninteresting, there might not be as many players as the script called for. on one occasion, when i was seven, a friend and i decided we would perform scenes from one of my favorite books as entertainment for my mother. at first we performed theatrically, with my mother seated in front of a "set"; my friend and i wore costumes and acted behind an imaginary line which separated the two of us "on stage" from my mother "in the audience." however, for our second scene we had to enlist my mother as a third character, causing her to cross that boundary; and by the third scene we no longer thought of ourselves as putting on a show, but were playing in earnest. by this time my mother was in the kitchen washing dishes; when the occasion called for an extra character we involved her, but for the most part we continued to act out the story without an audience. in this instance play and performance mixed effortlessly, and became one and the same. there was no dependence on the audience; the quality and significance of our performance remained unchanged whether or not my mother was watching. in my first two examples the text was created by the context of the performance. the third example used text to shape the performance, but here text was secondary to the mechanisms of performance and play. at this point the "script" began to occupy an increasingly significant position in my shows. traditionally, every time my siblings and i were together with our cousins we put on a show; originally, these were in the form of pageants or tableau-like nativity scenes, but as time went on the shows grew more elaborate. costume was always important; rehearsal was secondary, but there was at least a specific plan to be followed. i did most 25 wein of the planning; i was the oldest of the cousins, and after my brother was injured in a car accident there was a five year gap in age between me and the next in age. in the later shows i did not actually participate as an actor, and wrote plans for plays which contained sections of script that were more or less followed word for word. our most memorable performance was a production of some of the final scenes in the lord of the rings; this was memorable mostly because of elaborate costumes and a carefully constructed volcano that actually glowed with a baleful red light (effected by a flashlight shining through red cloth). there was no written script for this production; the youngest performer was seven years old, and the oldest eleven. the children knew what to do in each scene, and followed general guidelines; but the final text was created before the adult audience as the show was performed. "the abduction" was a three-minute silent film of the same vintage as our production of the lord of the rings, and it was created in exactly the same way. i planned it, my cousins rehearsed it once, and we filmed it. silent film would have been ideally suited to any of our shows at this time, for they were governed by rigorous rules as far as costume and action were concerned, but were then still flexible in terms of text. the last show performed by my cousins and me was produced when i was seventeen. it was called "a midsummer day's eve's dream." the plot had nothing to do with the shakespeare play of similar title; but it did follow an actual script, and was based on a specific poem by eleanor farjeon. i had by this time formed my own sense of what bauman explains to be goffman's "keys" to performance (16); "a midsummer day's eve's dream" had a narrator's introduction and a closing disclaimer plagiarised straight from shakespeare. also, text and performance were becoming for me the two separate entities that i now see them as being. the text of "a midsummer day's eve's dream" exists in its own right, pastiche of shakespeare and children's poems though it is. it could be performed again, using the same text, although the original performance could not be reproduced. at about the same time that this show was produced, a friend and i videotaped a play my friend had written called ''the tragedy of the thane of cawdor." like "the abduction," it was rehearsed only once before being recorded. unlike ''the abduction," "the tragedy of the thane of cawdor" included sound; it also relied heavily on scripts. the final performance, the one that is recorded for posterity, shows all the characters with scripts in hand-sheaves of white typing paper, which are especially evident in the case of one near-sighted actor who had to hold his manuscript two inches from his face in order to be able to read. what caused this shift in emphasis from performance to the written word? part of it is inevitable in our culture, and stems from the notion that anything on paper is privileged over anything communicated orally (even 26 show biz the television reporters shuffle sheaves of paper before them on their desks; we trust they are not making up their information). part of the shift also has to do with rivka r. eifermann's notion of "mastering performance" (141). although she speaks of a solitary act in her childhood as performance and i speak of performances that were most often designed with an audience in mind, our experiences are similar in that we were both "performing creatively" as well as playing. by shifting from improvisation and free play to a designated script the child can prove his mastery of language, his memorization ability, his acting ability. and in this society, acting from a designated script is a more valid and more widely recognized mode of performance than improvisation. what separates the games and unplanned "shows" of childhood from the games and studied theater of adulthood is fundamentally the same thing that separates oral from written literature. it is almost impossible to conceive of a written text as its own being, unchanged by interpretation; but the oral text is its own being. there are no repeated oral texts; each occurs only once, in the context of its original performance, and is nearly impossible to record. one can tape or videotape a children's "show" just as one can tape a folkloristic storytelling session, yet neither performance is reproducible in the way that a broadway musical is reproducible. the "show" is in a sense an ideal situation, because it brings text and performance together. unfortunately, the text that occurs during these performances is generally not of a very high quality; it surely lacks the superior verbal qualities of certain literary texts. yet literary texts cannot ever truly exist as pure "text"; they are always subject to interpretation. as text and performance become more sophisticated, they also grow apart from each other, more separate. the categories of childhood's performance became more clearly delineated as i grew older. actors and directors, audience and performers ceased to be one and the same; the categories became bounded. roles became clearly defined; the show became organized. but as an adult, the "show" no longer exists. the new awareness of boundaries causes enthusiasm for the show to die out. at fourteen i was no longer an active performer in our shows; i organized them for a few years after that, but when my cousins grew older they no longer wanted to perform in them either. i cannot say whether we suddenly thought of the shows as "childish," or whether we had finally achieved whatever mastery the shows gave to us. we look back on these performances as good performances, but we do not miss them. university of pennsylvania works cited barthes, roland. image—music—text. new york: hill and wang, 1977. 27 wein bauman, richard. verbal art as perfomance. illinois: waveland press, inc, 1977. eifennann, rivka r. "children's games, observed and experienced." in the psy choanalytic study of the child. vol. 42. new haven: yale u p, 1987. 28 children's folklore section: 1990 annual meeting twenty current (and prospective) members of the children's folklore section of the american folklore society gathered on friday, 19 october 1990, for a business meeting and breakfast. president priscilla ord called the meeting to order at 7:14 a.m. as those present feasted (so to speak) on a continental breakfast, priscilla reviewed corrections to the 1989 meeting minutes, and the minutes were passed as corrected. vice-president tom johnson reported that no 1990 newell prize was awarded because no entries were received during the submission period. the reason, perhaps, was the recent change in the submission date. entries for the 1991 prize (for papers written during the calendar year 1990) are already coming in. the submission deadline is march 1. for more information, contact tom johnson. secretary-treasurer danielle roemer reported that, as of 31 august 1990, the section had a balance of $3610.57 (which included the $2000.00 endowment for the opie prize) and had earned more than $100.00 in interest during the 1990 year. currently, the section has 77 members: 52 domestic and 25 foreign. danielle also reminded those present that section renewal notices are now being sent out as part of the afs yearly renewal notice. the section is working with the afs/ american anthropological association office to correct any glitches in the system. if a member has problems with his or her section membership or renewal, he or she should contact danielle roemer. june factor asked if section members needed to be members of afs. danielle explained that, according to tim lloyd (afs secretary-treasurer), afs will send renewal notices to all cfs members, whether they are afs members or not. archivist simon bronner asked the membership to send the archives copies of papers on children's folklore, written and/or delivered. cfr editor chip sullivan passed out copies of the review, appearing for the first time in its new journal format. he reported that the cost of this format is approximately the same as that of the previous newsletter. chip also announced that the section's executive board had approved opening the journal to advertising. he will notify by letter those publishing houses that might be interested. a question was raised concerning the criteria, if any, for ads accepted for the 29 cfs review. the executive board will take up the question during the coming year. simon bronner asked about the relevance to the review of papers and other materials treating the folklore of adolescents and suggested that chip offer guidelines in some future "from the editor." chip also announced that judith haut has agreed to serve as book review editor for the review. members should contact her if they have books they wish to review or wish to suggest for review (2733 halsey road, topanga, ca 90290). linda morley moved that the section express its appreciation to chip for his editorial efforts in moving our publication from a newsletter to a review journal. the motion was seconded and passed by acclamation. the opie prize committee (joe edgette and danielle roemer) announced the winner of the 1990 opie prize to be simon bronner for his american children's folklore. those present congratulated simon with a hearty round of applause. in discussion, members raised the possibility of changing the opie prize award to something other than a solely cash award jay mechling will investigate the feasibility and cost of additional means of recognition such as a certificate, a trophy, or the like. members were reminded that contributions to the opie prize fund are tax-deductible and very welcome. contributions can be sent to danielle roemer. the following officers were then elected or re-elected by acclamation: judith haut as vice president and danielle roemer as secretary-treasurer. appointments reconfirmed by acclamation were simon bronner as archivist and chip sullivan as cfr editor. the discussion turned to raising section dues. chip reminded us that mailing rates will increase, and danielle summarized the cumulative impact on the treasury of the various prizes we award. at present, only the newell prize is completely paid for by annual earned interest. members present voted to raise the dues to $10.00/year effective 1 january 1991. however, anyone paying for a 1991 membership on or before 30 december 1990 can receive a membership for the old rate of $5.00/year. the members present also approved the category of section life membership. monies acquired in this way will be added to the opie prize endowment linda morley moved that the life membership rate be calculated at twenty times the subscription rate of 1 january 1991. the cost would therefore be $200.00. the proposal was seconded and passed linda morley then reported on the lifetime achievement medal. in spite of the section's prior decision to allocate $200.00 plus the matching funds from the afs centennial committee, there was a cost overrun of $194.00. joe edgette moved that the section authorize payment for this overrun. the motion was seconded and passed. danielle moved that the section express its gratitude to linda for her efforts in bringing out the 30 1990 annual meeting medal. the motion was seconded and passed by acclamation. it was suggested that a letter of appreciation be sent to artist armond szainer thanking him for his valuable contribution and assistance. it was announced that any section member can nominate someone for the lifetime achievement award. members present then discussed and agreed to establish a nominating committee, appointed by the cfs president, for the next lifetime award tom johnson then led a discussion of possible changes to the section's constitution and by-laws. it was suggested that the title of vice-president be changed to that of president-elect; that the out-going president serve for two years as past-president, that the executive board appoint a book review editor for cfr who would not be a member of the executive board, that the cfr editor appoint an editorial board for cfr which would be separate from the executive board, and that the cfr editor's term be for three years and be renewable. simon bronner moved that the proposed changes be sent to the membership for a vote. the motion was seconded and passed. with the introduction of new business, priscilla turned the chair over to tom johnson, in-coming president. jay meching and gary alan fine raised the possibility of the section's awarding a prize for the best children's book incorporating children's folklore or to the best book of folklore for children and that the prize be called the brian sutton-smith prize. linda morley suggested that the section announce its decision as to the best book rather than offer a cash award. margaret read macdonald expressed her support for the prize, saying that the section's accolade would be valuable to publishers and readers of children's books. chip advised that we would need to be very clear about the criteria of the prize to distinguish it from the opie prize. gary moved that a committee be established to investigate such a prize and that it make its recommendations to the executive board. the motion was seconded and passed. judith haut moved that this be an ad hoc committee of two who would propose guidelines for the prize and make their recommendations to the executive board. the motion was seconded and passed. gary alan fine and linda morley agreed to serve on this committee. judith haut raised the possibility of a section-sponsored panel at the 1991 newfoundland afs meeting. she expressed the concern, shared by others, about attendance at that meeting. it was suggested that authors unable to attend might ask someone else to deliver their papers. it was pointed out that it is against afs policy to write a paper with the explicit intent of having someone else deliver it. bill ellis raised the possibility of a sectionsponsored open forum at newfoundland. judith will investigate offering a panel/forum. edith fowke volunteered to chair a panel on children's folklore. 31 cfs under announcements, the following were reported: (1) the association for the anthropological study of play (taasp) will meet 14-16 march 1991 in charleston, sc. the meeting will be held jointly with those of the american ethnological society and the society for applied anthropology; (2) edith fowke announced that the canadian folklore society will meet prior to the afs meeting in newfoundland; (3) the handbook is (still) being put on computer disks. the meeting was adjourned at 9:29 a.m. respectfully submitted, danielle roemer secretary-treasurer 32 book review cosbey, robert. all in together, girls: skipping songs from regina, saskatchewan. regina: university of regina, 1980. 101p. pb. this small book is the first analytical study of children's lore in canada. robert cosbey, an ex-american then teaching at regina university, collected skipping songs from skippers between 1972 and 1978. he presents 114 different songs and 57 variants from 21 separate schools in regina. he begins with some comments on the range of skipping and its history and then questions the general assumption that skipping is a group activity of girls developed at the close of the nineteenth century. he argues that skipping was already an established tradition by the middle of the nineteenth century and that we have no way of knowing how much older than that it may be. he presents skippers as a folk group, discusses the sources, transmission, and changes of the rhymes, and describes and analyzes the performance of skipping. he says that children follow rigid rules: everybody gets a turn, and there is no competition. he analyzes the content of the texts, noting that some are used to foretell events, others express anxieties about sickness and death, some contain a somewhat satirical attitude toward adults, and some exhibit a complete naturalness about sexual encounters. he quotes: along came johnny swinging on a chain, down went his zipper and out it came. three months later you could really tell. nine months later out they came two little greasers swinging their chains. he notes that the informant who gave him this rhyme remarked: "it was not that the song was bad, but the adults always took it the wrong way. they took it literally while we took it as just another skipping song." edith fowke toronto 33 sue samuelson (1956-1991) simon bronner few people imagined that sue samuelson's address at the 1990 afs meeting would be her last. having already made her mark in folklore and folklife scholarship with college teaching positions, consultancies, papers at professional meetings, articles, book chapters, and books, she was too young to contemplate the end of life, no less the end of a career. but sadly she died on 17 january 1991 after more than two years of fighting lung cancer. she was 34 years old. sue received a b.a. in anthropology at the university of california at berkeley, where alan dundes introduced her to folklore scholarship. she was awarded the steager folklore prize there her senior year. she entered law school, but withdrew after a week and went to ucla for an m.a. in the folklore and mythology program and then to the university of pennsylvania for her ph.d. in folklore and folklife. at penn, she wrote her dissertation on christmas celebrations in america and developed the research interests in festivals, foodways, the folklore of children and adolescents, modem legendry, and applied folklore that would remain with her throughout her career. in recent years, sue was especially active in the children's folklore section (as secretary-treasurer and as vice president) and the foodways section (as conveener) of the american folklore society. she prepared a chapter on the transition from childhood to adolescence for the forthcoming handbook on children's folklore sponsored by the children's folklore section, and she collaborated with ted and lin humphrey on the introduction to "we gather together": food and festival in american life (1988). the foodways section has named its prize for the best student paper after sue. a more complete tribute to sue, along with a complete bibliography of her scholarship, will appear in an upcoming issue of the j ournal of american folklore. penn state-harrisburg 34 notes and announcements the children's folklore review is available only to members of the children's folklore section of the american folklore society. to become a cfs member, send $10.00 yearly dues to danielle roemer, literature and language, northern kentucky university, highland heights, ky 41076. additions/corrections to volume 13. number 1: volume 13, number 1, should also be identified as fall 1990. the articles by nicola hurlston and linda riley, identified as the 1990 newell prize winners on the contents page, were actually the 1989 newell prize winners. the article ending on page 24 should have as its last sentence: "they're the men who don't want to admit they're doing it, because it's not a macho activity." a correction slip was included in 13.1. the cover of 13.1 is millais' "the woodman's daughter" (1850-51). ala awards the american library association has honored folk guitarists dave van ronk and doc watson. each received an ala 1991 notable children's recording award. van ronk received his award for peter and the wolf, adapted for jugband by billy novak and narrated by von ronk who conceived of the project. watson received his award for doc watson sings songs for little pickers, a collection of traditional songs, most of which were recorded live at a concert in atlanta. watson's album has also received a grammy nomination in the best children's album category. contact: alcazar records, box 249, waterbury, vt 05676, for more details, a free catalog, or to order. youth culture in sweden the research program youth culture in sweden aims at exploring central aspects of today's swedish youth culture. it focuses on four themes: modernization, gender, style, and 35 notes and announcements spheres. it was started in 1988 and is the main responsibility of musicologist and youth culture researcher johan fomas. the program, which now includes about 50 researchers and post graduate students, is financed by the swedish research council for the humanities and social sciences and is also supported by allmanna bamhuset. for additional information, write: johan fomas, media and cultural theory, university of stockholm, s-106, 91, stockholm, sweden. folklife in education special issue of southern folklore camilla a. collins, editor nancy a. nusz, special editor a 1988 american folklore society panel provided the impetus for this insightful overview of the development of fo1k1ife in education and its implementation in specific programs. the papers that evolved from that session and the additional ones solicited for this issue constitute a marker of the progress made by folklorists in public education and critically examine the future of this field. topics addressed include the historical development of folk art in education programs, intercultural education, collaborative efforts between fo1k1orists and art teachers, folklore in prison education, curriculum materials for folklife education, and folk1ore and teaching english as a second language. special editor nancy a. nusz provides an introduction and a selected bibliography. contributors include peggy a. bulger, karen compton, kristin g. congdon, gregory hansen, michael kline, rita moonsammy, nancy a. nusz, and janis rosenberg. f olklife in education is available from the university of kentucky press at a cost of $10.00 36 cfr will accept manuscripts on 3 1/2" disks if the manuscript was typed using microsoft word or macwrite on a macintosh computer. we request that, if possible, authors using typewriters or dotmatrix printers have their manuscripts redone and a laser printed copy made. this will enable us to scan the copy, thereby eliminating rekeying the manuscript. please send manuscripts to: c. w. sullivan iii, editor children's folklore review department of english east carolina university greenville, nc 27858-4353 children's folklore review is published twice a year and sent to all members of the children's folklore section of the american folklore society. published by east carolina university issn: 0739-5558 copyright @ 1991 children's folklore section printed by morgan printers, inc. ocr document a review of the distinctive genres of adolescent folklore sue samuelson edited and introduced by simon j. bronner sue samuelson (1956-1991) served as vice president and secretarytreasurer of the children's folklore section of the american folklore society and often let her colleagues know her opinion that the rubric of "children" should be modified. her view came out of her scholarly work documenting legends and beliefs among teenagers, and their contexts in slumber parties and school gatherings. she felt that categorizing adolescent lore under childhood misrepresented the transitions culturally and physically that occurred to teenagers. although she recognized the connection of folklore used by adolescents to forms established in childhood, she noted that the emphasis on groupness and spirit in the american high school experience added an organizational difference to the american adolescent experience and distinguished it from categories of childhood, adulthood, or even college life. she agreed with gary alan fine's usage of the analytical terms "preadolescent" and "adolescent" to represent cultural patterns associated with coming of age (see fine, with the boys: little league baseball and preadolescent culture [chicago: university of chicago press, 1987]). she was indeed an appropriate figure to discuss adolescent folklore in a project surveying the field of children's folklore sponsored by the children's folklore section. she prepared a draft on the subject in 1983 when she was teaching at penn state harrisburg but was stricken with cancer a few years later when the project began moving forward. she was not then in a position to prepare her work for publication. the results of the project will appear in 1995 as children's folklore: a sourcebook published by garland. it was a project she promoted and would have wanted to see in print, but sadly, she died in 1991. sue's paper on adolescent folklore had a significant message to offer about the need for consideration of folklore genres that characterize adolescence as a distinctive phase of life. it also contained a review of literature that had appeared in this fledgling field. in fact, she traced serious treatment of adolescent folklore to the shockingly late date of 1963, but pointed out that substantial progress had been made on consideration of the special functions that folklore held during the transition years of adolescence. she was especially drawn 13 samuelson to psychological studies of folklore, because of the mentoring of alan dundes while she was an undergraduate at the university of california at berkeley. she went on to study folklore and folklife at the university of california at los angeles (ma) and university of pennsylvania (phd), where she delved more deeply into the perspectives of performance, social context, and organization as guiding principles of study. although many publications described legends without relating the significance of the age of tradition bearers, she insisted in articles such as "the white witch: an analysis of an adolescent legend" in indiana folklore (1979) and "european and american adolescent legends" in arv (1981) on making specific reference to the "adolescent legend" and by extension "adolescent folklore." her work was often cited when, during the late 19808 and early 19908, more scholarly attention turned to the teenage years and its agerelated folklore. in publications and at meetings, folklorists gary alan fine, bill ellis, jay mechling, ronald baker, and linda dégh, among others, were especially active in pointing out the context of adolescence in narrative performance. thorny issues remained of associating adolescent folklore with childhood and synthesizing collected folklore from teenagers into a folkloristic perspective that took into account interdisciplinary contributions on aging from psychology, education, anthropology, history, and sociology. after discussions of such issues at the 1994 american folklore society meeting, members of the children's folklore section recalled sue's draft and suggested that it would provide a good background in children's folklore review for efforts now being pursued in the field. i undertook the task of revising the prose, and added a conclusion drawn from her observations in "european and american adolescent legends" in arv(1981) and "notes on a sociology of folklore as a science" (new york folklore 9 [1983]: 13-20). i also had notes on hand from her papers donated to the center for pennsylvania culture studies at penn state harrisburg. in some instances, especially her discussion of functionalism, i expanded on her statements for the sake of bringing her ideas across more thoroughly. as her friend and colleague in the american studies program at penn state harrisburg, i relied on my memory of conversations with her about ideas not found in print for my elaborations of the text, but as much as possible i let her words remain intact. i left her bibliography as she compiled it to represent the literature from which she drew her observations. as a supplement to her survey of works, i can mention many significant additions that have appeared during the late 1980s and early 1990s. perhaps the greatest growth on the folkloristic bookshelf related to adolescents has been in the area of narrative and legend-telling. sequels to jan harold brunvand's vanishing hitchhiker have appeared, including the choking 14 distinctive genres of adolescent folklore doberman (1984), the mexican pet (1986), curses! broiled again! (1989), and the baby train (1993). gary alan fine, whose scholarship sue greatly admired, has included essays on adolescent legend in his book manufacturing tales (knoxville: university of tennessee press, 1992). many of the articles on legend she cites from the journal indiana folklore have been reprinted in the book indiana folklore: a reader, edited by linda dégh (bloomington: indiana university press, 1980). while sue points to the special place of articles on adolescent legend in indiana folklore and midwestern folklore, i would add the periodicals contemporary legend, foaftale news, and western folklore since the late 1980s to her list. a special issue of western folklore devoted to "contemporary legends in emergence," edited by bill ellis (january 1990), for example, includes his study of satanic cult rumors among high school students, "the devilworshippers at the prom: rumor-panic as therapeutic magic" (27-49). in addition, several proceedings of conferences on "perspectives on contemporary legend" have appeared with studies of legends collected from teenagers, without making reference, however, to the "adolescent legend." an exception in western folklore by s. elizabeth bird refers to "adolescent legend trips" in her article "playing with fear: interpreting the adolescent legend trip" (53 [1994]: 191-210). other excellent discussions of the adolescent legend-trip can be found in "adolescent legend trips as teenage cultural response: a study of lore in context" by patricia m. meley (children's folklore review 14 [1991]: 5-24), and "legend tripping in ohio: a behavioral survey" (papers in comparative studies 2 [1982-1983]: 61-73) and "legend-trips and satanism: adolescents' ostensive traditions as 'cult' activity" (in the satanism scare, ed. james t. richardson, joel best, david g. bromley [new york: aldine de gruyter, 1991]), both by bill ellis. ellis also refers to "adolescent horror legends" and legend-trips in "'the hook' reconsidered: problems in classifying and interpreting adolescent horror legends" (folklore 105 [1994]: 61-76). other genres associated with adolescence such as "sick" jokes and drinking games have been covered in a number of publications, but it is fair to say that they have lagged behind the interest generated by "contemporary legend." alan dundes collected his essays on "sick jokes" in cracking jokes (berkeley: ten speed press, 1987). it includes essays on "the dead baby joke," mentioned by sue, and others circulated by adolescents such as jokes about quadriplegics and jewish-american princesses. i discuss a regional joke cycle that began with adolescents in "political suicide: the budd dwyer joke cycle and the humor of disaster," midwestern folklore 14 (1988). several interesting references have meanwhile appeared about drinking games, mostly in health journals. see sylvia grider, "reversal of compe 15 samuelson tence in college drinking games," play and culture 3 (1990); paul douglas, "bizz-buzz, turtles, quarters, and one horse club: the role of drinking games among high school and college students," alcohol health and research world (summer 1987); willy pedersen, "drinking games adoles . cents play," british journal of addiction 85 (1990); janet crawford, "the role and function of drinking games in a university community," journal of american college health 39 (1991). an analysis of games using the source of the human relations area files is "adolescents at play: a cross-cultural study of adolescent games" by alice schlegel and herbert barry iii in the content of culture: constants and variants, ed. ralph bolton (new haven: human relations area files, 1989). see also the cross-cultural examination of rituals for puberty and adolescence in transitions: four rituals in eight cultures by martha nemes fried and morton h. fried (new york: w. w. norton, 1980). a suggestive study of slang used by gang members— constituting adolescent subcultures-is thomas murray's "the folk argot of midwestern gangs," midwestern folklore 19 (1993). the "slumber party" and "spooky activities" (e.g., seances and levitations) often related to it are covered by shaari freed in "spooky activities and group loyalty," children's folklore review 16 (fall 1993); see also elizabeth tucker, "levitation and trance sessions at preadolescent girls' slumber parties," in the masks of play, ed. brian sutton-smith (new york: leisure press, 1984). adolescent rites of passage as well as gender roles are studied in the men from the boys: rites of passage in male america by ray raphael (lincoln: university of nebraska press, 1988) and rites of passage in america: traditions of the life cycle organized by the balch institute for ethnic studies (1992). although more sociological than folkloristic, the material child: coming of age in japan and america by merry white (new york: free press, 1993) and coming of age in new jersey by michael moffatt (new brunswick: rutgers university press, 1989) cover the teenage "coming of age." although sue neglected material culture in her study, some recent essays have examined teenage fashions as part of the process of tradition. for friendship bracelets and other adornments, for example, see my american children's folklore (little rock: august house, 1988), catherine klutz, "friendship bracelets," children's folklore review 12.1(1989): 4-5, and ariane sains, "the latest teen rage? embroidery," children's folklore review 13.1 (1990): 23-24 (for an austrian study of teenage clothing preferences that invites comparison, see michael martischnig, "schöner vogel jugend: kleidung und verkleidung jugendlicher heute," in gegenwartsvolkskunde und jugendkultur [vienna: österreichischen akad. der wiss., 1987]. although sue's review mainly covered folklore from the united states, it is worth mentioning some comparative studies from other 16 distinctive genres of adolescent folklore countries that focus on adolescent culture. for folk song from adolescent females in canada, one can consult "theorizing music's affective power" by jennifer giles and john shepherd in ethnomusicology in canada, ed. robert witmer (toronto: institute for canadian music, 1990), and for religious beliefs in finland, one can read "religious attitudes, values and world view: a study among contemporary young finns" by helena helve in ethnologica uralica 3 (1992): 31-38. several essays in the austrian publication gegenwartsvolkskunde und jugendkultur, edited by klaus beitl and eva kausel, discuss research methods and historiography related to the study of adolescents. the organizational context of schools, camps, and churches and their influence on adolescent life is the focus of several studies in inside organizations: understanding the human dimension, edited by michael owen jones, michael dane moore, and richard christopher snyder (newbury park, california: sage, 1988). among the titles relating to adolescents are "the paradox of functional dysfunction in a girl scout camp" by patricia atkinson wells, "dealing with organizational stress: lessons from the folklore of mormon missionaries" by william wilson, and "organizational festivals and the uses of ambiguity: the case of picnic day at davis" by jay mechling and david scofield wilson. students as part of an age and an organization receive consideration in jay mechling's "mediating structures and the significance of university folk" in folk groups and folklore genres: a reader, ed. elliott oring (logan: utah state university press, 1989). my study of folklore collected from students appeared as piled higher and deeper: the folklore of campus life (little rock: august house, 1990); it extends the collection american children's folklore (little rock: august house, 1988), which covers the school years between the ages of 5 and 17. considerations of gender relations that especially concerned sue are "some differences in male and female joke-telling" by carol mitchell (in women's folklore, women's culture, ed. rosan a. jordan and susan j. kalcik [philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press, 1985]) and "'this is a true story': roles of women in contemporary legend," midwestern folklore 20 (1994). and for information on sue samuelson's life and career, see my essay, "sue samuelson (1956-1991)," journal of american folklore 104 (1991): 341-44. simon j. bronner penn state harrisburg january 1995 17 samuelson adolescent lore popular descriptions of the transition from childhood to adolescence often include one of two paradoxical viewpoints. the first is the sentimentalized "overnight wonder" experience: one day the children are contented with dressing dolls or climbing trees and the next they are buying prom clothes, asking to borrow the family car and telling stories about crazy killers with hooks instead of hands. this image is more often the production of advertising campaigns (e.g., the kodak montage of photographs of "misty yesteryears") than the actual experience of people in daily contact with children. the other viewpoint covers a slower but more realistic transition that features physical changes (especially puberty), improving social skills, and intellectual development. even the most rapid course through puberty still takes more than a day to complete the journey. no clear boundaries differentiate childhood from adolescence (or adolescence from adulthood). this seamlessness helps explain the scarcity of folkloristic studies that treat adolescent culture apart from more clearly demarcated age categories of childhood or adulthood. that is not to say, however, that adolescence, sometimes referred to roughly as the "teen years," doesn't carry meaning as an age category. typically, it is treated as a period of transition, and interpretations often seek to find the functions that folklore plays to mature children or move them into adulthood. folklore collected from adolescents often overlaps with the cultural expression of the preceding and succeeding periods of life. adolescents unconsciously retain (or consciously mock) elements of the folklore which played such an important role in their childhood years. jumprope rhymes, cootie catchers, and the like are filed away for later use when children become parents, aunts and uncles, or teachers. occasionally, the items are jarred back into consciousness when one is babysitting or reads magazine articles that appear periodically as reminders of younger days. still, many cycles of childhood games or customs disappear completely as youngsters move on to new interests. if demarcations of adolescence are vague, especially in modern industrialized society, then folklore helps identify distinguishing characteristics of the period between childhood and adulthood. in addition to testing the process of transition, adolescent folklore, much of it short-lived, creates social separateness. by "folklore," i mean forms of traditional expressive activities, attitudes and material objects passed on by word of mouth and through imitation which serve as a format for communicating fears, feelings, problems, and goals of individuals and the groups of which they are a part. a partial listing of genres that are especially evident during adolescence are: legends, slang, ceremonies, customs, pranks, games, parties, special clubs, 18 distinctive genres of adolescent folklore verbal dueling, automobile activities, foods, songs and cheers (and their parodies) and autograph and yearbook verses. specific examples might include slang expressions about parts of the body or articles of clothing (such as "boulder holder" for bra) or jokes and stories about sexual experimentation. such genres reflect teenagers' interest in their changing bodies. another example from the realm of speech play is the adolescent's use of proverbs. from a piagetian perspective, the adolescent has reached the stage of formal operational thinking. that is, his or her thought processes can consider the possible as well as the real. the folklorist is interested in the impact of these changes on expressive performance. the abstract applications of proverbs often cannot be understood by children but will make sense to adolescents whose cognitive capabilities are more developed. on the other hand, older children find the simplicity of riddling to be less humorous (although riddling persists in adult repertoires to some extent). cultural awareness of adolescence appears to be a twentieth-century phenomenon. descriptions of traditional adolescent activities can be found in the late nineteenth-century collection of children's games by william wells newell (1883), in paul brewster's studies of games and customs in the 1950s, and in iona and peter opie's books on english children's games from the 1950s and 1960s. these works tend to present teenage customs as an extension of children's behavior. martha dirks' "teen-age folklore from kansas," the first american treatise to consider adolescent folklore separately, appeared in 1963. dirks examined four main genres: humor, slang, customs/beliefs, and verse/song. she appeared to be unaware of the plethora of "scary stories" whose popularity with teenage storytellers extended back to the 1930s, if not before. the main repository for texts of these kinds of narratives is the journal indiana folklore, which ceased publication in the early 1980s. taking its place as an outlet for studies of adolescent folklore is midwestern folklore (formerly midwestern journal of language and folklore ). with the establishment in 1968 of indiana folklore, the study of adolescent folklore made great progress. in the journal's first years it was a rare volume that did not include at least one article on adolescents' legends. readers became familiar with widely told stories such as "the boyfriend's death" (dégh) or "the hook" (dégh) as well as more localized legends about haunted houses, bridges, and tunnels (see sliney). while the bulk of this work concentrates on indiana materials from the late 1960s and early 1970s, the obvious enthusiasm for collecting and interpreting the narratives is reflected in the publication of similar articles in other journals and in indiana folklore's expansion to include material from outside of the midwest (see samuelson, "the white witch"). jan harold brunvand's vanishing hitchhiker: ameri 19 samuelson can urban legends and their meanings (1981) and its sequels provide a review of legends popular with adolescents and college students (and with other age groups as well). studies have been made of events related to adolescent legends such as visits to haunted sites or pranking activities that draw on a store of common knowledge about local ghosts or strange happenings (see koss, and hall). such occasions often result in even more storytelling events or are recalled after they occur as a form of vicarious enjoyment. other locales for legendtelling, such as slumber parties (see simons) and summer camps (see leary, "the boondocks monster of camp wapehani," and mechling, "the magic of the boy scout campfire"), have also received analytical treatment. after narrative studies the most common genres for scholarly folkloristic inquiry are rites of passage and verbal dueling. the former is a rather vaguely defined area. it includes ritual-like activities such as high school graduations and their associated events (e.g., proms) that signal the beginnings of transition into adulthood. college interview stories are another example (see stephanoff), along with the all-important driver's license, "an especially apt embodiment of a rite of passage attuned to the spirit of a secular and mechanical society. . . [it is] a transition via testing and training, and finally incorporation into a new way of life with its concomitant opportunities and responsibilities" (thompson 154). studies also exist for intra-adolescent initiations such as induction into a club or high school sorority (see schwartz and merten) or athletic teams (see mccann). associated with this genre are items such as pep rallies (see burnett), practical jokes (e.g., toilet papering the houses of athletes to wish them good luck or honor them for a strong performance), cast parties following dramatic productions, and yearbook signings. some anthropologists contend that in contemporary western cultures little or nothing is done in the way of ritual or ceremony to create changes in social status, particularly in regard to initiation into adult roles (gluckman 3538). religious rituals such as confirmations or bar/bat mitzvahs lack a broad base of support and the importance of high school and college graduations tends to be downplayed as well. these are "specialized ceremonies of initiation, which-indeed like weddings and funerals-mark changes of status, but they do not involve any ideas that the performing of prescribed actions by appropriately related persons will mystically affect the well being of the initiands" (gluckman 137). one study by jacquetta hill burnett, however, strongly portrays the significance of the elaborate ceremonial cycles that are performed in high schools across the united states. burnett carefully acknowledges the difference of these rituals from the more magico religious ones practiced in tribal societies. she is also aware of the impact of 20 distinctive genres of adolescent folklore variations in social structure to be found in communities and high schools that are to be expected in heterogeneous society. but burnett is adamant in stating her belief that ceremonial activities associated with sports, dances, homecoming, and so on as a part of the annual school cycle and a four year agegrade cycle are significant ways of marking changes "in the character of interaction, in the configuration of relationships, and in the nature of activity" (4). anyone who has participated in a high school graduation ceremony or a prom or functioned as an "interested bystander" (parents; younger, and envious, siblings) knows that these are very important occasions. if they do not actually change the "character of interaction," they certainly make a contribution by marking significant points in the socialization process. because they do not explicitly cause a change in status, however, they might be better labeled rites of aging rather than of passage. most of the articles on verbal insults deal with "the dozens," "a verbal duel played by negro males, the object of which is to better one's opponent by deriding him with defamatory insults about his family. the content of the insults principally describes reputed sexual misdeeds of the opponent's mother" (ayoub and barnett 337). as early as the late 1930s the use of dozens by black youths received attention in psychological journals. it was roger abrahams' folkloristic studies, however, that made the genre a prominent area of cultural investigation. in the 1970s, studies of contests-ininsults among whites complemented abrahams' significant investigations. the meanings of verbal dueling depend on many variables, including the race, class, and personality of participants, but several interpretations have been raised. the earliest study suggested dozens as a means of coping with aggression (see dollard); later studies suggested a search for masculine identity (see abrahams), peer-group definition (see ayoub and barnett), and status enhancement via the debasement of basic societal values (see bronner). articles by simon bronner explore the cohesive functions of ritual insults for small male groups in urban areas, particularly for boys in a fringe stmtum of society. psychological factors also enter into the analysis, such as the "aggressive character of competition, rejection of authority, and manifestation of sexual behavior" (see bronner, "who says?" 54). affiliated with the examination of verbal insults are studies of adolescent language, such as group designations (e.g., nerd, hood, doper, greaser), states of being (e.g., with it, cool) (see schwartz and merten, and parker). other forms of language behavior (e.g., jokes and riddles) have been touched upon, often with some penetrating comments on their functions. thomas peck's comparison of male and female dirty joke-telling notes that "both the male and female joke-tellers tend to place their own sex into a superior position in the creation of their jokes. . . [and] that many of the objects used as the source 21 samuelson of humor are not used by the opposite sex." furthermore, girls are affected (at least during the early 1970s) by social ideals that they should not appear to be too "crude." thus their "creative genius of [dirty] joke inventing is. . . going to decrease" as they mature (103). peck's comment is a little overstated, especially since considerable changes in the social interaction patterns of females has occurred since his study was made. as david hufford notes in his editor's preface to the special issue of keystone folklore quarterly on folklore at a pennsylvania prep school (the issue in which peck's article appeared), obscene materials often are collected from adolescent boys and girls, "the group which is most often singled out as needing shelter from such things. . . . obscene material is of great interest to adolescents and forms a very significant part of their repertoires" (55). in addition to obscene jokes and language, stories set in lover's lanes (e.g., "the boyfriend's death") or about boys who put aphrodisiacs in their date's drinks (e.g., "drugged and seduced") abound with sexual references (see greenberg). beliefs about pregnancy and birth control (e.g., cola as a douche, using plastic wrap as a condom) forms another category with sexual references common among adolescents (see fish). these forms of expressive behavior reveal adolescents' great interest in sexual matters, which should not be unexpected considering their physical and social development. courtship is a highly anticipated and greatly discussed part of adolescence. especially in legends such as "the boyfriend's death" or "drugged and seduced," the "power struggle which almost invariably accompanies dating" is expressed (schwartz and merten 466). pranking activity among adolescents often revolves around the use of the automobile, so car lore may be considered another genre of folklore among adolescents. the automobile is "the site of bull sessions, drinking bouts and necking parties. in all, the car provided a mobile parlor, clubhouse, dining room, and bedroom. it was at once the setting and symbol of much adolescent deviant and non deviant sociability and sexuality" (licht 46). car lore also includes stories of buying and maintaining cars, the slang expressions used in referring to them (or their parts), games like "chinese fire drill" or "chicken," and just plain "cruising." a psychoanalytically oriented article by charles yohe examines an adolescent "folkway" known as "pantsing" or "mooning" wherein a teenage passenger in a car drops his (it is usually a male activity) pants and presents his buttocks to (or through) a car window to passing motorists. such activity can occur elsewhere (cf., a school dance in the movie grease ), but it is most commonly practiced in automobiles. yohe believes mooning is not the deviant act that some adult authorities claim; it functions as a reasonable release for exhibitionistic tendencies. 22 distinctive genres of adolescent folklore a commonly recognized but understudied genre of adolescent folklore is the kissing game, such as "spin the bottle" and "post office." such games are mentioned in some children's folklore collections (see newell, passim; brewster 152-56; and opie 1969: 169-170,263-267,270-272), but the most thorough study is "the kissing games of adolescents in ohio," an essay by brian sutton-smith in which he describes 53 adolescent kissing games, their settings, origins, and functions. sutton-smith interprets the functions of the games by observing that they "have prospered and developed in the modern world because they are appropriate to the parlor settings in middle and uppermiddle class homes and because they satisfy the desire of adolescents for increasing heterosexual experience, but at the same time safeguard them against too open a commitment to, or too much intimacy with, the other sex" (216). contemporary teenagers are much more open about their sexual activities in the 1980s than the adolescents that sutton-smith investigated in the 1950s. although kissing games might be acceptable to some adolescents, particularly younger ones, they can seem a bit outdated. drinking games, though, are quite popular, even among late adolescents (especially the college crowd). they have been the subject of a master's thesis (see young), but relatively few publications. in addition, games involving the use of drugs may draw upon the drinking game tradition, but public references to this sensitive material is scarce (see dorson). two late articles of the 1970s explore adolescents' use of graffiti. gelman concentrates on postal graffiti, such as swak (sealed with a kiss), an envelope sealer, but the author's promised interpretative comments on the presentation of self and revelation of group identity are minimal. a study of high school bathroom graffiti conducted by three sociologists (see perelti, et al.) reveals five main areas of concern: sexual maturation, self-identification, idealism, iconoclasm. and rebelliousness. sexual maturity was the number one topic for both sexes while girls appeared to be more concerned with the next two topics and boys were more involved in iconoclastic writings. both sexes scored equally on items involving rebelliousness. some of the genre-oriented articles focus more on the organizational setting than the item of folkloristic performance, particularly when they assess the high school as the primary social base of activity for teenagers. one of the most thorough surveys of adolescent legendry asserts that the school "is the main setting for establishing and maintaining personal relationships; it is also the center for many community activities" (thigpen 141). various articles have discussed school spirit (see miracle), conflicts between teachers and students (see davis), and the general types of behavior at a high school such as classes, customs, and after-school activities (see burnett). outside of the school setting only a few of the possible contexts for activity have been 23 samuelson analyzed: play behavior in the boy scouts (see mechling "sacred and profane play in the boy scouts of america"), mock ordeals at summer camps (see ellis), and work sites, especially the fast-food restaurants that frequently employ large numbers of teenagers (bronner, "who says?" 57-58). except for analyses of contests-in-insults called "the dozens," the majority of the studies of adolescent folklore have focused on white, middle-class, suburban and urban american teenagers (see samuelson, "european and american adolescent legends," for a brief report on adolescent legends told by europeans). furthermore, the studies mainly have looked at normal, nondelinquent teenagers, although some of the marginal groups—ethnics, drug users, delinquents—could be valuable sources of information to provide contrasting data to the middle-of-the-road groups studied thus far (see hawes). kenneth thigpen, for example, discusses the existence of two groups within the adolescent population he studied in brown county, indiana. one group consists of traditional stereotyped teenagers. members are politically, religiously, and socially conservative, rebellious against authority as it pertains to them personally but not against the system, and primarily use beer and liquor as symbols of maturity. the other group, called "counterculture," is politically apathetic but leans toward liberalism, is religiously apathetic but shows an interest in the occult, and uses wine and marijuana as a means of titillation (209). a few studies of adolescents expand on the context of social interaction that fosters folkloric production. james p. leary's "white guys' stories of the night street" examines some of the linguistic behavior of a bloomington, indiana, group of late adolescents who hang out at night in a supermarket parking lot. their greetings, taunts, proverbs, jokes, toasts, and parodies center on matters of immediate concern—getting drunk or stoned, driving and its associated technology, fights and contests, women, "crazy" behavior, and visiting "scary" places. leary finds pattern to this behavior. one kind of interaction reports and comments on relations with in-group males; others respond to dealings with females, with outsiders and their material extensions, and with the supernatural world. such an interpretative scheme might provide considerable comparative information if applied to other kinds of teenagers, both marginal and "normal." this is a point made in simon bronner's "'who says?'''—a study of white ritual insults. marginal groups do not just give contrasting data. they should be studied also because they magnify the concerns and tensions of the mainstream. if one were trying to gain a sense of mid-twentieth century american adolescence from folklorists' reports, no clear picture would emerge. most of the articles contain good descriptions of folklore and often some analysis, but little has been done in the way of synthesizing the material for an overview 24 distinctive genres of adolescent folklore of adolescents' attitudes, behaviors, and social relationships, and the ways that folklore can reveal significant features of this stage of development or of adolescents as a cohesive social group. when one assesses the various analytical comments in the studies available, some trends emerge. one finds adolescent concerns with sexuality, a sense of adventure and discovery, a need to test alternative forms of reality, and to express independence. when examining sexual activity as a major theme in the folklore adolescents, it is important to remember who is telling the story or joke, using the slang expression, or playing the game. one generalization often put forward is that while folklore research overall has tended to use male informants, adolescent folklore research has favored the expressive behavior of females (fine and johnson 120). this situation partly owes to the boom in studies of contemporary legend, many gathered from high school and college women. especially conspicuous in interpretations of this narrative material is the suggestion that among women coming of age sexual behavior induces caution at best and fear at worst sexual connotations in women's narratives, however, are less clinical in detail than the few male narratives which have been examined. "typically sexuality in the legends of adolescent girls is symbolic rather than overt," fine and johnson observe (120). most feminine stories emphasize the negative consequences of sex; they are cautionary tales rather than forms of wish fulfillment (see dundes "on the psychology of legend"). the reverse is more the case for male legend-tellers although they occasionally tell or listen to specifically female-oriented stories. in addition to recognizing the ethnicity and locale of the person telling stories, folklorists increasingly consider the narrative viewpoint in relation to gender. an example is fine and johnson's analysis of "the promiscuous cheerleader," a legend about a female cheerleader who offers herself sexually to an entire football team. from the boy's perspective, the narrative details of the cheerleader are appealing because they represent relief from the embarrassment of sexual maneuvering and possible rejection. but they also illustrate the male's potentially negative opinion of a female in a sexually aggressive role. the same kind of issue is mentioned by jay mechling in his discussion of a boy scout game, "poison pit,'" a tug-of-war-like activity played over a pit filled with mud and watermelon rinds and seeds. mechling argues that "the game of poison pit is a ritual literalization of metaphor, with the pit symbolizing a vagina. much linguistic evidence supports the interpretation of the game, which was a ritual addressing the boys' anxiety about female sexuality, and consequently, their own" ("male gender display at a boy scout camp" 156). although such psychological analysis is often defensible, folklorists must be careful that the connection of sexuality to adolescence, especially in 25 samuelson the period around puberty, does not obscure other lessons. for instance, sexually oriented folklore can be also analyzed in terms of political issues. the cycle of "grosser than gross" jokes (involving tampons, toxic shock syndromes, and pantyhose, among other topics) reveals the impact of the women's movement on new items of folklore. the teenage boys who tell such jokes, according to simon bronner, "are becoming aware of women's political rise at the same time they are recognizing girls' rapid physical development. as such, the jokes signify certain male discomfort with, or female pride in, the advancing adult maturity and socialization by girls" (1985: 41). another approach to the sexual themes in adolescent folklore emphasizes the potential outcome of sexual behavior-babies-and the social ramifications of teenage sex. alan dundes, for example, looks at the recent "dead baby" joke cycle and concludes, "the cycle provides a means for adolescents and young teenagers to try to relieve their anxiety about impending parenthood" ("the dead baby joke cycle" 157). biologically, adolescents can have children while they are still technically children themselves, not having completed the cultural or social transitions into adulthood. even with sex education and increased availability of contraceptives and abortions adolescents still have babies, and sex drives, "but in theory society insists that they postpone such activities." the result is guilt and anxiety which are "clearly a factor in the generation and transmission of dead baby jokes" (157). there is more to the use of sexually oriented folklore by adolescents than a release of psychological tension; they also indicate a desire for increased socialization and entertainment among age-mates. as bronner notes in regard to the adolescent penchant for "sick" jokes (including the dead baby joke cycle): supposedly, the sick jokes are especially appealing because of that age's [adolescence's] rebellious spirit which matches the shocking, rebellious content of the jokes. in addition, however, i note that many adolescents often anticipate the conflicts and tensions of society, since they are in the process of socializing into it. therefore they often prefigure such societal conflicts and tensions by symbolically confronting them in folklore. [1985: 41] an increasing awareness of one's sexuality directly relates to another facet of adolescent behavior, a need for discovery and adventure. this is allied with changes in cognitive development, to be sure, and parallels similar behavior in early childhood when one starts to explore the environment. but adolescents have a far greater area to investigate; they feel that the whole 26 distinctive genres of adolescent folklore world is at their disposal. besides sexuality the diverse experiences of intellectual, artistic, occupational, and religious spheres are open for investigation. this directly ties in with teenagers' desires to test the reality of the new vistas opening up to them. alternative forms of reality are explored, particularly the supernatural. while children and adults know ghost stories and the like, the adolescent's repertoire of scary stories (see roemer) and visits to haunted sites is impressive. such activities often occur in groups so there is a great deal of mutual reinforcement and safety in numbers to help allay fears that something untoward will happen. the actual beliefs in ghosts, spirits, or abnormal creatures with whom most of the legends and legendtrips deal has yet to be adequately assessed. some teenagers know that they are just playing along, having suspended their disbelief to enjoy the thrill of a good scare in much the same way that they take a roller coaster ride or see a horror movie. they know the real world still exists; now is the time to explore the possibilities of other types of situations. reality testing and a familiarity with the "real reality" of socialized adult behavior coincides with a desire among teenagers to express their independence. this, too, has precedents in earlier childhood, but adolescents want to make sure that authority figures know that teenagers feel they are nearing the time when they will be able to perform acceptably in adult roles. the stereotype of the "storm and stress" of adolescence fits in well here, but not every adolescent experiences the yearning for independence in this fashion. it is hard to say what a normal, or ideal, adolescence is. if anything should prevail from folkloristic (and other scholarly) observations of adolescents in a number of settings, it is that there is an incredible variety of experience. many individuals have relatively calm teenage years (although they may compensate later in life with a delayed independence period following a major life crisis). some persons are classic rebels, while others route their independence/adventurous/sexual striving into sports, clubs, and drama activities. they are not always eager to discuss their feelings either, and it is in such situations that an observation of their stories, jokes, customs, and games might help to reveal what is going on in their lives, how they are releasing and relating themselves through these forms of expressions. bronner notes this situation in his article "a re-examination of dozens among white adolescents." as mentioned earlier, the mother insults that form the core of most dozens activity are a debasement of basic societal values, but they function as a release mechanism for frustration over adult social patterns and expectations. the dozens also serve as expressions of creativity, competition, and camaraderie. studies such as bronner's on verbal dueling exemplify those approaches that go beyond content analysis to provide interpretations drawn from the 27 samuelson context and performance of adolescent cultural expression. he documents the material and organizational environments in which duels occur, provides social backgrounds and physical descriptions of the participants, describes the positions of the participants and their movements during the event, records narrative exchanges and reflections of participants on what occurred, and interviews non-participants on their views of the events. to paraphrase steve bartlett in his article "social interaction patterns of adolescents in a folklore performance," the performance, rhetorically managed in relation to the social demands of the event, brings meaning to the words and gestures used. repetitive patterns can be discerned within a narrative exchange as well as among several events. one needs to look at how, why, when, and where an item is presented and what the performers, the adolescents themselves, have to say about it. not only the words of the story but the words about the story are vital components of the interpretative task of the folkloristic researcher. my experience in fieldwork has been that tradition bearers bring differing values and concerns to their interpretation of folklore, although patterns typically emerge among many teenagers with points that are emphasized. one has to be prepared, though, for informants who cannot or will not provide interpretative comments. in such cases material garnered from a thorough understanding of the social and cultural basis of adolescence, both in general and in a particular community, can still provide the stage from which one can "decode" the values, worldviews, and problems expressed in items of folklore. the instability, the transition, associated with adolescence in western society provides fruitful ground for research. the themes that teenagers want to express such as sexuality, sex roles, guilt in violating social norms, anxiety at assuming responsibility, and exerting more control over their lives are evident in adolescent lore. the genres of adolescent lore—especially legends, jokes, beliefs, rituals (such as slumber parties )—operate to communicate these themes and often function to alleviate tension and worry. besides scholarly studies of adolescence produced by psychologists, educators, sociologists, and anthropologists, folklorists have made significant contributions. more attention by folklorists to adolescence as a separate phase of life with distinctive forms of expression will enhance the understanding, popular and scholarly, of the ways through their lives that people find of assuaging their loneliness, their fundamental separateness, by making connections to other people, connections over which they can exert some degree of control through performance. 28 distinctive genres of adolescent folklore works cited abrahams, roger. "playing the dozens." journal of american folklore 75 (1962): 209-220. ayoub, millicent, and stephen a. barnett. "ritualized verbal insult in white high school culture." journal of american folklore 78 (1965): 337-344. bartlett, steve. "interaction patterns of adolescents in a folklore performance." folklore forum 4 (1971): 39-67. brewster, paul g. american non-singing games. norman: u of oklahoma p, 1953. bronner, simon j. "a re-examination of dozens among white adolescents." western folklore 37 (1978): 1i8-127. _______. "what's grosser than gross?" midwestern journal of language and folklore ii (1985): 39-49. _______. '''who says?' a further investigation of ritual insults among white adolescents." midwestern journal of language and folklore 4 (1978): 53-69. brunvand, jan harold. the vanising hitchhiker. new york: norton, 1981. burnett, jacquetta hill. "ceremony, rites and economy in the student system of an american high school." human organization 28 (1969): 1-10. _______. pattern and process in student life: a study of custom and social relationships among the students of an american high school. new york; teacher's college p, 1969. davis, janet. "teachers, kids and conflict: ethnography of a junior high school." the cultural experience: ethnography in a complex society. ed. j. p. spradley and d.w. mccurdy. chicago: sra, 1972. 114-155. dégh, linda. "the boyfriend's death." indiana folklore 1 (1968): 101-106. ________. "the hook." indiana folklore 1 (1968): 92-100. dirks, martha. "teenage folklore from kansas." western folklore 22 (1963): 89 102. dollard, john. "the dozens: dialectic of insult." american imago 1 (1939): 3-25. dorson, richard. "folklore of the youth culture." america in legend: folklore from the colonial period to the present. ed. richard dorson. new york: pantheon, 1973. 257-259. dundes, alan. "on the psychology of legend." american folk legend: a sympo sium. ed. w. d. hand. berkeley: u of california p, 1971. 21-36. _______. "the dead baby joke cycle." western folklore 38 (1979): 145-157. ellis, bill. "the camp mock-ordeal: theatre as life." journal of american folklore 94 (1981): 486-505. fine, gary alan, and bruce noel johnson. "the promiscuous cheerleader: an adolescent male belief legend." western folklore 39 (1980): 120-129. lydia. "the old wife in the dormitory—sexual folklore and magical practices from state university college." new york folklore quarterly 28 (1972): 30-36. gelman, susan. "toward a study of postal graffiti: text and context in an adolescent girls' genre." western folklore 37 (1978): 102-118. 29 samuelson gluckman, max. "les rites de passage." essays on the rituals of social relations. ed. max gluckman. manchester: manchester up, 1962. 1-52. greenberg, andrea. "drugged and seduced: a contemporary legend." new york folklore quarterly 29 (1973): 121-158. hall, gary. "the big tunnel: legends and legend-telling." indiana folklore 6 (1973): 139-173. hawes, bess lomax. "'la llorona' in juvenile hall." western folklore 27 (1968): 153-169. hufford, david j. "editor's preface." keystone folklore quarterly 15 (1970): 55 58. _______. "teaching and collecting folklore at a boys' prep school: field work exampoles from 'the academy'-pennsylvania." keystone folklore quarterly 15 (1970): 59-113. koss, deborah. "a collection of interviews about a porter county ghost hunt." indiana folklore 8 (1975): 99-125. leary, james p. "the boondocks monster of camp wapehani." indiana folklore 6 (1973): 174-190. _______. "white guys' stories of the night street." journal of the folklore institute 14 (1977): 59-72. licht, m. "some automotive play activities of suburban teenagers." new york folklore quarterly 30 (1974): 44-65. mccann, robert. "before suburbia collapses: teaching and collecting folklore among adolescents." keystone folklore 1 (1982): 34-50. mechling, jay. "the magic of the boy scout campfire." journal of american folklore 93 (1980): 35-56. _______. "male gender display at a boy scout camp." children and their organizations: investigations in american culture. ed. r. t. sieber and a. j. gordon. boston: g. k. hall, 1981. 138-160. _______. "sacred and profane play in the boy scouts of america." play and culture. ed. h. b. schwartzman. west point, ny: leisure, 1980.206-213. miracle, andrew w., jr. "school spirit as a ritual by-product: views from applied anthropology." play and culture. ed. h. b. schwartzman. west point, ny: leisure, 1980. 98-103. newell, william wells. 1883, 1903. games and songs of american children. new york: dover, 1963. opie, iona, and peter opie. children's games in street and playground. oxford: clarendon, 1969. parker, drucilla p. "a dictionary of adolescent folk speech in oakland." m.a. thesis, university of california, berkeley, 1975. peck, thomas. "dirty jokes at the academy and angela morrison." keystone folklore quarterly 15 (1970): 93-105. peretti, peter o., richard carter, and betty mcclinton. "graffiti and adolescent personality." adolescence 12 (1977): 31-42. roemer, danielle. "scary story legends." m.a. thesis, university of texas at austin, 1972. 30 distinctive genres of adolescent folklore samuelson, sue. "european and american adolescent legends." arv: the scandi navian yearbook of folklore 37 (1981): 133-139. _______. "the white witch: an analysis of an adolescent legend." indiana folklore 12 (1979): 18-37. schwartz, gary, and don merten. "the language of adolescence: an anthropologi cal approach to youth culture." american journal of sociology 72 (1967): 453-468. simons, elizabeth r. "the slumber party as folk ritual: an analysis of the informal sex education of preadolescents." m.a. thesis, university of california, berkeley, 1980. sliney, deanna. "haunter sites in indiana: a preliminary survey." indiana folklore 7 (1974): 27-51. stephanoff, alexander. "college interviews as a folklore genre." keystone folklore quarterly 15 (1970): 106-113. sutton-smith, brian. "the kissing games of adolescents in ohio." midwest folk lore 9 (1959): 189-211. thigpen, kenneth a., jr. "adolescent legends in brown county: a survey." indiana folklore 4 (1971): 141-215. thompson, leslie m. "the driver's license: emblem of a modern rite of passage." paisanos: a folklore miscellany. ed. f. e. abernathy. nacogdoches: texas folklore society, 1978. 153-156. yohe, charles. "observations on an adolescent folkway." psychoanalytic review 37 (1950): 79-81. young, monique. "drinking games: a survey." m.a. thesis, university of califor nia, berkeley, 1981. 31 lydo~rn~~m~~ [p[lli~~~~~@rn~ the 1983 newell prize was awarded to dean m. lapp, then a student of simon bronner's, for his paper, "a systematic investigation of jump-rope rhymes: computer applications for field collected cultural material. n children's folklore has attracted attention from educational psychologists because of the ease in which the lore is memorized, and because of the connections between childlore and psychological development. a promising movement within educational psychology addresses the role of microcomputers in the learning process of children. folklorists have generally avoided quantification although they have put forward psychological interpretation.! the connections, as it turns out, between folklore and educational psychology are close and deserve more consideration.2 looking at the content of jump-rope rhymes is a step toward explaining the cultural development of young girls. brian sutton-smith, a researcher bridging educational psychology and folklore, agrees, and states that, "it is 'fair' that one of the most persistent of children's play activities (jumping rope) be introduced into this intellectual stadium." (abrahams 1969) a content analysis is any research technique for making inferences by systematically and objectively identifying specified characteristics within texts (stone et al. 1966: 5). content analysis by computer is not a new approach. four colleagues at harvard university used computeraided content analysis over twenty years ago. their efforts produced the general inquirer, a set of computer programs designed to (a) identify systematically, within text, instances of words and phrases that belong to categories specified by the investigator; (b) count occurrences and specified co-occurrences of these categories; (c) print and graph tabulations; (d) perform statistical tests; and (e) sort and regroup sentences according to whether they contain instances of a particular category or combination of categories (stone et al. 1966: 68). the developers of the general inquirer note that their concern is with "basic issues of content analysis rather than technical details of current computer implementation." they insist that the computer only aids and does not replace human endeavor (stone et al. 1966: xi). many studies applied this new methodology, and their results bear witness to the progress made in the field of content anal ysis. 3 the recent computer boom has accelerated the use of content analysis as a method. the only drawback appears to be the need to closely verify texts when entering material. this process is time consuming, but necessary, as the reliability of content analysis depends on properly spelled words. many modes of speech, both written and oral, have attracted the applications of content analysis. many of these studies are presented in gottschalk and glesser's the measurement of psychological states through the content analysis of verbal behavior, and in a follow-up book by gottschalk, the content analysis of verbal behavior further studies. content analysis was used to explore shame and guilt in neuroses, psychotherapy research, dream research, and alcoholism. other applications have evolved in the fields of political science, anthropology, and social psychology.4 providing a precedent for my study is an article in gottschalk's further studies on children's speech as a source of data for psychological investigation. gottschalk found, for instance, that a negative correlation existed between the level of anxiety demonstrated through speech, and the level of hope expressed. along with this finding, other correlations supported the evidence for a relationship between children's psychological states and their speech.5 notwithstanding gottschalk's study, the analysis of children's verbal behavior is still a relatively unexplored area, as is the analysis of folklore content. some work has been done however, and a good example is the study by kalin, davis, and mcclelland, who investigated the relationship between the use of alcohol and the expression of aggression themes in folktales. the purpose was to find psychological correlates of heavy drinking in primitive societies by relating the thematic content of folktales as a medium for verbal behavior investigation.6 one assumption must be made in this study that folklore reflects the attitudes of people in a society. a more concrete application of this assumption would be that jump-rope rhymes reflect the attitudes of young girls. attitudes have been defined as containing three components: a cognitive, an emotional, and a behavioral. 7 the verbal behavior of young girls is an example of the behavioral component and should reflect, in part, their attitudes. previous research has indicated that folktales are indeed psychologically revealing products of a society. for example, mcclelland has reported a positive relationship between achievement themes in folktales and the percentage of males engaged in full-time entrepreneurial activity.8 my efforts in investigating the content of jump-rope rhymes are intended not to delve into the deep psychological constitutions of young girls, but more to provide some hypotheses that would apply to such endeavor. i hope first to answer a methodological question: does the use of a microcomputer ease the methodological task of investigating and interpreting field collected cultural material? the second question explored will be: can useful hypotheses about the psychological states of young girls be drafted by exploring the content of jump-rope rhymes? previous studies of rope skipping have concentrated more on the game than on the verse. bruce buckley's classification system was based on style of jumping (buckley 1966: 99-111). similarly, ruth hawthorne suggested variables of jumping rope, describing both the game and the verse (hawthorne: 1966: 113-126). roger pinon outlined a classification system on belgian jump-rope rhymes (continued on page four) 3 the newell prize: 1983, continued that did include thematic categories of content, but which were never applied to psychological questions (abrahams 1969: xxiii). one of the major categories of jump-rope rhyme content suggested by mary and herbert knapp is domestic life (1976: 112). in keeping within the general inquirer approach to content analysis, the focus of this study will be on frequency counts of words relating to domestic life, and more specifically, personal relationships in domestic life.9 the collected material used for the content analysis was roger abrahams' jump-rope rhymes: a dictionary. it was chosen because it is a comprehensive, available source of jump-rope rhymes. radio shack's trs-80 model iii microcomputer and word processing program scripsit were used to perform the analysis. the procedure used in this study could have been performed on practically any microcomputer and with most word processing software packages. most word processing programs available today include a "global search" routine which allows the operator to isolate key words, or key words in context. scri psit has such a routine, and i chose the key word in context approach as it enabled me to differentiate meaning. for example, some british girls used the word love as a slang pronoun: goodbye (may), while you're away; send a letter, love, say you're better, love, don't forget your dear old (nell). some rhymes were also entered with the generic phrase (girl's name), meaning the jumpers could supply any name they chose: down in the valley where the green grass grows, there sat little (girl's name) without any clothes. along came (boy's name) . . . . . because of semantic differences, both of these examples were excluded from the counts of the words girl and love. the majority of the 619 jump-rope rhymes in the collection were collected from young girls, between the ages of 7 and 10, and from mostly american urban areas. controlling the population variables helped strengthen my conclusions. the procedure for searching the rhymes was straightforward. i defined the string of characters or word that i desired counting, and the first rhyme that contained the word was displayed on the console screen, with a blinking marker on the first letter of the word. by sequentially pushing three keys, the search continued to the next rhyme, or displayed a message (word) not found. table i represents the words chosen, and their respective frequency counts. the results in table i represent the number of rhymes that contain the word, not the total number of occurrences of the word. to help appreciate the speed of the computer, the alternative should be considered. that is, could i have performed the same frequency counts in the same amount of time, by manually paging through the dictionary? for the original 21 words used in this study, perhaps i could have accomplished the same search in 16 hours. the advantage is apparent however, if i choose to examine more words. with the rhymes on magnetic tape, the search process can now be performed an unlimited number of times on any word, or string of characters. the 14 hours required to record the rhymes on tape was a onetime procedure. improvements could have been made by considering hardware and software alternatives. the radio shack trs-80 is not the fastest microcomputer. other word processing programs have also demonstrated more efficiency.1o it is also conceivable that the rhymes could have been entered as records in a file, and subsequently processed as data. the potential exists, then, for further easing the methodological task of investigating cultural material. larger mainframe computers could also be considered, but folklorists probably have easier access to microcomputers and should become familiar with their capabilities. speed was not the only benefit of the computer evident in this study. the text could be entered in a condensed more efficient form. as a method of investigating written verse, content analysis typically does not take into account punctuation or grammatical structure. the text can ostensibly be reduced to a series of words. the human mind does not have the perceptual ability to ignore these additional symbols, making the counting task more complicated. the computer would also be more efficient at examining phrases, as it is more difficult for a human being to isolate a phrase within the context of a sentence. an attempt to suggest potential hypotheses from results implies hypothetical question. kenneth l. ketner warns that, "one must not think that the way to get a hypothesis is to gather a large body of 'data' in the hope that a usable hypothesis will spring forth from it." he continues, "one will of necessity, already have an implicit hypothesis, for the canon used in selecting certain facts as data is a hypothesis. "11 my choice of words to count defines my implicit hypothesis. i suggest that the thought and overt speech of young girls concerning domestic relationships will frequently include words like mother, father, brother, and sister. i admit that the frequency of these words alone are insufficient to show causation, but i do submit that comparisons of frequencies between words might provide grounds for further study. for example, the word mother was found in 53 rhymes. the word father was found in 13. i think it is legitimate to ask the question, "why does the word mother occur four times as much as the word father?" this question can, in turn be phrased as a hypothesis, suitable for investigation using scientific methods. the hypothesis might be pre-adolescent girls are more closely attached to their mothers than their fathers, and this attachment is evident in their behavior. my findings might also be used for evidence in researching the psychoanalytic concept of the oedipal complex. at an early stage of development (usually 3 to 6 years) children are thought to identify with the parent of the opposite sex. according to psychoanalytic theory, this identification is accompanied by a fear of the same sex parent, although with less intensity by girls. why this takes place depends upon the girl's reaction of disappointment when she discovers that a boy possesses a protruding sex organ, the penis, while she has only a cavity. she holds her mother responsible for her castrated condition, and transfers her love to her father because he has the valued organ which she aspires to share with him. after this stage passes, psychoanalytic theory proposes that the child goes into a prolonged latency period. impulses are said to be repressed during this period and original . i 4 love for the mother surfaces again (for both sexes), because she satisfies their needs. it is about this same time (7-10 years) that girls are learning jump-rope rhymes. thus, another hypothesis might be proposed as psychosexual stages, as defined by psychoanalytic theory, can be delineated by examining children's verbal behavior.12 the findings also indicate an apparent emphasis on the nuclear family. the number of rhymes containing the words mother, father, brother, and sister totaled 78. in contrast, only i rhyme contained the word uncle. no rhymes were found to include aunt, niece, nephew, or cousin. it might be useful to know if this emphasis is a reflection of the age of the girls. that is, would an investigation of folklore content authored by adolescent girls contain a different ration of words symbolizing nuclear family as opposed to other family relations? this question could also be proposed as a legitimate hypothesis. also, the above finding provides evidence that folklore reflects culture. that is, the american nuclear family consists of those words found most often. the folklore from another society, where the nuclear family includes grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins, might reflect an increase in the use of those words. another hypothesis can be drawn from this idea. one final observation of the results was a lack of rhymes containing words found in the marriage theme. although there does appear to be an emphasis on the theme of boys and boyfriends, there were only a few rhymes containing the words husband, wife, daughter, son, bride, and groom. since most girls this age like to play house and dress-up, and role-playas wife and mother, it seems unusual that the marriage theme was not better represented.13 folklorists look deeply into the meaning and function of lore they collect. they have therefore disciplined themselves to use a more humanistic, qualitative approach to interpretation of lore. i believe, however, that the computer can rejuvenate textual analysis while still accounting for contextual variables. the value of this study lies not in the intrinsic findings, but more in the potential for other studies or applications. for example, the same procedure could be applied to other genres in oral tradition. counting rhymes, ball bouncing rhymes, riddle and joke telling, and story telling are a few examples. verbal lore that has been indexed represents excellent material for content analysis. the connection between folklore and child development could also be more closely examined. for instance, might there be relationships between verbal lore and kohlberg's eight stages of moral development or piaget's six stages of intellectual development, in addition to freud's psychosexual development stages? the opportunities to evaluate cultural material systematically are rising as computer facilities expand on university campuses. therefore, the tools are available. further, folkloristics has produced many indexes with no clear use.i4 because of the structure of indexes, they are prime candidates for computer-aided content analysis, and i believe the field will benefit from the expanded knowledge obtained in such an analysis. finally, i believe the results of this study support the connection between folkloristics and human behavior.1s as the content of folklore is a genuine expression of human experience, behavioral scientists should pay attention to its potential as a source for investigating and interpreting behavior. notes i the merging of folkloristics and behavioral studies is covered in simon j. bronner, "learning of the people: folkloristics in the study of bahavior and thought," new york folklore 9, nos. 3-4 (winter (983): 75-88. 2 perhaps the clearest example of the connection between educational psychology and folkloristics is a glimpse at the table of contents of a basic educational psychology textbook. chapter headings such as, "parents and teachers as mediators of social and cultural influencc," "remembering what is learned," and "cultural demands and individual values," illustrate the partnership of these two disciplines. these chapters were taken from, educalional psychology: inslruclion and behavioral change (new york: meredith corporation, 1970). 3 sixteen studies are presented in the second half of the general inquirer. the seven fields represented are small groups, political science, personality, clinical psychology, social psychology, cross-cultural studies, and "other" applications. 4 the majority of the studies presented in gottschalk's works are psychodynamic. the political science, anthropology, and social psychology disciplines are given more attention in the general inquirer. powerful evidence is demonstrated, however, in louis a. gottschalk, and goldine c. gieser, the measurement of psychological slales through the content analysis of verbal behavior (berkley, california: university of california press, 1969), and louis a. gottschalk, the content analysis of verbal behavior: further studies (california: spectrum publications, inc., 1979). s gottschalk, further studies, p. 249. 6 rudolph kalin, william n. davis, and david c. mcclelland, "the relationship between use of alcohol and thematic content of folktales in primitive societies," included in the general inquirer: a compuler approach to con lent analysis (cambridge, massachusetts: the m.i.t. press, 1966), pp. 569-588. 7 any social psychology text will address this definition in more detail. for example, see robert a. baron and donn byrne, social psychology: understanding human interaction (boston, massachusetts: allyn and bacon, inc., 1981), pp. 91-92. 8 this study is cited in the alcohol study of kalin, et al. the general inquirer, p. 571. for a complete description of mcclelland's work, see, the achieving society (princeton, n.j.: van nostrand, 1961). 9 by the general inquirer approach i mean that category construction is regarded as a crucial aspect of content analysis. the authors say that category construction is the step in which the data are tied to theory, and that it serves as a basis for drawing inferences. see stone, et ai., the general inquirer, p. 9. 10 see the critiques in peter a. mcwilliams, the word processing book (los angeles, california: prelude press, 1982), pp. 188-189; 207-212. ii this quote comes from an excellent article on hypothesis testing in folkloristics. kenneth laine ketner, "the role of hypotheses in folkloristics," journal of american folklore 86 (1973): 114-130. 12 there is a large body of research, both applied and theoretical, on psychoanalytic development. surveying the literature for oedipal complex, psychosexual stages, or identification will provide some insight. one source sof sigmund freud's original writings is william s. sahakian, ed., psychology of personality: readings in theory (boston, massachusetts: houghton mifflin company, 1977), pp. 22-23. 13 the theme of marriage is discussed briefly as a component in the continuation of society theme in richard m. dorson, ed., handbook of american folklore (bloomington: indiana university press, 1983, p. 318. 14 the frank c. brown collection, compendium of american folklore, and hyatt collections could serve as references for computer analysis. is bronner, "learning of the people.. .,".pp. 75-88. references cited abrahams, roger d. 1969 jump-rope rhymes: a dictionary. austin, texas: university of texas press. buckley, bruce 1966 "jump rope rhymes: suggestions for classification and study." keystone folklore quarterly ii: 99-111. hawthorne, ruth 1966 "classifying jump-rope games." keystone folklore quarterly i i: 113-126. . knapp, mary and herbert knapp 1976 one potato, two potato: the folklore of american children. new york: w.w. norton and company. stone, philip j. and dexter c. dunphy and marshall s. smith and daniel m. ogilvie. 1966 the general inquirer: a computer approach to content analysis. cambridge, massachusetts: the m.lt. press. (continued on page six) 5 results of frequency counts word number of occurences word number of occurences mother 53 father 13 brother. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 5 sister. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 7 aunt. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. .. . 0 u nde . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. i cousin. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 0 niece. . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . 0 nephew o girl 19 boy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 table 1. baby. .. .. . . . .. ... .. . . .. 12 teacher. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 13 school. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. ii husband 4 wife. . . .. . . . .. . . . .. . . . . .. 9 bride.. . . . . . .. . .. .. . . . . .. 2 groom.. . . . .. . . . .. . . . . .. 0 daughter.. . . . . . . . . .. . ... 6 son 0 love. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 mmrn~rn[id~lli index to the children's folklore newsletter, 1978-1988, volume i: 1 through x:3 archives, location of: i: i, page 5 articles: "baloney & peanuts: politics among grade schoolers," c. w. sullivan iii, 1:2, page 4 "folktales, ballads and high fantasy: an excerpt from research in progress," c. w. sullivan iii, v:i, pages 2 & 4 "snooping for snipes: america's favorite wild goose chase," david chinery, x:i, pages 3-4; x:2, pages 3-4 "twin pranks and practical jokes" (the newell prize paper, 1987), judith l. rush, x:3, pages 3-6 bibliographies of children's folklore, general: i: i, pages 6-9 ii:!, page 4 iv:i, page 6 iv:2, page 2 v:i, page 2 vi:2, page 2 vii:2, page 2 bibliographies of children's folklore, specific: "adolescent folklore studies and collections," sue samuelson, v:2, pages 2-3 "australian children's folklore publications," june factor, x:3, page 7 "rhymes of children: a select bibliography of english language materials," barbara orbach, iv:i, pages 5-6 "studies in german," rainer wehse, ix:i, pages 3-4; ix:2, pages 2-4; ix:3, pages 3-4 book reviews: "all our noses are here by alvin schwartz," viii: i page 6 "busy buzzing bumblebees and other tongue twisters by alvin schwartz," v:2, page 4 "children's humor by sandra mccosh," iv:2, page 4 "children's literature: volume 10 ed. by francelia butler," v:i, page 4 "classic fairy tales, the, lona and peter opie," iv:3, page 5 "counting-out rhymes: a dictionary by roger d. abrahams and lois rankin," iii:3, page 4 "growing up on the playground by andy slukin," iv:3, page 5-6 "more scary stories to tell in the dark by alvin schwartz," viii: i, page 6 "someone saw a spider: spider facts and folktales by shirley climo," viii:3, page 4 "storyteller's sourcebook: a subject, title, and motif index to folklore collections for children by margaret macdonald," v:3, page 4 "there is a carrot in my ear by alvin schwartz," v:2, page 4 "truth about santa claus, the by james cross gilbin," viii:3, page 4 "unriddling: all sorts of riddles to puzzle your guessery by alvin schwartz," viii:!, page 6 "world folktales by atelia clarkeson and gilbert cross," ii:2, page 4 constitutions and by-laws, children's folklore section: iii:2, page 3-4 courses in children's folklore: list of, i: i, pages 3-4 "a course in children's folklore," danielle roemer, iv:3, pages 2-3 "folksongs in the elementary school," hope c. bliss, vi:2, pages 2-6 folk speech: "baseball chatter," fine, 1:2, pages 2-3 "playing doctor: children's medical terminology," tucker, 1:2, page 3 "pre-adolescent male slang," fine, ii: i, pages 2-3; ii:2, pages 2-3; iii: i, pages 3-4; iii:3, page 3; iv: i, pages 3-4; iv:2, page 3; iv:3, pages 4-5 graduate program: children's literature and the imagination, university of pennsylvania, diana kelly-byrne, vii:3 page 3 membership list: 1979, 1:1, pages 1-3; 1980, iii:i, page 2; 1981, iv:i, page 2; 1984, vii: i, page 2; 1985, viii: i, page 2; 1986, ix:i, page 2; 1987, x:i, page 2 minutes, children's folklore section: 1978 meeting, 1:2, page i 1979 meeting, ii:2, pages 1-2 1980 meeting, iii:3, page 2 1981 meeting, iv:3, pages 1-2 1982 meeting, v:3, pages 2-3 1983 meeting, vi:3, page 2-3 1984 meeting, vii:3, pages 2-4 1985 meeting, viii:3, page 2 1986 meeting, ix:3, page 2 1987 meeting, x:3, pages 2 & 8 (continued on page eight) 6 fall88vol11no1_part3 fall88vol11no1_part4 fall88vol11no1_part5 fall88vol11no1_part6 ocr document bare bums and wee chimneys: rudeness and defining the line between child and adult donna m. lanclos a careful consideration of the uses of rude or "dirty" folklore on and off the playground is necessary, because it is around rude performance and references to rudeness by children that adults enact many of their expectations and desires for their children. reactions to verbal "dirt" reveal both the construction of children in the minds of adults, and the reaction of children to that construction. they explore it, they resist it, and occasionally they attempt to enforce it amongst their peers. the reaction of adults to the forbidden words and actions of kids, whether or not they are their own children, in turn speaks to anxieties and expectations that adults have about children and, by association, the society of the future. this paper concerns the ways in which belfast children used rude folklore to mark and question age categories among themselves on the playground. it is based on materials i collected during nine months of fieldwork, from 1996 into 1997, in five different belfast primary schools: two protestant/state schools (p.s.1 and p.s.2), two catholic schools (c.s.1 and c.s.2) and one integrated school (i.s.).1 in particular, i address the adult/child divide, the ways in which that separation is dependent upon western constructions of childhood, and furthermore, how folklore materials reveal children's awareness of and ambivalence toward the very label of child. in working-class northern ireland, it seems to be particularly difficult to maintain a rigid split between adult and child, and both kids' and parents' awareness of this difficulty informs many of the apparent contradictions between standards of behavior within the schools, and those applied without. the folklore materials i focus on here are those that the kids themselves classified as "dirty" or "rude": especially those concerned with scatological or sexual words and situations. i found in the course of my research that children's use of rude materials, and corresponding adult reactions to and anticipation of that use, serves as a kind of flashpoint for the discussion and negotiation of definitions of what it is supposed to mean to be a child. fundamental to this discussion, then, is a sense of what is meant by lanclos "dirty", and what it meant by childhood. mary douglas' description in purity and danger: an analysis of the concepts of pollution and taboo of "dirt" as "matter out of place" is also crucial to this argument, as is horace beck's equation of the term "dirty" with forbidden or obscene folklore, in his journal of american folklore article "say something dirty!" in this case, the "matter" in question consists of the sexual and scatological words and references. in belfast, i and the children i met encountered two different "places" where particular sorts of "matter" were unwelcome, and therefore "dirty." the first place was institutional settings, in particular schools, which are permeated by generalized middleclass notions of propriety (notions which do not include the public references to sex or other bodily functions). the second place was that of the abstract notion of childhood, also as defined by the middle-class, as a protected and (forcibly) innocent space ideally unsullied by forbidden, adult knowledge. while the vast majority of the kids i worked with in belfast were from working-class backgrounds, in the course of their everyday lives they were in frequent contact with institutions such as schools and with conventional, middle-class notions of proper child-like behavior. in this they were like the adults in their lives, who are regularly forced to confront middle-class expectations of behavior in their encounters with government agencies, city center department stores, and so on. most adults have long since learned the unspoken rules of conduct that determine when and where particular language and actions are and are not appropriate. children are in the middle of their struggle to learn the contexts in which "rudeness" is allowed (or at least, tolerated), but are also embroiled in the struggle to understand what can easily be perceived as adult hypocrisy around such issues. until the conventions are more clear to kids, they often see adult silencing and censoring as hypocritical: how can teachers forbid them to use the very same words they hear other adults using in the shops, or even at home? as they learn the nuances of rudeness, and the importance of context, the distinction between institutional, teacher-based behavior expectations, and the other everyday models they encounter outside of school becomes more clear, and kids become increasingly adept at interpreting and acting on contextual cues. however, one set of references are uniformly perceived, across class lines, as forbidden to children, and that is references to vio 8 bare bums and wee chimneys lence, especially sectarian violence. the association of rude, "dirty" language and violence is inherent in much of the folklore materials i collected in belfast. i explore the implications of this connection towards the end of this paper. for the purposes of the analysis i present here, expectations of "proper" childlike behavior directly inform notions of what is "dirty" when said or done by a child. i will first address some of the theoretical discussions about the status of children in western society, and the ways in which concerns about obscenity and children's use of same reflect both ideal constructions of childhood, and the conflicts of reality with that ideal: the lived reality of children, and the reality of adults who care for and about them. i then turn to the various ways in which children in belfast used obscenity and obscene folklore. both the folklore texts and the contexts in which they were employed provide a complex commentary on age roles, and especially on the children's perceptions of their own place within their rigidly age-graded society. a word on age-groups in northern irish schools schoolchildren receive strong signals about the importance of age in separating themselves from each other in their everyday school practices. the class grouping in northern irish primary schools, as is the case in the rest of britain, ireland, the united states, and indeed most of the parts of the world that use the western european model of schooling, are based on age ranges, so that p1 is four to five years old, p2 is five to six, p3 is six to seven, p4 is seven to eight, p5 is eight to nine, p6 is nine to ten, and p7 is ten to eleven. "p" stands for "primary," so "p1" is pronounced "pee one," and is short for "primary year one." such institutional separation of age grades frequently translates into separation away from school: parents in the united states frequently use whether or not there are children the same age as their own as a factor in deciding whether to move into a particular neighborhood, and the children themselves can take on these age-grades as given, if they have enough people their own age around to maintain such separations. in neighborhoods or schools with low populations of children, however, the rigidity of the age-grades breaks down in favor of simply having someone to play with; this has been described in america by marjorie goodwin, in he-said-she-said, and barrie thorne in gender play. 9 lanclos in the belfast schools in which i worked, even though children mixed with other age groups on the playgrounds, the mixing was controlled by the adults in the schools. for instance, at c.s.1, the teachers allowed the younger girls (p1—p4) to mix with the older girls (p5 through p7) for about ten minutes during their lunch break, but at the end of that time insisted that the younger children line up and go back into their classrooms. resistance to mixing also came from the kids themselves, especially among groups close in age (e.g., p4s and p5s). this was the case when i saw p5s rejecting p4s who volunteered to play with them, something that happened at most populous schools in my sample: p.s.1, c.s.1 and c.s.2, and i.s. but if maintaining the rigid agegrades meant that there wouldn't be enough players in a game, or simply that play wouldn't be very satisfying, they were quick to adjust, as was certainly the case outside of school in their home neighborhoods, where many age-mates might or might not share a street, but a wide range of ages would. internal (that is, within the category of child) age grade distinctions were most frequently maintained in the practice of play. that is, distinctions were made from one group through the exclusion of people from the game, or from overt declarations that "you don't know how to do it properly," a dismissal that resulted more often than not in the child retreating to the company of an age-mate, and playing with them. distinctions of child from adult, while also exercised in physical practice (children ran around on the playground and played, adults supervised that play), was more frequently present in the performances of folklore materials, especially in rude rhymes, jokes, and songs, wherein children would not only mark the distinction, but would challenge and mock it. regardless of internal divisions among the pupils at all of the schools, all were classified as "children" by the adults, including teachers, playground supervisors, classroom aides, and custodial staff while the divisions within the school of p7 from p4 were important, the constant status of "child," held by all pupils at the schools, and the behavior expectations implied in that label by the adults at the schools, permeated the everyday experiences of every child. 10 bare bums and wee chimneys the child as innocent: constructions of childhood these behavior expectations are linked to broader western (european and american) expectations of how children are supposed to act, by virtue of the fact that they are children. much has been written about the socio-cultural constructions of the child, and childhood, beginning in 1962 with philippe aries' seminal volume centuries of childhood. in particular, the notion of a proper child as innocent, meek, protected, has been discussed as a particularly bourgeois and western concept, but one that has become a conventional model, in this the end of the twentieth century, for what the behavior (if not the actual essence) of a child ought to be. because the innocence of children can only be observed by adults through patterns of behavior, underlying assumptions about the true nature of the child can vary, even within uniform expectations of behavior patterns. therefore, while one parent may subscribe to the model that children are inherently bad, and must be taught to be good, and one parent may assume that children are inherently good, and learn to be bad from outside sources, both parents may still hold expectations of behavior that require outward appearances of goodness and innocence. in the end, it does not matter if the children curse inwardly, so long as they do not do it aloud, among adults, and so rupture the desired image of the child as innocent. of course, aries was not the first to discuss the culturally constructed nature of childhood; margaret mead and martha wolfenstein explored that very issue in 1955, in their edited volume childhood in contemporary cultures, as did beatrice whiting in her 1963 work six cultures: studies of child-rearing. his discussion of a particularly protected, bourgeois notion of childhood is important here, because it is this notion that belfast children (and most children in the urban, western european and american world's) regularly encounter in their everyday lives. this is not to say that this ideal model of the innocent and dependent child is accepted wholeheartedly, either by the children themselves, or by their parents. it is to say that this model has been generalized to such a degree that it has become the picture of what "should be normal," in belfast and elsewhere, and so it must be confronted, 11 lanclos both in this theoretical discussion, as well as by the kids themselves. the epistemological move that aries documents via social history, removing young people from the realm of everyday adult life and into a separate, protected childhood, coincided in the nineteenth century with an invention of notions of obscenity and pornography that very explicitly constructed women as particularly susceptible to the corruptive influences of pornography, as has been discussed by the authors in lynn hunt's edited volume the invention of pornography: obscenity and the origins of modernity. women and children both were constructed as the vulnerable, and therefore needing protection from harm, including the potential harm of obscenity. it was not until 1977 in the u.s. that child pornography laws were in effect; in the face of women's rejection of male "protection," this is a striking parallel with the move from women being the "problem" informants in anthropology, as described by edwin ardener, to children being classified as the same.2 some feminist theorists today define pornography as another form of violence, and if women and children must be protected from violence, then they must likewise be protected from pornography and obscenity. this is not to suggest that children (and women, and all others) should not be protected from sexual and other sorts of abuse. the fact that obscenity definitions include far more than just pornography, however, means that children's speech is regularly censored by wellmeaning adults who are afraid that children's familiarity with "dirty" materials will lead to familiarity with other, more dangerous and antisocial realms, including violence. while in the belfast city center, i would regularly observe women or men talking to friends, on buses, in taxis, or simply on the street, as if their child were not there, observing every act and listening to every word. the adults would often use words such as "fuck," "shite," "hell," – words that children are simply not supposed to say, even if they know them. even if these adults themselves do not punish their children for rudeness—i did observe some parents laughing indulgently at a "cheeky" child—some adults will, especially teachers and playground supervisors. regardless of the individual model of childhood constructed within each family, then, the broader "societal" model will be encountered by chil 12 bare bums and wee chimneys dren at regular intervals, and they will have to deal with the tension that ensues, between what they have observed to be true about adult behavior, and what is expected of "proper" children's behavior. folklore and definitions of the obscene g. legman, in his introductory essays to sandra mccosh's children's humor: a joke for every occasion, and vance randolph's roll me in your arms: "unprintable" ozark folksongs and folklore, details with some dismay the long history of folklorists' struggle with obscene materials, of self-censorship and the censorship of informants, especially children, who produce obscene or even slightly off-color materials. it is telling that the censorship in print of children's lore begins in the seventeenth century, a time that aries identifies as one of the most "plentiful" in the definition of childhood as an innocent time apart from the adult world. during the late nineteenth century, when folklore was just beginning to be defined as a discipline, censorship of children's folklore was at its height, as evidenced by the production of what in 1979 legman called the "lily-pure" (xvii) collection by lady alice gomme, the traditional games of england, scotland, and ireland published from 1894 to 1898. the victorian sensibilities surrounding childhood in turn continued to influence subsequent generations of folklorists, most notably peter and iona opie, as evidenced in their works the lore and language of schoolchildren, and childre’ s games in street and playground. while the opies' collections are undisputedly important contributions to the field of folklore collection, they dismiss scatological or sexual materials as only used by "ogre" or "savage" children, first in lore and language (95-96), and additionally in iona opie's people on the playground (26). such dismissal continued the tradition of normalizing "innocence" among children, and marking the display of any other kind of knowledge as pathological. of course, freud and those who were to follow the thinking in his three essays on the theory of sexuality wrote much to disrupt the victorian hegemony of the innocence of the (middle-class) child, and there were folklorists influenced by his attempt to re-introduce the notion of childhood sexuality as normal, and 13 lanclos as requiring more study than silence.3 martha wolfenstein's children’s humor: a psychological approach is exemplary in its analytic approach to children's humor of all sorts, including the sexual and the scatological. legman noted in 1979 that the number of folklorists actively collecting (and more importantly, finding publishers for) obscene materials from anyone, including children, had remained a steady trickle since the 1930s, especially in the united states and britain. now, in the 1990s, one can with relative ease find published collections of children's obscene lore, for example, parts of simon bronner's american children’s lore, as well as wendy lowenstein's shocking, shocking, shocking: the improper play rhymes of australian children. many of these published works lack analysis, and remain disembodied collections, with little sense of the purpose to which children would put such folklore. it should also be noted that many collections of obscene materials, both from children and adults, are the result of attempting to fill in the "holes" left by expurgated volumes printed earlier, as randolph tried to do with his ozark collections in roll me in your arms. with children's folklore, researchers are trying to balance the previous "lily-pure" picture given by earlier scholars, and in so doing produce volumes that actually exaggerate the existence of obscene children's lore in everyday practice. publishing the materials in separate volumes highlights them in a way that is not true to the actual performance of the lore, which tends to be mixed, and highly dependent on intentions of performers, and context in which they are performing. such exaggeration can feed the fears of adults who continue, as most do in the united states and britain, to hold to at least some extent the now middle-class ideal of the good child as an innocent child, and a good childhood as one that shields children from inappropriate experiences and materials. such an ideal has an impact regardless of the economic class, in that it tends to be the middle and upper class who make and enforce the rules, and when those rules pertain to children and child welfare, the middleclass ideal of innocence is imposed upon everyone. the censorship of children's folklore in print and in practice speaks as much to the adult need to protect themselves from the awareness that children are not and cannot be the ideal innocents so perfected in image by the victorians. but as michel foucault 14 bare bums and wee chimneys made clear with the case of sexuality, in the history of sexuality, an introduction: volume 1, the silencing of the obscene (much of which was defined as such because of explicit references to sexuality, not coincidentally) in fact highlights its titillating appeal, for adults as well as children. the individuals defining materials as rude are the adults, and they make these definitions known by silencing or censuring children who are "dirty" within adult earshot.4 children then take these definitions on amongst themselves, gasping in disbelief, disapproval, or (frequently) pleasure when one of their peers would come out with a joke or rhyme that, had adults heard, would elicit the usual adult response. this is a context-driven definition very much based on a "because we [the adults] say so" rationale regarding the nature of obscene materials. the bourgeois model of an innocent childhood could be seen in the expectations of many parents in belfast, and in the precautions children took to make sure they were not caught being "improper" (and in the joy they took in disobeying the rules of propriety). it should be noted that what i am calling the innocent child model of behavior was not uniform, and was very dependent on class; children can be protected only insofar as the family can afford to, and if the child is needed for domestic work, such as childcare, doing the shopping, or even just taking care of themselves while their parents/grandparents are at work, then the adults are aware that children are more "exposed" by necessity, and are less uniformly condemnatory of obscenity and other "improper" behavior. in some cases, such behavior would be classed as "cheeky" or "bold" in a good way: the working class child needs that attitude to succeed in the economically and politically and socially hostile world outside (and sometimes even within) their own neighborhood/community.5 sandra mccosh noticed while collecting jokes in schools in england and america that teachers uniformly censored kids who asked if they could tell "rude" jokes, but for a variety of reasons. one teacher in leeds simply asserted that the kids "shouldn't know any" rude jokes (75), while a teacher in san francisco was afraid that once the kids started, they wouldn't stop telling dirty jokes. this idea that kids would become uncontrollable once they were allowed to express dirty materials speaks eloquently of broader 15 lanclos adult fears concerning the need to control children, and in particular the fear of the potential for "other" children to get out of control. "other" children are those of the other, whether it be class or race-based distinctions of otherness; teachers in belfast, and often in america and england, are frequently from a community other than the one in which they taught (although this is changing somewhat) and so do not see the children they taught or the children's parents as necessarily members of the same community that they, the teachers, belonged to. this fear of uncontrollably "dirty" kids implies that the slope from rudeness to outright obscenity and beyond is a slippery one, nearly impossible to escape once embarked upon. additionally, these fears seem to point to an underlying assumption behind the innocent child model: if children are not made innocent through the efforts of adults around them, then they will become bad children, uncouth, antisocial, and even violent. there are, in fact, two related models of childhood imbedded in aries' discussion, and in contemporary popular concepts of the child: the first, the innocent protected child, is the ideal cleaved and aspired to, especially by those who can afford to shield their children from the "real world." it is incumbent on parents operating under this model to make sure their children are not exposed, or do not indulge in, behavior that does not fit this model of innocence. therefore they censure kids who refer to sex or bodily functions, because they interpret such references as beginning the slide down the obscenity slope mentioned above. the second model, that of the uncontrollable, bad child, is one frequently employed to discuss the problems with "other people's children." this is the case in many parts of the world with "street children" problems; the kids are stigmatized as inherently out of control and uncivilized, a contaminating influence on whoever they contact and wherever they live.6 these "bad children" are the logical result of not protecting children, as well as justification for protecting children in the first place. what is missing from these complementary models is any sense of middle ground, any feeling that kids could, for instance, use "bad words" and still be worthwhile members of society, let alone children.7 the fact is that kids, like most people, mix obscene, "bad" materials in with the rest of their everyday discourses. they just have to try and make sure they do it out of adult earshot, so as not to invite punishment. 16 bare bums and wee chimneys gender and class in uses of obscenity there are clearly class differences regarding rudeness and the appropriateness of dirty words. the working-class parents i observed outside of school seemed to be more tolerant of cursing, so long as it wasn't directed at them, or seen to be intended as hurtful. intentionality was far more important than just the bare fact of cursing, and so standards of behavior as far as obscenity (in terms of words, anyway) were more contextual, less absolute in the "children should never say that" way. standards about other kinds of unacceptable behavior, including making fart noises, potty talk, and sectarian language, were also situational. i saw some adults simply ignore such things, if they did not feel it was directed at them, or if they saw no real harm in the activities. i also saw some adults use that behavior as an excuse to come down on a child who "had it coming," who had been acting up in more innocuous ways, and who was perhaps getting on their nerves, and so the obscenity was the last straw, and the adult wasn't prepared to overlook it. it is a more flexible approach to obscenity among children, one which actually gives the kids some credit for being capable of knowing when it is and is not appropriate, and to some extent lessening the hypocrisy of those adults who do use obscene language in their everyday speech practices. it also acknowledges that one cannot control one's kids' speech all of the time, and that being selective about the battles one has with them conserves precious energy needed to spend on the real problems and pleasures of life. however, while it might have been more acceptable for the kids in the neighborhoods i was working in to be "obscene" by middle-class belfast standards, it was still restricted by the potential for adult disapproval. many kids were still learning and testing when and where they could get away with obscene language, in much the same way (and often at the same time) that they would test the limits of physical play, often dancing on the edge of verbal or physical violence, and sometimes going beyond it. when they did go beyond it, the kids were frequently pulled back, by peers as well as adults. kids who were viciously physical or obscene with their peers were not played with as often, or were interacted with cautiously, and not with abandon. 17 lanclos kids might also, in their uses of obscene language and images, have been rebelling against the hypocrisy of adults who used those very same words and phrases, but attempted to prohibit children from doing so. such prohibition from adults was very gendered; most of the censure i witnessed came from women, and furthermore, girls tended to be scolded for such language more so than boys. this speaks to particular constructions of the masculine in working-class belfast, where it is not only expected but more acceptable that men would curse and be crude. this is not to say that women didn't similarly indulge, only that public perceptions of who could do so "acceptably" were strikingly split. this model is also particularly class-specific, where in the working class, it is more accepted that women do indulge in such behavior, while middle or upper-class women would not do so, for fear of seeming "lower class." again, the ideal model of gender behavior is class-situated, so that even if working class women actually accept it far more amongst themselves, they are still aware of the abstract potential for censure from the middle and upper class establishment-whether or not they change their behavior because of the potential censure is an individual matter. one would also hear girls scold each other and their male peers, far more than boys ever would, for obscenity. in my experience, boys rarely threatened to tell an adult about a peer's obscene conduct, even if they were not friends. younger boys (under the age of 6, for the most part), did appear to be more likely to report obscenity. i was frequently used in attempts to get others in trouble, when boys would run up and tell me "so and so said a bad word!" the minute i asked them (as i tried to do consistently), "which one?" the tattlers knew i was a lost cause as an authority figure. frequently they would start to say the word, and then catch themselves, shooting me a startled and cross look as they went in search of a more effective authority figure. girls of all ages, on the other hand, would police each other far more vigilantly, even if sometimes it was only in play; they would threaten to tell, playfully, and so highlight the naughtiness of the just-uttered joke or word. definitions of dirt for the kids i met in belfast, the awareness of potential adult censure was enough to make most uses of obscenity self-consciously 18 bare bums and wee chimneys rebellious acts. the older kids, especially boys around the age of 11, seemed to have a less self-conscious attitude towards cursing—while they were still very self-conscious about sexual matters. this may be related to the rather unself-conscious cursing that many adults in belfast appeared to engage in, and could reflect the growing conception that the boys (and some girls) have of themselves as near-adults, even at the relatively young age of 11 or 12. what then counts as forbidden or rude materials? by whose standards are materials proclaimed as such, and do these definitions always hold true? in her collection of children's jokes in the u.k. and the u.s., sandra mccosh included all "dirty or 'rude' jokes" under the analytic category of "sex, " which for her included "actual or implied reference to the physical relationship between men and women; parts of the body, both male and female; swear words or dirty words; and bodily functions, such as going to the toilet (75)." she based this definition on children's attitudes towards the joke, and i agree that this is the most effective way of ascertaining the level of rudeness that the kids are engaging in. if they perceive the materials to be forbidden, then they are. however circular that definition may be, it is certainly a relevant one to the kids, who know how to classify materials like jokes based on the reaction of those around them, including peers and adults. mccosh notes that the younger children, from about 6 to 8 years of age, she collected from tended to indulge more often in jokes concerning bodily functions, especially toilet jokes, while the older kids, starting at about 9 and for her sample, through the age of 12 or 13, tended to tell what she names "actual" sexual jokes. i define "dirty" materials, for the purposes of this discussion, as either language or subject matter considered by adults to be unacceptable, rude, or even wicked for children (and in some cases, depending on the social context, for adults). this includes curse words, the most popular of which were "fuck" and "shit," references to undergarments and sex, and references to other bodily functions, especially excretory ones. the materials were frequently marked by the kids themselves as "dirty," either in exclamations about another's joke ("oh, that's a dirty one!"), or in a warning phrase before a joke was told ("this one's dirty"). some of their "catches" played with the notion of "the dirty," especially the following: 19 lanclos wanna hear a dirty joke? a man fell in the mud. wanna hear a clean one? he got washed.8 the above teases the audience with the teller's knowledge that his or her audience does want to hear the dirty joke, and then further teases with a very literal punchline. it indicates the teller's knowledge of the attraction of truly dirty materials, both for him or herself, as well as for their audience. my consideration of rude materials on the playground is one that i hope makes clear the integral nature of materials considered improper or forbidden by adults within the traditions of children. they use "dirt" in very measured ways, for very particular purposes, and not simply because they know adults don't want them to-although that is certainly part of it. at what point do materials used by children cease, if ever, to become dirty, and segue into the realm of acceptable? it is possible that such materials, because the joy taken in expressing them is so tied to the awareness of an abstract adult disapproval, that it would be singularly dissatisfying to ever move rude materials into the realm of the acceptable.9 their very forbidden nature is what makes the jokes, rhymes, and isolated words and exclamations, so very attractive, and so particularly useful as well. in some cases, they were used to mark and question my own status. i encountered most such marking early in my field season, when i was still being introduced to the students, and when they were still unsure about my status on their playgrounds. i was, clearly, not a "kid", not one of them. so was i a supervisor? was i a teacher? if i was none of those, what was i, anyway? in addition to direct questions—of which there were many—the children at all of the schools tended to employ jokes and very measured uses of rudeness as a way of gauging my status. concealing dirt in the schools the sensitivity of the kids to their uses of dirty materials may in fact be far more related to their awareness of the requirements of the institutional setting (the school), rather than their adherence to some far more abstract notion of innocence perpetuated by 20 bare bums and wee chimneys middle-class notions of a proper childhood. the two are not unrelated, however, as the schools' ethos, especially surrounding that of the place of children in society, is directly informed by such middle-class notions, regardless of the class identity of the kids within the school. one game perfectly mocked this sense of propriety: at both c.s.2 and i.s. i observed kids playing "sorry," wherein the players deliberately run into each other, almost but not quite knocking other players over. each time they knock into someone, the players call, "sorry!"—often in whining, insincere tones of voice.10 the message of the game appeared to be that so long as one held to social conventions and appearances, however insincerely, one's rude, actual behavior could become acceptable. as with the rigidity of gender separation on the playground, described in barrie thorne's gender play as well as in derek van rheenen's article "boys who play hopscotch," the apparently strict awareness of what is "proper" behavior on the playground may fade once off school grounds, both among kids on their own, as well as among kids and parents. this would go a long way towards explaining why, away from school, i witnessed parents tolerating and even encouraging some kinds of language and behavior that on the playground was instantly censured. the parents were aware of what was "proper" for particular contexts, and were enforcing this sense of propriety when appropriate. in many cases, kids who violated that propriety on the playground did not do so out of ignorance, but rather did so in a very deliberate and calculated way, as a part of their continuing evaluation of the loyalty of their peers, and of the actual rigidity of the boundary that separated the acceptable behavior of adult and child.11 one strategy for walking that fine behavioral line was the use of several different versions of the same rhyme within a given child's repertoire. most notably, the knowledge and use of a "g-rated" version in place of an "r-rated" version allows reference to the forbidden material without actually saying it. some 6 and 7 year old girls at c.s.2 gave me this counting out rhyme: ip dip12 dog shit you aren't on it everyone but you you aren't on it 21 lanclos but one girl at c.s.1 had a censored version that still allowed her to indulge in the imagery of dog excrement, without saying a completely forbidden word: ip dip, dog's dirt [etc.]. a cognate, and much milder version of the two rhymes above, also collected from c.s.2, went as follows: ip dip dip my little ship sailed down the alleyway and you aren't on it this last version was used quite frequently, especially during the early months of my fieldwork, and i continued to collect it at the larger schools, especially i.s., where not all of the kids knew me well, or were very comfortable in my presence. the rude versions were said in situations where either the kids did not know i was around (in which case they acted horrified when they realized i'd just taped them), or knew me well enough not to care that i was hearing them say those words. for example, at p.s.2, two five-year old girls counted out to "ip dip dog shit," but while i was listening, the first time they did it, the girl doing the counting out simply fell silent at the place where the dirty word belonged. after the first rendition, she actually said the word "shit," perhaps confident in my lack of censure after the first round.13 some counting out is done in complete silence, with the child doing the counting out saying the rhyme to themselves as the rest of them count along, keeping track of who should be out. you can tell that the others do keep track, because occasionally there would be disputes about who should "really" be out. the "silent performance" of a counting out rhyme allows for "closet" rudeness, where all know that the forbidden rhyme is being used, because it is "called" beforehand (e.g., "ip dip!"), and so can enjoy the knowledge that they are violating adult interdictions even while they are protected by their overt silence. 22 bare bums and wee chimneys among the peer group: rudeness as a means of testing loyalty as i witnessed this process of assessing tolerance for the forbidden as applied to me, i began to realize that they applied this to each other, as well. kids regularly used rude materials as a sort of test, not just of me, but of their peers, as a way of determining who was more loyal to their friends, and to children's notions of conduct and propriety, than to abstract adult standards of same. many issues of belonging and identity are invested in who one's age mates are, and how loyal they are. loyalty to friends is expressed in a variety of ways, including tolerating (and not interrupting) particular jokes, or, alternately, tolerating someone's interruption of their joke, and even accepting corrections (or at least, accommodating them). it is also expressed in a toleration of rudeness, and very specifically, in not reporting it to adults in authority. in telling me dirty jokes (starting at a low level and progressing a higher level), they were assessing my trustworthiness, and therefore my eligibility to be included in some way in the group. for instance, invariably, at every school, the first even slightly-off color joke i was told was the following: knock knock [who's there?] bear [bear who?] bare bum! generally this joke would come after one or two "why did the x cross the road" jokes, or some other equally innocuous piece. my reaction to the "bare bum" joke was inevitably closely scrutinized, and when i encouraged them to tell more, the kids would usually continue, not necessarily immediately following with an even more off-color joke, but usually throwing one or two into the subsequent mix. and no wonder they were curious how i would react. the joke is actually quite provocative. one p4 girl at c.s.1 followed her performance of "bare bum" with: 23 lanclos knock knock [who's there?] bear [bear who?] bare clare! in making herself bare as a part of the punchline, clare revealed, so to speak, that the bum in the original joke is not just anyone's behind, but is in fact that of the joke-teller. the joke allows the teller to (in american argot) "moon" the listener without actually doing so, a masterful substitution of words for action.14 they did the same among their peers. in a "joking relationship," as traditionally defined by anthropologists,15 individuals tolerate impropriety within the frame of play, as defined by gregory bateson, as an expression of trust. while peer groups were predominantly age groups, they were also cross-cut by gender. therefore, if a girl wanted to emphasize her difference from boys, she might exaggeratedly disapprove of their fart jokes as "disgusting." if she wanted to emphasize how much older she was than a group of boys and girls, she might do the same; or, she might even bewilder or impress them by upping the ante from toilet humor to sexual references. sometimes the testing incorporated a catch question as well as some kind of dirty reference. for instance, an ll-year old boy at p.s.2 asked me: what do you call a wee man made out of cement? a wee hard man he then moved on to: knock knock dml: who's there? bear dml: bear who? bare bum. [giggles] and for the finale: guess what? dml: what? you guessed 24 bare bums and wee chimneys as i was laughing, the boy exclaimed, "this is cracker!" meaning, "this is great," and i tried to get him to say even more jokes by telling him i knew he was "full of them." the above exchange shows him testing me, seeing how i will react to the mild dirtiness of the bare bum joke and then catching me with the "you guessed" joke. he shows his pleasure with "this is cracker," which might be an indication that he's pleased with my positive reaction, or lack of a negative one; i laughed, rather than scolding him for tricking me, or for mentioning bare bums. catch questions like "guess what" were frequently used by boys to mark the boundary of an in-group from an out-group.16 the person caught in the catch is made to appear to say, do, or be something embarrassing. those who fall for the catch could be: 1) not in the age group of the person executing the catch, 2) not in the peer group of the person executing the catch, or 3) actually in the peer group, but the person "catching" you is "only messing," and in so doing, is emphasizing your friendship. the third option is seldom the case, because if you are firmly a member, you do not fall for the catch-primarily because it is not done to you in the first place. a more likely scenario is that you learn the catch from witnessing a member of your in-group doing it to a nonmember. children's rules for appropriate behavior-much like those employed among adults-are not hard and fast, but rather are guidelines that allow kids to use language in fluid, complex ways to suit their own purposes, and not just that of the adults in their world. it is because the rules are variable and context-dependent that kids relied on a "testing" strategy to evaluate a person's trustworthiness. in my experience, children would seldom come right out and be rude first thing. they went, as a rule, through very measured stages of evaluation, observing my reaction to mildly risqué material before escalating to something more explicit. for instance, "cinderella" was an immensely popular skipping rhyme at p.s.1, and the versions i invariably heard on the playground were some variety of: cinderella dressed in yellow went upstairs to see her fellow how many kisses did she give him? 1,2,3 25 lanclos this was an extremely popular rhyme, not least in part because of the reference to kissing, which is assumed to be engaged in by the skipper. the more skips the skipper successfully carries out, the more kisses she "gives," making the truly skilled skippers into extremely experienced "kissers" in one fell swoop. the embarrassment of being a "kisser" thus tempers the joy in skipping, and might even discourage some skippers from monopolizing the rope. those waiting their turn to skip frequently sing along, which allows them to enjoy the potential discomfort of the current skipper/kisser. one day, a couple of months into my field season, i was taping the a group of p5 girls "cold," that is, taping them singing without them skipping, and one girl, amy, led the group into the following version: cinderella dressed in yellow went upstairs to kiss her fellow when she came down her knickers busted how many people were disgusted i had never heard this version before, but the rest of the girls clearly had, and were initially quite giggly and nervous that amy had chosen to sing it for me. i asked them to repeat it for the tape, however, and with that all of the girls chipped in singing, quite loudly.17 the sexual nature of cinderella's actions (resulting in her "knickers busting") was what both attracted the girls to the rhyme and made it such a risky thing to chant in the presence of a real adult—that is, one who would punish them for uttering it in the first place. while i did have that potential power, i had never exercised it. i had successfully made the transition, distancing myself from "'real" adults, and becoming a fit, potentially appreciative audience for the rhyme. much later in the year, at i.s., a small group of p3 girls were skipping, and one girl in particular, kira, insisted that i record the following version of cinderella. i had already recorded the "usual" version, the first one listed above, many times at this school. cinderella dressed in blue18 went upstairs to do a poo 26 bare bums and wee chimneys how many poos did she do? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20 these much younger girls had hit upon a particularly rich vein of adult disapproval—any mention of excretory functions, in particular "doing a poo," but also including farting, or making fart noises. the girls who chanted this rhyme were particularly pleased that kira managed to skip as high as twenty times, maximizing the number of "poos" they could refer to in the rhyme. notice as well that the obscenity for the younger children, in this case about six years old, concerned excretory functions, while the older children, eight or nine years for the ones who sang the "knickers busted" version, are using sexual images. where there was no gradual buildup to outright dirtiness, it was because i asked for it first thing. the only time i did this in my fieldwork was when i specified to the kids that i wanted "rude christmas carols." these were almost inevitably parodies of jingle bells,19 and i had discovered that if i did not specify that i wanted the rude ones, that i would be left with several minutes worth of the regular christmas carol on my tapes. direct inquiry yielded songs such as the following, from i.s. jingle bells, jingle bells joker smells a thousand miles away he let a fart behind the cart and blew up the ira. this is rude not only because of the mention of farting, but also because of the reference to the ira. i collected this christmas parody from protestant, catholic, and integrated school pupils, all of whom appeared delighted to be singing about farting and blowing up the ira, a lethally funny combination of forbidden subjects: bodily functions and sectarian violence. children were not supposed to mention the paramilitary organizations around adults, and were often shushed for doing so in my presence. after that rendition, which is a combination of the parody involving batman and the one involving santa claus, several kids20 remembered that they knew that one, so i got a group version: 27 lanclos jingle bells santa smells a hundred miles away let a fart behind the cart and blew up the ira—ho! similar stuff was to be had at c.s.2, from some of the older girls, ranging in age from 9 to 11: jingle bells santa smells a thousand miles away let a fart behind the cart and blew up the ira! the only non-jingle bells parody i collected was the following, from c.s.2, sung right after a version of "jingle bells, batman smells," and was probably inspired by the reference to farting: the addams family started21 when uncle fester farted he farted through the keyhole and par-al-ysed the cat the cat got all excited and shouted, "man united"22 and man united shouted "the addams family!" duh deh deh deh thpph thppph[two farting noises] duh deh deh deh thpph thppph[mad giggling at all this farting noise] duh deh deh deh duh deh deh deh duh deh deh deh thpph thppph much could be said here about the image of uncle fester "starting" the family by farting, reminiscent of freudian theories of male appropriation of birth through images of defecation, as 28 bare bums and wee chimneys has been discussed by alan dundes in his article "couvade in genesis," but in this particular performance of the rude song, what were clearly most important at the time were all of the farting noises, which inspired gales of giggles and laughter, and were so much fun that the girls had no hesitation at all in repeating the song for me, so that i might capture it on tape. once it was recorded, the girls insisted that i play it back for them, and they thoroughly enjoyed hearing—and occasionally sang along with—their voices on tape. at c.s.1 i frequently held "recording sessions" with a particular group of p4 girls who, once they figured out i wanted to hear from them, were happy to provide me with materials. the girls would crowd around me and my tape recorder, and would often simply sing or chant the rhymes. it was evident that it was far easier for them to remember the words to counting out and clapping rhymes if they were actually doing the counting out or clapping, and so i would encourage them to "say it like you're doing it," if their memory failed them as i was taping them "cold." a series of materials they gave me in november, still fairly early in my field season, began with a counting out rhyme containing no risqué material. one potato, two potato, three potato four23 five potato, six potato, seven potato more [this] spud's out! the next volunteer ("can i say one?") proceeded to a rhyme wherein the main character has her "knickers [underwear] in the air and her jumper [sweater] inside out," suggesting improper if not outright obscene behavior. the performer initially forgot how the entire rhyme goes, but clearly remembers the important part, that of the knickers being in the air. a nearby friend took over the recitation of the rhyme. for these girls, the part of the rhyme that made them giggle appeared to be the very mention of the word "knickers," and not so much the implied situation that would have resulted in the knickers being in the air in the first place. again, the mere mention of bodies, especially those improperly exposed, or engaged in private and often gross functions, was plenty amusing for these younger children. 29 lanclos there is a party on the hill would you like to come? [yes] {pause}. . . with your knickers in the air. . . {interruption} [no!] {someone else takes over} there's a party on the hill would you like to come? [yes] who's your very best chum? [martina] martina will be there with her knickers in the air and her jumper in-sideout24 a series of knock knock jokes was started at this point, and towards the end, one girl then told the following knock knock joke. knock knock [who's there?] paddy [paddy who?] paddy irishman this joke signals a whole new turn in the joke telling, which led to a series of paddy jokes, three in all they go from mild to rude, with the last one actually having the word "shit" in it. a different girl starts the series with a paddy irishman, paddy englishman and paddy scotsman joke: paddy irishman, paddy scottishman and paddy englishman were in this big haunted house. and they were starving, and paddy irishman went down intil the kitchen, and he—he went til the cupboards and he got a cup of tea, right, and he was looking in the fridge and he sees a big thick slice in the fridge and he…and he hears this voice, {makes her voice deep} "i told you once i told you twice i told you thirty times not to eat that thick slice." this is an unfinished joke, cognate with several others i collected involving a ghost protecting something, usually food or money, that the various characters want.25 the last character to go in and 30 bare bums and wee chimneys try for the object is usually the one to get it. this joke speaks to a desire to ignore edicts about what you can and cannot have-adult restrictions on children's desires-and allows for that desire to be satisfied within the joke, with the usual punch line allowing the final protagonist to get away with the desired object. in this version of the joke, however, the teller leaves us with the edict "not to eat that thick slice" unchallenged by any of the characters, perhaps indicating less conviction about the possibility of defying such a command from a figure of authority. another girl joined in the session with the following contribution: paddy englishman paddy scotchman and paddy irishman were all in a haunted house and they brought guns and that and they heard somebody go "whoooo whoooo!" and one of them shooting and banged the door open and went and knocked the door in 'hi the toilet and there's a wee girl in there picking her nose going, "whooo whoooo!" [the teller mimics the blissful smile the girl in the joke would have had].26 this joke maintains the thematic thread of the "three paddys in a haunted house," but introduces the mention of a rude action—picking one's nose, and furthermore, enjoying it. the girl telling the joke was explicit both in tone of voice and in expression that the girl in the joke was having a wonderful time both picking her nose, and perhaps in scaring the three (adult) paddys, who were probably expecting a ghost. the end of this short session was the following: paddy irishman, paddy englishman, and paddy scotchman were all on this flying carpet, right? whatever they wished for they got. and paddy irishman wished for a pot. . . paddy englishman [she gets help here—"wished for a pot of gold!" teller says "no," the corrector says, "he did!" so i say to let her tell the joke her way for now.] paddy englishman wished for a big thing of. . . you know. . . pot of [corrector says, "money!"]. . . gold. paddy scotchman wished for a big bottle of scotch. and paddy irishman, didn't know what to wish for, and he tripped and said, "shit" and landed in a big pile of shit." 31 lanclos the theme has shifted again here; this is still a paddy joke, but it belongs to the set of jokes involving wishes27 the joke was hurriedly told, and to some extent "by committee," with help from the audience, indicating a desire to get to the punchline, which contains not only the word "shit," twice, but the terribly funny image of paddy irishman landing in a big pile of it. not only does the joke itself violate adult standards of proper children's conduct, but the image of landing in a pile of shit runs rather contrary to adult admonitions, regularly heard on the playground, not to get dirty, to be careful with one's clothes, etc. these jokes were told in november, and while it rains frequently throughout the year in northern ireland, it is particularly rainy in the winter, and supervisors at this school and at others had been particularly vigilant about not letting the students into the grassy areas near the playgrounds, so that they would not get muddy. this was a very long session, involving rhymes, jokes, and songs, and i had been extremely careful not to act shocked or disapproving of any of the materials they gave me, so as to make the girls feel at ease. just as the bell was about to ring for them to return to class, some of the girls wanted to give me "a funny song," and a large group of them sang very loudly: mummy mummy mummy! there's something in my nappie it's big and brown i can't sit down and if i sit and squash it you will have to wash it it's not a joke the washing machine's broke there is no soap my dolly's head's broke. this song is funny because of the reference to shit-filled diapers, the "big and brown" "something in my nappie." it is also an exercise in control, with the child, in the nappie, lording over the mother the fact that "if i sit and squash it, you will have to wash it." the seriousness of that threat is exacerbated by the apparent poverty, or at least temporary down and out status, of their situation. "the washing machine's broke, there is no soap, my dolly's 32 bare bums and wee chimneys head's broke" can be read not just as a statement of the way things are, but as a protest by the child of the conditions in which she has to live. she is clearly blaming the parent-in this case, the mother-for the situation, and is threatening to make it worse if it doesn't get better. the issues of control over adults implicit in the text of this song were accompanied by the sense of control that the girls were clearly reveling in while they were singing this very rude song, very loudly, while standing in their classroom, traditionally the site where they are most assuredly not supposed to be singing rude songs. the performance was a triumph over perceived limits set by adult sensibilities, and an expression of solidarity amongst the girls against those who would censor them. children challenging adults there is a distinct discourse within rude jokes concerning challenging authority, as embodied in a variety of different adult characters. the challenge comes not just the act of telling an inappropriate joke, but in the texts of the jokes themselves. occasionally the jokes were relatively subtle, as was the case with one told by carly, a 10 year old at p.s.2. she had been listening to a series of jokes told by 10 and 11 year old boys, and joined in at the level of obscenity that the boys had worked up to, after they had walked away for a few minutes. right, paddys englishman, paddy scotchman, paddys irishman, seen this devil. so [laughs], paddys englishman goes, i betcha i can sit in his hand for 10 seconds. he goes, 1, 2, and then he jumps off. then he goes, i'm away for a cold bath, because it was warm. then he runs off, comes back, paddys englishman [sic], paddy—said, i bet i can sit on it for 10 seconds, so he goes, 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8, and then he jumps off and says, i'm away for a cold bath. and so he goes into the cold bath and comes back again. paddy scotchman says, i'll be able to do it, so he got on, and he goes, 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10, and got off. here they were, how'd you do that? and here he was, chocolate melts in your ha—no, chocolate melts in your mouth, not in your hand. [repeats it for my benefit, and to make the punch line that she nearly messed up more clear] chocolate melts in your mouth, not in your hand.28 33 lanclos the listener has to think about the fact that the "chocolate" in the punch line is actually excrement.29 that combined with the famous m&m's slogan, "melts in your mouth, not in your hands,"30 allows carly to indulge in a very round about way in the image of someone eating shit. at the very least, the joke involves someone who takes a shit in the hand of a devil, perhaps even the devil, a powerful image indeed. carly knows it is not obvious, and because i had a previous record of not always understanding their jokes on the first try, she "explained" the punch line to me by repeating it. jokes involving rude names for the main characters reveal a great deal about children's perceptions of hypocrisy in a social world that does not allow them to participate in the dirty discourses that they can clearly witness adults engaging in. it is indicated in the following pair of jokes told to me by a small group of p7 girls at c.s.1. annie: right, there was these three people, called shutup, manners, and [someone prompts her, "dog's dirt,"] dog's dirt, right? they were all walking along, and then dog's dirt falls down the hole, and then the policeman comes over, and then manners goes to pick him up, and then here he goes— [her friend interrupts]—no, you go like this, he picks him up and then walks on, and then this policeman comes up, and he goes, what's your name, and he says, shutup, and then the man goes, the policeman goes, i'll ask you again, what's your name, and he says [with more emphasis] shutup! and then he says, where's your manners, and then shutup says, um, down the hole, picking up dog's dirt.31 [laughs] dml: and where did you learn that one? annie: [someone] told me it. mary: right this jokes called sit down, dick out, pee in the corner [shocked laughter] mary: right. [there were three kids. . .] one called sit, one called dick, and one called pee, right, and they were all in school, and they were all throwing papers at each other and being mad, and the teacher comes in, and goes, right, sit down, dick out, pee in the corner! [some silence] pee in the corner! [for emphasis] 34 bare bums and wee chimneys on the face of it, the kids seemed to enjoy telling these jokes because they provided the opportunity to engage in forbidden, obscene language, and to make their peers laugh simply for that reason. the girls described the jokes to me as "dirty," and they were learned in this case (i found out later) from an older, male cousin. but a closer look at their content reveals further elements that may feed kids' interest in and enjoyment of these narratives. in the first joke, the policeman, a convenient symbol for parental authority, questions the children about what they are doing, and is rewarded by what could be interpreted as a string of obscene words and images, that is, the children's answer. however, that string of words is also a very accurate description of what is going on. herein lies the children's dilemma. when asked, they are perfectly capable of representing the world as they know it, warts and all. frequently, however, the adults in their world either do not know or do not want to know about this level of awareness among their children. for a child to rupture this parental illusion is to invite a variety of potential punishments, from simple silencing ("you mustn't say that"), to actual censure ("you're a bad girl for saying that"), and occasionally physical reprimands or threats ("you say that again and i'll give you a smack."). in the jokes above, however, the adult is never allowed to punish the children; the joke ends before that is possible, and the punch line is the child getting to say what is really going on. in the second joke, the adult, this time a teacher, is forced to be obscene when she punishes the children, dick and pee. in engaging in an activity that usually warrants punishing (saying obscene words or phrases), while in the act of punishing, the teacher reveals herself to be like many adults who tell children to do one thing while they themselves do another. the jokes that kids tell are told in very particular contexts, usually within a body of other jokes, and the sequences that build up are especially revealing. in one session, at p.s.2, girls segued smoothly from telling jokes about big phones (adults) telling wee phones (children) what to do, to a mildly obscene knock knock joke, therefore doing and saying something that probably wouldn't be approved of by an adult, inspired by the prior jokes concerning older figures forbidding younger ones from doing things. older boys at p.s.2, during the same session, continually upped the rude 35 lanclos ness ante with each successive joke, building on the jokes told before, and clearly inspired by them, too. this sequence of jokes also reveals the implicit association of the violent with the dirty, a theme i will return to later on. one finds frequent representations in jokes and rhymes of older/bigger people/objects telling younger/smaller people/objects what to do. the following two wellerism jokes are about "big and wee" conversations.32 they were told to me in the context of an extended joke telling session with a number of kids, ranging in age from 8 to 11, at p.s.2, after school. william and mike floated in and out of the session, as they were frequently distracted by the indoor football game that was happening nearby. william: what did the wee [his cousin mike cuts in, and they both say] what did the big chimney say to the wee chimney? dml: what? both: you're too young to smoke. william: [fast on the heels of the last punchline]: what did the big phone say to the wee phone? [he answers himself] you're too young to get engaged! these jokes reference notions of what you should do (i knew at least one of the boys telling the chimney joke to smoke regularly), and being told that by adults (the big chimney, etc.), told in the face of what they actually do—smoke, act as though they are "engaged" –or at least, sexually active (or acting as though they are). these jokes also invoke adults saying that children shouldn't do things that they (the adults) themselves clearly do. the chimney is a thing that by definition smokes, the phone is a thing that by definition becomes engaged (in use); the implication of the characters in these jokes is that they are going to, and indeed have to, do precisely what they are told not to. this is more than simple resistance, but a complex representation of a certain sense of inevitability held by both parents and children: people in northern ireland do have families (if not get engaged) young, they do smoke,33 also starting quite young. in so doing they are reproducing their own parents' patterns of behavior, something that makes it that much more difficult for a parent to condemn the behavior, however much they might wish their children would do differently. 36 bare bums and wee chimneys ambivalence and concern about authority are displayed particularly well in a series of jokes about doctors. when told by adults, they undoubtedly plug into a series of anxieties around health, the authority of doctors, and the national health system, but with children there is additional resonance in the fact that doctors are another kind of adult, telling them what to do.34 doctor doctor, everyone thinks i'm a liar35 i don't believe ya' doctor doctor, i can't get to sleep at night. well, lie at the edge of the bed, and you'll soon fall off. doctor doctor, i feel like a pair of curtains. pull yourself together! doctor doctor, i feel like i'm invisible.36 next, please! doctor doctor, i feel like a dog. how long have you felt like this? since i was a puppy. doctor, doctor, i feel like a bridge. what's come over you lately? two trucks and a car. there was this man who went to the doctor's, and he said, "doctor, doctor, i keep fartin' and i'm stinkin'!" the doctor goes out and comes back with a pole with a hook on it, and the man says, "doctor, doctor, what's that for?" "t'open a window, you're stinkin'!"37 frances: doctor, doctor, i feel like a deck of cards.38 shut up and i'll deal with you later. doctor doctor i feel like a spoon. sit down and don't stir. note that the doctor's responses are singularly unhelpful. the patient (child) is asking for help for frequently serious conditions, 37 lanclos some social, some physical-not being able to sleep, being stigmatized as a liar, smelling awful because of uncontrollable flatulence-but the doctor (adult) is flippant and uncaring, making a joke at the patient's expense. in several of the jokes, the patient/child likens themselves to an inanimate object-a pack of cards, a bridge-something to be played with or run over by cars, a thing without agency, without exercisable power. the doctor/adult answers with a line confirming the patient/child's initial feeling: "i'll deal with you later," to the pack of cards. while the laughter generated by the joke is frequently at the patient's expense, occasionally the joke does seem as if the patient is getting back at the doctor, as in the case of the patient who feels like a dog, and has done since he "was a puppy." the doctor looks foolish here: if he had been thinking, of course, he would have known that the patient who is a dog now would have been a puppy when young. the unhelpful advice from the doctor is in contrast to the advice given in the following rhyme, which was used in this case as a countingout rhyme. the kids are directing advice and sanctions of their own to adults, and even seem to be assuming the voice of a doctor. put your fags in the box sir39 yes sir let me hear you cough sir [cough cough] very bad indeed, sir and you are not on it for the rest of the game. here the child performing the counting out rhyme takes over the role of doctor, and the reference to "sir" indicates an adult is being addressed. the doctor appears to be giving "sir" a physical; the "let me hear you cough" line suggests the "turn your head and cough" portion of a male physical, wherein the testicles are held by the doctor; for the purposes of the rhyme, this gives the child/doctor even more power over "sir"/the adult.40 at the end of the counting out, the person identified as the smoking adult is not on it for the game. the child thus gets to put the adult in his place, controlling "him" physically, and judging "him" (i observed this counting out rhyme as performed by girls), and not only for the unhealthy practice of smoking. ultimate playground power is finally exercised by not allowing "sir" to play the game. 38 bare bums and wee chimneys persistent association of rudeness with violence contrary to the argument presented by g. legman in his introduction to sandra mccosh's work, the association of obscenity with violence is in the kids' performances of folk materials; this is not just an adult injection of violence as a substitute for sex, as legman suggests, but an actual association made by the children, most often in their following a sexual piece with a violent one during a performance, or vice versa. the kids i observed were fairly consistent in following an obscene reference with a violent one. for example, the c.s.2 version of "ip dip dog shit" (cf. above) was swiftly followed by a version of: my mummy and your mummy41 were hanging out the clothes my mummy hit your mummy a punch on the nose what color was the blood? [the person picked says:] red r-e-d spells red and you are not on it for the rest of the game violent and dirty references were also occasionally united in the same piece of folklore. for example, the following was sung' by a large group of girls at c.s.2. the giggling when they say "underpants" indicates that they know they're not supposed to be saying anything about it, but they can do it in groups and it will be safer. my boyfriend gave me an apple42 my boyfriend gave me a pear my boyfriend gave me a [kiss noises, hand to mouth as if blowing a kiss, three times] and he kicked me down the stairs [i kicked him] 1 kicked him over london 1 kicked him over france 1 kicked him over u-s-a 39 lanclos and he lost his underpants! [giggles] i made him do the dishes i made him do the floor i made him do the baby's bum and i kicked him out the door! starting after "underpants," the two p3s who started the rhyme were joined in their singing by 5-6 other girls, who lent their voices— loudly!—to the last part of the rhyme, even though they were not clapping. there was also some dispute over whether the boyfriend was doing the kicking, or being kicked (indicated in brackets, above); some girls sang one version, and some sang the other. the version where the girl is kicking her boyfriend took over at the next line. also at c.s.1, the girls sang the following parody right after their lusty rendition of "mummy mummy mummy," (cf. above) just as the bell was ringing for them to return to class activities. the fact that it concerns a television show, "barney and friends," that is explicitly intended for children,43 and is insistent in its emphasis on love and sharing, makes the parody even more striking in the mouths of the very children supposedly targeted by the show. i hate you44 you hate me let's get together and kill barney with a big axe through barney's head aren't you glad that barney's dead? on the surface, i think that this association is in the folklore, and made by the kids in their performance of the materials, because obscenity and violence are clearly things not approved by adults for children. if they are going to indulge in one, it is a small enough leap to indulge in the other as well. on a deeper level, i think that obscenity and violence, while perceived by the adults in their society as dangerous and anti-social, are being used by the kids as a kind of social glue. those who choose to participate in the obscene or violent moments, in word or in deed, are united in their shared defiance of adult edicts concerning appropriate thoughts and behavior. this is not unique to children, of course. violence within the frame of play is frequently cited as an arena for male bonding in 40 bare bums and wee chimneys western european societies; in northern ireland, as in much of europe and in the united states, this occurs at football, rugby, and other team sporting events. using casual obscenity among friends is a way of indicating your level of comfort with them, and is characteristic of the "joking relationship" much cited by anthropologists in their descriptions of behavioral roles and expectations, especially among family members. so in one sense, children are no different from adults; they indulge in obscene and play-violent behavior as a way of bonding with particular groups of friends. on the other hand, they are still learning just where the boundaries of obscenity and unacceptable violence lay, and the variable nature of standards of obscenity, depending very much on social context. it is in the testing of these boundaries and standards within the frame of play that we can see that learning process taking place. i observed cases on every playground where the play violence shaded into actual violence; the nearly universal condemnation of such a shift by the kids who observed and were victimized by it speaks to the consensus among children that play violence is, in fact, "only playing." they know the minute it stops being "play," and when it becomes unacceptable. perhaps what disturbs adults the most is the revelation in their folklore of potentially violent behavior in children, especially boys. adult concerns about children engaging in violent acts came out in the complaints of a group of playground supervisors at p.s.1; they were all mothers with children at the school. they remarked about the older boys, that "all they ever do is fight" if they don't have a football to play with. even then, the suggestion was made that boys would fight over football games if the supervisors did not intervene. while i did see conflict over scoring and rules among the older (p6-p7, mostly) boys at p.s.1, the most violent conflicts i saw were a result of interactions between the supervisors and the kids themselves. when one supervisor took a child out of play, and the child resented the reasons (or simply resented being taken out in the first place), that kid would frequently re-enter the game, against the commands of the supervisors, thus generating a verbal tug of war that frequently ended in the kid being banned from playing at all. that kid would then act up on the sidelines, throwing things at those still allowed to play, in protest. many times, adult worries about violence, and a reluctance to let the kids work 41 lanclos it out for themselves because they perceive the kids to be at risk, seemed to do more harm than good.45 conclusions it is this implicit association of rudeness with violence, seen so clearly in the folklore materials, that appears to feed much adult anxiety about "dirtiness" among children. this is particularly pointed in a society like that in northern ireland, where children are only too likely to have quite personal experiences with violence. parents may wish to protect their children, in limiting their exposure to forbidden language and folklore, because of this perceived link with violence. at the very least, parents can try to maintain the illusion that they are protecting their children from the one (violence), by limiting their children's expression of the other (dirty materials). dirty words themselves are potentially violent; if they are used to hurt or insult others, they can have an impact often just as severe than physical violence. children fling words at each other far more often than their bodies, and are aware of the power they have to make each other feel bad, simply with words. in this case, conventional rudeness doesn't even have to be used-intent is key, and if someone wishes to hurt another person, they can call that person a "melon" and have it hurt, because hurt was intended. adult anxieties about child obscenity are not simply a result of generalized cultural constructs dictating proper childlike behavior, of course.46 parents in particular can be concerned because such words can be interpreted as "fighting words," and lead to violence. in a place like northern ireland, where the threats to people from violence are quite real, and violence frequently impacts children both directly and indirectly, such worries are not idle, and are very much reflective of actual dangers. it is this adult impulse to protect children from violence, and to prevent their participation in it, that is also behind adult censure of child rudeness. it is more than just a violation of some abstract model of a proper childhood, but a very real warning sign that children might not be as safe as adults would like them to be. 42 bare bums and wee chimneys notes 1. i carried out this research thanks to funding from the wenner-gren foundation for anthropological research, the u.c. berkeley vice-chancellor for research grant, the u.c. berkeley humanities graduate grant, and lowie/olson funds from the department of anthropology, u.c. berkeley. 2. i am grateful to professor nancy scheper-hughes for this insight. 3. joann conrad points out in her article, "lost innocent and sacrificial delegate: the jonbenet ramsey murder," that americans in particular continue to struggle with notions of child sexuality. 4. such silencing also happens when children bring up other topics adults would rather they not discuss, in particular issues surrounding the protestant/catholic divide in northern ireland. 5. paul willis presents an economic view of the perpetuation of workingclass perspectives among a small group of secondary school boys in britain in learning to labor: how working class kids get working class jobs. 6. nancy scheper-hughes and carol sargent address this issue in their edited volume small wars: the cultural politics of childhood, continuing a discussion laid out in sharon stephens' children and the politics of culture. joann conrad summarizes much of this in her article, "lost innocent and sacrificial delegate." 7. for more on the apparent disqualification of children from childhood, because of their violation of the standards of innocence and dependency, see especially allison james and chris jenks' article, "public perceptions of childhood criminality." 8. the folklore materials in this article are annotated in notes, by, indicating other collections of children's folklore where these materials, or variants of them, can be found. this particular rhyme is also found in mccosh's collection (202-3). 9. for a detailed discussion of definitions of obscenity, especially regarding legal definitions, see harry m. clor's obscenity and public morality. 10. also observed by iona opie (32). 11. mccosh (134) suggests a similar phenomenon around jokes; that is, that jokes can reveal children's attempts to escape from often adult-imposed ignorance of matters intellectual, sexual, and physical. 12. in their collection one-potato, two potato... : the secret education of american children, mary and herbert knapp record a shorter version of this: "dog shit you're it. out!" (26). in the course of her dissertation research, jane hubbard encountered a different variant in derry that she calls in the first volume of children’s play, songs and games in 43 lanclos derry, "more typical of a boys' choosing rhyme: icky dicky dog's dicky, out pops piss!" (170). 13. jane hubbard also recorded this strategy of simply falling silent where the dirty word came in the rhyme. 14. alison lurie discusses this substitution of words for action as children get older in her essay "the folklore of childhood." 15. the joking relationship was first defined by a.r. radcliffe-brown in his article "on joking relationships" in 1940. keith basso discusses the phenomenon at length in portraits of "the whiteman": linguistic play and cultural symbols among the western apache (67-75). 16. mccosh (129) makes the same point regarding jokes, especially rude ones. mccosh also gives several examples of tricks and catches (21722), as do knapp and knapp (92-99). 17. my colleague jay dautcher suggested to me that the knickers bust because of menstruation, and that's why people are disgusted. i think it more likely that cinderella's knickers bust because of her expanding belly; she is pregnant because of going upstairs to "kiss" her fellow, and people are disgusted at her state. 18. for other cinderella dressed in colors other than "yella" rhymes, see knapp and knapp (125-26). 19. this was also recorded by simon bronner (105-6), and iona opie (31). 20. this was a mixed group of boys and girls, and while boys were leading most of the songs, the girls present were singing just as loud. 21. knapp and knapp recorded a version of this as well (213-14). when i recorded this in belfast, the addams family movie had just been shown on television. 22. this is manchester united, the football team, and one of the favorites of kids from all schools. 23. this rhyme and variants of it also recorded in america by bronner (53) and knapp and knapp (25), and in northern ireland by hubbard (vol.1, 172, vol. 2, 62,106), and by maurice leyden, in his book boys and girls come out to play (106). 24. hubbard collected several versions of this (e.g., in vol.1, 174) without any mention of knickers: ". . . bring your own cup and saucer and your own cream bun. [name] will be there with ribbons in her hair. . . " 25. also in bronner (155), mccosh (241), and i. opie (24). 26. also bronner (156) and mccosh (242-43). 27. also see bronner (141). 28. notice that this is a protestant child in a school within a neighborhood with a heavy paramilitary (uda/uvf) presence. paddy irishman is in the first line, but is effaced in the body of the joke. the scotsman is the hero here, which resonates well with some ulster protestant affinities to and for, scotland as a prime site for heritage and allies. 44 bare bums and wee chimneys 29. as in the rhyme "milk, milk, lemonade, around the corner fudge is made," the symbolic equivalence of things that are brown and potentially mushy makes chocolate a convenient stand-in for shit. 30. bronner (142) records a similar joke told about a black man. in that case, however, the man himself was "chocolate" due to the color of his skin. 31. also in mccosh (281) and i. opie (14). 32. also in mccosh (212-13), bronner (117), i. opie (13, 111), and opie and opie (81-82). 33. northern ireland's consumption of nicotine and caffeine products outstrips the consumption of alcohol. 34. these jokes are usually started and ended by the same person, making them rather more like couplets than the more regularly encountered riddling question. examples can also be found in collections by mccosh (214-16) and i. opie (14). 35. two jokes from p.s.2, p6es and p7s. 36. four jokes from c.s.1, p6s 37. from p.s.2, p7s 38. two jokes from c.s.1, p6es and p7es 39. from c.s.1, p4s; bronner (68) collected a "sir" rhyme that has him with a cold, caught while hunting polar bears at the north pole. variants can also be found in roger abrahams' jump rope rhymes (60), in eilis brady's all in! all in! (64), in the second volume of hubbard's collection (75), as well as in leyden's (116,133). 40. thanks to professor alan dundes for this insight. 41. also collected by abrahams (133), bronner (56), hubbard (vol. i, 173; vol.2, 40,63, 105, 138), knapp and knapp (26), and leyden (1056). 42. hubbard (vol. 1, 179, vol.2, 78,125) records the gifts of the boyfriend as apples, pears, and then opal fruits (a chewy fruit candy similar to starburst in america) rather than kisses; this rhyme is also found in brady's collection (3738) as well as leyden's (147). 43. while barney the big purple dinosaur and his television show had already had their heyday in the united states before i entered the field, the show and the characters within it, especially barney himself, and his little green friend baby bop (a girl dinosaur in frilly clothes), were still quite popular among some younger (4-6 years old) children in belfast during the time i was there. as was the case in the united states, many older children and adults were disgusted or annoyed by the treacly show, and such sentiments are clearly present in the parody song given here. 44. josepha sherman discusses this rhyme and variants of it in an american context in her article "gopher guts and army trucks: the modern evolution of children's folklore rhymes" (22-23). 45 lanclos 45. in her article "trashy talk makes educators cry foul," reporter deneen brown, in the may 12, 1998 edition of the washington post, reveals that in the local schools, the link between rude language and violence is made explicit in their conduct codes. one 17 year old was quite clear in noting how contextual language is, suggesting an awareness that "violence" in language is not an absolute, any more than rudeness or obscenity is. 46. thank you to professor nancy scheper-hughes for stimulating this line of thought. references abrahams, roger d. jump rope rhymes: a dictionary. austin: university of texas press, 1969 ardener, edwin. "belief and the problem of women," in the interpretation of ritual. j. la fontaine, ed. london: tavistock, 1972. aries, philippe. centuries of childhood: a social history of family life. robert baldick, transl. new york: random house, vintage books, 1962. basso, keith h. portraits of "the whiteman ": linguistic play and cultural symbols among the western apache. illus. by vincent craig. cambridge: cambridge, 1979. bateson, gregory. "a theory of play and fantasy," in steps to an ecol ogy of mind. new york: ballantine books, 1972. 177-93. beck, horace. "say something dirty!" journal of american folklore. 75(1962): 195-99. brady, eilis. all in! all in!: a selection of dublin children’s traditional street-games with rhymes and music. dublin: cohmairle bhealoideas eireann, an colaiste ollscoile, 1984. bronner, simon j. american children’s folklore. little rock: august house, 1988. brown, deneen l. "trashy talk makes educators cry foul," washing ton post. washington, d.c., tuesday, may 12, 1998. a01. clor, harry m. obscenity and public morality: censorship in a liberal society. chicago: u of chicago p, 1969. conrad, joann. "lost innocent and sacrificial delegate: the jonbenet ramsey murder," childhood 6 (1999): 313-51. douglas, mary. purity and danger: an analysis of concepts of pollu tion and taboo. new york: praeger, 1970 [1966]. dundes, alan. "couvade in genesis," in parsing through customs: es says by a freudian folklorist. madison: u of wisconsin p, 1987. 145-66. 46 bare bums and wee chimneys foucault, michel. the history of sexuality, an introduction: volume 1. new york: vintage books, 1990. freud, sigmund. three essays on the theory of sexuality. new york: basic books, 1962. gomme, alice bertha. the traditional games of england , scotland, and ireland, with tunes, singing-rhymes, and methods of playing ac cording to the variants extant and recorded in different parts of the kingdom. 2 vols. london: d. nutt, 1894-1898. goodwin, marjorie harness. he-said-she-said : talk as social organization among black children. bloomington: indiana up, 1990. hubbard, jane anne. children’s play, songs and games in derry: a social anthropological study, volume 1. unpublished ph.d. dissertation, department of social anthropology. belfast: queen's university, 1995. _______. children s play, songs and games in derry: a social anthropological study, volume 2. unpublished ph.d. dissertation, department of social anthropology. belfast: queen's university, 1995. hunt, lynn, ed. the invention of pornography: obscenity and the origins of modernity, 1500-1800. new york: zone books, 1993. james, allison, and chris jenks. "public perceptions of childhood crimi nality," british journal of sociology 47 (1996): 315-31. knapp, mary, and herbert knapp. one potato, two potato... : the secret education of american children. new york: norton, 1976. legman, g. "introduction," in children s humor: a joke for every oc casion. s. mccosh. london: panther books, 1979. vii-xlix. _______. "introduction," in roll me in your arms: "unprintable" ozark folksongs and folklore. vance randolph. fayetteville: u of arkan sas p, 1992. 1-31. leyden, maurice. boys and girls come out to play: a collection of irish singing games. belfast: appletree press, 1993. lowenstein, wendy. shocking, shocking, shocking: the improper play rhymes of australian children. prahran, vic.: fish and chip press, 1974. lurie, alison. "the folklore of childhood," in don't tell the grown ups: the subversive power of children s literature. boston: back bay books, 1990. 189-204. mccosh, sandra. children s humor: a joke for every occasion. lon don: panther books, 1979. mead, margaret, and martha wolfenstein, eds. childhood in contempo rary cultures. chicago: u of chicago p, 1955. opie, iona, and peter opie. the lore and language of school-children. oxford: oxford up, 1967. 47 lanclos _______. children’s games in street and playground. oxford: oxford up, 1984. opie, iona. the people in the playground. oxford: oxford up, 1994. radcliffe-brown, a. r. "on joking relationships," africa 13 (1940): 195-210. _______. "a further note on joking relationships." africa 19 (1949): 133 40. randolph, vance. roll me in your arms: "unprintable" ozark folksongs and folklore. edited with an introduction by g. legman. fayetteville: u of arkansas p, 1992. scheper-hughes, nancy, and carolyn sargent, eds. small wars: the cultural politics of childhood. berkeley: u of california p, 1998. man, josepha. "gopher guts and army trucks: the modern evolu tion of children's folklore rhymes," children’s folklore review 21:2 (spring 1999): 17-24. stephens, sharon. "introduction: children and the politics of culture in 'late capitalism,'" in children and the politics of culture. s. stephens, ed. princeton: princeton up, 1995. 3-48. thorne, barrie. gender play: girls and boys in school. new brunswick, n.j.: rutgers up, 1995. van rheenen, derek. "boys who play hopscotch: the historical divide of a gender space," children s folklore review 12: 1(1998): 5-34. whiting, beatrice. six cultures: studies of child-rearing. new york: john wiley and sons, inc., 1963. willis, paul. learning to labor: how working class kids get working class jobs. new york: columbia up, 1977. wolfenstein, martha. children’s humor: a psychological analysis. fore word by alan dundes. bloomington: indiana up, 1978 [1954]. 48 ocr document books for children edith fowke my best known children's book is sallv go round the sun: 300 songs. rhvmes. and games of canadian children (toronto: mcclelland & stewart; new york: doubleday, 1969). this is a large-size volume beautifully illustrated by carlos marchiori. it won the canadian association of children's librarians ' award for the best book of the year, and it continues popular. all the items were from oral tradition, collected in 1958-1964 from canadian children plus a few from adult friends who remembered them from their youth. i started collecting with some of the children on my own street and then began going to various toronto schools where i arranged to tape the students in grade 3 classes, which i found the best age-group for this type of material. i asked them for the games and rhymes they knew, and had no trouble getting a wide variety. children's lore is probably the easiest kind of folklore to collect today. when i had assembled a number of tapes, i transcribed them, picked the best versions of the various items, arranged them in categories, and cited the sources and references to other versions. i was lucky in the artist whose delightful color illustrations made the book very attractive. he used two unusual techniques: many of his pictures included fingerprints, others looked like lace. this book is still in print, still popular, and still representative of the children's lore common in canada. students in my introductory folklore classes at york university collected children's rhymes and games as an annual assignment during the seventies and eighties, and found very few that were not in sally. in 1989 virginia caputo, a graduate student in anthropology at york, did her masters' thesis comparing the songs in my collection with those she collected in the same schools some twenty-five years later. an article on her study, which showed a remarkably close parallel, appeared in the canadian folk music journal for 1990. keith macmillan, who had transcribed the music, brought a group of children into a studio and recorded some of the songs and games. this was not a field recording, as the children had to be rehearsed: they knew the songs, but some of their versions were slightly different from those in sallv, and keith's piano or guitar accompaniments were used. however, it was children singing children's songs--an 39 fowke improvement over most children's records which are sung by adults. later, the record was replaced by a cassette. partly because of the lovely illustrations and the record, sally is much the best known of my books. at various gatherings parents still come up to tell me how much their children enjoy it, and many adults liked being reminded of their childhood. i was pleased to find that it was the only north american book on the reference list in the opies' the singing game (oxford: new york, 1984) except for newell's games and songs of american children from 1903. jay rahn, a leading canadian ethnomusicologist, used my collection as the basis for an analysis of the tunes of children's songs, "stereotyped forms in english-canadian children's songs: historical and pedalogical aspects" in the 1981 canadian folk music journal. it compares the tunes in sally with those of similar items in britain and the states. this seems to be the first attempt to analyze english-language children's tunes. a sequel, ring around the moon: 200 songs, tongue twisters, riddles. and rhvmes of canadian children (toronto: mcclelland & stewart; englewood cliffs, nj: prentice-hall, 1977), was designed for a slightly older group and contains some material for children rather than from children. because of its smaller format and black-and-white illustrations, it proved less popular than sally and was out of print for several years, but it has recently been reprinted (toronto: nc press, 1987). both those books gave sources, comparative references, and indexes. a smaller and less scholarly book, riot of riddles (richmond hill, ont: scholastic-tab, 1982), was published by one of the major companies selling to schools. it contains a wide variety of riddles and puzzles: true riddles, conundrums, riddle jokes, crossword puzzles, guessing games, etc. of course riddles are tremendously popular among children; any group will gladly produce a number, and some make up their own. more recently, i assembled a book of children's street games. red rover. red rover (toronto: doubleday canada, 1988). the material came largely from my students' assignments over a dozen years supplemented by some from robert cosbey, who had collected them from his folklore class at regina university, laurel doucette, who sent some from an ottawa class and some she remembered from her childhood, and philip thomas, who collected some in vancouver, plus a few from helen creighton's collection in the folklore archives of the national museum. again i went through a voluminous mass of game descriptions, selected the best versions, organized them in the eleven classes use by iona and peter opie in children's games in street and plavground (london: oxford university press, 1969), and added four extra sections: pretending, miscellaneous, marble, and word games. when i told iona what i was planning, she wrote: "i think it would be excellent if you used the analytical arrange 40 booksfor children ment of children' games in street and playground . . . i think peter would be pleased. he was justifiably proud of his analysis, which caused him many skull-cracking hours." in addition to those books designed specifically for children, some of my others are also useful for children. one, published originally as canada's story in song (toronto: gage, 1965), and long out of print, came out later in a new edition as singing our historv (toronto: doubleday canada, 1984). this began as a series of radio programs for which i wrote the scripts and canadian folksinger alan mills narrated and sang the songs. all the songs are related to events and periods in our history, and we hoped it would be used in history and social studies classes. alan recorded a two record set of the songs (folkways 4000), and the new york times listed it as one of the hundred best records of 1956. singing our historv is a revised and enlarged edition, containing eighteen additional songs found since 1965. another book that came out of a radio series, john d. robins' logging with paul bunvan, originally published in 1967 (toronto: ryerson), was reissued in a somewhat different format designed to appeal to children as paul bunvan. superhero of the lumberjacks (toronto: nc press, 1980). dr. robins, a professor at the university of toronto, had worked in the northern woods where he heard many lumbering songs and stories. (incidentally, he was instrumental in getting me interested in folklore, and my first book was dedicated to him.) we had collaborated on a radio series about paul bunyan in which dr. robins, impersonating an old lumberjack, told the stories and i supplied songs from records. after dr. robins died, mrs. robins turned his manuscripts over to me; i edited them, adding an introduction and notes. when it had been out of print for several years, nc press issued the revised version aiming at a children's market folktales of canada (toronto: nc press, 1979) has also been used with children, although it is not primarily for children. it is translations of varied french-canadian tales (mostly from marius barbeau's collection) illustrating the different types of folktales. i did this book because most frenchcanadian tales available in english had been rewritten, and i kept my translations as close as possible to the original texts. my folksong anthologies, folk songs of canada i and ii (waterloo: waterloo music, 1954, 1967), and the penguin book of canadian folk songs (harrnsworth, england, 1973; rpt. markham, ont., 1986), while not designed for children, have been used in school music programs and at summer camps. folk songs of canada, produced with a musician, richard johnston, was my first book. i began to realize the need for such a book as a result of my radio series, "folk song time," which was then being aired on the canadian broadcasting corporation. when i played records of canadian 41 fowke songs, listeners would inquire where they could find them, but no general canadian collection of folk songs existed, only regional collections from quebec, nova scotia, and newfoundland. we also produced a small volume of french-canadian songs, chansons de ouebec/folk songs of ouebec (waterloo: waterloo music, 1957) with the original french and singable english translations, hoping to make the beautiful french-canadian songs better known among anglo-canadians. also, as singing french is much easier than speaking it, the book would be useful in teaching french to english-speaking children. then in canada's centennial year, 1967, we added the second volume, originally published as more folk song-s of canada. it gave some less familiar songs and some from ontario and western canada collected since 1954. when working on the first book, we found practically no songs from west of quebec, which led me to begin my own collecting. my other general anthology, the penguin book of canadian folk songs, was prepared with the hope of making canadian songs better known in britain and the united states, and allowed me to present a substantial number of ontario songs i had collected. later i scripted the audio-visual historv of canadian folk music, issued by mead sound filmstrips as a combined filmstrip and cassette for sale to schools. the canadian singer stan rogers (tragically killed in a plane crash a few years later) narrated the script which was illustrated by short excerpts from songs and some well-chosen paintings and photographs. one delightful book i edited came from my friend alice kane, a children's librarian who supplied some of the items for sally and ring around the moon. she is a founder of the storytellers' school of toronto and the best storyteller in canada. she has a phenomenal memory, and every time i saw her she would be quoting a song or a poem or a saying she remembered from her childhood. i kept telling her to write these down, they were folklore; eventually she did, but instead of simply writing the songs and rhymes, she quoted them as part of the story of her childhood years in belfast, and gave me the manuscript as a christmas present! i was so charmed by it that i arranged to have it printed as songs and savings of an ulster childhood (toronto: mcclelland & stewart, 1983). this is a beautifully written narrative incorporating an astonishing wealth of folklore drawn from alice's amazingly complete memory of her first twelve years in ireland. i added an introduction, notes, comparative references, and bibliography. in 1985 i received the vicky metcalf award of $2,000 "for a body of work inspirational to canadian youth," a prize administered by the canadian authors association. toronto 42 ocr document arnold lobel's fables and traditional fable features pack carnes one of the most noticeable aspects of the modem study of folklore is its lack of clear and precise genre boundaries and definitions. it is not altogether certain that these are the necessity that some would have us believe. after all, a great deal of folkloristics is being done today in haughty disregard of this lack. still, most of us agree that some such boundary markers would be a help.1 in no case—save perhaps that of "emerging legends"—is this lack more clearly demonstrated than in the fable and in the various forms that members of fable sets take. arnold lobel's fables present a specific case in point. this small collection of fables is clearly a literary collection, yet it owes much to traditional materials. this article will approach the traditional aspects of lobel's fables as an investigation into the nature of the intertextual relationships of highly personal literary creation and folklore. that the fable lays claim to being folklore can hardly be doubted. it exists as short oral narratives (jokes, proverbs, and songs, etc.), and fabular motifs are found in virtually every folk art form. but the fable is also literature.2 what's more, it is literature of a quite varied, yet interconnected sort. the telling and retelling of fables creates and demonstrates very close intertextual relationships among members of fable sets. each set is defined as being a group of allomorphs of an identified fabular motif or narrative type. thus the fable of the fox and the grapes (p15),3 known from classical times through hundreds, perhaps thousands, of literary fabular reworkings is also found in (predominately) oral versions as folktales in the complex delineated by the at type 59 and has a further extended family covered by the thompson motif index number j871. moreover, the fable is clearly connected to, but not identical with, the proverbial phrase "sour grapes"4 and all the semantic areas involved in the resolution of that metaphor. the set is extendable through many dozens of cartoons, a very long list of "anti-fables," and other parodies.5 all these latter forms are connected theoretically through prior knowledge of the motif and prior introduction to the narrative type, often in the nursery. prior knowledge of the "original" story line of the narrative allows satires and parodies of that narrative encountered later in life to be successfu1.6 in the same way, a fable set is related to other fable sets by commonality of purpose, by form and structure, and by function, 3 carnes among other features. previous experience with the structure of the fable, narrative together with an epimythic "moral," for example, allows predictable responses to such structural features when used in another circumstance as, say, a joke narrative and punch line. this is a critical feature of the form and structure of any genre, although very often overlooked. the structure has meaning, of course, as the resolution of the metaphor of the narrative is in effect channeled and controlled to a certain extent by the secondary metaphor of the epimythium. all this needs to be measured against the background of the history of the fable and the position of the fable in modem society, on the one hand, and studied with regard to the world of children's literature and folklore on the other. this is especially important as the learning of fable motifs appears to take place primarily in the context of children's literature. lobel, in particular, will take great advantage of the positioning of traditional materials in the nursery. with regard to the history of the form, generally speaking, we think of the fable as incredibly old, dating back to aesop, a sixth-century b.c. phrygian slave. but the fable is in fact much older than that, with beginnings that go back to the earliest known literature.7 the earliest known sumerian fables would have been as old to aesop as aesop is to us. the modern fable is clearly different from the classical corpus, but equally clearly connected to it. all this makes the fable an excellent testing board for the multivalence of the motifs and other features of the fable, quite beyond the usual dichotomy of "folklore" and "literature." there are features that are to be found in the interstices of these categories, in the "harmonics" of the structure and content of the texts, such as fabular characterizations (the very specific characters of the lion or the fox, for example), the traditional "shape" or length or other structural considerations of fable texts which help us respond to a fable in a way unlike that of any other genre, its attempt to teach or to instruct, and the transparency of resolution of its metaphorical content. these considerations are found in classical fables, their folklore reflexes, and their modem (essentially literary) analogues.8 they are therefore to be found in both literary and orally transmitted forms.9 the fables under discussion here are at once firmly footed in that classical tradition and yet float free of it in their own way. lobel's fables are a mixture of the traditional and the literary and lay claim to both heritages. the tales are his own literary creations, but the connective tissue is comprised of traditional features. as we examine arnold lobel's fables we need to remind ourselves that the intertextual relationships among the members of any particular fabular motif set are important for an understanding of that set or any member of that 4 arnold lobel's fables set, but that this is not the only important set of relationships. indeed, the interrelationships to be found among sets, though of a different order, are easily shown to be equally important, as there are a number of elements that are cross-overs from one set to another. the very shape of fables is an important consideration here. just as we are conditioned to anticipate a punch-line after an introductory line of a joke, so too the reader/listener's response to fables is very much conditioned by the expectations of the approaching "moral."10 arnold lobel shares in all of these features in a way that allows us to approach his texts a little more closely by identifying his reliance upon traditional fabular characters, motifs, and structure. characterization is a prime example of all of these aspects. for example, the fabular lion is the king of beasts, and the fox the trickster par excellence, and those characterizations are fairly consistent. the characterization is suprasegmental, if the segments are the individual fabular motifs, for the lion is the king of beasts in virtually all fables, including the modem parodies, which question the viability of that very aspect of traditional fabular lions, just as twentieth-century democracy has taken its toll of kings on this planet. 11 5 carnes lobel's materials are not only in the tradition of previous fables; he has made extensive and interesting use of other folklore materials. his fables are not overtly traditional fables or anti-fables; that is, they are not refashioned tellings of traditional common fables, or parodies of such, but they carry much of fable tradition with them. lobel then has not been dependent upon the traditional (that is the aesopic fables) for much of his raw materials as have thousands of fabulists from long before aesop through la fontaine and beyond; yet part of their tremendous success is clearly due to the fables' appeal to tradition. this is not the usual fable tradition; in fact, lobel sometimes ignores or "violates" folk tradition for his effects. this is a commonly enough observed process to be found in genres and types that exist so comfortably in both "literary" and folk tradition, from folk music to schubert, from academic medicine to folk healers, from märchen to kunstmärchen, and other binary operating genres. lobel does not even depend entirely upon general responses to the fable as his pieces are certainly enhanced, if not indeed completed, by the illustrations.12 in all cases, it is clear that the illustrations are more than simply decorations; they freeze the action at certain critical points and also provide particularly effective reference points or points of recognition when rereading the fable. thus, from a receptor's point of view, seeing the picture, the entire text is recalled and re-experienced. there is also the very important consideration of direction. this is a very complicated event, involving both the intention of the author (which can be approximated here because of two elements, pace the zealots for the "intentional fallacy"), and the reception of the reader. first of all, the author channels the reader's resolution of the metaphor by providing the epimythium or moral tag-line. and secondly, since it is this point in the action that is usually the moment of the illustration, the illustration supports and reinforces the interpretation intended by the author. there is in the specific case of arnold lobel another factor of significance here. lobel tells us that the fables came in part after the decision to draw the animal characters, although he does not say that the scene depicted preceded the fable text proper. lobel describes his choice of animals as characters in part as beginning with a list of animals that he thought it would be fun to draw (hood 34-35). and, partly as an artifact of the particular position of the modem fable (a relatively new feature of which is the de-emphasis of the moral orparaenetic, the purely didactic element, of the fable, usually in favor of the satirical or the humorous), lobel's fables float free of the popular expectations of, say, the 6 arnold lobel's fables p373 "ant and the grasshopper" in that his "morals" are less demanding. lobel's fables are bound to a certain extent by the traditions of the literary fable, but they use various folklore traditions very effectively and resonate with various harmonics from traditional fables and other narratives. the characters too, though not always the traditional aesopic characters, are often highly reminiscent of more familiar fable characters (the fox, lion, ant, wolf, mouse and so on) and the traditional "expectations" of characterization (see carnes, "traditional expectations"). lobel's fables seem almost studiously distinct from each other with regard to characters; that is to say, not a single character shows up as the main character in more than one. the characters are all animals, in a sense a somewhat recent "traditional expectation,"13 as the classical corpus of fables has more fables with humans as actors (as well as fables with plants and inanimate objects) than those with only animals. lobel might have felt constrained to present only animals as these appear to be more in keeping what the new "traditional" expectation for a fable today, or it may simply have not occurred to him to use any actors other than animals, as he implies in an interview about his fables (hood 35). the animals he chooses, however, are only in part traditional. king lion is, of course, as are the frogs, the bear, and even the crab and the camel, but many are not. the lobster occurs as a character in no "canonical" (le., aesopic) fable of which i am aware, nor does the rhinoceros or the kangaroo. the use of these characters proclaims lobel's independence from some of the traditional constraints of the aesopic fable as much as his title and the familiar structuring of his stories claim the advantages of it.14 yet lobel has taken from all along the fable tradition. to begin with, his characters are perhaps even more closely akin than the average aesopic fable character is to what fabular characters truly are or are meant to be: costumed humans. it does us no real good to see only a lion in the fables about the king of beasts; we need to recognize the metaphor and see in that creature something of ourselves. lobel, with one significant exception, does not let us forget that, even though his creatures act well within the boundaries of their natural characteristics.15 in this lobel is close to his contemporary fabulists: william march [campbell], james thurber, wolfdietrich schnurre, gerhard branstner, helmut arntzen, jean anouilh, and hoshi shin'ichi, among others. there is little pretext here. thurber's version of the tortoise and the hare has the tortoise ironically remind us that there is a fable about a tortoise and a hare; he "read in an ancient book" a story in which a tortoise beat a hare in a race and never read anything about a hare that beat a tortoise in a race, and thinks therefore that he could beat a hare and sets out to find one, to challenge him to a race. the tortoise loses, naturally 7 carnes (thurber, fables 83). helmut arntzen's lamb runs away from the stream when he sees the wolf. the wolf protests that he would not harm the lamb, but the lamb runs away, saying "thank you very much, but i've read my aesop" (64). these are not animals at all, simply humans in sheep's clothing, so to speak. much of lobel's appeal comes from this sort of thing. his characters are not much in the way of allegorical frogs and camels; they are people that we all recognize, and that is naturally, precisely the point. lobel's opening fable demonstrates this clearly. "a crocodile in the bedroom" (2) begins with a kafka-like (not kafkaesque, but kafka-like) opening: "a crocodile became increasingly fond of the wallpaper in his bedrooin."16 that situation is the problem. the crocodile stared at the ordered patterns of flowers and leaves (well-illustrated in the accompanying drawing which catches this aspect of the fable and not its moral or the "action"). the crocodile becomes so accustomed to the order that the comparative disarray of even the "ordered" growth of mrs. crocodile's garden is abhorrent to him. overcome with distaste for the untidiness everywhere around him, he returns to his room, takes to his bed, and (we assume) slowly slips from life. without making too much of the similarity, the moral is as much like kafka as anything else: "without a doubt there is such a thing as too much order." there is of course nothing crocodilian about this character at all. any other creature would have done as well, but lobel has chosen a character that seems, to judge by its natural appearance, to be about as far as could be from a sentient creature capable of even the limited aesthetic responses needed for the narrative, his own statement about choosing characters that were "fun to draw," notwithstanding. we are set up for this by the title which serves in the office of a promythium, but one is still completely unprepared for the ill fitting match of character and narrative. one would have expected in a traditional tale a more naturally orderly creature: a raccoon, a social insect, perhaps. the choice of the crocodile as an exponent of aesthetics makes this modem fable turn the traditional fable on its ear and outfits it with a finely tuned sense of humor that approaches the grand paradox of disney's having a dragon friendly to children.17 characterization in ''the ducks and the fox" (5), on the other hand, is completely straightforward. the fox is sly and plans to catch and eat the ducks, a familiar response of foxes toward ducks both in the natural and the fabular worlds. the ducks are silly and only just barely recognize the fox as enemy, but they are beguiled by him in the traditional aesopic and märchen manner. the fox very nearly talks the two ducks into his sack, just as the fox talks the crow out of the cheese in the innumerable versions of their classical 8 arnold lobel's fables fable. the ending is thoroughly modem and fits very well even with silly ducks. the fable has a traditional conflict between, incidentally, two clearly opposite forces (as is the usual case in fables). however, the ending appears contrived-perhaps for the sake of the moral tag line or epimythium. the epimythium does seem more typical of lobel's (and our) own time: "at times, a change of routine can be most helpful." the irony generated by the distance between what sounds like a slogan of the jogging 70s and 80s, on the one hand, and the understatement of the moral, on the other, is highly effective, indeed much more so here than in many of his other morals. lobel's use of traditional characterization is best seen in "king lion and the beetle" (7). this fable is far from an aesopic one, but it is firmly dependent upon the reader/listener' s response to such fables, upon the reader/ listener's being responsive to fables in general and having heard aesopic fables before. although the fable itself is a new one, the incremental characterization of the lion wherever he appears in fables is assumed. the lion is the king of beasts-from the two classical versions of the "lion's share" fable to the "aged lion and fox," and a host of others through the modem lion in the ass's skin cycle of helmut arntzen and the lion's share fable by james thurber. here lobel does not depend upon his audience's knowing any particular fable as much as knowing about the general fabular lion's characterization. the lion's role in society and his comical vain insistence upon his "kingliness" is the point of the fable and causes the lion's (literal) downfall. his vanity, expressed physically with robes, heavy jewels and a crown, causes the lion to fall into the mud, down to the level of the beetle from whom he demands acknowledgment. none of lobel's other fables depends upon traditional characterization as much as this one does. there are, however, examples of unexpected behavior within what appears to be a number of more "natural" characterizations. this sometimes bizarre behavior is elusive and ill-defined, but highly effective. "the bear and the crow" (16) is a case in point. behind the highly effective composition of the narrative as a fable, the characterization stands out as particularly vivid, in part because of the use of a traditional fabular actor in an uncommon role. the crow, the deceived in most fables, becomes the deceiver here. the bear, although not unknown as a gullible creature in fables, is more obvious in that role in the cyclical animal tale. emphasis upon the characterization here, however, no matter how interesting, must not draw the reader away from the point of the fable, from the fact that we are all not just creatures in fables, but creatures of fashion in the literal sense. those who allow themselves to be talked into the bear's situation have brought it upon themselves, even though the crow is not altogether blameless. the epimythium is weaker here than in 9 carnes most of lobel's fables and is indeed not really needed at all. a well-chosen epimythium can often add to even a well-told story, much as an emblem enhances the effect of a proverb or motto. in lobel's case, the illustrations are equally effective and often surpass the epimythium in drawing the attention of the reader to the point of the fable. a particular striking example of that is to be found in "the baboon's umbrella" (12). there are two characters: the baboon, who complained that he was unable to close his umbrella, and his obliging friend the gibbon, who suggested the cutting of large gaping holes in it. the action is easily foreseen as the rain begins to fall. the baboon and the gibbon here are not disturbingly out of character at all. although they are not drawn from standard fabular characters, they do function quite well as actors. this is a very wellconstructed fable, and a great deal of its strength and appeal comes from the moral tag line: "advice from friends is like the weather. some of it is good and some of it is bad." i rather suspect that lobel purposely sidestepped the obvious line available to him in constructing his moral with "fair weather" and "friends," but he has certainly felt the need for a moral couched in a quasiproverbial phrase. the natural characteristics of animals is the third source of elements from which a fabulist can draw for his work. this is as old as the originator of the tortoise and the hare fable, in which the actual speed of the hare is matched to the actual slowness of the tortoise. modem fabulists in general have made more use of this aspect than was the case in earlier literary fables, but lobel uses it most effectively. in fact lobel parodies the very process in his fourth fable: "the crab and the lobster" (8). we are so accustomed to looking for metaphors in fables (and allowing for the convention that animals speak), we are taken aback when the actors in a fable actuality are the creatures that they are and moreover are in fact in possession of their natural characteristics. as the two crustaceans set sail on the sea, they encounter a storm and the boat begins to sink. the lobster answers the crab's horrified cries with: of course, we are sinking. this old boat is full of holes. have courage, old friend. remember, we are creatures of the sea. of course they are. the marvel here is that we, too, as fable readers, are not accustomed to having fable creatures operate in their own natural elements, as natural creatures, or falling back upon natural abilities to save themselves.18 even the crab seems to have forgotten that although he is playing a costumed human in the fable, he can still live under water. the epimythium, "even the taking of small risks will add excitement to life," is effective again for its irony. there are, of course, no risks involved at all. 10 arnold lobel's fables the natural crowing of roosters at dawn, and their folktale proclivity to do so, is well-exploited in lobel's "the young rooster" (37). this is especially effective, for the conflict comes about precisely of the fact that the young rooster does not seem able to "crow up the sun," as his first day "on the job" is cloudy and overcast. this results in failure for the young rooster who is now discouraged. all the barnyard animals decry the disastrous lack of sun. the bull, in an attempt to help, provides the rooster with the marvelously incongruent fact that the sun is 93,000,000 miles away, a statement that is not likely to have occurred in any aesopic fable (and inserted, i rather suspect, for precisely that reason). the mouse in the "the mouse at the seashore" (10) is another character chosen for its natural qualities. once the premise of the fable is accepted, then the dangers encountered are those that a mouse would be likely to run into: a cat, a bird, and dogs-all of which attack him. he loses his way and is bloodied time and again, but the sight of the sea is worth it all. the epimythium is an overstatement made redundant by the charming illustration of the mouse sitting on the sand dune watching the sun set over the sea. here, then, the fact that the fable is not about mice at all is clear. the natural enemies pitted against the mouse misdirect the reader into thinking that indeed the story is about a mouse, but the final scene and the exquisite illustration bring us back to our world, resolve the metaphor, and remind us that we are talking about us, in a way that is completely consistent with the aesopic tradition. in contrast to the fables discussed above, there are a number of instances in which lobel has purposefully strayed from the natural characteristics of certain animals, but has stayed in sight of their roles in traditional folk literature and, in some instances, in children's literature. the resulting effect is mixed. the hippopotamus in "the hippopotamus at dinner" (38) is perhaps an obvious choice on the surface for gluttony, but the hippo is not in fact a glutton, just a bulky animal whose dimensions are translated into obesity when compared to a human scale of girth. it is the nature of the hippo to be overtly fat from the human point of view, but it does not follow that he would "over-order" in a restaurant. the situation takes advantage of some characteristics of hippos, real or imagined: hippos seem (to humans) to be fat, and that seems to imply overeating. this is one of lobel’s "weakest" fables, and the epimythium: "too much of anything often leaves one with a feeling of regret," does not save it from being relatively ineffective. the motif is a common one in folk literature: the hippo overeats and then cannot leave the table (cave, hollow tree, etc.), having grown too large. it is significant that this precise motif is found in children's literature in a number of instances, the chapter in winnie the pooh with pooh and the honey pot being but one example.19 11 carnes , further, the wolf, in the somewhat misnamed ''the hen and the apple tree" (11), plays an even more traditional folk-literature role, that of assuming a disguise in order to obtain his prey. although this is not a behavior of wolves observable in nature, it is clearly one common characteristic of wolves in folk literature. the märchen "little red riding hood" is only one example; there are fabular disguised wolves as well: "wolf and the kid" (p572), which has of course a much later märchen reflex, in grimm no. 5, for example. the innovative twist lobel gives his wolf here is twofold: first, the wolf is disguised as an apple tree, and second, in an even more anti-traditional feature, the hen sees through the disguise. the wolf, quite uncharacteristically, "knew that he had been outsmarted," an unusual insight for the plastic characters of the fable; but that having been said, the fable ought to end there, rather than with the too obvious "it is always difficult to pose as something else." it is that line, one suspects, that lobel was writing toward. it is clearly designed for the children for whom the "moral" is intended. there are also the somewhat abstracted natural characteristics of animals that are chosen for fables here. the ostrich is popularly believed to be afraid and thus the "shy lover" ostrich is a natural secondary overtone (21). the camel is clearly one of the most unlikely animals to be chosen to play the part of a ballerina and, therefore, is an excellent choice for a fable in which the main actor is shown not being able to do what she wanted to do well, but "she will dance just for herself" (22). actually, there is an aesopic fable about a 12 arnold lobel's fables camel dancing, p83 "ape and camel," known from the earliest greek prose tradition, in which the camel tried to dance and was so ridiculed that he was forced to leave the gathering of the animals. some of lobel's fables have characters and situations that are not standard, not traditional, and not specie-specific. lobel is not the first to use animals this way, but he is surely the first to write a fable about a vain rhinoceros (a capsule "emperor's clothes," a-t 1620; tmi k445) or a peculiar fable about an elephant and his son (32) that has nothing to do with elephants and does not show any general or specific characteristic of elephants. "the pelican and the crane" (35) also owes nothing to the natural traits or physical attributes of pelicans and cranes, but succeeds extremely well. lobel pays the price of his independence in this regard: he must characterize his actors to set up the moral. the grand advantage of using traditional characteristics and traditional traits of fabular characters is the shorthand and "instant characterization" afforded by that tradition. the fable is best when very short, and that is accomplished in the easiest fashion by letting traditional characterization supply those features for which the animal was selected. when using an animal that is not somehow characterized in traditional literature, the author has to create some of that characterization himself. that is difficult in the short space allowed a fable. in the "pelican and the crane," lobel has to set the stage and establish the characters early on. in the first line, we read "the crane invited the pelican to tea." we know nothing about lobel's general idea of cranes and pelicans, nor this specific fable crane and this specific fable pelican as yet. "no one invites me anywhere," says the pelican, and we ought to be on our guard for the reason for that statement. that is, naturally, the very point: "entirely my pleasure," said the crane to the pelican, passing him the sugar bowl. "do you take sugar in your tea?" "yes, thank you," said the pelican. he dumped half the sugar into his cup, while spilling the other half on the floor. that is the element of characterization we need. the pelican continues with: "i seem to have no friends at all." the crane then asks if he takes milk. some of the milk goes in the tea, but most ends up on the floor-and our suspicions are confirmed. a third clumsy act is needed to make the point most effectively, and pelican does this by stuffing so large a pile of cookies into his mouth that his shirt is covered with cookie remnants. this is the point of the action shown us in the illustration. the moral tag-line: "when one is a social failure, the reasons are as clear as day," could easily be entered in pencil under william march [campbell]'s fable no. 22, "polecat and his friends." the 13 carnes polecat in this fable was indignant at the manner in which he was treated by the other animals, and he complained bitterly to an old tortoise about the "undemocratic snobs" and the fact that they never invited him to any of their parties. the old tortoise at the end is forced to point out: "well, after all, you do stink a little" (march [campbell] 42-43). campbell's polecat does stink, and this aspect of the animal actor results in the clever finale. but lobel has to create the unsavory manners of the pelican, as manners, good or bad, are not commonly attributed to pelicans. there are other features outside of characterization in this collection that tie these fables to traditional materials, such as the idea of gold (and diamonds and pearls) at the end of the rainbow as the central motif for "frogs at the rainbow's end" (14) or the märchen tendency for "threes" in the pelican and crane fable and elsewhere throughout the collection. the collection depends to a great extent upon such traditional features, and that is as it should be. such ties facilitate reception of the work for both children and adults (see carnes, "fable and proverb" 56-61). but these fables are literature, and everywhere there is the distinctive hand of the craftsman using traditional materials to aid, not to dictate, the development of his materials. if today' s fable has any true "direction" at all, then it is to be found as a vector of the work of such fabulists as thurber, schnurre, and lobel. its function is close to the necessity to point out society's little faults, not the grand socio-economic schemes, and its responses are from us on a mediumburner level, because these are all we have time for. they are successful, no longer quite on the rhetorical level of the traditional aesopic fable, nor on the poetic-genre level of the seventeenth-century la fontaine or his eighteenthcentury followers, nor even on the somewhat "higher" moral plane of the fable of the sixteenth century, but on the level of common knowledge and utility, and especially on the plane of traditional, familiar materials presented in a somewhat untraditional manner, mostly for fun. lake forest college lake forest, il notes 1. the call for example issued a quarter of a century ago by alan dundes is as valid today as then, even though dundes himself has sharpened a number of genre lines in many categories and has worked extraordinarily well with many areas and with many types of materials without such delimitations. the surprising lack of definitions and clear-cut categories--with the fable a specific case in point--is 14 arnold lobel's fables best seen in the introduction to dan ben-amos, ed., folklore genres, and the bibliography cited there. 2. the fable in fact is generally defined as such. see, for example, smith, which has not been much improved upon, save by increasingly allowing more freedom to the form in perry, aesopica, and leibfried, all of which leave out the oral component, some aspects of the structure, or the essentials of context and the like. 3. fables here are identified by "perry number," that is, the number of that fable as found in ben edwin perry's monumental aesopica. i use perry numbers to indicate the set of fables, one element of which (and often the earliest known member) is to be found in perry. obviously that set could be designated by other schemes. wherever possible, the set designate includes the tale type number, as well as the corresponding motif index numbers, from aarne-thompson, here designated a-t, and thompson, here tmi, respectively. the sets extend far beyond the fable forms of course; clearly the proverbial phrase "sour grapes" belongs to the same set as the fable "fox and grapes (as in perry, aesopica, no. is), and the folktale equivalents found under a-t 59 are also members of that set. see carnes, ''the fable and the anti-fable," for a more complete discussion of fable sets and their members, especially with regard to the fables and their "anti-fable," analogues. 4. see stahl, reprinted in carnes, proverbia in fabula, and the introduction to that volume. for details of the relationship of the phrase to the fable, see carnes, "fable and proverb." 5. the term anti-fable is coined on analogy of wolfgang mieder's "anti-sprichwort" and refers to the burlesques or travesties constructed upon those aesopic motifs that can be assumed to be part of the cultural baggage of the reader. examples include james thurber's "turtle and the hare" (p226, a-t275a; tmi kl 1.3), in which the rabbit wins (see carnes, fable scholarship 5-9). in the version of this narrative type by the japanese science-fiction writer hoshi shin'ichi, the rabbit does not win, as the turtle has the rabbit arrested for speeding, and the turtle wins by default. for hoshi shin'ichi and his concept of the anti-fable, see carnes, "the fable and the anti-fable." jokes cast in fabular form, with narrative and "moral" are legion, for examples and discussion, see gerth, and carnes, "the fable joke." 6. in contrast, however, this does not mean that prior knowledge of the fable is essential in order to understand the proverbial phrase associated with that fable. rather stringent testing has revealed that knowledge of the fable was absent in the majority of those who recognized phrases such as "lion's share," "out of the frying pan, into the fire," "sour grapes," and the like. most receptors did not know the fable source, nor recognized it after being told. it is significant that virtually none of these understood the phrase in the so-called "standard" metaphor resolution. for details, see carnes, "introduction," proverbia in fabula, and "fable and proverb," 55-76. 15 carnes 7. see, for example, the materials in lambert, and jason and kempinski. the jason and kempinski article attempts to date the earliest known narratives. their dates are fairly firm, depending upon a conservative estimate of the earliest recorded written record. in some cases, the dates are easily extendible one or two thousand years, even assuming that there was no significant period of oral transmission, which there clearly was. of the five they identified as the earliest narratives, all are or are potentially fables, and one or two of the earliest are known today as jokes and as fables. 8. the modern forms are of three types, although the distinction ought not to be too finely drawn. there are essentially modern fables which are written more or less as classical fables are, and then there is another closely associated category which consist of parodies of classical forms, i.e., the above mentioned "anti-fables." most modern fabulists write fables of both of these sorts. the third category is that into which all of lobel's fables fall. they are essentially "new" fables in that they use for the most part "new" motifs and narratives (although there is borrowing all along the tradition). most modern fabulists write some "new" fables, even those, like thurber and ambrose bierce, who "specialize" in antifables. 9. i do not wish to restrict myself to these two categories, but they will do if considered only provisionally. there are a number of other possibilities, such as printed commercials, advertisements, "xerox-lore" (now commonly "faxlore"), and quite a few other venues. 10. this is actually fairly modern. the consolidation of the macro-structure of the fable into the "standard" form today was leveled out in the middle ages on analogy of examples from classical times (see perry, "the origin of the epimythium"). there have been a number of attempts to change these formal structures throughout the ages, but the modern fable has been fairly consistent in favor of the moral tag line. lobel suggests that he thought first of not having epimythia: "they simply seemed very much out of date." but in the end, he decided that fables seemed somehow not complete without them (hood 35). there are in fact a few modern fabulists who use no epimythia (wolfdietrich schnurre, for example), and one very important modern fabulist who uses only promythia(usually in badly rhyming couplets), the (once east) berliner, gerhard branstner. it is important to note that the use of the moral tag-line is so strongly ingrained in most modern fabulists, that some, such as thurber add epymithia to other genres, such as re-cast märchen, which of course never had them, and which were not told for the purpose of the moral as fables were. see thurber's version of "little red riding hood," entitled ''the little girl and the wolf' (thurber, fables 4-5), discussed in carnes, fable scholarship 5-6. evenjokes that are masquerading as fables (see carnes, ''the fable joke") have pseudoepimythia "punchlines." 16 arnold lobel's fables 11. the point is easily made: thurber's "lion's share" fable (thurber, "further fables" 23-2) has king lion lose all the booty in the form of taxes and hunting licenses. helmut arntzen's lion (6) does not fare any better: he is informed that, although he is still technically "king of the beasts," he is now only a constitutional monarch in a parliamentarian democracy. modern jokes about the fall of king lion are legion (see carnes,"the fable and the anti-fable" 26-27, for examples). 12. much work is needed on the reaction to folk elements when accompanied by illustrations. a number of modern fabulists illustrate their own work, and not only for children's books. in addition to lobel, james thurber, wolfdiedrich schnurre, james kniss-who write fables especially for children-all illustrated their fables themselves. there is need for studies of the interaction of both "texts," i.e., the fable narrative and illustration. the history of fable illustration remains unwritten, but a marvelous start has been made for illustrations through the seventeenth century in hodnett 57-72 and 168-222, although none of these ideas are discussed. 13. this is an artifact of survival only. very few fables from the greek prose tradition have survived into the very limited corpus of aesopica alive today. 14. in a sense, this is necessary. in nothing more than this is an important ethos between literature and folklore clearly seen. the traditional, the folklore artifact claims unity with others of its kind and in that it finds its existence and its appeal. literature, on the other hand, claims and insists upon its distinctiveness, away from the group, away from tradition. the virtue of the one is the anathema of the other. modern fabulists are just as likely to use many non-traditional characters in non-traditional fabular motifs as to use the more familiar forms. 15. lobel says much the same thing in his interview with susan hood, an editor of the journal instructor. there he describes his characters as representative of himself. 16. a number of modern fabulists seem to be drawn to franz kafka (who wrote fables himself, or, perhaps more properly, he wrote one true fable, and a number of other pieces that are "fabular" in nature, but not aesopic in type). one of the most striking examples of this kafka connection is found in the seventeenth fable, "la cucaracha sonadora," in augusto monterroso' s fable collection. in this fable" ...a cockroach named gregor samsa dreamed that he was a cockroach named franz kafka who dreamed that he was a writer who wrote about a clerk named gregor sarnsa, who dreamed that he was a cockroach" (monterroso 59). 17. many modern fables do this, in contrast to the classical corpus. wolfdietrich schnurre uses a rabbit as an example for vainglorious behavior (9); a rooster is 17 carnes made the vehicle for a moral about seeing "with the sun" and not against it, in branstner (no. 16), and so on. 18. the irony created by the distance we normally create as a response to the structure of a fable to its characters and content, keeps us from remembering that these characters, after all, live at the bottom of the sea. this is similar to the cartoon figure of daffy duck, who, falling from a tall mountain and plunging down to "certain death," suddenly remembers that he is a duck and, as such, can fly. 19. this is p24 (tmi k1022.1), with the classic forms represented by babrius 86, and it is a-t 41 (see, for example, no. 73 in the grimm collection) usually with a fox or bear, instead of a hippo. works cited anouilh, jean. fables. paris: la table ronde, 1962. arntzen, helmut. kurzer prozefi aphorismen und fabeln. munich: nymphenberg, 1966. ben-amos, dan, ed. folklore genres. austin: u of texas p, 1976. bierce, ambrose. fantastic fables. new york: putnam, 1898. rpt: new york: dover, 1970. branstner, gerhard. der esel als amtsmann oder das tier ist auch ein mensch: fabeln. berlin: der morgen, 1977. carnes, pack. ''the american face of aesop: thurber's fables and tradition." moderna sprak 80 (1986): 3-17. rpt. in carnes, pack. proverbia in fabula: essays on the relationship of the proverb and the fable. bern: lang: 1988. 311-31. _______. "fable and proverb: intertexts and reception." proverbium 8 (1991): 55-76. _______. ''the fable and the anti-fable: the modem faces of aesop." bestia: yearbook of the international beast fable society 4 (1992): 5-33. _______. "the fable joke." southwest folklore 5 (1981): 1-9. _______. fable scholarship: an annotated bibliography. new york: garland, 1985. _______. ed. proverbia in fabula: essays on the relationship of the proverb and the fable. bern: lang, 1988. _______. "traditional expectations in the modem fable." neohelikon 11 (1983): 203-16. dundes, alan. "texture, text and context." southern folklore quarterly 28 (1964): 251-65. rpt.in dundes, alan. interpreting folklore. bloomington: indiana up, 1980. 20-32. gerth, klaus. "fabeln und witze." praxis deutsch: zeitschrift für den deutschunterricht 11 (march 1984): 14-24. hodnett, edward. francis barlow: first master of english book illustration. ilkley, yorkshire: scolar p and u of california p, 1978. hood, susan. "crocodile's terror and an elephant's error-that's what arnold lobel's fables are made of." instructor 90 (may 1981): 34-39. 18 arnold lobel's fables hoshi shin'ichi. mirai issopu [the future aesop]. tokyo: shincho-sha, 1971. jason, heda, and aharon kempinski. "how old are folktales?" fabula 22 (1981): 1-27. krüss, james. die schiffbrüchigen oder die fabelinsel. berlin: die kinderbuch verlag, 1985. lambert, w. g. babylonian wisdom literature. oxford: clarendon p, 1960. leibfried, erwin. fabel. stuttgart: metzler, 1967. lobel, arnold. "ca1decott meda1 acceptance." horn book magazine 57 [4] (1981): 400-4. _______. fables. new york: harper, 1980. march [campbell], william. 99 fables by william march, edited and with an introduction by william t. going. university, al: u of alabama p, 1960. mieder, wolfgang. antisprichwörter. wiesbaden: verlag für deutsche sprache, 1982. monterroso, augusto. the black sheep and other fables. trans. walter i. bradbury. garden city, ny: doubleday, 1971. trans. of la oveja negra y demás fabulas. mexico: joaquin moritz, 1969. perry, ben edwin. aesopica: greek and latin texts. urbana, il: u of illinois p, 1952. ______. "the origin of the epimythium." transactions of the american philological society 73 (1940): 391-419. schnurre, wolfdietrich. der spatz in der hand: fabeln und verse. munich: albert langen, 1973. smith, m. ellwood. "the fable and kindred forms." journal of english and germanic philology 14 (1915): 519-29. stahl, sandra. "sour grapes: fable, proverb, unripe fruit." folklore on two continents: essays in honor of linda degh. eds. nikolai burlakoff and carl lindahl. bloomington: trickster p, 1980.160-68. rpt. in carnes, pack. proverbia in fabula: essays on the relationship of the proverb and the fable. bern: lang, 1988.295-309. thurber, james. fables for our time and famous poems illustrated. new york: harper, 1939. ______. further fables for our time. new york: simon and schuster, 1956. 19 35 “the shooter has asperger’s”: autism, belief, and “wild child” narratives simon j . bronner having reviewed hundreds of press reports on school shootings since 2000, i find a consistent pattern of narrative speculation about the association of autism and more specifically asperger’s syndrome with individuals who commit mass violence in america. in reporting the “motivation” for shootings by teens and young adults, the press typically relies on oral narratives provided by classmates and family members, rather than medical documentation. often these reports cite odd, unusual, or asocial behavior by the individuals, sometimes prompted by bullying or engagement in game or music participation, that lead to an unanticipated violent outburst, colloquially called a “meltdown,” “breakdown,” or “losing it.” the press reports reflect, or respond to, a more general belief found in the population concerning the shooter’s deteriorating mental state since childhood and the notion that he, and the shooter is assumed to be male, had gone undiagnosed or kept his diagnosis secret in mainstream society, commonly with the suggestion that he should have been institutionalized or separated from “normal” youth. pathologizing or folklorizing the phenomenon, observers often mention an unrecognized or suppressed “epidemic” of autism or mental illness along with speculation about environmental as well as medical reasons bordering on the conspiratorial for the contemporary rise of retributional violence by youth. without discounting scientific attempts to understand brain function in relation to youth violence, i frame the discourse among such observers in the context of folk psychology, a term that has come into usage outside of folkloristics, but can be applied to issues of social interaction as manifested in traditional cultural practices of children (haselager 1997; thomas 2001). the key concept suggested by folk psychology is that people as part of their localized cultural experience perceive, predict, and explain one another’s actions, thoughts, and motivations, often in relation to inherited norms of social behavior expressed through narrative and ritual. the intellectual and cultural construction of autism, asperger’s, and aspies although the public has a number of beliefs about autism, and asperger’s characteristics which is usually tied to autism, thus expressing a folk psychology, the psychiatric community has a set of definitions it circulates among its practitioners, most notably in the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders, known by the initialism dsm and a number indicating its edition. in the most current version of dsm-5 prepared by the american psychiatric association, autism is listed under “neurodevelopmental disorders” as “autism spectrum disorder.” the disorder entails “persistent deficits in social communication and social interaction across multiple contexts, including deficits in social reciprocity, cfr_2014.indb 35 11/20/14 1:07 pm “the shooter has asperger’s” bronner 36 nonverbal communicative behaviors used for social interaction, and skills in developing, maintaining, and understanding relationships” (american psychiatric association 2013, 31). the spectrum refers to relative severity of symptoms, related in the scientific literature to impairments of the development of the brain or central nervous system. neurodevelopmental disorders that are differentiated from the autism spectrum are intellectual developmental disorder, attention-deficit/ hyperactivity disorder, tic disorder, and developmental coordination disorder (american psychiatric association 2013, 31-86). readers will notice the absence of asperger’s syndrome from this list. in dsm-5, the american psychiatric association declared that “many individuals previously diagnosed with asperger’s disorder would now receive a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder without language or intellectual impairment” (2013, 32). autism as a label is a little over a hundred years old, and became popular only after 1943 when american child psychiatrist leo kanner described eleven children with “autistic disturbances of affective contact,” that is, a highly variable social impairment that he linked to a neurodevelopmental disorder (schriber, robins, and solomon 2014). kanner differentiated this disorder from schizophrenia that eugen bleuler, a swiss psychiatrist who introduced the term “autism” in 1911 along with “schizophrenia” in his weighty tome dementia praecox or the group of schizophrenias, thought was connected (mcnally 2009). kanner hypothesized that the autistic disturbances he observed were inborn and presumably genetic. later psychiatrists described the social impairment that kanner described as “kanner’s infantile autism,” which appeared similar to the syndrome proposed around the same time as asperger’s. one major difference is the muteness or abnormality of speech among kanner’s children in his study, whereas asperger’s was viewed as more of a social disorder and in the twenty-first century is more popularly known (pearce 2005). notice of asperger’s syndrome is credited to austrian pediatrician hans asperger’s paper “die ‘autistischen psychopathen’ im kindesalter” in a german journal of psychiatry and neurology in 1944. in the essay, he identified patterns of children who had poor nonverbal communication skills (their speech, however, was fluent but long-winded, literal, and pedantic), were emotionally detached, displayed egocentric behavior, and were physically clumsy. later clinicians identified additional symptoms of repetitive behavior, obsession with specific interests, and normal to superior intelligence despite difficulty in conventional school work. although asperger noted the association of abnormalities with the childhood years, usually among males after starting school, he noted that the traits were lifelong. before asperger’s paper, psychiatric literature included case histories of “schizothymic” or “schizoid” patients. ernst kretschmer in 1925, for example, wrote about a patient who had no friends at school, was odd and awkward in social interaction, was observed being oversensitive, and was unhappy when away from home. drawing psychiatric attention, including folkloristic as well as psychoanalytic commentary from sigmund freud , such patients were described as having invented a detailed imaginary world. freud in 1918 in his famous cases of the wolf man and rat man referred to “infantile neurosis” as a mental disorder caused by an oedipal conflict that has been symbolically noted in the cfr_2014.indb 36 11/20/14 1:07 pm bronner “the shooter has asperger’s” 37 male patient’s early childhood. in adulthood, the patient displays obsessional and paranoid behaviors associated later by psychoanalysts with autism (loewald 1974). freud did not observe violent tendencies in his case histories of young adults plagued by this neurosis, but kurt schneider in 1923 identified a psychological type called “affectionless psychopaths” who pursue their own interests with ruthless indifference to other people’s feelings. although asperger, freud, and kretschmer did not mention a propensity for violence in the different childhood disorders they identified, schneider noted the possibility that “psychopaths” could harm others in pursuit of their special interests. the connection of “affectionless” patients to autism owes largely to a 1981 paper “asperger’s syndrome: a clinical account” in psychological medicine by english psychiatrist lorna wing. she introduced the label “asperger’s syndrome” to replace the negative, vague terms “psychopath,” “schizoid,” or “neurotic.” her connection of asperger’s to autism was based upon similarity of symptoms described by asperger to kanner’s autism, such as the inability to understand that others have beliefs that are different from their own. these neurologically based deficits prevent normal social intercourse, including the ability of the children to engage in joint fantasy or to empathize with the feelings of others. the significance of the connection to autism is the shift to what kanner (1943) called an “innate” disorder with the suggestion of genetic transmittal within families. for the first time in 1994, and then in a revision of 2000, the american psychiatric association in its influential diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (dsm-iv-tr) listed “asperger’s disorder” (299.80) as a distinct condition (klin 2003, 106-7). the primary features, according to the manual, were “severe and sustained impairment in social interaction and the development of restricted, repetitive patterns of behavior, interests, and activities” (american psychiatric association 2000, 80). the stated contrast to “autistic disorder” was the absence of “clinically significant delays or deviance in language acquisition … and spontaneous communicative phrases” (american psychiatric association 2000, 82). no mention was made of a propensity to violence; in fact, the concern in the manual for asperger’s patients was the experience of “victimization by others” (american psychiatric association 2000, 82). although the dsm-iv-tr noted occasional associations with depressive disorders, more frequent was a prior diagnosis of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (adhd, estimated to affect 3 to 7 percent of all school-age children). as with asperger’s, adhd primarily affects boys, according to the manual, ranging from ratios as high as 9 to 1 (asperger’s is 5:1). dsm-5, released in 2013, however, eliminated asperger’s as a distinct condition and placed its symptoms under a broad category of “autism spectrum disorder” (american psychiatric association 2000, 50-59). placement of asperger’s syndrome or disorder on the autism spectrum by medical authorities has been disputed, primarily on the bases of the refocusing of asperger’s as a communication disorder rather than a neurological or learning characteristic. some critics who view the autism spectrum as a social construction worry that psychiatrists have broadened the population of individuals as patients who are at the high functioning end. the diagnosis on the autism spectrum, according to this view, will stigmatize these persons and potentially concentrate cfr_2014.indb 37 11/20/14 1:07 pm “the shooter has asperger’s” bronner 38 treatment on communication rather than intellectual and social issues. another argument against the elimination of asperger’s syndrome as a separate category is a cultural defense. one report from the college of william and mary, for example, points out that “many also see the asperger’s diagnosis as part of their identity, especially those who have lived with the label for many years. by grouping all spectrum individuals together, they fear they will lose this, as they will not be able to relate or identify with a majority of their autistic peers under the new criteria” (disability services 2014). this identity for many individuals diagnosed with asperger’s is the “aspies” who view themselves positively as “neuro-diverse” with creative, intellectual, and occupational assets (robison 2007). they often express asperger’s as a value of being different that they do not want to change (robison 2012). as a group whose members often communicate with one another in listservs, online networks, and special groups (including camps), aspies nonetheless worry about being misunderstood, and feared, as diseased, incapable of social relationships, and dangerously violent (robison 2012). although aspies increasingly advocate for themselves, they are aware that asperger’s has become a folk term with negative connotations in popular culture and folklore (robison 2012; seventhvoice 2013). in the psychiatric community, the issue of communication skills apparently was a key in the decision to eliminate asperger’s from dsm-5. the manual stated that “individuals who have marked deficits in social communication, but whose symptoms do not otherwise meet criteria for autism spectrum disorder, should be evaluated for social (pragmatic) disorder” (american psychiatric association 2013, 51). apparently responding to criticism of cultural standards for social communication, especially in narrative competency, the dsm-5 noted culture and gender-based diagnostic issues. acknowledging that “cultural differences will exist in norms for social interaction, nonverbal communication, and relationships” (and therefore the perception of maladjustment), the manual insisted nonetheless that “individuals with autism spectrum disorder are markedly impaired against the norms for their cultural context” (american psychiatric association, 57; emphasis added). it hypothesized, for example, the lateor under-diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder among african american children. still finding more males with the disorder, the manual considered the possibility that girls might be left undiagnosed because of “subtler manifestation of social and communication difficulties” (american psychiatric association 2013, 57). another factor in the elimination of asperger’s from dsm-5 was the concern of overgeneralizing behavioral difference into a definite pathology. as one writer who self-identified as an aspie reported in response to the newtown shooting, “if you meet somebody with asperger’s, you’ve only met one person with asperger’s. asperger’s is a blip on the far-reaching autism spectrum and no two cases are the same. just as no ‘typical’ person deserves to be tar-brushed with the evil acts of another, aspies don’t deserve the bad press they’re getting” (inquisitr 2004). parents in a support group i attended for caregivers for youth diagnosed with asperger’s often uttered the statement “if you’ve seen one aspie, you’ve seen one aspie” as proverbial wisdom, and i heard this saying in conversation with parents of aspies elsewhere (lovett 2005, 29-30; snowy owl 2005; szalavitz 2009). it cfr_2014.indb 38 11/20/14 1:07 pm bronner “the shooter has asperger’s” 39 counters the adage “seen one, seen them all,” which suggests that characteristics of an individual or thing repeated in other instances, and therefore do not have to be witnessed (ammer 2013, 393; mikkelson and mikkelson 2006; shapiro 2006, 11). despite the cautionary message in the folklore of aspies about overgeneralizing and pathologizing non-conforming behavior, the term “autistic” has emerged in popular parlance to refer to someone socially disconnected or annoying, showing up in middle-school slang, so my children tell me, apparently to replace playground use of “spastic” and “retard” which has become repressed or obsolete. according to dsm-5, autism and autism spectrum disorder are general terms for disorders of brain development (autism first appears as a separate condition in dsm-iii in 1980; in dsm-ii, schizophrenics could be identified by “autistic, atypical and withdrawn behavior” and autism is totally absent in dsm-i published in 1952). in that sense, such disorders are neurological rather than psychological conditions, although diagnosis is based upon a checklist of manifest behaviors, not on a physiological examination. if it is physiological, skeptics have questioned why so many more children are being diagnosed as autistic in the twenty-first century. as of 2008, about 1 in 88 children were identified with an autism spectrum disorder and boys (1 in 54) are 5 times more likely to be diagnosed with autism than girls (1 in 252). in 2002, the number was 1 in 150, or 23 percent lower. medical sources note the difficulty of an exact count of individuals with asperger’s syndrome, but most sources cite an incidence between 1 in 250 to 500 persons (stanford 2003, 33-34). that suggests the syndrome to be more common than childhood cancer, muscular dystrophy, or cerebral palsy (bashe and kirby 2010, 18). other estimates run between 2 to 7 per 1,000, still a small segment of the population (baio 2014; kuehn 2007). even if asperger’s is no longer in the dsm, it is getting more attention in popular culture with characters on twenty-first century television shows such as “the bridge” (2013-2014), “parenthood” (2010-2014), “glee” (2011), “grey’s anatomy” (2008-2009), and “sherlock” (2012-2013). others such as sheldon cooper on “big bang theory” (premiering 2007) while not identified as having asperger’s, are popularly associated with its characteristics (learningneverstops 2012). indeed, showing the rise of asperger’s awareness in public consciousness, press reports refer to cooper as the first, and most popular, situation comedy character with asperger’s (collins 2010). the trend to depict modern-day “oddball” characters having asperger’s on television and movies raises speculation whether asperger’s cases are more prevalent in the twenty-first century because of conditions of modern society and environment, including linkages made by commentators to various children’s vaccines, drugs (acetaminophen is frequently mentioned), and high-gluten and fast-food diets, or the tendency to diagnose autism more for behavior that some would call characteristic of children or particularly boys (park 2011). in january 2014, a folkloric event occurred when jenny mccarthy, host of the popular television show “the view,” angrily answered rumors that her elevenyear-old son evan was misdiagnosed with asperger’s syndrome or autism. the story was connected apparently with mccarthy’s outspoken criticism of childhood vaccinations such as the measles, mumps and rubella shot (mmr) cfr_2014.indb 39 11/20/14 1:07 pm “the shooter has asperger’s” bronner 40 being responsible for the rise in autism rates (vultaggio 2014). she also claimed to have cured her son of autism through a gluten and dairy free diet and vitamin regimen she developed from social connections (mccarthy 2008). many postings on social media concerning the rumor referred to her questionable parenting as a single mother who served as a model for playboy magazine (johnson 2014). one comment, for example, was that “jenny mccarthy’s son might grow up to be surprisingly levelheaded, which would be a miracle considering his parentage” (nguyen 2014). the comment arose in mccarthy’s public statements on her difficulty of controlling her autistic son, who often reported his mother to the police. on her xm radio show, “dirty, sexy, funny” she broadcast this anecdote: “he [her son evan] called 911 and said, ‘i am alone in the house. my mom abandoned me. i go back in the house and it’s 911 and they’re like, ‘your child just called. is there an emergency?’ i’m like, ‘what? no! everything is fine.” (nguyen 2014). critics use this narrative to question whether she has an active boy rather than someone with a neurodevelopmental disorder (celebitchy 2014; see also gnaulati 2013). even hans asperger in 1943 wondered if the condition he was observing might be, in his words, “an extreme variant of male intelligence, of the male character,” which appeared increasingly out of place in a feminizing or domesticating society. in other words, he opened for comment that the syndrome he observed was a case of “boys will be boys,” which with euro-american modernization appeared abnormal. british psychologist simon baron-cohen hypothesized that autism in boys might be overdiagnosed to control male behavior in a feminizing society, but saw truth to the idea that autistic behavior is related to what he called an “extreme male brain,” which presumes differences between typical men’s and women’s brains (2004). another connection to masculinity as a problem in cases of autism is in genetics. research has been undertaken to investigate a folk belief that violent and criminal behavior can be explained with a chromosomal deviation. the investigation hinges on an additional y sex chromosome attached to the normal xy pairing in males, a rare condition estimated to affect 1 to 1.5 per 10,000 live births (cashion and roden 2011). in an attempt to explain severe temper tantrums and violent tendencies biologically, questions have been raised by popular writers as to whether patients diagnosed with asperger’s have this configuration (miedzian 2002, 70-71). another line of biological investigation that responds to folk psychology questions the role of parents rather than environment and more often than not, the research subject is the mother. one proposed explanation for the rise of autism diagnoses, for example, is the increased number of pregnancies by women over the age of 40 (moisse 2010). although an epidemiological study published in 2010 confirmed a 51 percent higher risk for mothers over 40 compared to women 25 to 29, it did not dig down specifically to asperger’s syndrome (moisse 2010). one study in 2012 that specifically concerned maternal connections to asperger’s children used crowd-sourced data to suggest that women who have a history of bipolar disorder or depression are more likely to have a child with asperger’s syndrome than classic autism (wright 2012). the scientific evidence is growing for biological factors contributing to asperger’s characteristics in children, and even cfr_2014.indb 40 11/20/14 1:07 pm bronner “the shooter has asperger’s” 41 before these studies became publicized, cultural representations of youth with asperger’s often pinned blame following folk psychology on a single, inattentive, or depressed mother. school shootings and the folk psychology of asperger’s syndrome why is the tragedy of, and the discourse that followed, the sandy hook shooting significant toward a modern conceptualization of folk psychology? the answer lies in the projection of anxiety about independent children and their parenting onto narratives of mental derangement in public space. here are the facts. around 9:30 a.m. on december 14, 2012, 20-year-old adam lanza, armed with guns and ammunition, entered sandy hook elementary school in newtown, connecticut, and proceeded to fatally shoot twenty children and six adult staff members. as first responders arrived twenty minutes later, lanza took his own life with one of the three guns he brought into the school. one of those responders was also newtown bee associate editor shannon hicks, who sent out the first photographs over ap wires of police and teachers leading children away from the school. national news agencies rushed to the scene and 24-hour news networks cut into programming to give live coverage. confusion existed about the identity of the shooter and in the rush to report the news, national outlets such as abc and cnn mistakenly reported that the shooter was adam’s brother ryan and that his mother was a kindergarten teacher at the school who was found dead inside. abc news talked to neighbors who described adam lanza as “odd” and displaying characteristics associated with mental illness. an ap story on december 17 quoted a high school technology club adviser who claimed that lanza, who was a member, had a “rare condition in which he couldn’t feel pain.” although ‘congenital insensitivity to pain’ (cip), a neuropathic disorder, is associated with self-inflicted injuries, press informants interpreted this report as pointing to asperger’s syndrome (wagner 2012; see also magee 1963)). the new york times in its cover story the next day was more specific: “some former classmates said they had been told that mr. lanza had asperger’s syndrome which is considered a highfunctioning form of autism” (flegenheimer and somaiya 2012). other reports collected from classmates, counselors, and teachers claimed the shooter had sensory integration disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, a developmental disability, or autism generally, but the rumor that lanza had asperger’s had the most traction in print, television talk shows, and social media, despite the declaration by h. wayne carver ii, the state’s chief medical examiner, that asperger’s is not associated with violent behavior and his dismissal of asperger’s as a reason for lanza’s rampage (owens 2012; see also nano 2012). although carver reported looking for identifiable diseases associated with lanza’s violent action, he told the press that asperger’s “is simply not on the menu, in terms of what is wrong with this kid. asperger’s is not associated with behavior patterns that are violent” (owens 2012). the state’s attorney’s report issued almost a year after the shooting refers to a diagnosis in 2005 of “asperger’s disorder” related to “significant social impairments and extreme anxiety.” it added that he “lacked empathy and had very rigid thought processes. he had a literal cfr_2014.indb 41 11/20/14 1:07 pm “the shooter has asperger’s” bronner 42 interpretation of written and verbal material. in the school setting, the shooter had extreme anxiety and discomfort with changes, noise, and physical contact with others.” he did not have a learning disability and tested with an overall iq in the average range. the report related his asperger’s characteristics along with obsessive compulsive disorder (ocd) concerns, emotional and/or pervasive developmental disorder (pdd) spectrum behaviors, and high level of anxiety to problems of school performance rather than violence. the report underscored that “those mental health professionals who saw him [lanza] did not see anything that would have predicted his future behavior” (sedensky 2013, 35). nonetheless, in the absence of a clear motivation for the killing spree, speculation spread about whether asperger’s explained his outburst of violence. and even though reports came out of his ocd and pdd spectrum behaviors, public commentary focused on labeling him with asperger’s (koplewicz 2012). on cnn the night of the shooting, piers morgan interviewed psychologist xavier amador, who told a nationwide audience that “a symptom of asperger’s, and this is one report coming out which may or may not be true, is something’s missing in the brain, the capacity for empathy, for social connection, which leaves the person suffering from this condition prone to serious depression and anxiety” (christopher 2012). on 60 minutes on december 16, lanza family friends mark and louise tambascio informed reporter scott pelley that adam’s mother told them he been diagnosed with asperger’s and she complained that it was a fulltime obligation to take care of him, made all the more difficult as a single mother (owens 2012). at the same time, fox news’s hannity presented dr. marc siegel, who told interviewers, “if he had something called asperger’s, he may have had ongoing meltdown.” his remark was countered by curtis brainard, who covers science journalism for the columbia journalism review: “there’s absolutely no association between autism and acts of premeditated violence, such as those that we saw in newtown” (garfield 2012). among adam lanza’s alleged symptoms was a lack of sociability and narrative competency. his high school latin teacher told a reporter that “he didn’t want to be around people.” “he had a great ‘latin mind,” she said, because the language is very structured. suggesting that he did not fit in because he was humorless, she told the interviewer, “the day he made his first joke, i almost cried.” the new york times reported that he was the butt of jokes, stating, “mr. lanza’s evident discomfort prompted giggles from those who did not understand him” (halbfinger 2012). but most quoted informants noted that he was not bullied or ridiculed. matt baier, a high school classmate, summarized: “from what i saw, people just let him be, and that was that.” others mentioned that he had a positive experience in his time at sandy hook; there appeared to be no reason for revenge. although he was described as a “shut-in,” classmates remembered a boy involved in outdoor activities of soccer and skateboarding in addition to playing video games and reading indoors (o’leary 2013; see also flegenheimer and somaiya 2012). classmates mentioned asperger’s in relation to his “flat affect.” “if you looked at him,” an unidentified classmate said, “you couldn’t see any emotions going through his head.” referring to cultural expectations of middle and high school, one classmate stated, “in high school, no one really takes the time to look and cfr_2014.indb 42 11/20/14 1:07 pm bronner “the shooter has asperger’s” 43 think, ‘why is he acting this way?’” although he was reported talking about aliens and “blowing things up,” this was, according to a classmate, “the typical talk of prepubescent boys.” if classmates were aware of other social transitions such as his parents’ divorce, departure of his brother to new jersey, and withdrawal from his mother, pundits were not linking them to the newtown shooting as much as the attribution of asperger’s. in a kind of confirming narrative coda common in legends, classmates pointed out that he was smart, having been placed in honors classes, lending credence to the belief that children with asperger’s, while not socially adept, were savants, or in the vernacular, geeks. in an unconfirmed story, a supposed friend of adam’s claimed that his mother’s threat to have adam committed to an institution triggered the violent rampage. another blame-themother narrative claimed that his mother’s obsession with guns influenced young adam (halbfinger 2012). adam’s estranged father peter lanza in various interviews tried to answer public association of his son’s violence with asperger’s by stating that it was a name for adam’s quirky ways but he never thought of it as a condition leading to violence. for his father, adam was a “normal little weird kid” who enjoyed his time as a student at sandy hook elementary school (ellis 2014). the connection made in the press and on the street in lanza’s case between mass murder and asperger’s syndrome came on the heels of a mass shooting inside a movie theater in aurora, colorado, on july 20, 2012. attorneys for james eagan holmes, who was arrested for the crime, entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity but did not disclose the nature of the suspect’s mental illness. nonetheless, on msnbc, joe scarborough caused a row by stating that after he heard the news of the shooting, “i knew it was a young, white male, probably from an affluent neighborhood, disconnected from society, it happens time and time again. most of it has to do with mental health. you have these people that are somewhere, i believe, probably on the autism scale.” although he admitted that he did not know “the specifics about this young man,” he generalized that “we see too many shooters bearing the same characteristics mentally” (joe scarborough 2012). scarborough was skewered by the mental health community for his comments. in response, he issued a statement revealing that he had a son with asperger’s syndrome and claimed that his comments about the aurora shooting were in the context of advocating for stronger support systems for youth with autism. he referred to the “growing autism epidemic” that is, in his words, “a tremendous burden for children, parents and loved ones to endure” (zakarin 2012). the belief that people with asperger’s syndrome are violent accelerated when police identified 22-year-old eliot rodger for a killing spree of students in isla vista, california, near the campus of the university of california, santa barbara, on may 23, 2014. although rodger had not been officially diagnosed with asperger’s syndrome, deborah smith, the principal of a high school he attended, told the new york times that he displayed “classic symptoms of asperger’s syndrome: he was socially awkward, had trouble making eye contact and was very withdrawn, if very smart” (nagourney, cieply, feuer, and lovett 2014). on twitter, hundreds of tweets attributing his violence to asperger’s appeared with the hashtag #aspergers with the suggestion that the condition, like a hidden virus, is dangerous because cfr_2014.indb 43 11/20/14 1:07 pm “the shooter has asperger’s” bronner 44 people who have it blend into society until a violent “meltdown” occurs. the implication was that contemporary society was too tolerant of the mainstreaming of persons with mental illness. another connotation was that asperger’s was a virulent illness that many “geeks,” “gamers,” and loners possess (roberson 2014). nichi hodgson answered these knee-jerk responses with the complaint that variations on the belief “the dude has asperger’s” is a “mawkish non-sequitur that quickly closes down any further interrogation of the reasons for his actions, and the notion of personal agency” (hodgson 2014). moreover, the label of asperger’s stigmatizes and pathologizes anyone who seems odd, idiosyncratic, or iconoclastic in a mass society. rodger had misogynist feelings of vengeance against women that he expressed in a youtube video and a long manuscript, but these sentiments are not part of the criteria of asperger’s (hodgson 2014). voicing the attribution in social media, however, offers a physically evident trigger in the absence of a rational motive. the tweets could be interpreted as folk beliefs to fill in details not available in official reports. those beliefs not only express post-modern fears of being surprised by violent perpetrators in a world of strangers in which individuals’ identities and mental states are not manifest, but also indicate the charge of mental instability in a child as a function of poor parenting. in a narrative that extends from the underlying anxiety about proper child-rearing, youth are most susceptible to coming-of-age stress in which students are pressured to conform by totalizing institutions that have a role of in loco parentis. according to this scenario, violent retribution is the tragic, sociopathic outcome of pent-up frustrations that the disease channels abnormally. the santa barbara county sheriff bill brown, for example, said in an interview on the cbs program “face the nation” that rodger had been able to “fly under the radar” and conceal his mental instability. “it’s very apparent,” brown said, “that he was able to convince many people for many years that didn’t have this deep, underlying mental illness that also manifested itself in this terrible tragedy” (gazzar 2014; see also inquisitr 2014). of folkloristic interest, commentators on mass shootings frequently reflected on a central trait by shooters of blurring the lines between fantasy and reality in addition to play and violence, in key cultural practices such as game playing, music fandom, and movie watching. despite the recognition of living in an individualistic society that with consumer technology makes it easier to engage in activities alone, commentators consistently mentioned the trait of being a “loner” as a sign of maladjustment. further, this social “disability” became a problem supposedly in not being able to recognize a culturally formed frame of play that might contain violent elements. of special concern to commentators was the relation of secluded individuals to technology when engaged in video games with violent content and disembodied messaging through social media and texting. commenting on an inventory of adam lanza’s possessions three and a half months after the shooting, for example, the new york times stated that “he had cocooned himself in front of electronic game consoles in the basement of their home, playing warfare games.” noting that information on the lives of the family to date has yielded little insight, the article viewed the contents as affording a “fuller picture of the dark corners of mr. lanza’s mind.” among the cfr_2014.indb 44 11/20/14 1:07 pm bronner “the shooter has asperger’s” 45 items were books connected to autism. the christian science monitor viewed the content as revealing “a troubled young man who clipped newspaper articles about school shootings and played hour upon hour of violent video games” (kleinfield, rivera, and kovaleski 2013). he reportedly had aspirations to become a marine and participated in gun play, which the press interpreted as an oddity for a boy (scherer and khadaroo 2013). beliefs in a direct link between autism and violence also had come out in the case of 22-year-old jared lee loughner, convicted of killing six and injuring thirteen people in a shooting attack in 2011 at a public meeting at a safeway supermarket north of tucson, arizona. medical evaluations diagnosed him as a paranoid schizophrenic, but psychologists speculated to the media that he had “autism or other mental illnesses.” according to cnn, he “creeped out classmates and teachers with his odd behavior” (fantz and grinberg 2011). the new york times, however, reported that “several of jared’s friends said he used marijuana, mushrooms and especially, the hallucinogenic herb called salvia divinorum … none of this necessarily distinguished him from his high school buddies. several of them dabbled in drugs, played computer games like world of warcraft and diablo and went through goth and alternative phases” (barry 2011: 16). the report quoted teachers who noted his sudden outbursts in class and asking incoherent questions. wrongplanet, the primary discussion forum for autism, featured a thread, “jared loughner is an aspie?” zen wrote “what annoys me is that every time some nutcase goes on a shooting spree, the media is all, ‘he was a loner, quiet, kept to himself, didn’t have many friends …’ no wonder we have it rough.” in response, jared guinther wrote, “i wouldn’t doubt that he is an aspie, but i think he has a severe mental illness.” the distinction here is that despite popular perception of asperger’s as a mental illness, aspies refer to medical literature asserting that it is a developmental disability and neurological condition. indeed, they commonly refer to themselves positively as “neuro-diverse” in contrast to “neuro-typical” society, and do not look to get “cured” or “fixed” (jared loughner 2011; scally 2008). before the newtown, aurora, and santa barbara shootings, i wrote that expressive culture suggests an american folk psychology in which youth violence represents a failure of individual responsibility and public morality (bronner 2011). for example, “classic” twentieth-century teen legends such as “the roommate’s death” and the “boyfriend’s death” portray youth as victims by crazed or insane killers, presumably adults, but in the school-shooting discourse of the twentyfirst century, apparently ordinary youth whose problems go unnoticed lash out at children unreasonably and tragically, either because of a difficult family life, strange habits or clique, or bullying by peers. nonetheless, the assumption is that they were lost socially and emotionally in mass society. when their secret “disease” is revealed, lines that were thought to be clear on what is normal and what is not are questioned, often with a reference to modern self-indulgence and lack of parental or institutional control. another boundary that gets questioned is the division between play and reality, especially one involving violence in games and other forms of fantasy entertainment. a status anxiety becomes apparent in the role of individuals who in an open, inclusive society navigate on their own, cfr_2014.indb 45 11/20/14 1:07 pm “the shooter has asperger’s” bronner 46 rather than with the support of familiar community structures such as family, religion, and school. in the absence of direct motives for an act of violence, an undetected disease of the mind, much like a virus without symptoms, is blamed for driving a lost, unguided individual to disaster. the folk idea of the individual ill-equipped to navigate modern social worlds often leads to parables of experience, in the form of wild and diabolical child narratives, frequently with the implication that parents have lost control of their children in modern society and do not pass ethical values and discipline associated with a secure, community-based past to their children. aware of the predominance of these narratives in society, aspies counter with stories of successful, admired historical figures such as albert einstein, isaac newton, or andy warhol, who supposedly had asperger’s characteristics of asocial and repetitive behavior. this is not to say that there are not individuals who have violent tendencies, but my point is that the association of school shootings with an autism epidemic embedded in statements claiming a duplicated pattern or plot has a core of unsubstantiated belief that potentially projects anxieties of enfeebled masculinity, absent parenting, and massification in modern society. the belief especially relates to incidents in public space, which act as microcosms of a bureaucratized, impersonal culture in which traditional activities of childhood are no longer controlled by communities and parents. the discourse is indicative of the uncertainty of post-modern boundaries between normal and abnormal in which traditional control of youth from generation to generation appears in decline and communities vie with institutions for moral hegemony over public space. lorna wing, who is often credited with popularizing asperger’s syndrome, resorts to folklore to epitomize the dilemma of asperger’s as a negative disorder or positive condition. she tells the story of brother juniper, called the “jester of the lord,” who was one of the original followers of st. francis of assisi. a persistent legend is his service for a feeble poor man who longed for a meal of pig’s feet. capturing a pig in a nearby field, he cut off a foot and cooked the meal for the man. trouble was that the pig’s owner came to st. francis in great wrath about the slaughter of his pig. st. francis reproached juniper and ordered him to make amends. juniper did go to him but retold the tale of the pig’s foot as though he had done the man a favor. the owner then gave juniper the rest of the pig for the sake of charity. her point is that the asperger’s youth is often unconventional and literal, and this can get him into trouble, but the outcomes are usually noble. but in contemporary discourse, the more frequent legendary reference with questioning of the child’s ability to discern between fantasy and reality is likely to be stories of the autistic child who, alone at home, tells his returning parent that he caught a “troll” (emery 2012; mace 2010). raising narrative questions about possible symbolic equivalents of the earlier circulating story of the choking doberman who eats the fingers of a thief who hides in a closet, the troll is found to be suffering in the “shut-in” closet. he had been a delivery person or leafletter who had come to the door. on snopes.com, the earliest version dates to 2009 and two others from 2010 are reported, all from the united states (mikkelson 2013). a key element of the narrative is that the child is left unsupervised, or lacking parenting, at home. folklorists might recognize other connections cfr_2014.indb 46 11/20/14 1:07 pm bronner “the shooter has asperger’s” 47 to stories circulating in the early twenty-first century of a developmentally or mentally challenged child who, left on his own, brings a penguin home from the zoo, thinking the animal is there for the taking, and a small child mistaken for a gnome by drug-tripping young adults. whereas earlier collected narratives mention a child with down’s syndrome, later ones replace this with asperger’s or mention a “mentally ill” child. the legend invites commentary on the literalness of the asperger’s child, and in the case of the latter, a connotation of adults as irresponsible guardians or representatives of an addled popular culture, who have a mistaken folk perception of the asperger’s child. the uncontrollable or “wild” child and its symbolic equivalence with animals has been the subject of numerous narratives since the eighteenth century and as late as 2008, often focusing on the consequences of isolation from humans by small children. popular psychologist bruno bettelheim may have had an influence on the connection of autism in legends of feral children to autism with his famous essay in 1959, “feral children and autistic children,” in which he suggested that reports of the feral children were more likely descriptions of autistic children rather than infants raised by non-humans. he hypothesized, however, that ultimately, the stories point out the problem of “extreme emotional deprivation” for abnormal children. although he does not say so, his thesis raises the possibility that the popularity of the animal-parented story, even if the raising by animals is untrue, could be a projection of a belief that the rambunctiousness of some children, especially boys who resist “domestication,” owes to poor or singlemother parenting characteristic of a modernizing society. folklorist michael carroll observes that the “animal-parented stories,” typically with male children suckled by a female parent, demonstrate that a female animal in the absence of a male produces an autistic or defective human being and this view is inherent in a folk psychology of the “normal” family. his conclusion is that sons who “fail to repress their oedipal desires would suffer disasterous [sic] consequences” (1984: 81). yet an added trope is apparent in the discourse of the allegedly autistic shooter in modern america. the son has withdrawn from both mother and father, not embraced the mother, and displaced them with popular culture, which he cannot relegate to its proper place of fantasy as normal children can. rather than being guided by culture, he is trapped in it, and unable to rely on traditions to help him perceive how to act properly, i.e., sedately. in saying he is autistic, narrators are projecting an attitude that the child was like anyone else but was not able to process the meaning of masculine entertainment. violence, even if out of character, expresses in narrative the adult fear that the child is retrieving the male warrior ideal that eliminates the sign of mainstream society — its institutionalized children doing what they are supposed to do. in this folk logic, the boy, who was confused about what a modern man should do, becomes primal or feral and exerts revenge on other children as representatives of childhood and the institutions that could not help him. the task, then, is not just to incarcerate him as a criminal but to figure out what his frame of mind is, and by extension, examine the vulnerability of the cultural frame that surrounds neuro-typical society. the discourse of the sandy hook, aurora, and santa barbara shootings reveals a folk psychology, especially pervasive in america, that the ultimate explanation of mass cfr_2014.indb 47 11/20/14 1:07 pm “the shooter has asperger’s” bronner 48 violence, and the uncontrollable boy, is an invisible internal ailment that points away from possible external cultural factors that would make adults culpable. acknowledgements this article is a revised version of a paper delivered at the american folklore society annual meeting, providence, rhode island, october 2013, in a panel on “children’s folklore in the 21st century: folklorists of childhood respond to the newtown tragedy,” chaired by elizabeth tucker. i am grateful to her and to trevor blank for encouraging this research. i owe many children and their parents willing to talk about purported asperger’s characteristics, and i especially benefited over the years from conversations about asperger’s syndrome with folklorist patricia turner. i also appreciate correspondence with june factor and june mckinty in australia and william hansen in the united states about a global view of american school shootings and wild-child narratives. and hardly a paper is written at my desk that i do not owe some intellectual debt to jay mechling, who always graciously provides keen insights for me to consider. works cited american psychiatric association. 2000. diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders, fourth edition, text revision. washington, dc: american psychiatric association. ________. 2013. diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders, fifth edition. washington, dc: american psychiatric association. ammer, christine. 2013. american heritage dictionary of idioms: american english idiomatic expressions and phrases, second edition. boston: houghton mifflin harcourt. asperger, 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(november 14). http://seventhvoice.wordpress. com/2013/11/14/myths-lies-and-suspicious-minds-debunking-the-popularmisconceptions-that-surround-the-lives-of-adults-with-aspergers-syndrome/. shapiro, fred r., ed. 2006. the yale book of quotations. new haven: yale university press. snowy owl. 2005. as interlocking. post. wrongplanet.net. http://www. wrongplanet.net/postp65913.html&highlight=. stanford, ashley. 2003. asperger syndrome and long-term relationships. philadelphia: jessica kingsley publishers. szalavitz, maia. 2009. a radical new autism theory. daily beast (may 11). http:// www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2009/05/11/a-radical-new-autism-theory.html. thomas, r. murray. 2001. folk psychologies across cultures. thousand oaks, ca: sage. vultaggio, maria. 2014. jenny mccarthy, autism and vaccines: former ‘playboy’ star slams rumors about autistic son, evan. international business times (january 5). http://www.ibtimes.com/jenny-mccarthy-autism-vaccinesformer-playboy-star-slams-rumors-about-autistic-son-evan-1526750. wagner, david. 2012. what does it mean that adam lanza might not have been able to feel pain? the wire (december 17). http://www.theatlanticwire. com/national/2012/12/what-does-it-mean-adam-lanza-might-not-have-beenable-feel-pain/60062. cfr_2014.indb 52 11/20/14 1:07 pm bronner “the shooter has asperger’s” 53 wing, lorna. 1981. asperger’s syndrome: a clinical account. psychological medicine 11: 115-29. ________. 1998. the history of asperger syndrome. in asperger syuncrome or high-functioning autism?, ed. eric schopler, gary b. mesibov, linda j. kunce, 11-28. new york: plenum. wright, jessica. 2012. clinical research: maternal depression linked to mild autism. sfari: simons foundation autism research initiative (october 16). http://sfari.org/news-and-opinion/in-brief/2012/clinical-research-maternaldepression-linked-to-mild-autism. zakarin, jordan. 2012. joe scarborough apologizes for making autism link to james holmes, alleged aurora shooter. hollywood reporter (july 24). http:// www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/joe-scarborough-apologizes-autismjames-holmes-shooting-353595. cfr_2014.indb 53 11/20/14 1:07 pm cfr_2014_part5_part2 cfr_2014_part6 cfr_2014_part7 pages from cfr_2014_part8 children’s folklo re review volume 36 2014 published by the children’s folklore section of the american folklore society with support from the dean’s office of harpur college at binghamton university cfr_2014.indb 1 11/20/14 1:07 pm contents from the outgoing editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 from the incoming editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 trickster’s economics: conservation and innovation in the game of jinx jeffrey g. howard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 children’s folkore in the twenty-first century: folklorists of childhood respond to the newtown tragedy elizabeth tucker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 the endangered child: choking and fainting games in the online underground of youtube elizabeth tucker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 “the shooter has asperger’s”: autism, belief, and “wild child” narratives simon j. bronner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 children’s folklore section: 2013 annual meeting . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 notes and announcements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 cfr_2014.indb 3 11/20/14 1:07 pm 5 from the outgoing editor elizabeth (libby) tucker this thirty-sixth volume of children’s folklore review is my last, so i am feeling nostalgic as we go through the process of getting the journal ready to print. c.w. (chip) sullivan had edited cfr for thirty years when he passed its editorship on to me in 2007. chip did amazing work, and i am grateful to have had the opportunity to follow in his footsteps. during the past seven years cfr has published extremely interesting articles, including some that have heralded the importance of digital media in children’s lives. i am enormously pleased that trevor j. blank, an expert in folk and popular culture, mass media, and the digital humanities, is cfr ’s new editor. trevor is not only the author or editor of seven books, most recently the last laugh: folk humor, celebrity culture, and mass-mediated disasters in the digital age (university of wisconsin press, 2013) and toward a conceptual framework for the study of folklore and the internet (utah state university press, 2014), but also an outstanding editor and a wonderful person. last year, after concluding his editorship of new directions in folklore, he joined me as co-editor of cfr; next year he will edit the journal solo. we are incredibly lucky to have trevor as cfr ’s new editor. i want to congratulate him on his new position and to wish him the very best as he starts work on volume thirty-seven. this volume includes three articles by folklorists of childhood. jeffrey g. howard’s “trickster’s economics: conservation and innovation in the game of jinx” analyzes a game first discussed by iona and peter opie in their lore and language of schoolchildren. two other articles, simon j. bronner’s “‘the shooter has asperger’s’: autism, belief, and ‘wild child’ narratives” and my own “the endangered child: choking and fainting games in the online underground of youtube,” originated as papers on a panel titled “children’s folklore in the twenty-first century: folklorists of childhood respond to the newtown tragedy” at the american folklore society’s annual meeting in providence, rhode island in 2013. the introduction to that panel is also included in this volume. all back issues of children’s folklore review except for the most recent one are available online via indiana university’s scholar works repository website (https:// scholarworks.iu.edu/dspace/handle/2022/13438). all of the research published by our journal is accessible to anyone who has a computer. i want to thank the dean’s office at harpur college of binghamton university for its very generous support of children’s folklore review for so many years. dean anne mccall and associate dean anna addonisio have both been strong supporters of the journal, as were dean donald nieman and dean ricardo rené laremont. i am also very grateful to kathy buchta for her excellent work on layout/design and to sheridan press for its fine printing and mailing service. many warm thanks to all of you who have subscribed and contributed to cfr! it has been a great experience to edit this journal, the only one of its kind in the world. trevor, thanks so much for becoming our new editor! i know you will do fantastic work. cfr_2014.indb 5 11/20/14 1:07 pm 7 from the incoming editor trevor j . blank i’m fairly certain that i have been drawn to collecting and sharing children’s folklore since i was a child myself. when i was in second grade, for instance, my teacher asked my fellow students and me to write a short story and subsequently present it in front of the whole class. while most students quickly read through their mini essays and returned to their desks with little fanfare, i was not content to put forth a similarly meager thirty-second effort. upon reaching the end of my paper’s written words, i proceeded to concoct a grandiose tale of a boy who lost and chased a soccer ball down the sewer — even pretending to turn pages to heighten the story’s authenticity as a written account — for another five whole minutes, incorporating motifs that followed longstanding narrative traditions i had somehow internalized in the course of my youth. (in response to this performative charade of mine, my teacher called my parents to complain about my “lying” in class; a missed opportunity to celebrate creativity, i say!) upon entering graduate school, first at indiana university under the tutelage of john h. mcdowell and later at penn state with simon j. bronner, the tremendous breadth of children’s folklore studies really came into focus for me. stretching far beyond the schoolyard, i found the works of my academic mentors, as well as those of alan dundes, bill ellis, mary and herbert knapp, jay mechling, brian sutton-smith, elizabeth tucker, and of course the renowned opies, to be incredibly inspiring. in my final graduate course at penn state, several classmates — including three of the four authors featured in last year’s issue of cfr, volume 35 — jokingly “dared” me to write my final research paper on children’s folklore surrounding flatulence, which i accepted. this effort not only invited a prolonged period of weird fecal and flatulence-related book purchase suggestions when browsing amazon.com, it also led to the article, “cheeky behavior: the meaning and function of ‘fartlore’ in childhood and adolescence,” which won the 2010 william wells newell prize and later appeared in volume 32 of children’s folklore review. this project marked my first formal collaboration with the journal; more importantly, it crystallized children’s folklore as one of my core professional interests within folkloristics and sparked my ongoing commitment to scrupulously monitoring and contributing to the academic treatment of the subject, especially in the pages of cfr itself. that passion continues to this day, and i am extraordinarily excited to transition into my new role as editor of children’s folklore review, the preeminent folkloristic organ dedicated to the study of the vast, meaningful traditions that comprise the expressive dynamics of pre-adult life. i come to children’s folklore review from new directions in folklore (http:// newfolk.net), an open access e-journal specializing in the study of contemporary folklore in the digital age and beyond, where i served as editor and journal website manager from 2010 to 2014. like cfr ’s online back issue repository, the journal is hosted by iuscholarworks. throughout the experience i learned so much about effectively managing and editing a refereed publication; developing cfr_2014.indb 7 11/20/14 1:07 pm from the incoming editor 8 and working collaboratively with a team of engaged, reliable scholars; and increasing readership, article submissions, and overall journal visibility in academia. i love the process of editing, especially how all stages of the journey from written draft to final publication welcome interactions with various people, each of whom contribute uniquely to the advancement of new research and insights that seek to deepen our collective understanding of folklore. i pledge to bring my unwavering enthusiasm to the editorship of children’s folklore review and i am so humbled and honored to join such a storied cast of editors who have graced this journal’s pages over the years. finally, i must express my deepest gratitude to outgoing cfr editor, libby tucker, who has been an indescribably wonderful friend, mentor, and colleague. she has been such a patient and thoughtful co-editor, teaching me the ins-and-outs of the journal’s intricate editorial and publication protocols while carefully tending to the masterful compilation and completion of this issue. libby leaves behind big shoes to fill, and it has been a privilege to work in the shadow of her effortless warmth and generosity over the last year. she is a true model of professionalism and i am so grateful for her guidance and for her years of service to children’s folklore review. thank you, libby! and to the readers of cfr: thank you for your continuing patronage and support and for making every page-turn — planned or performatively improvised — a welcome and valuable one. cfr_2014.indb 8 11/20/14 1:07 pm 9 trickster’s economics: conservation and innovation in the game of jinx jeffrey g . howard “it is desirable to combat the persisting popular tendency to disregard the holistic humanity of children as equal, fully human beings — even to the extent of their having meaningful culture” (carpenter 1994, 19). forty years ago, as of the time i am writing this, herbert and martha knapp published an article in the journal of american folklore called “tradition and change in american playground language.” their article dealt with national — rather than regional — distribution of language and terminology types whose long-lasting presence on the playground had separated certain games from more trendy and faddish types of activities practiced by schoolchildren (knapp and knapp 1973, 131). these language types included the truce terms “time out” and “king’s x,” the tag terminology involving “cooties,” and finally — and perhaps the most significant and popular phenomenon — “jinks.” peter and iona opie have also written about jinx as they observed it in english schoolchildren (although they do not refer to it by that name), describing the performance in this manner: if two children accidentally say the same thing at once (it must be accidental), they instantly stop what they are doing and, without uttering a further word to each other or making any sound, glide into a set ritual which varies only according to the part of britain or, for this is an international performance, the part of the world in which they live. (opie and opie 1961, 310) the opies recorded various rituals associated with this game, including phrases such as “touch wood and whistle” and “white rabbits” and actions like linking pinkies and making wishes. in the u.s, many children use the word jinx, a more modernized form of “jinks” (which i will use to refer to the game throughout the remainder of this essay), as the cue for the performance of their own rituals. these rituals have consisted of pinching, poking, punching, counting, and even extorting. sometimes the winner demands silence from the loser; other times, a simple soda pop. in fact, although the game does have quite a few variations, a few of which the knapps recorded, one of the most widespread phrases associated with the game is “jinx, you owe me a coke!” in 2006, the line even made an appearance in a season 2 episode of the american tv sitcom the office when the office secretary, pam, and her co-worker jim say something at the same time, and pam calls, “jinx! you owe me a coke!” unfortunately, since the knapps’ article in 1973, the game has received very little attention, which is odd since the opies in the language and lore of schoolchildren claim that “the rite would bear detailed investigation in the united cfr_2014.indb 9 11/20/14 1:07 pm trickster’s economics howard 10 states,” and the knapps’ exposition of the game, while interesting and informative, was by no means definitive or exhaustive (opie and opie 1961, 19). one of the few references to the jinx game in folklore scholarship since that time occurs in simon j. bronner’s classic work american children’s folklore. bronner records a single instance of the game, but provides no commentary on it (bronner 1988, 172). consequently, while i make no assertions about conducting a “detailed investigation” of the game, i feel the need to break the near-silence of forty years regarding the state of the jinx to respond to the knapps’ uncertainty as to whether “the popularity of the game [was] increasing or decreasing” (knapp and knapp 1973, 138). not only does jinx still continue to be popular among schoolchildren — and even some adults, myself included on occasion — as both a game and a linguistic performance, but it is also changing and evolving in response to social influences. a version of the jinx game that i collected from my niece (to whom i will refer as lydia for the purposes of this project) illustrates brian sutton-smith’s dual concept of innovation and conservation at work in the game (qtd. in zumwalt 1995, 43). lydia’s version of jinx conserves some of the traditional aspects of the game, such as rhyming and demanding compensation, but it also creates content that reflects the innovative trends of the technological society of today and combines those trends with the role of the trickster archetype. jinx, like other games and teasing, is for my niece (and children like her) “a means of more fully experiencing and defining the people in their lives and the world in which they live” (jorgensen 1995, 213), and through the rules of jinx and the spirit of play she breaks down existing hierarchies and sets up new ones in their place. etymology and context the term jinx is a fairly recent one. the oed records the earliest known usage of the term in 1911, although its variations may be far older (oxford english dictionary online, 2013). in fact, the knapps trace “jinks” back to 1670 as “a piece of conjurer’s gibberish,” and it has since appeared in other variations (jinkgo, jingo, jings, etc.) since then (knapp and knapp 1973, 139). a jinx is more than just a spell or conjuration, though; it can also come in the form of a person with contagious ill fortune. barbara rieti reports instances in newfoundland of fisherman with bad luck who were and are known as jinkers, which is close enough to jinx to potentially share an etymological heritage. the following is an account given by one of rieti’s student regarding such bearers of bad-luck: “if you went with a fisherman and he got a water haul, i.e. no fish, … then you were considered a jinker or doone dinker … and it was highly unlikely that they would let you go with them again” (qtd. in rieti 2008, 19). incidentally, the oed also associates jinx with a jonah, another seafaring term taken from the biblical jonah and assigned to people who bring bad luck not only on themselves but also on their mates (oxford english dictionary online, 2013). the jonah-as-jinx concept has been referred to both explicitly and implicitly in various books such as daniel defoe’s robinson crusoe, herman melville’s moby dick, ernest hemingway’s the old man and the sea, and even films such as peter weir’s master and commander (in which the jonah character receives such ill treatment from the crew members cfr_2014.indb 10 11/20/14 1:07 pm howard trickster’s economics 11 that he finally throws himself overboard). regardless, though, of how jinx and its associated ideas of luck, superstition, and powerlessness have been preserved in written language and oral tradition up until the term jinx surfaced in its current form in 1911, it eventually made the jump from conjurers’ spell and sea-farer’s lore to the schoolchild’s playground as a word game. according to the knapps, the jinx game became popular in the 1940s as a replacement (so it seems) for a prior “ceremonial colloquy” known only as “needles and pins” (knapp and knapp 1973, 138). “needles and pins” was a wishing ritual that required two children to accidentally say the same word at the same time (it cannot be on purpose, or the mystique is lost), lock pinkies, and repeat the chant, “needles and pins, / needles and pins, / when a man marries/ his trouble begins” or some derivation (knapp and knapp 1973, 138). the chant appears as a nursery rhyme in the 1916 children’s book the real mother goose, and b.a. botkin recorded the same rhyme in 1947 in his hefty volume a treasury of new england folklore, stories, ballads, and traditions of the yankee people. however, neither version mentions speaking at the same time or making wishes. both the knapps and the opies recorded children in new england, but also in missouri and east texas, who employed the “needles and pins” model and wishing ceremony throughout the early to mid-1900s (opie and opie 1961, 312). the opies also recorded multiple verbal rituals similar to “needles and pins” in england during that same time period. many of these rituals also have to do with wishing as a collaborative endeavor in which both individuals participate. the opies collected one version “at the royal school, bath,” in which “after making the wish, one girl says: ‘i wish, i wish your wish comes true.’ and the other replies: ‘i wish, i wish the same to you.’ in southampton both chant: ‘i wish, i wish this wish to you, / i wish, i wish your dream come true’ (opie and opie 1961, 311). these ceremonial procedures emphasize unity of purpose and the idea that people must work together and look out for each other in order for needs and wants to be realized. luck is only responsible for the opportunity, but they must take advantage of it together. jinx, on the other hand, at least those versions that the knapps collected and many of the versions i have heard work in an almost opposite direction, stressing competition and dominance of one individual over another instead of collaboration and equality. many versions make references to payment and indebtedness, i.e. “you owe me a coke!” while others allow children to perform a type of physical dominance with pinching and poking or discursive superiority by forcing them to be silent. my dad explained that the version he played with his siblings involved both hitting and remuneration: “you yell ‘jinx!’ and you hit them, and then they have to buy you a pop or something” (howard, 2013). the reason for this shift from the cooperative wishing of “needles and pins” to the more antagonistic relationships of “jinx” in the 1940s could be due to a number of social factors. the 1940s, of course, consisted of a rise in international tensions that resulted in the united states entering wwii. the global community, while still maintaining some sense of alliance and cooperation within the competing sides (the axis and the allied forces), became a place of competition and combat. coping mechanisms dealing with this wartime environment might cfr_2014.indb 11 11/20/14 1:07 pm trickster’s economics howard 12 have manifested themselves in the form of rough physical play had not the 1920s and onward begun to curtail and reduce such things with more adult supervision (hughes 1996, 320). thus, by replacing games like “needles and pins” with “jinx” allowed children to express that type of antagonism verbally when they were not allowed to express it physically. whether or not these factors are responsible for the shift, i think it fair to say that the need for collaboration and the need for control and dominance form major roles in a child’s developing personality. the game in either form is certainly reflective of each set of tendencies, and the fact that children are able to express both of these diametrically opposed characteristics is a testament to their inherent complexity. children play with both of these needs in order to achieve power and success, and these versions of jinx demonstrate this weighing of capitalistic and communal roles as children seek to translate these ideologies into the idiom of their own lore. the jinx machine: an analysis one evening in may 2013, i was sitting down to eat a dinner of pizza and salad at a family get-together. at gatherings of this nature, i generally sit with my nieces and nephews because i happen to like the topics of conversation circulating around the kids’ table more so than those selected by the adults’; tales of secondgrade romances, name-calling, and body humor suit me far better than hearing about number of circumcisions my obgyn brother-in-law has done and how easy it was to perform an especially gruesome c-section (the story of which he might choose to relate at the exact moment i am cutting into the pizza). in between mouthfuls of bell peppers and canadian bacon, my niece and nephews shared funny stories about school and church and friends and knockknock jokes, frequently interrupting each other in order to usurp an especially silly punch line (i don’t often understand their humor, but the fact that it doesn’t make any sense at all doesn’t deter me from enjoying it. most of their jokes are made up on the spot, and, to use the rhetorical terminology of my profession, consist primarily of non-sequiturs). at one point, my niece, lydia, and her brother said the same thing at the exact same moment. lydia pointed at her brother and shouted, “jinx!” they giggled at the coincidence, and she continued, “the jinx machine is out of order. please insert another quarter” (lydia, 2013). i quickly overcame my surprise at hearing a version of jinx that i had never heard before (and which does not seem to exist anywhere else in jinx-lore), asked her to repeat it, and i transcribed it into my phone calendar (i would have used something more official to record the event, but i had no pencil and my napkin was covered in marinara and grease). her brother complained that she had stolen the phrase from him, although when i questioned him more closely, he admitted that he, too, had taken that version of jinx from friends at school. while innovative in several ways which i will discuss later, this particular version of jinx conserves some of the elements found in versions collected by the knapps and simon j. bronner, and even in some of the versions that i have heard and used at various times as a child. cfr_2014.indb 12 11/20/14 1:07 pm howard trickster’s economics 13 first and foremost, lydia’s jinx couplet is what jan brunvand would call a “game rhyme” (brunvand 1968, 64). c.w. sullivan iii says, “children’s games … often include rhymes,” but the appearance of rhyme in recorded jinx versions is rare, although in its predecessor “needles and pins” rhyming is standard issue (sullivan 1995, 147). however, in 1971, the knapps did collect a game rhyme version of jinx in smithville, indiana: “pinch, poke, / you owe me a coke” (knapp and knapp 1973, 137). the metric qualities of this rhyme (two stresses, one iamb, and one anapest) are a bit chaotic for a couplet, but it does demonstrate that my niece’s version still (after forty years) conserves the notion of jinx as a game rhyme. lydia’s game rhyme, however, has a more unified rhythmical structure than the knapps’. her two lines consist of a variation of iambic tetrameter (with one extra unstressed syllable), a metric form employed by poets such as emily dickinson, alfred lord tennyson, and percy bysshe shelley, among others. the first line of the rhyme begins with four iambic feet and an extra unstressed syllable at the end (“the jinx machine is out of order”). the final unstressed syllable, however, connects to the stress in “please” in the second line, thus unifying the rhyme as one line glides into the next. further, the couplet is not only an example of poetic completeness, but also of satire. one of the most well-known usages of iambic tetrameter appears in samuel butler’s “sir hudibras,” a seventeenth-century poetic satire written about puritans and roundheads in the late seventeenth century. the iambic tetrameter and couplet form (like those found in my niece’s rhyme) rhythmically convey the sense of mockery and derision. in the same way, the metric quality of this version of jinx (not only a game rhyme but also a “rhyme of derision” or taunt [brunvand 1968, 68]) also asserts the competitive nature of the game; in a sense, the rhyme celebrates the victory of the crowing child and the defeat of the rival, not in words but in music. in addition to its rhyming quality, lydia’s jinx game also conserves the motif of playing the game at dinner. bronner records, ganie and neil had a custom when people said the same thing at the dinner table. one person shouted out “jinx,” and started to count until the other person said “stop.” the person who said “jinx” got to slug the second person who said stop as many times as he counted. (bronner 1988, 172) dinner time is traditionally supposed to be a time of familial unity and cooperation. according to gregory k. fritz, “family dinners allow all members of the family to be involved, to know what is important, enjoyable, difficult or annoying for the others … for parents, regular family meals provide opportunities to inculcate values and model supportive interactions” (fritz 2006, 8). richard wilk echoes that sentiment, referring to the “image of the happy family meal” in the united states as “the warm, encompassing circle of commensality [that] drew everyone together around real food cooked with unique family recipes, teaching children religious values and respect for their elders, and brought order and cfr_2014.indb 13 11/20/14 1:07 pm trickster’s economics howard 14 comfort to a nation founded on family values” (wilk 2010, 428). his assertion in a sense gives dinner time a connotation of spiritual development, sustenance, and, most importantly, ritual. at the table, parents, as the authority figures, have constructed an ordered setting in which children and parents can interact in meaningful ways. even at the kids’ table, when authority figures are physically absent, the values and expectations of the parents should keep the parents figuratively present. ideally, children will behave because they will give into the panoptical gaze of the absent parent and behave as if they are not completely unobserved. the child’s performance of the jinx game, though, disrupts the order that is supposed to prevail at dinner time. the rituals of jinx trump the dinner ritual and essentially provide the child the opportunity to act the part of the trickster, a virtual brer rabbit whose intent is to subvert the sacred ritual of eating and the system imposed by the more powerful parental authority, not out of spite but for the sake of spectacle and performance. george lankford says, trickster is more likely to be discovered through roles and functions than through labels and appearances … inordinately clever, he frequently lures others into humiliation, injury, and even death … he is a menace to society without being its enemy, and he brings disaster to others without malevolence. he is the rule breaker par excellence. (lankford 1996, 716) the trickster archetype fits well with the jinx game (and many other children’s games as well) because of what roger d. abrahams refers to as his “regressive infantilism” and his desire to play (abrahams 1968, 173). while lydia’s and bronner’s jinx games are certainly not intended to bring about injury or death to the other participants, they do “menace” the society of the table by upsetting the rules of good behavior and peer-ness, humiliating competitors, and reducing that person’s position in the eyes of the others. in my niece’s case, the victim of the rhyme game is her brother, who is both older and bigger than she is. her jinxing of him temporarily overturns not only his advantage in age, size, and strength (once again an echo of brer rabbit and his encounter with animals like brer bear and brer fox), but also the constructed superiority of his masculinity. further, jinx not only becomes a mockery of her male rival, but by extension also of the ritual of dinner time and the adults who have instituted it. all of them fall prey to the culprit’s jinxing couplet. the mental superiority of the trickster as manifested in its ability to upset the status quo not only demonstrates of the children’s ability to conserve elements of the game, but within the behavior of the same archetype exists an illustration of childhood innovation and understanding of everyday realities and their complexity. marilyn jorgensen suggests (paraphrasing richard tallman’s article “a generic approach to the practical joke”) that one of the main roles of a trickster involves trying to “get something for nothing” (jorgensen 1995, 214). interestingly, this endeavor to procure amenities at someone else’s expense is also the guiding objective of the jinx performance. in a few cases, such as the one that bronner cfr_2014.indb 14 11/20/14 1:07 pm howard trickster’s economics 15 reports, the winner procures the right to strike the opponent a certain amount of times, while in other cases (and i remember having played it this way) the winner gains control over loser’s speech because the loser has to be silent until the winner says his name three times. most commonly, the trickster cries, “jinx, you owe me a coke!” “pinch, poke you owe me a coke!” or, as the knapps report from an informant in tacoma in 1959, “jinks, cokes, and hamburgers” and thus secures physical sustenance (knapp and knapp 1973, 137). regardless of which version is used, the winner gains something by calling “jinx!” first without investing anything. lydia’s jinx version retains or conserves this “something for nothing” aspect. the phrase “the jinx machine is out of order, / please insert another quarter” indicates this underlying ideology because inserting a quarter into a broken machine indicates logically (though logic frequently matters but little place in a children’s rhyme) that the giver will receive nothing in return. after all, a machine that is “out of order” can’t actually do anything. however, her request (her demand, i should say) for the quarter also demonstrates her creativity in that instead of asking for a type of currency like the coke or other kind of soda that has limited usage (she can only drink it), she asks for money. her demand for cash is clever in that it makes the brother beholden to her and gives her real power in the economic discourse of the world in which she lives. though a coke possesses physical fluidity, she realizes that money is the only true liquid asset. money has far more weight and versatility than a coke does in its purchasing power. a person who has money has the ability to buy a coke, should she feel the need, but she can choose to purchase something besides a coke. she can even choose not to spend it at all. in her own way, she is demanding more freedom at the expense of her brother’s. she is not only trickster, but she is trickster masquerading as the economic “machine.” my niece’s couplet, further, is also interesting in that it asks for an amenity (money) whose system is founded on belief, which is exactly how the game functions. the power of money comes from the trust and belief of consumers; the metal disk we call a quarter has no real power in and of itself, but only insofar as people believe in the value it represents. in the same way, she only has power over her rival because both parties believe in the rules of the game. in a sense, then, her innovative demand suits the game’s ideology better metaphorically than the cokes and pinches of previous jinx versions. in the end, the trickster/my niece triumphs, but her victory is only short-lived, which is to be expected since, as lankford states, “trickster is as much tricked as tricker in countless stories about his dealings with others, often leaving the analyst to ponder who is the trickster” (lankford 1996, 716). in the jinx game, the final part of the performance occurs when the loser refuses to make good on his or her debt. this seems to be a fundamental part of the game’s narrative. the knapps mention that frequently after the winner proclaims victory, “no one takes [the] debt seriously” (knapp and knapp 1973, 137). essentially, this refusal to pay up by the loser becomes the proverbial tar baby; trickster lydia never collects the quarter from her brother and is thus outfoxed in her demand for remuneration. she has, though, throughout the game shown her ability to deal with the complex issues of modern economic systems of exchange, while also retaining some of the cfr_2014.indb 15 11/20/14 1:07 pm trickster’s economics howard 16 original elements of the jinx tradition in unexpectedly profound demonstration of the “dynamics of cultural acquisition” (carpenter 1994, 19). overall, her version of jinx is a veritable playground where the interaction of old and new ideologies can occur. works cited abrahams, roger d. 1968. trickster, the outrageous hero. our living traditions: an introduction to american folklore. edited by tristram potter coffin. new york: basic books, inc. bronner, simon j. 1988. american children’s folklore: a book of rhymes, games, jokes, stories, secret languages, beliefs ad camp legends for parents, grandparents, teachers, counselors, and all adults who were once children. little rock: august house. brunvand, jan harold. 1968. the study of american folklore: an introduction. new york: w.w. norton & company, inc. carpenter, carole h. 1994. developing an appreciation for the cultural significance of childlore. children’s folklore review 17 (1): 19-29. fritz, gregory k., m.d. 2006. the importance of the family dinner. the brown child and adolescent behavior letter 22 (2): 8. howard, david. 2013. jinx. personal interview. hughes, linda a. 1996. games. american folklore: an encyclopedia. edited by jan harold brunvand. new york: garland publishing, inc. jinx, n. oed online. march 2013. oxford university press. http://www.oed.com/ view/entry/101360?rskey=d2g9no&result=1 jorgensen, marilyn. 1995. teases and pranks. children’s folklore: a source book. edited by brian sutton-smith et al. new york: garland publishing, inc. knapp, herbert and martha knapp. 1973. tradition and change in american playground language. the journal of american folklore 86 (340): 131-141. lankford, george. 1996. trickster. american folklore: an encyclopedia. edited by jan harold brunvand. new york: garland publishing, inc. lydia. 2013. jinx. personal interview. opie, iona, and peter opie. 1961. the lore and language of schoolchildren. oxford: clarendon press. rieti, barbara. 2008. making witches: newfoundland traditions of spells and counterspells. montreal: mcgill-queen’s university press. sullivan iii, c.w. 1995. songs, poems, and rhymes. children’s folklore: a source book. new york: garland publishing, inc. wilk, richard. power at the table: food fights and happy meals. cultural studies/ critical methodologies 10 (6): 428-436. zumwalt, rosemar lévy. 1995. the complexity of children’s folklore. children’s folklore: a source book. new york: garland publishing, inc. cfr_2014.indb 16 11/20/14 1:07 pm 17 children’s folkore in the twenty-first century: folklorists of childhood respond to the newtown tragedy elizabeth tucker this introduction to the panel “children’s folklore in the twenty-first century: folklorists of childhood respond to the newtown tragedy” was presented at the annual meeting of the american folklore society in providence, rhode island on october 17, 2013. at the american folklore society’s annual meeting in 2000, the children’s folklore section sponsored a panel in response to the columbine tragedy of 1999. titled “the monstrous child: folklore responds to columbine and adolescence,” this panel resulted in a special issue of children’s folklore review (2002) in which folklorists of childhood responded to both columbine and adolescence. jo ann conrad’s paper, “the war on youth: a modern oedipal tragedy,” identified the concept of a “monstrous child” from which tragedies come. since the time of our panel on columbine, questions have arisen about the line between play and violence in frames of children’s activities and the issue of adult control of such activities. in the aftermath of the horrifying tragedy at newtown in 2012, in which twenty children and six teachers died at the hands of a late-adolescent shooter, this panel again gathers folklorists of childhood to re-examine the use and urgency of children’s and adolescents’ folklore for youth and adults. during the thirteen years since our panel on “the monstrous child,” many changes have taken place. with horrifying rapidity, so many school shootings have occurred that it is hard to remember when all of them happened. newtown, however, has left an indelible imprint of horror and sadness on people’s minds. the children who died were so young; there were so many of them, and their killer was a troubled late adolescent or young adult who also killed his mother. newspaper reporters wrote about newtown as “slaughter of the innocents,” invoking a well-known biblical theme. something terrible had happened, and people of diverse backgrounds struggled to find meaning. in this panel we will try, as folklorists of childhood, to interpret contemporary children’s and adolescents’ behavior. our presentations address diverse aspects of contemporary children’s folklore, but all of them reflect the need for folklorists to analyze how children’s culture develops and changes, particularly in relation to intertwined roles of play and violence in youth folk practices. this year’s theme of cultural sustainability, defined on the afs website as “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs,” fits our panel’s purpose well. we plan to examine the culture of childhood from multiple vantage points, exploring how children and adolescents maintain their own culture and what methods and strategies we choose to use in our research. during the discussion period, we will ask you to consider how childlore is growing and changing in the early twenty-first century and how it contributes to the discourse of play and violence in twenty-first century public life. cfr_2014.indb 17 11/20/14 1:07 pm children’s folkore in the twenty-first century tucker 18 works cited bronner, simon j. 2002. introduction: folklore responds to columbine and adolescence. children’s folklore review 24 (1-2): 7-20. conrad, jo ann. 2002. the war on youth: a modern oedipal tragedy. children’s folklore review 24 (1-2): 33-42. tucker, elizabeth. 2012. changing concepts of childhood: children’s folklore scholarship since the late nineteenth century. journal of american folklore 125:498 (fall 2012): 389-410. cfr_2014.indb 18 11/20/14 1:07 pm 19 the endangered child: choking and fainting games in the online underground of youtube elizabeth tucker in 1987, a nine-year-old boy named derek told a student fieldworker in binghamton, new york, that he and his friends had taken turns putting a rope around their necks and pulling it tight, to see “who [could] choke himself the longest” (tucker 2008, 79). having expected to hear derek speak about active but not life-threatening games, the student felt shocked and concerned. i also felt worried about derek but knew that such games had been going on for years in the united kingdom and the united states. in the late 1980s, choking and fainting games, as well as other games involving breath control, were not very familiar to the public. iona and peter opie had identified fainting games as “misplaced audacity” in their book children’s games of street and playground (1969, 27374), but their documentation of the games had not caused widespread concern. children and adolescents had identified choking and fainting games by so many different names (including pass out, space monkey, california dreaming, purple dragon, and the gasp game), that it was hard for adults to identify the games’ purpose. because of the childhood underground — a network of young people that adults did not usually enter — choking and fainting games took place in relative obscurity until the early twenty-first century, when media reports of accidental deaths of game-players became common. in my article “‘go to bed, now you’re dead’: suffocation songs and breath control games” (2008-2009), i examined choking and fainting games’ origins and interpretations of their meaning by folklorists, forensic pathologists, psychologists, and anthropologists; i also discussed adults’ educational websites and young people’s accounts of playing breath control games. in conclusion, i noted that playing these risky games seems to facilitate passage from childhood to adulthood and asked whether adults can persuade young people to stop playing such games (2008-2009, 54). building from and expanding upon my previous work, this article analyzes adolescents’ and adults’ interaction based on videos about fainting and choking games posted on youtube in an effort to interpret the meaning and impact of such broadcasts through the analysis of meta-information. by taking a close look at comments on videos uploaded by boys and girls, as well as comments on videos uploaded by adults, i interpret adolescents’ and adults’ interaction related to this important, difficult subject and explain why young people persist in posting their own videos in spite of parental opposition. from the late 1990s to the middle of the twenty-first century, more and more people have become accustomed to communicating with each other on the internet. an important change took place in 2005, when three young computer specialists activated the domain name “youtube.com” (snickars and vonderau 2010; van dijck 2013). suddenly it became possible for kids aged thirteen and over (and many younger children as well) with access to the internet to upload, share, cfr_2014.indb 19 11/20/14 1:07 pm the endangered child tucker 20 and view videos. curious adolescents could upload videos of themselves playing games with friends and watch videos uploaded by others. youtube gave kids a new kind of childhood underground in which they could share their traditions and interests with peers around the world. this online childhood underground is porous because parents and other adults can attempt to check what kids are doing. before the internet made checking so easy, it was common for adults to let children learn and play games on their own. according to brian sutton-smith’s concept of the “triviality barrier” (1970, 1-8), adults tend not to find children’s games and other forms of folklore very significant or useful for children’s development. there have, however, been good reasons for adults to try to learn all they can about choking and fainting games. tragically, many preadolescents and adolescents have died while playing such games, and numerous reports of these fatalities have appeared in newspaper, television, and internet articles (e.g. o’sullivan 1999; parker-pope 2008; warner 2005). choking games involving ropes and chokeholds are high-risk; fainting games tend to be somewhat “safer” but can result in death from head injuries. more boys than girls have died as a result of choking games. the center for disease control’s report of 2008, based on news reports, explains that 86.6% of choking game deaths in the united states from 1995 to 2007 were males aged six to 19, with a mean age of 13.3 years. information about fatal falls resulting from fainting games is more difficult to find, but such information has gradually become available (e.g. phillips 2014). without breathing, it is impossible to live. understanding the peril of breath control games has contributed to adults’ awareness of young people’s vulnerability. the columbine high school massacre in 1999, followed by a series of tragic school shootings culminating in the newtown massacre in 2012, has enhanced american adults’ sense of children being in danger.1 when i wrote my article “changing concepts of childhood” for the journal of american folklore in 2012, i noted the significance of the “monstrous child” concept that emerged after the death of so many teenagers at the hands of fellow adolescents at columbine high school. i also found that carole carpenter’s (2011) analysis of the “bubblewrapped child” conveyed adults’ worries about safety very well. two years later, i find that the metaphor of “the endangered child” fits the impression of childhood that has come from both school shootings and fatal breath control games. folklorists of childhood have a unique perspective; their close observation of children’s interaction and respect for children’s own rules result in significant perceptions. since the columbine high school massacre, these scholars have paid particular attention to the relationship between folklore and school violence. simon j. bronner has noted that since the publication of reports on school shootings in the 1990s, which have emphasized the fact that most shooters have been male, boys have seemed to be more at risk than girls; “much of their plight [has] seemed expressed or exacerbated by circulating folklore” (2011, 149). the higher percentage of males’ deaths after playing choking games fits this pattern, which should be studied closely. careful consideration of youtube videos and comments posted by viewers makes it possible for researchers to gain insight into young people’s performances and responses. cfr_2014.indb 20 11/20/14 1:07 pm tucker the endangered child 21 methodology and numerical results methodology for analyzing young people’s use of youtube is still developing, since this medium of communication is relatively new. one good study of the performative use and function of youtube videos is anthony buccitelli’s “performance 2.0: observations toward a theory of the digital performance of folklore” (2013). between september 26, 2013, and november 1, 2013, i did keyword searches on youtube to find videos of breath control games, searching for “choking games,” “fainting games,” and “pass out games.” through these searches i found 54 videos: 27 (50%) of all-male groups posted by boys, 16 (30%) of all-female groups posted by girls, and four (7%) of mixed groups posted by either boys or girls. there were also seven educational videos (13%) posted by adults. i took notes on the content of all 54 videos and recorded comments that had been made. in some cases there were numerous comments; in others there were none or very few. i also noted the gender and, if possible, the place of residence of the individual who posted the video. in some cases it was difficult to learn the age, gender, place of residence, and past experience of the people who posted comments. the tone and diction of many comments suggested that teenagers had posted them, but it was impossible to be certain. some teenagers commented that they had “pranked” their younger brothers or sisters by making them play choking or fainting games while making videos. youtube is supposed to be used only by people aged thirteen and older, but a close look at comments shows that children are sometimes involved as well. my search for percentages of video generation was influenced by martha linkletter, kevin gordon, and joe dooley’s (2009) article, “the choking game and youtube: a dangerous combination,” a significant medical study that points out the connection between watching videos online and playing games; it also notes that familiarity with videos posted online may deter some young people from playing.2 the study’s main goal is to describe demographics and techniques of the choking game; its methodology is retrospective content analysis. noting that very little information on this subject exists in medical literature, the authors conclude: “there is no causal link between youtube allowing increased access to videos and any increase in participation and increase in morbidity and mortality. it is possible that youtube has merely allowed access to previously unobserved activity” (277). linkletter, gordon, and dooley discovered that 90% of the participants in the 65 videos they studied were male. in 55% of the videos, participants had hypoxic seizures, but the percentage of seizures went up when participants used the valsalva maneuver, usually called the “sleeper hold,” in which one person puts an arm around the other’s neck and squeezes it. in 88% of those videos, there was a hypoxic seizure. clearly, the level of danger rises when this kind of choking takes place. in contrast to linkletter, gordon, and dooley’s (2009) study, my own research — compiled three years later — shows a larger percentage of female participants and only one use of the valsalva maneuver. in most of the videos i watched, children or adolescents lost consciousness after hyperventilating while squatting, then standing up and putting their thumbs in their mouths. this difference might cfr_2014.indb 21 11/20/14 1:07 pm the endangered child tucker 22 seem to indicate a major change in kids’ game-playing patterns since the study by linkletter, gordon, and dooley, but it seems more likely that the difference in percentages results from youtube having limited viewings of the most dangerous choking games during the past several years. some videos that have been deemed inappropriate by youtube can still be viewed. in the video “cofer passed out” (2010), which i found in the fall of 2013, a late-adolescent boy uses the valsalva maneuver to make a girl have what appears to be a hypoxic seizure. when i clicked on this video on july 28, 2014, i was able to watch it, although it was labeled with the message “this video has been removed because it violates youtube’s terms of service.” perhaps part of the content had been removed before i watched the video. according to youtube’s community guidelines, any member of the youtube community can flag a questionable video, and staff members work twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, to remove objectionable content (“flagging content” 2014). it is noteworthy that youtube recommends, in its “teen safety” section, consideration of “the grandma rule”: if you don’t want your grandma to watch a video you have made, you should not post it. in this way, youtube promotes standards that might be found in a family or a small community (“teen safety” 2014). reading young viewers’ comments on youtube videos helps adults understand the impact of videos of the games on young people. but why do so many kids want to play these games? what questions and worries arise as they learn about the games and think about playing them themselves? comments on videos show adults how children and adolescents react to the videos while engaging in dialogue with peers and adults. defiance, dizziness, and danger before examining the videos and comments, it is necessary to consider scholarship that puts them in the context of youth culture. since the 1970s, folklorists have studied adolescents’ trips or quests to experience something amazing or shocking that has a connection to a legend (dégh 2001, ellis 1982-83, meley 1991, thigpen 1971). bill ellis observes that when they visit legendary locations, teenagers seek “deliberate escapes into altered states of being where conventional laws do not operate” (2001, 189). this escape, ellis explains, is part of a broader behavior pattern involving defiance of adults’ rules and drinking.3 when i was doing the research for my essay on breath control games in 2009, i found that the same general pattern applied. during breath control games kids seem to be “pushing each other to the brink of a seductive dream world … prob[ing] boundaries between conscious and unconscious awareness and between life and death” (tucker 2008-2009, 54). this kind of experimentation is deeply embedded in youth culture and resists regulation by parents and teachers. simon j. bronner notes that adolescents tend to take risks and withdraw because of their “betwixt and between” stage of development, during which they may act both defiant and restrained (2014b). in a similar vein, richard a. friedman observes that although teens have an “enhanced capacity for anxiety,” they are also “novelty seekers and risk takers” (2014). cfr_2014.indb 22 11/20/14 1:07 pm tucker the endangered child 23 like legend trips or quests, breath control games offer new experiences and tests of courage before and during adolescence. challenges can, of course, take many forms, but the french play scholar roger caillois’s (1961) study of ilinx play — the kind of play that produces dizziness and disorientation — helps us understand young people’s fascination with breath control. both caillois and finnish play scholar marjatta kalliala (2007) note that children actively seek dizziness, lightheadedness, and related feelings. at amusement parks, young people line up to get dizzy on tilt-a-whirls and other rides. the popularity of such thrilling, disorienting rides, like the popularity of breath control games, never seems to wane. caillois partially explains this phenomenon by comparing vertigo-seeking children with spinning sheep and tail-chasing dogs, but he does not explain why members of different species crave vertigo. instead, he notes that both ilinx play and related spectacles appeal to the young because play is selfrewarding and separate from daily life: essential is the pursuit of this special disorder or sudden panic, which defines the term vertigo, and in the true characteristics of the games associated with it: viz. the freedom to accept or refuse the experience, strict and fixed limits, and separation from the rest of reality. what the experience adds to the spectacle does not diminish but reinforces its character as play. (caillois 1961, 26) the key phrases here are “freedom to accept or refuse the experience” and “separation from the rest of reality.” we can apply caillois’s analysis of ilinx play to the process of maturation during adolescence. play’s creation of a different realm becomes especially valuable during this stage, when it becomes necessary for young people to pull away from their parents to establish independence. this process of separation involves both reliance on parents and resistance to parental control.4 if adolescents post videos of themselves playing breath control games, they take the risk of parental intervention, which may lead to unpleasant objections but may also bring parental attention that the adolescents want to receive. those who post breath control videos show their peers that they have accepted a difficult, possibly dangerous challenge; they also show that they have gone beyond everyday reality to experience something thrilling, unusual, and bravely playful. there is not much consideration of play’s rewards in the current folkloristic discussion of children’s endangerment and early death in mass and new media. this discourse, including the subject of school shootings, may encourage playful but dangerous performances on the internet. some adult viewers of youtube videos express outrage and implore youtube to remove a video because it sets a bad example. both educational videos and comments by concerned adults have potential value, but it is not unusual for young viewers to reject them. while some kids express horror and sadness about negative consequences of choking and fainting games, others make snide or humorous comments that suggest opposition to adults’ guidance. recently it has become apparent that some teenagers who do not like adults’ interference on youtube are sending their videos to instagram cfr_2014.indb 23 11/20/14 1:07 pm the endangered child tucker 24 instead (bronner 2014a). choosing a new site is one of many ways in which young people can keep adults from viewing their communications. danah boyd’s term “social stenography,” which refers to teenagers’ interpersonal encryption, fits this situation well (boyd 2014). adults’ educational videos educational videos made by adults comprised only 16% of the choking and fainting game videos i found on youtube in the fall of 2013, but comments suggested that many kids had also watched them. in my study of educational websites about choking games in 2008, i found that such websites typically presented personal testimony from parents who had lost children, as well as information about the games’ extreme risk (tucker 2008-2009, 50-52). the seven videos on choking and fainting games uploaded by adults that i found in this recent study also contain parents’ testimonies and information about risk. in addition, they emphasize testimony from young people who have lost friends or relatives and want to warn their peers not to experiment with the game. an example of videos of this kind is “survivors of the choking game,” uploaded february 8, 2010. with a shocking profile photo of a child lying in a hospital bed breathing through a respirator, this short (3 minute, 44 second) video has drawn many viewers; 300,509 people had watched it by july 27, 2014. consisting of quotes, images, and video clips accompanied by suspenseful music, the video delivers a strong message: choking games can cause brain damage, and brain damage may be irreversible. the video clips of young teenagers struggling through therapy after playing the choking game convey this message powerfully. comments indicate a broad range of responses: appreciation of the warning, eagerness to warn others, skepticism, and interest in playing choking games. missy, a teenaged girl, writes “thank you for taking the time to help someone.” another teenaged girl, erica, comments, “i did it don’t do the after symptoms aren’t fun. don’t do it! nykro, whose gender is unclear, writes “my class mate ‘friend’ almost died of this shit ‘choking game,’ so guys please trust the rules and live longer.” all of these comments express concern and a desire to help other young people stay safe.5 in contrast to these responses, several teenagers question the truth of the information in the video. brad, a teenaged boy, writes, “ok so this video makes no sense at all. there is no proof that any of these children received their injuries from it.” similarly, “whammy” (gender unclear) asks, “is this real?” and “jesting” (gender unclear) comments, “this video sucks. it’s misleading.” suspicious of warnings from adults, these three young people reject the video’s message. many young commenters on the video support playing choking games and describe their own experiences in a positive way. kelly, a teenaged girl, writes, “i did it, and i’m fine! just hurt my nose a little bit. the vids up on my challenge.” similarly, julius, a teenaged boy, comments, “this is bullshit. i’ve done it a hundred times and never gotten hurt.” sara, a teenaged girl, goes a step farther, explaining why she enjoys playing choking games: “its really addicting, you guys don’t know the amazing feeling it brings unless you try it.” brian, a teenaged cfr_2014.indb 24 11/20/14 1:07 pm tucker the endangered child 25 boy, offers vivid details: “did this shit and my vision was shaking + it was like i was reborn like a new me, all the birds and light and sounds. this shit goooooo00d.” his comment shows that, like some takers of hallucinogenic drugs, teenagers playing choking games may feel that they have entered a new world full of enchanting sensations. one of the most significant aspects of this video’s comment section is the interaction between teenagers and adults (see appendix). when sandra, a teenaged girl, says that the pictures of choking game survivors in the video do not look real, two adults, bob and neecy, assure her that she is wrong. bob expresses himself angrily, telling sandra that she has “shit for brains,” but neecy calmly and authoritatively observes that she knows the parents of the teenagers whose images appear in the video and that her own son died after playing the choking game. after reading bob’s angry comment, sandra retorts, “and who are you to judge me?” she does not object to neecy’s more gentle and reasonable comment. maybe she has stopped questioning the video’s veracity, or maybe she does not want to engage in further dialogue with an adult who proves her wrong. throughout these comments and the comments on many other breath control game videos, we become aware that issues related to belief and non-belief are generating lively debate. are choking and fainting games real, and are videos about such games based upon true information? linda dégh and andrew vázsonyi (1973) argue that both belief and skepticism keep legends alive. comments on choking and fainting game videos display a similar dynamic, in which teenaged skeptics engage other teens and adults in lively, sometimes acrimonious dialogue. boys’ videos while viewing boys’ and girls’ videos in the fall of 2013, i discovered a contrast in settings. most of the boys’ videos were filmed outdoors, in the back yards of private homes or on playing fields, while most of the girls’ videos were filmed in bedrooms of private homes. this contrast fits previously observed patterns of american teenaged girls’ and boys’ social interaction: girls are much more likely than boys to have “sleepovers” at which they eat junk food, play exciting games, watch movies, and stay up all night talking (tucker 2007-2008). teenaged boys also stay overnight at each other’s houses, but the “sleepover” tradition is more formularized among teenaged girls. among the boys’ videos that i watched, two, “choke rope” and “fainting game!!!,” are especially revealing. “choke rope” was removed from youtube between the fall of 2013 and the summer of 2014, and “fainting game!!!” was flagged on july 29, 2014. because both of these videos are part of the argumentation on choking and fainting games that has been taking place in the youtube community, i use them as examples here. “choke rope” is a parody of adults’ educational videos. it was posted on september 21, 2011, by adam, a teenaged boy, and had been viewed by 464 people when i took a close look at it. “choke rope” shows two early adolescent boys horsing around with a rope in their backyard. the video’s soundtrack is garbled, but that problem does not become evident until a person starts watching. cfr_2014.indb 25 11/20/14 1:07 pm the endangered child tucker 26 its cleverly assonantal title suggests the possibility of both humor and violence. the two boys give their video a facetious tone, saying with exaggerated strictness, “warning: do not try this at home!” and outlining steps that viewers should take to choke each other with a rope. mocking serious educational videos, they shove each other, knock each other down, and go indoors, then outdoors again. they enjoy themselves hugely and expend much energy throughout the film. the two boys’ video has serious content, however. throughout their oneminute, four-second performance, they toss around a rope, at one end of which they have made a noose. when they go inside the house, they enter a closet, and one of the boys puts his wrist into the noose. both the choice of the closet as a location and the placement of a wrist in the noose show the boys’ awareness of hanging games in closets and other enclosed spaces. at the end of the video, one boy places the noose around the other’s neck, and both stare into the camera. the absence of words here has its own kind of eloquence. have the two boys played hanging games with ropes, or are they thinking of doing so? we do not know, but the video certainly brings those possibilities to mind. the two boys’ video received no comments at all: no applause, no criticism, no questions. nothing in the video raises the question of “true or fake?” and nothing seems terribly alarming. the fact that 464 people watched the video and nobody chose to comment through early november of 2013 shows that it had not yet become part of the dialogue on dangerous play at that point in time. between november of 2013 and july of 2014, the video was removed from youtube. its removal suggests that someone flagged the video because its content seemed inappropriate for young viewers. although i have not found specific information about the video’s removal, it seems likely that it disappeared from youtube because a staff member or a viewer questioned the appropriateness of its content. the second boys’ video, “fainting game!!!,” was flagged for inappropriate content on july 29, 2014. its poster was league city stunts, a group that films “all types of things, from 4wheeling to rolling people down hills in tires.” the video was uploaded on may 30, 2013, and had been viewed 314 times as of november 1, 2013. by july 25, 2014, the number of viewers had risen to 2,620. this brief, 59-second video is typical of short fainting game videos made by boys. four adolescent boys stand on a playing field, laughing and pushing each other. two of them start to play the fainting game, first squatting on the ground and hyperventilating, then standing up and putting their thumbs in their mouths. two other boys, one of whom looks older than the others, serve as spotters, supervising the two boys who are playing. the two players collapse, seeming to have lost consciousness, and the others laugh. the video ends shortly afterwards. comments on this video show why it was removed from youtube (see appendix). the first few comments indicate amusement; one commenter pokes fun at the legs of one of the boys. on july 29, however, adriana, who appears to be a teenaged girl, comments, “you know you can die from playing this game or end up brain damaged.” shortly after her comment, “music lover” (age and gender unclear) writes, “y’all finna [fixing to] die.” the following day, the video appears with a prompt: “this video has been age-restricted based on our community guidelines.” it is possible for viewers who can confirm their age to view the video, cfr_2014.indb 26 11/20/14 1:07 pm tucker the endangered child 27 but others are not allowed to see it. this restriction demonstrates responsiveness to viewers’ concerns, which is a key aspect of youtube’s ground rules. since the fall of 2013, there have been increasing restrictions and removals of videos that clearly display choking and fainting games. girls’ videos from the many available videos of fainting games created by adolescent girls, i have chosen to examine two: “pass out gamemikala and madison,” posted on june 21, 2013, and viewed 12,181 times by september 27, 2013, and “faint game,” posted on october 13, 2012 and viewed 1,726 times by july 28, 2014. teenaged female video-makers made both films in their bedrooms, with other girls present. “pass out game — mikala and madison” shows five teenaged girls taking turns hyperventilating and passing out in a bedroom. the girls stand against a wall next to a bed. when they fall, they collapse onto an array of colorful pillows. they seem both excited and nervous as they perform for their friends and the larger audience of youtube. the first comment on this video is part of a pattern that is, unfortunately, common on the internet: men ogling teenaged girls and trying to get their attention. this comment, “well i think you are both really cute with sexy legs!” comes from a male who self-identifies as “steve from london”; he cautions the girls to “play safe,” adopting a quasi-parental tone. steve writes “thanks for the uploads,” showing that he enjoys watching pretty girls faint; on breath control videos and others, such responses are fairly common. comments two through six — questions and compliments — are also typical of comments on youtube videos of fainting and choking games. in the sixth comment, however, the young male writer, “go pro hero,” explains that, because he thought the game was “bullshit,” he “just tried it,” passed out, and woke up screaming. although he ends his comment with the abbreviation “lol,” he sounds shaken up. is he really upset after trying the fainting game, or is he pretending to participate in the game to develop rapport with the individual who uploaded the video? it is not possible to know what he did or did not do, but it is significant that this male commenter wants to find out whether the game is “real” or “bullshit.” the “real or fake” question, commonly expressed by young people on youtube, arises often in comments on fainting and choking game videos. debate about what is real and what is fake fuels discussion of performances of these games, as in the dialectics of the legend (dégh and vázsonyi 1973). after go pro hero’s comment, other writers criticize the game and the girls: “fucking idiots,” “you are killing a ton of brain cells,” and “don’t it can kill you.” in comment 12, caitlin, who self-identifies as an adolescent girl, writes, “please tell me how to do this!!” undeterred by the three previous writers’ negative remarks, she seems eager to try the game herself. like the ancient greek pandora, who cannot resist opening her box of troubles, caitlin seems irresistibly drawn to the strange sensations caused by fainting games, as do the creators of the video, mikala and madison. in late september of 2013, when i found mikala and madison’s video, the video had not yet been flagged. by the summer of 2014, however, it was apparent that cfr_2014.indb 27 11/20/14 1:07 pm the endangered child tucker 28 mikala was trying to evade family opposition. her video “passout game — mikala and madison” had disappeared from the internet, and she had posted three sections of the video with different titles. in mid-july, a comment appeared on “pass out game — 2 mikala and madison”: “reported a bunch of these btw, you really have been bad. granddad.” this sounded like the end of mikala’s subversive fun. nonetheless, it was still possible for anyone to view all three fainting game videos through the end of july. the second girls’ video, “fainting game,” comes from hayley, who introduces her video with the apprehensive comment “if you are going to pist [post] comments telling me its bad then go fuck yourself.” her brief, 30-second video shows her or a friend hyperventilating, then collapsing while standing against a bedroom wall. the viewer hears laughter and then, after the girl’s collapse, the words “wakey-wakey!” this is a typically short video from girls in a bedroom with a closed door, who are maintaining their privacy from parents and siblings while sharing their adventures with a wide audience of young and older viewers on youtube. although hayley expresses worry about receiving critical comments, she gets compliments and friendly questions from viewers of her video (see appendix). “steve from london,” who complimented mikala and madison on their fainting game, tells hayley, “well i think you are gorgeous!” claiming to have experienced “déjà vu” after playing a fainting game, he asks her whether she has had the same sensation. answering that she felt as if she were dreaming and does not think that steve is “creepy at all,” she seems receptive to his overtures. another commenter, hizzy, asks, “you got a boyfriend?” answering “no lol,” hayley seems to like his question. both steve’s and hizzy’s questions suggest that they would like to get closer to hayley, and her responses do not discourage their interest. she self-presents as a young woman who has had little experience with men, and, unlike mikala, she has not had relatives intervene by contacting youtube. in the ambiguous realm of the internet, this is one kind of peril of which parents need to be aware. choking and fainting games give young people exciting but nerve-wracking chances to test their bravery. the urge to do something risky, thrilling, and heroic is hard to resist, even (or especially) when pressure from adults provides a deterrent. becoming dizzy, feeling disoriented, and experiencing a briefly altered state of consciousness has a strong appeal to young people on the cusp of adolescence. this experience helps young people feel brave and resilient; they have accepted a difficult, possibly life-threatening challenge and returned from an alternate state of consciousness that seems like another world. not all kids accept this challenge, of course; some agree with adults that the games are too dangerous. but for those who do, performance of breath control games for peers, in defiance of adults’ rules, demonstrates strength of mind and determination. worried parents want to stop the games so that their kids can stay safe and grow up to be responsible adults. both parents and their offspring value progress toward adulthood, but they tend to have different ideas about how to achieve it. in the dynamic performance arena of youtube, new videos appear every day. comments on new and older videos reveal concern about truth and fakery, as well cfr_2014.indb 28 11/20/14 1:07 pm tucker the endangered child 29 as safety and danger. viewers who object to particular videos can ask youtube staff members to remove them. although youtube’s community guidance system has placed viewer-based limits upon some videos, it has not stopped kids from posting new videos that they want to share with others. as the discourse on safety and endangerment continues, we should remember that young people feel a need to demonstrate their courage and that many of them find enormous satisfaction in peer-based video-sharing. notes many thanks to simon j. bronner and trevor j. blank for reading an earlier draft of this essay and sharing their insights, which i greatly appreciate. i especially want to thank simon j. bronner for his very helpful suggestions regarding adolescents’ engagement with adults as they move toward maturity. i also want to thank trevor j. blank very much for his very perceptive, constructive suggestions. i presented a shorter version of this essay at the american folklore society’s annual meeting in the fall of 2013. 1. on december 14, 2012, 20-year-old adam lanza shot and killed 20 children and six adults at sandy hook elementary school in newtown, connecticut. soon afterwards he committed suicide. shocked by the massacre of so many children and adults, americans questioned gun control laws and other aspects of this tragic occurrence. 2. there is no mention in this article of folklorists’ studies of choking games from 1969 to 2009, although the authors note fourteen folk terms for choking games in english and one folk term in spanish, intento desmayo. the authors cite an early study of fainting and choking games in the british medical journal: howard, leathart, dornhurst, and sharpey-schafer’s “the ‘mess trick’ and the ‘fainting lark,’” which was published in 1951. 3. scholars outside the field of folklore have examined children’s and adolescents’ rebellion from a number of perspectives. an analysis of childhood that contrasts adults’ sheltering and spoiling of children with children’s desire to rebel is historian gary cross’s the cute and the cool: wondrous innocence and modern american children’s culture (2004). 4. see roger d. abrahams’s deep down in the jungle (2006 [1970]) for an insightful study of young men’s defense and criticism of their mothers while playing the “dozens” in urban philadelphia. 5. because youtube videos are public documents, i have included links to videos that can be viewed online. in this article, for the sake of preserving individuals’ privacy, i use first names only and do not identify full screennames. all youtube comments are presented in their original form, without correction of spelling or syntax. cfr_2014.indb 29 11/20/14 1:07 pm the endangered child tucker 30 works cited abrahams, roger d. 2006 [1970]. deep down in the jungle: black american folklore from the streets of philadelphia. new york: aldine transaction. boyd, danah. 2014. it’s complicated: the social lives of networked teens. new haven, ct: yale university press. bronner, simon j. 2011. framing violence and play in american culture. journal of ritsumeikan social sciences and humanities 3: 145-160. ______. 2014a. email communication. august 4. ______. 2014b. email communication. august 11. buccitelli, anthony bak. 2013. performance 2.0: observations toward a theory of the digital performance of folklore. in folk culture in the digital age: the emergent dynamics of human interaction, ed. trevor j. blank. logan: utah state university press, 60-84. caillois, roger. 1961. man, play and games. new york: free press. carpenter, carole h. 2011. why children’s studies? center for research in young people’s texts and cultures. http://crytc.uwinnipeg.ca/pdf/papers/carole. carpenter.pdf. choke rope. 2011. posted by adam. youtube. 21 september. no url available because of removal from site. cofer passed out. 2010. posted by kevin. youtube. 25 january. http://www. youtube.com/watch?v=ah0wn9jfi18. conrad, joann. 2002. the war on youth: a modern oedipal tragedy. children’s folklore review 24 (1-2): 33-42. cross, gary. 2004. the cute and the cool: wondrous innocence and modern american children’s culture. oxford and new york: oxford university press. dégh, linda and andrew vázsonyi. 1973. dialectics of the legend. bloomington, in: folklore publications group. ______. 2001. legend and belief. bloomington: indiana university press. ellis, bill. 1982-83. legend tripping in ohio: a behavioral study. in papers in comparative studies, vol. 2, eds. daniel barnes, rosemary o. joyce, and steven swann jones, 61-73. columbus, oh: center for comparative studies in the humanities. ______. 2003. aliens, ghosts and cults: legends we live. jackson: university press of mississippi. fainting game. 2012. posted by hayley. 13 october. youtube. http://www. youtube.com/watch?v=w4nvdz67h4m. fainting game!!! 2013. posted by league city stunts. 30 may. youtube. http:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwdjc1kfrg8. flagging content. 2014. youtube. https://support.google.com/youtube/ answer/2802027. friedman, richard a. 2014. why teenagers act crazy. sunday review, new york times. 28 june. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/29/opinion/sunday/whyteenagers-act-crazy.html?_r=0. cfr_2014.indb 30 11/20/14 1:07 pm tucker the endangered child 31 howard, p., leathart, g.l., dornhorst, a.c., and sharpey-schafer, e.p. 1951. the ‘mess trick’ and the ‘fainting lark.’ british medical journal 2: 382-384. kalliala, marjatta. 2006. play culture in a changing world. maidenhead, uk: open university press. linkletter, martha, kevin gordon and joe dooley. 2009. the choking game and youtube: a dangerous combination. clinical pediatrics 49 (3): 274-279. meley, patricia. 1991. adolescent legend trips as teenage cultural response: a study of lore in context. children’s folklore review 14: 5-24. opie, iona and peter. 1969. children’s games of street and playground. new york: oxford university press. o’sullivan, jack. 1999. so you still want to send the kids to boarding school? the independent. 18 march. http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/ so-you-still-want-to-send-the-kids-to-boarding-school-1081328.html (accessed august 9, 2009). parker-pope, tara. 2008. ‘choking’ game deaths on the rise. nytimes.com. 14 february. http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/ pass out game2 madison & mikala. 2013. posted by mikala. youtube. 21 june. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=betk0u5qhl4. passout game — mikala and madison. 2013. posted by mikala. youtube. 21 june. no url available because of removal from site. phillips, anne. 2014. hyperventilation — a deadly game. jeff orchard, university of waterloo. 10 october. https://cs.waterloo.ca/~jorchard/mike/mike.html snickars, pelle and patrick vonderau. 2010. the youtube reader. stockholm: national library of sweden. sutton-smith, brian. 1970. psychology of childlore: the triviality barrier. western folklore 29 (1): 1-8. teen safety. youtube. 2014. https://support.google.com/youtube/ answer/2802244?hl=en. thigpen, kenneth a. 1971. adolescent legends in brown county: a survey. indiana folklore 4 (2): 141-215. tucker, elizabeth. 2012. changing concepts of childhood: children’s folklore scholarship since the nineteenth century. journal of american folklore 125 (498): 389-410. ______. 2008-2009. “go to bed, now you’re dead”: suffocation songs and breath control games. children’s folklore review 31: 45-58. ______. 2007. haunted halls: ghostlore of american college campuses. jackson: university press of mississippi. ______. 2007-2008. levitation revisited. children’s folklore review 30: 47-60. unintentional strangulation deaths from the ‘choking game’ among youths aged 6-19 years — united states, 1995-2007. 2008. mmwr weekly, center for disease control. 15 february. http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/ mmwrhtml/mm5706a1.htm. van dijk, jose. 2013. the culture of connectivity: a critical history of social media. london: oxford university press. cfr_2014.indb 31 11/20/14 1:07 pm the endangered child tucker 32 warner, paul m. 2005. “choking game” claims life of one california teenager. canyon news. 7 august. http://www.canyon-news.com/artman/publish/ article_3310.php (accessed august 7, 2009). appendix excerpt from comments on youtube video “survivors of the choking game,” uploaded feb. 8, 2010 by carrie (300,509 views by july 27, 2014): 1. sandra: omg...people seriously? you believe that all teenagers from this video died? and their show pictures of them?? really?? okay i believe that someone diedt from that “game” and im really sorry for their parents but i really don’t believe that the pictures of children who died are real.. you really think that some adults or teenager would go to the hospital and take a picture or video of survives.. no i don’t think so.. no hates is just teenage girl opinion, don’t believe her because all teenagers are stupid. 2. bob: well you’re certainly not helping people think any more highly of teenagers, i mean maybe you should work on being able to post comments that don’t make you look like you have shit for brains. 3. sandra: and who are you to judge me? 4. neecy: they are real kids ..... how can you say this is fake? she has permission from all these kids parents to use this material because it really happened. i know these parents and can say it is 100% real and kids die. my 13 year old died from it as many others have. educate yourself and do your research if you have any doubts. comments on youtube video “fainting game!!!,” uploaded may 30, 2013 by league city stunts (314 views as of november 1, 2013): 1. nicholas: hahahahahahaha!!!!!!! 2. connor look at those calves on the white kid! 3. connor: your welcome 4. adriana: you know you can die playing this game or end up brain damaged. 4. music lover: y’all finna die. comments on youtube video “passout gamemikala and madison,” uploaded june 21, 2013 by mikala (12,181 views as of 9-27-2013): 1. steve: well i think you are both really cute with sexy legs! did you feel déjà vu when you came round? i used too. anyway, play safe and thanks for the uploads. steve from london 2. mikala: lol thanks!!!! 3. mojave: why did she fall so hard? cfr_2014.indb 32 11/20/14 1:07 pm tucker the endangered child 33 4. adrian: what’s your guy’s twitter/instagram? 5. johanna: cool t-shirt j 6. go pro hero: well i thought for sure this was bullshit never believed the game was real … i just tried it, bend down breathed hard for half a minute, and stood up and breathed on my thumb. my dogs were pushing me and i passed out i guess, because i woke up screaming what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck with a big pain in my back. landed on a gopro case:/ that was terrifying lol 7. mikala.: adrian it’s @smoking******** 8. mikala: and i know go pro. it’s i cool aft ho 9. jonathan: fucking idiots 10. gentrit.: well, for starters you are killing a ton of brain cells when you do stuff like that. and i am convinced it’s more noticeable because people who play this game already have fewer brain cells than average. 11. dark: dont it can kill you 12. caitlin: please tell me how to do this!! 13. dark: whats crazy is she is having a seizure 14. trinity: she fell hard 15. savanna: the girl that fell last with the cool story bro shirt on or whatever she faked it well at least it looked like she did 16. garrett: yo tell that girl in the white to hmu? 17. morgan: the cool story shirt fake ass 18. jzone: because getting drunk is too much work 19. theo: get rekt excerpt from comments on the youtube video ““fainting game,” uploaded october 13, 2012 by hayley (1,191 viewers by july 30, 2014) 1. hizzy: ok lol you do it to your mates then, you got a boyfriend? 2. super: how to do it 3. hayley: hizzy no lol me and my step sister used to it when we were about 13 so there is some old vids from then. im 17 now then remembered about it so we were bored one night and decided not to do it again :/ 4. steve: wow, you were out cold. did you feel déjà vu when you came round? i used to when i did this. great upload, thanks. just play safe if you haven’t got anyone to catch you. i concussed myself one time! anyway, i think your sexy, not bering creepy, just an observation. take care steve from london 5. hayley: haha i know! no i didn’t feel deja vu, but i do remember dreaming but i couldn’t remember what about. like when you wake up and you know you were just dreaming but you forgot. and oh dear lol i have never concussed myself although i did one time fall forward and nearly broke my nose haah. no not creepy at all lol cfr_2014.indb 33 11/20/14 1:07 pm 35 “the shooter has asperger’s”: autism, belief, and “wild child” narratives simon j . bronner having reviewed hundreds of press reports on school shootings since 2000, i find a consistent pattern of narrative speculation about the association of autism and more specifically asperger’s syndrome with individuals who commit mass violence in america. in reporting the “motivation” for shootings by teens and young adults, the press typically relies on oral narratives provided by classmates and family members, rather than medical documentation. often these reports cite odd, unusual, or asocial behavior by the individuals, sometimes prompted by bullying or engagement in game or music participation, that lead to an unanticipated violent outburst, colloquially called a “meltdown,” “breakdown,” or “losing it.” the press reports reflect, or respond to, a more general belief found in the population concerning the shooter’s deteriorating mental state since childhood and the notion that he, and the shooter is assumed to be male, had gone undiagnosed or kept his diagnosis secret in mainstream society, commonly with the suggestion that he should have been institutionalized or separated from “normal” youth. pathologizing or folklorizing the phenomenon, observers often mention an unrecognized or suppressed “epidemic” of autism or mental illness along with speculation about environmental as well as medical reasons bordering on the conspiratorial for the contemporary rise of retributional violence by youth. without discounting scientific attempts to understand brain function in relation to youth violence, i frame the discourse among such observers in the context of folk psychology, a term that has come into usage outside of folkloristics, but can be applied to issues of social interaction as manifested in traditional cultural practices of children (haselager 1997; thomas 2001). the key concept suggested by folk psychology is that people as part of their localized cultural experience perceive, predict, and explain one another’s actions, thoughts, and motivations, often in relation to inherited norms of social behavior expressed through narrative and ritual. the intellectual and cultural construction of autism, asperger’s, and aspies although the public has a number of beliefs about autism, and asperger’s characteristics which is usually tied to autism, thus expressing a folk psychology, the psychiatric community has a set of definitions it circulates among its practitioners, most notably in the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders, known by the initialism dsm and a number indicating its edition. in the most current version of dsm-5 prepared by the american psychiatric association, autism is listed under “neurodevelopmental disorders” as “autism spectrum disorder.” the disorder entails “persistent deficits in social communication and social interaction across multiple contexts, including deficits in social reciprocity, cfr_2014.indb 35 11/20/14 1:07 pm “the shooter has asperger’s” bronner 36 nonverbal communicative behaviors used for social interaction, and skills in developing, maintaining, and understanding relationships” (american psychiatric association 2013, 31). the spectrum refers to relative severity of symptoms, related in the scientific literature to impairments of the development of the brain or central nervous system. neurodevelopmental disorders that are differentiated from the autism spectrum are intellectual developmental disorder, attention-deficit/ hyperactivity disorder, tic disorder, and developmental coordination disorder (american psychiatric association 2013, 31-86). readers will notice the absence of asperger’s syndrome from this list. in dsm-5, the american psychiatric association declared that “many individuals previously diagnosed with asperger’s disorder would now receive a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder without language or intellectual impairment” (2013, 32). autism as a label is a little over a hundred years old, and became popular only after 1943 when american child psychiatrist leo kanner described eleven children with “autistic disturbances of affective contact,” that is, a highly variable social impairment that he linked to a neurodevelopmental disorder (schriber, robins, and solomon 2014). kanner differentiated this disorder from schizophrenia that eugen bleuler, a swiss psychiatrist who introduced the term “autism” in 1911 along with “schizophrenia” in his weighty tome dementia praecox or the group of schizophrenias, thought was connected (mcnally 2009). kanner hypothesized that the autistic disturbances he observed were inborn and presumably genetic. later psychiatrists described the social impairment that kanner described as “kanner’s infantile autism,” which appeared similar to the syndrome proposed around the same time as asperger’s. one major difference is the muteness or abnormality of speech among kanner’s children in his study, whereas asperger’s was viewed as more of a social disorder and in the twenty-first century is more popularly known (pearce 2005). notice of asperger’s syndrome is credited to austrian pediatrician hans asperger’s paper “die ‘autistischen psychopathen’ im kindesalter” in a german journal of psychiatry and neurology in 1944. in the essay, he identified patterns of children who had poor nonverbal communication skills (their speech, however, was fluent but long-winded, literal, and pedantic), were emotionally detached, displayed egocentric behavior, and were physically clumsy. later clinicians identified additional symptoms of repetitive behavior, obsession with specific interests, and normal to superior intelligence despite difficulty in conventional school work. although asperger noted the association of abnormalities with the childhood years, usually among males after starting school, he noted that the traits were lifelong. before asperger’s paper, psychiatric literature included case histories of “schizothymic” or “schizoid” patients. ernst kretschmer in 1925, for example, wrote about a patient who had no friends at school, was odd and awkward in social interaction, was observed being oversensitive, and was unhappy when away from home. drawing psychiatric attention, including folkloristic as well as psychoanalytic commentary from sigmund freud , such patients were described as having invented a detailed imaginary world. freud in 1918 in his famous cases of the wolf man and rat man referred to “infantile neurosis” as a mental disorder caused by an oedipal conflict that has been symbolically noted in the cfr_2014.indb 36 11/20/14 1:07 pm bronner “the shooter has asperger’s” 37 male patient’s early childhood. in adulthood, the patient displays obsessional and paranoid behaviors associated later by psychoanalysts with autism (loewald 1974). freud did not observe violent tendencies in his case histories of young adults plagued by this neurosis, but kurt schneider in 1923 identified a psychological type called “affectionless psychopaths” who pursue their own interests with ruthless indifference to other people’s feelings. although asperger, freud, and kretschmer did not mention a propensity for violence in the different childhood disorders they identified, schneider noted the possibility that “psychopaths” could harm others in pursuit of their special interests. the connection of “affectionless” patients to autism owes largely to a 1981 paper “asperger’s syndrome: a clinical account” in psychological medicine by english psychiatrist lorna wing. she introduced the label “asperger’s syndrome” to replace the negative, vague terms “psychopath,” “schizoid,” or “neurotic.” her connection of asperger’s to autism was based upon similarity of symptoms described by asperger to kanner’s autism, such as the inability to understand that others have beliefs that are different from their own. these neurologically based deficits prevent normal social intercourse, including the ability of the children to engage in joint fantasy or to empathize with the feelings of others. the significance of the connection to autism is the shift to what kanner (1943) called an “innate” disorder with the suggestion of genetic transmittal within families. for the first time in 1994, and then in a revision of 2000, the american psychiatric association in its influential diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (dsm-iv-tr) listed “asperger’s disorder” (299.80) as a distinct condition (klin 2003, 106-7). the primary features, according to the manual, were “severe and sustained impairment in social interaction and the development of restricted, repetitive patterns of behavior, interests, and activities” (american psychiatric association 2000, 80). the stated contrast to “autistic disorder” was the absence of “clinically significant delays or deviance in language acquisition … and spontaneous communicative phrases” (american psychiatric association 2000, 82). no mention was made of a propensity to violence; in fact, the concern in the manual for asperger’s patients was the experience of “victimization by others” (american psychiatric association 2000, 82). although the dsm-iv-tr noted occasional associations with depressive disorders, more frequent was a prior diagnosis of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (adhd, estimated to affect 3 to 7 percent of all school-age children). as with asperger’s, adhd primarily affects boys, according to the manual, ranging from ratios as high as 9 to 1 (asperger’s is 5:1). dsm-5, released in 2013, however, eliminated asperger’s as a distinct condition and placed its symptoms under a broad category of “autism spectrum disorder” (american psychiatric association 2000, 50-59). placement of asperger’s syndrome or disorder on the autism spectrum by medical authorities has been disputed, primarily on the bases of the refocusing of asperger’s as a communication disorder rather than a neurological or learning characteristic. some critics who view the autism spectrum as a social construction worry that psychiatrists have broadened the population of individuals as patients who are at the high functioning end. the diagnosis on the autism spectrum, according to this view, will stigmatize these persons and potentially concentrate cfr_2014.indb 37 11/20/14 1:07 pm “the shooter has asperger’s” bronner 38 treatment on communication rather than intellectual and social issues. another argument against the elimination of asperger’s syndrome as a separate category is a cultural defense. one report from the college of william and mary, for example, points out that “many also see the asperger’s diagnosis as part of their identity, especially those who have lived with the label for many years. by grouping all spectrum individuals together, they fear they will lose this, as they will not be able to relate or identify with a majority of their autistic peers under the new criteria” (disability services 2014). this identity for many individuals diagnosed with asperger’s is the “aspies” who view themselves positively as “neuro-diverse” with creative, intellectual, and occupational assets (robison 2007). they often express asperger’s as a value of being different that they do not want to change (robison 2012). as a group whose members often communicate with one another in listservs, online networks, and special groups (including camps), aspies nonetheless worry about being misunderstood, and feared, as diseased, incapable of social relationships, and dangerously violent (robison 2012). although aspies increasingly advocate for themselves, they are aware that asperger’s has become a folk term with negative connotations in popular culture and folklore (robison 2012; seventhvoice 2013). in the psychiatric community, the issue of communication skills apparently was a key in the decision to eliminate asperger’s from dsm-5. the manual stated that “individuals who have marked deficits in social communication, but whose symptoms do not otherwise meet criteria for autism spectrum disorder, should be evaluated for social (pragmatic) disorder” (american psychiatric association 2013, 51). apparently responding to criticism of cultural standards for social communication, especially in narrative competency, the dsm-5 noted culture and gender-based diagnostic issues. acknowledging that “cultural differences will exist in norms for social interaction, nonverbal communication, and relationships” (and therefore the perception of maladjustment), the manual insisted nonetheless that “individuals with autism spectrum disorder are markedly impaired against the norms for their cultural context” (american psychiatric association, 57; emphasis added). it hypothesized, for example, the lateor under-diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder among african american children. still finding more males with the disorder, the manual considered the possibility that girls might be left undiagnosed because of “subtler manifestation of social and communication difficulties” (american psychiatric association 2013, 57). another factor in the elimination of asperger’s from dsm-5 was the concern of overgeneralizing behavioral difference into a definite pathology. as one writer who self-identified as an aspie reported in response to the newtown shooting, “if you meet somebody with asperger’s, you’ve only met one person with asperger’s. asperger’s is a blip on the far-reaching autism spectrum and no two cases are the same. just as no ‘typical’ person deserves to be tar-brushed with the evil acts of another, aspies don’t deserve the bad press they’re getting” (inquisitr 2004). parents in a support group i attended for caregivers for youth diagnosed with asperger’s often uttered the statement “if you’ve seen one aspie, you’ve seen one aspie” as proverbial wisdom, and i heard this saying in conversation with parents of aspies elsewhere (lovett 2005, 29-30; snowy owl 2005; szalavitz 2009). it cfr_2014.indb 38 11/20/14 1:07 pm bronner “the shooter has asperger’s” 39 counters the adage “seen one, seen them all,” which suggests that characteristics of an individual or thing repeated in other instances, and therefore do not have to be witnessed (ammer 2013, 393; mikkelson and mikkelson 2006; shapiro 2006, 11). despite the cautionary message in the folklore of aspies about overgeneralizing and pathologizing non-conforming behavior, the term “autistic” has emerged in popular parlance to refer to someone socially disconnected or annoying, showing up in middle-school slang, so my children tell me, apparently to replace playground use of “spastic” and “retard” which has become repressed or obsolete. according to dsm-5, autism and autism spectrum disorder are general terms for disorders of brain development (autism first appears as a separate condition in dsm-iii in 1980; in dsm-ii, schizophrenics could be identified by “autistic, atypical and withdrawn behavior” and autism is totally absent in dsm-i published in 1952). in that sense, such disorders are neurological rather than psychological conditions, although diagnosis is based upon a checklist of manifest behaviors, not on a physiological examination. if it is physiological, skeptics have questioned why so many more children are being diagnosed as autistic in the twenty-first century. as of 2008, about 1 in 88 children were identified with an autism spectrum disorder and boys (1 in 54) are 5 times more likely to be diagnosed with autism than girls (1 in 252). in 2002, the number was 1 in 150, or 23 percent lower. medical sources note the difficulty of an exact count of individuals with asperger’s syndrome, but most sources cite an incidence between 1 in 250 to 500 persons (stanford 2003, 33-34). that suggests the syndrome to be more common than childhood cancer, muscular dystrophy, or cerebral palsy (bashe and kirby 2010, 18). other estimates run between 2 to 7 per 1,000, still a small segment of the population (baio 2014; kuehn 2007). even if asperger’s is no longer in the dsm, it is getting more attention in popular culture with characters on twenty-first century television shows such as “the bridge” (2013-2014), “parenthood” (2010-2014), “glee” (2011), “grey’s anatomy” (2008-2009), and “sherlock” (2012-2013). others such as sheldon cooper on “big bang theory” (premiering 2007) while not identified as having asperger’s, are popularly associated with its characteristics (learningneverstops 2012). indeed, showing the rise of asperger’s awareness in public consciousness, press reports refer to cooper as the first, and most popular, situation comedy character with asperger’s (collins 2010). the trend to depict modern-day “oddball” characters having asperger’s on television and movies raises speculation whether asperger’s cases are more prevalent in the twenty-first century because of conditions of modern society and environment, including linkages made by commentators to various children’s vaccines, drugs (acetaminophen is frequently mentioned), and high-gluten and fast-food diets, or the tendency to diagnose autism more for behavior that some would call characteristic of children or particularly boys (park 2011). in january 2014, a folkloric event occurred when jenny mccarthy, host of the popular television show “the view,” angrily answered rumors that her elevenyear-old son evan was misdiagnosed with asperger’s syndrome or autism. the story was connected apparently with mccarthy’s outspoken criticism of childhood vaccinations such as the measles, mumps and rubella shot (mmr) cfr_2014.indb 39 11/20/14 1:07 pm “the shooter has asperger’s” bronner 40 being responsible for the rise in autism rates (vultaggio 2014). she also claimed to have cured her son of autism through a gluten and dairy free diet and vitamin regimen she developed from social connections (mccarthy 2008). many postings on social media concerning the rumor referred to her questionable parenting as a single mother who served as a model for playboy magazine (johnson 2014). one comment, for example, was that “jenny mccarthy’s son might grow up to be surprisingly levelheaded, which would be a miracle considering his parentage” (nguyen 2014). the comment arose in mccarthy’s public statements on her difficulty of controlling her autistic son, who often reported his mother to the police. on her xm radio show, “dirty, sexy, funny” she broadcast this anecdote: “he [her son evan] called 911 and said, ‘i am alone in the house. my mom abandoned me. i go back in the house and it’s 911 and they’re like, ‘your child just called. is there an emergency?’ i’m like, ‘what? no! everything is fine.” (nguyen 2014). critics use this narrative to question whether she has an active boy rather than someone with a neurodevelopmental disorder (celebitchy 2014; see also gnaulati 2013). even hans asperger in 1943 wondered if the condition he was observing might be, in his words, “an extreme variant of male intelligence, of the male character,” which appeared increasingly out of place in a feminizing or domesticating society. in other words, he opened for comment that the syndrome he observed was a case of “boys will be boys,” which with euro-american modernization appeared abnormal. british psychologist simon baron-cohen hypothesized that autism in boys might be overdiagnosed to control male behavior in a feminizing society, but saw truth to the idea that autistic behavior is related to what he called an “extreme male brain,” which presumes differences between typical men’s and women’s brains (2004). another connection to masculinity as a problem in cases of autism is in genetics. research has been undertaken to investigate a folk belief that violent and criminal behavior can be explained with a chromosomal deviation. the investigation hinges on an additional y sex chromosome attached to the normal xy pairing in males, a rare condition estimated to affect 1 to 1.5 per 10,000 live births (cashion and roden 2011). in an attempt to explain severe temper tantrums and violent tendencies biologically, questions have been raised by popular writers as to whether patients diagnosed with asperger’s have this configuration (miedzian 2002, 70-71). another line of biological investigation that responds to folk psychology questions the role of parents rather than environment and more often than not, the research subject is the mother. one proposed explanation for the rise of autism diagnoses, for example, is the increased number of pregnancies by women over the age of 40 (moisse 2010). although an epidemiological study published in 2010 confirmed a 51 percent higher risk for mothers over 40 compared to women 25 to 29, it did not dig down specifically to asperger’s syndrome (moisse 2010). one study in 2012 that specifically concerned maternal connections to asperger’s children used crowd-sourced data to suggest that women who have a history of bipolar disorder or depression are more likely to have a child with asperger’s syndrome than classic autism (wright 2012). the scientific evidence is growing for biological factors contributing to asperger’s characteristics in children, and even cfr_2014.indb 40 11/20/14 1:07 pm bronner “the shooter has asperger’s” 41 before these studies became publicized, cultural representations of youth with asperger’s often pinned blame following folk psychology on a single, inattentive, or depressed mother. school shootings and the folk psychology of asperger’s syndrome why is the tragedy of, and the discourse that followed, the sandy hook shooting significant toward a modern conceptualization of folk psychology? the answer lies in the projection of anxiety about independent children and their parenting onto narratives of mental derangement in public space. here are the facts. around 9:30 a.m. on december 14, 2012, 20-year-old adam lanza, armed with guns and ammunition, entered sandy hook elementary school in newtown, connecticut, and proceeded to fatally shoot twenty children and six adult staff members. as first responders arrived twenty minutes later, lanza took his own life with one of the three guns he brought into the school. one of those responders was also newtown bee associate editor shannon hicks, who sent out the first photographs over ap wires of police and teachers leading children away from the school. national news agencies rushed to the scene and 24-hour news networks cut into programming to give live coverage. confusion existed about the identity of the shooter and in the rush to report the news, national outlets such as abc and cnn mistakenly reported that the shooter was adam’s brother ryan and that his mother was a kindergarten teacher at the school who was found dead inside. abc news talked to neighbors who described adam lanza as “odd” and displaying characteristics associated with mental illness. an ap story on december 17 quoted a high school technology club adviser who claimed that lanza, who was a member, had a “rare condition in which he couldn’t feel pain.” although ‘congenital insensitivity to pain’ (cip), a neuropathic disorder, is associated with self-inflicted injuries, press informants interpreted this report as pointing to asperger’s syndrome (wagner 2012; see also magee 1963)). the new york times in its cover story the next day was more specific: “some former classmates said they had been told that mr. lanza had asperger’s syndrome which is considered a highfunctioning form of autism” (flegenheimer and somaiya 2012). other reports collected from classmates, counselors, and teachers claimed the shooter had sensory integration disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, a developmental disability, or autism generally, but the rumor that lanza had asperger’s had the most traction in print, television talk shows, and social media, despite the declaration by h. wayne carver ii, the state’s chief medical examiner, that asperger’s is not associated with violent behavior and his dismissal of asperger’s as a reason for lanza’s rampage (owens 2012; see also nano 2012). although carver reported looking for identifiable diseases associated with lanza’s violent action, he told the press that asperger’s “is simply not on the menu, in terms of what is wrong with this kid. asperger’s is not associated with behavior patterns that are violent” (owens 2012). the state’s attorney’s report issued almost a year after the shooting refers to a diagnosis in 2005 of “asperger’s disorder” related to “significant social impairments and extreme anxiety.” it added that he “lacked empathy and had very rigid thought processes. he had a literal cfr_2014.indb 41 11/20/14 1:07 pm “the shooter has asperger’s” bronner 42 interpretation of written and verbal material. in the school setting, the shooter had extreme anxiety and discomfort with changes, noise, and physical contact with others.” he did not have a learning disability and tested with an overall iq in the average range. the report related his asperger’s characteristics along with obsessive compulsive disorder (ocd) concerns, emotional and/or pervasive developmental disorder (pdd) spectrum behaviors, and high level of anxiety to problems of school performance rather than violence. the report underscored that “those mental health professionals who saw him [lanza] did not see anything that would have predicted his future behavior” (sedensky 2013, 35). nonetheless, in the absence of a clear motivation for the killing spree, speculation spread about whether asperger’s explained his outburst of violence. and even though reports came out of his ocd and pdd spectrum behaviors, public commentary focused on labeling him with asperger’s (koplewicz 2012). on cnn the night of the shooting, piers morgan interviewed psychologist xavier amador, who told a nationwide audience that “a symptom of asperger’s, and this is one report coming out which may or may not be true, is something’s missing in the brain, the capacity for empathy, for social connection, which leaves the person suffering from this condition prone to serious depression and anxiety” (christopher 2012). on 60 minutes on december 16, lanza family friends mark and louise tambascio informed reporter scott pelley that adam’s mother told them he been diagnosed with asperger’s and she complained that it was a fulltime obligation to take care of him, made all the more difficult as a single mother (owens 2012). at the same time, fox news’s hannity presented dr. marc siegel, who told interviewers, “if he had something called asperger’s, he may have had ongoing meltdown.” his remark was countered by curtis brainard, who covers science journalism for the columbia journalism review: “there’s absolutely no association between autism and acts of premeditated violence, such as those that we saw in newtown” (garfield 2012). among adam lanza’s alleged symptoms was a lack of sociability and narrative competency. his high school latin teacher told a reporter that “he didn’t want to be around people.” “he had a great ‘latin mind,” she said, because the language is very structured. suggesting that he did not fit in because he was humorless, she told the interviewer, “the day he made his first joke, i almost cried.” the new york times reported that he was the butt of jokes, stating, “mr. lanza’s evident discomfort prompted giggles from those who did not understand him” (halbfinger 2012). but most quoted informants noted that he was not bullied or ridiculed. matt baier, a high school classmate, summarized: “from what i saw, people just let him be, and that was that.” others mentioned that he had a positive experience in his time at sandy hook; there appeared to be no reason for revenge. although he was described as a “shut-in,” classmates remembered a boy involved in outdoor activities of soccer and skateboarding in addition to playing video games and reading indoors (o’leary 2013; see also flegenheimer and somaiya 2012). classmates mentioned asperger’s in relation to his “flat affect.” “if you looked at him,” an unidentified classmate said, “you couldn’t see any emotions going through his head.” referring to cultural expectations of middle and high school, one classmate stated, “in high school, no one really takes the time to look and cfr_2014.indb 42 11/20/14 1:07 pm bronner “the shooter has asperger’s” 43 think, ‘why is he acting this way?’” although he was reported talking about aliens and “blowing things up,” this was, according to a classmate, “the typical talk of prepubescent boys.” if classmates were aware of other social transitions such as his parents’ divorce, departure of his brother to new jersey, and withdrawal from his mother, pundits were not linking them to the newtown shooting as much as the attribution of asperger’s. in a kind of confirming narrative coda common in legends, classmates pointed out that he was smart, having been placed in honors classes, lending credence to the belief that children with asperger’s, while not socially adept, were savants, or in the vernacular, geeks. in an unconfirmed story, a supposed friend of adam’s claimed that his mother’s threat to have adam committed to an institution triggered the violent rampage. another blame-themother narrative claimed that his mother’s obsession with guns influenced young adam (halbfinger 2012). adam’s estranged father peter lanza in various interviews tried to answer public association of his son’s violence with asperger’s by stating that it was a name for adam’s quirky ways but he never thought of it as a condition leading to violence. for his father, adam was a “normal little weird kid” who enjoyed his time as a student at sandy hook elementary school (ellis 2014). the connection made in the press and on the street in lanza’s case between mass murder and asperger’s syndrome came on the heels of a mass shooting inside a movie theater in aurora, colorado, on july 20, 2012. attorneys for james eagan holmes, who was arrested for the crime, entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity but did not disclose the nature of the suspect’s mental illness. nonetheless, on msnbc, joe scarborough caused a row by stating that after he heard the news of the shooting, “i knew it was a young, white male, probably from an affluent neighborhood, disconnected from society, it happens time and time again. most of it has to do with mental health. you have these people that are somewhere, i believe, probably on the autism scale.” although he admitted that he did not know “the specifics about this young man,” he generalized that “we see too many shooters bearing the same characteristics mentally” (joe scarborough 2012). scarborough was skewered by the mental health community for his comments. in response, he issued a statement revealing that he had a son with asperger’s syndrome and claimed that his comments about the aurora shooting were in the context of advocating for stronger support systems for youth with autism. he referred to the “growing autism epidemic” that is, in his words, “a tremendous burden for children, parents and loved ones to endure” (zakarin 2012). the belief that people with asperger’s syndrome are violent accelerated when police identified 22-year-old eliot rodger for a killing spree of students in isla vista, california, near the campus of the university of california, santa barbara, on may 23, 2014. although rodger had not been officially diagnosed with asperger’s syndrome, deborah smith, the principal of a high school he attended, told the new york times that he displayed “classic symptoms of asperger’s syndrome: he was socially awkward, had trouble making eye contact and was very withdrawn, if very smart” (nagourney, cieply, feuer, and lovett 2014). on twitter, hundreds of tweets attributing his violence to asperger’s appeared with the hashtag #aspergers with the suggestion that the condition, like a hidden virus, is dangerous because cfr_2014.indb 43 11/20/14 1:07 pm “the shooter has asperger’s” bronner 44 people who have it blend into society until a violent “meltdown” occurs. the implication was that contemporary society was too tolerant of the mainstreaming of persons with mental illness. another connotation was that asperger’s was a virulent illness that many “geeks,” “gamers,” and loners possess (roberson 2014). nichi hodgson answered these knee-jerk responses with the complaint that variations on the belief “the dude has asperger’s” is a “mawkish non-sequitur that quickly closes down any further interrogation of the reasons for his actions, and the notion of personal agency” (hodgson 2014). moreover, the label of asperger’s stigmatizes and pathologizes anyone who seems odd, idiosyncratic, or iconoclastic in a mass society. rodger had misogynist feelings of vengeance against women that he expressed in a youtube video and a long manuscript, but these sentiments are not part of the criteria of asperger’s (hodgson 2014). voicing the attribution in social media, however, offers a physically evident trigger in the absence of a rational motive. the tweets could be interpreted as folk beliefs to fill in details not available in official reports. those beliefs not only express post-modern fears of being surprised by violent perpetrators in a world of strangers in which individuals’ identities and mental states are not manifest, but also indicate the charge of mental instability in a child as a function of poor parenting. in a narrative that extends from the underlying anxiety about proper child-rearing, youth are most susceptible to coming-of-age stress in which students are pressured to conform by totalizing institutions that have a role of in loco parentis. according to this scenario, violent retribution is the tragic, sociopathic outcome of pent-up frustrations that the disease channels abnormally. the santa barbara county sheriff bill brown, for example, said in an interview on the cbs program “face the nation” that rodger had been able to “fly under the radar” and conceal his mental instability. “it’s very apparent,” brown said, “that he was able to convince many people for many years that didn’t have this deep, underlying mental illness that also manifested itself in this terrible tragedy” (gazzar 2014; see also inquisitr 2014). of folkloristic interest, commentators on mass shootings frequently reflected on a central trait by shooters of blurring the lines between fantasy and reality in addition to play and violence, in key cultural practices such as game playing, music fandom, and movie watching. despite the recognition of living in an individualistic society that with consumer technology makes it easier to engage in activities alone, commentators consistently mentioned the trait of being a “loner” as a sign of maladjustment. further, this social “disability” became a problem supposedly in not being able to recognize a culturally formed frame of play that might contain violent elements. of special concern to commentators was the relation of secluded individuals to technology when engaged in video games with violent content and disembodied messaging through social media and texting. commenting on an inventory of adam lanza’s possessions three and a half months after the shooting, for example, the new york times stated that “he had cocooned himself in front of electronic game consoles in the basement of their home, playing warfare games.” noting that information on the lives of the family to date has yielded little insight, the article viewed the contents as affording a “fuller picture of the dark corners of mr. lanza’s mind.” among the cfr_2014.indb 44 11/20/14 1:07 pm bronner “the shooter has asperger’s” 45 items were books connected to autism. the christian science monitor viewed the content as revealing “a troubled young man who clipped newspaper articles about school shootings and played hour upon hour of violent video games” (kleinfield, rivera, and kovaleski 2013). he reportedly had aspirations to become a marine and participated in gun play, which the press interpreted as an oddity for a boy (scherer and khadaroo 2013). beliefs in a direct link between autism and violence also had come out in the case of 22-year-old jared lee loughner, convicted of killing six and injuring thirteen people in a shooting attack in 2011 at a public meeting at a safeway supermarket north of tucson, arizona. medical evaluations diagnosed him as a paranoid schizophrenic, but psychologists speculated to the media that he had “autism or other mental illnesses.” according to cnn, he “creeped out classmates and teachers with his odd behavior” (fantz and grinberg 2011). the new york times, however, reported that “several of jared’s friends said he used marijuana, mushrooms and especially, the hallucinogenic herb called salvia divinorum … none of this necessarily distinguished him from his high school buddies. several of them dabbled in drugs, played computer games like world of warcraft and diablo and went through goth and alternative phases” (barry 2011: 16). the report quoted teachers who noted his sudden outbursts in class and asking incoherent questions. wrongplanet, the primary discussion forum for autism, featured a thread, “jared loughner is an aspie?” zen wrote “what annoys me is that every time some nutcase goes on a shooting spree, the media is all, ‘he was a loner, quiet, kept to himself, didn’t have many friends …’ no wonder we have it rough.” in response, jared guinther wrote, “i wouldn’t doubt that he is an aspie, but i think he has a severe mental illness.” the distinction here is that despite popular perception of asperger’s as a mental illness, aspies refer to medical literature asserting that it is a developmental disability and neurological condition. indeed, they commonly refer to themselves positively as “neuro-diverse” in contrast to “neuro-typical” society, and do not look to get “cured” or “fixed” (jared loughner 2011; scally 2008). before the newtown, aurora, and santa barbara shootings, i wrote that expressive culture suggests an american folk psychology in which youth violence represents a failure of individual responsibility and public morality (bronner 2011). for example, “classic” twentieth-century teen legends such as “the roommate’s death” and the “boyfriend’s death” portray youth as victims by crazed or insane killers, presumably adults, but in the school-shooting discourse of the twentyfirst century, apparently ordinary youth whose problems go unnoticed lash out at children unreasonably and tragically, either because of a difficult family life, strange habits or clique, or bullying by peers. nonetheless, the assumption is that they were lost socially and emotionally in mass society. when their secret “disease” is revealed, lines that were thought to be clear on what is normal and what is not are questioned, often with a reference to modern self-indulgence and lack of parental or institutional control. another boundary that gets questioned is the division between play and reality, especially one involving violence in games and other forms of fantasy entertainment. a status anxiety becomes apparent in the role of individuals who in an open, inclusive society navigate on their own, cfr_2014.indb 45 11/20/14 1:07 pm “the shooter has asperger’s” bronner 46 rather than with the support of familiar community structures such as family, religion, and school. in the absence of direct motives for an act of violence, an undetected disease of the mind, much like a virus without symptoms, is blamed for driving a lost, unguided individual to disaster. the folk idea of the individual ill-equipped to navigate modern social worlds often leads to parables of experience, in the form of wild and diabolical child narratives, frequently with the implication that parents have lost control of their children in modern society and do not pass ethical values and discipline associated with a secure, community-based past to their children. aware of the predominance of these narratives in society, aspies counter with stories of successful, admired historical figures such as albert einstein, isaac newton, or andy warhol, who supposedly had asperger’s characteristics of asocial and repetitive behavior. this is not to say that there are not individuals who have violent tendencies, but my point is that the association of school shootings with an autism epidemic embedded in statements claiming a duplicated pattern or plot has a core of unsubstantiated belief that potentially projects anxieties of enfeebled masculinity, absent parenting, and massification in modern society. the belief especially relates to incidents in public space, which act as microcosms of a bureaucratized, impersonal culture in which traditional activities of childhood are no longer controlled by communities and parents. the discourse is indicative of the uncertainty of post-modern boundaries between normal and abnormal in which traditional control of youth from generation to generation appears in decline and communities vie with institutions for moral hegemony over public space. lorna wing, who is often credited with popularizing asperger’s syndrome, resorts to folklore to epitomize the dilemma of asperger’s as a negative disorder or positive condition. she tells the story of brother juniper, called the “jester of the lord,” who was one of the original followers of st. francis of assisi. a persistent legend is his service for a feeble poor man who longed for a meal of pig’s feet. capturing a pig in a nearby field, he cut off a foot and cooked the meal for the man. trouble was that the pig’s owner came to st. francis in great wrath about the slaughter of his pig. st. francis reproached juniper and ordered him to make amends. juniper did go to him but retold the tale of the pig’s foot as though he had done the man a favor. the owner then gave juniper the rest of the pig for the sake of charity. her point is that the asperger’s youth is often unconventional and literal, and this can get him into trouble, but the outcomes are usually noble. but in contemporary discourse, the more frequent legendary reference with questioning of the child’s ability to discern between fantasy and reality is likely to be stories of the autistic child who, alone at home, tells his returning parent that he caught a “troll” (emery 2012; mace 2010). raising narrative questions about possible symbolic equivalents of the earlier circulating story of the choking doberman who eats the fingers of a thief who hides in a closet, the troll is found to be suffering in the “shut-in” closet. he had been a delivery person or leafletter who had come to the door. on snopes.com, the earliest version dates to 2009 and two others from 2010 are reported, all from the united states (mikkelson 2013). a key element of the narrative is that the child is left unsupervised, or lacking parenting, at home. folklorists might recognize other connections cfr_2014.indb 46 11/20/14 1:07 pm bronner “the shooter has asperger’s” 47 to stories circulating in the early twenty-first century of a developmentally or mentally challenged child who, left on his own, brings a penguin home from the zoo, thinking the animal is there for the taking, and a small child mistaken for a gnome by drug-tripping young adults. whereas earlier collected narratives mention a child with down’s syndrome, later ones replace this with asperger’s or mention a “mentally ill” child. the legend invites commentary on the literalness of the asperger’s child, and in the case of the latter, a connotation of adults as irresponsible guardians or representatives of an addled popular culture, who have a mistaken folk perception of the asperger’s child. the uncontrollable or “wild” child and its symbolic equivalence with animals has been the subject of numerous narratives since the eighteenth century and as late as 2008, often focusing on the consequences of isolation from humans by small children. popular psychologist bruno bettelheim may have had an influence on the connection of autism in legends of feral children to autism with his famous essay in 1959, “feral children and autistic children,” in which he suggested that reports of the feral children were more likely descriptions of autistic children rather than infants raised by non-humans. he hypothesized, however, that ultimately, the stories point out the problem of “extreme emotional deprivation” for abnormal children. although he does not say so, his thesis raises the possibility that the popularity of the animal-parented story, even if the raising by animals is untrue, could be a projection of a belief that the rambunctiousness of some children, especially boys who resist “domestication,” owes to poor or singlemother parenting characteristic of a modernizing society. folklorist michael carroll observes that the “animal-parented stories,” typically with male children suckled by a female parent, demonstrate that a female animal in the absence of a male produces an autistic or defective human being and this view is inherent in a folk psychology of the “normal” family. his conclusion is that sons who “fail to repress their oedipal desires would suffer disasterous [sic] consequences” (1984: 81). yet an added trope is apparent in the discourse of the allegedly autistic shooter in modern america. the son has withdrawn from both mother and father, not embraced the mother, and displaced them with popular culture, which he cannot relegate to its proper place of fantasy as normal children can. rather than being guided by culture, he is trapped in it, and unable to rely on traditions to help him perceive how to act properly, i.e., sedately. in saying he is autistic, narrators are projecting an attitude that the child was like anyone else but was not able to process the meaning of masculine entertainment. violence, even if out of character, expresses in narrative the adult fear that the child is retrieving the male warrior ideal that eliminates the sign of mainstream society — its institutionalized children doing what they are supposed to do. in this folk logic, the boy, who was confused about what a modern man should do, becomes primal or feral and exerts revenge on other children as representatives of childhood and the institutions that could not help him. the task, then, is not just to incarcerate him as a criminal but to figure out what his frame of mind is, and by extension, examine the vulnerability of the cultural frame that surrounds neuro-typical society. the discourse of the sandy hook, aurora, and santa barbara shootings reveals a folk psychology, especially pervasive in america, that the ultimate explanation of mass cfr_2014.indb 47 11/20/14 1:07 pm “the shooter has asperger’s” bronner 48 violence, and the uncontrollable boy, is an invisible internal ailment that points away from possible external cultural factors that would make adults culpable. acknowledgements this article is a revised version of a paper delivered at the american folklore society annual meeting, providence, rhode island, october 2013, in a panel on “children’s folklore in the 21st century: folklorists of childhood respond to the newtown tragedy,” chaired by elizabeth tucker. i am grateful to her and to trevor blank for encouraging this research. i owe many children and their parents willing to talk about purported asperger’s characteristics, and i especially benefited over the years from conversations about asperger’s syndrome with folklorist patricia turner. i also appreciate correspondence with june factor and june mckinty in australia and william hansen in the united states about a global view of american school shootings and wild-child narratives. and hardly a paper is written at my desk that i do not owe some intellectual debt to jay mechling, who always graciously provides keen insights for me to consider. works cited american psychiatric association. 2000. diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders, fourth edition, text revision. washington, dc: american psychiatric association. ________. 2013. diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders, fifth edition. washington, dc: american 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http://www.ibtimes.com/jenny-mccarthy-autism-vaccinesformer-playboy-star-slams-rumors-about-autistic-son-evan-1526750. wagner, david. 2012. what does it mean that adam lanza might not have been able to feel pain? the wire (december 17). http://www.theatlanticwire. com/national/2012/12/what-does-it-mean-adam-lanza-might-not-have-beenable-feel-pain/60062. cfr_2014.indb 52 11/20/14 1:07 pm bronner “the shooter has asperger’s” 53 wing, lorna. 1981. asperger’s syndrome: a clinical account. psychological medicine 11: 115-29. ________. 1998. the history of asperger syndrome. in asperger syuncrome or high-functioning autism?, ed. eric schopler, gary b. mesibov, linda j. kunce, 11-28. new york: plenum. wright, jessica. 2012. clinical research: maternal depression linked to mild autism. sfari: simons foundation autism research initiative (october 16). http://sfari.org/news-and-opinion/in-brief/2012/clinical-research-maternaldepression-linked-to-mild-autism. zakarin, jordan. 2012. joe scarborough apologizes for making autism link to james holmes, alleged aurora shooter. hollywood reporter (july 24). http:// www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/joe-scarborough-apologizes-autismjames-holmes-shooting-353595. cfr_2014.indb 53 11/20/14 1:07 pm 55 children’s folklore section: 2013 annual meeting providence, rhode island, october 17, 2013 announcements: the children’s folklore section will be utilizing the new tools of the afsnet.org website to communicate with its large membership. there is also a new facebook account at https://www.facebook.com/childrensfolklore, and shortly a new twitter account will be formed to have a more active and open forum of communication. volume 35 of the children’s folklore review was published, thanks to the editorship of dr. elizabeth tucker of binghamton university. this was dr. tucker’s final year of sole editorship and will be aided next year by dr. trevor blank of suny-potsdam. this year’s publication was a collection of past newell prize winners and focused on lds (mormon) children’s lore with a special introduction by dr. tom mould of elon university. attendance: sixteen members were in attendance, including trevor j. blank, brooke bryan, brant ellsworth, spencer green, kristin josvoll, denise mccormack, jodi mcdavid, jay mechling, semontee mitra, priscilla ord, randall parsons, jared rife, kate schramm, steve stanzak, libby tucker, and kristiana willsey. many others were unable to attend due to other section responsibilities. convener: jared rife opened the meeting with a brief introduction from present members of everyone and how long they have been involved with the children’s folklore section. there were numerous veterans as well as first-time attendees. secretary pro tem: kate schramm volunteered to take minutes for priscilla. treasurer: priscilla reported on the status of the section’s finances. the section has a total of $4,280.50 in its afs account. expenses for the past year were $600 for newell prizes, $400 for opie prizes, and $94.50 for the afs administration fee. revenue for the past year was $895.50. figures for the three endowment funds had not been provided by afs at the time of the annual meeting. these will be added to the final report when they become available. editor: libby tucker announced that trevor j. blank will be the new editor for the children’s folklore review (cfr). this will be a transitional year, with binghamton university helping to fund the cfr. the next issue, soon to be out, will be on mormon children’s folklore. priscilla, speaking as treasurer, noted that universities help pay for the journal through various forms of institutional support. many thanks go to binghamton university for its past and ongoing support. aesop committee: kevin cordi is stepping down as chair but has asked to remain on the committee. anne marie krause will be new chair of the committee. cfr_2014.indb 55 11/20/14 1:07 pm children’s folklore section: 2013 annual meeting 56 suzy grindrod will be staying on. jared rife nominated terell a. young to be the new member of the committee. the nomination was seconded by brant ellsworth, and the members voted to confirm the nomination. 2013 aesop prize ellis, deborah. looks like daylight. toronto: groundwood books, 2013. 2013 aesop accolades goldman, judy. whiskers, tails & wings: animal folktales from mexico. illustrated by fabricio vandenbroeck. watertown, ma: charlesbridge, 2013. parry, rosanne. written in stone. new york: random house, 2013. weulersse, odile. nasreddine. illustrated by rebecca dautremer. grand rapids, mi: eerdmans books for young readers, 2013. newell prize: this year’s winners are brant ellsworth, for “playing for change: the performative functions of children’s piano play,” and semontee mitra, for “children have their own world of being: an ethnography on children’s activities on the day of saraswati puja.” a new committee needed to be formed to judge and solicit both undergraduate and graduate papers for the newell prize. brant ellsworth, jodi mcdavid, and steve stanzak were nominated. a discussion of the newell prize criteria, length, and credentials of committee members followed. all nominated members were confirmed by unanimous vote; jodi mcdavid will serve as chair. opie prize: the opie prise will be awarded next year. the committee currently consists of john mcdowell and needs a new person to be on the committee with him. members will need to draw up a list of books, solicit copies, and read them. if eligible, one book list will be from beyond united states, and one book list will be from united states. new business: trevor j. blank gave a brief address as the new editor of cfr. discussion: jared opened the discussion concerning the quality and usefulness of the children’s folklore section website. further discussion ensued as to possibility of utilizing twitter or facebook to generate interest in the section although it is noted that this requires a commitment from a large group of people who make it work and requires participation. libby said that she started a facebook page for the english department at binghamton, and the six or seven co-administrators who run it is key. the website is deemed useful as a source for some information, such as information on the cfr and the aesop prize. in terms of the “best” place to share information (facebook, yahoo groups, etc), social media was pointed out as an effective means of sharing ephemeral children’s folklore to not only notify others while it is happening, but also to aggregate content and build a community of interest around it. by making folklore relevant to the shared material by framing it, cfr_2014.indb 56 11/20/14 1:07 pm children’s folklore section: 2013 annual meeting 57 that commentary in turn becomes part of the content aggregation. jodi mcdavid drew a parallel to what marc armitage is doing. another issue that was brought up was what we are doing to get professors and students to write/research/promote children’s folklore. a subcommittee on social media was proposed. randall parsons was confirmed as chair, and kristiana willsey is a member. jay mechling raised the issue of putting the cfr online, and discussion followed on the pros and cons of print versus digital journals. the possibility was raised for having short papers in the cfr, similar to western folklore’s “topics and comments,” to allow for the publication of good, short papers that may resemble edited conference proceedings with commentary published alongside them from several reviewers/commentators. jay mechling noted that previous issues of the children’s folklore newsletter had just such short articles published with commentary. additional discussion followed on how to solicit conference papers, promote the newell prize around various places, and increase visibility, from utilizing cfps like the unjournal, amazon ads, and printing t-shirts. kate schramm moved to adjourn the meeeting. spencer green seconded. respectfully submitted, kate schramm, secretary pro tem. addenda: as of august 31, 2013, although not reported until january 13, 2014, the section’s endowment funds gained 2% in the 2012-2013 fiscal year. their totals are life membership, $1,400; newell prize, $7,901; and opie prize, $2,928. respectfully submitted, priscilla a. ord, secretary/treasurer cfr_2014.indb 57 11/20/14 1:07 pm 59 notes and announcements newell prize the children’s folklore section of the american folklore society annually offers the william wells newell prize (which includes a cash award) for the best student essay on a topic in children’s folklore. students must submit their own papers, and published papers are eligible. instructors are asked to encourage students with eligible papers to enter the competition. papers must be double-spaced and submitted as a word document. on the first page, include the author’s name, academic address, home address, telephone numbers, and e-mail address. deadline for this coming year’s competition is september 30, 2015. please submit papers electronically to dr. jodi mcdavid, jodi_mcdavid@cbu.ca. book reviews children’s folklore review is seeking book review submissions for its next issue, to be published in october of 2015. this is an excellent opportunity for graduate students interested in building their writing credentials and demonstrating breadth in folklore, literature, and childhood studies. books are selected for review in children’s folklore review according to their relevance to the field of children’s folklore and their year of publication (within the past two years). if you would like to request a book for review, please contact the editor, trevor j. blank (blanktj@ potsdam.edu). book reviews should not exceed 1,000 words. cfr_2014.indb 59 11/20/14 1:07 pm 61 contributors simon j. bronner is distinguished professor of american studies and folklore and chair of the american studies program at penn state harrisburg. the author and editor of over thirty books, his most recent titles include campus traditions: folklore from the old-time college to the modern mega-university and explaining traditions: folk behavior in modern culture. formerly president of the children’s folklore section and the fellows of the american folklore society, he now serves as editor of the reference works youth cultures in america and encyclopedia of american studies. jeffrey howard received his m.a. in literature and writing from utah state university and is currently in the ph.d. program for english and the teaching of english at idaho state university. his areas of specialization include eighteenthcentury british literature, specifically the author samuel richardson and his novel clarissa, or the history of a young lady, and folklore, including children’s folklore, italian studies, and the supernatural. he has published in the american folklore society’s digest, and his current research deals with female trickster figures in the work of the early british novelists aphra behn, daniel defoe, and eliza haywood. elizabeth tucker, professor of english at binghamton university, is co-editor of children’s folklore review. she served twice as president of the children’s folklore section and is past president of the international society for contemporary legend research. her publications include campus legends: a handbook (2005), haunted halls: ghostlore of american college campuses (2007), children’s folklore: a handbook (2008), haunted southern tier (2011), and, with ellen mchale, new york state folklife reader: diverse voices (2013). cfr_2014.indb 61 11/20/14 1:07 pm cfr_14 covers_r2_prt cfr_2014_prt ocr document contents from the editor........................................................... 4 newell prize: 1991 "adolescent legend trips as teenage cultural response: a study of lore in context" patricia m. meley................................................. 5 international perspectives "strategy in counting-out: evidence from saint-nazaire, france" andy arleo ............................................................. 25 "the concept 'toy' and cultural research" bo lonnqvist ........................................................... 31 cfs invited essay "books for children" edith fowke ........................................................... 39 notes and announcements ................................ 43 directory of members ........................................ 45 cover: this issue's cover is a photograph of a painting by madeleine carpentier entitzed "les chandelles." 1 life achievement award r.s.v.p. (202) 707-1616 2 the library of congress washington, d.c. 20540 the american folklife center and the children's folklore section of the american folklore society cordially invite you to a coffee honoring iona opie recipient of the children's folklore section's life achievement a ward friday, april 19, 1991 9 10:30 a.m. montpelier room james madison building the library of congress life achievement award left to right: c. w. sullivan iii, cfr editor; iona opie; priscilla ord, cfs immediate past president; alan jabbour, director of the american folklife center 3 from the editor. . . the highlight of the spring for me was traveling to washington, dc, and, with cfs immediate past president priscilla ord, presenting the children's folklore section's lifetime achievement award to iona opie at the american folklife center and, that evening, hearing her deliver the arbuthnot lecture. the face of the medal awarded to ms. opie was on the cover of the last cfr (13.2); a copy of the invitation to the award ceremony and a picture of us all there are included in this volume. the lead article in this issue is patricia m. meley's "adolescent legend trips as teenage cultural response: a study of lore in context," the 1991 newell prize paper. meley is a student of simon bronner's. in addition, this issue features articles from cfs members in countries other than the us. bo lonnqvist's "the concept of 'toy' and cultural research" is the final paper from the 1989 cfs panel at philadelphia (see 13.1 and 13.2 for the other papers). lonnqvist is a senior research associate for the state commission for humanistic research at the academy of finland. andy arleo's "strategy in countingout evidence from saint-nazaire, france" continues fieldwork begun for his 1982 doctoral dissertation. arleo is a folklorist at the institut universitaire de technologie de saint-nazaire and centre d'etudes metriques, universite de nantes. the third article, "books for children" by edith fowke, is the first cfs invited essay. at the 1990 cfs meeting, the executive board and the members present suggested that canadian folklore scholarship, and especially that of edith fowke, needed to be more widely recognized and asked her to review pertinent books (see 13.2 for her review of cosbey' s all in t ol!ether girls) and to write an essay about her own work. desktop publishing continues to have advantages. the photograph in this issue is more affordable than it would have been in a type-set publication. there are some inconveniences with desktop publishing, however. editors who once blamed the printer for errors now must deliver perfect camera-ready copy or take the blame themselves. in the last issue, armand szainer's name was misspelled. his design for and work on the cfs lifetime achievement medal were, in a large part, donated to us; and i apologize for the error. c. w. sullivan iii 4 adolescent legend trips as teenage cultural response: a study of lore in context patricia m. meley one warm evening in june 1989, jason, a fifteen-year-old boy who lived next door, called through my open window, "can i come in and smoke a cigarette?" i welcomed him in, and as he sprawled his six-foot frame across the couch, he began to earnestly relate an account of a "trip" he had taken. to hear him tell it, it was a journey that took him far in emotion if not in distance: we went, you know, because duane told us about it. there's this trailer where this guy shot his wife--shot her dead, y' know--she's gone-dead. and we stopped at this trailer and sat there and stared at it and we were all scared shitless. 'cause it's just this narrow dirt road; trees surround it. and we sat there and this blue light goes on in this abandoned trailer where this man killed his wife. and if we didn't get out of there like nothing--i mean, we were gone. and then this car, it's a one-way road, there's no way to get out on it, this car just turned out of nowhere. there's a cliff--you fall off, you die--turned out of nowhere, just nowhere. i will never go back. i was so scared, i didn't sleep. about two weeks later, while he was sitting outside waiting for a friend, jason's seventeen-year-old brother, paul, told me a brief, but equally strange tale: there's a crazy man back there. he catches you--he hangs you upside down and cuts your balls off. there's a light that comes on and if you stare at it, you will be blind. yeah, we go back there. we walked it--me and a bunch of my friends. the teenagers who related these accounts to me are not juvenile delinquents; they are not drug addicts or mentally disturbed. they are healthy adolescents, and the activity that they describe, the legend trip, takes place near their hometown of columbia, pennsylvania. it also happens in sites all over america. legend trip research is a relatively new field of inquiry in folklore. the attention of earlier collectors centered on the textual analysis of adolescent legends. recent trends in 5 meley contextual analysis have refocused the research on the performance of the legend. legend trip research has focused rather exclusively on the trip's function in the coming-of-age process of white, suburban, middle-class adolescents. yet there are indications that the legend trip is an urban phenomenon as well, and as my own study shows, the trip is a multi-racial experience.1 kenneth a. thigpen, jr.' s, "adolescent legends in brown county: a survey," published in 1971, is an early study of adolescent legends that comments on the link between the narrative legend and its performance--the legend trip. central to the ritual performance in thigpen's opinion is the trip's three part structure: the introduction, the enactment at the scene of the phenomenon, and the retrospective memorate. the introduction takes place before arrival at the legend trip site and "includes relating the past event and describing the current phenomenon" (204). the story is told by an experienced legend-tripper "in a manner that will heighten the anticipation of uninitiated and initiated alike, thus enhancing the receptive psychological state of all involved" (205). the second part, the ritual enactment at the scene, is considered by thigpen the "crucial" aspect of the trip. during this phase, teenagers "attempt to merge the supernatural realm described in the first part with reality" (205). the third and final aspect involves the telling and retelling of the event that the participants have experienced. these stories may in turn "be added to the basic legend complex to be told as the first part of the performance" (205). thigpen concludes that the legend trip's primary function is the introduction of the "uninitiated to the realm of the supernatural" (204). gary hall coined the term "legend trip" in his study, "the big tunnel." hall concentrates his discussion on the legend-telling aspect of the trip. the telling sets the scene for the trip. hall concludes that the legend trip's function is "primarily recreational" and sees the "willing suspension of disbelief' as a crucial element of the trip's success (256). similarly, william m. clements' investigation of another indiana legend trip in "the chain on the tombstone" concludes that the trips "provide a supernatural thrill as an escape from boredom" (264). an extensive survey is bill ellis' "legend-tripping in ohio: a behavioral study." ellis proposes that adolescent legend trips are in part a "ritual of rebellion" in which the participants escape the reality-based, moralistic, and authoritarian world of parents, school, and police (64). legend trip sites are often physically remote, and the trips ellis surveyed are opportunities for illegal activities like under-age drinking, taking drugs, vandalism, and illicit sexual behavior. the presence of these activities reinforces his thesis that the trips function as "deliberate escapes into altered states where conventional rules do not operate" (65). in addition, ellis 6 adolescent legend trips examines the trips as a way for teens to confront adolescent anxieties of mortality in psychologically safe ways. he concludes that the “trip. . . is from start to finish a way of 'giving the finger' to adult rationality;” (69). my study contributes to adolescent legend trip research because i worked with a single peer group over a six-month period; as a result, my fieldwork is an in-depth study of a normally closed folk group. i attempt to place my informants' experiences against the larger backdrop of legend trip scholarship in order to draw comparisons and identify characteristics of a ritualized adolescent activity. by concentrating on the context of this ritual and by focusing on the folk group and its use of culture, i have been able to interpret the trips with a sense of the subtleties and complexities the study of adolescence demands. i conducted my fieldwork in my hometown of columbia, a small, working-class town located in south central pennsylvania. columbia's position on the susquehanna river made it a natural gateway to the west, and early in the eighteenth century, a trio of english quakers established a ferry there. known as "wright's ferry," the settlement grew in prominence and was formally founded as the borough of columbia in 1788. reaching its zenith in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, columbia was a bustling center of river and railroad transportation, and home to many industries, including foundries, rolling mills, and lace mills.2 colombia has, throughout its history, stood in marked contrast to its neighboring towns. in a region best known for its german mennonite and amish groups, columbia's 10,000 residents are largely of german catholic and scots-irish ancestry. a democratic bastion in conservative, republican lancaster county, the industrial town lies among many agricultural communities. today, like many other small towns in america, columbia must combat the stagnation brought on by unemployment, population decline, and lack of morale. although columbia has been in slow decline over the past few decades, many older residents show a fierce pride and are quick to point out the town's advantages. colombians still sit "out front" on stoops and porches where they greet their neighbors by name, and the borough remains a relatively safe and appealing town in which to raise children. children still gather to play in neighborhood groups, and the town is virtually surrounded by the natural playgrounds provided by wooded lots, and the banks of streams and the susquehanna river. for adolescents, however, the community offers little entertainment and with many familiar, watchful eyes upon them, the town can seem repressive. teenagers in columbia complain of the lack of places to congregate and of the absence of youth-oriented activities. those that do exist are predictable or typically adult-run. during the winter months, social events tend to revolve around the school calendar and are most often limited to 7 meley weekends. high school sporting events are well-attended, and occasional school dances help break the monotony. teens go to one another's homes (especially if parents are away or working) to watch mtv, play video games, and party--drink beer and occasionally smoke marijuana. columbia has two video arcades where teenagers gather, "but you have to spend money or they throw you out." "going to the mall" (park city mall in lancaster) is a favorite cold weather pastime, but one that requires cash, typically in short supply among columbia's teens. in warm weather, columbia adolescents are out of doors as much as possible, away from adult eyes and interference. a local pizza parlor serves as a meeting-place, and the town's centrally located park is a favorite hangout. up and down columbia's "main drag," locust street, teenagers gather in small groups, though the local police's efforts to crack down on loitering and cruising has put a damper on the crowds. in the summer, the town boasts a drive-in theater which specializes in horror and adventure movies and is popular as a party spot rather than a "passion pit." "car parties," when teenagers drive to isolated country roads to drink, remain popular, as does cruising. it is during the summer months that legend trip activity is at a peak. it has been this way since at least 1965, the earliest date that i have been able to trace legend trip activity. although older columbians related stories of cruising and other automotive activities, it appears that the legend trip is, in columbia, a post-1950s teenage pastime. i interviewed forty-one teenagers from july 1989 to january 1990. my informants composed a loosely affiliated peer group, racially and sexually mixed. the teens ranged in age from thirteen to nineteen; all were raised in columbia and attended columbia high school. some were honor students, active in school activities such as sports and band; others were in trouble with parents, teachers, and the law. most of the teenagers were of german ancestry, but i also talked with black and hispanic teens. the majority of the teenagers were from lower-income families though at least two had professional parents. i was at first surprised at the diversity within the group; but in a school with a class size average of under eighty, everyone knows everyone else, and though cliques do exist, their boundaries are often blurred. my first interview occurred at marisa's sweet sixteen birthday party, held in her backyard in july, 1989. subsequent interviews took place in my home under a variety of circumstances: sometimes a lone teen, sometimes a group of twenty or more. often these interviews were spontaneous, for in the course of my research, my informants came to look upon me as a "big sister." that, coupled with the fact that winter arrived and my apartment was warm and dry, gave me a unique opportunity to get to know the teenagers well. although my original encounters with the teenagers were 8 adolescent legend trips focused on legend trips, the interviews were characteristically informal, and we quickly expanded the relationship to include discussions about school, teachers they hated, relationships with parents, and their current love interests. when a large group showed up, the quality of my research suffered, and the meeting would quickly deteriorate from an impromptu "bull session" to a loud, unmanageable gathering. i interviewed informants on many occasions under more advantageous conditions. they included jason, a fifteen-year-old boy who was ambivalent about school and had a strained relationship with his parents. jason's ultimate goal was to "get the hell out of this town." paul, jason's seventeen year-old half-brother, was a more dedicated student and was involved in high school activities, like the football team. paul was shyer than his exuberant younger brother, blushed easily, and often drove during the legend trips that the teens told me about. i had known both boys since they were toddlers, and for the last three years, they had been my neighbors. it was through jason and paul that i gained access to the peer group. the brothers served as a bridge between the various elements in the large peer group; jason's friends were the wild bunch, while paul's were more likely to maintain the status quo. la was a sixteen-year-old black girl, soft-spoken and mature. la was always matterof-fact in tone, even when she told me outrageous stories. she recently began vocational training in horticulture and was pleased that she only had to attend columbia high for half-days. i chose to concentrate on two of the five legend trips sites my informants described. known as "the wall" and "haug's road," the two spots were cited by virtually all informants as the most popular and will be discussed in detail. the minor sites surveyed included "toad road" in york county, pennsylvania. the site was identified by only three seventeen-year-old males who told me that they had gone there with "a bunch of older guys one night." according to several young men from columbia, the site was an especially popular one in the early 1980s, but has apparently passed out of vogue. the "gates of hell" are located on the road; teenagers foolish enough to enter the gates are never seen or heard from again. the other two legend trips identified by my informants are complex and deserve separate discussion. they are both "harassment trips," a type that ellis describes as a trip where the object is to torment or abuse an elderly, eccentric, or handicapped individual. the "midget house" was such a site. only about fifteen of the teenagers told me that they had been there; four of the girls who went insisted that they only accompanied their boyfriends and did not "get out of the car and knock on the windows." one sixteen-year-old male told me that his friend had "run over one [a midget] in a cornfield one night," but most of the teenagers told me they thought this type of trip was "stupid." jason asked, "why would i want to bother them? 9 meley they never did anything to me." another harassment trip site was at the house of "the troll," described as a "nut who will shoot you if you beep and holler." the site was known to virtually all of my informants because of the notoriety of an incident that occurred there in december of 1988 when ralph longenecker, "the troll," shot at a carload of teens and injured one boy. longenecker's story of years of harassment made the national press, and he was later acquitted of any wrongdoing. "the wall" is an early nineteenth-century graveyard on a lonely road on the outskirts of marietta, pennsylvania, another small town in lancaster county, located about twenty minutes away from downtown columbia. the cemetery is small, measuring about fifty feet by thirty-five feet, and is enclosed completely by a three foot high wall. a stone plaque on the wall reads, "within this god's acre rest the descendants of hans graft."3 columbia teenagers contend that the cemetery is guarded by indian ghosts who reside in the surrounding woods and cornfields. on nights with a full moon, or on any night at midnight (depending on the version), teenagers describe a ritual said to be performed at the site: "you walk around the wall seven times and spit, and you will die." other versions vary the ritual: some say you must walk the wall thirteen times, some eliminate the spitting, and some say that death is not immediate, but comes in the future without warning. the ritual of circumambulation, though important to the site, does not have to be performed in order to make the trip successfully scary. in fact, not one informant admitted to completing the trek; most vehemently stated that they never even tried. phil, fifteen, told me that he had heard of "a guy and some girl who walked it, and they disappeared; nobody ever found out what happened to them." some of the more adventurous teenagers reported acts of vandalism; tombstones were overturned and tossed around. most of the adolescents, however, are content to simply drive to the site, and they report strange sights and sounds. the wind is held responsible for many scary experiences; on an otherwise calm night, the legend trip site is described as being unnaturally windy. for instance, one teenager reported that "a gust of wind nearly pushed the car off the road." others claim to have had unexplainable car trouble and report that the car stalled repeatedly though "nothing was wrong with the engine, 'cause we checked." a group of teenagers referred to "the night we saw the gas cans," but when pressed for details, they could not tell me why the gas cans frightened them. la's account of a legend trip to the wall describes her first experience with legend-tripping: i went about two years ago, me, r.j., and mike. we weren't scared or 10 adolescent legend trips nothing. you know, we just wanted to go over there and see what was goin' on--see if it was scary or whatever. so we went over and as soon as we got to the road that it was on this big gush of wind pushed the car back--it was scary. we were really scared. we weren't even there yet. we didn't know where it was so . . . we seen it and, urn, we just like looked at it for a while and this wind was pushin' the car and stuff. "i don't know if you want to get out of the car" [they said] and this one guy got out of the car--r. j. got out. and he, you know, looked over it and stuff, you know, and, you know, he was scared. and they're like, "walk around it seven times." he never did. we just--the car stalled right in front of it--it was wild. la's trip to the wall was typical in many ways. like many teens, she describes the unnatural wind and unexplainable car trouble, which, she told me later, continued to plague them until they were back in columbia. none of the participants attempted to walk on the wall, although all three were aware of the existence of the ritual. the trip was typical, too, in that it included both male and female teenagers, though the group of three was relatively small. larger trips to the wall were more common, like the one related to me by paul, seventeen, and his eighteen-year-old friend: b: yeah, we go over there all the time. the last time was great. it was paul and phil and helen. . . we had a whole carload of people. p: was that the time we thought we saw the gas can people? i was driving, yeah. and we pulled in real close to the wall. and, uh b: tara was there, too, 'cause she got out. p: oh, we were in the "big boat," weren't we? we had about ten people in there. everybody was carrying on and shit. did i get out that time? they paid me money to go 'cause i needed the gas money. it was after a football game. i was driving my dad's car. b: the car was slidin'. and you kept puttin' that back thing down. p: yeah, the back window, and i got real close. and the girls were all screaming. i picked a tombstone up. we were driving away, and i like, i don't know, but you b: we saw those gas cans p: i don't know why we got scared, but the girls were sure screamin'. it was cool. like most of the trips related to me by older teens, paul and his buddy stressed the social aspects of the trip. the gang had piled into his father's station wagon after the friday night football game, and paul described it for me as a celebratory occasion, with "everybody carrying on." larger trips 11 meley taken by older teenagers are related in an upbeat, joking tone. the teenagers are less serious in tone about the supernatural phenomenon and less emphatic about the details of the trip-who was there, what was seen, and how they were scared. "haug's road" is the second trip surveyed, and it has a more complex legend cycle, with significant discrepancies among stories collected. the winding, partially paved road in york county, pennsylvania, was for years the site of a harassment trip. haug's road was home to "an albino hermit who lived in a shack"; the site was popular among columbia teens at least as far back as 1971.4 as a teenager, i vividly remember trips to haug's road. my first legend trip was in the summer of 1977, when i was fifteen years old. four friends and i rode in the back of my brother's pick-up truck. after our initiation to the site, we returned many times, and though we never laid eyes on the hermit, our greatest fear (and the reason we went) was that he would shoot at us. the hermit died soon after i graduated from high school in 1979, and i assumed the lure of the site was buried with him. yet teenagers report a variety of uncanny activity on the road: mysterious blue lights; houses that move and disappear; half-cat, half-fox animals with glowing eyes that run in front of moving cars and disappear over the road's steep sides. they also offer differing reasons for the road's haunted nature. some teens claim that a "crazy man" lives on the road; some allude to the hermit, or his ghost; some maintain that the road was the site of a murder and attribute the haunted happenings to the victim's ghost or to the murderer (usually identified as a husband). a fifteen-year-old female informant related to me the following account of a trip to haug's road: a friend and a couple of other friends went--stan, michelle, tara, courtney, me, and mike. stan drove. they were all there before. it was a friday night last summer. we were just driving around town and stan said, "let's go over to haug's road." i said, "where's that at?" he said, "just come on. we'll all go there." i said, "all right" and all these people were in the car. and we're just on this dirt road. and it's all bumpy and we were driving on this bumpy road--real bumpy--and then we came upon this house. and there were no lights on and he [stan] stopped the car and turned out his lights. and all of a sudden this light came on in this house and we tried to start the car and his car wouldn't start up. and we were all screamin' and shakin' the car. and then, urn, and then. . . stan said, "look, what's that comin' out from the trees, walkin' down?" i said, "what is it?" we were all screamin'--we were so scared. and then we finally got the car started and we moved on. then we came upon this like, little shack. and then he [stan] said, "get out and go see what's in there." and we said, "no, 12 adolescent legend trips we ain't getting out." and i think that they already knew what was goin' on but i didn't. he said, "go ahead, go ahead," and i said, "no, someone go with me," 'cause they were all pushin' me to go. i said, "i don't want to go." and so i got out of the car and like there was this door and i heard this creepin' noise. i run back in the--i tried to get back in the car and they had the doors locked. i was sittin' there banging on the doors and it was so scary. and then we made a u-turn and we came back. and we kept hearin' these noises outside the car and then he [stan] got out. someone musta been pretendin' like there was a flat tire and he got out and there was no flat tire. and he said, "come on out here and look at this. come on out here and look at this." we went out and he took off--left us standin' there for like ten minutes--me, michelle, courtney, and tara. and we were by that house. so we start walking down the road and, uh, we saw this light flashin', but it was him in the car and he kept scaring us and we started runnin' down the road. and, uh, he was waiting like at the beginning where we were at. we were cursing him out and screamin' at him. on the way home we were talking about it and they were laughin' at us. i haven't been back since. in this narrative, the informant tells her story in a standard form, with a clear beginning, middle, and end. it is a story that she has told before, and one that she will repeat. typical among my female informants, this teenager paid particular attention to detail, especially in noting who was there and the reactions of all participants. the informant makes note of her status as an initiate: "... they already knew what was goin' on but i didn't." because she was new to the trip, she was tricked by the group into performing a special task. similarly, the boys, who were much older, "pranked" the girls by stranding them there. once initiated, teenagers take subsequent trips, and though they now know what to expect, the fun, and the scare, are in no way diminished. describing what he later told me was "about my twentieth" trip, a sixteenyear-old boy included an account of what happened once the group returned to town: oh yeah, sure, we go over there all the time. we went about a month ago-right after school started. it was me and rj. and marisa and julie. i drove marisa's car. it was a friday night and there was nothing going on so he says, somebody says, "hey, let's go over to haug's road." and we went and everybody kept saying that whoever was in that trailer shot his wife and killed her. and this, this really freaked me out. we drove back there, you know, to haug's road, and all the 13 meley windows fogged up. this is a dirt road in the middle of-like it hadn't rained for a week. we came out with mud allover the car and the windows steamed up. there was no mud on that road 'cause it hadn't rained for a week the car was muddy-it was full of mud. right up the road there's a barn and this blue light came on. well, we got out of there quick. so we got back to town and go to the pizza place and saw this, uh, this group of people we know. and like we start telling them about what happened, you know, with the mud and all. and they could see it. so they said that they were gonna go and check it out. despite the divergent tales that sun-ound the sites, teenagers are in agreement when describing the performance of the trips. indeed, legend trips to both sites share many of the same features. that the physical trips are consistent and exhibit a pattern of behavior is significant, for the trip itself appears to have functions independent of the legends and may well be the more important aspect in uncovering adolescent motives and behavior. the trips are described as either spontaneous or planned. a spontaneous legend trip usually occurs on a weekend night when "nothing else is happening." a group of teenagers, bored with cruising around town, suddenly decide to drive in the countryside, and someone suggests a trip. more commonly, however, legend trips are planned. teenagers who have been to the sites will often plan to take an initiate to the site: "they heard i never was there," one informant told me, "so they took me." occasionally a group will go to the site without an initiated teen: "we heard about it in school, so we went to look for it." according to my informants, the mood inside the car as the trip begins is often rowdy and excited. the kids laugh and joke and talk about general topics: school, families, and members of the opposite sex. once outside the town limits, however, the mood grows more serious. the topic of conversation switches to the approaching site, what happened there, what they saw the last time, what they heard happened to someone else. "if i was taking someone who's never been there," jason explained, "i'd bullshit it up. you know, i'd tell them what had happened, but i'd drag it out and shit." by the time the car has reached the site, the teenagers are engrossed with the situation. they are quiet, tense, apprehensive. both legend trip sites have a central focus. the cemetery itself is the obvious place to stop in the first trip, and the old blue trailer on haug's road is reported as the focus in the second. the event itself may vary, depending on the audacity of the driver and the passengers. some teens report getting out of the car, blowing the horn, even performing a chinese fire drill to taunt the fates. some teens are more timid, and sit passively in the car. when asked if he got out of the car at the wall, a fifteen-year old boy 14 adolescent legend trips told me, "no way! i wouldn't even look out the window. i was buried deep in someone." the central focus of the legend trip, the event at the site, is also the basis of most of the teenagers' narratives. they include many details of what happened at this central point, and they appear to vividly remember events, even if they occurred two to three years ago. leave-taking is usually abrupt and is markedly uncontrolled. something happens, someone sees or hears something, and kids jump into the car, bury their faces, scream, and speed away. the frenzy inside the car generally lasts until the teenagers are back on the main highway; everyone talks at once, in bits and pieces of, "oh my god" and "did you see?" as the teenagers calm, they begin to reconstruct the trip among themselves. they talk about what happened, and who saw what. sometimes, a teenager will attempt to rationalize a scary event, but most of the teenagers remain shaken. on the way back from haug's road one night, jason maintains that they were so scared that he was, "prayin' the rosary. la had this ‘angel on her shoulder’5 and she kept sayin, 'i'm prayin' to my angel.' and i said, 'the hell with your angel, i'm prayin' to god.' i kept asking for a sign, and we passed this guy on a motorcycle and he gave me a thumbs-up sign. after that we all felt better." by the time they approach columbia again, the mood is subdued, and the teenagers begin to talk of other topics. if it is earlier in the evening, however, the story is repeated several times; by the end of the night, it has taken a standard narrative form, to be repeated for the benefit of others and among themselves, and especially for the next trip. the return to the hometown marks the end of the trip to the teenagers. one boy told me, "you know, you get home and go, 'phew!'--like, 'i made it!' it feels good--it's fun." another teenage boy offered: "at the time it's not fun, but when you get out of it, then it's like, you know, 'ain't that cool?'" the teenagers typically go on legend trips in the summertime; autumn, especially around halloween, is also a popular time. during the winter, legend trip activity usually subsides. weather conditions are sometimes a factor in deciding to go on a trip; foggy nights are ideal, and "on a night with a full moon," jason tells me, "you almost have to go." some teenagers had been at the sites as early as age thirteen; fifteen was more commonly named as the age for the first legend trip. the trips continue throughout adolescence, though older adolescents report less frequent visits. the seventeen-, eighteen-, and nineteen-year-old male informants interviewed offered different reasons for going as well: they were often enlisted as drivers for the younger crowd, or accompanied their younger girlfriends. teenagers also report that the group can be as small as three or as large as ten; no one ever goes alone or as a couple; the group is usually mixed, male and female, though some boys sometimes go with a "gang of guys." no all 15 meley female groups were ever reported. in my interviews with the teenagers, i was continually impressed by the similarities in the information on legend trips they were sharing with me. i heard account after account that was virtually identical in content, form, and tone. the teenagers themselves were aware of this and grew impatient, insisting, "we already told you everything that happens." when asked to characterize the trips, the teens made sweeping generalizations: "you always go at night"; "you never go alone"; "everyone knows what happens there." there appeared to be rules to follow and roles to play, and a list of necessary ingredients for a successful trip. trips were taken at night, usually on the weekend; dark, gloomy nights, nights with full moons, and around midnight all enhanced the atmosphere. trips were taken by groups, and "the more people you can cram in the car, the better." boys act cool, girls scream a lot. tricks are played on either newcomers or on the females. a sixteen-year-old boy, weary of my interminable questioning, succinctly summed up adolescent legend trips in columbia: you know, you all get into the car and go over there. and you do something--something happens, like--and everybody gets all scared and stuff and you get the hell out of there and come home. that's all. it's just fun. okay? the ritual structure of legend trips parallels the model of rites of passage suggested by arthur van gennep. viewing traditional rites as cultural responses to "life crises" among tribal groups, van gennep's the rites of passage (1908) focused on the transitions in social identity that individuals and groups face: the passage from childhood to adulthood or from single to married status. van gennep distinguishes three phases within ceremonial rites of passage: separation, when initiates are figuratively or literally removed from the society, representing a break with the past status; transition, a liminal state when initiates must meet with tasks or challenges that symbolically prepare them for their new life; and incorporation, the ritual "welcoming" of the newly initiated into the membership of the community this three part framework is still valid in modem, industrialized societies, as ray raphael explicates in the men from the bovs: rites of passage in male america (1988), because the functions of ritual initiations remains the same. raphael writes, the primary role of an initiation is to dramatize. . . change, and thereby to facilitate it. a rite of passage places a difficult problem of personal growth into a social context; it gives a public dimension to private problems; it calls upon the combined forces of a culture and all its 16 adolescent legend trips traditions to help the individual get through this time of crisis. (12) in our modem, individualistic society, rites of passage may not be immediately recognizable. ceremonies like confirmations, bar mitzvahs, and high school graduations may appear to be rites of passage for adolescents in america, but are often rendered impotent. solon kimball, in his introduction to van gennep's the rites of passage, states that "perfunctory ritual may be pleasant but meaningless" (xvii). yet there is still a need for transition particularly from extended adolescence into adulthood, as raphael points out. this transition, according to raphael, bronner, and others, is not met by public, uniform ritual in america. it is therefore privatized, differentiated, and spontaneous. a comparison of trips from various sources with the trips of columbia teens establishes the legend trip tradition as a ritualized activity of modem american adolescents. the physical location of documented legend trip sites is consistently rural or isolated, thus requiring a passage from home and community to a liminal area or state. legend trip sites, in addition to having a rural setting, are usually an extended distance from the teenagers' homes. to reach their destination, teenagers must make a twenty to thirty minute drive away from the sanctuary of their hometown (ellis 66; hall 233). the trips that bill ellis surveyed were "invariably rural. . . located along sparsely populated roads" (61). gary hall describes a "winding road . . . shrouded invariably in dense fog" (233). another legend trip site in abington, indiana, stands "on the edge of a dense woods" (knox 1). and stewart blankenhorn's description of a popular legend trip site near suburban philadelphia, pennsylvania, is virtually identical to columbia teenagers' accounts of haug' s road: "... the paved road stops. . .. at this point, there are no more street lights. . .. the roads, which are only a carwidth, are dirt roads that seem to wind without any particular destination" (2). another consistent feature of a legend trip is that it is a communal activity shared by adolescents. a "typical" trip almost always includes a mixed-sex group of adolescents. stewart blankenhorn relates, "the typical carload is at least three people, not necessarily all of the same sex. however a carload of boys is common and a carload consisting of only girls has not been recorded. i recall one situation when i went there in a station wagon packed with twelve boys" (2). gary hall reports that the trips are usually practiced by "a carload or two of young people. . . . usually boys and girls ride in the same car, but seldom as couples" (232-33). informants in recorded trips generally mention drugs and alcohol as an ingredient of a successful trip. in the rites of passage, van gennep also reports mood-altering substances as a frequent feature of the symbolic, vivid nature of rituals. an informant related the circumstances leading to a 17 meley legend trip to collector mark knox: "we had been drinking one night during our junior year and he took me to the bridge where he said the moss man lived" (1). similarly, stewart blankenhorn reported, "people who visit pitcarin usually are drinking or have been drinking" (1). unlike many of the sites collected by bill ellis, the wall and haug's road were not used by teenagers as party or parking spots. ellis notes that the sites were marked by the great number of beer cans strewn around, and many sites were identified as lovers' lanes (64-65). yet my informants were adamant about this point: no one ever went to the legend trip sites to drink or to neck. one informant asked, "are you crazy? we go parking where it's safe." he offered the local high school parking lot as a prudent site. among my informants, moreover, the consumption of alcohol on a legend trip was seen as unimportant; many teens claimed to have gone on trips "stone cold sober." the three-part structure that kenneth thigpen discusses was found to be a valid pattern in my research. the same structure-introduction, ritual enactment, and retrospective memorate--parallels the structure of the rites of passage and is apparent in other legend trip accounts. stewart blankenhorn relates, "[on] the journey. . . legends about the pitcarin family and area are exchanged adding suspense to the ride" (2). gary hall's ''the big tunnel" contains a transcript of a taped ride to a legend trip site that clearly demonstrates the role of legend-telling as an introduction to the site. further, linda dégh discusses the cyclical aspect of how each successive performance evolves into a narrative which is then added to the extant legends of the site (77-78). the legend trip functions as a response to the stresses of generated by the transitions inherent in adolescence, transitions that must be managed without adult guidance. the age segregation of american teens, coupled with the lack of socially-approved means of ritual transition, results in adolescents finding their own standards of behavior and their own rites of initiation.6 the legend trip is an initiation into the family of the peer group, a sign of acceptance by other members and a sign of acceptance by the initiate of the rules and customs that govern that group. it is an initiation into adulthood, a ritual "trying on" of adult roles, and a means of internalizing the demands of adulthood. finally, it is an initiation of identity, a rite of passage into a self awakening in adolescence. the role of ritual in the development of adolescent identity is related to the role of the crisis during the adolescent years (erikson 17). a crisis-a conflict or choice-is a necessary impetus to identity definition. the legend trip is a self-induced crisis, deliberately sought by teenagers, for it compels the peer group to contemplate behavior and to emerge transformed. invoking rituals such as a legend trip, teenagers make the crisis more manageable 18 adolescent legend trips (bronner, "devices" 101-115). it becomes a safe way to experiment with various ideologies and feelings, to deal with issues of sexuality, mortality, and autonomy, and a viable means of asserting independence and maturity. legend trips serve to strengthen and bind the society of a peer group; teens are adamant about "who went which night." being invited to go on a legend trip can be a sign of acceptance into a group; my youngest informant. bill, thirteen years old, was proud of his inclusion on several trips and, among his younger peers, enjoyed a certain notoriety and elevated status by virtue of his acceptance by the older teens. another teenager who was not well-liked asserted her status as a member of the group by the fact that she had been included on a certain legend trip. she silenced the cries of derision and dismissals of "you weren't there," and ''no, you weren't with us" by describing a specific incident from the night in question. as a result, her precarious, fringe status was improved, at least for the moment. in addition, the trips facilitate the preservation of the group's collective identity. as a group, teen boys and girls think of the legend trip sites as private domain, belonging exclusively to them. all of my informants were surprised to learn that haug's road was a popular legend trip site throughout the 1970's. by naming and renaming sites, teenagers indicate their sense of ownership of a site. similar to the impulse of pioneers setting out away from the "old" community, teenagers, by virtue of naming a spot. claim it as their own. moreover, they exert control over their environment and reserve the site for themselves. grownups may know of the hans graft cemetery, but they do not recognize the appellation "the wall." even haug's road shares a subtle element of this. "haug" is a common name in the area and is pronounced "howg"; teenagers go legend-tripping on "hog's road." when i ask teenagers, "why do you go?" the younger teens invariably answer, "it's the thing to do," or "evervbodv goes." again, this indicates the need for approval from outside of oneself. older adolescents are better able to internalize their approval, and do not need the peer group's permission to act or make choices. older teenagers commented on the "fun" aspects of the trip more, and talked about the trips as big, crazy social gatherings, similar in tone to parties. participants in legend trips around columbia have expectations for socially appropriate behavior according to gender. teenagers insisted that girls never, under any circumstances, went on legend trips "alone," in an allfemale group. in addition, i did not encounter a single episode where a girl drove a mixed-sex group, though many of the girls i interviewed had access to a car. rather, boys drove the girls to the spots, and at the sites, the girls often exhibited different reactions. they screamed more and as one boy explained, 'they grab you and stuff. it's kind of neat." when boys go on legend trips by themselves, it is a different kind of 19 meley experience. in all-male groups, the object of the trip is to contain the fear, to dismiss the anxiety, and to belittle the frightening aspects of the trip. paul bragged about walking the length of haug's road with his buddies, and one teenage boy told me, "when just the guys go, it's a macho thing." when describing trips in general, the older male adolescents tend to describe their exploits in a confident tone. the boys perform more daring acts, such as getting out of the car, walking on the wall, and throwing tombstones. one sixteen-year-old boy told me, "me and webby got on top of the car and rode on the roof' at haug's road. girls of all ages and the younger boys focus on the supernatural elements of the trips. the youngest informant interviewed told me that just talking about the trips gave him the "creeps," and after about twenty minutes he refused to go on. as a rite of passage that serves to socialize an individual, the legend trip's rigid gender roles suggest that boys and girls must learn different lessons in their process of becoming men and women. the girls stressed cooperation and interdependence in the performance and narrative of the legend trips; they elaborate on the details of the trip-who went along and what kind of interaction took place during the trip. while the teenage boys brag about their bravado in the face of danger, the girls discuss the trips in terms of "we": "we were scared," "we all screamed," and "we all saw it." the girls also exhibit a passivity and dependence on the males of the group; they never go alone and seem to rely on the boys for both protection and to tease them about their fright. the boys, on the other hand, display a competitive denial of fear. many times in my interviews, boys would point out that while others were losing composure, they themselves remained calm: "you know, they were all screaming and shit, i told them to chill out." when describing trips, they tended to use words like "neat," "wild," "crazy," and "great" compared to the female's "scary" and "awful." male teenagers use the trips to test and prove their masculinity; only the boys talked about attempting daring feats at legend trip sites. the legend trip also helps to alleviate the sexual anxiety of both the boys and the girls. despite the apparent sexual sophistication of my informants, the fear of rejection remains intense. the nature of the trips--mixed-sex groups crammed into close quarters--gives teenagers an opportunity to be physically close without having to express the desire to touch. in the frenzy that takes place inside the car, both boys and girls have a chance to satisfy needs for physical contact without excess, commitment, or fear of rejection. newly acquired skills in reasoning enable teenagers to contemplate death in a new way. adolescents can become almost obsessed with death, drawn to the morbid and supernatural, or indulge in fantasies about their own deaths. paradoxically, to the outside world, teenagers may appear 20 adolescent legend trips completely unconcerned with death, and may actually tempt fate with reckless, death-defying behavior. "the way i figure it," one informant told me in an offhand manner, "is we all have to die sometime." this nonchalant attitude belies the sometimes profound fear that adolescents have of their own mortality associated with independence. in a world like ours, death and destruction are daily fodder for the media. at the same time, adult society does not condone open discussion of death and dying. this point was especially apparent in the course of my research. a sixteenyear-old informant with leukemia died in march after a long struggle with the disease. the other teenagers were visibly shaken and several gathered in my apartment after the viewing. one boy related that in school that day there were counselors to assist the students. "i went to talk with one," the boy told me. "she told me to go and eat lunch and that was supposed to make me feel better." he was openly disgusted with adult guidance. in lieu of a support system and an acceptable method of dealing with death and dying, teenagers are once again left to their own means. the ritual of the legend trip is an aid in helping teenagers confront issues of death and mortality in a psychologically safe way. without risking their lives, teenagers can simulate the experience of looking death in the face, and this helps them to "exorcise" their fears about dying. my informants expressed an ambivalence about their hometown. well aware of columbia's "black sheep" status among neighboring communities, the teenagers are distrustful of outsiders and are easily and often provoked into fighting to defend their town's honor. at the same time, among themselves, they complain bitterly about columbia. "this town sucks," one boy casually summed it up. most teens express a desire to "get out" as quickly as possible. for many of my informants, the chance will not come. for these teenagers, the legend trip may be a symbolic escape out of town. ellis interprets the legend trip as a ritual of rebellion. the trips include features of acts against social norms and expectations, demonstrated by the under-age drinking and acts of vandalism, but the rebelliousness is more an outcome than a purpose of the ritual. because the rebellion is ritualized, it is transformed; through the ritualization of the challenge to adult authority, teenagers make their challenge both manageable and comprehensible. the activity takes place deliberately away from the locus of adult power and control, and is guarded against the possibility of adult interference or even knowledge. the legend trip, though superficially incorporating the face of anti-social activity, is not a delinquent behavior. it is not an overt challenge to society but is rendered a private ritual in which teenagers assert their independence from adult control innocuously. the search for independence is a primary motivation for legend trips. this is reinforced by the physical structure of the trips. legend trip sites are 21 meley removed through time and space from the adolescents' hometown. unlike party or parking spots, which are chosen for their convenience as well as their seclusion from prying adults, the legend trip site requires a journey of considerable distance from the town. although a number of cemeteries and sites could be characterized as "spooky" within the town's limits, teenagers deliberately travel away from what they consider to be the locus of parental and societal control in order to have a chance to try on adult roles for themselves. the legend trip provides teenagers with a setting in which to test their new found, adult courage. it gives teenagers a opportunity to prove their ability to take care of themselves in a crisis. finally, the legend trip also offers teenagers the chance to return to the sanctuary of home when they have had enough of the adult world of risk and responsibility. without a chance to test the limits, to question authority, to live and learn, teenagers cannot incorporate the values, the lessons, the judgment, and, essentially, the integrated identity they will need to cross the threshold to maturity, able and willing to meet the stresses and challenges of adulthood in modem american society. in the absence of meaningful, adult-sanctioned rites of passage, teenagers must create their own. the legend trip serves this function in modem society, for unlike tribal cultures, which celebrate initiation rites rarely in an individual's lifetime, modem american teenagers must repeat the ritual over and over again. because their incorporation into adult society is not acknowledged by that society, teenagers must, on an individual basis, make a judgment about their own level of maturity. the repetition of the legend trip throughout the adolescent years reinforces and validates the teenagers' growth as individuals and as young adults. the vitality of the teenage tradition of the legend trip is thus strengthened, and the continuity of trips is assured. a sixteen-year-old girl shared the story of her first legend trip with me and revealed how the trips will continue in columbia. having never been on a legend trip, she was ambivalent about going, but yielded to peer pressure: "they said they couldn't believe that i wasn't ever there before. they kept telling me all this weird stuff about it, you know, and man, i didn't want to go. but they were all saying, 'oh, you gotta go' and all." once at the site, she reports that the boys "showed off' by getting out of the car, and they teased the girls for their timidity, saying, '''c'mon, get out and walk the wall.''' the girls, true to their legend trip role, "wouldn't, you know. we were just sitting in the car saying, 'you're crazy.'" the event climaxed when "this dog, it sounded like a wolf, it started barking and somebody said that it was twelve o'clock midnight, and we started screaming and flipping out. so the guys get back in the car and we got out of there real fast." but that was not the end of the trip for my informant. she now had a story to tell, and, im 22 adolescent legend trips portantly, an experience to share: "when we got home i was still shaking, but it was cool, you know, because the next day, i told my girlfriend about it, and i told her that she had to go. so we're gonna take her, maybe this weekend." the context she provides for her adolescent folklore helps to uncover the base, compelling reasons why teenagers "have to go" on legend trips. ultimately she, like others, speaks of transition from adolescence to adulthood, a transition made all the more stressful in a fragmented, individualistic society. the legend trip provides teenagers with a culturally appropriate and comprehensible response. heritage center of lancaster county, lancaster, pa notes 1though published literature on the urban legend trip is scant, brief interviews reveal that the tradition is found within the city limits. a thirty-five-year-old harrisburg man told me that, as a teenager, he and his friends wallced to a city graveyard to see "fidget widgets," creatures that he described as "outer spacemen." teenagers at the harrisburg middle school report going to the same cemetery to see the fidget widgets, but they claim the scary creatures are video game characters. 2 a thorough, recent history of columbia, pennsylvania, remains to be written. one available source is history of lancaster county. by franklin ellis and samuel evans, published in philadelphia by everts and peck in 1883. an invaluable glimpse of columbia at the height of the town's prosperity was provided by james d. slade's a complete business directory of columbia. lancaster countv. pennsylvania. together with a few of the most important events of the borough's past. and a correct pen picture of columbia in 1887, published in columbia by the evening star job office in 1887. i also relied on the information i acquired at wright's' ferry mansion, a private museum in columbia where i worked as a tour guide in 1988. 3 i have been unsuccessful in my attempt to identify "hans graft." 4my brother, nick meley, born in 1955, told me that his first legend trip to haug's road was as a high school sophomore in 1970 . 5"angel on my shoulder" refers to a tiny angel pin worn on the shoulder for a blessing or as a good luck charm. the pins are popular in columbia among both children and adults. 6simon bronner discusses how children in modern america similarly use folklore in lieu of adult guidance in american children's folklore. ray raphael argues similarly for young males in american society in the men from the boys. works cited: published books and articles bronner, simon. american children's folklore. little rock: august, 1988. ---"left to their own devices: interpreting american children's folklore as an adaptation to aging." southern folklore 47 (1990): 101-115. 23 meley clements, william m. 'the chain on the tombstone." indiana folklore: a reader ed. linda degh. 258-264. bloomington: indiana u p, 1980. degh, linda. 'the haunted bridges near avon and danville and their role in legend formation." indiana folklore 2 (1969): 55-74. ellis, william. "legend-tripping in ohio: a behavioral study." papers in comparative study 2 (1983): 61-73. erikson, erik. identity: youth and crisis. new york: norton: 1968. hall, gary 'the big tunne1." indiana folklore: a reader ed. linda degh. bloomington: indiana u p, 1980. 225-257. raphael, ray. the men from the boys: rites of passage in male america. lincoln: u of nebraska p, 1988. thigpen, kenneth a., jr. "adolescent legends in brown county: a survey." indiana folklore 4 (1971): 141-215. van gennep, arnold. the rites of passage. trans. monika b. vizedom and gabrielle l. caffee. chicago: u of chicago p, 1960. works cited: unpublished sources blankenhorn, stewart. "pitcarin." unpublished manuscript, the penn state harrisburg folklore archives, 1983, accession #83-024. knox, mark. "the moss man." unpublished manuscript, indiana university folklore archives, 1971, accession #71-321. informants: oral sources 1. jason, 15, german, catholic 2. paul, 17, german, protestant 3. la, 16, black, african methodist 4. julie, 15, german, catholic 5. charlie, 16, german, catholic 6. rob, 16, german, episcopalian 7. jen, 16, german, episcopalian 8. hosee, 16, filipino, catholic 9. kathy, 15, german, lutheran 10. danielle, 16, italian, catholic 11. brandi, 16, german, catholic 12. marisa, 16, german, lutheran 13. amita, 17, indian, hindu 14. angie, 16, german, catholic 15. bill, 17, german, catholic 16. wolfgang, 16, german, lutheran 17. randy, 16, german, methodist 18. faith, 16, black/german, baptist 19. duane, 19, black/hispanic, african methodist 20. bill, 13, german, catholic 21. bucket, 17, black 24 22. tara, 18, black 23. helen, 14, irish/italian/black 24. nestor, 15, black/hispanic, baptist 25. amy, 16, mexican, pentecostal 26. evie, 17, german, atheist 27. chris, 14, german, protestant 28. latrease, 18, black, baptist 29. r.j., 18, german 30. phil, 15, german, lutheran 31. michelle, 19, black/german 32. scott, 17, black/german, african methodist 33. heidi, 15, german, catholic 34. bo, 18, black 35. carol, 17, german, mormon 36. tiekey, 17, black, baptist 37. emily, 14, german, catholic 38. jeff, 15, black/hispanic, african methodist 39. mike, 18, black, baptist 40. phil, 17, black, baptist 41. kurt, 17, black, baptist strategy in counting-out: evidence from saint-nazaire, france andy arleo in a study based on the ethnography of speaking approach, goldstein described and analyzed various strategies used in counting-out by fourto fourteenyear old children in the east mount airy section of northwest philadelphia in 1966-67. goldstein observed that, although he had been informed orally of similar or other counting-out strategies employed in other parts of the united states, canada, europe, and africa, there were to his knowledge no published accounts of these (178, n. 15). the purpose of this paper is to contribute to the crosscultural investigation of children's folklore by providing data on counting-out strategies used in saint-nazaire, france.1 my field work was initially undertaken for a doctoral dissertation (arleo 1982) involving the comparative study of counting-out rhymes in french and english. research methods included observation, interviews and recording in play areas and in the classrooms of several elementary schools, as well as the collection of written documents (texts, drawings, descriptions, questionnaires) from children and adults. additional collecting of counting-out and other children's rhymes has been carried out since 1982 to the present time in saint-nazaire and the surrounding areas.2 the countimr-out ceremonv in france. from my own data and that of other researchers it appears that counting-out is a widespread activity among schoolchildren of both sexes.3 certain counting-out rhymes are learned from parents, siblings or peers at an early age (around 2 or 3 years old), but are not actually used for selection purposes until the end of the ecole maternelle, roughly at the age of 4 or 5. at this stage performance is usually awkward, often marked by poor coordination between the rhyme and the gestures. counting-out really blossoms in elementary school, but by cours moyen 2 (grade 5) many children consider it to be a somewhat "babyish" occupation. the function of counting-out is to choose an "it" (often called le loup, "the wolf', or "le chat", "the cat") in popular children's games like tag (jouer au loup) or hide and seek (cache-cache). the counting-out procedure used in saintnazaire is similar to that described by goldstein: the players are seated in a circle and a 25 arleo counter, often self-appointed, taps each player's foot on each syllable or each beat of the rhyme, almost always in a clockwise direction. occasionally, as with "one potato, two potato. . .", fists rather than feet are designated and in this case a special rhyme is employed. according to some reports, counting-out also occurs with all players standing and the counter pointing at or tapping each person's chest. the use of strategy in counting-out. a survey on counting-out was conducted in 1981 at the bibliotheque municipale in saint-nazaire. 67 children (45 girls and 22 boys) filled out questionnaires, occasionally with the help of the librarians. most of the respondents (nearly 70%) were in elementary school; only 2 children were still in nursery school (ecole maternelle) and 16 were in secondary school. among the questions on counting-out were two related to the use of strategy. it was decided to frame these questions with the verb tricher, "to cheat," as this is an easily understood word employed frequently by children. thus, the first question on strategy was formulated "est-ce qu'il y a des enfants qui trichent en 'pouffant'?" (are there children who cheat when counting-out?). the verb "pouffer" is a term used by children to mean "to count out". it is derived from the nonsense syllables "pouf pouf' spoken before counting-out begins. the second question was "si oui, comment font-ils pour tricher?" (if yes, how do they cheat?). 55 (82.1 %) of the 67 respondents answered that children do cheat when counting-out, against 9 (13.4%) who answered that they do not, and 3 nonresponses. it seemed interesting to look into possible correlations between the answer given to this question and the age or sex of the respondent. specifically, i investigated the hypothesis that awareness of "cheating" would increase with age. it turns out that among the youngest informants (age 6 or 7) 10 answered "yes", i.e. children do cheat, and none answered "no" (one person did not answer). in fact, it was in the 8-9 age group that the "no" rate was highest, reaching 26.3% (5 out of 19 informants). surprisingly enough, 4 informants aged 10 or above, all girls, also answered "no". my hypothesis was therefore not confirmed, at least for this limited population. the correlation between the answer to this question and the sex of the respondent seems tenuous as there was only a slight difference between male and female informants: 10% of the boys (2 out of 20) answered "no" compared to 15.6% of the girls (7 out of 45). the three non-responses all came from boys. there were a variety of answers to the second question on how children cheat. tile most frequent response (16 out of the 44 informants who answered the question) was "ils 'sautent' des joueurs" (they "skip over" players). this was followed by 7 respondents who said "they think it over 26 counting-out ahead of time" (variants: they calculate, they "count in their heads"). a related response, mentioned six times, was "they start with themselves." other techniques noted less frequently were: the same person is counted twice (4 informants), "by going fast" (3 informants), "they forget to include themselves in order to avoid being the wolf', "they skip a turn", "they count out twice", "they add words" (2 informants for each of the last four techniques). although some of these answers are difficult to interpret, it is nevertheless clear that the "skipping over" technique, whether applied to the counter or to another player, is quite widespread. regarding the technique of adding extra words, mentioned twice, it should be added that there is a special rhyme, or coda, which is used for this purpose. this is illustrated by the following example: pouf pouf. ca sera toi le loup, mais comme le roi et la reine ne le veulent pas, ça ne sera pas toi. pouf pouf. you will be the wolf, but as the king and the queen don't want this (to happen), it won't be you. source: 9 year old boy, in 4th grade, ecole primaire minot, la laule, recorded in 1985. in the numerous examples of this type, the clause beginning with mais ("but") always follows a short counting-out rhyme which could stand on its own. here then is an example of a linguistic device (as opposed to "skipping over" or "calculation") used for strategic purposes. it may even be argued that this coda contributes to language development by increasing awareness of the contrastive function denoted by the conjunction mais. moreover, by invoking the "king and the queen" to preclude the choice of a particular player, the counter shifts his or her responsibility to a higher authority, thus making it more difficult for the other participants to challenge the final outcome. conclusion. the results of the above survey, although based on a small population, show that strategy is a part of the counting-out procedure used in saintnazaire, france, and that, even at a young age, children are generally aware that liberties can be taken with "an idealized set of rules" (goldstein 172) through the use of different verbal or non-verbal devices. furthermore, a number of techniques mentioned by goldstein, such as "skipping over", "calculation" or "rhyme extension" appear to be practiced in france as well.4 data from other folklorists suggest that similar ploys are utilized 27 arleo elsewhere.5 it has long been known that counting-out, a game in itself and a preparation for other games, is a widespread genre of children's folklore. the use of strategy in this context implies that cross-cultural similarities involve performance as well as textual features and also raises questions about how this form of children's play contributes to social and cognitive development. our exploration of this field, however, has barely begun: in order to pursue research on these and related issues in a fruitful way, it will be necessary to obtain data from children's folklorists working within a wide range of cultures. lnstitut universitaire de technologie de saint-nazaire and centre d'etudes metriques, université de nantes notes 1saint-nazaire (1990 pop. 65,380), located on the mouth of the loire river (60 kilometers southwest of nantes), famous for its shipbuilding industry, is traditionally perceived as a working-class town. in recent years, however, there has been a diversification of economic activities and as a result most of my informants could be described as coming from both working class and middle class families. although there are social differences from one neighborhood to another, these do not seem to be reflected in the material i have collected or in the way it is performed. 2for further details see arleo (1988) and arleo & flament (1988). the latter is an experimental study based on the acoustic analysis of the french counting-out rhyme "une poule sur un mur". 3the standard work on french counting-out rhymes is baucomont et al (1961). more recent data can be found in brinton (1985) and hazael-massieux (1987). laforte (1987) is a very complete compilation of published texts of children's songs and rhymes in french. 4as far as i know, few researchers have explored the use of strategy in counting-out among french-speaking children. picard (1970), in her interesting book on mathematics and children’s games, devotes a chapter to “counting-out rhymes, or how to cheat” (66-75). this is a description and formalization of the “calculation method” mentioned both by goldstein and my informants. 5 according to folklorist erik k. nielsen (letter dated nov. 1 and 15, 1981), danish children sometimes use strategy by extending the counting-out rhyme or by putting in an extra word or line. this is usually done by older or more sophisticated children with younger participants. ase enerstvedt (letter dated nov. 8, 1981) writes that some norwegian children "know how to manipulate the rhymes to get a certain outcome". furthermore, all children are aware of this possibility and even small children (age 5, for example) may master the technique. devices include manipulation 'of stress and rhythm, place-changing and rhyme extension. finally, bengt af klintberg (letter dated oct. 26, 1981) has heard that children in sweden often use strategies to influence the result of counting-out. works cited arleo, a. une etude comparative des comptines françaises et anglaises. doctorat 28 counting-out de troisieme cycle, université de nantes, 1982. arleo, a. fonnulettes d'élimination recueillies a saint-nazaire. en brière et dans la presqu’île guérandaise. université de nantes (centre d'etudes métriques), 1988. arleo, a. and b. flament. '''une poule sur un mur…’: rythme et mélodie d'une comptine à partir d'une analyse mingographique". le français moderne 56.5 (1988): 33-59. baucomont, j. et al. les comptines de langue française. paris: editions seghers, 1961. brinton, r. the southern french child at play: a study of his traditional lore. diss, university of bath, 1985. goldstein, k. "strategy in counting out: an ethnographic fo1klore field study." the study of games. ed. e. avedon and b. sutton-smith. new york: john wiley, 167-178. hazaël-massieux, m.-c. chansons des antilles, comptines, fonnulettes. paris: editions du centre national de la recherche scientifique, 1987. laforte, co le catalogue de la chanson folklorique française v" chansons brèves (les enfantines). quebec: les presses de l'université laval, 1987. 29 the concept "toy" and cultural research bo lonnqvist in finland and sweden, the 1980s discussions on the harmful influence that so-called military toys were said to have on children evoked a pronounced interest in the overall form and function of the toy in today's culture. the great collectors' interest in toys and recurring reports on rising auction prices for old toys have also contributed to making the subject topical. critical voices maintain that today toys express the consumer society's predilection for fashion, meaning the predilection for change. the "toy," as it is understood in public debate and in western culture in general, is above all a product of the adults' view of children, of physical objects, and of children in relation to physical objects. this approach has developed simultaneously with the golden age of the european toy industry, between 1860 and 1930, a period when toys quite tangibly reflect the ideals of the bourgeois society. the toy is an object manufactured by adults, and it has one unequivocal function that the child is supposed to realize in play. this definition has coloured public consciousness, expositions, collections in museums, and scientific research. this goes to show how strong the impact of the adults' view of children's culture has been for over a hundred years. i will start by discussing various ways of treating the toy in anthropologically-oriented cultural research. i will then, as cases in point, refer to studies on children's play in a modem urban environment in finland. i will project this against a background of examples from earlier centuries. i will finish by discussing the concept "toy" in the adult world and in the world of the children. in my view the concept mirrors different aspects of the cultural pattern, on the one hand the position of children in society, on the other hand their position in culture. i dare maintain that children's culture, including the tools used in play in a way which expresses a specific type of formative creativity, has been generally overlooked. this opens up new vistas for both field studies and theoretical reasoning focusing on the cognitive dimensions of physical objects and on specific group cultures. 31 lonnqvist toys were for the first time assembled as a group of their own at the christmas exhibition of the germanisches national museum in nuremberg in the 1890s. as late as the 1880s, dolls, for instance, had been put on show as part of the costumes exhibition. the spread of toys in europe in the 19th century was largely coupled with bourgeois christmas celebrations. the scientific view of toys was likewise coloured by this fact: toys were seen as a pastime and as connoisseur objects. for research on cultural history, and for collectors, the toy became an instructive object bearing witness to cultural varieties, different stages of civilization, the history of crafts, and the need for social and aesthetic representation throughout history. as far as type selection and design were concerned, it was maintained that these remained unchanged through the centuries (grober 1928, groos 1899, boehn 1929). this view is historical. in his global overview peepshow into paradise in 1953, lesley gordon divided his exposition into a section on chronology and a section on types and regions. this evolutionary view of toys also contains an inventory of the function of the toy at celebrations and as cult objects, such as painted eggs and dolls. most studies on and exhibitions of specific types of toys reiterate this historical-geographic approach. the toys of greek antiquity as well as exotic and prehistoric toys have been described typologically, even though an often stated difficulty is the distinction between toys used simply for playing, and toys with a double function: ritual-religious, and as components in children's play (so the doll). as late as the encvclopedia of tovs (london 1978), constance eileen king divided the material as follows: 1) miniature living, 2) toys purely for pleasure, 3) wheeled toys & children's transport. 4) metal toys, 5) board and table games, 6) educational toys and pastimes. towards the end of the 19th century and in the early 20th, research on children's play was based on kant's definition of the spirit of play as partly a free, individually chosen activity, partly an end in itself, which had its roots in a biological play instinct characterized by such factors as superfluous energy, imitation, repetition, and supplementary activity. parallels were drawn between art and the creative urge of the child (paul hildebrandt, das spielzeug im leben des kindes, 1904/1979). ethnographic research has focused particularly on tradition and imitation. early anthropological monographs on the cultures of various tribes mention toys briefly in connection with games and sports, songs and dances. the general consensus was that toys imitated the objects used in everyday life, or that the small figures could be connected with magic. examples of this kind may be found 32 the concept "toy" in the classical studies of the siberian tjuktji and korjaks, led by franz boas (bogoras, jochelson, 1904-09,1908. the jesup north pacific expedition). functionalist studies in social anthropology have also dealt with playing, and the tools used therein, as a means of forming and adopting the individual to social life (granqvist 1947, klepzig 1972, itkonen 1941: arabs in palestine, african children, sami people). moreover, ethnological studies have described the manufacture of toys as crafts and home industry, in a wider perspective of ecology and economy, art history and cultural history. after the 1920s, the influence of historical-geographical and functionalist views and structuralist and paedagogic-psychological theories has slowly brought about a problemization of the concept "toy." the overall tendency has been to fit the "inconspicuous" toy into a wider context, as an illustration of cultural attitudes in general, and as a: meaning-carrying tool in the entity of the play situation. classical studies of children's play, written by yrjö hirn (1916) and johann huizinga (1938), are forerunners of psychological research on toys. as early as 1957, the ethnologist reinhard peesch, in das berliner kinderspiel der gegenwart, directed attention to the great variations of form in children's play, and to the restructuring of play as a continuous process. in his 1959 study of children's play and its changes on new zealand, brian sutton-smith expressed similar thoughts. the structure of the play repertoire showed the children as being both conservative and innovative, and their need for patterns was supplemented by a flexibility which was based on their actual experiences. the danish psychologist jens sigsgaard has in his definition of the toy (1982) introduced the concept "imagination," the capability of transferring observations from the "level of reality" to conceptions of a more "unreal" character, a creative quality specific to children. by this approach the symbol-carrying function of toys acquires central importance. with the aid of play, and the tools of play, reality may be both negated, deepened, and accorded continuous changeability (lili e. peller). in paedagogics, hans scheuerl says that earlier game theories treated playas a definite course of events, an "internal-subjective" process. but in play, "external-subjective" objects, rules, and partners are equally needed, and thus play must also be seen as symbolic interaction. this leads us to the theories (erikson, wygotzki) in which the structure of play is seen as a particular type of abstraction. in anthropological research on play, the relations between reality and imagination, the qualities attributed to objects, and their symbolic variations in meaning also acquire focal interest (buytendijk 1973). 33 lonnqvist when reality is made to vary in the course of play, there arises a peculiar relation between the meaning and the significance of the toy. the object will maintain its factual significance (in an operational sense), but a new act provides it with new meaning, or "additional meaning." this relation is borne out by a child "playing around" an object (alexander leontjew, jean piaget). what fascinates me personally is the repertoire of meanings of objects and the cultural arrangements that the children express in their symbolical treatment of the objects during play, and i will give you an example. here we must expand the concept "toy," and i would prefer to talk about "play tools." * an approach having close affinities to a more cognitive anthropological view of the objects in the child's world will prove fruitful in the interpretation of illustrations dating back to the 16th and 17th centuries. it will also gainsay the common misconception that children did not possess toys in the olden days, especially not the children of common people. the well-known picture by the older pieter brueghel of children playing in a small dutch village in 1560 shows that the components of the playing consist of the children's own bodies and the entire surroundings: fences and beams, sand heaps and bricks, barrels, trestles, sticks and stones, trees and animals. of what is conventionally regarded as toys there are only a cock-horse, whirligigs, balls, stilts and barrel hoops, a few dolls and a doll's cradle. similarly, in jacques stella's illustrated publication les jeux et plaisirs de l'enfance (1657), most of the play tools are things deriving their meaning from the process of playing: there are masks to frighten others with, an earthenware jug for breaking hung on a tree branch, a fire to be jumped over, the body of another child to ride upon. oral tradition reflecting finnish urban and rural popular culture towards the end of the 19th and in the early 20th century also bears out the fact that practically all objects in the physical surroundings could be used to play with. tools, household utensils, and above all the domestic animals functioned as projections for the children's view of the world. a game known in various parts of the nordic countries as "jacob's ladder," "the sheep's heaven," or "the celestial ladder," was played for instance by shepherd boys in satakunta in western finland. this game illustrates the principle of the staircase or ladder in culture, the connection between things heavenly and things of the earth. this shows that the objects produced by the children them 34 the concept "toy" selves are not exclusively imitations of the tools of the adults. there is a collection of bricks dating back to the 15th century, from the tavastehus (fi. hameenlinna) castle, which bear the imprints of children's and animals' feet--they have probably run across the bricks while they were drying, or else jumped on them. the footprints show that the children were of different ages. it may have been a forbidden game, but nevertheless it shows an activity linked to the work of the adults, and the children have played in a group, together with the animals. quite recently a girl of twelve (my daughter) informed me that "on a beach," she had found a beautiful boat of polystyrene with a sail made out of a plastic bag. "you could photograph that for your collection" was her judgement, and we went to find the place. this is in the very heart of helsinki, a stone desert where one does not expect to encounter children at play. "the beach" turned out to be a small strip of sand under a narrow quay of planks. under this plank structure, which an adult person could not enter, the boat lay. it was a somewhat formless rectangular piece of expanded polystyrene with a piece of wood tucked in as keel, half a plastic bottle as boathouse, and a sea bird plume as a bowsprit. the mast lay beside the boat, with a plastic bag over it as a sail. at the end of the jetty there were traces of a "harbour," two pieces of planks laid across stones. the playing children would probably come back and possibly even produce other things, as the edge of the water was laden with all kinds of "refuse" that had not yet been cleaned away by the harbour authorities. consequently children's play is still alive, in a form unorganized by adults, in hidden places, with objects that derive their meaning from the play situation-not with the one-dimensional aspect given to it in advance by adults. it is obvious that the play tools will reflect the physical environment. but in all its occasional character, imitation is a creative process directed by those playing, and the properties for play have a role integrated in the playing itself. topical studies on children's play behaviour in urban environments in the nordic countries have criticized the extremely limited aspects of the children's environments. studies of children's behaviour in modern housing areas in helsinki, for instance, have shown that the play areas do not attract children as long as there are other alternatives such as pedestrian streets, market squares, and unbuilt areas. however, play with stones and trees in the natural environment as well as ball games and role play are disappearing. do children lack inspiration from the world of the adults? are children so strictly programmed for adultdirected games in planned play areas that their own initiative and creative urge are drying up? will certain games 35 lonnqvist simply disappear, without being superseded by others? will children's relations to objects in play be changed due to a formally perfect selection, though restricted in types, of industrially produced toys? previous analyses of toys have viewed the objects as paedagogic and instrumental in the learning process, the objects influencing the children. but objects have also been studied in a ritual-emotional-magical perspective, as objects of knowledge for children. both aspects bear witness to children's position in the community. anthropological study of toys could focus on the unlimited repertoire of meaning of objects in play, and the unlimited forms of adult life in the play world of the children. as a process of reflection and consideration, the transformations of the objects will then reveal the central structure of the world of physical objects in play. children's culture, the true domain of the children, offers us samples of another world, other "narrating" and "figurative" (umberto eco) traditions than our conventional ones. it is difficult to document the actual semantic relations within children's culture, as this culture is elusive in the extreme. the principle of transformation, which is the characteristic form of abstraction in children's culture, works at the flash of an eyelid, and the attraction of play seems at least partly to reside in the fact that it is beyond the reach of adults. * an extremely topical question comes to my mind concerning children's play and play tools in today's world-a world where overconsumption and hunger, refugee camps, children in war, child prostitution, child labour, and where a harsh, urban, and technocratic environment are realities. this question is: on whose conditions do children really play? academy of finland works cited von boehn, m. dolls. new york: dover, 1972. bogoras, w. the chukchee. the jesup north pacific expedition. ed. franz boas. memoir of the american museum of natural history. vol. vii. leiden-new york. reprint 1975. buytendijk, f.j.j. das menschliche spielen. kulturanthropologie. neue anthropologie herausgegeben von hans-georg gadamer und paul vogler. band 4. stuttgart, 1973. 88-120. eco, u. "ett foto."vad kostar ett masterverk? malmo: brombergs bokforlag ab, 1987. 220-224. 36 the concept "toy" gordon, l. peepshow into paradise. london: george harrap, 1953. granqvist, h. birth and childhood among the arabs. helsingfors: soderstrom, 1947. groos, k. die spiele der menschen. jena: verlag gustav fischer, 1899. grober, k. kinderspielzeug aus alter zeit. eine geschichte des spielzeugs. berlin: deutscher kunstverlag, 1928. hildebrandt, p. das spielzeug im leben des kindes. 1904. dusseldorf-koln: eugen diederichs verlag, 1979. hirn, y. barnlek. helsingfors: soderstrom, 1916. huizinga, j. den lekande manniskan. stockholm: natur och kultur, 1945. itkonen, j. "die spiele, unterhaltungen und kraftproben der lappen." journal de la societe finno-ourgrienne 51. helsinki, 1941-42. jochelson, w. the koryak. the jesup north pacific expedition. ed. franz boas. memoir of the american museum of natural history. vo1. vi. leiden-new york, reprint 1975. . king, c.e. the encyclopedia of toys. london: robert hale, 1978. klepzig, f. kinderspiele der bantu. meisenheim am glan: verlag anton hain,1972. leontjew, a.n. "realistik und phantasie im spie1." das kinderspiele. texte, herausgegeben von andreas flitner. münchen: r. piper & co. verlag, 1978. 133-138. peller, l.e. "modelle des kinderspiels." das kinderspiele. texte, herausgegeben yon andreas flitner. münchen: r. piper & co. verlag, 1978. 93-107. peesch, r. das berliner kinderspeile der gegenwart. duetsche akademie der wissenschaften zu berlin. veröffentlichungen des instituts fur deutsche volkskunde. band 14. berlin: akadernie verlag, 1957. piaget, j. and inhelder, b. "das symbolische spiel." das kinderspiele. texte, herausgegeben yon andreas flitner. münchen: r. piper, verlag, 1978. 130132. sigsgaard, j. and varnild, i. det legede vi med. . . gammelt legetøj i danmark. københavn: nyt nordisk forlag arnold busck, 1982. sutton-smith, b. the games of new zealand children. folklore studies no. 12. berkeley: u of california p, 1959. scheuerl, h. "alte und neue spieltheorien." das kinderspiele. texte, herausgegeben yon andreas flitner. münchen: r. piper & co., verlag, 1973. 32-52. stella, j. games and pastimes of childhood. trans. s. applebaum. illus. c.b. stella. new york-dover, 1969. 37 books for children edith fowke my best known children's book is sallv go round the sun: 300 songs. rhvmes. and games of canadian children (toronto: mcclelland & stewart; new york: doubleday, 1969). this is a large-size volume beautifully illustrated by carlos marchiori. it won the canadian association of children's librarians ' award for the best book of the year, and it continues popular. all the items were from oral tradition, collected in 1958-1964 from canadian children plus a few from adult friends who remembered them from their youth. i started collecting with some of the children on my own street and then began going to various toronto schools where i arranged to tape the students in grade 3 classes, which i found the best age-group for this type of material. i asked them for the games and rhymes they knew, and had no trouble getting a wide variety. children's lore is probably the easiest kind of folklore to collect today. when i had assembled a number of tapes, i transcribed them, picked the best versions of the various items, arranged them in categories, and cited the sources and references to other versions. i was lucky in the artist whose delightful color illustrations made the book very attractive. he used two unusual techniques: many of his pictures included fingerprints, others looked like lace. this book is still in print, still popular, and still representative of the children's lore common in canada. students in my introductory folklore classes at york university collected children's rhymes and games as an annual assignment during the seventies and eighties, and found very few that were not in sally. in 1989 virginia caputo, a graduate student in anthropology at york, did her masters' thesis comparing the songs in my collection with those she collected in the same schools some twenty-five years later. an article on her study, which showed a remarkably close parallel, appeared in the canadian folk music journal for 1990. keith macmillan, who had transcribed the music, brought a group of children into a studio and recorded some of the songs and games. this was not a field recording, as the children had to be rehearsed: they knew the songs, but some of their versions were slightly different from those in sallv, and keith's piano or guitar accompaniments were used. however, it was children singing children's songs--an 39 fowke improvement over most children's records which are sung by adults. later, the record was replaced by a cassette. partly because of the lovely illustrations and the record, sally is much the best known of my books. at various gatherings parents still come up to tell me how much their children enjoy it, and many adults liked being reminded of their childhood. i was pleased to find that it was the only north american book on the reference list in the opies' the singing game (oxford: new york, 1984) except for newell's games and songs of american children from 1903. jay rahn, a leading canadian ethnomusicologist, used my collection as the basis for an analysis of the tunes of children's songs, "stereotyped forms in english-canadian children's songs: historical and pedalogical aspects" in the 1981 canadian folk music journal. it compares the tunes in sally with those of similar items in britain and the states. this seems to be the first attempt to analyze english-language children's tunes. a sequel, ring around the moon: 200 songs, tongue twisters, riddles. and rhvmes of canadian children (toronto: mcclelland & stewart; englewood cliffs, nj: prentice-hall, 1977), was designed for a slightly older group and contains some material for children rather than from children. because of its smaller format and black-and-white illustrations, it proved less popular than sally and was out of print for several years, but it has recently been reprinted (toronto: nc press, 1987). both those books gave sources, comparative references, and indexes. a smaller and less scholarly book, riot of riddles (richmond hill, ont: scholastic-tab, 1982), was published by one of the major companies selling to schools. it contains a wide variety of riddles and puzzles: true riddles, conundrums, riddle jokes, crossword puzzles, guessing games, etc. of course riddles are tremendously popular among children; any group will gladly produce a number, and some make up their own. more recently, i assembled a book of children's street games. red rover. red rover (toronto: doubleday canada, 1988). the material came largely from my students' assignments over a dozen years supplemented by some from robert cosbey, who had collected them from his folklore class at regina university, laurel doucette, who sent some from an ottawa class and some she remembered from her childhood, and philip thomas, who collected some in vancouver, plus a few from helen creighton's collection in the folklore archives of the national museum. again i went through a voluminous mass of game descriptions, selected the best versions, organized them in the eleven classes use by iona and peter opie in children's games in street and plavground (london: oxford university press, 1969), and added four extra sections: pretending, miscellaneous, marble, and word games. when i told iona what i was planning, she wrote: "i think it would be excellent if you used the analytical arrange 40 booksfor children ment of children' games in street and playground . . . i think peter would be pleased. he was justifiably proud of his analysis, which caused him many skull-cracking hours." in addition to those books designed specifically for children, some of my others are also useful for children. one, published originally as canada's story in song (toronto: gage, 1965), and long out of print, came out later in a new edition as singing our historv (toronto: doubleday canada, 1984). this began as a series of radio programs for which i wrote the scripts and canadian folksinger alan mills narrated and sang the songs. all the songs are related to events and periods in our history, and we hoped it would be used in history and social studies classes. alan recorded a two record set of the songs (folkways 4000), and the new york times listed it as one of the hundred best records of 1956. singing our historv is a revised and enlarged edition, containing eighteen additional songs found since 1965. another book that came out of a radio series, john d. robins' logging with paul bunvan, originally published in 1967 (toronto: ryerson), was reissued in a somewhat different format designed to appeal to children as paul bunvan. superhero of the lumberjacks (toronto: nc press, 1980). dr. robins, a professor at the university of toronto, had worked in the northern woods where he heard many lumbering songs and stories. (incidentally, he was instrumental in getting me interested in folklore, and my first book was dedicated to him.) we had collaborated on a radio series about paul bunyan in which dr. robins, impersonating an old lumberjack, told the stories and i supplied songs from records. after dr. robins died, mrs. robins turned his manuscripts over to me; i edited them, adding an introduction and notes. when it had been out of print for several years, nc press issued the revised version aiming at a children's market folktales of canada (toronto: nc press, 1979) has also been used with children, although it is not primarily for children. it is translations of varied french-canadian tales (mostly from marius barbeau's collection) illustrating the different types of folktales. i did this book because most frenchcanadian tales available in english had been rewritten, and i kept my translations as close as possible to the original texts. my folksong anthologies, folk songs of canada i and ii (waterloo: waterloo music, 1954, 1967), and the penguin book of canadian folk songs (harrnsworth, england, 1973; rpt. markham, ont., 1986), while not designed for children, have been used in school music programs and at summer camps. folk songs of canada, produced with a musician, richard johnston, was my first book. i began to realize the need for such a book as a result of my radio series, "folk song time," which was then being aired on the canadian broadcasting corporation. when i played records of canadian 41 fowke songs, listeners would inquire where they could find them, but no general canadian collection of folk songs existed, only regional collections from quebec, nova scotia, and newfoundland. we also produced a small volume of french-canadian songs, chansons de ouebec/folk songs of ouebec (waterloo: waterloo music, 1957) with the original french and singable english translations, hoping to make the beautiful french-canadian songs better known among anglo-canadians. also, as singing french is much easier than speaking it, the book would be useful in teaching french to english-speaking children. then in canada's centennial year, 1967, we added the second volume, originally published as more folk song-s of canada. it gave some less familiar songs and some from ontario and western canada collected since 1954. when working on the first book, we found practically no songs from west of quebec, which led me to begin my own collecting. my other general anthology, the penguin book of canadian folk songs, was prepared with the hope of making canadian songs better known in britain and the united states, and allowed me to present a substantial number of ontario songs i had collected. later i scripted the audio-visual historv of canadian folk music, issued by mead sound filmstrips as a combined filmstrip and cassette for sale to schools. the canadian singer stan rogers (tragically killed in a plane crash a few years later) narrated the script which was illustrated by short excerpts from songs and some well-chosen paintings and photographs. one delightful book i edited came from my friend alice kane, a children's librarian who supplied some of the items for sally and ring around the moon. she is a founder of the storytellers' school of toronto and the best storyteller in canada. she has a phenomenal memory, and every time i saw her she would be quoting a song or a poem or a saying she remembered from her childhood. i kept telling her to write these down, they were folklore; eventually she did, but instead of simply writing the songs and rhymes, she quoted them as part of the story of her childhood years in belfast, and gave me the manuscript as a christmas present! i was so charmed by it that i arranged to have it printed as songs and savings of an ulster childhood (toronto: mcclelland & stewart, 1983). this is a beautifully written narrative incorporating an astonishing wealth of folklore drawn from alice's amazingly complete memory of her first twelve years in ireland. i added an introduction, notes, comparative references, and bibliography. in 1985 i received the vicky metcalf award of $2,000 "for a body of work inspirational to canadian youth," a prize administered by the canadian authors association. toronto 42 notes and announcements the children's folklore review is available only to members of the children's folklore section of the american folklore society. to become a cfs member, send $10.00 yearly dues to danielle roemer, literature and language, northern kentucky university, highland heights, ky 41076. round river records is delighted to announce that three of its children's releases received honorable mentions at the naird (national association of independent record distributors and manufacturers) convention awards ceremony held in los angeles in mid may. the awards were given to bill harley's come on out and play and grownups are strange and to sally rogers' piggyback planet: songs for a whole earth. round river records has received a variety of national awards for its ten releases of family music including several from naird and the parent's choice foundation. debbie block, president of round river records notes, "we are thrilled to receive this honor and vote of confidence from the independent record industry . we are very proud of these recordings and are committed as ever to producing top quality releases that parents and kids can share." for further information, contact: debbie block, round river records, 301 jacob street, seekonk, ma 02771. phone: (508) 336-9703. the goldfinch is a folklife magazine subtitled iowa history for young people and is published through the state historical society of iowa. unlike the children's folklore review. the goldfinch is written especially for young readers, but in such a way that older readers will find much of interest in it as well. each volume focuses on folklore and folklife to show what life was like in iowa and how life there has changed in the past century. for further information, contact: deborah gore, editor, 402 iowa avenue, iowa city, ia 52240. the h.w. wilson company announces the publication of margaret read macdonald's look back and see: twenty lively tales for gentle tellers. this collection of macdonald's favorite stories includes tales from native american, african european, asian, latin american, and middle eastern traditions which are lively but non-violent. the tales are accompanied by substantial critical apparatus for the prospective story teller. 43 notes and announcements wilson also announces the publication of judy sierra's fantastic theater, a collection of thirty plays for puppets based on the poetry, folk songs, fables, folktales, and myths of various cultures. fantastic theater also includes complete instructions for making puppets, puppet stages, props and scenery, and suggestions for music and sound effects. for further information, contact: michael page, advertising department, the h.w. wilson company, 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department of english east carolina university greenville, nc 27858-4353 children's folklore review is published twice a year and sent to all members of the children's folklore section of the american folklore society. published by east carolina university issn: 0739-5558 copyright @ 1991 children's folklore section printed by morgan printers, inc. counting-out ocr document "sui" generis: mock violence in an urban school yard ann richman beresin during a year's field work in an urban working class, racially integrated, public elementary school yard in pennsylvania, a type of popular children's game emerged that had been underreported in the folk play literature. mock violent games, among both boys and girls, appeared as hitting, pushing and slamming games, ranging in violence from the overt, although playful, to the covert. the nonviolent violent handball game of "suicide" will be examined in detail in this paper, and it will be argued that the hybridity of the game reflects its paradoxical status as mixt genre and unique cultural marker. the genre of mock violent games includes a range of other classic folk game genres: wrestling games, tagging games, and handball games. one could argue, given the emotional charge of mock violent play, that any game from any genre could become mock violent. genre here is, as ben-amos phrased it, a "conceptual category of communication, not classification" (1976). with this in mind, if we extend sutton-smith's notion of play fighting as custom and stylized communication, (1973, 1980), we can then examine the larger tensions in the play fighting and seek to understand its mixed messages within the school context. it will be argued that mock violent games, here seen as hybrid forms of varying complexity, need to be examined not only in terms of their mixed history, but in their overlapping physical locations. games of the body, with the exception of clapping, tagging, and stepping games, have been virtually ignored in the cannons of american children's folklore (bronner, 1988; knapp and knapp, 1976; newell, 1963; jones and lomax hawes, 1972), and their absence reflects both a romanticism in many children's lore collections, and the limitations of orally-based field recording. this fieldwork was performed in the full 1991-1992 school year and involved extensive videotaping of children's spontaneous play in the recess school yard, and the presentation of these videotapes back to the participants for their native commentary. one hundred and four third, fourth, and fifth grade boys and girls were observed, audiotaped, and videotaped during recess. forty-seven children served as native experts, including tim, paulo, wahid and their friends. 25 beresin mock violent games as a genre first it seems wise to clarify what we mean by "mock" violent games. the animal play literature of aldis (1975) and bertrand (1976), and the roughand-tumble literature of blurton-jones, and also pellegrini, and boulton and p.k. smith have made the case for mock violence being clearly distinct from real violent action (blurton-jones, 1976; pellegrini, 1987, 1988, 1989; boulton and p.k. smith, 1989; hartup and laursen, in press). in general when animals or humans are playing mock violently, the actors stay together after the bout is over, and as goffman and kendon have noted, the face is visible and in the mode of presentation (goffman, 1963, 1967; kendon, 1990). in real violence, eye contact is brief, if at all; one actor retreats, and the participants separate. this is not to say that real bruises do not occur over mock violent play, but as my own observations have confirmed, the two are, in general, distinct and distinguishable. as gregory bateson framed it, "the nip connotes the bite, but not what the bite connotes" (bateson, 1955). the distinction is necessary as adult perceptions of violence have been utilized for the control of children's play and the elimination of recess periods at this school in the 1990-1991, and 1992-1993 school years. hybrid forms a case will be made for the examination of mock violent games as constituting its own momentary hybrid genre. two games that i will mention by way of introduction are "the fighting game" and "slap boxing." in this way we can begin to tease apart what is meant by hybridity and point out its utility in game analysis. "the fighting game" is a popular wrestling game, performed in a square of nine boxes, and the object for each of the two facing opponents is to push the other out of the square. among some players at the school, when one person's foot was pushed outside the box, the other had won the round. among others, especially third graders, you were still considered in the game as long as you hopped on one foot even if you were pushed "out." there is a simple hybridity here, but it is merely in the form. although many wrestling forms use squares or rings as marked spaces, here the one place for the game was a space marked by nine boxes, and acknowledged by the children as created but not used for ball bouncing. the nine square ball box became synonymous with "the fighting game," and when "the fighting game" was asked about in indoor interview settings, inevitably a pretend nine square box was drawn. 26 "sui" generis another example of a simple mixed form is visible in the game "slap boxing" where two players face each other and attempt to slap each other's face, while dancing like boxers, and often moving from one location to another. the first to slap or tap the face of the opponent five times is the winner. this was a favorite on line and in the hallways, and on the stairs, in transitional times and places. it was "tag" and it was "boxing." and like "the fighting game" it was confrontational, but playful, a mix of specific genres now forming a relatively new form, at least in this context. so far these examples merely show the extension of what gary allen fine called newell's paradox, where william wells newell noted that children were both conservative and inventive with their games, and may reflect the lively slipperiness of performance centered folklore collection in general. abraham's "the complex relations of simple forms," in benamos's text folklore genres suggests that play forms are perhaps the most slippery in the range between what he called "conversational" and "fictive" genres (abrahams, 1976). one might also wonder if people are more playful with their genres than earlier cannons would have us believe. but the most interesting and significant use of the hybrid image is in the study of mixed genres that indeed are two different languages, as bakhtin has suggested, two different stories being told in the same game, simultaneously (bakhtin, 1981). it is here that we turn to the puzzle of suicide. "sui" sui, or suicide, is a handball game, most beloved by fourth and fifth grade european american and african american boys in this one school. the object is to throw a tennis ball hard at the wall, and have it return and intentionally touch a player. if someone is touched by the ball, or if the ball is caught one handed as a fly ball, the touched must run to the designated wall or base and shout "sui." if you do not, or do not get there fast enough, you are at risk of "beaning," or intentional slamming with the ball. as tim, one sixth grader, told me during the first week of school, if you're collecting games, "you gotta have sui." at the core of the discussion will be where the "suicide" is in a game that does not refer to any version of stylized death. its mix of dramas within the game's form point to the utility of the examination of hybridity wherever pieces are missing from the tale. details of sui include the shouting of "relay" or "no relay" where, if the touched person is far from the one with the ball, the ball may be relayed to another player who can then bean him. i was told you were not allowed to play "sui" in gym, "cause you'd get suspended," yet the occasional bruises and hollers of "suicide" were far less violent than the blood shed over 27 beresin territory in basketball or over turn taking in any other traditional game form when the bell rang. if one was hit by the ball three times, also known as having been "threed," one was to submit to the punishment of "the tunnel" where hitting was overt, although the players all mentioned that doing the tunnel was not done at school. sui was clearly the most popular boy's game next to basketball and football, and mentioning sui to any third through sixth grader was like mentioning a favorite dish from the old country to a group of expatriates. "sui, sui, we know sui." "i'm the best at suicide." there is a mystique to sui, even to the adults who do not allow it in gym, in part due to the intentionality of trying to bean, or bruise someone, and in part, due to the power of the name. the child experts, male and female, were unable to explain the meaning of the game title, although one fifth grader offered that it is called that because if you play, "'you're suicide." it was typically played by fourth and fifth grade boys in a secluded alley way, between the school buildings. its simpler cousin wall ball, a straight ball bouncing game led by individuals was often found on the perpendicular wall, in the public space of the school yard. joe, a fifth grader, said wall ball is "like the same thing, but you just don't, just don't hit nobody in wall ball." the fifth graders, clearly the experts in the handball variations, noted that the younger children played wall ball, and that sui was for the older ones. paulo, a fifth grader said, "our class, all of us made up all the games." video example: suicide, may 11, 1992 alley courtyard between buildings. 5 players, mostly fifth and fourth grade boys. diagram time action voice w a     1 1   10:33:27 10:33:31 b drops ball (it touched him, so he runs back to touch wall) 28 "sui" generis 10:33:36 a picks up ball 10:33:41 a throws it at wall 10:31:47 c catches it/throws it at wall 10:33:54 fumbles, d throws it at wall, 10:34:03 b catches it/throws it at wall 10:34:06 e catches it 10:34: 11 e throws it at wall 10:34: 17 b catches it. throws it at wall 10:34:21 e catches it 10:34:26 caught as fly ball, boy goes to touch wall 10:34:25 t catches it and throws it high 10:34:32 e catches it as fly ball. t tries to hide behind other boy sneaks to wall 10:34:36 "bean him!" throws it at t misses him hits wall 10:34:38 t runs to wall "sui!" 10:34:49 throws it hard to get c slam hits him 29 beresin 10:34:54 10:34:56 10:35:13 w a      1 1 10:35:16 10:35:20 10:35:26 10:36:33 d throws it at wall e goes after it, changes direction returns to go get ball camera follows little guy running out side door through alley way, out to main yard. camera follows him and films perpendicular game of wall ball ball is thrown high by one boy standing in front near wall, the crowd that is catching is out of view boy who catches it in the crowd comes to first boy's place boy stays there, throws again (no one has caught ball directly) boy throws again when a group of fifth grade boys watched the first part of this clip in a small interview setting, the videotape was turned on and there was immediate laughter. (-- -- laughter, laughter, laughter! shhh.) 30 "sui" generis --hey, there go big joe, ya'll see big joe? no --look at big joe. --there's brian, there's brian there go brian. arb is this sui? yeah --this all sui. --see wahid missed the ball, see him running for the base? arb yeah -now he got the ball ---there go brian, he gonna throw it at him. arb where' s the base? --see? --the base is the wall, you gotta call "suicide" you gotta say "sui" --see he ran to it after he touched the ball? see brian didn't touch the wall yet so he can still get hit. --see brian didn't touch the wall yet so he can still get hit. that's what i'm sayin' ---you hit it and you ran. oh me? i hit it? --you dropped it. ---where am i ? --you ain't on there; it's only michael, wahid, paulo and brian. yeah --(giggles.) for the third graders who were watchers of sui, but never participants, their game was the simpler wall ball, with its simple authoritarian individual turn taking. one is up front and bouncing the ball off the wall, and someone in the group catches it, and then it is their turn up front. this is in direct contrast with sui's shifting format of the one with the ball having power in the back, and the one up in front, at risk of multiple negative attention from those in the back. this is not unlike the visible formats of third versus fifth grade classroom behavior in this one school, suggesting that sui is in itself a parody of identification with adult authority, or perhaps of classroom participation itself. although the "it" role is usually ambivalent, according to gump and sutton-smith, here the "it" role is consistently negative (gump and sutton-smith, 1971). no one brags about being it, or being hit in suicide. the parallel drama in the classroom is also the ambivalence of being called on, or being 31 beresin "it," having the classroom's eyes on you, especially if you are a fifth grade working class boy in this rather restrictive school. here too, the power of peers to make you squirm or come to your aid is in a relayed, indirect form, from the back. bourdieu and passerson argue that symbolic violence is typically reflective of institutional violence (1990), and one could argue that the drama of mock violent play in suicide is a direct reflection of the constructed emotional violence in the fifth grade classrooms. turner in his marvelously entitled: from ritual to theatre: the human seriousness of play, wrote of symbolic ritual as the expression of conflict (turner, 1982). the drama of the game, i would argue, is such a symbolic ritual in this rather restrictive authoritarian place, where the last minutes of recess were called "the worst part of school." this is not unlike the parallelisms found in game forms and in cultural communication patterns, such as farrer's study of the mescalaro apache tag, or studies of house and meals which can be said to be symbolically related to an entire ethos (farrer, 1976). "sui" as historically hybrid the puzzle of the name of sui lends support to its being a game of indirect symbolic violence, yet the acceptance of such an explanation for the mock violent drama does not explain the name itself. it is here that the possibilities of historical hybridization enter. handball's history, according to tylor dates back to the fourteenth century where it was "particularly suited to soldiers shut up in castle yards" (tylor 69). although handball variations, including wall ball and step ball, which were also found at the school, were readily found in ferretti's and also dargan and zeitlin's collections of urban play, no mention was made in any collection of such a mock violent version as sui (ferretti, 1975; dargan and zeitlin, 1990). in brewster's 1953 text american non-singing games, there is listed another sui, s-o-o-e-y, the only other sui i found in print. in "s-o-o-e-y," a stick and can game, one player is excluded and does not have his own can and all run to a designated base and yell "sooey" very loudly and return and see who is the one excluded and left can-less. referred to as an eastern european game of "sau ball" or literally "pig ball," the initial drama had something to do with a farmer and a lost pig. the school is located in an area with a large eastern european immigrant population, with polish immigrants being perhaps the largest white ethnic group in the school. but like the two simple examples of the fighting game and slap boxing, questions of the game's origin are interesting but tell us little of the 32 "sui" generis current meanings of the "s-u-i-cide." it points to the significance of utilizing both the theoretical tool of historical hybridity and its bakhtinian cousin reversal, along side the magnifying lens of physical contextual reflection. in a sense the fact that the children called it both "sui" and "suicide" marked its double status as a mixed genre, a "double voiced" form that is both ball game and a death drama, school yard game and institutional game. "sui" generis? in conclusion, we need to examine to what extent hybrid genres are, like mock violent games, sui generis, at least for the analytical moment, for the communications systems of the children and the teachers are in a dynamic unique to the context. secondly, since the connection of games to similar genres, and an examination of their uniqueness is necessary if comparative work is to be possible, it requires us to play our own hybrid game of layered emic conceptual analysis and etic conceptual reevaluation. it can be said that the paradox that performance centered hybrid study has stumbled upon is the uniqueness of things generic. and lastly, the categorization of games layed out by the opies, in children's games in street and playground, or by caillois, in man, play and games, must be challenged by each context, as we have shown, for mock violent games are one and many genres simultaneously. many game collections simply avoid classification and return to the nineteenth-century alphabetized dictionary form initiated by lady gomme, or choose to organize by region, or whimsey, or both, in schwartzman's classic, aptly named: transformations: the anthropology of children 's play. the hybrid genre thus not only teases us into examining the mixed messages within the place of study, a most useful pointer in understanding tension filled contexts, but also invites us to examine the messages encoded in our own sport of genre boxing. university of pennsylvania acknowledgements the author would like to thank the children of "the mill school" and. the spencer foundation for their support during this project. works cited abrahams, roger d. "the complex relations of simple forms." folklore genres, dan ben-amos, ed. austin: u of texas p, 1976. 193-215. 33 beresin aldis, owen. play fighting. new york: academic, 1975. bakhtin, m.m. the dialogic imagination. trans. caryl emerson and michael holquist. austin: u of texas p, 1981. bateson, gregory. "a theory of play and fantasy." psychiatric research reports. 2 (1955): 39-51. ben-amos, dan. "introduction." folklore genres. austin: u of texas p, 1976. ix xlv. bertrand, m. 1976. "rough-and-tumble in stumptails." play: its role in develop ment and evolution. jerome s. brunner, alison jolly, and kathy sylva, eds. new york: basic books, 1976.320-327. blurton-jones, n. "rough-and-tumble among nursery school children." play: its role in development and evolution. jerome s. bruner, alison jolly, and kathy sylva, eds. new york: basic books, 1976.352-363. boulton, m., and p.k. smith. "issues in the study of children's rough-andtumble play." the ecological context of children's play. mariane bloch and anthony pellegrini, eds. norwood, nj: ablex, 1989. 57-83 bourdieu, pierre, and jean-claude passerson. reproduction in society, education and culture. london: sage, 1990. brewster, paul g. american non-singing games. norman, ok: u of oklahoma p, 1953. bronner, simon j. american children's folklore. little rock: august house, 1988. caillois, roger. man, play; and games. new york: the free press, 1961. dargan, amanda, and steven zeitlin. city play. new brunswick: rutgers up, 1990. farrer, claire. "play and interethnic communication." the study of play: problems and prospects. d.f. laney and b.a. tindall, eds. cornwall, ny: leisure press, 1976. 98-104. ferretti, fred. the great american book of sidewalk, stoop, dirt, curb, and alley games. new york: workman, 1975. goffman, erving. "face engagements." behavior in public places. new york: the free press, 1963. 83-111. _____. "on face-work." interaction ritual: essays on face-to-face interaction. garden city, ny: anchor, 1967. 5-46. gomme, alice bertha. the traditional games of england, scotland, and ireland. 1894. new york: dover, 1964. gump, paul y., and brian sutton-smith. "the 'it' role in children's games." the study of games. e.m. avedon and brian sutton-smith, eds. new york: wiley, 1971. 390-399. hartup, willard w., and brett laursen. "conflict and context in peer relations." children and playgrounds: research perspectives and applications. craig h. hart, ed. albany: state u of new york p, 1993. 44-84. humphreys, a., and p. smith. "rough-and-tumble in prescool and playground." play in animals and humans. p.k. smith, ed. london: blackwell, 1984.241 270 jones, bessie, and bess lomax hawes. step it down: games, plays, songs amd stories from the afro-american heritage. athens: u of georgia p, 1972. 34 "sui" generis kendon, adam. "some functions of gaze in two-person interaction." conducting interaction: patterns of behavior in forced encounters. cambridge: cambridge up, 1990. 51-90. knapp, mary, and herbert knapp. one potato, two potato: the folklore of american children. new york: norton, 1976. newell, william wells. games and songs of american children. 1882. new york: dover, 1963. opie, iona, and peter opie. children's games in street and playground. oxford: clarendon, 1969. pellegrini, anthony d. "children on playgrounds: a review of 'what's out there'." children's environments quarterly. 4.4 (1987): 2-7. ______. "elementary-school children's rough-and-tumble play and social compe tence." developmental psychology. 24.6 (1988): 802-806. ______. "what is a category? the case of rough-and-tumble play." ethology and sociobiology. 10 (1989): 331-341. schwartzman, helen. transformations: the anthropology of children 's play. new york: plenum, 1978. sutton-smith, brian. "games of order and disorder." paper presented to sympo sium "forms of symbolic inversion," american anthropological association, toronto, 1 december 1972. ______. "games, the socialization of conflict." sonderdruck aus sportwissenschaft. 3 (1973): 41-46. _______. "children's folk games as customs." paper presented to the confrence on american folk custom, library of congress, washington, d.c., 3-5 october 1980. ______. "school playground as festiva1." children's environments quarterly. 7.2 (1990): 3-7. turner, victor. from ritual to theatre: the human seriousness of play. new york: performing arts, 1982. tylor, e. b. "the history of games."the study of games. e.m. avedon and brian sutton-smith, eds. new york: wiley, 1971. 63-76. 35 ocr document contents from the editor ............................................................................................ 3 boys who play hopscotch: the historical divide of a gender space derek van rheenan ...................................................................................... 5 childhood narrated and negotiated: children's, parents' and teachers' views on childhood bjørg kjær .................................................................................................. 35 bedtime stories joann conrad ............................................................................................. 43 the state of play: a report on the conference julia c. bishop ........................................................................................... 54 notes and announcements ............ ..…….... ....................... ......... ............. 56 contributors ................................................................................................ 58 on the cover: reproduction of the cover of w.w. newell's games and songs of american children. 1 from the editor... this volume of children's folklore review is a bit behind schedule, and it is my fault. i had the galleys of a book come back in september, and the publisher wanted them back before i left for the american folklore society meetings on october 24th. so, i put off the final editing of cfr for a few weeks. this issue, however, is a nice follow-up to the anniversary volume. the volume leads off with derek van rheenen's "boys who play hopscotch: the historical divide of a gendered space," an examination of a game now thought of as a girls' game which, historically, was also played by boys. bjørg kjær’s "childhood narrated and negotiated; children's, parents' and teachers' views on childhood" examines the ways in which the three groups named in the title present themselves and their positions in their stories about what they do. in "bedtime stories," joann conrad describes the bedtime interactions between a mother and her child, revealing a great deal about both participants. the volume also includes with julia c. bishop's "the state of play: a report on the conference," a report on last year's conference at the university of sheffield, england. having produced the special twentieth-anniversary issue, we could not quite go back to the format we had had before, and so volume 21, number 1, returns to the twice-a-year schedule but retains some of the features that we liked about the special issue. we are keeping the upgraded paper of the cover and the interior, and we are changing the cover illustration-now a reproduction of the cover of w. w. newell's games and songs of american children. we hope that you like the way cfr is developing-and we urge you to send your articles on children's folklore to this journal. c.w. sullivan iii 3 boys who play hopscotch: the historical divide of a gendered space derek van rheenen as a child hops through a sketched diagram shaped like a cross, an airplane, a snail, careful not to tread on the forbidden lines, to enter the dragon's teeth, or step foot in hell, does the hopping participant contemplate what this mere amusement means? as the child strives to take ownership of his or her own space, ultimately attaining a place called sky blue, heaven, or paradise, what symbolic path has this child just traversed, what cultural meanings has he or she just produced? am i reading too much between the lines to suggest that the modern game of hopscotch involves something more than mere amusement? as the social practice of hopscotch represents a singular form of recreation, i believe it worthwhile to ask what cultural systems of meaning are both re-created and created anew through such social activities. do these chalked boundaries of space suggest a particular course of social action, even in a space seemingly divorced from adult authority? if childhood represents a context within which social trajectories are traced, some doors open and others closed, what might this mere amusement tell us about the possibilities and constraints of social mobility? are certain social spaces more open to boys than to girls, or vice versa? is the gender order being recreated within these mere amusements, or do traditional games offer the possibility of creating something innovative, even a new social order? as games represent dynamic social practice, then it is imperative that we situate these games within the context of social power and culture historically. to understand the multiple meanings attached to a social practice within contemporary culture, i believe it necessary to chronicle its particular historical development. by analyzing a social practice historically, it may be possible to surmise the developing relations of cultural production as groups and individuals construct meaning in their respective use of these practices. the traditional game of hopscotch can therefore be characterized as a social practice, a habitable text of cultural constraint 5 van rheenen and possibility.l weaving a path of cultural production, participants negotiate meaning across lines of social and physical space.2 once a game played predominantly by boys, hopscotch has undergone a historical transformation in both the sex of player participants, as well as in the subsequent cultural meanings attached to its gendered involvement. thus, within the twentieth century, the socially constructed space of the hopscotch diagram has come to be marked as feminine, a cultural text inhabited primarily by preadolescent girls. boys who play hopscotch today run the risk of being deemed effeminate, a stigmatized marking in a patriarchal society. this essay attempts to examine the cultural meanings of gender as played out in the historical transformation of this children's game. initially, i will discuss the ways in which traditional games, and the study of these games, intersect the social construction of gender and gender socialization. as these games are commonly classified in terms of the sex of their participants, research has tended to highlight the apparent differences between girls and boys. these differences have generally supported the reigning gender order. by examining the traditional game of hopscotch, this essay attempts to illustrate how the simple lines of a children's game have served to separate boys from girls, institutionalizing the binary construction of gender and sexuality within the twentieth century. and yet, as a malleable text enacted in local contexts, the historical practice of hopscotch likewise highlights the polysemic possibilities of gender production and meaning. sex differences and gender socialization children experience themselves as belonging to distinct and dichotomous gender identities. these gender identities are based upon cultural systems of belief which generalize, and in turn naturalize, the appearance, behaviors, and thoughts of each sex. children's play is but one of several interrelated activities which informs the cultural production of gender. by addressing the informal play of children, it is possible to witness the ways in which these active agents of culture participate in their own construction of gender. 6 boys who play hopscotch according to haraway, '''gender' is at the heart of constructions and classifications of systems of difference. complex differentiation and merging of terms for 'sex' and 'gender' are part of the political history of the words. medical meanings related to 'sex' accrue to 'gender' in english progressively through the twentieth century" (130). however, the concept of gender appears to have developed in order to contest the naturalization of sexual difference and superiority. thus, for haraway, gender has the potential to both historicize and culturally relativize the analytical categories of sex or nature (134). in this capacity, gender represents the semiotic production of sexual subjectivity, embodied in "the history, practices, and imbrication of meaning and experience" (de lauretis 167). the situated practices of traditional games are often conceived of as a laboratory of social relationships (knapp and knapp, 1976; sierra, 1995). as such, these games are thought to provide essential training in social interaction and development. but because traditional games are often categorized by the sex of the participant, numerous scholars have sought to differentiate between the sexes on the basis of their play preferences (crosswell, 1898; mcghee, 1900; terman, 1926; lehman and witty, 1927; erikson, 1950; sutton-smith and rosenberg, 1961,1963; lever, 1976, 1978). much of this literature has relied on a transmission model of socialization, in which adults teach children particular social skills and capacities. this conception of socialization rests on humanist discourses which view the individual as unique, fixed, and coherent (harre, 1985; weedon, 1987; davies; 1989). within this paradigm, children represent passive recipients of this socialization, as they are pressed into a relatively fixed form (waksler, 1986; davies, 1989; davies and banks, 1992). in a social world polarized around a male/female dualism, sex/gender is conceived as primary to this essential form. as such, boys and girls enter into apparently discrete and non-contradictory categories of gender. as will be seen in the following section, the classification of traditional games by the sex of the participants has served to perpetuate this dualism, producing some troubling conclusions about the social construction of gender in modern society. and yet, as i demonstrate in the final section of this essay, this structured dualism likewise affords the possibility of cultural resistance and agency. 7 van rheenen jack and jill at play in a popular nursery rhyme, jack and jill climb a hill together. in their effort to fetch a pail of water, they come tumbling down the hill, once again together. in describing children's games, however, young jack and jill are often separated. children's games have been categorized throughout history in terms of the sex of the participants. these games have traditionally been described as "the peculiar and particular property" of either boys or girls (gomme, 1898). two thousand years ago, aristophanes mentions jacks as a game played by greek girls, while pollux describes an early form of blind man's bluff played by roman boys.3 gomme classifies games of children into the two broad categories of (i) dramatic games, and (ii) games of skill and chance, attributing the former to girls, the latter to boys. as a result of such classification schemes, knapp and knapp assert that girls' games generally require the mastery of extended, repetitious patterns of words and motions, while boys' games demand players to strategically improvise as the game progresses. in general, then, the play of girls is often characterized as more passive and devoid of the elaborated structure inherent in boys' more strategic forms of play (lehman and witty, 1927; piaget, 1932/1965; lever, 1978; suttonsmith, 1972). additionally, girls are said to demonstrate a more pragmatic and flexible orientation towards rules than are boys, who tend to be less willing to alter the rules in the middle of the game (piaget, 1965; gilligan, 1982). in preparation for adulthood, boys' games have been said to ready young men for success in the competitive working world of modern society, while girls' games and toys may serve to prepare these participants for the private sphere of the home and their future roles as wives and mothers (lever, 1976; seiter, 1993). in her survey of girls' toy advertisements within the twentieth century, seiter suggests that these toys represent an "institutionalized" form of play, replicating the specific historical forms of women's domestic labor (74). in one example, an advertisement for tootsietoy dollhouse furniture states that "the child is taught to play house and do as mother does at the age when impressions begin to mean so much" (seiter 79). like toys, traditional games have been heralded as a 8 boys who play hopscotch means of developing particular social skills. unfortunately, the common paradigm of contrasting girls' and boys' play forms has too often led scholars to categorize children into discrete and dichotomous sex roles, perpetuating the binary construction of an artificial gender divide. in comparing the moral judgment of girls to boys, for example, piaget concludes that "the legal sense is far less developed in little girls than in boys" (77). he bases this finding on the rule structure of select games, games which he characterizes as belonging primarily to either boys or girls. adopting marbles as a representative boy's games, piaget then chooses "one of the most primitive forms of the game of hide-and-seek" known by swiss children as ilet cachant, to study the moral development of girls. piaget acknowledges that he and his colleagues had first considered the game of marelle or hopscotch as representing the traditional play of girls, but asserts that the" game in itself is very simple and never presents the splendid codification and complicated jurisprudence of the game of marbles" (77). in discussing the game of hopscotch, piaget writes, the few rules embodied in this game (not to put the other foot down, to make the pebble go into the right square with one kick, not to let the pebble stop on a boundary line, permission to rest in a special section called heaven, etc.) show well enough how possible it would have been to complicate the game by constructing new rules on these initial data. instead of which girls, though they are very fond of this game and play it much oftener than boys, have applied all their ingenuity in inventing new figures. for the game of marelle exists in a multitude of forms; the sections drawn in chalk on the pavement succeed one another in a straight line, in parallel lines, in the shape of a spiral, a circle, an oval, of the pipe of a stove, etc. (77) thus, while these girls apparently demonstrate ingenuity in their creative production of game form, piaget is interested primarily in the social relations which exist between the practice and consciousness of game rules.4 he argues that the way in which children develop an understanding and respect for these game rules mirrors the way in which children develop a sense of social morality. this epistemological assumption forces piaget to examine the particular rules of play inherent in these supposed girls' and boys' games. this poses some methodological 9 van rheenen problems. concluding that the structure of hopscotch lacks complexity in strategic interaction and social negotiation, pia get writes that "we decided to study a very simple game containing a minimum of rules and to try to find out up to what point girls look upon rules as obligatory" (70). one wonders whether piaget's findings concerning the legal sense of little girls and little boys might have been qualitatively different had he chosen a more complex game than ilet cachant to represent the play of girls en masse.5 by choosing a "simple game" to represent the rule practice and consciousness among little girls, it seems a fore drawn conclusion that these game participants will appear less developed in their strategic negotiation of rules. the rules of the game are in fact less complex. to extrapolate about gender differences in moral development from such data seems highly problematic. had piaget opted to study hopscotch as the traditional game characteristic of girls' play, the methodology would remain problematic, but his findings might have provided some alternative results. as the work of goodwin suggests, participants in the game of hopscotch actively collaborate in constructing the game of the moment. it is not merely the form of the hopscotch diagram which is creatively produced by game participants, as piaget contends. rules are constantly negotiated in dynamic social interaction. in support of this assertion, sutton-smith contends that "clearly one reason for [the game's] persistence is found in the freedom that children have felt to vary and complicate the rules" (1959: 198). the relative complexity of rules varies from game to game and from one context to the next. this variation in rule practice remains a central characteristic of traditional games. the informal nature of these games suggests that the rules will not be strictly codified. in the informal play of children, then, there exists no fixed set of rules, no mechanical jurisprudence (hart, 1961; goodwin, 1995). like the creative production of hopscotch form, the rules of the game are constructed in context, negotiated in order to accommodate the participants involved as well as enhance the game event at hand. thus, based upon her sociolinguistic study of a group of girls actively negotiating a round of hopscotch, goodwin chal 10 boys who play hopscotch lenges previous game scholarship which asserts that boys' games are more complex than those of girls. while her criticism is certainly valid, goodwin continues in the tradition of viewing children's games as gender specific. neither piaget nor goodwin presents these traditional games as dynamic social practice-as cultural texts in social context-whereby the participants engaged within these social activities vary across time and geographic space. in the following section, then, i attempt to demonstrate the way in which a singular practice may be actively produced by both boys and girls. as the case of hopscotch illustrates, traditional games cannot be said to belong exclusively to either male or female participants. as such, findings which report seemingly natural differences between the sexes based upon play preferences more likely reflect the cultural construction of gender at a particular historical moment. the case of hopscotch a traditional game reproducing "traditional" gender values. in the past decade, two children's magazines began publication in the united states: hopscotch: the magazine for girls and quest: the magazine for boys. marketed for an audience of six to twelve year olds, "with youngsters eight, nine, and ten the specific target age," these magazines stress a gendered point of view. while one reviewer contends that "the writing is objective" and that there is no apparent religious or political slant to these magazines (katz 132), the very names of these periodicals articulate an ideology of gender. in the current climate when "traditional values" are so fervently touted by a large segment of american society,6 the decision to adopt the traditional game of hopscotch as signifying traditional femininity seems telling. the message is clear. playing hopscotch represents socially sanctioned (i.e., "normal" and "natural") behavior for preadolescent girls.7 conversely, quest: the magazine for boys suggests that masculine boys will exhibit a frontier mentality of exploration and bravery. of course, these magazine titles may merely reflect the play preferences of late twentieth century boys and girls. as will be discussed in the following section, hopscotch has indeed come 11 van rheenen to be characterized as a "girls' game" today. boys, who played this traditional game more freely in the past, appear to prefer other activities today, particularly those which exploit the wide open spaces of playing fields (thorne). but these titles may likewise promote expectations of gender behavior. like seiter's assertion that toy advertisements institutionalize the historic forms of women's domestic labor, might not the traditional game of hopscotch embody traditional values of male hegemony? as goldenberg suggests, "could this elaborate use of small spaces be one way little girls train to make maximum use of the restricted social territory in which they have to move when they grow up?" (263). this feminist interpretation of hopscotch may well support the cultural meanings connected to this traditional game today, but how might this same game be interpreted when practiced by boys? as the following discussion attests, hopscotch was once played almost exclusively by boys. does the elaborate use of these small spaces by boys similarly reflect a limited social mobility for males, or have the gendered meanings of this social practice undergone a significant historical transformation? rugged boys and sissies the traditional game of hopscotch was once played primarily, if not exclusively, by boys. pliny describes a roman game much like round hopscotch played by the boys of his day. kiliaen (1574) reports that the game was generally known in the sixteenth century, played by dutch boys. the game is featured in the literary works of rabelais (1490-1553?), fischart (15461590), and basile (1575-1632), played by a male protagonist. in one of the earliest references to hopscotch found in england, there is mention in poor robin's almanack (1667), of "the time when school-boys should play at scotchhoppers" (brand 331). nearly two centuries later, kennedy describes a wexford (irish) variant of hopscotch, asserting that "rustic boys had a like game, which they called heck-a-beds" (608-9). the idea of hopscotch representing a practice engaged in by rustic boys seems to be reinforced by guts muths (1803), who includes hopping on one leg as one of the gymnastic activities promoted 12 boys who play hopscotch within his practical guide to healthful and amusing exercises. he argues that hopping serves particularly to strengthen the lower limbs, as well as give elasticity to the entire frame. the resolution to jump over obstacles such as brooks and ditches was thought to enhance the character of rugged boys as they mature into virile and virtuous men. guts muths makes no mention of this gymnastic exercise practiced by girls. perhaps this connection between hopping and rugged boys has most to do with guts muths' assertion that this" simple exercise ranks among the most violent." in highlighting the physical challenge of hopping on one leg, he writes that "the inexpert frequently cannot advance above the little distance of thirty steps: on the other hand, i have frequently seen robust, experienced boys hop on above eight hundred steps, over hillocks, holes, and wheelruts" (199). by the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, however, a shift in game production seems to take place. hopscotch becomes a social practice popular among both boys and girls. culin suggests that "two distinct ways of playing this game exist among the children of brooklyn: one common among boys and girls called 'kick the stone out', and another, said to be exclusively played by girls, called 'pick the stone up'" (229). similarly, h. f. feilberg reports that hopscotch in denmark "seems common in the country too, played equally by boys and girls" (362). sometimes together and sometimes separated, both boys and girls begin to participate in this social practice. de vries asserts that" sowohl knaben wie mädchen beteiligen sich an diesen spiel" [boys as well as girls take part in this game], but adds immediately that "es scheint mir aber, dab heutzutage die mädchen dem spiel treurer geblieden sind, als die jungen" [it appears to me that girls have remained more interested in the game than have boys] (3). in fact, the increased popularity of this game among girls during this historical period is striking. in their "sixty years of historical change in the game preferences of american children," sutton-smith and rosenberg contrast the results of four large-scale studies of children's games and find, among other things, that hopscotch gained in popularity with girls from 14th place in 1896, to 7th in 1921, and finally to 5th in 1959 (1961: 32). similar shifts in game preference seem to have occurred world 13 van rheenen wide. in japan, for example, the popularity of hopscotch among girls gained from 39th position during the early meiji period (1868-1883) to 6th during the late shôwa period (1946-1973).8 thus, by the twentieth century, the widespread practice of hopscotch begins to be described specifically as a girl's game (maclagan, 1901, 1905; vanoverbergh, 1927; frashëri, 1929; parsons, 1936, 1945; salas, 1947; barnouw, 1956; sutton-smith, 1959, sutton-smith and rosenberg, 1961; scheffler, 1976; plath, 1986), an activity perhaps no longer befitting rugged boys of the past. menendez, in discussing the argentinean variants of rayuela (hopscotch), states that "con respecto a la diferenciación de sexos, en algunos lugares la rayuela es jugada exclusivamente por niñas; en otros es mixto. nunca es eclusivamente masculino, yen ciertas partes jugarlo es considerado una actitud 'afeminada'" [with respect to the differentiation of the sexes, in some places hopscotch is played exclusively by girls; in others it is mixed. never is it exclusively masculine, and in certain places, to play it is considered an 'effeminate' act] (137). these characterizations of hopscotch as distinctly feminine have altered the meaning of this widespread practice within the twentieth century. rugged boys once played the game, but modern boys who cross the lines of the hopscotch grid run the risk today of being called "sissies" (from sister), or some cultural equivalent connoting effeminacy.9 these designations, deemed culturally derogatory, have been reported from nearly every continent (de vries, 1957; sutton-smith, 1959, sutton-smith and rosenberg, 1961; menendez, 1963; manilerd, 1986) within the twentieth century.10 such labels of contempt alert boys to the fact that only certain actions are socially sanctioned as appropriately "masculine," negatively reinforcing any deviation from such masculine practices. these same labels suggest to girls that those cultural productions deemed feminine become socially marked and marginalized. and yet, as this brief historical analysis illustrates, the traditional game of hopscotch belongs neither to boys nor girls exclusively. as a dynamic social practice, hopscotch has become within the twentieth century a highly gendered space, a socially sanctioned space of femininity.11 thus, within the binary construction of the gender order, boys participating in purportedly "girls' game" become socially stigmatized. for as rosenberg 14 boys who play hopscotch and sutton-smith suggest, it was "much more deviant behavior for a modern boy to play at, say dolls, hopscotch, jacks, houses, schools, cooking, jump rope, musical chairs, simon says, and singing games than it was for a boy to play at these things in earlier historical periods. . . " (1961: 41). it seems evident that this behavior is deemed "deviant" within the twentieth century because these particular practices have become culturally feminized. for those stigmatized as sissies, the adage that boys will be boys takes on a coercive twist. the expression becomes an imperative rather than a statement signifying future perfection. thus, the gendered space of the hopscotch grid simultaneously sanctions the cultural production of femininity while questioning the masculine development of its male participants. in questioning boys' masculinity, notions of sexuality are "playfully" invoked, promoting an ideology of heterosexism and homophobia. as lynne segal has written, homophobia represses "the 'feminine' in all men [as] a way of keeping men separated off from women, and keeping women subordinate to men" (16). in a marked attempt to separate male from female, the active production of children's social worlds strongly discourages boys from engaging in practices perceived even remotely feminine. as a result, boys distance themselves from any games or activities which come to be equated with girls. in this way, children respond to the social pressure of conforming to the cultural definitions of appropriate and dichotomous gender roles by producing boundaries for their own social activities. in order to escape the apparent stigma attached to playing hopscotch, then, twentieth century boys have drawn further away from this social practice (de vries, 1957; suttonsmith, 1959; sutton-smith and rosenberg, 1961; knapp and knapp, 1976; thorne, 1993).12 as this historical sketch illustrates, the traditional game of hopscotch has come to be viewed today as a feminine form of action. as girls began to enter social spaces previously inhabited by young men within the nineteenth and twentieth century, boys appear to have distanced themselves from these previously male preserves. while the historical evolution of this traditional game is perhaps noteworthy, it tells us little about the potential factors which underlie the changing meanings of gender and sexuality within the twentieth century. in the following section, 15 van rheenen then, i attempt to broadly examine the ways in which this singular practice has helped to reify gender as a binary social construction within the twentieth century. focusing in particular on american forms of hopscotch, i address two sociological developments of the modern era which i believe have served to institutionalize the physical and social structure of the game today. sociological trends within 20th century america in the context of the united states, the rise of modern sport and the incorporation of recreation under institutional control has significantly altered the meaning of this traditional game. both of these developments have led to an increased formalization of game structure as well as a more rigid separation of game participants by sex. men and the sporting culture modern sport may well represent one of the last strongholds of male power and superiority over—and separation from—the perceived "feminization" of american culture (messner, 1987; horowitz, 1987). the closing of the frontier, changes in the workplace, the family, and the educational system have all been cited as factors eroding the traditional bases of male privilege within the united states (filene, 1975; dubbert, 1979). in this context, organized sports has become a "primary masculinityvalidating experience." besides becoming a medium for adult male production and consumption, boys are often directed towards organized sports and other activities which articulate cultural definitions of masculinity. the creation of the boy scouts of america, little league baseball, and pop warner football exemplify the way in which modern boys have been institutionally segregated from girls so as to develop a distinctly male gender identity. as quest: the magazine for boys suggests, modern boys are expected to explore and conquer a competitive world, perhaps opening new markets and opportunities. the sporting world provides a symbolic arena within which boys may prepare and 16 boys who play hopscotch practice for adult forays into this competitive culture. thus, institutionalized games such as baseball and football offer a cultural medium through which developing masculinity might further be validated. in this regard, sport serves to reinforce rigid definitions of masculinity and femininity as well as rationalize male domination. like boys who are stigmatized as sissies for playing hopscotch, girls entering the arena of modern sport within the twentieth century have had to deflect accusations of lesbianism. for as lenskyj asserts, "athleticism is so clearly defined as a male attribute that its presence in women is automatically assumed to 'masculinize' her, if she was not 'masculine' at the outset" (1993:280). ironically, a girl traversing a hopscotch diagram today, leaping over restricted boxes while balancing a marker upon the back of her hand, must demonstrate tremendous athleticism. however, this display of unquestioned athleticism in girls is seldom perceived as masculine. thus, as boys entered the male preserve of modern sport, girls appear to have taken primary ownership of the hopscotch diagram. as sport was perceived as culturally masculine, the social and physical space of the hopscotch diagram became readily identified as feminine. the spatial parameters of these very games could be said to reinforce these cultural meanings. while most sports require a larger expanse—a wide open terrain of fields, courts, and diamonds—the traditional game of hopscotch is played within a confined space. given these requirements of physical space, sports tend to be played further from the home or school site than a game such as hopscotch, which is generally played in earshot of these physical structures. the physical mapping of these diverse activities suggests a similar mapping of social structure, particularly as it relates to a hegemonic gender order. men are afforded greater social mobility than women, while women continue to be culturally positioned (and in turn, position themselves) in closer proximity to the home. thus, this modern reading of hopscotch as feminine practice appears to be supported by its physical and social structure. the names often given to the compartments of this traditional game seem to lend support to the argument that playing hopscotch prepares participants for domestic life, training modern girls to gain a certain mastery within this confined space. 17 van rheenen particular compartments within the diagram are often referred to as rooms (brewster, 1945,1953; sutton-smith, 1972). the skillful player moves from one room to the next, obeying the responsibilities and restrictions associated with each room. in other cases, the small spaces of the hopscotch diagram are actually called houses (hurgronje, 1905; bancroft, 1937; winslow, 1965; lankford, 1992),13 where the ultimate goal is to take ownership of one's own house. a girl becomes the master of her own house, a housewife, only after she has demonstrated skill and proficiency within this feminine course of action. but again, this gendered interpretation makes sense in describing modern forms of women's domestic labor, but does this same game train boys to become domestically skilled and/or confined? how might we explain boys' use and control of these symbolic spaces within previous centuries? perhaps this shift in game preference highlights another shift in domestic control, where women are understood within the sexual division of labor to represent the modern masters of the house. institutionalizing game form and the gender order on the school playground the structural equivalence created between hopscotch and femininity has been further reinforced by the incorporation of recreation into the american education system. this development towards institutionalized play within the twentieth century has changed the context within which traditional games are produced. previously referred to as a street or sidewalk game (culin, 1891; douglas, 1931; salas, 1947; fraser, 1975), the depiction of a painted hopscotch diagram onto the school playground has appeared to formalize both its physical and social structure. based on participant observation of nineto eleven-year-old children in four elementary schools, thorne and luria found that gender segregation is central to the daily lives of american school children. so central in fact is this segregation that these authors speak of separate boys' and girls' worlds. this separation by gender seems even more pronounced on the playground, where adults are less able to exert control and children are relatively free to choose their own activities and companions. this tendency to select genderspecific games on the school 18 boys who play hopscotch playground has similarly been reported elsewhere. in a study of thai children's games, anderson (1973) found that games deemed exclusively feminine or masculine were played much more frequently at school than in the home neighborhood. thus, in the united states and abroad, it appears that girls and boys play together much more readily away from the school setting, and seem willing to play games at home or in their neighborhoods which their same-sex peers would preclude at school. thus, the incorporation of recreation into the schoolday beginning in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries has appeared to segregate the sexes in their play activities, contributing to the social construction of a gender divide. the fact that playgrounds have "a more fixed geography of gender" suggests that children actively participate in the production of their own gender identities (thorne 44). and yet, the playground itself remains a school-sanctioned space. as such, schools have formalized the physical fields of play available to children. while many of these decisions rest upon the limitations of real estate and the desire for functional order, these decisions significantly alter the cultural production of children. concerning the traditional game of hopscotch, school authorities these days commonly paint a diagram (or perhaps a few of the same diagram) upon the playground blacktop. presented as the basic form of this polymorphous practice, this painted and semipermanent diagram represents a design repossessed from children by adult authority, a painted form which potentially limits the freedom of children's play and innovation. this process of incorporating an informal game into the more formalized school setting has led many children around the world to refer to the modern 'game of hopscotch as "school" or "classes" (byleeva and grigoriev, 1985; vsevolodski-gerngross, 1987; duran, 1995). in russia, for example, gorbunov, efimov and efimova (1994: 101) report that the name of classes, given to certain versions of the game of hopscotch, only appears after the 1930s. thus, the incorporation of this traditional game into the school setting within the twentieth century appears to have altered the names that children attribute to this social practice. the painting of a relatively fixed form on the school playground may in fact discourage children from participating in this traditional game altogether. in discussing the play of scot 19 van rheenen tish children, nielsen and roberts report that "perhaps as a matter of policy linked to the best kept school award [sic], the only hopscotch beds in today's playgrounds have been painted by benevolent authority. 'beddies' is not much played in aberdeen now: pre-decorated playground surfaces do not interest children for long" (34, my italics). as their own production is stripped from them, children are expected to passively consume the games offered to them by school authorities. however, children are not merely passive recipients of adult socialization. as skillful social agents, children may ignore these adult designs or they may reassert their own productive and creative capabilities. thus, the structural constraints placed upon these games by adults may be actively resisted. it is not uncommon for children to add to the painted diagram, or bypass the school-sponsored form and draw their own hopscotch diagram.14 in this way, children produce their own structure for play. by not playing within the school-sanctioned hopscotch diagram, simultaneously defacing school property in order to assert an alternative identity, children risk getting into trouble with adults. ritchie reports one child's concerns about drawing hopscotch ("peevers" or "beddies" in scotland) diagrams at school: "in ma last school ye got the belt for drawin' peever beds in the playground. fae the heidmaister tae! . . . at abbeyhill ye could play peevers in the playground but the jannie was a moanin" (109). despite these risks and threats of physical punishment, children continue to produce their own possibilities for play. in active resistance to adult authority, children sketch their own creations of this traditional game on the blacktop surface. it should be added, however, that these acts of resistance against the school-sanctioned game diagram or physical structure is a different kind of resistance than children challenging the social structure embedded within this particular practice. children may produce their own hopscotch design as an act of cultural resistance while simultaneously reproducing the binary and hierarchical construction of gender. this does not mean that the social structure embedded within these social practices cannot also be challenged. in fact, boys continue to play the game of hopscotch today, despite incriminations against entering into this stigmatized space.15 thus, 20 boys who play hopscotch even within late twentieth century america, the feminized practice of hopscotch should not be labeled a "girls' game." however, in order to more fully examine how both boys and girls interpret their use of/production within, and distance from, this particular practice, children must be made the living units of analysis. in order to accomplish this task, however, we must merge culturally texted studies with ethnographically grounded studies. one possible means of adopting this ethnographic approach in relation to this work would be to focus on those boys who continue to engage in this social practice despite its gendered marking. in the following section, then, i tentatively advance three types of social actor: tykes, teasers, and cultural resisters. while the following brief section is presented solely as a prelude to more detailed ethnographic work, i do draw from informal observations witnessed on school playgrounds within the san francisco bay area. boys who play hopscotch: tykes, teasers, and cultural resistors the majority of boys who participate in the social practice of hopscotch appear to be several years younger on average than the preadolescent girls playing the game. these boys, whom i affectionately call the tykes, often play along side these older girls, representing perhaps a younger brother, cousin, or next door neighbor of one of the female participants. boys appear to enter this social and physical space at around the same age as little girls, but they stop playing the game much earlier. both boys and girls at the age of five or six seem interested in the gymnastic challenge of traversing the hopscotch diagram. girls, however, seem to retain their interest in this traditional game until the age of twelve or so. boys, on the other hand, move away from this social space after a relatively short period of time, often as they enter formalized schooling. few boys older than seven or eight years of age appear interested in the game of hopscotch today. as demonstrated above, this period of time corresponds generally with an increased segregation among the sexes, a segregation seemingly institutionalized within the school setting. similarly, as boys begin to experience masculine valida 21 van rheenen tion through competitive sports, joining organized, same-sex football, baseball and soccer teams, the hopscotch diagram is left behind. nonetheless, older boys occasionally enter the hopscotch terrain. the reasons for their participation may be quite different, however. some boys, whom i refer here to as the teasers, invade the marked and feminized space of the hopscotch diagram in order to disrupt the play of girls. the ambivalence of wanting to be a part of the girls' activity while wishing to articulate difference often translates into a type of teasing. this teasing is most prevalent on the playground rather than in a neighborhood setting, where the stigma attached to playing the game is not so severe. the teasing associated with the game of hopscotch is generally for the benefit of other boys, a way of reinforcing the segregation of girls' and boys' social worlds. a boy may try to make fun of the girls' practices, exaggerating what he believes to be their feminine course and style of action. these teasing boys are actively adopting gender as a resource for their creative and reproductive play. by reinforcing the gender divide on this physical plane, male hegemony is further entrenched into the dominant discourse of culture. occasionally, however, an older boy will join a round of hopscotch in apparent disregard for the social stigma attached to it. he enters the game as a willing participant without the intent to tease or taunt. these individual deviations actively challenge the binary construction of sex/ gender, and as such, i call these boys cultural resistors. in their cultural production of play, these boys resist the social structure embedded within this game, thus challenging the dominant meanings of masculinity and femininity. while these boys may be labeled sissies for their social action, they likewise serve a critical role in validating the masculinity of their social critics. in a sense, then, their very presence on the playground helps to perpetuate the gender order, while highlighting the tenuousness of these social constructions. and yet, these same boys awaken the promise of cultural possibility, a release from structural constraint. the contradiction of their cultural production suggests that gender is clearly marked within the confines of this traditional game. as a dynamic social practice, hopscotch embodies these cultural 22 boys who play hopscotch and physical markings. for while the lines of the game diagram compartmentalize physical space, the social structure of the game tends to reproduce the binary construction of gender within the twentieth century, simultaneously affording room for social resistance. summary and implications in tracing the historical transformation of hopscotch, this essay has sought to illustrate how a traditional game, once played primarily by boys, has come to signify a feminine course of action within the twentieth century. a game once played by rugged boys, hopscotch has become today a stigmatized space, where manly boys dare not tread. thus, by creating the structural parameters of a hopscotch diagram, negotiating the method and tenor of play, children actively participate in their own construction of gender. for as children divide their environment into chalked boxes for apparent amusement, they likewise divide the sexes into cultural categories of gender. as children enter into this marked and confined space, they face a divided landscape of gendered terrain. at play, these children work through these socially constructed confines, confronting other cultural possibilities of game and gender form. there is space within these traditional games to play with social divisions, to resist the imposition of social structure. in order to investigate these new forms of cultural production, however, it is imperative to view children as active social agents. on a daily basis, on school blacktops and in their own backyards, children (re)create culture. as adults, we need to keep these blacktops and backyards open, free from the bias of a grown-up perspective. by celebrating rather than controlling the range of youthful production, we learn from children not only about our own rich histories but also about a future of endless possibilities. university of california, berkeley notes 1. this notion of viewing games as habitable texts challenges the fixed nature of games as socializing agents, where the structure of the 23 van rheenen game itself determines player and personnel strategy. in this sense, the subjective reading of hopscotch as a habitable text returns the cultural production of meaning to the player himor herself. simultaneously, however, the structural imposition of meaning upon a particular reading will likewise affect player experience and production. the idea of as "open" text (eco 1989) has been the subject of considerable interest within literary criticism. of note here is julio corbizar's revolutionary 1963 publication of rayuela (translated as hopscotch in 1966), in which he encourages the reader to participate in the production of the novel. cortazar suggests two possible ways of reading the novel. the first, which he associates with the "female reader," is to read the novel in the normal or passive fashion from beginning to end. the second, which he attributes to the "male reader," takes control (as led by cortazar himself) of the novel's order by reading chapters in alternative sequence. as might be expected, cortazar's sexist imposition of just what constitutes a male and female reading drew a great deal of criticism. in an interview with evelyn picon garfield, he responds to this criticism with an apology to women worldwide: i ask pardon of the women of the world for the fact that i used such a "machista" expression so typical of latin american underdevelopment. . . . i did it innocently and i have no excuse. but when i began to hear the opinions of my friends, women readers who heartily insulted me, i realized that i had done something foolish. i should have put "passive reader" and not "female reader" because there's no reason for believing that females are continually passive. they are in certain circumstances and are not in others, the same as males. (garfield 108) while cortazar's terminology is reflective of a sexist gender ideology, the suggestion that men and women, boys and girls, may read themselves into a cultural text differently provides an interesting point of departure for this paper, as the cultural production of hopscotch varies in time, place, and game participant. 2. space refers here to both the physical plane as well as the social relations existing within and across that physical plane. i borrow here from the work of bourdieu (1990), massey (1991), and lefebvre (1991) in my own understanding of space. in discussing the connection between social and physical space, massey contends that "social relations always have a spatial form and a spatial content, they exist necessarily both in space (i.e., in locational relations to other social phenomenon) and across space. and it is the vast complexity of the interlocking and articulating nets of social relations which is social 24 boys who play hopscotch space" (12). in terms of this paper, i am particularly interested in lefebvre's notion of social space. he writes that "social space is the outcome of past actions that permit fresh actions to occur, while suggesting others, while prohibiting yet others" (73). 3. this boisterous game for boys was called "bronze fly." pollux writes, "they bind a boy's eyes with a headband, and he is turned round and round calling out, 'i will chase the bronze fly.' the others answer, 'you will chase him, but you won't catch him.' they hit him with paper whips until he catches one of them" (9.123). the game of blindman's buff was known as hoodman blind during the elizabethan times. in shakespeare's hamlet, hamlet says to his mother: what devil was't that thus hath cozen'd you at hoodman blind? (iii.4.76-77) 4. piaget defines the practice of rules as "the way in which children of different ages effectively apply rules," while the consciousness of rules refers to the way in which" children of different ages form [sic] the character of these games rules, whether of something obligatory and sacred or of something subject to their own choice, whether of heteronomy or autonomy" (14-15). 5. in fairness to piaget, he himself poses the question whether this gender "difference [is] due to the somewhat loosely knit character of the game of 'ilet cachant' or to the actual mentality of little girls." his answer, however, is not all that persuasive as he dismisses a very real methodological problem while making sweeping generalizations about all "girls' games." he writes: "both of these suppositions probably amount to the same thing, since we noticed that all girls' games are marked by this polymorphism and tolerance (83, my italics). 6. in this statement of philosophy, the publishers of hopscotch for girls and boys' quest list as their first goal the desire to "instill traditional family values in elementary age girls and boys." 7. in a telling article entitled "the hopscotch girl," patricia foster provides a personal narrative of her own troubled childhood. the abstract for this article states that "her resurfacing desire is to see herself as a natural, hopscotch-playing, carefree girl." the connection between "natural" femininity and playing hopscotch provides yet another glimpse into the use of this practice within literature and popular culture as signifying "traditional" girlhood. concerning popular culture, in two of the best picture nominees for the 1996 academy awards, the english patient (which won) and shine, young girls are 25 van rheenen depicted playing hopscotch. as these blockbuster films target an international audience today, a widespread practice such as hopscotch fits nicely into both films' global readability. while these scenes may be peripheral to the main story, the visual message remains clear: girls play hopscotch. 8. within the folklore archives at the university of california, berkeley, one informant, joseph young (as collected in 1969 by his daughter, irene young of los angeles) recalls playing hopscotch in new york city during the 1930s, suggesting that boys played hopscotch while girls played a similar game they called potsie (potsy). young remembers that girls and boys played this similar game separately. another informant, barbara altman (as collected by her daughter, gail altman of huntington beach), recalls playing the game with other girls in her neighborhood in the bronx, new york, stating that "boys never played potsy." thus, it appears that certain versions were more commonly played by girls while others were more likely practiced by boys, or boys and girls together. from the above references, it seems as if clum's description of "pick the stone up" might be related in some way to potsy, versions of the game which appear to be almost exclusively played by new york city girls. 9. the game preferences of japanese children are chronicled in the encyclopedia nipponico, 1984: 352-53. 10. it is possible in previous times, when the game was played primarily by boys, that girls who attempted to participate in this social practice were also stigmatized, ridiculed for being too masculine. i have found no evidence to support this claim however. 11. this has similarly been reported by numerous informants within folklore archives world wide. informant samuel lewis reports that this game came into his life about 1910 in san francisco through a girl a few years older than he and his friends. lewis adds, however, that "we regarded it as a sissy's game." another informant, diane canning of sunnyvale, california, states that she asked her brother if he knew what hopscotch was and if he ever played the game. he said, "are you kidding? that's for girls!" this notion that hopscotch was popular among girls and avoided by boys has been reported world wide, from norway (tom arne lunne, oslo, 1950) to taiwan (robert huang, tai chung, ca. 1952; helen chan, 1975), from france (anouch chanazariaun, 1957) to pakistan (taki tejami, karachi, 1943), and from israel (tiva pelter, 1965) to ethiopia (daniel taruku, dessie, 1970). the use of designations such as sissy, fag, or queer is relatively common in the informal activities of children within the twentieth century. in the 26 boys who play hopscotch popular game of "smear the queer," also known in the united states as "bag the fag," "tag the fag," "cream the queer," etc., a player throws or kicks a ball into the air and everyone chases and tackles whoever catches it. the brave lad who picks up the ball and runs from the others is purportedly "queer." ironically, however, the longer this player can last without being tackled and mauled by the other boys, the more masculine the queer is deemed to be. this game tends to be most popular among elementary and junior high school boys, a game played at roughly the same ages as hopscotch is played by girls today. thus, peer socialization around issues of gender and sexuality appear particularly pronounced among preadolescent children. for an interesting discussion of how the game of smear the queer fits into an underlying cultural paradigm of ritualized homosexual behavior evident in male-to-male sports and games, see alan dundes' "the american game of 'smear the queer' and the homosexual component of male competitive sport and warfare," parsing through customs, madison: university of wisconsin press (1987): 178-94. 12. i borrow from lenskyj here in defining femininity as "the socially constructed components of female identity: behavior, attitudes and practices, which, by focusing on sex differences, serve as outward and visible signs of women's sexual, social and economic subordination to men" (381). this social subordination may in part explain why low status boys within all-male peer groups are sometimes called girls or sissies. 13. an active male agent who crosses the gender divide indeed risks social ostracism from other children, as the label of sissy or queer confirms. many of the names given to hopscotch variants around the world may elucidate this cultural ambivalence with the appropriate sex of this games participants. in spain, for example, two variants of the game, reina mora and pata coja, suggest this possible ambivalence. reina mora can be directly translated as queen mora, most likely in reference to a moorish queen associated with the moors' invasion and occupation of spain throughout this european country's history. but, as in the english speaking world, a "queen" can also refer to a homosexual man, particularly an effeminate gay man. thus, a boy who plays the queen runs the risk of being thought more comfortable with "female" rather than "male" characteristics and pastimes. similarly, the name pata coja may be loosely translated as either "bent leg" or "hopping (female) duck," which seems logical given the movements of participants engaged in this children's game. but the term pata (leg or female duck) may likewise refer to a gay man in many central and latin american countries. the term pata derives, it would seem, from the latin word pater, or father, or even from pato to pata 27 van rheenen (male to female duck) suggests that this masculine symbol, and the corresponding suffix "o," has been castrated and replaced by the feminine "a." thus, a spanish slang term which connotes a feminized male symbol depicts this gendered children's game. finally, a north american variant, found particularly on the east coast of the united states, bears the name potsie or less commonly patsie (goldenberg, 1993). this term has come to mean both the overall game of hopscotch, as well as the marker used by children as they throw or kick it through the various compartments of the chalked diagram. but there exists a similar folk expression which seems to have evolved within the twentieth century, the description of an individual, usually male, who is called a "patsy." this term refers to "a dupe or fall guy" (a dictionary of slang and unconventional english 1984), or, even more specific to this argument, "a weak or cowardly man" (dictionary of american slang 1967). the etymology of this folk expression remains uncertain, although it begins to appear in print only within the current century. one reference to the slang expression appears in 1953, in which william gloves writes, "you can hardly call a patsy a hero" (ap, may 11). is it not possible that the derivation of the english expression "patsy" comes directly from the worldwide children's game of hopscotch? as this term refers to both the overall game as well as the marker used within the game, might it not likewise refer to a boy who plays this evolving "feminine" pastime? a boy who plays hopscotch risks maturing into a "weak or cowardly man," a patsy. gloves' oppositional use of the folk term patsy with a hero similarly suggests that what once might have represented a male initiation rite (see chapter 3) has now become the feminine antics of a cowardly man or patsy. if the gendered interpretation of this modern folk expression seems reaching to the reader, we can more safely assert that a potsie or patsie indeed represents the marker used within this children's game. as this marker is thrown and kicked about, it becomes the central instrument or tool of use by the players. the folk term patsy similarly refers to an individual easily kicked about, a mark used for the benefit of others. thus, the folk expression of a patsy may well have evolved out of this mere "child's play," commonly known within the english speaking countries as hopscotch. 14. this idea of taking ownership of one's own compartment or house within the game of hopscotch has been reported world wide. foreign informants to the uc berkeley folklore archive have similarly reported this phenomenon. examples include maria del carmen infante (rosario, argentina, 1952), cherrymae king (belize city, belize, 1964), daniel tariku (dessie, ethiopia, 1970), tacio myriantheus (athens, greece, 1967), momo (liberia, 1986), thanhdung nguyen (saigon, 28 boys who play hopscotch vietnam, ca. 1972), liza bird (teheran, iran, ca. 1956), and more. it is worth noting that this process of obtaining private property within the hopscotch diagram as a result of successful play, thereby forbidding others to set foot into this terrain, has been found in both capitalist and socialist economies around the world. 15. several informants to the dc berkeley folklore archive have discussed the making of their own hopscotch diagrams onto the school playground. karen kresich davis (berkeley, 1975) reports of her sister's (informant joan kresich icanberry) play during the 1950s: "my sister remembers that there were some hopscotch looking games painted on the playground at school. these were not right for the game she played, however, so she had to draw her own game." nancy mitchell (redwood city, california, 1982) reports that "a certain number of hopscotch squares were painted on the cement at the school, but sometimes girls would bring chalk to draw more." gilda fong (oakland, california, 1956) states that "if hopscotch squares were in use at the playground, then we would draw our own squares with white chalk on the ground." other informants report adding to the school sponsored hopscotch diagram: one fourth grader (collected from v. silver ton, 1969) adds that "the greatest part of the hopscotch figure is painted on the playground, with the numbers. the girls take chalk and draw a circle at the end [of the diagram] and number it." 16. it should be noted here that the game of hopscotch still appears to be played by boys in some cultures without this apparent stigma. sierra reports, for example, that the game is primarily played by boys in the tarascan and zapotec cultures of mexico. in ireland, brady reports that "the number of boys to be seen playing beds has increased considerably lately: a few years ago only the girls played beds" (153). these case are interesting as they seem to contradict the cultural feminization of this widespread children's game within the twentieth century. these cases similarly suggest that this particular practice possesses no inherent connection to one sex or the other, and that the meanings associated with the game of hopscotch shift both historically and cross-culturally. nonetheless, these cases seem to be the exception rather than the rule of practice. from australia to argentina, from thailand to holland, from korea to california, the social practice of hopscotch has generally become associated with girls today. i am most interested here in how children both reproduce and resist the gender order, as embodied in this dynamic social practice. 29 van rheenen works cited anderson, wanni w. children's play and games in rural thailand: a study in enculturation and socialization. dissertation, 1973. bancroft, jessie h. games. new york: macmillan, 1937. barnouw, victor. 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"an annotated collection of children's lore." keystone folklore quarterly 6 (1966): 180-85. 34 childhood narrated and negotiated: children's, parents' and teachers' views on childhood bjørg kjær in this paper i shall demonstrate how different approaches to childhood interact with the childhood narratives of children, parents, and school teachers. childhood is narrated and constructed by different agents. in pierre bourdieu-terms we have a field of agents, discussing the definition of the child. in this discussion, professionals have striven to achieve orthodoxy, i.e. the privilege of being experts whose utterances have more power than those of others. the danish context in the nordic countries and especially in denmark, childhood has become extremely institutionalized and professionalized during the last thirty years. today we have a large labor market related to children, and childraising has become a matter for professionals as well as parents. most danish children attend daycare within their first year of living as 90% of all mothers are in the labor market. so the concept of the child is a very important category which functions as an archimedic point in the process of defining specific professional groups as well as parenthood in general. the public debate has frequently returned to the question of who should influence and leave their mark on children. in the seventies, there was a moral panic about indoctrination of school-children, which created a taboo in relation to the role of professional upbringers. they were expected to be teaching "facts" and useful competences like reading, writing, calculating, etc. but it was also expected that teachers would train children's independence and improve their abilities to participate in a democratic society; at least this is an implicit formulation in the text of the school legislation. so, as a teacher, one must both teach "facts" and "attitudes." 35 kjær the questions of what are "facts" and what are "attitudes" has been rather obscure in the public debate, and the demand for neutrality has forced teachers to emphasize and make visible their teaching, and play down their personal opinions and values, even though the latter is an important part of teaching democracy. methods in this context i have studied how children, parents and teachers tell childhood. i have done so partly by means of interviews and partly by fieldwork. the former i rather prefer to call conversations or dialogues with people. the latter i would call folkloristic fieldwork, i.e. on the basis of my cultural competence i get into dialogues and interactions with adults and children. being a part of the danish culture myself, i have striven for no kind of neutrality. rather, i have sought to expose the context-bound dynamics of communication in relation to children and their upbringing. i have been faced with the well-known dilemma of not being able to ask the informants about what i wanted to know because i wanted to obtain materials which would provide more than just examples of what i could think of in advance. so, instead of making questionnaires, i spoke with the informants about themes in relation to my interests. we spoke about children and adults, about play and school, about toys and joys, about the past, present, and future. i also spoke with the children and interacted with them in different ways, and i spent time with them, just observing. and those observations included adults interacting with children. i see this fieldwork partly as a way of producing social reality by means of my person and partly as a way of observing (this) social reality. the teachers on the basis of sandra dolby stahl's study of personal narratives, i have interpreted the dialogues between me and the informants (kjær 1997) in relation to communication strategies 36 childhood narrated and negotiated and the use of style and narrative sequences of different kinds. in short, teachers tell in generalized terms, they express themselves as having official capacities as experts with authority deriving from their training. they tell no personal narratives, but many "scientific truths" about children's nature. but they do not just hide behind authority. they also express very deep personal involvement in their work. in this personal involvement they make use of their childhood memories in two ways: 1) they tell pupils about their own childhood experiences in order to establish a close relationship with them, and 2) they refer to their own childhoods to aid in evaluating contemporary children's competences, needs, and possibilities. i shall give an example to illustrate the type of dilemma that teachers have to deal with. this teacher tells about the teacher-pupil relationship. per: "there has to be a fundamental joint trust, namely, that both of us are basically fond of each other. and i don't say 'respect' one another. i say: are fond of each other." bjørg: "what then if you're not fond of somebody? did you ever experience that?" per: "no. there's no reason not to be fond of them. what reason would that be?" bjørg: "maybe you are just not fond of some people." per: "yes, but i feel differently. and i know that i do. otherwise i couldn't be a teacher. my task. . . is to see that there is a person who needs knowledge. and i must give knowledge to that human being. because if i don't do that, i've let him or her down." this teacher expresses deep devotion and personal involvement in order to explain his obligations towards the children. it is a contemporary version of a classic nineteenth-century con 37 per: "and by the way, i get paid for it." kjær cept of devotion. this concept is closely connected with the very shaping of the professional teacher, who emerged as a skilled person in this historical period. this devotion is about morality, affection, and openness in relation to any human being that walks through the door of the classroom. this very sentence i just quoted, "because if i don't do that, then i've let him or her down," is a strong statement of human commitment. but it ends in a totally different style, like this: this illustrates the tension between, on the one hand, the teacher's selfimage based on devotion, and, on the other hand, external demands for professional capacity to act in standardized and predictable ways in order to be fair to all children and trustworthy to the surroundings. this tension demands devotion and personal commitment from the teacher-but at the same time it taboos the limits of such a deep personal involvement. so the teacher has to say that his disliking a pupil is not a possibility. we have two lines of argumentation: 1) the personally committed and emotionally expressed way of telling, and 2) the professionally distanced and intellectually expressed way of telling. and these two lines of argumentation never meet. the teachers jump abruptly from one to the other. in this movement between the discourses, the image of childhood functions as a legitimizer and explanation. as a teacher, one is supposed to love all children because they are assumed to be alike-i.e. childish. on the other had, because children are alike, one can generalize in scientific ways about them. the parents parents tell childhood in very personal ways. this is in complete accord with their culturally-defined roles as intimately related to and attached to their children. they would be bad parents if they spoke otherwise. they tell many personal narratives and identify strongly with their sons and daughters as they recollect their own childhood experiences. but the picture is 38 childhood narrated and negotiated quite ambiguous because the parents also use scientific concepts and knowledge when narrating their children. all of the parents use developmental psychology to explain and describe children in general and their own children in particular. when the offspring are discussed, parents mention, for instance, the importance of play and sport activities for children's mental and intellectual development, implicitly drawing on psychological research showing a connection between the two. the swedish ethnologist karl-olov arnstberg (1987) describes how psychology as a scholarly discipline has led to the growth of a popular psychology living side by side with authorized psychology. according to arnstberg, psychology offers personally based causal explanations which appear to be universal and place the individual in a larger context without deindividualizing him or her. this is why scientific psychology is used in everyday life. the conceptualization of childhood gives the personal interpretations a touch of science. especially in this field of childhood and child raising, the question of right and wrong is attached to scientific results. so these parents' interpretations of children are marked by the scientifically legitimated discourse of public professional childcare. today, most parents are in contact with daycare institutions very early in their parental career, as part of child raising is moved from a private to a public space when the child is about one year old. ideals, norms, dreams, and hopes, which can differ a lot, are narrated and negotiated in an arena where the intimacy of the family must communicate with professional competence. the reference to developmental psychology makes the parents' argumentation appear scientific in a way that signifies their mastery of the prestigious codes concerning children and their development. this style of well-informedness aims at mastering the professional code in order to make it possible for the parents to express their own opinions. the parents do not necessarily take over scientific frames of reference uncritically. rather, they create a tradition of parenthood and childhood on the basis of a scientific discourse. they use this scientific discourse in refiguring their own wishes, norms, and morals in much the same way as they use their childhood memories. 39 kjær the children i am going to introduce you to three boys in a kindergarten. they are best friends, sometimes referred to as "the three musketeers"—just to give you some idea of the character of their friendship. for about two years, these boys have been busy telling and playing endless spiderman stories. they go on for hours, days, and weeks. conscientiously they have been doing their "homework" as they have watched the spiderman tv show every friday afternoon. they have made their parents videotape the shows, they have invited each other home to watch the tapes, and they have rehearsed and discussed conflicts and characters in the show. the teachers do not think spiderman is in good taste. they consider it to be of poor quality and violent, primitively repeating a stereotyped dichotomy between good and evil. the boys use spiderman in at least three ways: 1. it keeps the adults at a distance, whereby the boys gain complete control. here it is of great help that teachers loathe spiderman! 2. it serves as a good source for the creativity of the boys, as the characters are used, transformed, discussed, and elaborated in narratives and play. 3. it forms a critique of cultural notions in the adult world. the boys use spiderman to insist on the existence of good and evil—and they insist on the importance of their own judgments, which are far from stereotyped. let me elaborate a bit on the last point. in contemporary denmark, the dichotomy of good and evil is, in a way, non-existent. to be more precise: it has been transformed into a dichotomy of good and sick (or good and pathological) (d. frykman 1993). this dichotomy of good and sick is a contemporary way of conceptualizing human suffering by relating to evil not as an explanation, as in premodern or religious contexts, but as some 40 childhood narrated and negotiated thing that has to be explained. in this process of explaining evil, professional caregivers, teachers, social workers, etc. play an important role. a child cannot be just evil, bad, unpleasant or disagreeable. the badness of the child has to be explained in terms of external influences such as events, which have made a healthy, normal child turn into a pathological one. this process of making evil dissolve into social, psychological, and societal circumstances is practiced by professional upbringers of all kinds and has become part of danish common sense, a "truth" taken for granted. but by using spiderman characters in playing and telling, these boys insist on the existence of evil. the pedagogues cannot accept such a standpoint since their professional identity is closely linked to the explanation of evil in order to make it disappear and make the malfunctioning child normal again. in these three different ways of narrating and defining childhood we can see that all of them implicitly or explicitly relate to the private-professional dichotomy, and negotiate the appropriate frame of reference. to my mind the different, distinct adult modes of telling the child must be understood together as a whole. the messages of private and professional utterances are important to understand some basic cultural notions in contemporary denmark. i consider this tension between modes of utterances to be a reflection of an ideology of social life. it is an ideology which connects professional competence to both authority and morality. the greater the professional competence, the greater the authority and moral habitus. that which is formed as rational, scientific, neutral truths are as a matter of fact utterances about morals, attitudes, and values. actually, the study of children's expressions is an eye-opener in pointing to these truths for what they are: cultural notions about the nature of children. works cited arnstberg, karl-olav, ed. bläckfisken. om tillvarons tolkning, sunt förnuft och psykologins utbredning. 1987. baurdieu, pierre. distinktionen. 1986 trans. of la distinction. paris: ed 41 kjær de minuit, 1979. ______. "nägra egenskaper hos fälten." 1990 trans. of "quelques proprietes des champs. "questions de sociologie. 1980. frykman, jonas. "beroendets mörka sida. ondska i en social kontext." ondskans etnografi. eds. lena gerholm and tomas gerholm. stockholm, 1993. kjær, bjørg. "childhood narrated, privately and professionally." arv, nordic yearbook of folklore. ed. ulrika wolf-knuts. the royal adolphus academy, upsala. stockholm: almquist & wiksell, 1997. 42 bedtime stories joann conrad conventional ethnographies portray a reality with limited complexity—from the singular perspective of the ethnographer observing the object engaged in events external to the observer. the multiple voices or personalities of the ethnographer are never invoked nor is the complex relationality of the object(s) and the ethnographer(s) to each other and to their situatedness in a context that is dynamic and dependent on their presence. in contrast to such ethnographies, in this article it is the process of investigation into the central question—the puzzle concerning the nature of the mother-child relationship—that is the main diegesis. this is a description; an investigation into the parallel, complex emotional relationship between a mother and child; an unfolding of the intertwined development of two characters' feelings and sometimes conflicted emotions, probing into the nature of the relationship of the characters in which the historical and psychological depths of that relationship are revealed. in unraveling the nature of this relationship, the rigid, separate and hierarchical polarity of other and self (ethnographer) is deconstructed. there is, in fact, no simple monolithic self to act as a referent to an equally monolithic other. the revelation undermines the construction of such an other and uncovers the dilemma inherent in the entire ethnographic enterprise which masquerades as representation. the inevitable categorization, distillation and oversimplification of reality in any such representation belies its complexity. in this ethnographic enterprise, the mother's questions on the nature of close relations parallel, reflect, and illuminate the son's stories. the development of the sensibilities of the characters in the piece is brought out in their juxtaposition—reflecting as well as motivating one another. following the search for understanding into the deepening sensibilities of both characters is the main story line—anchored in no time or space other than that of the characters themselves. here time and space are reorganized to maximally illustrate the search, and yet the puzzle that is the nature of the relationship remains unsolved. rather that being provided with a description or portrait of "reality," we have in the multi-layered interaction between 43 conrad mother and child a powerful analogy for the complexities and unresolved questions that are, perhaps, the nature of existential reality. in the play of surface and depth, the particular and apparently trivial moments of story telling are transcended, and through the allegory of the local and incidental lend substance to another level—the anecdotes themselves and the descriptions of story telling episodes overflowing their own boundaries. * * * it's early morning. i lie awake in bed staring at the wall opposite me. something is wrong, something out of place. . . on any other morning i'd be in bed with mommy, after pop has left for work. . . but mommy is not in bed. my door is closed, but i can hear voices, a lot of voices on the other side in the living room. they are hushed, and i can't make out any words, just strained, worried sounds. . . . is someone crying? . . . why is george out there? he never wakes up this early. . . . something is . . . pop is dead. i'm not getting up. . . i'm not getting out of the bed or moving at all. as long as i stay here and don't go out there he's not dead, it's still part of last night and i've just gone to bed first. . . they just haven't gone to bed yet. i'll just stay here and things won't change. i shuffle down the hall and the living room opens out in front of me. faces turn and expand and fill the space. my mom is all red..."oh, josie . . . there's something i have to tell you. . ." conrad-george fredrik, on dec. 14 born in kaiserslautern, germany. chief engineer, coronado ferries. survived by wife, mary rita, two sons and one daughter. services at sacred heart catholic church, coronado, 10:00 am. * * * 44 bedtime stories "whew, hee, hee, hee. whew, hee, hee, hee. whew, hee, hee, hee." the pain is rising up from the base of my abdomen, rising and taking me with it. i try to resist, to stand my ground, but it's useless. quickly, in rapid succession, nothing, nothing, then screams, arms flying, mouth foaming, eyes rolling, dry heaves. . . ok, ok, it's over again. "her blood pressure is going up; let's get her to lie down." "nooo. please, it hurts too much to lie down!" before i'm fully supine, the pushing starts and the pressure is relieved. push, push, push, hurt, hurt. . . and then. . . emptiness, relief. . . and a tiny cry. a wet mass is placed on my breasts. placental blood is caked on his hair, but his eyes are bright and he is perfect. . . but where did he come from. . . ? can it be possible that this beautiful creature caused so much pain? petraborg— conrad fredril, on may 15,12:20 pm at alta bates hospital, to parents guy petraborg and joann conrad of berkeley. a circle is closed. i try to understand what love is, how it shapes the ones it touches. i know that there is an intimacy i shared with conrad, and for me, part of it is shaped by the physical link i alone have with his creation and initial nurturing. but does this mean that his father cannot access this intimacy, or that conrad even reciprocates it? how does that reconcile with my own bonding with my father, however short-lived? no, . . . i think motherhood provides access to such feelings, but they are not immediate or necessarily forthcoming. does a child experience love differently? is it dependency? does it derive from a need for pleasurable experiences? what constitutes an utterly un-selfconscious love? and can the pain of separation ever not be implicit in such emotions? 45 ,..,._u. conrad 46 ok, now the lights are out, and we're finally winding down. why do they portray going to bed as such a quick process in the movies? the mom and dad just come in, tuck their kid in, kiss him goodnight and close the door. no hysterics, no crying. . . what planet does that happen on? lying down and talking to conrad once he has settled down is so much fun. . . it makes me feel guilty at the same time because i can like him so easily in these non-trying times. god, i wonder how many parents actually lie down with their four-year-old kids... and fall asleep with them? maybe it's a big conspiracy. . . everybody does and nobody admits to it. it's like the tv versions of delivery. . . women looking radiant—yeah, right. "hold still, you wiggle-worm!" he still fits neatly into the curve of my body when we lie together. i have my head resting on his outstretched arm in a gesture that seems almost paternal on his part. i really want to be quiet, i want to fall asleep this way, even though i'm supposed to get him to sleep and go out and do some work. but he wants to tell stories. he wants to keep this going, afraid of going to sleep. is he afraid of this transition to the unknown? or is he just trying to test the limits imposed on him, to see how set they really are? oh man, this fat cat fred is back on the bed between my legs. . . . now i'm pinned in between him and conrad. i can feel my neck twisted in an unnatural and uncomfortable position and i want to move, but fear my movement will get conrad worked up again. . . . i'll have a crick in my neck in the morning. "turn on the light, mommy." "no, i'm not turning the lights on, it's bedtime." "but i can't hear with the lights off. i need the lights on." bedtime stories light comes into the bedroom from the living room beyond, faintly illuminating the forms and figures in the room. the lights from cars passing by in the street outside penetrate the space between the window frames and the shades, and large shards of light pierce the space and travel in circular patterns across the walls. the central bed, heaped with small figures and stuffed animals, is surrounded by the vestiges of day-time activities: art projects, clothes, clean and dirty intermixed and strewn about, puzzle pieces, books, ropes, balls, chairs, a small table. . . their indistinct shapes occasionally sharpened and given color by the lights from the street. i'm settled in under the covers of conrad's double bed, lying on my side facing him. he is lying on his back, with his legs over the covers. he's still wiggling around and is physically engaged in the story telling. i like to watch his profile with the upturned nose and the full cheeks. i like the warmth his body gives up, and try to get closer to enjoy that, while not getting a stray arm or leg in the face. this warmth has gained conrad a number of nicknames: "warm-bug," "heater," or, perversely, "the human worm." i luxuriate in his smell, my favorite aspect of our intimacy. . . it smells of young skin, wet hair, light sweat, and faintly of soap. later in the evening, after he has been asleep for some time, thrashing about in his bed, i'll tuck him in again, and the freshly-washed sweetness will have been replaced with a stronger scent, one that i much more emphatically associate with my son. the sweetness of my intimacy with conrad, the luxury of his soft skin, shared conversation and baby smell is heightened by its fleetingness. this is the final act of a regularly enacted ritual that includes a bath, nude dancing, acrobatics on the bed, diapering under duress, putting on pjs, brushing teeth, drinking water, reading stories in bed, and finally, lights out with a long period of 47 conrad talking and storytelling in the dark. the stories unfold slowly, interspersed with conversation about the day's routines. initially the narratives are informed by cartoon figures and plots, but conrad quickly begins to fill in with his own story lines, which open up aspects of the world of his thoughts that are otherwise unarticulated. he wants to tell these stories, partly because he wants not to go to sleep, but also because they are a means of communication for him. they are encoded messages for me to decipher, if i expend the effort to really listen to what he is saying. i don't want to tell any stories. i just want to go to sleep. i hope he tells me one soon. "hey mom, you know what?" "what?" "ahmad got a beetle-man and him gonna share with me at school." "cool! so, why don't you tell me a story?" "i don't know any stories. . . " "well you do. . . ." "ok. one a time, [a]laddin, urn . . .genie, and a who? abo and what is that birdie name?" "yago?" "and what is the green one's name?" "oh, i dunno . . . that bird?" " yeah." "oh, yeah, i dunno." "yes you do." "no." "you saw it afore." "i know but i never knew the name." "why? it's yago's mommy, really." "oh, ok." "her talk to yago. the mommy. . . " conrad slows down here, pauses, and then speeds up, and delivers the following in a much quicker, louder and more assertive tone. 48 bedtime stories "and yago have the daddy and a mommy. cause, after, um, yago didn't have a mommy and a daddy. . . ? " yeah?" (said as if crying himself)"him be crying." "yeah. . . ?" (sympathetically). "and after him have a mommy and a daddy. . . him said, 'yeah! yeah! yeah!'." (conrad's arms are raised over his head, and he jubilantly shouts.) 49 oh god! he's stressing over the transitions, anxious about our separations. we try to squeeze in too much. . . school, jobs, commitments. . . there is no time to do anything as a family. our schedule is erratic. no wonder he is telling these stories, no wonder he drags out going to bed. it may be our only set routine, and he exercises some control over the situation. but isn't he doing more than that. . . it's too easy to say he's anxious. . . he's trying to get a grip on the whole thing. . . his relationship with us, with the rest of the world. . .trying to figure out how he fits in to all of this. it is just ego gratification to dismiss this as separation anxiety. . . do kids really depend on us as much as we want them to? he's dealing with the conflicting emotions of dependence and independence. his stories reflect this. having us around is not always so great. conrad sighs. "tell me a story. . . hmm . . . my story is short." "it's good though." "one upon a time a snake came, and got [a]laddin on him back. and yago and. . . ate all the other guys. . . (smacks his lips and pretends to eat for ten seconds). and when [a]laddin got all the way to him face, the snake ate him. and princess jasemin came up, "shweh", the snake. . . . hey, what is that moving? the house is moving. . . ." "really? i didn't feel anything. . . " "i feel it moving. (big sigh) and then her, princess jasemin came all the way to him face, 'swish, bedtime stories also). then them went back home. and then the school was open and it was fixed. and then the gargoyles came back and saw it was fixed and they wrecked it again. that's it." here i am trying to resolve my contradictory feelings towards conrad, and it looks as if he is trying to do the same thing. he is trying to balance his feelings of dependency and love with those of a desire to be independent and to extend his social sphere beyond just us. in the first story school is a good place. the kids are sad when they can't get in, and happy when they can get in to play-without the teachers. this is wish fulfillment, freedom within a safe, familiar environment. the second story complicates the vision of school. school is the site of the most traumatic transition and separation on a routine basis. it is the separation from me that conrad loathes, not the social interaction at school. seen as the source of this separation anxiety, school is therefore the logical target of some pretty heavy aggression, and a desire to see the source of the enforced separation eliminated—permanently. "mom, when did you get married?" "oh, a long time ago." "well i don't want you to be married." "why not?" "because when you're married you talk with one voice, you're one person." "no, honey, i'm always mommy. what do you want?" "i want there to be mommy, and daddy and conrad." although i know that i can't grasp the full intention of his statement, the depth and profundity of them strike me, undermining my initial musings on his stories and exposing my patronizing attitudes towards his narratives in reducing them to such simplistic, formulaic interpretations. conrad recognizes human complexity and the complexity of human relations. his articulation of this perception in turn sharpens my own. his desire not to be subsumed into a unifying experience or relationship echoes the attempt to interject complexity into ethnographic 51 conrad description, to eschew essentializing, simplifying accounts and analyses. "ok, it's time to go to sleep now. turn over and go to sleep." "i want you to sleep with me." another separation, compounded with being scared of the dark. i hate the separation as well and would rather stay in bed with him, but i feel that i should have him go to sleep by himself. am i afraid of the closeness, or am i following the dictates of society that assigns a certain stigma to a mother-son relationship perceived to be too close. i want to rebel, to act as my impulses direct, but something gnaws at me that he is too old, that the long term consequences are not good. why? i turn over and close my eyes. conrad turns towards me, press his face up to mine and kisses me. "good night, mom." "good night, boo-boo. i love you." "i love you too." * * * conrad and i began telling stories to each other naturally. these stories were in addition to and quite separate from reading books. the stories were often in collaboration, and at the very least provoked response, criticism, and correction. they were dynamic and tended to revolve around everyday events, retold in dramatic, exaggerated form. for a long time, my interest in these stories was entirely personal: i liked to encourage conrad's ability as a storyteller, i physically preferred to tell or listen to a story rather than read one, and it gave us a special context of shared intimacy. i began to become intellectually interested in conrad's stories during my investigations into the various theories on the formation and transmission of folk and personal narratives. was there a deeper structure inherent in narratives that could be seen to have parallels in children's own stories, in the same way that deeper language structure was inferred in the processes of first language acquisition? would it be possible to extrapolate, as botvin and sutton-smith have 52 bedtime stories suggested, narrative structure from children's narratives? contrary to the expectations embedded in these questions, however, in the course of our storytelling events it became obvious that both thematically and structurally conrad's narratives were already quite formalized, and that extrapolating a deeper, inherent narrative structure from those of an as yet "uncontaminated" or "pure" narrative form of a child was an exercise with a flawed premise. what did emerge, as the writing and analysis of the project unfolded, was that embedded in such small, specific narratives and their telling was a much more complicated macro-narrative: the mother-son relationship. there are many stories within stories. michel foucault has claimed that the "author function" serves to disperse simultaneous, plural selves, which exist nonhierarchically (112-13). in this experimental and impressionistic piece, both the subject and the object are multiple and shifting, and in the shifting of voice and the laminations of time we discover an erasure of the boundaries inscribed by the categories themselves. subject and object are not only multiple, they are constantly invoked and intertwined, and as their sensibilities unfold in patches and chunks of scenes and variations in texture, so the reader is drawn into these sensibilities. in this manner interiority flows from exteriority; the reader breaking through the opacity of the individual narratives into a reality to which she has only partial access. works cited botvin, g.j., and brian sutton-smith. "the development of structural complexity in children's fantasy narratives." developmental psychology 13 (1977): 377-88. clifford, james. "on ethnographic allegory." writing culture: the poetics and politics of ethnography. ed. james clifford and george marcus. berkeley: u of california p, 1986. 98-121. foucault, michel. "what is an author?" the foucault reader. ed. paul rabinow. new york: pantheon, 1984. 101-20. vanmaanen, john. tales of the field: on writing ethnography. chicago: u of chicago p, 1988. white, hayden. tropics of discourse: essays in cultural criticism. balti more and london. johns hopkins up, 1978. young, katharine. taleworlds and storyrealms:the phenomenology of nar rative. dordrecht, boston, nijhoff. 53 the state of play: a report on the conference julia c. bishop a conference on "the state of play: perspectives on children's oral culture" took place at the university of sheffield, england, organised by the national centre for english cultural tradition in collaboration with the folklore society. it was a truly international gathering with speakers from australia, israel, north america, and several countries, as well as from all corners of the british isles. we were privileged to have dr. iona opie as guest of honour and our opening speaker. she described how she and her husband, peter, had become interested in children's oral tradition and how they approached their work. in typically modest vein, she stressed that neither of them had any academic training, the onset of the second world war precluding the possibility of attending university at the time. their total commitment to their chosen field, however, had undoubtedly been an inspiration to many in the audience. there were also five keynote addresses during the conference. june factor spoke on "three myths about children's folklore," gwenda davey discussed continuity and change in australian children's traditional play, and simon lichman illustrated the way in which the traditional creativity through the schools project used the study of children's folklore and family traditions to help bring together the arab and jewish communities in israel. allison james, approaching children's playas a social anthropologist, discussed children's oral communication strategies in the negotiation of identity, while john widdowson highlighted the importance of the informal language used in the playground for the acquisition of the formal linguistic skills taught in the classroom. in addition, there was a plethora of stimulating papers on such topics as the effects of the physical environment on imaginative play and games, the influence of the media on playground games, children's story telling, historical aspects of the study of play, and children's music. 54 the state of play the conference seems to have stimulated communication among researchers around the world concerned with children's oral culture. it is hoped that a selection of the conference papers will be published in the near future. to obtain future information on this, please contact the organisers at the address below, or join the e-mail distribution list by contacting julia bishop (j.c. bishop@sheffield.ac.uk). national centre for english cultural tradition university of sheffield sheffield s10 2tn uk tel: 0114-222-6296 (main office) 0114-222-0229 (direct line) 55 notes and announcements the children's folklore section of the american folklore society annually offers the w.w. newell prize (which includes a cash award) for the best undergraduate or graduate student essay on a topic in children's folklore. students must submit their own papers, and published papers are eligible. instructors are asked to encourage students with eligible papers to enter the competition. papers must by typed, double-spaced, and on white paper. on the first page include the author's name, academic address, home address, and telephone numbers. deadline for each year's competition is march 1st. submit papers or write for more information: dr. c.w. sullivan iii, english department, east carolina university, greenville, nc 27858-4353. broadview press announces the publication of burning brightly: new light on old tales told today by kay stone (children's folklore section member) and folk and fairy tales 2/e edited by martin hallett and barbara karasek. burning brightly examines the storytelling revival throughout north america and discusses the hundreds of local groups and centers springing up and the story telling that has become an important part of training for librarians. stone explores story telling through the storytellers themselves and provides commentary from her own background as a storyteller. folk and fairy tales 2/e is an anthology designed to provide a solid foundation for courses in children's literature, folklore, and the literature of fantasy. for additional information or examination copies, write: broadview press, 3576 california road, orchard park, ny 14127 or broadview press, po box 1243, peterborough, on k9j 7h5, canada. the university press of kentucky announces the publication of an appalachian mother goose by james still, illustrations by paul brett johnson. still begins the book with an explanation of how the mother goose rhymes evolved in the appalachian 56 notes and announcements region and then provides variations of familiar and unfamiliar mother goose rhymes as well as some rhymes native to the region. still is also the author of other children's books, way down yonder on troublesome creek and jack and the wonder beans, and a number of books of poetry. for additional information, contact leila salisbury, publicity, university press of kentucky, 663 south limestone street, lexington, ky 40508-4008. children's folklore section member, director of the dominican college storytelling program, and internationally-known storyteller ruth stotter announces the publication of the golden axe and other tales of compassion and greed. these stories are variations of tale type 480, "the kind and unkind girl," from all over the world, retold by stotter. there are 27 stories in full text, 17 summaries of additional tales, additional summaries, lists of additional citations and picture books, and a great deal of other material as well. for additional information, contact ruth stotter, 2244 vistazo east, tiburon, ca 94920. 57 contributors joann conrad is a phd student in folklore/cultural studies at the university of california at berkeley. drawn to the unseen, everyday folklore that shapes perceptions, beliefs, and a particular view of "reality," her research often involves the intersecting currents of childhood and folklore: how such perceptions trickle down into policies concerning childhood and education, i.e., the politicization and socialization of childhood; and also the very construction of childhood as it is informed by folklore and commonly held beliefs and attitudes. she is the author of "stranger danger: defending innocence, denying responsibility," forthcoming in an issue of contemporary legend. bjørg kjær, born in copenhagen, is a danish folklorist and phd student at odense university's centre for contemporary culture. he received an ma in 1994 with a major in folklore and a minor in rhetoric; his thesis dealt with different approaches to childhood and how these approaches are narrated and negotiated. employed as a research fellow at the university of copenhagen to study youth problems in the city, kjær produced an article, "marginalization processes, youth problems, culture and ethnicity," in contemporary folklore: changing world view and tradition, edited by mare koiva, institute of estonian language & estonian museum of literature, 1996. derek van rheenen is currently a lecturer at the university of california, berkeley, where he recently earned his phd in interdisciplinary studies. he teaches coursework on sport, culture, and education. a former professional athlete, van rheenen's interests include children's folklore and gender studies with a particular emphasis on traditional games and modern sport. 58 the children's folklore review is available only to members of the children's folklore section of the american folklore society. to become a member, send $10.00 yearly dues ($15.00 for non-us members) to joseph edgette, 509 academy road, glenolden, p a 19036. please make checks payable to "afs children's folklore section." cfr requests manuscripts that are prepared using laser printed text or letter quality text. we request that authors using typewriters or dot-matrix printers have their manuscripts redone and a laser printed copy made. this will enable us to scan the copy, thereby eliminating rekeying the manuscript. please send manuscripts to: c. w. sullivan iii, editor children's folklore review department of english east carolina university greenville, nc 27858-4353 children's folklore review is published twice a year and sent to all members of the children's folklore section of the american folklore society. published by east carolina university issn: 0739-5558 copyright © 1998 children's folklore section boys who play hopscotch boys who play hopscotch boys who play hopscotch boys who play hopscotch boys who play hopscotch boys who play hopscotch boys who play hopscotch boys who play hopscotch boys who play hopscotch kjær bedtime stories volume 42 children's folklore review2024 children’s folklore review editor: k. brandon barker, c/o dept. of folklore & ethnomusicology, indiana university, 800 e 3rd street, bloomington, indiana 47408, usa; barkerbr@indiana.edu editorial board: simon j. bronner, pennsylvania state university, harrisburg; jay mechling, university of california, davis; priscilla ord, mcdaniel college; elizabeth tucker, binghamton university reviews editor: spencer l. green, pennsylvania state university, harrisburg children’s folklore review (issn: 0739:5558) is an online, open-access journal published once a year by the children’s folklore section of the american folklore society. the children's folklore review regularly publishes articles on all aspects of children's traditions: oral, customary, and material culture. in addition, cfr will consider articles dealing with the use of folklore in children's literature, children's folklore and education, children's folklore and popular culture, children’s folklore and the internet, play studies, and similar topics. articles are refereed and are indexed by the mla and other major bibliographies. manuscripts submitted for consideration should conform to the author-date format of the chicago manual of style (2010). manuscripts should be submitted as word documents; illustrations should be submitted in “jpeg” or “tiff” form with a resolution of 300 dpi or higher. please submit manuscripts to https://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/cfr/index or by emailing the editor, k. brandon barker, barkerbr@indiana.edu. children’s folklore section officers senior convener: k. brandon barker, indiana university treasurer: priscilla ord, mcdaniel college secretary: brant ellsworth, central penn college aesop prize committee chair: brant ellsworth, central penn college opie prize committee chairs: elizabeth tucker, binghamton university and john mcdowell, indiana university w.w. newel prize committee chairs: k. brandon barker, indiana university and stephen lochetto, penn state harrisburg mailto:barkerbr@indiana.edu https://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/cfr/index mailto:brantellsworth@centralpenn.edu children’s folklore review special issue the texas children’s folklore project volume 42 number 1 2024 published by the children’s folklore section of the american folklore society special issue the texas children’s folklore project (tcfp) contents from the editor 1 part i. new reflections on the texas children’s folklore project the texas children’s folklore project: richard bauman 5 a retrospective on the street with austin’s chicano kids john holmes mcdowell 17 play and the performance of children’s folklore: beverly j. stoeltje 37 opportunities for learning part ii. revisiting three previously published tcfp works ethnography of children’s folklore richard bauman 61 riddling and enculturation: john holmes mcdowell 87 a glance at the cerebral child children’s handclaps: beverly j. stoeltje 103 informal learning in play (digitized version of original instructional book) part iii. texas children’s folklore project: a bibliography texas children’s folklore project: john holmes mcdowell 147 a bibliography children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39018/ from the editor this special issue of children’s folklore review is dedicated to the work of the texas children’s folklore project (tcfp), which took place in austin, texas in the 1970s. the contributors to this this special issue are richard bauman, leader of the tcfp, and john mcdowell and beverly stoeltje, who worked with the tcfp as graduate student researchers. children’s folklorists—all folklorists—are aware of the immensely successful careers of these scholars, and part i of this issue consists of new contributions from each. the insights in the new pieces are many. bauman’s article, “the texas children’s folklore project: a retrospective,” provides, for example, historical context on wrongheaded deprivationist theories held by many scientists and teachers in the seventies. where deprivationists saw a lack in the communicative and expressive practices of working class and minority children, folklorists working with the tcfp found playful, artistic, and cognitive virtuosity. mcdowell’s fresh reflections in “on the streets with austin’s chicano kids” reinforce just how important it is for children’s folklorists to get our feet on the ground—on the playgrounds, in backyards, and in the neighborhoods—so we can directly observe children’s expressive performances in natural, unmediated socioecological contexts. moreover, the highly creative multilingual speech play that mcdowell documented on austin’s streets highlights the fertile grounds for expressive culture that multicultural communities provide. stoeltje’s thoughtful new piece, entitled “play and the performance of children’s folklore: opportunities for learning,” also focuses on her fieldwork. she discusses doing a kind of insider fieldwork with a group of youths that included her own children. in private and semi-private spaces, stoeltje had front-row access to the group’s folkloric performances in which the kids rejoice in cultural taboos, playing the clown, and making sense of nonsense. having done my own fieldwork with groups of youths that included my children over the past decade, i am fascinated and inspired by the timeless pertinence of stoeltje’s intimate analyses. i highly encourage readers to listen to the selections from mcdowell’s and stoeltje’s original field recordings that are linked in their essays in part i. for those audio files, i thank alan burdette and allison mcclanahan, who while working with the archives of traditional music at indiana university, completed the crucial task of digitizing the original audiotape recordings. their help was invaluable. part ii of this issue consists of previously written and previously published articles, including bauman’s “ethnography of children’s folklore” (1982) and mcdowell’s “riddling and enculturation: a glance at the cerebral child” (1976). the issue https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39018 2 children’s folklore review children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39018/ concludes with stoeltje’s complete instructional book, children’s handclaps: informal learning in play (1978). i am very pleased to say that, until now, none of the contributions to this special issue have been published in an easily accessed, highquality digital format. of the many challenging ideas located in the older pieces, i have my own idiosyncratic reasons for noting that the problem of adultocentrism, first introduced by bauman in “ethnography of children’s folklore,” the question of how children’s play forms are connected to human development of higher-order, role-based relational reasoning, as discussed by mcdowell in “riddling and enculturation,” and the youthful forms of body acquisition that accompany children’s performances of complex handclap routines, as demonstrated in stoeltje’s instructional book, are issues that remain just as relevant today to the lives of children and to the work of children’s folklorists as they were a half-century prior. no doubt, readers will make their own discoveries as they (re)read these works. two further acknowledgements: the authors and i thank jay mechling for encouraging children’s folklore review to pursue a special issue on the tcfp. additionally, beverly stoeltje would like to acknowledge the major role her daughters, gretchen stoeltje and rachael stoeltje, played in her research. they were engaged, even enthusiastic, about the project, the boundary between spontaneous and requested performance being quite fluid. their names were changed in the counting-out performance write-up to gina and suzy. for my part, reading (and rereading) this gathering of new and old tcfp publications, i am immediately impressed by tcfp’s bountiful outputs. look over the bibliography of tcfp publications (part iii, page 147 in this issue). the list includes twenty-one articles and working papers; two dissertations; and four books—including john mcdowell’s children’s riddling (1979), a book that won the chicago folklore prize, and margaret brady’s “some kind of power”: navajo children’s skinwalker narratives (1984), a book that i believe demonstrates some of our discipline’s most clever and penetrating methodologies for gathering folk narratives from youths. all in all, the tcfp must be considered one of the most successful research programs into the nature of children’s folklore ever conducted in the united states. k. brandon barker indiana university bloomington https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39018 part i new reflections on the texas children’s folklore project children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39019/ the texas children’s folklore project a retrospective richard bauman indiana university, emeritus in this introductory essay, i present an overview of the historical and institutional context, the motivating ideology, the methodological framework, and the research foci of the texas children’s folklore project, conducted from 1973-1976 by a team of faculty and graduate students from the university of texas under the auspices of the southwest educational laboratory. from 1973-1976, i directed a research project on children’s folklore under the auspices of the southwest educational development laboratory (sedl) in austin, texas. the project yielded a number of publications that suggest the principal frames of reference that guided our work1 but not necessarily the motivating factors that led me to undertake it in the first place or the elements of time, place, and organization that gave it shape and direction. this essay, then, is intended to fill some of those gaps, though at a remove of more than 50 years and in the absence of concrete records that would allow for more detail and precision. those files, alas, fell by the wayside in the course of several moves and office clear-outs, but memory, conversations with surviving participants, and the published record bring back at least the basic contours of the enterprise. the politics of education in texas in the early 1970s texas, like other southern states with a long history of segregation, was conspicuously resistant to the kinds of efforts at integration mandated by brown v. board of education in 1954 and the civil rights act of 1964. nevertheless, notwithstanding the foot-dragging of top-level administrative officials, there were a few https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39019 6 children’s folklore review children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39019/ staunch staff members at the texas education agency (tea) who made efforts, beginning in the late 1960s, to respond constructively to the need for redressive and compensatory measures to overcome the deeply detrimental effects of a century of segregated schooling. one such effort, organized by mary galvan of tea in partnership with rudolph troike, a linguist in the university of texas english department, was the east texas dialect project, launched in 1967 with funding from the elementary and secondary education act (esea), signed into law in 1965 by president lyndon johnson. among its wide-ranging provisions, the law provided federal grants to state educational agencies to improve the quality of elementary and secondary education. the substantive focus of the project in east texas was “to study the language patterns which exist in texas, particularly the phonology and syntax which have most bearing on learning” (galvan and troike 1972[1969]:298). a critical turning point in the project’s development was the discovery by fieldworkers of “extralinguistic” factors (i.e., factors beyond the initial focal elements of phonology and syntax) that seemed to have significant implications for understanding language use on the part of african american children. specifically—perhaps unexpectedly—the fieldworkers began to amass a corpus of children’s folklore forms—“rope-skipping rhymes, game songs, and narrative accounts” as well as “verbal contests”—the dynamics of which could not be grasped satisfactorily in formal linguistic terms. as recounted by the principal investigators, “about this point, the project was fortunate in acquiring the consultative services of another university of texas staff member, a folklorist with a specialty in negro culture, whose role was to explain many cultural patterns of behavior to staff members. his contribution became larger as time passed and is at present [i.e., in 1969] equally important as the linguists’” (galvan and troike 1972:299). that folklorist was roger abrahams, troike’s colleague in ut’s english department. african american children’s https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39019 vol. 42, no. 1 (2024) 7 children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39019/ folklore was a significant component of roger’s dissertation research in south philadelphia (abrahams 1962) and at the time he joined the east texas dialect project team he was at work on jump-rope rhymes: a dictionary (1969). roger’s contribution, and that of américo paredes who joined up in the next phase of the project as it expanded into mexican american south texas, cemented the place of folklorists in subsequent compensatory efforts on the part of tea. all this is to say that just as the ut folklore program was getting fully under way with the establishment of the center for intercultural studies in folklore and oral history (“the folklore center”) in the spring of 1968 (see bauman 2020), children’s folklore was becoming a significant component of the intellectual environment for ut folklorists. in the aftermath of the east texas dialect project, tea established a consulting committee, including roger and américo, to assist in the development of intercultural education programs but the politics of culture in texas and the continued foot-dragging on the part of top-level leadership at tea precluded any real progress. pressures increased significantly, though, in 1971 with the handing down of civil action 5281, a federal court order issued in response to a lawsuit challenging continued efforts to circumvent integration (the school desegregation in texas policy research project 1982). sweeping in its scope, encompassing the entire state, the order contained multiple provisions addressing demographic and administrative problems and policies, but one section addressed “curriculum and compensatory education” and placed tea in charge of monitoring and enforcement. this responsibility provided an impetus to elevating the consulting committee, now under the rubric of the “confluence of texan cultures,” with a charge that included “the provision of programs to compensate students for the ill effects of previously segregated schools” and “the development of a statewide design to educate the disadvantaged.”2 membership on the committee, as it turned out, was not without its frustrations as efforts to slow-walk the process within https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39019 8 children’s folklore review children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39019/ tea and to circumvent its implementation out in the state at large persisted, but for the time being, into the mid-1970s, children’s folklore remained of at least professed interest to the agency as a resource that would serve the interest of compensatory program development and acknowledge the cultural heritage of “the disadvantaged.” it is important to recall that this period in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s was the heyday of deprivationist ideologies on the part of educationists and psychologist—even liberal ones—concerning the verbal and cognitive abilities of working class and minority kids and their low performance in the nation’s public schools. in the pithy critical summary offered by joan baratz, the educators were the first to contribute a statement about the language difficulties of these children, a statement that amounted to the fact that these children were virtually verbally destitute—i.e., they couldn’t talk and if they did, their speech was deviant and filled with “errors.” the next group to get into the fray—the psychologists—reconfirmed initially that the children didn’t talk, and then added the sophisticated wrinkle that if they did talk, their speech was such that it was a deterrent to cognitive growth. [baratz 1969:87] to folklorists even superficially familiar with the kinds of verbal, cognitive, and interactional skills—even virtuosity—that these very children were able to display out in the schoolyard, the neighborhood, and the home, these deprivationist portraits simply did not ring true. the interventionist efforts that those of us at ut and our colleagues elsewhere sought to bring to bear were based on our understanding that what kids knew and could do with regard to language and the associated skills demonstrated in their play activities would provide a critical corrective to notions of verbal and cognitive disability and a basis for enriching educational programs that would compensate for and redress the damaging effects of segregated schooling. https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39019 vol. 42, no. 1 (2024) 9 children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39019/ at the same time that roger and américo were engaged in these state-focused efforts, i became involved in similarly motivated project sponsored by the american speech and hearing association (asha), the national professional organization of speech pathologists and audiologists in the u.s. collegial connections with faculty and graduate students in speech and hearing at ut drew me into a consultative role with asha as it too attempted to come to terms with linguistic and cultural diversity and overcome a deeply entrenched bias toward monoglot standard english and the ideologies that sustained it. my efforts, in a 1970 workshop and subsequent article (bauman 1970), were directed at suggesting the productiveness of a relativist, ethnographic perspective on language as a critical corrective to the ethnocentric biases that prevailed among the vast majority of speech pathologists and speech therapists engaged with school-aged children. in particular, i advocated for the value of children’s folklore as a vantage point on what minority children knew and could do with language. the texas children’s folklore project the foregoing overview is prologue, but it suggests why i should have been receptive when bob randall came to see me as director of the ut folklore center, sometime in the fall of 1972. bob was the head of the early childhood program at the southwest educational development laboratory (sedl), one of a network of research and development centers and regional educational laboratories authorized in 1965 under title vi of the esea, the same agency that funded the east texas dialect project, and subsequently transferred to the newly created national institute of education (nie) in 1972. the early childhood program was charged with research and program development for children in kindergarten through third grade, roughly, 5-9 years old. bob’s own interests centered on informal learning, that is, learning that takes place https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39019 10 children’s folklore review children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39019/ primarily outside or in the margins of formal educational institutions and without formal instruction. children’s folklore was on texas educators’ radar by this time and bob wanted to explore with me the possibility that sedl might sponsor a research project in the area with the potential to serve a basis for educational programs that built on the verbal, cognitive, and interactional energies and strengths of cultural forms that were child-initiated and directed and pleasurable to the participants. moreover, given that the children’s folklore forms were rooted in their own communities, they might provide a mechanism for the kids to work out their own adaptations to multiculturalism in newly integrated schools. the outcome of our conversation was that i agreed to direct the project that bob envisioned under the auspices of sedl. for me, the venture was multiply appealing: it was an opportunity to put my money where my mouth was, doing primary research that was at the same time oriented to important applied ends and it was a way to support ut graduate students and get them involved in fieldwork that was socially engaged, motivated at least in part by real world social problems. during the spring of 1973, sedl administrators and i worked out the arrangements and launched the project. i would teach a graduate course on children’s folklore that would serve as a venue for recruiting and training potential fieldworkers as well as exploring foci for research that would suit their interests and those of the overall project and include kids from the three predominant ethnic groups in texas: african american, anglo american, and mexican american. during the academic year of 1973-74, i would take a leave of absence from ut to work full time on the project. our responsibility was primary research, defined in scholarly terms. sedl would handle all the bureaucratic work, mediate between us and nie, provide leads to austinarea schools that would allow us to work with their kids, and do the work of adapting our findings to school-oriented programs when the time came. altogether, seven ut https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39019 vol. 42, no. 1 (2024) 11 children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39019/ graduate students worked on the project: meg brady, rosalind eckhardt, john mcdowell, andrea meditch, danielle roemer, beverly stoeltje, and dorothy stroman. meg and beverly were experienced teachers, returned to ut as doctoral students in folklore and beverly had kids of her own, which enhanced her participation in the project. as the project developed, solicitational routines (riddles, knock-knock jokes, catches), ring games, line plays, and handclaps emerged as the principal substantive foci of our research. project guidelines and research foci the guidelines for project research were shaped by the conceptual and methodological principles of the ethnography of speaking, then entering what amounted to the second major phase of its development. following on the programmatic phase of the 1960s, a cadre of young researchers had carried the approach into the field as a framework for their own primary research and by the early 1970s they were ready to report on the results of their efforts. at the time of my involvement in the tcfp, i was engaged, with joel sherzer, in the organization, conduct, and aftermath of the conference on the ethnography of speaking, held at ut in april of 1972 to bring these researchers together and followed by the publication of explorations in the ethnography of speaking (bauman and sherzer 1974) and a review essay of the field (bauman and sherzer 1975). at the same time, in a related effort, i was engaged in formulating a concept of performance as a display of virtuosic skill and efficacy, presented initially in the american anthropologist in 1975 and in expanded form in the book version of verbal art as performance (bauman 1975, 1977). there are abundant bodies of literature on the ethnography of speaking and performance so there is no need to recapitulate their founding principles and subsequent development here. a few key points may be useful, however. first, the https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39019 12 children’s folklore review children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39019/ notion of performance was central to the tcfp in two fundamental senses, both rooted in the ethnography of speaking: (a) performance as practice, that is, the social use of communicative forms in the conduct of social life, with a focus on acts, events, participant roles and structures, emergent outcomes; (b) performance in the more marked sense of virtuosic display, especially important as a critical corrective to deprivationist models. second, our focus was developmental, attentive to the acquisition of competence in the use of the folklore forms in the children’s repertoires. how did children acquire and manifest the knowledge and ability to use these forms in socially appropriate and intelligible ways? this concern required that we record and analyze what amounted to incompetent as well as fully competent attempts to engage in riddling or perform handclaps as novice performers tried them out on the way to being able to accomplish and evaluate fully competent performances and ultimately to attain reflexive awareness of how the various forms are made, used, evaluated, and even, perhaps, parodied or subverted in inversive counterplay. the standard of social appropriateness that guided our work was child-centered: if participants judged and responded to a performance as skillful, enjoyable, and engaging, it was socially appropriate, even if, by strict adult or school-centric terms it was obscene, scatological, or otherwise transgressive. third, again consistent with the charter of the ethnography of speaking, our assumption was that engagement in children’s folklore was crossculturally variable and to be discovered ethnographically. thus, as noted earlier, we built into our research protocol fieldwork with children from all three of the major ethnic groups in texas, anglo american, african american, mexican american. finally, in addition to variation by age and ethnicity, we were attentive to gender variation in repertoire, participation, and development. outcomes https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39019 vol. 42, no. 1 (2024) 13 children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39019/ it’s difficult to know whether or to what extent the research findings produced by the tcfp made their way into early elementary education. by the terms of our arrangement with sedl, we submitted our materials and reports to them and they were to take over from there in developing educational programs based on what we provided. i do recall a mockup of a booklet of riddles drawn from our corpus, but i’m unsure whether it ever found a publisher or made its way into schools. the lab did support the production of two brief books, one consisting of essays by meg and rosalind on african american girls’ participation in a variety of play forms, at times in interaction with their anglo and mexican american classmates (brady and eckhardt 1975), and one by beverly on handclaps (stoeltje 1978). both works combined scholarly documentation and analysis with teacher-oriented explication and feedback to the authors indicates that some teachers, at least, found the works interesting and useful. just how they were used, who knows? i need hardly say that the lab people paid no attention to the transgressive materials that we collected. some were even a tad suspicious of data that suggested that children manipulated forms like counting-out rhymes or engaged in inversive clowning against the grain of orderly performances considering that those materials somehow compromised the mainstream ideology of childhood innocence. for the graduate-student researchers who worked on the project, there were a number of clear payoffs, even beyond the financial support they received for their work. several went on to do further research on children’s folklore. danielle and john produced ph.d. dissertations based on the research they carried out under the auspices of the project (mcdowell 1975; roemer 1977). meg extended her engagement with children’s folklore in her subsequent dissertation research and book on navajo children’s skinwalker stories (brady 1984). danielle, john, meg, and beverly all went on to teach courses devoted to children’s folklore or including a significant component of https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39019 14 children’s folklore review children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39019/ children’s folklore in more general courses, such as american folklore. and for all participants, i believe, the project offered a focused initiation into the world of socially engaged scholarship. i know that for all those participants who went on to teach, bringing that engaged stance into the classroom had a multiplier effect. over the decades since the early ‘70s, the work of the tcfp colored the educational experience of a lot of college students. we can hope that it made a difference in their understanding of the strengths and challenges of cultural and linguistic diversity and what they might offer to a humane multicultural society. in the end, i believe, no one who has considered closely the semantic intricacy of a children’s riddling session can doubt their cognitive abilities; no one who has analyzed the poetic and kinesic intricacy of a handclap session can doubt their capacity for verbal virtuosity; no one who has observed the structural acuity of a schoolyard clown in his inversive parody of a line play, can question his capacity for reflexive awareness; and no one who has witnessed the social finesse of a girl leading a ring play can deny her rhetorical skill and effectiveness in managing complex interaction. richard bauman is distinguished professor emeritus of folklore and anthropology at indiana university, bloomington. the principal foci of his research include narrative, oral poetics, performance, genre, and language ideologies. among his publications are verbal art as performance (1977), let your words be few (1983), story, performance, and event (1986), voices of modernity (with charles l. briggs, 2003; sapir prize 2006), a world of others’ words (2004), and a most valuable medium (2023). bauman has been a guggenheim fellow, a fellow of the american academy of arts and sciences, recipient of the lifetime scholarly achievement award of the american folklore society, and the franz boas award for exemplary service to anthropology of the american anthropological association. references cited abrahams, roger d. 1962. negro folklore from south philadelphia: a collection and analysis. ph. d. dissertation in folklore, university of pennsylvania. _____. 1969. jump-rope rhymes: a dictionary. austin: university of texas press. https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39019 vol. 42, no. 1 (2024) 15 children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39019/ baratz, joan. 1969. “language and cognitive assessment of negro children: assumptions and research needs.” asha 11(3) :87-91 https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ed022157.pdf bauman, richard. 1970. “an ethnographic framework for the investigation of communicative behaviors.” asha 13:334-340. _____. 1975. “verbal art as performance.” american anthropologist 77(2): 290-311. https://www.jstor.org/stable/674535 _____. 1977. verbal art as performance. rowley, ma: newbury house. _____. 2020. “the texas school.” in folklore in the united states and canada: an institutional history, patricia sawin and rosemary zumwalt, eds., pp. 129-141. bloomington: indiana university press. https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv16h2ngc.14 bauman, richard and joel sherzer, eds. 1974. explorations in the ethnography of speaking. cambridge: cambridge university press. _____. 1975. “the ethnography of speaking.” annual review of anthropology 4:95-119. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2949351 brady, margaret. 1984. “some kind of power”: navajo children’s skinwalker narratives. salt lake city: university of utah press. brady, margaret and rosalind eckhardt. 1975. black girls at play: folkloric perspectives on child development. austin, tx: southwest educational development laboratory. galvan, mary and rudolph troike. 1972. “the east texas dialect project: a pattern for education.” in language and cultural diversity in american education, ed. roger d. abrahams and rudolph troike, pp. 297-304. englewood cliffs, nj: prentice-hall. mcdowell, john 1975. the speech play and verbal art of chicano children: an ethnographic and sociolinguistic study. ph.d. dissertation in folklore, university of texas, austin. roemer, danielle. 1977. a social interactional analysis of children’s folklore: catches and narratives. ph.d. dissertation in folklore, university of texas, austin. stoeltje, beverly. 1978. children's handclaps: informal learning in play. austin, tx: southwest educational development laboratory. the school desegregation in texas policy research project. 1982. school desegregation in texas: the implementation of united states v. state of texas. lyndon b. johnson school of public affairs policy research project report no. 51. austin, tx: lyndon b. johnson school of public affairs. https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39019 https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ed022157.pdf https://www.jstor.org/stable/674535 https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv16h2ngc.14 https://www.jstor.org/stable/2949351 16 children’s folklore review children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39019/ 1 see the tcfp bibliography (page 147) in this issue. 2 l. harlan ford to américo paredes, 9/17/71. américo paredes papers, nettie lee benson library, university of texas, austin. https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39019 children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39022/ on the street with austin’s chicano kids john holmes mcdowell indiana university, emeritus these pages offer a retrospective on my time with the texas children’s folklore project, which set me in motion to document the verbal play of chicano children in austin, texas. after a short overview of the field collection assembled there, i address its core elements in relation to techniques that enabled me to get the work done, a small set of events that stand out in my memory as exemplary, and a surmise of analytical themes emerging from my encounter with those lively youngsters and their repertories. my essay is supplemented by a selection of rhymes and songs performed by the children, in the form of audio files and corresponding transcriptions and (as needed) translations. my awareness of the big picture of the texas children’s folklore project (tcfp) was quite limited. i knew that it was coordinated by richard bauman, my mentor and contact for the project, that it had a regional hub in the southwest educational development laboratory (sedl), and that there was federal funding from the department of education. i was aware that the project proposed gathering samples of children’s folklore, primarily in the form of verbal art performances in their natural, peer-group settings, with representation from the three main ethnic groups in austin, the anglos, mexican americans, and african americans.1 and i had the idea that these field-gathered resources would be the source of educational materials for teachers and for use in their classrooms. but mostly, i knew that my job was to collect folklore from chicano kids; that’s what i did, and that’s what i will briefly reflect back on here. how did i get involved in the project? i had come up to austin from corpus christi where i was a vista volunteer, working with a community action program to eradicate poverty, or, at least, assist local chicano populations in their quest for the equal rights owed them as citizens of the nation. i attended in austin a conference on bilingual education, a topic of interest to the chicano activists i was associating with at https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39022 18 children’s folklore review children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39022/ the time, and there i met professor américo paredes, who encouraged me to enter graduate school at the university of texas where he was teaching. i did that, entering the ma program in latin american studies in 1971, and, the ma completed, moving in 1972 over to the doctoral program in the folklore center, with its foothold in both the anthropology and english departments, under the supervision of professor richard bauman.2 in the spring of 1974 i was recruited by professor bauman to work in the texas children’s folklore project, specifically, since i was fluent in spanish, to collect folklore among mexican american children. this was salaried work, much appreciated at the time – i had spent the previous summer painting the exterior of the house i was renting in exchange for the summer’s rent money. moreover, i carried with me a fondness for the people and the culture, based on my two-years as a vista volunteer, living and working in chicano communities, first with migrant families in the area around hillsboro, oregon, then in settled communities in the counties around corpus christi, texas. hence, i found the prospect of gathering verbal lore from chicano kids to be an attractive one. so, i signed on and started visiting the neighborhoods in austin with chicano residents during the spring semester of 1974, continuing these visits over the summer months and into the fall of that year.3 in these pages, i offer a retrospective on my time with the tcfp. after first presenting a short overview of the field collection i assembled, i turn my attention to its core elements via a reprise on the techniques i developed to get the work done, an account of a small set of events that stand out in my memory as exemplary, and a surmise of analytical themes emerging from my encounter with this material. before i commence with this agenda, it’s worth noting that, after preparing as required a report for the sedl replete with my field data, i then wrote my doctoral dissertation thesis on this material, highlighting what i viewed as the children’s significant social and https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39022 vol. 42, no. 1 (2024) 19 children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39022/ cognitive development accomplished through participation in this medium of playful communication. this thesis, completed in 1975, is titled the speech play and verbal art of chicano children: an ethnographic and sociolinguistic study.4 moreover, the field materials gathered during those months in austin’s neighborhoods and barrios has fueled a string of publications over the years, from my first book, children’s riddling (iu press, 1979), winner of the chicago folklore prize, to a segment in my 2018 book chapter, “transitionality: the border as barrier and bridge,” included in border folk balladeers: critical studies on américo paredes, edited by roberto cantú and published by cambridge press.5 in all, publications making use of these field materials include, in addition to this first monograph and the 2018 chapter, eight substantial articles and chapters and several smaller pieces (see separate list of publications). during my stint as a fieldworker with the tfcp i created a veritable treasure trove of ethnographic field materials that has sustained my abiding interest in the remarkable things that children achieve through their playful peer-group interaction. contents of the collection my field collection of chicano children’s folklore in austin, texas, consists of a set of nine audio cassette tapes containing over 14 hours of recorded material documenting the verbal art and speech play of chicano children in austin, texas, recorded in 1974 on the streets and playgrounds of the clarksville neighborhood and east austin, featuring riddles, stories, taunts, and rhymes and songs of children between the ages 4-11 performing in peer groups ranging from two-to-six children and occasionally in solo recitations. there is, as well, one recording of a home conjunto performance at a birthday party, and there are also a few low-quality photos.6 (see the appendix to this essay for sample performances from these recordings.) https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39022 20 children’s folklore review children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39022/ while i do not have access to the written report that i produced for the tcfp, i do have in hand my 1975 dissertation thesis, which uses that report as a starting point: i reproduced in the thesis the majority of the field data meeting basic standards of coherency, that is, that could be rendered as items of folkloric performance. in addition to scene-setting chapters and chapters on acquisition and enculturation, the thesis has chapters on what i call interrogative ludic routines, that is, playful question-answer sequences built on the speech act of interrogation, and on narratives, taunts, and rhymes and songs. a total of 124 interrogative routines are included in the thesis, organized into three categories: descriptive routines (riddle-like questions that contain no block element), riddles proper (these do center on a block element that impedes easy solving), and routines of victimization (these appear to be riddles but instead facilitate miniature acts of aggression). the thesis features transcriptions of fifty narratives, organized into several categories; almost half of these belong to the category “spooky stories.” the chapter on taunts presents thirty-four taunts from the palm school encounter – more on that to follow. a whopping 183 texts of songs and rhymes are presented in the thesis, organized into several categories including items associated with games such as handclaps and jumping rope, and items tied to the pursuit of social control. drawing on folkloristic precedents in the study of children’s lore, and attending to issues of interest to the student of children’s folklore, i establish the architecture of these four genres with their multiple categories to make sense out of the enormous stock of material captured on the nine cassette tapes recorded with austin’s chicano children. these are the expressive forms that attracted the imagination and energy of the children, and although they sometimes occurred mixed together in the recording sessions, it was useful to separate them out into genre inventories for purposes of analysis and interpretation. as can be seen, i found the children to be loquacious, ready https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39022 vol. 42, no. 1 (2024) 21 children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39022/ and even anxious to display their ability and agility in these verbal forms, to rehearse and adapt to the requirements of the present moment the ample resources granted them by tradition. field techniques so how did this encounter between the errant folklorist and the resident chicano children transpire? what were the situational factors that made possible the assemblage of such a rich harvest of folklore? as this was my first extended fieldwork experience, i had no backlog of previous practice to draw upon. in my graduate studies i had read commentaries on collecting folklore, but there was no set of orthodox procedures to follow. instead, as i reconstruct the process, i entered this field setting with a few basic orientations in mind, and with the expectation that i would improvise as needed to assure the free flow of folklore from the children to me and my sony tape recorder. my orientation to the project rested on my conviction that children are capable of creating artistic renderings of experience worthy of our respect and even admiration. moreover, i sensed that the verbal repertoires of these chicano children would be especially intriguing, in light of their bilingual and bicultural heritage. i viewed children’s folklore is an oral literature indigenous to childhood, and hence thought that it should be disentangled to the extent possible from the discourses used in communicating with adults. this set of orienting expectations led to a fieldwork technique that revolved around documenting children’s folklore in peer-group settings whenever possible. my goal was to establish arenas where children would share performance routines with and for each other, where my presence and my tape recorder would fade from sight as the verbal exchanges among peers became animated. the truth is that i did manage to create such arenas, and in these the flow of folkloric performance was a splendid thing https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39022 22 children’s folklore review children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39022/ to behold. but it was not always possible to do this, and there were other kinds of collecting arenas that took shape: lively groups with children competing for my attention and for the opportunity to hear their voices replayed on the recorder; and solo sessions where i collected repertoires from especially active performers of children’s folklore. in one instance, the palm school encounter, i became the unhappy focal point of the children’s attention, as we shall see in the next section of this paper. exemplary events walking the streets in clarksville and east austin was always an interesting experience.7 during the summer months of 1974, and on school days in the fall afternoons, i would invariably find groups of friends gathered in front yards or by curbside, and they were generally agreeable to come sit for a chat with me.8 i will highlight here a few exemplary moments, selected from many others, to reveal something of the flavor of my fieldwork activity with chicano children and their families. episode 1: playing the naming game the chicano children i encountered in east austin, particularly, were conscious of their participation in two distinct languages and cultures. the following exchange, recorded in june of 1974 in east austin with a group of five children aged 7-11, shows the interest and even delight they bring to this bicultural endowment: raúl: can you say our names in spanish? me: what are your names? paula: paula. me: that’s spanish already. silvia: paula (emphasizing the spanish pronunciation) https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39022 vol. 42, no. 1 (2024) 23 children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39022/ rudi: say rudi. me: rudi, ah rodolfo. adam: adam. me : adán. rosemary: say rosemary in spanish. me: rosamaría. adam: say mary jane. me: maría juana. (laughter) adam: what’s your name in spanish? me: juan. adam: juanillo. silvia: juanillo río. in my most recent publication drawing on the austin project, i characterize this exchange as follows (mcdowell 2018, 96): in this flurry of queries about naming, the children focus on me as a friendly outsider, even as they display their own fascination with the two parallel naming systems in their experience. in addition, the crafty adam (adán) lures me into a verbal trap, cleverly nudging me into speaking a close approximation to a taboo term, marijuana, and adam and silvia demonstrate, in the final sequence, the productivity of the spanish component of the system, which allows them to frame up innovative riffs off of the spanish version of my given name: juanillo, juanillo río. episode 2: “we don’t know any rhymes.” i have a vivid memory of walking down a street in east austin one afternoon, and spotting three or four children out in front of a house. i had just begun talking to them when two mothers appeared, and, hearing what i was up to, invited me into the https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39022 24 children’s folklore review children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39022/ backyard to continue the conversation with their children while we had a sip of lemonade. but, when i asked the children if they knew any rhymes or riddles, they responded, under the close gaze of their mothers, that they didn’t. amiably, i took my leave, but the children followed me to the front of the house. there we reconvened and i secured an excellent session of storytelling, and yes, riddles and rhymes. the moral here is that children’s lore is native to childhood and, often, an intimate component of it – hence, at times, something they might be reluctant to perform in front of their parents. episode 3: “yeah, that’s the part i don’t get either.” a six-year-old child had just performed for me the newspaper riddle – “what’s black and white and red (read) all over?” when i asked her why the newspaper was “red,” she replied, “yeah, that’s the part i don’t get either.” working with children over an age-range 4-11 years, i could trace lines of cognitive (and social) development rather clearly. one conceptual hurdle in performing and understanding what i call riddles proper is the ability to comprehend the reversals that feed the block element, whether they be metaphorical, where one object stands in for another, or acoustic, where two words sound alike but have different meanings (as in red/read). i found that it was roughly around the time of their seventh birthday that kids become competent in these tricks of the riddle trade. it turns out that this timing coincides with jean piaget’s developmental scheme, and with observations on children’s play by child development specialists working in laboratory settings (piaget 1972; mcghee 1976; shultz 1974; whitt and prentice 1977). episode 4: symposium on locomotion. this transpired as a group of children explored, over the course of a half-hour, the conceptual domain of locomotion -how things move about in the world. during this riddling session, they produced eleven riddle-like routines directed to the ways that https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39022 vol. 42, no. 1 (2024) 25 children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39022/ animals, machines, and people get about, with legs and wheels, and the number thereof, serving as the distinguishing features. in children’s riddling, i characterize this session as a symposium and argue that “as the theme of locomotion is explored and developed, one routine begetting another, one senses that underlying this contemplative kind of performance there lurks a rather fully developed folk taxonomy” (1979, 137). the symposium on locomotion begins with this routine: “what has eight wheels and rolls?” the answer provided is, “roller skates.” but the session also includes this riddle: “what has four legs and can’t walk?” the answer here, of course, is “a chair.” hence, i see this symposium moving in two different directions, toward confirming a shared set of perceptions about the world, and toward challenging “the familiar orders of language and culture” (1979, 143). the upshot, for me, is to recognize the cerebral child, who is “concerned in his or her verbal art with complex matters of rationality, logic, sociability, and aesthetics” (1979, 144). like claude lévi-strauss’s cerebral savage, the cerebral child needs to be rescued from our complacent disdain and celebrated as an ethnographer and creator of culture. episode 5: palm school encounter. palm school was, and still is, an elementary school in east austin, and i ventured there one weekend afternoon in november in search of children. the aggressive attitude of the children i encountered that day stands out as unique across the whole gamut of my research ventures for the texas project. as noted, i include in my dissertation (1975) a chapter on taunts, and feature excerpts from the encounter with four children, ages 6-10, on the palm school playground. presenting this episode as an instance of the children testing the investigator and the situation, i describe the action as follows: “verbal taunts were accompanied by physical aggression…as the investigator became a recipient of mock blows to the back, head, and shoulder. at one point three or https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39022 26 children’s folklore review children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39022/ four children climbed on my back and were not easily dislodged. this physical aggression was carefully restrained, never reaching the level of actually inflicting serious pain. also worthy of mention is the momentary theft of the investigator’s notepad and glasses case, which were returned upon request.” in the pages of that thesis chapter, i analyze the form and content of the verbal taunting, noting, for form, that a range of speech acts are exploited, including mock riddles, pointed narratives, and derisive and disparaging rhymes; and for content, that metaphorical thinking prevails, disparaging the investigator as a non-human creature, as a deviant human being, and as a part of the human anatomy. at the time of the palm school encounter, i reasoned that the schoolyard on a weekend afternoon is an ambiguous space, where the children are released from the constraints of home and family. such a settling could give rise to behavior lodged at the uncertain zone between play and not-play. looking back at the event, i understand it as well to have been a spirited defense of disputed territory, embodying larger societal factors, whereby the children are fending off against the intrusion of an agent of the often-oppressive outside world. episode 6: popeye the sailor man. i saw in the children’s verbal repertoire an engagement with contemporary popular culture that spanned their cultural horizons. for example, in one session, the performance of the english-language parody of the popeye ditty brought to the fore a spanish-language equivalent: english version: i’m popeye the sailor man, i live in a garbage can, https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39022 vol. 42, no. 1 (2024) 27 children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39022/ i eat all the worms and spit out the germs, i’m popeye the sailor man. spanish version: popeye nació en torreón (popeye was born in torreón encima de un sillón, on top of a toilet seat, mató a su tía he killed off his aunt con una tortilla, with a tortilla, popeye nació en torreón. popeye was born in torreón.) it appears that the cartoon protagonist had a presence also in mexican popular media, and that children tuning into this manifestation of it were just as irreverent as their peers in the united states. his name, however, comes out quite differently in the two languages – in spanish, it has three syllables, with each “e” ringing forth like the vowel sound in the english word “say.” how fortunate the child, i thought at this event, who can have fun with popeye in two languages! emerging themes the underlying political agenda at the time the texas project took shape, there was a sense among academics in the social sciences and humanities that we could participate in a redemptive movement, helping to redeem socially marginalized populations from commonplace stereotypes that deprived them of their agency and even their humanity. for example, the word in some circles was that “chicanos are functionally illiterate in two languages.” their bilingualism was viewed, in these circles, as a negative thing, holding them back in the educational system and in the larger society. inspired by william labov’s work in https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39022 28 children’s folklore review children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39022/ recognizing the verbal excellence of urban black youth culture (1972), i saw my work with the texas project as an opportunity to feature the achievements of chicano children and the advantages of growing up in a bicultural, bilingual community. and the children did not disappoint. as i detail in a later article, "sociolinguistic contours in the verbal art of chicano children" (1982), the children i documented in austin exhibited verbal competence and creativity in english, spanish, and in a creole mode of speaking that combines the two languages. it seemed to me that this spanishenglish creole was, for some of the children, their favored speech variety, and it percolated into much of their verbal art performance. for example, i recorded this linguistic reshaping of a well-known interrogative routine (i’ve placed the spanish in italics and added english translation for the spanish words; see mcdowell 1979, 177): 1st child: why did the chicken cross the road? ¿por qué? (why?) 2nd child: porque (because) it’s too far to walk. 3rd child: porque está too far pa’ andá(r). (because it’s too far to walk.) one senses here the children savoring the possibilities inherent in their speech competence, rolling different options off their tongues, mixing spanish and english, as they seek the most pleasing formulation, perhaps aware at some level that the fit between riddle question and answer wasn’t quite where it needed to be.9 moreover, they could draw on rich verbal art heritages lodged in two world civilizations: anglo american traditions rooted in the british isles and processed through the north american experience; and spanish american traditions with roots in spain, processed through the latin american experience, primarily that of mexico, the culture of origin for most of their families. i formulated this competence in my 1982 article as one featuring both parallel and mixed constructions, that is, verbal products that keep the two languages and traditions separate, and those that mix them. https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39022 vol. 42, no. 1 (2024) 29 children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39022/ discussing this competence in my 2018 article, where i work with the concept of transitionality as endemic to border populations, i conclude that the verbal performance of chicano children reveals that “transitionality entails its dislocations, but when circumstances are favorable, it can occasion a doubling of riches” (2018, 98). assessing the functions of children’s play. crossing the triviality barrier (sutton-smith 1970) that encourages indifference to the things children do, i sought to show that the verbal routines i collected are not only diversions or entertainments, which they are, but that they also serve important purposes in the life of the child, enabling children to participate successfully in group activities and to express themselves artistically in traditional cultural forms and arenas. entering the world of children’s peer play, and seeking to describe it as it actually transpires, i came away impressed with the social skills in evidence as the children collaborated on their multi-turn performances, and with their inventiveness as they brought forward, reprocessed, and repurposed familiar items in their cultural repertories. such was the fluidity of mental operations in this play arena that, when brian sutton-smith asked me to write on the transmission of children’s folklore, i used materials from the texas project to write instead about the activation of children’s folklore, finding the concept of transmission to be too mechanical to fit the data (mcdowell 1995). in sum, i came to construe children’s play as a crucial arena of socialization and enculturation. addressing the praxis of the verbal routines i gathered in austin, i wrote in the thesis (1975, 394) that the children learn “that they can tease, rebuke, plea, command, inquire, solicit, and insult through any one of these verbal genres, and that often the message will be all the more convincing when formulated in one of these verbal capsules.” and, construing children ultimately as both ethnographers and https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39022 30 children’s folklore review children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39022/ tricksters, achieving mastery over cultural resources but also the ability to detect points of overlap, inconsistency, and neglect, i wrote, in the thesis, as follows: “without the availability of this informal, generally pleasurable format for interaction, it is difficult indeed to imagine that children could acquire and master the range of cognitive, linguistic, and practical materials and methods which will eventually carry them into adolescent and adult roles” (1975, 395-96). concluding thoughts casting my glance back over the years, i feel fortunate to have participated in the texas project. there was the immediate satisfaction of coming into contact with children and their families in clarksville and east austin, and my growing fascination with the impressive verbal repertoire i was documenting. additionally, there were short-term benefits of considerable importance to me – not the least being that i could generate from my field materials the dissertation thesis that would complete my doctoral work at the university of texas. moreover, the laboratory actually financed the typing of my thesis! looking further down the path, it was valuable to gain this on-the-ground experience doing fieldwork in a community; i had previously done only minor bits of fieldwork in the course of preparing seminar papers.10 the extended stint in the chicano neighborhoods of austin, texas, gave me the opportunity to amass a significant body of field data and to ponder its possible meanings and uses. and, as is evident in this retrospective account, the materials i collected in austin have served me well over the years as i have continued to be instructed and intrigued by the conspicuous verbal expertise of the young mexican americans i came to know on the streets with austin’s chicano kids. https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39022 vol. 42, no. 1 (2024) 31 children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39022/ appendix: audio file compilation story: “este chamaquito estaba chewing gum” (click for access to audio) this performance took place in east austin on may 11, 1974, among a lively group of siblings and friends. my notes indicate a session with “some riddles, then stories about talking monkeys (changos) in english and spanish; next, inter-racial jokes favoring the mexicano; then they sing songs from the current spanish hit-parade.” the storyteller is raymond, age 5, who insists on telling a story his older brother claims to have already told – the performance is remarkable for its code-switching, to the point of displaying a spanish-english creole. here is my transcription, and translation, of raymond’s performance: este chamaquito, este chamaquito estaba chewing gum, (this little boy, this little boy was chewing gum) estaba comiendo gum y la estaba chewing (he was chewing gum, and he was chewing it) y después se le cayó y ya la iba a levantar y dijo la mamita: (and then it fell and he was going to pick it up and his mother said) "no, no lo agarre porque el diablo ya la lambió," y después dijo, ("no, don't grab it because the devil already licked it" and then she said) "ten, anda a buscar otra," so he chewing it ("take this, go and look for another" so he chewing it) and this, el vio una big old rock que la mamita, la quería hacer jump la rock y se cayó y dijo, (and this, he saw a big old rock that his mother, she wanted to jump over the rock and she fell and said) "ontá mi nene?" y dijo, "no, porque el diablo ya te lambió." ("where's my little boy?" and he said, "no, because the devil already licked you") -- https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39022 https://youtu.be/7sgbcybieg0 32 children’s folklore review children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39022/ rhyme: “corrí corrí” (click for access to audio) this rhyme was performed by a lively group, with ricky, age 10, angie, age 8, and linda, age 9, in the middle of the action. the scene is east austin, the date july 17, 1974. “corrí corrí,” is comical and also slightly risqué, and it evokes a good deal of laughter as the children rapidly chant it. here are the words – the spanish original, my english translation: corrí corrí me tropecé (i ran and ran, and then i tripped) caí en las lanas de josé (i fell into the undies of josé) se las metí, se las saqué (i put them on, i took them off) tenía pelitos y me asusté (they had little hairs and i got scared) -- song: “elena la ballena” (“elena the whale,” click for access to audio) this performance (and the next one) took place on may 1, 1974, in the clarksville neighborhood of austin. three youngsters, josé, age 9, joanne, age 9, and tina, age 7, are the main players. leonice santamaría is assisting. my notes have this synopsis: “mix of spanish and english. lots of riddles, rhymes, songs, and games.” “elena la ballena” is sung entirely in spanish; here are the words, with my translation: elena elena (elena elena) elena la ballena (elena the whale) vivía vivía (she lived, she lived) https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39022 https://youtu.be/wz-ukjn0ons https://youtu.be/cqca1wqeqe0 vol. 42, no. 1 (2024) 33 children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39022/ vivía en el mar (she lived in the sea) en el agua azul (in the blue water) le gustaba jugar (she liked to play) en el agua azul (in the blue water) le gustaba bañar (she liked to bathe) ay mami (oh mother) que hondo está el agua (how deep is the water) que hondo está el mar (how deep is the sea) -- rhyme: “my sailor” (click for access to audio) this rhyme, performed in the may 1, 1974, session in the clarksville (see above, #3), neighborhood with josé, joanne, and tina, is widely known, and is performed by these children to accompany their handclapping. here are the words, in their original english: my sailor went to sea sea sea sea to see what he could see see see see, but all that he could see see see see see, was the bottom of the ocean sea sea sea sea my sailor went to cha cha-cha cha to see what he could cha chacha cha, but all that he could cha chacha cha, was the bottom of the ocean cha chacha cha. my sailor went to chi-na to see what he could chi-na, but all that he could chi-na, https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39022 https://youtu.be/pezu5oxvek0 34 children’s folklore review children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39022/ was the bottom of the ocean chi-na. my sailor went to ooh-wa-chi-ga to see what he could ooh-wa-chi-ga, but all that he could ooh-wa-chi-ga, was the bottom of the ocean ooh-wa-chi-ga. -- john holmes mcdowell, professor emeritus at indiana university, works at the confluence of language and culture in us and latin american settings. his research topics range from the verbal play of children, in children’s riddling (iu press, 1979); to mexico’s ballad tradition, the corrido, in poetry and violence: the ballad tradition of mexico’s costa chica (university of illinois press, 2000) and ¡corrido! the living ballad of mexico’s western coast (university of new mexico press, 2015); to the mythic consciousness of andean peoples, in sayings of the ancestors: the spiritual life of the sibundoy indians (1989) and "so wise were our elders": mythic narratives of the kamsá (1994), both published by the university press of kentucky. lately, he is collaborating with the diverse environmentalisms research team (dert) to explore the concept of ecosovereignty, in performing environmentalisms: expressive culture and ecological change (university of illinois press, 2021, co-edited with katey borland, rebecca dirksen, and sue tuohy). references cited richard bauman 2020. “the texas school.” in patricia sawin and rosemary levy zumwalt, eds., folklore in the united states and canada: an institutional history. bloomington: indiana university press. https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv16h2ngc.14 william labov, 1972. language in the inner city: studies in the black english vernacular. philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press. josé limón, “the folk performance of chicano and the cultural limits of political ideology,” working papers in sociolinguistics 62: 1-28. southwest educational development laboratory: https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ed198695 john mcdowell, 1972. “differential response of the class and ethnic components of the austin speech community to marked phonological variables," https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39022 https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv16h2ngc.14 https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ed198695 vol. 42, no. 1 (2024) 35 children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39022/ anthropological linguistics 14(6): 228-239. (with susan mcrae). https://www.jstor.org/stable/30029325 _____. 1974. "some aspects of verbal art in bolivian quechua," folklore annual 6: 68-81. https://scholarworks.iu.edu/dspace/bitstream/handle/2022/25100/someaspectsof verbalart.pdf _____. 1975. “the speech play and verbal art of chicano children: an ethnographic and sociolinguistic study.” university of texas, austin. doctoral dissertation. _____. 1979. children's riddling. bloomington: indiana university press. _____. 1982. sociolinguistic contours in the verbal art of chicano children," in spanish in the united states: sociolinguistic aspects, lucia elias-olivares and jon amaestae (ed.). cambridge: cambridge university press, pp. 333-353. [also appears in aztlán: chicano journal of the social sciences and the arts 13: 165-193.] _____. 1985. "the poetic rites of conversation," journal of folklore research 22(2/3): 113-132. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3814388 _____. 1995. "the transmission of children's folklore," in children's folklore: a source book, brian sutton-smith et. al. (ed.). new york: garland, pp. 49-62. https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/usupress_pubs/71/ _____. 2018. “transitionality: the border as barrier and bridge.” in border folk balladeers: critical studies on américo paredes, edited by roberto cantú. cambridge press, pages 86-101. mcghee, p.e.. 1976. “children’s appreciation of humor: a test of the cognitive congruity principle,” child development 47(2): 420-26. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1128797 piaget, jean. 1972. the child and reality: problems of genetic psychology. new york: viking. shultz, thomas. 1974. “development of the appreciation of riddles,” child development 45(1): 100-105. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1127755 sutton-smith, brian. 1970. “psychology of childlore: the triviality barrier,” western folklore 29(1): 1-8. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1498679 https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39022 https://www.jstor.org/stable/30029325 https://scholarworks.iu.edu/dspace/bitstream/handle/2022/25100/someaspectsofverbalart.pdf https://scholarworks.iu.edu/dspace/bitstream/handle/2022/25100/someaspectsofverbalart.pdf https://www.jstor.org/stable/3814388 https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/usupress_pubs/71/ https://www.jstor.org/stable/1128797 https://www.jstor.org/stable/1127755 https://www.jstor.org/stable/1498679 36 children’s folklore review children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39022/ whitt, kenneth and norman prentice. 1977. “cognitive processes in the development of children’s enjoyment and comprehension of joking riddles,” developmental psychology 13(2): 129-36. https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/0012-1649.13.2.129 1 i use mexican american and chicano interchangeably here, notwithstanding their connection to two different speech registers: mexican american the more formal, official option; chicano the more informal, colloquial one. see limón 1979 for a discussion of these ethnonyms. 2 see bauman 2020 for a full account of the twists and turns in the road leading to the formation of this program. 3 my partner at the time, leonice santamaría, took an interest in this project; she accompanied me on visits with children in the clarksville neighborhood, and assisted with translation questions as these arose. 4 it was professor bauman who helped me formulate this excellent title for a thesis. my thesis committee was a strong one: bauman as chair, plus roger abrahams, then chair of the english department; marcia herndon, ethnomusicologist in the anthropology department; américo paredes, who was in english at the time; and brian stross, in anthropology. 5 this collection of essays derives from the 2016 conference themed “américo paredes: border narratives and the folklore of greater mexico,” sponsored by ucla and california state university, los angeles; my essay is based on my keynote address at that conference. 6 copies of the tapes are stored in the archives of traditional music at indiana university (see https://iucat.iu.edu/catalog/5735752), and transcriptions of these recordings are stored among my papers at the indiana university archives: see john h. mcdowell papers, accession 2021/067, indiana university archives, bloomington, in. 7 especially memorable is the afternoon i wandered in on a birthday celebration where a conjunto was making music – i was invited to join in the festivities, and provided with beer to boot! 8 i realize this protocol would not fly today, when irb’s are closely watching research projects involving children. indeed, there is perhaps less easiness now than formerly about strangers interacting with children, and i doubt one would find many children at ease in front of their houses, with the rise of supervised activity and the interference of computer-mediated entertainment. 9 the riddle question would have to ask something like, “why did the chicken fly across the road?” in order to sustain the proffered solution. 10 i note that three of these seminar fieldwork projects resulted in publications: mcdowell 1972; mcdowell 1974; and mcdowell 1985. i thank professors brian stross, joel sherzer, and richard bauman for providing much-appreciated guidance and inspiration. https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39022 https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/0012-1649.13.2.129 children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39020/ play and the performance of children’s folklore opportunities for learning beverly j. stoeltje indiana university, emeritus focusing on a wide range of folklore genres (handclaps, songs, jokes, counting out rhymes, circle games) and taboo topics, this study situates the data within a theoretical literature on play, performance, ritual, learning, and symbolic anthropology. children between the ages of 4 and 10 (female and male) performed the various genres in the early 1970’s in austin, texas. the research was conducted in conjunction with the southwest educational development laboratory in austin, texas, and the texas children’s folklore project directed by richard bauman at the university of texas, austin. launched in the early 1970’s at the university of texas (austin) the texas children’s folklore project not only generated new research but aimed to attract the attention of educators. as a graduate student in the folklore program i enthusiastically joined the research team with the encouragement of dick bauman and roger abrahams who were engaged in the field as dick outlines in his essay. in addition to “bauman and abrahams,” as they were widely known (or “dick and roger” to students), were other faculty whose interests had a potential bearing on children’s folklore and welcomed our attention. among those on the folklore faculty was barbara kirshenblatt-gimblett (from whom i took my first folklore course) who published an edited volume on speech play with one chapter devoted to the speech play of children. doug foley (education and anthropology) regularly taught courses on the anthropology of education and welcomed folklore students. joel sherzer—dick’s close colleague in linguistic anthropology was closely allied with the graduate program in folklore. his interest in speech play featured prominently in his research and in his classes. brian stross (anthropology) maintained an interest in children’s speech play and encouraged folklore students engaged with any genre of children’s folklore. when barbara babcock arrived, she introduced structural symbolic anthropology https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39020 38 children’s folklore review children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39020/ into the folklore curriculum, including the ideas of gregory bateson, mary douglas, victor turner, jim fernandez, and french structuralism in the work of claude levistrauss, paul ricoeur, guy debord. of particular relevance to me in this literature was the theme of play as it related to ritual, festival and carnival. this milieu was saturated with heady theoretical perspectives, ones that supported an interest in children’s folklore. combined with this rich academic environment was the sedl (southwest educational development laboratory) research project (as dick bauman has explained in his essay). it provided a fertile empirical domain within which to explore children’s performances and assimilate the research to a wide range of theory. at this same moment in time folklorists in the american folklore society were engaged in debates concerning whether folklore scholarship should or could be applied to settings outside of academe. as the purpose of our research was to provide results relevant for educators, our research generated interest among folklorists across the country. in austin we felt that our research had value both within academe and in the field of education. my research incorporated a wide range of folklore genres in a variety of settings recognizable as play. scholars in separate disciplines were focusing on the relationship between play and ritual in these years, identifying the space for play with the liminal period in ritual in which creativity and expressivity flourished.1 erik erikson linked these concepts in his definition of play as playful ritualization (1972:143), and jean piaget emphasized that learning is based on a process of discovery, construction, and reinvention (1972: 26-27), a definition equally appropriate for children’s folklore. further, in his now classic article on play, gregory bateson introduced the idea of frame, a concept especially useful in the study of children’s folklore and widely applicable to performance studies. further, he succinctly argued that in play a child is learning “a https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39020 vol. 42, no. 1 (2024) 39 children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39020/ conceptual structuring of the universe” in which there are “sorts and categories of behavior” (1971, 266). children’s handclaps: poetic features and semantic concepts children’s handclaps involve the performers in a multiplicity of skills involving a wide range of learning. this topic was selected as one that deserved a separate book designed for teachers and others who worked with children. that became my project for sedl, an instructional book that would direct teachers to the importance of handclaps as informal learning. let me mention my qualifications for this task in addition to the fact that i was a graduate student engaged in children’s folklore research. in the 1960’s i taught junior high school on the monterey peninsula of california, providing me with first-hand knowledge of teaching in public schools. piano lessons (for almost twenty years) provided me with the ability to transcribe the handclap tunes. of even more relevance, my research was greatly facilitated by having two informants in residence, my daughters gretchen and rachael, who were a constant source of rich data and always ready to collaborate in my research. they were ages four and seven years and then five and eight years, ages when handclaps and other folklore forms were popular play activities. they and their friends filled numerous cassettes with their performances. the instructional book is titled children’s handclaps: informal learning in play. it includes twelve texts of handclaps (with cultural variations), suggestions for teachers, instructions for participation, drawings of hand positions, the musical scores for the tunes, and multiple photos illustrating nineteen children of different ages, ethnicity, and gender plus one teacher, all engaged in “doing handclaps.” a statement on handclaps as artistic communication and cultural variation, and its relevance for learning, concludes the book. https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39020 40 children’s folklore review children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39020/ handclaps involve hand/eye coordination and coordination with another person. they also integrate a musical tune, rhythm, rhyme, repetition, word substitution, and nonsense, all of which constitute speech play. while the tune and rhythm and certain words will remain the same throughout a specific song, other words will change as the song moves from one verse to another, moving the action along. poetic features coordinate concepts, plot, rhyme, tunes, and movement in forms of speech play by means of integrating the syntagmatic and the paradigmatic; in other words, the principle of combination/contiguity and the principle of selection/substitution coordinate to create the poetic form. “when sally was a baby” repeats a sentence (the combination of words into a sentence), but sally’s identity is a substitution in the sentence as she grows up, finally becoming a skeleton, illustrating the life cycle with words and movements. verse motion when sally was a baby, a baby, a baby thumb sucking motion when sally was a baby, she went like this ummmm, this-a-way, ummmm, that-a-way. or: she went like this: ummmm this-a-way, one, two, three. ooo, aah, cha, cha, cha when sally was a schoolgirl, she went like this: two plus two is four, four plus four is eight, eight plus eights is sixteen, sixteen plus sixteen is thirty-two when sally was a teen-ager, she went like this… talks on phone or slaps knees when sally was a wife….. kissing and hugging motion when sally was a mother….. rocking baby motion when sally was a grandmother….. bent over with aching back when sally’s husband died….. hands over face when sally was a skeleton….. shake arms loosely in the following handclap, “tiny tim,” the nonsense sentences serve to emphasize rhyme and rhythm as well as sequence and repetition. https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39020 vol. 42, no. 1 (2024) 41 children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39020/ miss lucy had a baby, she named him tiny tim. she put him in the bathtub to see if he could swim. he drank up all the water, he ate up all the soap. he tried to swallow the bathtub, but it wouldn’t go down his throat. miss lucy called the doctor, miss lucy called the nurse. miss lucy called the lady with the alligator purse. in walked the doctor, in walked the nurse. in walked the lady with the alligator pure. out walked the doctor, out walked the nurse. out walked the lady with the alligator purse. not all handclaps have a linear, sequential message, or a “plot,” but each handclap selects from the repertoire of ideas and concepts available to children and combines them with poetic features, including nonsense words or phrases, so that the song and the clapping express the rhythm. the performers are increasing their motor skills through hand/eye coordination and their musical ability by carrying a tune. not to be overlooked, in the clapping a child is learning cooperation and coordination with another child. bateson’s definition of play (above) is especially cogent for handclaps that they are not learning separate concepts but skills, knowledge, and semantic categories, the conceptual structuring of the universe. though my major responsibility for the project was the production of the handclap book, i also visited a navajo elementary school in crown point, new mexico. it was a school that had been shifted from bia administration to the tribe itself. i know that my review was very positive as the school was running smoothly, and children were very comfortable being interviewed by me in english. the strongest image i came away with was the children’s artwork, posted on the walls of classrooms. one drawing https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39020 42 children’s folklore review children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39020/ depicted in the child’s own words a “squaw dance where people are having a good time. the women are trying to cook some foods, also sharlinda’s family were there to help.” above the scene with the women cooking and sharlinda’s family were cars flying through the sky in the traditional navajo pattern, an arc. instead of horses flying across the sky, the young artist, melvin chee, had incorporated modernity in the form of cars, the more common mode of transportation in the 20th century. publicity and continuity our team was not tasked with publicity and distribution, and we did not receive data from sedl. however, through folklore channels we were aware that news of the book went out and requests for copies arrived. in one example, a four-page excerpt from the handclap book appeared in the winter of 1979 newsletter of the children’s folklore section. further notices announced it in the american folklore newsletter and in the student newsletter of indiana university. at klrn-tv, austin, a teacher’s guide was produced entitled, caboodle, which used some of the children’s handclaps material. in their newsletter the center for southern folklore wrote an article that included material from the handclap book, and the editors replied to stoeltje, “we feel what you have to say about handclaps fills a much-needed link in presenting a wellrounded picture of children’s folklore to our audience…”. also, lillian krelove of legacy books sold copies of the book, and numerous folklorists requested copies through those of us at the university. on our recommendation, letters and copies of the book were sent as well to specific scholars, and announcements went out to colleagues in fields related to education. a second body of research from the children’s folklore project published by sedl focused on ring games performed by african american girls: black girls at play: folkloric perspectives on child development. this publication featured two articles https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39020 vol. 42, no. 1 (2024) 43 children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39020/ describing and analyzing traditional ring games that black girls played on school playgrounds. margaret brady’s article, “this little lady’s gonna boogaloo,” emphasized the importance of peer group support, demonstrated in performance (through coaching) or in the case of hurt feelings or preventing someone from falling off the merry-go-round. noting jean piaget’s attention to this element she references his comment that social collaboration is an essential factor in intellectual development (1964, 4). rosalind eckhardt, the author of “from handclap to line play,” documented handclaps in circles of children as many as ten. her essay included 24 photos of girls (and boys) playing ring games and line games in which one girl performs in the center or through two lines of other players. eckhardt elucidates the proxemic structure of these games and notes the increasing complexity of the games in children ages eight and nine. both the children’s handclaps instructional book and the black girls at play publications are held in libraries throughout the country.2 perhaps the most important means of communicating information related to the texas children’s folklore project rested on the shoulders of the participants in the project. one example was the symposium on informal learning of children chaired by brian sutton-smith in 1976 at the annual meeting of the a.e.r.a. (american educational research association) in san francisco. included in the presentations were ones by richard bauman and bob randall of sedl. significantly, as the team members gathered data, we also gave papers at the annual meetings of the american folklore society and began publishing articles based on the research. dissemination of the research has been ongoing, however, through teaching. for those several of us who went on to become professors at various universities, teaching presented an opportunity to present the research in folklore classes. while teaching in the english department at the university of texas, i included children’s folklore in my classes, and again at indiana university where i taught large folklore classes and was https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39020 44 children’s folklore review children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39020/ assisted by graduate students in the folklore and ethnomusicology department. not only could the undergraduate students relate to children’s folklore, but the graduate student assistants incorporated it in their classes when they began teaching at other universities. one of our team, margaret brady, who published her dissertation on navajo children’s skin walker stories, taught throughout her career at the university of utah where she included children’s folklore in her classes. (see john mcdowell’s article in this issue for his publication and teaching.) an ethnographer’s observations johann huizinga considered that “…one of the most important characteristics of play was its spatial separation from ordinary life” (1970, 19-20). as research confirmed, children perform a wide range of folklore genres in settings that are unstructured, removed from routine activities. sites where children perform comfortably include school playgrounds, neighborhood yards and homes, car trips, mealtimes and more. the “separation” need not be measured in distance but rather the children must feel that no adult nor adult rules are governing the play space or will intervene in the play-though an adult may be present or in proximal space. for example, my research included lunch time in a school cafeteria; though teachers were present in the room, they were not sitting with or monitoring the children. like playgrounds, lunch time was separated from the authority and routines of the classroom; it brought friends together in a child only space which they transformed into a performance opportunity. in addition to school lunch as a research site, i collected performances of children’s folklore on school playgrounds, in after school play groups, in the car, at mealtime, in my own home and wherever children were at play. consequently, my https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39020 vol. 42, no. 1 (2024) 45 children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39020/ research captured a wide variety of children’s folklore performances, filling 16 cassette tapes. while some scholars and educators have recognized the importance of social collaboration and/or group solidarity for learning (piaget argued that ”social collaboration….leads to a critical frame of mind where children must communicate with each other” [1964, 4]), it depends on familiarity or an environment in which familiarity can develop. folklore performance flourishes when groups of children interact frequently over time. interaction creates familiarity with performance forms and trust among the participants, ultimately building confidence among the group members. consequently, children will organize themselves in performance more quickly and sustain their play longer when they frequently play together in contrast to children who are not familiar with each other. placing the focus on specific performances reveals significant individual behavior as well as that of groups, small and large. leadership roles, clown behavior, competitive and/or cooperative relationships, skills and talents such as knowledge of jokes, songs, and handclaps or the ability to perform exceptionally well, or, alternatively, the lack of ability to perform or the source of disruption – all of these can be observed as children perform handclaps, ring games, and more. an especially important interaction involving specific individuals is that between more experienced performers (either because of age or experience) and newcomers or younger ones. the experienced member of a group will often assist a novice or contribute a new item to perform; however, taking advantage of their expertise, some experienced individuals will manipulate the folklore form to their advantage. though rarely mentioned in collections, the identity of the field worker – how it can be exploited to good advantage or be an obstacle to overcome – bears consideration https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39020 46 children’s folklore review children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39020/ in conducting research. whether an individual has language facility, familiarity with children and schools, knowledge of folklore forms, access to children, and other relevant features such as cultural identity and gender, can influence the success of the research. the examples below from my research illustrate the effects of familiarity, the wide range of folklore the children possessed, and the significance of documenting specific performances. i have noted the relevance of poetic features, the manipulation of the semantic categories that constitute the effort at a conceptual structuring of the universe, the variety of roles children can assume, and the social interactions that are encapsulated in a performance of children’s folklore. these examples include a counting out rhyme, a circle game, a short verse, and songs and jokes. manipulation and resistance: eenie meenie, minnie, moe or “counting me” in the following counting out rhyme, “eenie, meenie, minnie, moe,” (click for access to audio) five girls, ages 4 to 10 years, are in my living room participating in the counting out rhyme. four of the five girls live on the same block and play together frequently; the fifth and oldest girl plays with the group when she is visiting her grandmother but attends a different school. my tape recorder and i were familiar to these children because i frequently recorded their play, and one of them especially enjoyed hearing herself on the tape. on the day i recorded the “counting me” incident i was sitting at the kitchen table, and the children were close by in the next room, and the tape recorder was running. suzy is the 4 year old, and karen is the10 year old. https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39020 https://youtu.be/awfqrfh7egy vol. 42, no. 1 (2024) 47 children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39020/ i hear the finish of the counting out rhyme and suddenly several voices at once were screaming: “you are it!” “suzy did it.” “gina did it.” “quit it, suzy, quit it!!!!” “come on…let’s go tell, gina.” the girls come rushing into the kitchen, accompanied by suzy. gina: “mommy, suzy’s been spittin’ all over the table and everything.” mommy to suzy: “why were you doing that?” suzy replies: “cause, they were counting me, and i didn’t like it.” mommy to suzy: “they were counting you? what does that mean?” suzy: “they…” (pause) karen to mommy: “we were going eenie, meenie, minie, moe, and we knew it was her, and everybody knows, and…it even landed on her, so we said it was her. now, she keeps on fussing.” mommy to karen: “come, show me how you do it.” suzy screams: “i’m not it. i’m not it!” karen to mommy: “eenie, meenie, minie, moe, catch a fella by the toe, if he hollers, let him go. eenie, meenie, minie, moe. my mother told me to pick this very one so you are it. see – it landed on her some way.” mommy to karen: “how did it turn out for her to be it?” https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39020 48 children’s folklore review children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39020/ karen to mommy: “see, gina, when it landed on her she started pointing at suzy. suzy started kicking then and got people’s pants all dirty, and then lucy wiped it back on her, and then she got the chair and tried to get lucy – and that wouldn’t work.” karen to mommy: “look, she’s it… eenie, meenie, minie, moe see, it always lands on her.” mommy to karen: “does it have anything to do with who you want it to land on?” karen answers: “nooooo, yesss. well, see, this is really the way it goes—see, i told lucy she might lose a $5.00 bill, you know, so i told gina, ‘gina, take this $5 bill and keep it’ (pause). i told lucy, ‘lemme see that $5 bill,’ and she goes (pause), and everybody starts runnin’on suzy.” mommy to karen: “this is how you decided it was suzy?” karen answers: “i didn’t – she did.” mommy to karen: “you said, ‘eenie, meenie, mini, moe’ to decide who took the $5 bill?” karen: “yeah, and it always landed on her, see.” suzy: “i wasn’t it!!!” in this case karen, who was three years older than several of the girls and five years older than suzy, was managing the counting out rhyme and planted the $5 bill that was the object of this rhyme on gina. (she gave it to her and told her to keep it). (she obtained the $5 bill from lucy). she manipulated emmm so that it landed on gina, but gina understood that she was to be judged the one with the $5 bill so she pointed to her younger sister (suzy), and karen agreed to the move and claimed that it landed on suzy, the 4 year old who was not sure what this was all about, but was quite certain that she had been identified as “it” the one guilty of something. being much younger, she opted to act out in resistance and began kicking and spitting on the others, disrupting the game and bringing it to an end. https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39020 vol. 42, no. 1 (2024) 49 children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39020/ peace was restored once karen explained her strategy to me. (the manipulation of counting out rhymes seems to be a common occurrence among children.) punchinella: a rich opportunity a circle game popular with african american girls, punchinella, names the individual in the center of the circle who demonstrates a movement that all in the circle must repeat while singing the verses of the song. the movement is coordinated with hand clapping and the words and tune of the song. when all the verses are completed, the child in the center chooses one from the circle to become punchinella, and the song is repeated with a new movement. though the game is frequently performed, in each instance variations are enacted. the game and specific performances are also described in brady and in eckhardt (brady 1975 and eckhardt 1975). the performance i observed (click for access to audio) took place on the playground of an integrated elementary school in austin. african american girls created a circle and began the game. at a certain point in the game, a white girl walked up to one of the black girls in the circle and requested to join; permission was granted and a handclasp was broken to permit her to enter the circle, and the game continued smoothly. another variation in this particular game was the action of two boys who played a distinct role. previous to punchinella one of the boys was engaged in chasing one of the girls (who had initiated the chase game). once she organized punchinella he continued to focus on her, pushing her, running across the circle and other disruptive moves. at times one player would yell to him to get out of the way, and another player yelled to others not to hit him in the back. he played the role of the clown, refusing to join in the game, violating the rules, but as he was juxtaposed against the structure of the game, he was generating energy, and sustaining the “chase relationship” with the leader of the https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39020 https://youtu.be/r1zt-6nftjc 50 children’s folklore review children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39020/ group. another boy participated in the game, performing the movements to perfection and urging others to shape up the circle and get the game moving by uttering the phrase, “get by your honey.” the variations/violations and the instructions created by the two male figures provided a clown figure to create anti-structure and an artist who represented structure, the effort to move the game along smoothly. the two seemed to be friends and tolerated each other comfortably. the girls seemed to enjoy the two boys, and the game continued for many rounds, suggesting that the energy the boys provided prolonged the game by introducing these innovations. performing the circle game is itself an example of social collaboration, but it also provides the opportunity for individuals to perform before a responsive audience; equally important, each one of the players experiences a turn in the center of the circle. in this example the two boys draw attention not only to themselves but to the girls’ ability to tolerate the disruptions caused by the clown and the instructions issued by the artist. poetics and performance matters my daughters and i moved to student housing where they had new playmates. pablo and julio, who were from nicaragua, were the ages of my children and we carpooled every morning to school, and sometimes they played in the afternoon. one evening they joined my girls and me for dinner when the following performance took place (click to access audio). gina is finishing her dinner and begins a verse, keeping time with her feet: beans beans…” the more ya eat, the more ya toot: the more ya toot, the better ya feel; so eat your beans at ev-ry meal. https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39020 https://youtu.be/nz_y8-67dxw https://youtu.be/nz_y8-67dxw vol. 42, no. 1 (2024) 51 children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39020/ however, pablo is not satisfied with her performance and issues a correction. the emphasis in the last line should not be on every, but on meal. “that’s not at every meal, but at every meal.” as pablo points out, the poetic function in this brief verse requires that emphasis be placed on meal to emphasize the rhyme with feel. gina then repeats the verse with the correction. the children then have ice cream and discuss school activities. at that point i ask gina where she learned the verse, and pablo volunteers that he taught it to her, having learned it from a friend of his who goes to a different school. being the source of the verse endows him with authority to correct the emphasis. throughout dessert gina continues to play with the verse, speeding and slowing the rhythm, exaggerating the speech with a texas accent and speaking the lines of the verse separately – all in an effort to try out various poetic features. taboo as rearranging the categories children from k-6th grade are characteristically curious about and learning from multiple sources about sex, bodies, authority, violence, animals, insects, and other topics, some of which may be considered taboo for children. aware of topics that are taboo, some children delight in performing genres of folklore that articulate those topics as they elicit squeals and laughter from the other children and encourage further attempts to bring bodily topics into their verbal play. these efforts constitute semantic categories which the children are exploring. as i reflect on my fieldwork in relation to the sedl charter for the project, what comes vividly to mind is the material that fell outside their ideological comfort zone – those categories considered taboo. a small group of children, female and male, who were friends in and out of school provided a very rich body of taboo material for me, https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39020 52 children’s folklore review children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39020/ most of which is characteristic of children 6-10 years of age. my two children were members of this group and occasionally spent time with phillip and chris outside of the group interactions when one of us parents would take them to a movie, for example. this material was fascinating to consider as it related to my intellectual interests in ritual, festival, and symbolic anthropology (as mentioned above). a major figure in this field, mary douglas, addressed these semantic categories as they occur in the marginal/liminal period of ritual, “the segregation of the body from society.” she wrote with targeted insight that “…inhabitants there are licensed to participate in asocial behavior. dirt, obscenity and lawlessness obtain…” (1966, 117). moreover, “the orifices of the body are then the vulnerable points of the body, and what issues from them is marginal –spittle, blood, milk, urine, feces or tears… in this theory, the body mirrors the social situation, therefore the power of particular bodily margins is determined by the situation being mirrored.” (1966, 145) like the inhabitants of the marginal described by mary douglas, members of this children’s group frequently performed jokes and songs concerned with sex, bodies and body parts, death, school authorities and repulsive items such as gopher guts. because the core group of children socialized often, they were familiar with each other and with the jokes and songs. their ages ranged between 5 and 9 years. individual behavior was prominent in the group as phillip (eight years) focused on the taboo and grotesque, assuming the role of a clown. he dominated the play but his performance stimulated others to perform as well. as he liked to hear himself on the tape recorder, he was eager to perform in the hopes of hearing the playback. his brother, chris (nine years), did not appreciate his performances and responded with verbal skill. most of their songs have been documented in collections of children’s folklore.3 https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39020 vol. 42, no. 1 (2024) 53 children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39020/ verse & jokes at lunch in the school cafeteria phillip volunteers when he sees my tape recorder, telling me that the following is really a song: i’m a twenty-foot geenie, with a thousand-foot weenie, and i showed it to the lady next door. she thought it was a snake so, she hit it with a rake. now my weenie’s only 5 foot 4. the after-school play group included several of the same children who sat together at lunch in the school cafeteria. a popular joke in the after-school group deals with the body and the discovery of sexuality: sally and tommy were playing together, and tommy says, “sally can i play with your belly button?” and sally says “sure.” so he starts playing with her belly button. sally says, “tommeee, that’s not my belly button.” and he says, “that’s not my finger either.” another joke introduces a violation of the teacher/student relationship; the teacher initiates the action with an unwilling (at first) child. “ok,” the teacher says, and “ok, it’s time to go home; everybody go home except,” i don’t know his name. after everyone left, the teacher said, “john, take off my shoes,” and he says, “i don’t want to,” and she said, “john,” and he said “ok.” and she said, “john, take off my dress,” and he said, “i don’t want to,” and she said, “john,” and he said “ok.” (giggles) and finally he undressed her all, and she laid down on the table, and she said, “john, get on top of me” (giggles) and he said, “i don’t want to,” and she said, “john,” and he said, “ok,” and he gets on her, and then the janitor walks in, and in a few minutes says “john, get off that teacher,” and he says, “i don’t want to.” https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39020 54 children’s folklore review children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39020/ songs & inversion of instructions glory, glory hallelujah, teacher hit me with the ruler; i hit her in the weene with a rotten tangerine, and she ain’t my teacher no more. more verses followed. in the following example five children of the same group as above are recorded and observed as we go to a pizzeria for dinner and then to an ice cream shop for dessert. as we are driving to the ice cream shop, i remind the children of good behavior because on a previous trip phillip broke his dish and spilled the ice cream. phillip responds: “we’ll remember – i’ll go over the rules. throw ice cream at each other. break up spoons. don’t eat the ice cream. if you do not like it, throw it at somebody. and those glass cups, remember break them on your way out. those are the ground rules. do them all.” phillip’s brother chris replies, “phillip, you want to know something? if pooh came out of your rear end every time you said a word, your pants would be too heavy for you to wear, and it would be impossible to clean up.” these comments lead to a discussion of diarrhea with all children talking at once, and gina states that phillip’s diarrhea comes out of his hair. we arrive at the ice cream shop, and everyone enjoys their ice cream with no accidents. once in the car, the children sing one of their favorite songs: have you ever seen a hearse go by, with people in it about to die. they wrap you up in a bloody sheet and drop you down about sixty feet. the worms crawl in, the worms crawl out, the worms play penuchle on your snout. they eat your eyes, they eat your nose, they eat the jelly between your toes. then all the lizards crawl through your gizzards. when finished they move on to another favorite song: “greasy, grimy gopher guts.” https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39020 vol. 42, no. 1 (2024) 55 children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39020/ throughout the performance of these examples and many more, phillip assumed the role of clown, reversing rules and relationships, crossing conceptual wires of the real and imaginative, and inverting concepts and categories. others in the group participated when they had a taboo form to contribute. the group enthusiastically sang the songs carefully constructed with poetic features which nevertheless expressed grotesque images. like the inhabitants of the marginal described by mary douglas the children are marginal to mainstream adult society and when at play are “licensed” to articulate the obscene, agonistic, inversive, scatological – all beyond the pale of mainstream educational principles and pedagogy. these performances occurred during play time and can be accurately described by babcock who argued that the “play dimension – the re-arranging of semantic categories…” (914) was not simply chaos, but …whether it be the game of a child, the art of a clown or the play of the novelist –[it] is an ensemble of rules for the manipulation and transformation of the various semiotic systems which constitute a given culture.” (babcock, 921). children’s folklore: play and performance as the above examples demonstrate, play and the performance of children’s folklore create a wide range of informal learning. not limited to adding skills and knowledge, informal learning also creates opportunities for subtracting and refining, classifying and rearranging, creating reflection on and refinement of semiotic systems – the fundamental material of culture. concerned with informal learning, the children’s folklore project motivated a great deal more research concerned with children’s performance than the products published by sedl. had the potential of the project been fulfilled, more publications would have been produced out of the research, and person to person contacts with https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39020 56 children’s folklore review children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39020/ teachers and school administrators could have been pursued to explore further developments and application of the research material. while the concept of informal learning would seem to be attractive to educators, expanding the topic into a larger document addressing concepts such as play, language, social collaboration, creativity, substitution, would have been valuable for teachers. another approach would have involved breaking down the material into smaller units, suggesting how it could be used as an illustration, integrated into a day in which numbers or language or some other formal learning were on the agenda. finally, an essay on children’s performance of folklore would have been a valuable contribution, emphasizing that an individual has the opportunity to try out roles, to perform before a friendly audience, to express self-assertion or resistance, to demonstrate artistry and to practice social skills when performing in play. these opportunities assist children to develop self-esteem, discover talents, build friendships, social awareness, group solidarity, and finally, to conclude what to keep and what to discard. the children’s folklore project was well situated to send a message, and perhaps did succeed in doing so, confirming that the performance of children’s folklore showed in impressive ways what children were interested in and what they were capable of, intellectually, interactionally, aesthetically, morally. beverly j. stoeltje is professor emerita of anthropology and of folklore and ethnomusicology, at indiana university. her research has concentrated on gender, ritual and festival, performance, traditional authorities and legal anthropology. her research topics include the american west and rodeo as performance; gender and representation; queenmothers in ghana. among her publications are children’s handclaps (1978) and beauty queens on the global stage (with r. wilk and c. b. cohen) (1996); she has served as editor of special issues of the journal of folklore research and africa today with articles in the journal of american https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39020 vol. 42, no. 1 (2024) 57 children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39020/ folklore, the research review (ghana) and chapters in multiple volumes. her current research is focused on the ashanti people of ghana, with special attention to queen mothers and chieftaincy disputes. acknowledgements beverly stoeltje would like to acknowledge the major role her daughters, gretchen stoeltje and rachael stoeltje, played in her research. they were engaged, even enthusiastic, about the project, the boundary between spontaneous and requested performance being quite fluid. their names were changed in the counting-out performance write-up to gina and suzy. references cited abrahams, roger d. 1969. jump rope rhymes: a dictionary. austin: university of texas press. babcock-abrahams, barbara. 1974. “the novel and the carnival world: an essay in memory of joe doherty.” modern language notes. 89: 911-937. https://doi.org/10.2307/2906942 bateson, gregory. 1971. “the message ‘this is play,’” in child’s play, edited by r.e. herron an brian sutton-smith, 261-69. new york: john wiley and sons. brady, margaret. 1975. “this little lady’s gonna boogaloo,” in black girls at play: folkloric perspectives on child development, edited by m. brady and e. rosalind, 151. austin: southwest educational development corporation. _____. 1984. “some kind of power”: navajo children skinwalker narratives. salt lake city: university of utah press. douglas, mary. 1966. purity and danger. new york: penguin. eckhardt, rosalind. 1975. “from handclap to line play,” in black girls at play: folkloric perspectives on child development, edited by e. rosalind and m. brady, 52-101. austin: southwest educational development corporation. erikson, erik. 1972. “play and actuality,” in play and development, edited by maria w. piers, 127-68. new york: w. w. norton & co. https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39020 58 children’s folklore review children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39020/ huizinga, johan. 1970 [1950]. homo ludens: a study of the play element in culture. new york: beacon press. piaget, jean. 1964. "cognitive development in children." journal of research in science teaching. 2(2): 176-186. _____. 1972. “some aspects of operations,” in play and development, edited by maria w. piers, 15-27. w.w. norton & co. stoeltje, beverly j. 1978. children’s handclaps: informal learning in play. austin: southwest educational development corporation. turner, victor. 1974. “liminal to liminoid, in play, flow, and ritual: an essay in comparative symbology.” the anthropological study of human play. 60(3): 53-92. 1 see victor turner (1974). 2 a further note: nyu published a book in 2020 entitled the games black girls play by ethnomusicologist kyra gaunt. it employs a different perspective from the brady and eckhardt essays, but references “black girls at play,” suggesting that the author might have been inspired by their publication. 3 see, for example, roger abrahams (1969). https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39020 part ii revisiting three previously published tcfp works children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39023/ ethnography of children’s folklore richard bauman indiana university, emeritus first presented in 1978 at the colloquium on ethnography and education, which was hosted by research for better schools, inc. and the university of pennsylvania, bauman’s “ethnography of children’s folklore” was also printed in children in and out of school: ethnography and education in 1982. thank you to the center for applied linguistics for permission to reprint in this special issue of children’s folklore review. via an examination of children’s folklore—including riddles, jokes, catches, and solicitational routines—bauman’s article makes strong claims for the importance of ethnographic study of children’s folklore as a source of insight into the rich artistic, expressive competencies too frequently ignored by educators. i am especially pleased to have the opportunity to address the subject of children's folklore within the context of ethnography and education. for nearly twelve years now, i have been hawking children's folklore to educators in one for(u)m or another, more often than not in conferences or workshops organized in terms of conceptions of children's expressive behavior and/or of research generally in varying degrees out of phase with my own. but not this time. ethnography is exactly what i believe in and try to do, and i am convinced that a self-conscious consideration of what is distinctive about ethnography and children's folklore can highlight some important matters that otherwise tend to remain obscured. let me begin by specifying what i mean by children's folklore, namely, the traditional formalized play activities of children, including forms of speech play and verbal art, that are engaged in and maintained by the children themselves, within the peer group. familiar genres of children’s folklore include riddles, games, jokes, taunts, retorts, hand-claps, counting-out rhymes, catches, ring plays, and jump-rope rhymes, and several dozen others that most of you can probably remember as well as i can. https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39023 62 children’s folklore review children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39023/ children's folklore is distinguished on the one hand from nursery lore, such as nursery rhymes, finger plays, knee-bouncing rhymes, tickling rhymes, and other routines that have their locus in the interaction between very young children and adults. it is likewise distinguished from, though it may share items and genres and have other continuities with, adult folklore. ethnographic studies of play and children’s folklore anthropological students of childhood will be familiar with a whole range of what are generally identified in the literature as ethnographic studies of children's play, either full-length ethnographies, or more often parts of ethnographies conceived in broader terms. characteristic of these studies, the feature that earns them the designation ethnographic, is the consideration of children's play within the context of and functionally integrated with larger social and cultural systems. most often, as pointed out by helen schwartzman in her review of the literature on anthropological studies of children's play (1976), these studies view children's play as an enculturation vehicle. the children are seen as proto-adults, learning things and acquiring competencies through play that will equip them for later, more mature stages of life beyond childhood. the view is a teleological one, taking children as incomplete, as yet unfinished bearers of adult culture, helped along toward adulthood by their play activities. schwartzman (1976:298) quotes a nice example of the genre from colin turnbull's (1961) description of the play of mbuti pygmy children: like children everywhere, pygmy children love to imitate their adult idols...at an early age boys and girls are 'playing house' or 'playing hunting.'... and one day they find that the games they have been playing are not games any longer, but the real thing for they have become adults. this perspective, characteristic also of many psychological treatments of children's play, tends to be attractive to educators, because education tends https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39023 vol. 42, no. 1 (2024) 63 children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39023/ overwhelmingly to be conceived—by educators and laymen alike in our society—as preparing children for, and moving them along toward, adulthood. at its best, the approach can be useful, for one of the universal facts about children is that they do indeed become adults, and moreover, because they do in fact operate to a significant extent in the world of adults. unfortunately, however, research on children's folklore with an eye toward enculturation and toward the potential application of childlore to education tends to be seriously skewed by the widespread underlying attitude toward play that it has to be useful in a moral sense, that it should contribute toward 'proper' and 'productive' adult ways of behaving. thus, i have found in my own work with educators that my research was impelled toward the investigation of language skills in children's speech play and verbal art that are clearly implicated in reading proficiency, or of reasoning skills that contribute to mathematical or scientific proficiency. the tendency is to reduce the playful, whimsical, artful aspects of children's folklore to the merely instrumental, and to shun entirely the aggressive, obscene, scatological, anti-authoritarian, and inversive elements (e.g., glory, glory, hallelujah! teacher hit me with a ruler ...) that any student of children's folklore knows well to be a central part of the expressive culture of childhood. it would certainly be ill-advised to argue against the appropriateness of excluding these latter elements from the classroom, and i don't propose to do so. but what role should they play in research on children's folklore? should they be excluded from educationally sponsored research as well? i'll return to this issue shortly, but first i want to establish a broader point, relevant to it, but stated so as to be more directly relevant to the matter of ethnography. what i want to do is point up a basic paradox implicit in the kind of ethnographic studies of children's play as enculturation that i was discussing a moment ago. one of https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39023 64 children’s folklore review children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39023/ the most fundamental commitments of ethnography, really a basic ideological principle, is to the necessity of accounting for the realities of a culture in its own terms, free of the bias inherent in the imposition of frames of reference, or functional imperatives, or a priori moral judgments from without. anthropologists have a name for the violation of this principle, namely, ethnocentrism, and they view it as a cardinal sin. but let us consider an anthropological study of children's folklore as it functions in the enculturation process in a particular culture that is carried out by the best relativist standards, and is innocent of any taint of ethnocentrism vis-a-vis that culture at large. remember here, though, that children's folklore is uniquely the expression of children in the peer group, and the peer group, although situated within the society as a whole, undeniably has its own social structure, and, i would argue, its own distinctive culture. perhaps subculture would be a better term, but in either case, a way of life and a way of perceiving, comprehending, and operating in a world that is not the same as that of adult members of the society. what we are faced with, then, in viewing children's folklore by adult standards and imperatives, is something very much akin to ethnocentrism, perhaps adultocentrism, if you will permit. this may be an inescapable consequence of the fact that children are indeed in transit to adulthood, as i mentioned earlier, and of the quite legitimate interest and concern that adults--whether anthropologists, educators, or laymen—have in the process and its outcome. i want to use this occasion to argue, though, for the need to provide a counterbalance to this adultocentrism by turning our ethnographic lens on the peer group and its lore in its own terms, precisely in the manner that we undertake our ethnographic investigations of other cultural systems. moreover, i would argue as well that this ethnographic focus on the peer group of children should logically precede the study of children's folklore as a mechanism of enculturation for adulthood, and still further that investigation of this kind has its own special usefulness for educators. https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39023 vol. 42, no. 1 (2024) 65 children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39023/ to describe the kind of study i am advocating for children's folklore, i will need to say something about what ethnography has come to mean in folklore research generally. for most of the history of folklore as a scholarly discipline the basic unit of analysis has been the folkloric text, the item of folklore, sometimes in relation to other versions of that item in historical or distributional perspective, sometimes in relation to other texts to which it bears a generic relationship, sometimes in relation to other aspects of society or culture, or even individual biography or personality, but overwhelmingly with a sense of folklore as isolatable stuff, like a pot or an axe or an arrowhead, with its essence somehow identifiable in its formal structure and content alone. more recently, however, there has been an increasing interest in folklore as situated communication, for the place and uses of folklore in the conduct of social life and the competence that underlies this use. (by competence, i mean the knowledge and ability to operate appropriately in a socially constituted and culturally defined world [hymes 1971a]). this study of the patterns and functions of folklore as situated communication, rendered meaningful in terms of endogenously determined contexts of use, is what i mean by the ethnographic approach to folklore (see also paredes and bauman1972; bauman 1975, 1977a, 1977c). an illustrative example might be useful here, to underscore the distinctive ethnographic perspective i am suggesting. a particularly effective example, directly relevant to children's folklore, concerns counting-out rhymes, those forms, like eenymeeny-minie-mo or one potato, two potato, that children commonly use to allocate game roles or establish other kinds of priority orderings. counting-out rhymes were an early focus of anthropological interest in children's folklore on the part of nineteenth century scholars, who saw in them a survival of ancient forms of divination (see, e.g., bolton 1888). more recent scholars, including roger caillois (1961:36) and brian suttonsmith (1959:89-90), concerned with the organizing principles of various game activities https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39023 66 children’s folklore review children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39023/ and the correlation between these organizing principles and aspects of adult social relations, have classified counting-out as a game of chance, based on the formal structure of the activity without regard to its actual use. kenneth goldstein (1971) , however, undertook to investigate ethnographically how children actually conduct the activity of counting-out, and made an interesting discovery, namely, that children employ a variety of quite conscious strategies, including extension of the rhyme by additional formulae, selection of alternative rhymes, skipping regular counts, changing positions, and the like, to manipulate the apparently random mechanism of counting-out to ensure specific desired outcomes. that is, for goldstein's population, counting-out is actually a game of strategy, masked over by a seeming reliance on chance. his findings demonstrate counting-out to be a more complex activity than had formerly been recognized, in which the public fiction of chance and impersonality is maintained at the same time that a series of strategies are available to the counter and the counted for manipulating the outcome, and the counter especially has a considerable amount of latitude and power in controlling the activity. goldstein's analysis thus reveals a more complex range of competencies to be mobilized in the conduct of counting-out than just the mastery of the rhyme and the associated kinesic and proxemic aspects of the activity would suggest. the various educators to whom i have presented this case have often been made uneasy by it, as somehow suggesting that innocent children are in fact duplicitous and manipulative, and that ethnography, by implication, is the business of exposing the seamy underside of childhood. still, it seems to me that ethnography can do far worse than to stand as an enterprise that pursues an understanding of how people really go about the conduct of their social lives; with reference to children's folklore, this means investigating their folklore as a cultural system in its own terms, attending to the ways and contexts in which it is used by them in the conduct of peer group social life, https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39023 vol. 42, no. 1 (2024) 67 children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39023/ neglecting nothing that is meaningful to them—decorous or indecorous, sense or nonsense—without asking first if it is meaningful or appropriate to adults sensibilities. insofar as a rational and responsive educational system must take fundamentally into account what a child at any given stage of development already knows and can do, nothing having to do with the competence of children is irrelevant to education, whatever relation it may bear to adult competence, and whether or not it ultimately makes its way into the classroom. now, much the same kind of argument could aptly be made for the study of children's peer group culture in all its aspects, not just children's folklore. why single out children's folklore for special attention? i believe that the investigation of children's folklore is especially productive because folklore represents communication in its special modes, modes that are traditional, foregrounded, highly marked, valued, and enjoyed. folklore forms are display forms, public means for the presentation and representation of oneself, one's culture, and one's social structure to others in ways that underscore both their meaningfulness to the group and one's own competence as a member of it. the forms of children's folklore, as i conceive them, are the special traditionally shared means for displaying one's competence to others, subject to evaluation for the skill and effectiveness mobilized in performance, the most artful way of speaking and behaving in the children's peer group repertoire. as such, children's folklore is an index to what is important to children in the peer group, and to their communicative competence within it. naturalistic observation and children’s folklore all that i have said thus far addresses the nature of ethnography as a perspective, centering on the goal of developing descriptive theories of what one needs to know and how one needs to behave to operate in a socially constituted and culturally defined world, from the point of view of endogenously organized meaning—meaning https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39023 68 children’s folklore review children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39023/ apprehended and interpreted through the eyes of members of the social group itself. there remains yet the matter of ethnography as method, usually identified as naturalistic, open-ended, and qualitative, by contrast with the more experimental, operational, and quantitative methods of behavioral research. there is already an extensive and growing literature debating the merits and shortcomings of these respective research orientations, much of it produced by people better qualified than i am to discuss these issues. accordingly, i do not propose to deal at length with the general issue of methodology in the ethnography of children's folklore, confining my remarks instead to some of the special problems attendant on this research. i do believe that the ethnographic perspective dictates at the very least a naturalistic frame of reference, whatever specific methodologies are invoked for the gathering and interpretation of data. by a naturalistic frame of reference. i mean at least an implicit concern for naturally occurring, contextually situated behavior, unmanipulated and unconstrained by externally imposed methodological imperatives. this is not to say that everything the ethnographer wants to know is evident in externally observable, naturally occurring behavior, or even that truly natural behavior is always accessible to the observer; if nothing else, the anthropological version of the heisenberg principle calls into question whether any behavior, as observed by the researcher, is ever truly "natural." nevertheless, a naturalistic frame of reference can and should be used as a guide and a standard for the evaluation of methodological validity in ethnographic research. i raise these issues because naturalistic observation and participation is often a special problem in the study of children's folklore—the free peer group activity of children is by its very nature a privileged realm in which adults are alien intruders, especially so insofar as much of the children's folklore repertoire violated what children understand to be adult standards of decorum. the ethnography of children's folklore https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39023 vol. 42, no. 1 (2024) 69 children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39023/ thus raises to special importance the need to establish rapport with informants, to convince them of the genuineness of interest in the full range of their folklore repertoire, in order to overcome their reluctance to open their expressive world to adult scrutiny., moreover, it is a fundamental characteristic of many, if not most, forms of children's folklore that they are spontaneous in occurrence and fleeting in duration, such that one never knows for certain whether or when a group of children will engage in them. thus, direct elicitation, pump-priming, or the establishment of an induced natural context (goldstein 1967), all requiring prior familiarity with the repertoire, may be necessary before the observer might have the opportunity to step back and allow the dynamics of peer group interaction to take their course. on the other hand, rapport once established, adult interest can also be a stimulus to performance, by providing an occasion for it, since children do enjoy engaging in the performance and exchange of their folklore. sometimes, the licensed ignorance of the adult outsider can itself provide a useful stimulus, as in cases where all the children in the group know and are tired of a particular routine, and the presence of someone who purports not to know it provides a fresh occasion to trot it out once more. the essential point is, whatever methodological ingenuity is called for, it should be informed by the goals of the ethnographic perspective and hew as closely as possible to the naturalistic frame of reference. examinations of solicitational routines let me turn now to a series of concrete and related examples drawn from an extended research project in children's folklore that i undertook with some of my students in 1973 through 1976 in conjunction with the southwest educational development laboratory. our research was centered especially on children's verbal folklore in the conviction that the ethnographic study of these forms would reveal useful information about the communicative competence of children within the context https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39023 70 children’s folklore review children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39023/ of their own self-motivated and enjoyable peer group activity, information that might not be so readily accessible from the study of children's communicative behavior in more formal settings, or in interaction with adults. moreover, because of the crucial centrality of language skills to contemporary american education, we felt that the strongest case for the potential contribution of children's folklore to education could be made in this sphere. the project focused on the folklore repertoire of 5through 8-year-old anglo, black, and chicano children in austin, texas. at the very beginning of our fieldwork it became apparent that perhaps the most popular folklore forms, at least among the anglo and chicano children in that age range, were riddles and related forms like knock-knocks and catches, to which i applied the collective label solicitational routines. these are expressive routines (hymes 1971b:58), which are distinguished by their incorporation within the formal structure of a dyadic social exchange consisting of at least one solicitation (a speech act, the function of which is to elicit a verbal or kinesic response) plus the response (bellack, kliebard, hyman, and smith 1966: sinclair and coulthard 1975). at first glance, from the outside, solicitational routines appear as small, rather inconsequential forms, considered trivial and corny if not downright foolish by most adults. on closer examination through the ethnographic lens, however, solicitational routines reveal themselves to be fascinating in their complexity, implicating a wide range of linguistic and sociolinguistic virtuosity. perhaps if i can leap the triviality barrier, to use sutton-smith's apt phrase, by showing something of the complexity of these small folklore forms, the productiveness of studying children's folklore intensively in all its richness will be more readily accepted. i stressed earlier that the ethnographic study of folklore contrasts strongly with those investigative perspectives on folklore that draw conclusions based on the abstract, normative structure of verbal genres, without attending to their actual social use. such https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39023 vol. 42, no. 1 (2024) 71 children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39023/ normative conceptions of genre, together with allied conceptions of folklore forms as fixed, traditional texts, and as esthetic vehicles subject to evaluation for the skill and effectiveness with which they are done, make both scholars and lay-men disvalue and tend to disregard flawed performances; who wants to record a garbled rhyme or riddle when it is possible to find someone who can perform it well? yet these flawed but recognizable attempts at performing traditional genres constitute a significant proportion of the expressive output of young children in their first few years of peer group involvement, say, from 5 to 7. take knock-knock jokes, for example, one popular type of solicitational routine. in studying the use of solicitational routines among 5 through 8-year-olds,1 we collected knock-knocks in varying degrees of approximation to the standard form, such as the following: 1 a: knock, knock. b: who's there? a: lisa [child's own name]. b: lisa who? a: lisa nora [name of present peer]. 2 a: knock, knock. b: who's there? a: amos. b: amos who? a: amos mosquito bit me. knock knock. b: who's there? a: amos mosquito bit me again. 3 a: knock, knock. b: who's there? a: olive. b: olive who? a: olive [i love] you. https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39023 72 children’s folklore review children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39023/ only the last of these is a well-formed traditional knock-knock. what are we then to make of the others, both apparently flawed by the normative standards of the genre? matters are clarified somewhat if we reveal that the first of these routines was contributed by a child of 5 years/3 months, the second by a child of 6 years/1 month, and third by a child of 8years/6 months. the flawed knock-knocks in fact represent stages in a developmental progression, beginning with a stage in which the child has mastered the generic form of the routine but does not recognize the traditionality of the entire routine or understand the speech play in the standard knock-knocks, and so coins her own third line as if she were really presenting herself at the door, and fifth line by arbitrarily conjoining another name from the immediate situational environment with her own. the child who produced the next routine is attempting to repeat a traditional knock-knock (knock, knock/who's there?/amos/amos who?/a mosquito bit me. knock, knock/who's there?/andy/andy who? /andy bit me again), knowing that proper knock-knocks are ready-made, but is again defeated by the speech play, which rearranges lexical boundaries to transform amos to a mos-quito (she may in fact not recognize amos as a name) and andy to and he. the final stage in the progression is the correct doing of a traditional knock-knock. time does not permit me to elaborate more fully on what is involved in this process, though i have treated it at length elsewhere (bauman 1977b). the point i want to make here is that taking the data as they come, consistent with the ethnographic perspective, allows us to take account of the flawed renditions together with the good ones, and to see them as exemplifying stages in the acquisition of competence to perform a particular genre, and as indices to the range of cognitive and communicative skills implicated in the performance of the genre, not merely as mistakes to be disqualified. this is enculturation within the peer group, not from an adultocentric perspective. https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39023 vol. 42, no. 1 (2024) 73 children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39023/ one of the principal hallmarks of recent ethnographically informed folklore research, consistent with the reorientation from a concentration on discrete normative texts, abstracted from context, is its attention to the structure of the situational context of the performance of folklore and the patterning of folkloric performance within such situation or events. drawing another example from our study of solicitational routines, we may illustrate the productiveness of this analytical focus for the study of children's folklore. the example is drawn from john mcdowell's penetrating analysis of a riddling session involving three chicano children, ranging in ages from 6 to 8 (1979:135-146). embedded in this session, of approximately a half hour's duration, were eleven routines dealing with the semantic domain of locomotion: 1 what has eight wheels and rolls? -roller skates. 2 what has two wheels and pedals? -a bicycle. 3 what has four wheels, no pedals, and a steering wheel? -a car. 4 what has four legs and can run? -a mustang. 5 what has three wheels and pedals? -a tricycle. 6 what has four legs and can't walk? -a chair. 7 what has two legs, it can walk? -a monkey. 8 what has long legs and its hard to walk? -a seagull. 9 what has two seats, four wheels, and they can roll? -a car. 10 what has lots of windows and they can fly? -airplane. 11 what are those little clocks and its in your car? -a dragger. https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39023 74 children’s folklore review children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39023/ two of these, numbers 1 and 6, are traditional riddles; the remaining nine are what mcdowell has labeled descriptive routines (1979:34), in which the solicitation is in the form of a question, but the question is not ready-made, i.e., traditional, but rather newly coined by the child, following one of the syntactic and textural patterns characteristic of traditional riddles. most commonly, the descriptive routine calls on the respondent to identify an object by describing it in the solicitation in terms of one or more (usually more) of its salient attributes. mcdowell's analysis demonstrates how, through the exchange of solicitational routines, the children participating in the session systematically construct and explore a folk taxonomy of locomotion, as represented in figure 1. though clearly not exhaustive, this taxonomy is yet highly logical and structured by the taxonomic relationships of inclusion and contrast. mcdowell goes on to show how the logic and order of the basic taxonomy is interpenetrated by another type of reasoning, in which prevailing cultural orders are dismembered and rearranged in apparently anomalous ways. the shift resides in items 4 and 6, which, by incorporating ambiguity, depart from the transparent description characteristic of descriptive routines. the metaphorical attribution of legs to chairs, which should thus be capable of locomotion but are not, suggests the possibility of restructuring the taxonomy on another basis, as does the association of an automobile with a wild horse, otherwise in contrast as machine and animal, but alternatively conjoined on the basis of fleetness. mcdowell's analysis thus reveals a group of children aware of the dual capacity of language to encode and convey shared cultural meanings, but also to rearrange the structure of those meanings in alternative ways, all explored through the medium of traditionally organized speech play. consider what an array of “language arts" is implicated here—mastery of generic form, encoding of salient descriptive attributes, logical relationships of inclusion and contrast, ambiguity in metaphor, and so on—not completely evident in the solicitation routine texts taken https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39023 vol. 42, no. 1 (2024) 75 children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39023/ singly, or from attention to the traditional riddles alone, but from the systematic analysis of an aspect of the patterning of the event as a whole. figure 1: the taxonomy of locomotion [from mcdowell 1979, 138] a different kind of confrontation between order and disorder, implicating not so much logic and classification as the very communicative resources and rules by which conversation is conducted, is embodied in a third type of solicitation routine, the catch. danielle roemer, who has made an intensive study or these routines (1977), defines catches as two-party, humorous, interactional routines that are strategically designed to effect the surprise and victimization of one of the participants. they provide for the enactment of a stylized conversation between two parties: the child who initiates the exchange assumes the role of the trickster; the respondent acts as the straightman (1977:13). typical examples of the genre, commonly represented in the repertoire, are the following: https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39023 76 children’s folklore review children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39023/ 1 a: open up the gate. [the ends of a's index fingers are together; his thumbs are pointing up.] b: [pulls a's index fingers toward himself.] a: bang, bang, you're dead [a’s hands are now in the shape of fifty bullets in your head. “guns” which he shoots at b.] brush your teeth and go to bed. 2 a: say a number after everything i say. i saw a dead buzzard layin' in the road. i one'd it. b: i two'd it. a: i three'd it. b: i four'd it. a:i five'd it. b: i six'd it. a: i seven'd it. b: i eight [ate] it. 3 a: what's your name? b: jane. a: what's this? [points to her own nose.] b: a nose. a: what's in my hand? [shows empty palm.) b: nothing. a: jane knows nothing. the catch, as a genre that almost universally incurs the disfavor of adults because of its violation of the interactional ideals of trust and reciprocity, its licensed physical aggression and verbal insult, and its encouragement of profanity, albeit in a playful way, must depend for its survival on the oral tradition of the peer group, receiving little or no reinforcement from polite riddle books, educational television shows, or teachers. yet, if we can suspend moral judgment long enough to examine catches in their own terms, we find them to involve a remarkably sophisticated structure, centering on the manipulation of linguistic and social interactional resources and their interrelationships. https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39023 vol. 42, no. 1 (2024) 77 children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39023/ the principal communicative resource exploited in catch routines is the interpretive frame, the metamessage signaling how a particular message is to be interpreted. through the mechanism of the routine, a context is established by the trickster that keys a particular range of meanings to lead the straightman on to further participation. at the end, however, the apparently harmless message keyed by the original frame is 'subtly reframed, to challenge or destroy the reputable social self of the straightman through licensed aggression, embarrassment, or other means of degradation. even worse, this is done in such a manner that the straightman is revealed to have collaborated in his own fool-making. in the examples just presented, straightmen variously find themselves inviting symbolic aggression as an innocuous gesture is transformed into a symbolically dangerous one, admitting to the eating of carrion (consisting of a dead buzzard, which is itself an eater of carrion and so doubly polluted) by a shift from one meaning of a homonymic pair to the other, or constructing a verbal admission of their own ignorance through the establishment of discourse cohesion uniting three apparently unrelated utterances, one of which is itself refrained by a similar homonymic shift. these catches are thus a striking lesson in the sensitivity of meaning to its context of use. catch routines, thus analyzed, reveal their users not only to be possessed of a range of interesting linguistic competencies, but of a striking awareness of sociolinguistic nuances as well, all mobilized in the playful service of social disorder. so far, i have been talking of children's folklore in fairly generalized terms, without much regard-to the many dimensions of diversity that characterize american children. to a certain extent, this is warranted by the substantial degree of sharing of repertoire that does in fact exist among children throughout the country; i have a vague hunch that children's folklore may be more homogeneous nationwide than any other part of our american expressive repertoire. nevertheless, there are many lines along https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39023 78 children’s folklore review children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39023/ which the repertoire is diversified as well, paralleling those that underlie the diversity of american society at large. exploring this diversity is a dual problem, part ethnographic, part comparative. the relationship between the two in anthropological inquiry has been treated by dell hymes elsewhere in this volume, so i will not dwell on it here, but simply suggest a few of the dimensions if social variability in the children's folklore repertoire. in doing so. i want to make clear that none of these dimensions operates in discrete isolation, sorting the children and their folklore into neat boxes. it is more accurately the case that such demographic factors as age, sex, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and language may all bear a simultaneous and inter-related influence on such folkloric variables as generic preference, performance style, content, and participation structures. although the relative associations along these sets of variables is certainly amenable to statistical analysis, the work remains to be done. i can only suggest in fairly broad terms how some of the factors may sort themselves out. i pointed out in an earlier example how developmental differences may affect the production of knock-knocks. to continue further with solicitational routines, it is clearly the case for the austin children we studied that while anglo and chicano children both have a substantial investment in riddling, the chicano children care relatively little for a range of solicitational routines, like knock-knocks and others i have not discussed here, that are great favorites among the anglo children.2 older chicano children, though, beyond our 5 through 8 age range, do enjoy an adapted form of knock-knock that plays on code switching, as in: 1 a: knock, knock. b: who's there? a: apio verde [celery]. b: apio verde who? a: apio verde (happy birthday) to you. https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39023 vol. 42, no. 1 (2024) 79 children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39023/ or 2 a: knock, knock. b: who's there? a: sue. b: sue who? a: sue [su] madre. on the other hand, there is a particularly intriguing type of solicitation routine that we collected only from chicano children, and only in spanish. these involve a solicitation in the form of a statement in which the answer is concealed by the arrangement of word boundaries and can only be guessed by rearranging syllables, morpheme; or lexemes across these boundaries. for example (mcdowell 1976: 176): 1 oro no es, plata no es. ¿qué es? -plátano. 2 yo aquí, tu allá. ¿qué es? -toalla. there are traditional english routines analogous to these (emrich 1970: 58-59), but they are not current among our anglo population. even for forms that are popular in both ethnic groups, there are subtle differences of emphasis. in riddles and descriptive routines, for instance, the anglo children's repertoire shows a far greater penetration of influences from popular culture—figures from television and comic books, for example—than does that of the chicano children, reflecting perhaps the greater accessibility of these elements of mass culture to the more affluent anglo children (mcdowell 1979:ch. 8). by contrast, the chicano riddlers exploit body parts as comparisons and solutions far more than their anglo counterparts, which mcdowell convincingly attributes to a closer adherence to https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39023 80 children’s folklore review children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39023/ traditional riddling content, for body parts are unquestionably prominent in older riddling traditions. by contrast with both the anglo and chicano children, the children in our black population3 have very little interest in traditional, ready-made solicitational routines of any kind within the peer group, with one notable exception. the one form of solicitational routine that is popular, though, is a form of rhyming speech play that represents a kind of catch.4 some of these are traditional, such as: 1 a: say blue. b: blue. a: you got the flu. or 2 a: say brown. b: brown. a: you're a clown. moreover, these are often associated, in performance, with other rhyming forms that are also contestive, putting down the person to whom they are addressed much as catches do, but not in solicitational form, as in, my acka backa, my soda cracker, my b 0 booty hole. your mama, your daddy, your great granny got a hole in her panty, got a big behind like frankenstein, don't eat no meat on lincoln street, don't drink no wine on chicago line. https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39023 vol. 42, no. 1 (2024) 81 children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39023/ just scratching the surface in this manner, we have touched on ethnic and linguistic differences relating to generic preference and content. let us invoke some other factors by reference to another genre, namely, handclaps, routines that involve a pattern of handclapping with one or more partners to the accompaniment of a sung or chanted rhyme. handclaps are preeminently a girls' form, with a substantial sharing of the rhyme repertoire among the three ethnic groups we studied. the differences to be found here have principally to do with participant structure and style. thus, beverly stoeltje (1978) has noted that among black girls, the signal offering to begin handclapping is nonverbal, i.e., the presentation to one's potential partner of the hands in the position for the opening clap: left palm up, right palm down. if the invitation is accepted, the initiator launches into the chosen rhyme, picked up immediately by her partner. among anglo girls, the invitation to handclap is made verbally: "let's do miss mary mack," or whichever rhyme the presenter wishes to perform. again, black girls are far more likely than anglo girls to use syncopated rhythms in handclaps, e.g., a three-beat handclap pattern in conjunction with a 2/4 musical rhythm in the rhymes, while the standard anglo pattern is a two-move handclap with the same 2/4 rhymes. education and the ethnography of childlore now, what do all these commonalities and contrasts imply for education? beyond highlighting the unities and diversities of our society and culture in general, it is very difficult to say precisely at this early point in the research what the meaningful differences are, let alone what their educational implications may be. to be sure, certain hypotheses do suggest themselves as especially worthy of further research. to take only one example, drawing again on solicitational routines, it seems to me that insofar as riddles are expressive models of the kind of interrogation and interaction that is ubiquitous in the school setting (cf. roberts and forman 1972; mehan 1982), https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39023 82 children’s folklore review children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39023/ engagement in riddling may have real adaptive value for children in the 5 through 8 age range we studied, as they come to terms with the participant structures of schooling in our society. put another way, our prevailing educational practices may select against children, like the black children in our austin study population, who, for whatever social or cultural reason, do not engage in speech play of this kind, though their expressive repertoire may be very rich in other forms that the anglo children don't do. but the point is that the anglo children don't lose anything in the classroom by not doing them. concerning the potential educational relevance of the ethnography of children's folklore, however, i can speak with more confidence. here, i would stress two points. i am convinced, first of all, that the most significant potential contribution that the close study of children's folklore can make is in revealing the truly impressive range of linguistic and sociolinguistic competencies that is fostered by the children's own peer group culture.5 to repeat an earlier point, nothing having to do with the competencies of children should be foreign to education, and children's folklore shows children at their natural virtuoso best, mobilizing skills that are not evident in their social life outside the peer group. what makes this point still more telling is that proficiency in the peer group is not necessarily correlated for all groups of children, or individuals, with success in the classroom. i am far from the first to point out that for minority children especially, various kinds of true communicative virtuosity and communicative leadership may be excluded from or selected again in the school; william labov has argued as much most impressively' (1972), as have others. surely, a humane and rational educational system ought to be responsive to such factors, by profiting from and building on the in-sights that the ethnography of childlore can provide. the other major concluding point i would make stems from my conviction that the arts should play a significant role in education and my clear impression that https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39023 vol. 42, no. 1 (2024) 83 children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39023/ increasing numbers of educators are coming to share this conviction. this suggests that children's folklore, representing what might aptly be called the indigenous art forms of childhood, unquestionably valued and enjoyed by the children themselves, might constitute a significant resource in the development of culturally responsive, locally relevant arts programs in the schools, together with--perhaps as an ante--cedent point of departure for--the general run of arts curricula that are oriented more to the fine art forms of western culture. how these suggestions might best be implemented remains an open question, calling for a substantial amount of further research and program, development. there are certainly problems to be confronted in the course of this research and development, not the least of which is the danger of sapping the vitality and spontaneity of children's folklore by neutering and sterilizing it for classroom use or polite consumption. what seems to me clear, though, is that the results of investigating children's folklore will amply repay the effort, and above all that ethnography must play a leading part in these efforts. richard bauman is distinguished professor emeritus of folklore and anthropology at indiana university, bloomington. the principal foci of his research include narrative, oral poetics, performance, genre, and language ideologies. among his publications are verbal art as performance (1977), let your words be few (1983), story, performance, and event (1986), voices of modernity (with charles l. briggs, 2003; sapir prize 2006), a world of others’ words (2004), and a most valuable medium (2023). bauman has been a guggenheim fellow, a fellow of the american academy of arts and sciences, recipient of the lifetime scholarly achievement award of the american folklore society, and the franz boas award for exemplary service to anthropology of the american anthropological association. references cited bauman, richard. 1975. “verbal art as performance.” american anthropologist 77(2): 290311. https://doi.org/10.1525/aa.1975.77.2.02a00030 https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39023 https://doi.org/10.1525/aa.1975.77.2.02a00030 84 children’s folklore review children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39023/ _____. 1977a. “settlement patterns on the frontiers of folklore.” in frontiers of folklore, edited by william basom, 121-31. denver: westview press. _____. 1977b. “linguistics, anthropology, and verbal art: toward a unified perspective, with a special discussion of childrens’ folklore.” in linguistics and anthropology: georgetown university round table on languages and linguistics, edited by muriel saville-troike, 13-36. washington, d.c.: georgetown university press. _____. 1977c. verbal art as performance. rowley: newberry house. bellack, arno, herbert kliebard, ronald hyman, and frank smith. 1966. the language of the classroom. new york: teacher’s college press. bolton, henry c. 1888. the counting-out rhymes of children. new york: d. appleton. brady, margaret, and rosalind eckhart. 1975. black girls at play: folkloric perspectives on child development. austin: southwest educational development laboratory. caillois, roger. 1961. man, play, and games. glencoe: the free press. emrich, duncan. 1970. the nonsense book. new york: four winds press. goldstein, kenneth s. 1967. “the induced natural context: an ethnographic folklore field technique.” in essays on the verbal and visual art, edited by june helm, 1-6. seattle: university of washington press for the american ethnological society. _____. 1971. “strategy in counting out: an ethnographic folklore field study.” in the study of games, edited by elliott m. avedon and brian sutton-smith, 167-78. new york: wiley. hymes, dell. 1971a. “competence and performance in linguistic theory.” in language acquisition: models and methods, edited by renira huxley and elisabeth ingram, 3-22. new york: academic. _____. 1971b. “on linguistic theory, communicative competence, and the education of disadvantaged children.” in anthropological perspectives on education, edited by murray l. wax, stanley diamond, and frederick o. gearing. new york: basic books. labov, william. 1972. language in the inner city, part ii: the vernacular and its social setting. philadelphia: pennsylvania university press. mcdowell, john. 1976. “riddling and enculturation: a glance at the cerebral child,” working papers in sociolinguistics, 36. austin: southwest educational development laboratory. https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39023 vol. 42, no. 1 (2024) 85 children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39023/ _____. 1979. children’s riddling: the interrogative ludic routine in child cognition and sociability. bloomington: indiana university press. mehan, hugh. 1982. “the structure of classroom events and their consequences for student performance.” in children in and out of school: ethnography and education, edited by perry gilmore and allan a. glatthorn, 59-87. washington, d.c.: cal. paredes, américo, and richard bauman, editors. 1972. toward new perspectives in folklore. austin: university of texas press. park, rose. 1972. an investigation of riddles of children ages 5-14. phd dissertation. columbia university. roberts, john m., and michael l. forman. 1972. “riddles: expressive models of interrogation.” in directions in sociolinguistics, edited by john gumperz and dell hymes, 180-210. new york: holt, rinehart, and winston. roemer, danielle. 1977. a social interactional analysis of anglo children’s folklore: catches and narratives. phd dissertation. university of texas. schwartzman, helen b. 1976. “the anthropological study of children’s play.” annual review of anthropology 5: 289-328. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2949315 schultz, thomas r. 1974. “development of the appreciation of riddles.” child development 45(1): 100-05. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1127755 sinclair, j. mch., and r.m. coulthard. 1975. towards and analysis of discourse. london: oxford. stoeltje, beverly. 1978. children’s handclaps: informal learning in play. austin: southwest educational development laboratory. [see also the reprint of this publication in this special issue, doi.????####????. sutton-smith, brian. 1959. the games of new zealand children. berkeley and los angeles: university of california press. _____. 1976. “a developmental structural account of riddles.” in speech play: research and resources for studying linguistic creativity, edited by barbara kirshenblattgimblett. philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press. turnbull, colin. 1961. the forest people. new york: simon & schuster. whitt, j. kenneth, and norman prentice. 1977. “cognitive processes in the development of children’s enjoyment and comprehension of joking riddles.” developmental psychology 13(2): 129-36. https://doi.org/10.1037/0012-1649.13.2.129 https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39023 https://www.jstor.org/stable/2949315 https://www.jstor.org/stable/1127755 https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/0012-1649.13.2.129 86 children’s folklore review children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39023/ 1 the following discussion of knock-knock routines draws upon unpublished work by andrea meditch, undertaken as part of the above-mentioned research project on children's folklore, under the sponsorship of the southwest educational development laboratory, austin, texas. 2 note carefully that there is no implication here that they can't do them, or that they are in some way deficient for not doing them, simply that empirically they don't do them. 3 the discussion of black children's folklore draws upon unpublished work by margaret brady, in conjunction with the children's folklore research project mentioned earlier (see note 1). see also brady and eckhardt 1975. 4 note again that i am not saying they don't have the capacity for them, only that they are not a real part of their repertoire, any more than spanish language solicitational routines that depend upon rearranging word boundaries are part of the anglo children's repertoire. they do other things. 5 these same children's folklore materials are also highly illuminating of cognitive abilities, which are outside the scope of this paper. see park 1972; shultz 1974; sutton-smith 1976; whitt and prentice 1977. https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39023 children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39024/ riddling and enculturation a glance at the cerebral child john holmes mcdowell indiana university, emeritus this paper attempts to illustrate with concrete data that riddles serve as a didactic device to sharpen the wits of young children. the riddle is described as a verbal routine which adapts the interrogative system of a speech community to purposes of play. riddles concerning motion or locomotion of animals, machines, and toys were collected in a single riddling session, from three chicano children aged 5-7. the output of these neophyte riddles is discussed in the context of the acquisition and refinement of cognitive categories, and a folk taxonomy focused on the semantic domain of locomotion is suggested. riddling is viewed as a didactic mechanism conducive to experimentation with received notions of order, and elaboration of novel cognitive orders. in riddling, at various stages, children learn to formulate culturally acceptable classifications; to articulate classifications at variance with cultural conventions; and finally to assess language and classification as arbitrary instruments reflecting only partially the continuous texture of experience. the present paper, dealing with a form of children's riddling which lacks cultural saliency, represents another assault on what brian suttonsmith has felicitously termed the triviality barrier (sutton-smith 1970). childish behavior is so thoroughly stigmatized in our canons of adult comportment that much of the spectrum of characteristically children's activity has been systematically neglected or at best observed with disdain or apology in our social sciences. we owe to johan huizinga the definitive affirmation of the importance of play, adult's and child's, in the shaping of culture: play is more than a mere physiological phenomenon or psychological reflex...it is a significant function—that is to say, there is some sense in it. in play there is something "at play" which transcends the immediate needs of life and imparts meaning to the action. (1950:1) https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39024 88 children’s folklore review children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39024/ subsequent research, taking as fundamental the notion advanced in the above statement, has demonstrated beyond any measure of doubt the non-trivial nature of children's play. it would be possible, on the basis of a growing body of research too extensive to review here, to characterize the play of children as a crucial function, central in the acquisition, maintenance, and modification of culture (see piaget 1965; roberts, arth, and bush 1959; roberts and sutton-smith 1962; sutton-smith 1967; sanchez and kirshenblatt-gimblett 1971; mcdowell 1974). moreover, as huizinga's initial effort intended, the study of the play motive in culture has blossomed into a powerful analytical tool, with major applications in several domains of human activity (huizinga 1950; abrahams 1973). the riddle, with which we will be concerned in what follows, is among the most venerable of the genres of folklore, a source of instructive play in many societies, the venda for example (blacking 1961), and an enduring puzzle and challenge to students of expressive culture. simply defined the riddle is a verbal routine which adapts the interrogative system of a speech community to purposes of play. the question, a fundamental speech resource, normally employed in the exchange of informat1on, serves in the riddling context as a means of examining wrinkles or ambiguities latent within the verbal code (see abrahams 1972). riddles, like other ludic forms, reverse the pattern of expectations normally associated with the activity involved. the serious question enables the questioner to solicit information unknown to him (except in the instance or rhetorical questions, which arguably constitute an elaboration of basic questioning procedures). in riddling, on the other hand, the questioner solicits information already known, indeed the riddler alone determines correct and incorrect responses. some contemporary riddling makes this reversal all the more conspicuous by citing an answer for which the riddles must then provide an appropriate question. https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39024 vol. 42, no. 1 (2024) 89 children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39024/ riddling competence necessarily builds on prior interrogative competence. for this reason we rarely find children riddling before the age of 5 or so. even so, the 5 or 6 year old riddler makes of riddling something rather different than the practiced routines of his adolescent counterparts. as sutton-smith has remarked, the former is prone to view the riddle as "a puzzling question with an arbitrary answer" (suttonsmith 1972). in another variation, the younger riddler is likely to design riddles which are transparent questions, lacking the characteristic block element responsible for the semantic confusion normally generated in the riddle. the block element, revolving on metaphor or another form of artful obfuscation, remains somewhat beyond the grasp of the riddling neophyte (see georges and dundes 1963), the initiate riddler captures first the aural texture and rhythm of the riddle, and only later adjusts to the more demanding strictures of riddle content. riddling at each stage along the journey to artful ambiguation apparently serves functions connected to the acquisition of cognitive and interactional skills (mcdowell 1974). in making this assertion we cross the triviality barrier and attribute vital functions to a form of child's play often annoying to mothers, and until recently entirely invisible to scholars. in the remainder of this paper i will discuss and interpret the output of riddling neophytes during the course of a single riddling session. this riddling will be viewed in the context of the acquisition and refinement of cognitive categories. the riddles were collected by myself in austin, texas, from a trio of chicano children, ages 5-7. this riddling session structured itself around one specific theme, addressed in several of the individual riddles, concerning the motion or locomotion of machines, animals, and toys. as a text for the present purposes, i have extracted and present here those routines touching on this particular topic. other intervening material has been edited out. my presentation here retains the original order of occurrence. https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39024 90 children’s folklore review children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39024/ 1) what has 8 wheels and rolls? roller skates. 2) what has 2 wheels and pedals? a bicycle. 3) what has 4 wheels, no pedals, and a steering wheel? a car. 4) what has 4 legs and can run? a mustang. 5) what has 3 wheels and pedals? a tricycle. 6) what has 4 legs and can't walk? a chair. 7) what has 2 legs, it can walk? a monkey. 8) what has long legs and its hard to walk? a seagull. 9) what has 2 seats, 4 wheels, and they can roll? a car. 10) what has lots of windows and they can fly? airplane. 11) what are those little clocks and its in your car? a dragger. we have here, then, a corpus of interrogative routines of the transparent sort, involving unambiguous questions (with one or two exceptions, to be dealt with below) whose answers are uniquely determined by the interrogator. in point of fact, items #4 and #6 above, the two exceptions, allow us to call this sample a transitional one between neophyte and more experienced riddling. the riddlers have mastered the texture and rhythm of their genre, and are making tentative stabs into appropriate content. https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39024 vol. 42, no. 1 (2024) 91 children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39024/ in order to convincingly penetrate the triviality barrier with this folkloric material, i will have recourse to the concept of folk taxonomy. the starting point in the analysis may as well be ward goodenough's formulation of the cognitive approach to culture: a society's culture consists of whatever it is one has to know in order to operate in a manner acceptable to its members... it is the forms of things that people have in their mind, their models for perceiving, relating, and otherwise interpreting them. (goodenough 1957:167) culture, in this formulation, consists in mental structures, or to follow contemporary parlance, folk taxonomies. these folk taxonomies organize the experiential world into discrete and logically ordered semantic domains. the cognitivist argues that all human behavior derives from these models, mental structures, or folk taxonomies (sturtevant 1964). returning to our corpus of children's riddles, i would contend that the riddles centering on locomotion demarcate this theme as a semantic field, and provide substantial detail concerning the structure of its component categories. the riddles themselves provide only the tokens, or concrete objects in the taxonomy, and the distinctive features, or points of significant contrast. the entire taxonomic apparatus, consisting of segregate labels, must be provided in this instance by myself, the analyst. given, then, by the children, is the following set of tokens: roller skates, bicycle, car, mustang, tricycle, chair, monkey, seagull, airplane, dragger. in addition, the riddles provide the following distinctive features: wheels, pedals, legs. yet as the theme of locomotion is explored and developed, one routine begetting another, one senses that underlying this contemplative kind of performance there lurks a fairly rigorously organized taxonomic structure. https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39024 92 children’s folklore review children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39024/ the chart given below presents one possible taxonomy of the semantic domain of locomotion capable of accounting for the riddles in our corpus. this chart is truly the product of a collective effort, first on the part of the children, whose verbal interaction created the corpus, and second, on my own part, in creating a feasible taxonomic environment for their empirical observations. whether this chart or one like it resides in the children's consciousness or subconsciousness is an issue entirely beyond the scope of my judgment. we have here a folk taxonomy focused on the semantic domain of locomotion. while the taxonomy is obviously not exhaustive, it is equally obviously highly structured and logically ordered within its chosen realm. there are several tiers to the taxonomy, connecting the tokens at the most particular level to the unique beginner at the most general. segregate categories delimit the relationships of exclusion and inclusion obtaining in the taxonomy. criterial attributes distinguishing the members of a single segregate category are provided immediately above the tokens. the logical relationships inherent in the children's riddling and captured (hopefully) in this taxonomy can be isolated through a distinctive feature analysis of the segregate categories. with reference to a small number of critical variables, each https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39024 vol. 42, no. 1 (2024) 93 children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39024/ segregate category exhibits either a positive or negative value. the constellation of such values should be unique in each case. here is the entire set of contrasts: animals toys machines furniture +legs -legs -legs +legs -wheels +wheels +wheels -wheels -pedals +pedals -pedals -pedals +mobile +mobile +mobile -mobile we can readily perceive some of the differences between folk and scientific taxonomy. the folk taxonomy is adapted to practical purposes, while the scientific taxonomy attends rigorously to all of the phenomena within its ken. the practical orientation of the folk taxonomy emerges from the following children's riddle: what’s the difference between a loaf of bread and an elephant? response: i don’t know. catch: i won’t send you to the grocery store for bread. the classification system contained in folk taxonomies sustains basic cultural competence even at the most mundane level. the folk taxonomy is a working taxonomy, facilitating, as goodenough observes (see above), culturally acceptable action. scientific taxonomy, on the other hand, seeks to make explicit the structure of semantic domains beyond the scope of any ordinary utility. thus in this example the children need not be concerned with marginal cases such as the wheelchair, nor with the exceptional status of skates which are toys but lack pedals. in point of fact, disc1epancies of this nature are particularly conducive to true riddles with metaphoric content, as we shall see below. nonetheless, the taxonomy presented here is not unscientific. in their grouping of tokens the children have suggested a structure transcending what levi-strauss calls "classification at the level of sensible properties" (1966:15). the taxonomy sketched in https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39024 94 children’s folklore review children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39024/ above rests on the union of form and function. wheels, legs, and pedals are not casually, but causally, related to locomotion; they are the empirically available markers of specific modes of locomotion. legs correlate with self-generated motion; pedals, with mechanical motion based on the expenditure of human energy. wheels without pedals entail in most cases some exterior source of energy. these distinctive features go beyond mere empiricism, by linking external form or anatomy to function. the formulation of such a taxonomy, emerging as it does in the arena of verbal play, is no mean or trivial task. in the analysis thus far, we have viewed the children in their structuring persona, dwelling rather methodically in the course of the riddling session on the order prevalent within their cognitive systems. we have seen a diverse collection of material objects, some commonplace, others exotic, systematically compared and contrasted, on the basis of a very few criterial attributes. children’s play across the whole spectrum of verbal and non-verbal genres exhibits this ordering facet, and one might speculate that without the informal, entertaining format provided by the ludic genres, children might acquire only with great difficulty the fundamental cognitive and interactional abilities required of adults in their society. indeed, the practice gained in the arena of children's folklore would appear to be a critical aspect of the enculturation process. resting our case here, however, with the ordering facet of children's play, would be a grave mistake. there is present in most children's folklore an opposite tendency, and this too contributes vitally to the enculturation process. returning to our riddling corpus, we find two routines which are extraordinary in that they depart from transparent questioning procedures and involve, whether intentionally or not, linguistic ambiguity. these two routines, #2 and #6, tend to subvert the very same taxonomy being developed in the other riddles in our corpus. as with the proverbial sand castle, https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39024 vol. 42, no. 1 (2024) 95 children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39024/ the children no sooner become adept at building a structure, than they learn to dismantle it. the notions subversive to our taxonomy appear in the guise of metaphor, in both cases involving a single word with two rather different referents. the metaphor resurrects a prior logic, the logic which enabled in the first place the extension of a single morpheme to two referents. this logic of the metaphor, however, stands apart from the organizing logic of the taxonomy. one of these metaphors comprises the block element of the only true riddle in the corpus: what has 4 legs and can't walk? a chair. in the context of the other routines, legs serve as a distinctive feature, setting the category animals apart from toys and machines. as we have seen, this feature has both formal and functional cogency in the folk taxonomy represented in our corpus of riddles. in this metaphor, however, the legs of a person or animal are analogized to the legs of a chair on formal grounds only, since the chair’s legs are not correlated to the chair’s mobility. the metaphor thus proposes another logic, one at variance with the logic of the taxonomy. or to put the matter differently, the metaphor proposes another taxonomy, one in which legged furniture and animals would be subsumed together under a single rubric constituted on the basis of the shared feature (+legs). this metaphor is subversive precisely because it broaches the possibility of alternate slicings of the experiential world. other, ghostly, taxonomies flicker into existence, challenging momentarily the taxonomy under elaboration. the other metaphor resides in the word mustang, which names both a type of horse and a car model, tokens which are cognitively separated in the taxonomy into the segregates animal and machine respectively. these tokens are cognitively conjoined in https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39024 96 children’s folklore review children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39024/ this metaphor, which proposes a grouping of diverse tokens united in their fleetness, or what we might refer to as locomotive expertise. as in the previous example, this metaphor throws into relief an alternative taxonomy, knitting some of the same tokens into a quite different logical structure. the children are evidently at that watershed point in their development, in which they become aware of the dual potencies of language, to render shared cognitive structures, and to rearrange these structures into alternative forms. each of these processes is adequately reflected in our riddling sample. it is noteworthy that the conventional taxonomy, with its solid foundation on formal and functional equivalence, prevails over the alternate taxonomies lacking as substantial a footing. the metaphorical connections remain pale and fleeting, in the context of the more highly elaborated taxonomy of locomotion. in fact, we tend to measure the departure of each metaphor using the locomotive taxonomy as a standard. thus, the leap of metaphor between the segregates furniture and animal is long indeed, since these two are dominated by the generic node in the taxonomy. the segregates animal and machine, on the other hand, momentarily aligned in the word mustang, are dominated by a lower node in the taxonomy. this latter metaphor consequently covers less cognitive distance. in this fashion the deviant visions of taxonomy actually reinforce the standard taxonomy, at least in the riddling corpus under consideration here. we might adduce from this fact that the children who produced these riddles are still primarily rooted in the utilitarian facet of language, the potency of language to render shared cognitive structures. later, as their riddling and other verbal expertise develops, they will acquire the notion that language is in reality a human tool, equally capable of clarification and obfuscation. https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39024 vol. 42, no. 1 (2024) 97 children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39024/ a few pages back, i alleged that both the ordering and disordering facet of children's folklore, and riddling in particular, have great consequence in the process of enculturation. concerning this point, ian hamnet observes as follows: classification is a pre-requisite of the intelligible ordering of experience, but if conceptual categories are reified, they become obstacles rather than means to a proper understanding and control of both physical and social reality. the ability to construct categories and also to transcend them is central to adaptive learning. (1967, 385) we have in the riddling sample herein treated an exemplification of precisely the point made by hamnet. cognitive skills central to the mastery of culture, "the ability to construct categories and also to transcend them," are fostered in the enjoyable format of children's riddling. in the way of a conclusion, i will simply tie up some of the loose ends left hanging over the preceding pages. william bascom has noted that in some settings "riddles serve as a didactic device to sharpen the wits of young children" (1954:294). the overall thrust of this paper has been to illustrate with concrete data this observation which has become fairly conventional in folkloristics. but the present exemplia further illustrates the nature of wits and what might be involved in the sharpening of them. we are concerned here with cognitive skills associated with the classification of the tokens of experience; with the capacity to articulate shared cognitive structures, and the complimentary capacity to transcend these. in this context, riddling may indeed be viewed as a didactic mechanism, conducive to experimentation with received notions of order, and elaboration of novel cognitive orders. riddling as an enculturating device allows children to work through the dual vectors of language, towards order and towards anti-order, in a stimulating and enjoyable social context. in riddling, at various stages, children learn to formulate culturally acceptable classifications; to articulate classifications at variance with cultural conventions; and finally to assess language and https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39024 98 children’s folklore review children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39024/ indeed classification as arbitrary instruments reflecting only partially the continuous texture of experience. we can perhaps anticipate yet another great humanistic wave, the discovery of the cerebral child. levi-strauss in particular introduced us to the cerebral savage, whose primitive speculation represents another, not an inferior, science (levi-strauss 1966). the time may be ripe to turn our humanistic energies to those savages among us, and recognize at our very portals the cerebral child, concerned in his verbal routines with complex matters of rationality, sociability, and aesthetics. certainly in the riddling corpus discussed above we find prolonged contemplation of a cognitive field, transpiring in a format conducive to artful speech and dependent on some degree of social harmony. crossing the triviality barrier, we readily perceive the consequential nature of children's verbal play. a folkloristics of enculturation must be developed to fully investigate the place of children's folklore in the persistence and modification of culture. finally, returning to the chicano children who produced this riddling corpus, we must inquire into their choice of semantic fields. the field of locomotion is a most interesting one, and the content patterning within this field even more so. in the first place, the environment in which the riddling transpires exerts considerable influence on content to be included. we were surrounded by cars and bicycles and airplanes, as one generally is in the urban setting. through the process of scene incorporation, these tokens found their way into the riddling. it is of interest that other tokens, far removed from the interaction, also turn up, such as monkeys, seagulls, skates. the classification begins with the familiar and expands outward to encompass the exotic. the basic antinomy established in the riddling might well be the contrast between animals and machines. at the very least, this topic could be said to be one of https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39024 vol. 42, no. 1 (2024) 99 children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39024/ the central concerns evinced in the riddles. this antinomy is of course crucial in the context of modern, industrial society, in which the machines rather than our animal brethren surround us with animistic contrast to ourselves. this development may well be all the more intensified among central texas chicanos, who have very recent pastoral roots, but currently reside primarily in urban environments. james fernandez remarks that in urban industrial settings children play at being machines, while in pastoral settings children play at being animals (1974). the folk taxonomy presented in this paper, straddling as it does both the pastoral and mechanical universe, may well reflect the transitional status of the chicanos, and indeed, our entire society, between a rural past, reflected in oral tradition, and an urban present. would it be possible to suggest that the children, in this riddling session, are working through basic contradictions in their cultural apparatus, in much the same fashion as primitives examine apparent contradictions through the logical tool of mythology, to borrow the diction of levi-strauss? (see levi-strauss 1963.) while the suggestion might seem a bit far-fetched, i would like to leave it on the books for corrective purposes. certainly, to argue that the riddling considered in this paper constitutes a symposium on matters of conscious and subconscious concern to the children, does less violence to scholarly countenance than to assert that these materials are trivial and of no consequence to social science at all. as the pendulum shifts from the extreme position characteristic until recently, which dismissed much of children's folklore as inconsequential, we will come to an accurate understanding of the proper place for these materials within the science of man. john holmes mcdowell, professor emeritus at indiana university, works at the confluence of language and culture in us and latin american settings. his research topics range from the verbal play of children, in children’s riddling (iu press, 1979); to mexico’s ballad tradition, the corrido, in poetry and violence: the ballad tradition of mexico’s costa chica (university of illinois press, 2000) and ¡corrido! the living ballad of mexico’s western https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39024 100 children’s folklore review children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39024/ coast (university of new mexico press, 2015); to the mythic consciousness of andean peoples, in sayings of the ancestors: the spiritual life of the sibundoy indians (1989) and "so wise were our elders": mythic narratives of the kamsá (1994), both published by the university press of kentucky. lately, he is collaborating with the diverse environmentalisms research team (dert) to explore the concept of ecosovereignty, in performing environmentalisms: expressive culture and ecological change (university of illinois press, 2021, co-edited with katey borland, rebecca dirksen, and sue tuohy). references cited abrahams, roger. 1973. “rituals in culture.” unpublished manuscript. abrahams, roger and alan dundes. 1972. “riddles.” in folklore and folklife, edited by richard dorson. chicago: university of chicago press. bascom, william. 1954. “four functions of folklore.” journal of american folklore 67(266): 333-49. https://doi.org/10.2307/536411 blacking, john. 1961. “the social value of venda riddles.” african studies 20: 1-32. https://doi.org/10.1080/00020186108707124 fernandez, james. 1974. “the mission of metaphor in expressive culture.” current anthropology 15(2): 119-45. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2740989 georges, robert and alan dundes. 1963. “toward a structural definition of the riddle.” journal of american folklore 76(300): 111-118. https://doi.org/10.2307/538610 goodenough, ward. 1957. “cultural anthropology and linguistics.” in report of the 7th annual round table meeting on linguistics and language study, edited by paul garvin. washington, d.c.: georgetown university press. hamnet, ian. 1967. “ambiguity, classification and change: the function of riddles.” man 2(3): 379-92. https://doi.org/10.2307/2798727 huizinga, johan. 1950. homo ludens. boston: beacon press. lévi-strauss, claude. 1963. structural anthropology. new york: basic books. ---. 1966. the savage mind. chicago: university of chicago press. mcdowell, john. 1974. “interrogative routines in mexican-american children's folklore.” texas working papers in sociolinguistics 20 (30 pages). austin, tx. https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39024 https://doi.org/10.2307/536411 https://doi.org/10.1080/00020186108707124 https://www.jstor.org/stable/2740989 https://doi.org/10.2307/538610 https://doi.org/10.2307/2798727 vol. 42, no. 1 (2024) 101 children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39024/ piaget, jean. 1965. the moral judgement of the child. new york: free press. roberts, john, m.j. arth, and r.r. buch. 1959. “games in culture.” american anthropologist 61(4): 597-605. https://www.jstor.org/stable/667148 roberts, john and brian sutton-smith. 1962. “child training and game involvement.” ethnology 1(2): 166-85. https://doi.org/10.2307/3772873 sanches, mary and barbara kirshenblatt-gimblett. 1971. “child language and children’s traditional speech play.” texas working papers in sociolinguistics 5. austin, tx. [reprinted in barbara kirshenblatt-gimblett, ed. (1976), speech play: research and resources for the study of linguistic creativity, pp. 65–110. philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press.] sturtevant, william. 1972. “studies in ethnoscience.” in culture and cognition: rules, maps, and plans, edited by james p. spradley. san francisco: chandler publishing company. sutton-smith, brian. 1967. “the role of play in cognitive development.” young children 22(6): 360-70. https://www.jstor.org/stable/42720714 ---. 1972. “a developmental structural account of riddles.” unpublished manuscript. ---. 1970. “psychology of childlore: the triviality barrier.” western folklore 29(1): 1-8. https://doi.org/10.2307/1498679 https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39024 https://www.jstor.org/stable/667148 https://doi.org/10.2307/3772873 https://www.jstor.org/stable/42720714 https://doi.org/10.2307/1498679 children's han dc laps informal learning in play republished children's folklore review 2024 originally published by southwest educational development laboratory austin, texas children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39025/children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39025/ brandon barker rectangle brandon barker sticky note completed set by brandon barker brandon barker rectangle https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39025 https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39025 produced by southwest educational development laboratory, a private nonprofit laboratory with some programs supported in part by funds from the national institute of education, department of health, education, and welfare. the opinions expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect the position or policy of the national institute of education, and no official endorsement by the national institute of education should be inferred. © 1978, southwest educational development corporation copyright on these materials is claimed only during the period of development, testing, and evaluation, unless authorization is granted by the national institute of education to claim copyright also on the final �aterials. for information on the status of the topyright claim, contact either the copyright proprietor or the national institute of education. origianlly printed in u.s.a. austin, texas table of contents page i. introduction.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 ii. handclaps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 ill. the teacher's role in handclapping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 iv. teaching procedures . . . . ... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 a. students as teachers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 8. teacher and groups of non-handclappers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 v. basic clapping patterns .................................................... 1 o a. up-down handclap pattern ............................................... 1 0 8. right-left handclap pattern ............................................... 12 vi. handclaps with texts, music, instructions ................................... 13 a. miss mary mack, mack, mack . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 8. billy boy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 c. mommy, mommy, i feel ill (tiny tim) ....................................... 19 d. playmate ............................................................... 22 e. my sailor ............................................................... 24 f. when sally was a baby .................................................. 27 vii. building the repertoire of handclaps ....................................... 29 a. candy on a stick ........................................................ 30 8. take me out to the ball park .............................................. 30 c. my momma, your momma ................................................ 31 d. improvisations ........................................................... 31 viii. handclaps in today's schools .............................................. 33 a. cultural variation ........................................................ 33 8. individual variation ....................................................... 33 c. relevance to concepts of learning ........................................ 34 105 children's folklore review vol. 42, no. 1 (2024) 106 children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39025/children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39025/ brandon barker rectangle brandon barker rectangle https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39025 https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39025 acknowledgments this publication is one result of research in chil­ dren's play and folklore conducted by the southwest educational development laboratory during 19741976. during this period, the children's folklore com­ ponent of the early elementary program conducted its research into handclapping under a grant from the na­ tional institute of education, u.s. department of health, education, and welfare. the laboratory would like to credit robert s. randall, director of the early elementary program; richard bauman, laboratory staff associate; and beverly j. stoeltje, folklore con­ sultant and author. james h. perry executive director southwest educational development laboratory i. introduction richard bauman the handclaps presented in the pages that follow represent a form of children's folklore, the traditional formalized play activities of chil­ dren that are engaged in and maintained by the children themselves, within the peer group. familiar genres of children's folklore include, besides handclaps, riddles, games, jokes, taunts, retorts, counting out rhymes, ring plays, jump-rope rhymes, and many other forms, some of which go back to remote antiquity and have parallels that span vast portions of the world. children's folklore forms are display forms, public means for the presentation and repre­ sentation of oneself and one's culture to others in ways that underscore both their meaningful­ ness to the group and one's own competence as a member of it. the forms of children's folklore are the special traditionally shared means for displaying one's competence to and with others, subject to evaluation for the skill and effectiveness of the performance-the most artful and valued ways of speaking and behaving in the children's peer group reper­ toire. as such, children's folklore is an index to what is important to children in the peer group, and their communicative competence within it. this work is presented in the conviction that children's folklore, representing what might aptly be called the indigenous art forms of child­ hood, unquestionably valued and enjoyed by the children themselves, can constitute a significant resource in the development of culturally responsive educational programs. the author, beverly stoeltje, has singled out handclaps as an especially interesting and attractive part of the children's folklore repertoire, in an effort to make them accessible and useful to teachers. the children, given the chance, will do the rest. 107 children's folklore review vol. 42, no. 1 (2024) 108 children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39025/ children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39025/ brandon barker rectangle brandon barker rectangle https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39025 https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39025 ii. handclaps beverly j. stoeltje h_an?clapping, a traditional children's activity of singing and clapping in rhythm, brings two or more c�ildre� together in face-to-face per­ formance involving music, poetry and motion. children who do handclaps are engaged in a cooperative artistic act which nurtures social verbal and motor skills. (see section viii c f�r further detail.) while these universal features a�e characteristic of all handclapping, cultural­ differences are exhibited in handclapping styles. these differences contribute to the un­ �imited variations which can be incorporated into th_e basic form. and further, this activity establishes a common ground for children from �e_terog�neous backgrounds to meet and par­ t1c1pate in an activity from the world of children (see section viii, a and b for elaboration.) handclaps, like other folklore forms, thus repre­ sent an important potential resource for educators. texts for those of you familiar with handclaps, per­ haps fr?m your own childhood, or perhaps from observing students, you may only need to see the texts of the individual handclaps to remem­ ber _ the tunes and motions. others may be curious to see the words in print as they are often difficult for the non-handclapper to com­ prehend due to the rapidity with which hand­ clapping is performed. for these reasons, the tests are presented initially as a group. following these texts you will find the pro­ cedur_es for teaching the handclaps to a group and six examples complete with texts music and teaching instructions. additional texts fol­ low, including some improvisations which demonstrate children's experimental use of language. and finally, some further discussion on hand­ claps in the schools is inciuded which will aid in understanding the relevance of this activity to the children of today. miss mary mack, mack, mack miss mary mack, mack, mack all dressed in black, black, black with silver buttons, buttons, buttons all down her back, back, back. she asked her mother, mother, mother for fifteen cents, cents, cents to watch the elephant, elephant, elephant jump over the fence, fence, fence. he jumped so high, high, high he touched the sky, sky, sky and didn't come down, down, down 'til the fourth of july, ly, ly. she cannot read, read, read she cannot write, write, write but she can smoke, smoke, smoke her daddy's pipe, pipe, pipe. billy boy when billy boy was zero he learned to be a hero hero yoka, hero yoka half past zero, cross down. when billy boy was one he learned to suck his thumb thumb yoka, thumb yoka half past one, cross down. when billy boy was two he learned to tie his shoe shoe yoka, shoe yoka half past two, cross down. when billy boy was three he learned to climb a tree tree yoka, tree yoka half past three, cross down. when billy boy was four he learned to shut the door door yoka,door yoka half past four, cross down. when billy boy was five he learned to swim and dive dive yoka, dive yoka half past five, cross down. when billy boy was six he learned to pick up sticks sticks yoka, sticks yoka half past six, cross down. when billy boy was seven he learned to climb to heaven heaven yoka, heaven yoka half past seven, cross down. when billy boy was eight he learned to shut the gate gate yoka, gate yoka half past eight, cross down. when billy boy was nine he learned to cut a vine vine yoka, vine yoka half past nine, cross down. when billy boy was ten he learned to say the end end yoka, end yoka half past ten, cross down. tiny tim (variation of mommy, mommy, i feel ill) miss lucy had a baby, she named him tiny tim. she put him in the bathtub to see if he could swim. he drank up all the water, he ate up all the soap. he tried to swallow the bathtub but it wouldn't go down his throat. miss lucy called the doctor, miss lucy called the nurse. miss lucy called the lady with the alligator purse. in walked the doctor, in walked the nurse. in walked the lady with the alligator purse. out walked the doctor, out walked the nurse. out walked the lady with the alligator purse. playmate say, say, oh, playmate come out and play with me and bring your dollies three climb up my apple tree slide down my rain barrel into my cellar door and we'll be jolly friends for ever more more, more more more. so sorry playmate i cannot play with you my dollies have the flu and we might catch it too i have no rain barrel i have no cellar door but we'll be jolly friends for ever more more, more more more. 109 children's folklore review vol. 42, no. 1 (2024) 110 children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39025/ children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39025/ brandon barker rectangle brandon barker rectangle https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39025 https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39025 my sailor my sailor went to sea sea sea to see what he could see see see but all that he could see see see was the bottom of the deep blue sea sea sea. my sailor went to chop chop chop to see what he could chop chop chop but all that he could chop chop chop was the bottom of the deep blue chop chop chop. my sailor went to china to see what he could china but all that he could china was the bottom of the deep blue china. my sailor went to oowasheewash to see what he could oowasheewash but all that he could oowasheewash was the bottom of the deep blue oowasheewash when sally was a baby when sally was a baby, a baby, a baby when sally was a baby, she went like this ummmm, this-a-way, ummmm, that-a-way, ummmm, this-a-way, one-two-three. when sally was a schoolgirl, a schoolgirl, a schoolgirl, when sally was a schoolgirl, she went like this: two plus two is four, four plus four is eight, eight plus eight is sixteen, sixteen plus sixteen is thirty-two. when sally was a teen-ager ... when sally was a wife ... when sally was a mother ... when sally was a grandmother ... when sally was a skeleton .. when sally was a nothin .. . candy on a stick candy on a stick makes me sick. makes my stomach go two four, six. not 'cause it's dirty, not 'cause it's clean. just 'cause i kissed a boy behind a magazine. girls, girls, have some fun. here comes johnny with a miniskirt on. he can wibble, he can wobble, he can do all that stuff but i bet he can't do this. close your eyes and count to ten. if you mess up, start it over again. one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. take me out to the ball park take me out to the ball park. take me out to the crowd. buy me some peanuts and cracker jacks i don't care if we never get back, so it's root, root, root for the home team. if we don't win, it's a shame, cause it's one, two, three strikes you're out at the old ball game. my momma, your momma my momma, your momma, live across the street eighteen-nineteen marble street every night they have a fight and this is what they say. boys are rotten just like cotton girls are dandy just like candy akawasaboos, akawasaboos akawasasodawater, i love you. i wish i had a nickel i wish i had a nickel i wish i had a dime i wish i had a boyfriend to kiss me all the time. my mother gave me a nickel my father gave me a dime my sister gave me a boyfriend who kissed me all the time. my mother took my nickel my father took my dime my sister took my boyfriend and gave me frankenstein. he made me scrub the kitchen he made me scrub the floor and when he wasn't looking i kicked him out the door. have you ever, ever, ever have you ever, ever, ever in your long­ legged life seen a long-legged sailor and his long­ legged wife? no, i never, never, never in my long-legged life seen a long-legged sailor and his long­ legged wife. have you ever, ever, ever in your short­ legged life seen a short-legged sailor and his short­ legged wife? no, i never, never, never in my short-legged life seen a short-legged sailor and his short­ legged wife. have you ever, ever, ever in your pigeon­ toed life seen a pigeon-toed sailor and his pigeon­ toed wife? no, i never, never, never in my pigeon-toed life seen a pigeon-toed sailor and his pigeon­ toed wife. have you ever, ever, ever in your bow­ legged life seen a bow-legged sailor and his bow­ legged wife? no, i never, never, never in my bow-legged life seen a bow-legged sailor and his bow­ legged wife. down by the river down by the river, down by the sea. johnny broke a bottle and blamed it on me. i tole momma, momma tole poppa poppa tole johnny he was gonna get a h-o-t-t-t miss sue from alabama miss sue, miss sue miss sue from alabama. they call her hickory stick, oh yeah. they call her hickory stick, oh yeah. miss sue, miss sue miss sue from alabama. they call her hickory stick, oh yeah. they call her hickory stick, oh yeah. (monica),* somebody's callin' your name. (monica), somebody's playin' your game. (monica), somebody wants you on the telephone. tell 'em i'm not home. * name of one handclapper 111 children's folklore review vol. 42, no. 1 (2024) 112 children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39025/children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39025/ brandon barker rectangle brandon barker rectangle https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39025 https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39025 miss sue, miss sue miss sue from alabama. they call her hickory stick, oh yeah. they call her hickory stick, oh yeah. miss sue, miss sue miss sue from alabama. they call her hickory stick, oh yeah. they call her hickory stick, oh yeah. (renee),** somebody's callin' your name. ** name of other handclapper (renee), somebody's playin' your game. (renee), somebody wants you on the telephone. tell 'em i'm not home. miss sue, miss sue miss sue from alabama. they call her hickory stick, oh yeah. they call her hickory stick, oh yeah. they call her hickory stick, oh yeah. they call her hickory stick, oh yeah. the teacher's role in han dc lapping the sound of singing, clapping children takes on special meaning for you as a teacher when you observe that the participants are learning interactional behavior, expressing creativity, utilizing syncopated rhythm, and "doing" poetry. in recognition of the important fact, however, that the formal and informal contexts for learning may utilize different processes, some principles are outlined below to assist you in teaching this play activity. handclaps are traditional, folkloric play and therefore they may be performed with wide variation in stylistic features. your effectiveness in facilitating this activity will be increased by giving special consideration to these variations which may be influenced by cultural back­ ground,* exposure to the form, age, or partici­ pant interaction. age range when a child learns to do a handclap is largely determined by when the opportunity arises. therefore, some kindergartners may be able handclappers while some fourth graders may be totally unfamiliar with the activity. hand­ clapping is of interest generally, however, to * see cultural variation, p. 33 . children between the ages of 5 and 12 years. you may determine your students' familiarity with handclapping by demonstrating a hand­ clap and inquiring if any of the students know how to do it or some other handclap. the casual demonstration is important in communi­ cating exactly what you mean. it is well to re­ member that some handclaps are more com­ plex than others. (a notation is made for each handclap included here as to its appropriate­ ness for beginners or for accomplished hand­ clappers.) context for learning children learn handclaps with the greatest ease if they learn from each other in an informal setting. this method should be encouraged if there are several children capable of teaching others. shy children may respond to a teach­ er's suggestion that a specific child can show how handclaps are done, on a one-to-one basis. if the teacher is also a participant on occasion, both as teacher and learner, uncer­ tain children will be encouraged to learn. however, for classes in which the majority of children do not know handclaps, a method is suggested here, "teacher and group of non­ handclappers," which can be used for teaching a group, or preferably, small groups, by a more formal method. once the activity is familiar, a more informal environment can be reestab­ lished for learning further handclaps. "doing" handclaps as children clap together they exchange vari­ ations and create new ones, increasing their own possibilities for artistic expression. when laughter and giggles occur or negotiations take place in the midst of a handclap, the partici­ pants are exploring variations in their play, learning patterns of social cooperation, and attending to the physical maneuvers of the performance. humor is an important charac­ teristic for both you and the children, for laugh­ ter emphasizes the play element so important to the success of this activity. in your role as teacher you may stimulate and encourage this play-learning known as handclaps by introducing the activity, directing attention to it, assisting children in acquiring the ability to handclap, and demonstrating appre­ ciation for the children's performance of the activity. teaching procedures 1. you the teacher should learn to do a simple handclap before introducing the activity to the children. (notations are made in the instructions for each hand­ clap as to its difficulty.) 2. listen to the accompanying cassette tape to familiarize yourself with tunes and rhythms. 3. remember that children learn this activity faster than adults. 4. be prepared to laugh, and expect laughter from children, when you make mistakes as all learners do. 5. if you remember handclaps from your own childhood, teach in the style which is comfortable for you. a. students as teachers determine whether your students are familiar with handclapping, by inquiring and simulta­ neously demonstrating informally. when a student indicates familiarity with handclapping, you may ask the child to demon­ strate "doing" a handclap with you or with a friend who also indicates familiarity with the activity. you may then arrange the children in pairs, a competent handclapper with a nonhandclap­ per, encouraging both the "teacher" and "learner." more direction from the teacher may be needed if social barriers inhibit the natural in­ formal context. 113 children's folklore review vol. 42, no. 1 (2024) 114 children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39025/children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39025/ brandon barker rectangle brandon barker rectangle https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39025 https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39025 if your students' style differs from the in­ structions included here or from your own, it is equally "correct" as long as it works. b. teacher and group of non-handclappers for the class in which handclapping is un­ familiar to the majority, you may organize small groups and demonstrate with one child, or pos­ sibly "borrow" a child from another class, or bring in another adult to demonstrate hand­ clapping. 1 . with the attention of the class or a small group of the class, demonstrate a simple hand­ clap, such as miss mary mack, mack, mack, singing the words or playing the tape: miss mary mack, mack, mack miss mary mack, mack, mack all dressed in black, black, black with silver buttons, buttons, buttons all down her back, back, back. she asked her mother, mother, mother for fifteen cents, cents, cents to watch the elephant, elephant, elephant jump over the fence, fence, fence. he jumped so high, high, high he touched the sky, sky, sky and didn't come down, down, down 'til the fourth of july, ly, ly. she cannot read, read, read she cannot write, write, write but she can smoke, smoke, smoke her daddy's pipe, pipe, pipe. 2. the second step is teaching the clap pat­ tern. the clap pattern for miss mary mack, mack, mack is based on the up-down pattern, (see p.10). practice these hand motions with your children, clapping slowly at first, and then with increasing speed as students demonstrate competence. 3. teach the one-two (in musical terms, two­ four) rhythm pattern. clap your hands or tap a pencil on a desk in rhythm while counting aloud: "one, two, one, two." at first, practice accenting the "one" count. then repeat the counting, accenting the "two" count. (some verses ac­ cent the first syllable in a line, others accent the second syllable.) 4. walking in a line or a circle, continue clap­ ping as above, walking in step with the "one, two" rhythm. 5. select a simple handclap, such as miss mary mack, mack, mack, teaching the words of one verse, one line at a time, without clap­ ping. repeat the words in rhythm, stressing the accented syllable. (in the example below, the second syllable is accented, placing the stress on the "two" count.) miss mary mack, mack, mack ' / ' bl' k all dressed in black, black, ac with silver buttons, buttons, buttons / i i i all down her back, back, back 6. say the rhyme and clap on the accented syllable only. 7. then clap your hands on every syllable, stressing the accented syllable, clapping also in the blank spaces (where there is a beat but not a word). _ , _ , , , miss ma ry mack __ mack __ mack i / i i all dressed in black __ black __ black i i i i with sil ver buttons __ buttons __ buttons / , i i / all down her back __ back __ back __ ,, 8. when students are familiar with clapping their own hands in rhythm with the words, re­ view the basic clap pattern taught earlier, and combine it with the words in the rhythm, chant­ ing the simple tune on page. 9. when students are familiar with clapping to the first verse, teach the words to the remain­ ing verses for as long as their attention is en­ gaged. when the children are learning addition­ al handclaps, many of the above procedures may be dropped as the children will be familiar with the clap pattern, rhythm, and accents. 115 children's folklore review vol. 42, no. 1 (2024) 116 children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39025/children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39025/ brandon barker rectangle brandon barker rectangle https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39025 https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39025 basic clapping patterns the two clapping patterns used as the basis for the following handclaps are illustrated be­ low. either of the patterns may be used for any of the handclaps. afro-american children more commonly use the up-down pattern while anglo children seem to prefer the right-left pattern. many handclaps add variations to the basic pattern. these variations are described with the individual handclaps. it is important to re­ member that the clap variations, like the words, may vary from one group to another, or from one week to the next. through these variations, cultural differences and individual creativity are expressed. children may occasionally disagree on specific items of the form, but they are usu­ ally able to resolve the differences themselves. the coding system used to describe the two basic clap patterns is consistent throughout. variations are described with the handclap in which they appear. both you and your children will find it easier to learn these basic clap patterns before learn­ ing specific handclaps. a. up-down handclap pattern description: this move begins with the left hand extended from the waist, palm up, and the right arm raised above the head, hand ex­ tended forward, palm down. when the partner's hands are in the same position, clapping be­ gins. hands are brought together in the up­ down (u-d) position at the mid-body for the clap. then partners clap both (b) of the other's hands in vertical hand position; then partners clap their own (0) hands together. this com­ pletes the pattern, and it begins over again. (u-d) up-down together (clap) (b) both partners' hands vertical (clap) (0) own hands (clap) the wide space of the u-d position is not usually maintained throughout the clap be­ cause of rapid movement. there are three basic moves in the patterns: u-d, 8,0. among afro-american children especially, the wide up-down position is often used as a signal to another child that one wishes to do a handclap. up-down handclap pattern (u-d) up-down, wide space (u-d) up-down together (clap) (b) both partners' hands vertical (clap) (0) own hands (clap) 117 children's folklore review vol. 42, no. 1 (2024) 118 children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39025/children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39025/ brandon barker rectangle brandon barker rectangle brandon barker rectangle brandon barker rectangle brandon barker rectangle brandon barker rectangle https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39025 https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39025 8. right-left handclap pattern description: this pattern begins by clapping one's own hands, (0), then partners clap right hands (r), clap own hands again (0), partners clap left hands (l), and then it begins over again. variations generally come before or after the basic pattern. this pattern is somewhat simpler for some children because it does not involve the up-down position. there are bas­ ically four moves in this pattern: 0, r, 0, l. right-left pattern (0) clap own hands (r) partners clap right hands (0) clap own hands (l) clap left hands handclaps with texts, music, instructions a. miss mary mack mack mack short and simple, this handclap is based on a chant and utilizes the cross down movement at the beginning of the clapping. features of special interest are the repetition of the same rhythm pattern in each line and the repetition of the last word of each line. this dominance of repetitive forms contributes to facility in learning the handclap and to the creation of new verses. it is recommended for beginners. complete text miss mary mack, mack, mack all dressed in black, black, black with silver buttons, buttons, buttons all down her back, back, back. she asked her mother, mother, mother for fifteen cents, cents, cents to watch the elephant, elephant, elephant jump over the fence, fence, fence. he jumped so high, high, high he touched the sky, sky, sky and didn't come down, down, down 'til the fourth of july, ly, ly. she cannot read, read, read she cannot write, write, write but she can smoke, smoke, smoke her daddy's pipe, pipe, pipe. rhythm the rhythm is based on the one-two rhythm pattern. the accent falls on the second syllable in the line through the entire handclap. accented beat: i unaccented beat: beat without a word __ clap own hands in rhythm with the words. 1 / / / miss ma ry mack __ mack __ mack i i i / all dressed in black __ black __ black / _ i i i with sil ver buttons __ buttons __ buttons i / i 1 i i all down her back __ back __ back ___ _ clapping pattern either the up-down or right-left pattern may be clapped here. the clap begins with cross­ down; however for beginning handclappers clapping own hands twice may be substituted. (see bi/ly boy for illustration of cross down.) right-left c cross (hands on own shoulders) d down (slap hands on thighs) 0 own hands r right hands 0 own hands l left hands 0 own hands r right hands (repeat above four times for each verse, once for each line, with two claps at the end.) up-down c cross d down ud up-down b both 0 own ud up-down b both 0 own (repeat above four times for each verse, once for each line, two claps at the end.) 119 children's folklore review vol. 42, no. 1 (2024) 120 children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39025/children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39025/ brandon barker rectangle brandon barker rectangle brandon barker rectangle brandon barker rectangle brandon barker rectangle brandon barker rectangle https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39025 https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39025 miss i i i ma ry mack / mack mack c d 0 r 0 i 0 r c d ud b 0 ud b 0 i i i all dressed in black black black c d 0 r 0 i 0 r c d ud b 0 ud b 0 wlth i i i sil i ver buttons buttons buttons c d 0 r 0 i 0 r c d ud b 0 cd b 0 ait i i i down her back back back c d 0 r 0 i 0 r 0 0 ·c d ud b 0 ud b 0 0 0 expansions in addition to the repetition of words and rhythms, this handclap rhymes the second and fourth lines and utilizes exaggeration in the character of the elephant who jumps to the sky, both features important in poetry. b. billy boy this handclap is sung to the familiar tune of i am a pretty little dutch girl. its theme is a cross child's growing-up from age zero to ten years. the variation move, cross down, is pictured (page below). the movement is rapid, in rhythm with the one, two count. this is recom­ mended for beginners after learning at least one other handclap. when billy boy was zero he learned to be a hero hero yoka, hero yoka half past zero, cross down. down ___ ______ i ___ ___ ___ ___ ____________121 children's folklore review vol. 42, no. 1 (2024) 122 children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39025/children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39025/ brandon barker rectangle brandon barker rectangle brandon barker rectangle https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39025 https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39025 the following materials are presented in a pattern consistent with the "teaching the handclaps" procedure. thus the verse is pre­ sented with the accents marked, then the clap pattern is combined with the words, and finally the complete text is presented. rhythm the beat may be counted out as "one, two, one, two." in the first two lines the accent falls on the second syllable of the line. in lines three and four the accent falls on the first syllable. beats are marked as follows: accented beat: i unaccented beat: beat without a word __ in all handclaps, one-syllable words may be divided to match the rhythm, and two syllables are occasionally joined together in one beat. (if you find it comfortable to sing the words you should do so; if not, the tune may be added after teaching the clap pattern. the clap pattern should be taught before clapping the words.) clap own hands, accenting the clap on the accented syllable as follows. /_ / / / when bil ly boy was ze ro __ i / _ / _ / he learned to be a he ro __ --• / / / / _ he ro yo ka, he ro yo ka / / / / half __ past __ zero, cross down. (at the beginning of a new verse the accent shifts again to the second syllable. there is no pause between verses.) clapping pattern when children have mastered clapping in rhythm with the words, the clap pattern may be introduced in combination with the words and rhythm. at the end of each verse are the words "cross down." the motion which accompanies these words is demonstrated in the photo­ graphs (p. 15 ). on the word "cross," cross arms over chest with hands on own shoulders; on the word "down," slap both thighs with own hands. this is a rapid movement in rhythm with the one-two beat, and no beats should be lost before beginning the next verse. either of the basic clap patterns may be used for this handclap. right-left 0 own hands r right hands 0 own hands l left hands cd cross down (repeat pattern seven times plus or and cross down for each verse) up-down u-d up-down (horizontal clap) b clap both partner's hands (vertical) 0 own hands cd cross down (repeat basic pattern 1 o times plus cross down for each verse) rhythm, words, clap pattern / / i i when bil ly boy was ze ro 0 r 0 i 0 r 0 i ud b 0 ud b 0 ud b / / / / he ro he learned to be a 0 r 0 i 0 r 0 0 ud b 0 ud b 0 i ud i / / ka ka, he ro yo he ro yo r 0 i 0 r 0 i 0 0 ud b 0 ud b 0 ud / / / half past zero, cross down. r 0 i 0 r c b 0 ud b 0 c complete text though only one version of each verse is presented here, children may vary the verbs and nouns throughout the verses, always rhym­ ing with the age in the verse. for example, in the last verse billy boy may learn to chase a hen, rhyming with ten. when billy boy was zero he learned to be a hero hero yoka, hero yoka half past zero, cross down. when billy boy was one he learned to suck his thumb thumb yoka, thumb yoka half past one, cross down. when billy boy was two he learned to tie his shoe shoe yoka, shoe yoka half past two, cross down. when billy boy was three he learned to climb a tree tree yoka, tree yoka half past three, cross down. when billy boy was four he learned to shut the door door yoka, door yoka half past four, cross down. when billy boy was five he learned to swim and dive dive yoka, dive yoka half past five, cross down. 0 b _ / / _ _ _ _ 123 children's folklore review vol. 42, no. 1 (2024) 124 children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39025/children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39025/ brandon barker rectangle brandon barker rectangle brandon barker rectangle https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39025 https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39025 when billy boy was six he learned to pick up sticks sticks yoka, sticks yoka half past six, cross down. when billy boy was seven he learned to climb to heaven heaven yoka, heaven yoka half past seven, cross down. when billy boy was eight he learned to shut the gate gate yoka, gate yoka half past eight, cross down. when billy boy was nine he learned to cut a vine vine yoka, vine yoka half past nine, cross down. when billy boy was ten he learned to say the end end yoka, end yoka half past ten, cross down. expansions in its content, billy boy moves progressively from age zero to age 1 o, providing a familiar c?ntext in which the participant may increase hrs understanding of sequencing at the same time as giving order to the concept of growing up. verbal structures focus on rhyming and uti­ lize the particular rhyme pattern: abba, (zero, hero, hero, zero), familiarizing the child with poetic forms. competence in the use of word order is increased by means of the changing nouns and verbs in each verse. the two rhythmical structures in each verse (accenting the first syllable, accenting the sec­ ond syllable), increase the performer's aware­ ness of rhythm, both in language and in body movement. beginners learn this one quickly. c. mommy, mommy, i feel ill the common experience of childhood illness forms the subject of this handclap which is chanted without a tune. the accent is on the first syllable of the line, and the rhythm is the familiar one-two pattern. simple to learn and popular because of its simplicity and familiar theme, it is especially good for beginners. mommy, mommy, i feel ill send for the doctor over the hill. in came the doctor, in came the nurse in came the lady with the alligator purse. out went the doctor, out went the nurse. out went the lady with the alligator purse. rhythm clap own hands in one-two rhythm, accenting the first syllable of each line. / / _ / _ / mom my mom my i feel ill _ / / _ / / send forthe doc tor o verthe hill _ words and clap pattern / / mom my mom my 0 r 0 l ud b 0 0 / i send forthe doc tor 0 r 0 l ud b 0 0 / / in camethe doc tor 0 r 0 l ud b 0 0 / / / / in camethe doc tor in camethe nurse _ i _ i _ i _ / _ in camethe lady withthe alli gator purse _ i / _ / / out wentthe doc tor out wentthe nurse _ i / / i out wentthe lady withthe alli gator purse -· clapping pattern when students are familiar with clapping out the rhythm and words, include the clap pattern. either basic clap pattern may be used. there are no variation moves in this clap. right-left 0 own hands r right hands 0 own hands l left hands (repeat twice for each line) up-down ud up-down b both hands 0 own hands 0 own hands (repeat twice for each line) / i i feel ill 0 r 0 ud b 0 / / 0 verthe hill 0 r 0 ud b 0 / in camethe nurse0 r 0 ud b 0 l 0 l 0 l 0 _ / _ _ _ _ _ _ 125 children's folklore review vol. 42, no. 1 (2024) 126 children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39025/children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39025/ brandon barker rectangle brandon barker rectangle https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39025 https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39025 / / in camethe lady withthe 0 r 0 l ud b 0 0 / wentthe / out doc tor 0 r 0 l ud b 0 0 / / out wentthe lady withthe 0 r 0 l ud b 0 0 variations children vary this handclap at the beginning of the line rather than the end. here they change the actor and action of the sentence, leaving the object (the rhyming words) the same. for example: i don't want the doctor, i don't want the nurse, i don't want the lady with the alligator purse. they may be encouraged to create their own variations if you point out these opportunities for variation. _______ the doctor ________ the nurse _______ t�l�y _______ the purse / alli gator purse 0 r 0 l ud b 0 0 / wentthe out nurse 0 r 0 l ud b 0 0 / alli gator purse 0 r 0 l ud b 0 0 a slightly different variation of this handclap is known as tiny tim. miss lucy had a baby; she named him tiny tim. she put him in the bathtub to see if he could swim. he drank up all the water; he ate up all the soap. he tried to swallow the bathtub but it wouldn't go down his throat. miss lucy called the doctor, miss lucy called the nurse. miss lucy called the lady with the alligator purse. in walked the doctor, in walked the nurse. in walked the lady with the alligator purse. out walked the doctor, out walked the nurse. out walked the lady with the alligator purse. _ _ _ __ __ __ _ -/ / / / 127 children's folklore review vol. 42, no. 1 (2024) 128 children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39025/children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39025/ brandon barker rectangle brandon barker rectangle https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39025 https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39025 d. playmate a very popular handclap, especially among accomplished handclappers, this one has been adapted from the popular song, playmate and is sung to that tune. movement variations are illustrated in the photographs below. the addi­ tional verses at the end of this section provide an example of children's creative efforts in constructing new interpretations using basic patterns. say, say, oh, playmate come out and play with me and bring your dollies three climb up my apple tree slide down my rain barrel into my cellar door and we'll be jolly friends for ever more more, more more more. rhythm the rhythm is the one-two pattern with the accent on the second syllable. swing {s) clapping pattern the beginning move is a swing (s) in which partners hold both hands, one partner holding palms up, fingers curled over, the other partner holding palms down, fingers curled (see photo­ graph). the movement is from side to side then up to clap own hands. variations in m�ve­ ment are clapping backs of both hands (bh), coupled with clapping both hands vertically, palms together. {b). these two moves replace the two swings after the first series of move­ ments. s swing s swing 0 clap own (0) hands r right hands (r) 0 own (0) hands l left {l) hands 0 own (0) hands 0 own (0) hands bh clap backs of both hands (bh) b clap both hands vertically (b) 0 r 0 l 0 0 . ·.•:t;.:. .. ����-�. -"'"""!!�� .. ::. . :: .. ··.:• .. � . ·---�:·�-• backs of both hands (bh) rhythm and clap pattern / / say say oh play s s 0 r i i come out and play bh b 0 r iand bring your dol bh b 0 r i i climb up my ap bh b 0 r i i sttde down my rain bh b 0 r i i 1n to my eel bh b 0 r i i and we'll be jol bh b 0 r i i for ev er more bh b 0 r additional verses so sorry playmate i cannot play with you my dollies have the flu and we might catch it too i have no rain barrel i have no cellar door but we'll be jolly friends for ever more more, more more more / i mate 0 l 0 0 with i / me 0 l 0 0 i i lies three 0 l 0 0 i i pie tree 0 l 0 0 i i barrel 0 l 0 0 i / lar door 0 l 0 0 i / ly friends 0 l 0 0 i / i i more more more more. 0 l 0 b b b say, say, oh, vampire come out and bite with me and bring your fangs three climb up my spookie tree slide down my blood vein into my coffin door and we'll be jolly friends for ever more, n1ore, more more more. __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ i 129 children's folklore review vol. 42, no. 1 (2024) 130 children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39025/children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39025/ brandon barker rectangle brandon barker rectangle brandon barker rectangle https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39025 https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39025 e. my sailor in my sailor words are used in linguistic play and motions are demonstrated which express these words. these motions may be expressed in any form which is meaningful to the perform­ ers. commonly found motions are included below in the photographs. salute my sailor went to sea sea sea to see what he could see see see but all that he could see see see was the bottom of the deep blue sea sea sea. my sailor went to chop chop chop to see what he could chop chop chop but all that he could chop chop chop was the bottom of the deep blue chop chop chop my sailor went to china to see what he could china but all that he could china was the bottom of the deep blue china my sailor went to oowasheewash to see what he could oowasheewash but all that he could oowasheewash was the bottom of the deep blue oowasheewash my sailor went to eye eye eye to see what he could i i i but all that he could i i i was the bottom of the deep blue 111 my sailor went to love, love, love to see what he could love, love, love but all that he could love, love, love was the bottom of the deep blue love, love, love. my sailor went to you, you, you to see what he could you, you, you but all that he could you, you, you was the bottom of the deep blue you, you, you my sailor went to i love you to see what he could i love you but all that he could i love you was the bottom of the deep blue i love you clapping pattern the variations in motion are expressions of the last words in each line, and are performed in accompaniment with the singing of those words. thus when the word is "sea, sea, sea," the performer salutes; when the word is "chop, chop, chop," the performer does a chopping chop china motion on his/her own arm while singing the word, etc. these motions are described below as well as shown in the photographs. sea,sea,sea s sea/see-place right hand on forehead as in a salute, repeat three times c chop-chop own left arm with right hand ch china-place both hands together under chin and slowly bend knees 00 oowasheewash-place hands on hips and wiggle while bending knees, down and up i love you l y ily i/eye-point finger to own eye or to body love-cross hands over chest you-point with finger to partner all three motions or simply hand over chest. complete pattern sea,sea,sea 0 r 0 l 0 s s s 0 r 0 l 0 c c c 0 r 0 l 0 ch ch ch 0 r 0 l 0 00 00 00 (repeat each four times) oowasheewash i love you 0 r 0 l 0 0 r 0 l 0 l l l 0 r 0 l 0 y y y 0 r 0 l 0 ily ily ily (repeat each four times) i i i i 131 children's folklore review vol. 42, no. 1 (2024) 132 children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39025/children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39025/ brandon barker rectangle brandon barker rectangle https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39025 https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39025 expansions the text of this handclap focuses on word­ play-homonyms and parts of speech. by re­ peating the same word in a different functional slot in the sentence, such as a noun in a verb slot and a verb in a noun slot, nonsense is created. this increases awareness of word recognition and parts of speech. the nonsense word, "oowasheewash," and the entire text of/ love you are based on wordplay. the artistic form of the verse makes it possible for a child to perform wordplay with sentence structure before encountering the concept formally. the child's language skills are expanded and formal concepts made fa­ miliar through verbal play. expressing a verbal concept through motion, as each of the movement variations does, pro­ vides a vehicle for comprehension of word sense as the performer demonstrates the meaning of the word in the performance. mastering this handclap thus involves sever­ al sensory modalities-acting out concepts, creating nonsense in words and sentences, and coordinating a variety of physical motions with another person in rhythmical form. f. when sally was a baby the performers sing through an entire life cycle from baby to the grave in this ancient and very popular song. its basic feature is the acting out of the role in each verse: thumb sucking for a baby, kissing and hugging for a wife, etc. the motions and the words vary with the particular group of children, expressing their own percep­ tions of roles and rhythms. the forms below may be considered a model from which the children may add or subtract or alter. they may add other roles such as aunt or teacher, they may change the name sally to another name or to/, various people may die before sally herself, and she may go to heaven and shout. the choice of motion to be demonstrated for each role and how it wil► be acted out is associated with the child's image of that role and the ability to express that image within the artistic form. in some versions the "ummm this-a-way" is replaced by descriptive words as in the second verse below; in others it provides an accompaniment for a motion without descriptive words as in the first verse. baby mother grandmother 133 children's folklore review vol. 42, no. 1 (2024) 134 children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39025/children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39025/ brandon barker rectangle brandon barker rectangle brandon barker rectangle https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39025 https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39025 motion thumb sucking motion, body sways in rhythm to "this-a-way, that-a-way" motion is replaced by words verse when sally was a baby, a baby, a baby when sally was a baby, she went like this ummmm, this-a-way, ummmm, that-a-way ummmm this-a-way, one, two, three. when sally was a schoolgirl, a schoolgirl, a schoolgirl, when sally was a schoolgirl, she went like this, two plus two is four, four plus four is eight, eight plus eight is sixteen, sixteen plus sixteen is thirty-two when sally was a teen-ager ... when sally was a wife ... when sally was a mother ... when sally was a grandmother ... when sally's husband died .. . when sally was a skeleton .. . another version utilizes the rhythmical phrase, "0000, aah, cha, cha, cha," and always exverse when mary was a baby a baby, a baby when mary was a baby she went 0000, aah, cha, cha, cha. when mary was a teen-ager, a teen-ager, a teen-ager, when mary was a teen-ager, she went 0000, aah, cha, cha, cha. when mary was a teacher .. . when mary was a mother .. . when mary died ... clapping pattern either the up-down pattern or the right-left pat­ tern may be used. the clapping continues through the singing. clapping does not continue through ooo, aah, cha, cha, cha or through ummmm this-a-way. talks on phone or slaps knees kissing and hugging motion rocking baby motion bent over with an aching back hands over face shake arms loosely presses the role in action rather than words. motion thumb sucking motion talks on phone or dances shakes finger rocks baby twists up face up-down right-left ud 0 b r 0 0 l building the repertoire of handclaps when handclapping is established as a familiar activity of informal play among children, new handclaps and variations on familiar ones are readily learned. the following texts are pre­ sented to expand the repertoire. it is likely that some children will already know many of them, and a reminder will be a sufficient stimulus to activate their performance. the same teaching procedures already presented can be applied to the following texts, and the two basic clap patterns, up-down and right-left, are used for these claps as well. the claps are sung or chanted on the accom­ panying tape. notations are given here for significant variations. where there is a clap without a word, a blank line has been included in the text. 135 children's folklore review vol. 42, no. 1 (2024) 136 children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39025/children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39025/ brandon barker rectangle brandon barker rectangle brandon barker rectangle https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39025 https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39025 a. candy on a stick this verse is chanted without a tune. it is simple to learn and is very popular with begin­ ning handclappers. the boy's name is usually changed each time it is performed. excitement is created in this handclap by the focus on male and female roles. the verse also provides practice in learning numbers. counting by fives, tens, etc. can be substituted for the one to ten count. candy on a stick --, makes me sick __, makes my stomach go two-four-six--· not 'cause it's dirty--, not 'cause it's clean __ , just 'cause i kissed a boy behind a magazine ___ girls, __ girls, __ have some fun --· here comes (jimmy) with a miniskirt on. he can wibble, he can wobble, he can do all that stuff but i bet he can't do this --· close your eyes and count to ten --· if you mess up, start it over again --· (eyes closed but still clapping) one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten b. take me out to the ball park the familiar popular song has been adapted to handclapping, which makes this one par­ ticularly easy to learn. unlike most others, however, it is a one, two, three rhythm. this rhythm makes the up-down clap pattern a more effective one for this handclap. unlike many others also, the clap begins on the accented beat. though the tune is familiar, the unusual rhythm pattern can create difficulty unless it is learned slowly in the beginning. take __ me out to the ball __ __ park ___ _ take __ me out to the crowd __ __ _ ____ _ buy me some pea nuts and crack __ er jacks ___ _ i __ don't care if we nev er get back, so it's root __ root root for the home __ __ team ___ _ if we don't win it's a shame __ __ --, cause it's one --two____ three strikes you're out at the old____ ball____ game____ --· c. my mama, your mama from the name of the street in the beginning to the nonsense at the end, this verse lends itself to variation and is seldom performed exactly the same way. collected from afro­ american and mexican-american groups of children, these two variations demonstrate cultural as well as individual patterns in the varying word choices. either clap pattern is appropriate for this verse, though the right-left pattern is somewhat easier to learn with this one. the words are chanted. it begins on the accented beat and has a one-two rhythm pattern. my mama, your mama, live across the street __ eighteen-nineteen marble street __ every night they had a fight and this is what they say __ boys are rotten just like cotton girls are dandy just like candy akawasaboos, __ akawasaboos __ akawasasodawater, i love you. si, si, si, si my mother, your mother, lives across the street eighteen nineteen cantebury street __ listen what they say __ boys are rotten just like cotton girls are honey made of candy no pizza pie, __ no pizza pie but a piece of bubble gum __ no pizza pie, __ no pizza pie but a piece of bubble gum. d. improvisations some of the verses below are improvisations on recognizable tunes while others are newly created verses set within the rhythmical form of the handclap. they are included here as ex­ amples of children's experimentations with the elements of handclaps. i wish i was a apple hanging from a tree i wish somebody' d come and put his arms around me i wish i was a apple, a sweet apple. i am a sweet apple, i am a sweet apple. i am a watermelon, hanging from a sweet tree i know i am a sweet watermelon sweet watermelon, sweet watermelon. please don't eat me from the tree from the tree, from the tree. just let me free, just let me free. i wish i was an apple hanging from the tree hanging from the tree, hanging from the tree. somebody come and eat me, eat me from the tree. eat me, eat me to the bone eat me, eat me to the peeling peeling, peeling, peeling, peeling. my mother, your mother, live across the street that's so i can play just with you not with nobody else, not with nobody else just with you and me, say who say who, say ray. mrs. folly had a dolly a dolly who was sick, sick, sick she called a doctor to be quick, quick, quick the doctor gave her a rubber bed he wrote on a paper for a bill, bill, bill i'll be back in the morning with the pills, pills, pills. si, si, si when peter went to the circus and then when he saw some carrots, carrots he got inside the sto-ore he eat all the carrots. when he got sick and his mother said no you never better not eat no more because you might die in your heart because you know in the store, store, store. 137 children's folklore review vol. 42, no. 1 (2024) 138 children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39025/children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39025/ brandon barker rectangle brandon barker rectangle https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39025 https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39025 sí, sí, sí cuando un turkey cuando cuando la comieron-on-on cuando la hicieron y la comieron sí, sí, sí georgie porgie what he got he got a bicycle and he ride it a lot then when he went and he fell down when he cried all up and down then he went to call his mother his mother put in a, a bandaid when he went to ride it again and when he fell down again and when he fell down again and then when he fell down again and then he hurt hisself and then they take him to the doctor and then when they fixed him up he was alright and then buy him a little bicycle and then when he ride it he didn't fell down. gimme me a nickel, gimme a dime i wanna see my honey bun all the time. handclapsin today's schools handclapping, a traditional children's activity of singing and clapping in rhythm, brings two or more children together in a face-to-face event of artistic communication. in stimulating this form of play, you as teachers encourage the informal learning process. this process fo­ cuses on self-motivated learning through observation and experience in a child-directed environment. social interaction and culturally distinctive behavior are fostered in the informal context. a. cultural variation the environment which encourages the per­ formance of culturally learned artistic activity also nurtures the child's identity, both as an individual and as a member of a specific ethnic group. particular cultural interpretations are reflected in the rhythmic, textual and kinesic elements of handclapping. for example, in mexican-american culture groups handclaps generally begin with "si, si, si." among afro­ american groups the signal to begin handclap­ ping is nonverbal: the up-down clap position. among anglo-american children the intention to handclap is announced verbally, "let's do the one .. . " stylistic variations in doing handclaps will appear in the choice of words, in rhythms and their combinations, and in the way in which children arrange their space for handclapping. for example, afro-american children are more likely than anglo children to use nonsense words because of the stress in afro-american culture on verbal art. thus the sounds of the words themselves, a feature of the poetic use of language, may be of primary importance in word choice. further, linguistic differences will be noted grammatically between different cul­ tural groups. thus children from spanish­ speaking cultures, those from afro-american culture, and native speakers of english may use word order, tenses, and pronunciation quite differently, yet in accord with their own culture's standards for speech play. recogniz­ ing the difference in a grammatical exercise and verbal play is an important distinction, for speech play encourages the poetic use of lan­ guage consistent with culture-specific stand­ ards rather than textbook grammar. rhythmical patterns also vary from culture to culture. therefore, it will be noted that afro­ american children are more likely than anglo­ american children to use syncopated rhythms in handclaps. the combination of the up-down pattern, which has three moves, with a one-two (2/4) musical rhythm, is an example of this syncopation. afro-american children generally prefer this rhythm combination, and anglo­ americans generally use the right-left clap pat­ tern, based on two moves, in combination with the one-two (2/4) musical rhythm pattern. b. individual variation swiss psychologist jean piaget stresses that learning is based on a process of discovery, construction, and re-invention. an "active methodology" in teaching makes available ap­ propriate materials with which the child may re-invent and thereby experience learning. (1972: 26-27). handclaps are based on tradi­ tional materials-the formal patterns of rhythm, motion, and verse. the natural environment for handclaps is children's informal play. charac­ teristic of handclaps is repetition of tune, move­ ment, words. equally characteristic are the individual and cultural styles which combine with the formal elements to create infinite vari­ ations. the artistic, ritualized pattern of the activity provides familiarity while the variations create novelty. each performance is a re-crea­ tion, different from every other one, depending on how it is enacted and by whom. described by erik erikson as "playful ritual­ ization," play which is based on ritualized pat­ tern is inherently both personalized and tradi139 children's folklore review vol. 42, no. 1 (2024) 140 children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39025/children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39025/ brandon barker rectangle brandon barker rectangle https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39025 https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39025 tional, improvisational and formalized (1972: 143). the participants .in such play experience a mutuality in performing the known materials together; yet there is a distinctiveness for each individual in the act of interpretation. innovation is apparent in "playmate" with the addition of children's verses to the original popular song. within the verses individual choice determines whether children sing of "jolly" friends or "best" friends, of "cellar doors" or "jelly spoons." different concepts of life and death are expressed in "sally." for some chil­ dren sally dies and becomes a "nothin'," and for others sally dies, goes to heaven, and shouts. each handclap performance thus con­ structs a living artistic event, based on formal patterns and given cultural and individual inter­ pretations by the performers. through observation of these folkloric activi­ ties you may gain knowledge of your students' abilities which do not appear in a formal learn­ ing context. children frequently exhibit pre­ viously unrecognized leadership qualities, lin­ guistic competence, and motivation in ritualized play. possessing an understanding of these activities provides you with a set of tools by which you can informally nurture and evaluate children's ability to integrate their verbal, cog­ nitive, and motor capacities in an act of artistic communication. you may also discover that the overall ex­ perience of learning is enhanced through co­ operative artistic performance which engages the child's full attention and increases self­ assurance while encouraging social growth. c. relevance to concepts of learning because no special equipment or space is required to handclap, it is a good activity for the playground, for rainy days in the classroom, for waiting in line, and for other settings which are not routinely structured. teachers may also wish to consider how the formal elements of handclapping are related to concepts of formal learning. some suggestions are listed below. elements which relate to physical edu­ cation and music education are based especially on coordination of motion within a rhythmical pattern. these include hand-eye coordination, left-right discrimination, and mov­ ing in rhythm. observational skills are devel­ oped in both the learning and performing of a handclap. memory skills are combined with observational ones as the participants must remember a series of movements, words, and tunes to perform a handclap. the acting out of concepts requires comprehension of word meaning and the ability to express it in a mo­ tion. children gain familiarity with music, both­ tune and rhythm, through the singing and chanting. and most important is the integration of skills which must be utilized simultaneously -mental, verbal, physical, musical-to perform a handclap. concepts of formal learning which relate especially to the language arts, mathematics, and social sciences are revealed particularly in the texts of handclaps. without conscious knowledge of the textual features, performers manipulate verbal and conceptual materials to achieve the overall effect. the interest of many texts depends on language play. in some cases the variation in each verse depends on the selection of a rhyming word to fill the slot of noun or verb which must change in each verse. in others, the same word is used repeatedly for all parts of a sentence, creating nonsense. in either of the above instances sentence structure is the focus of attention. rhyme and meter are in constant use. homonyms and synonyms are frequently employed. ordering occurs both in counting out numbers and in the ordering of actions such as life cycles and nar­ ratives. sounds and rhythms of words are used for their own sake, stressing both auditory dis­ crimination and the poetic use of language. especially important in handclaps is the figura­ tive use of language. the words and motions serve the purpose of creating images, many of which are humorous or nonsensical, illustrating the importance of words to communicate ideas and actions. as the activity is mastered, participants apply the traditional form to the creation of new verses and to new handclaps based on tradi­ tional tunes, television commercials, popular songs and other familiar materials. some new creations are refined through usage and be­ come a part of the larger repertoire while others are never incorporated. yet all of the efforts engage the participants in mastering basic skills of communication within artistic play. references erikson, erik, "play and actuality," play and 1972 development, maria w. piers, ed. w.w. norton & co. new york. piaget, jean, "some aspects of operations," 1972 play and development. maria piers, ed. w. w. norton & co. new york. 141 children's folklore review vol. 42, no. 1 (2024) 142 children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39025/children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39025/ brandon barker rectangle brandon barker rectangle https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39025 https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39025 children's han dc laps informal learning in play 143 children's folklore review children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39025/ children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39025/ brandon barker rectangle brandon barker rectangle brandon barker rectangle brandon barker line brandon barker rectangle https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39025 https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39025 part iii texas children’s folklore project a bibliography children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39026/ a bibliography of publications related to the texas children’s folklore project (tcfp) richard bauman publications relating to tcfp 1971 “an ethnographic framework for the investigation of communicative behaviors.” asha 13(6): 334-340.1 1975 “preface.” in black girls at play: folkloric perspectives on child development, by margaret brady and rosalind eckhardt [full bibliographic entry below]. austin: southwest educational development laboratory. 1977 “linguistics, anthropology, and verbal art: toward a unified perspective, with a special discussion of children's folklore.” in linguistics and anthropology, report of the 28th annual georgetown university round table discussion on languages and linguistics, 1977. muriel saville-troike, ed. washington, d.c.: georgetown university press. 1978 “introduction.” in children's handclaps: informal learning in play, by beverly j. stoeltje [full bibliographic entry below]. austin: southwest educational development laboratory. 1982 “the ethnography of children's folklore.” in children in and out of school: ethnographic perspectives in education. perry gilmore and alan glatthorn. arlington: center for applied linguistics.2 margaret brady publications relating to tcfp 1975 black girls at play: folkloric perspectives on child development. austin: southwest educational development laboratory. (with rosalind eckhardt) https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39026 148 children’s folklore review children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39026/ 1978 “peer group evaluation of narrative competence: a navajo example.” texas working papers in sociolinguistics 4. austin, tx.3 1984 “some kind of power”: navajo children’s skinwalker narratives. salt lake city: university of utah press. john holmes mcdowell publications relating to tcfp 1974 “interrogative routines in mexican-american children's folklore.” texas working papers in sociolinguistics 20 (30 pages). austin, tx. 1975 the speech play and verbal art of chicano children: an ethnographic and sociolinguistic study. university of texas, austin. doctoral dissertation. 1976 "riddling and enculturation: a glance at the cerebral child," working papers in sociolinguistics 36 (16 pages).4 1979 children's riddling. bloomington: indiana university press. 1980 "animal categories in chicano children's spooky stories." in folklore on two continents: essays in honor of linda degh, edited by nickolai burlakoff and carl lindahl, 169-75. bloomington: trickster press. 1980 "hey diddle diddle, what's in a riddle?" center for southern folklore magazine, 3: 13. 1982 "sociolinguistic contours in the verbal art of chicano children." in spanish in the united states: sociolinguistic aspects, edited by lucia elias-olivares and jon amaestae, 333-353. cambridge: cambridge university press.5 1983 "children's folklore." in handbook of american folklore, edited by richard dorson, 314-322. new york: mcgraw-hill. 1988 "speech play." in the international encyclopedia of communications, edited by erik barnouw, new york: oxford university press. https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39026 vol. 42, no. 1 (2024) 149 children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39026/ 1993 "hispanic oral tradition: form and content." for the handbook of hispanic cultures in the united states, edited by francisco lomelí, 218-25. houston: arte publico press. (with maría herrera-sobek and rodolfo j, cortina) 1994 "riddle." in the encyclopedia of language and linguistics, vol. 7, edited by r.e. ascher, 3578-580. oxford: pergamon press. 1995 "the transmission of children's folklore," in children's folklore: a source book, edited by brian sutton-smith, jay mechling, thomas w. johnson, and felicia r. mcmahon, 49-62. new york: garland.6 1999 “play.” the new book of knowledge. grolier, pp. 333-4. 2008 “naming games and beyond: referencing in children’s verbal play,” children’s folklore review 30: 35-46.7 2018 “transitionality: the border as barrier and bridge.” in border folk balladeers: critical studies on américo paredes, edited by roberto cantú, 86-101. cambridge: cambridge university press. danielle roemer publications relating to tcfp 1977 a social interactional analysis of children’s folklore: catches and narratives. ph.d. dissertation in folklore, university of texas, austin. 1980 “interjected routines as metanarrative commentary.” working papers in sociolinguistics 68 (39 page). austin: southwest educational development laboratory.8 1982 “semantic and syntactic parallelism in children's storytelling.” working papers in sociolinguistics 102 (29 pages). austin: southwest educational development laboratory.9 https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39026 150 children’s folklore review children’s folklore review, vol. 42, no. 1 · /doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39026/ beverly j. stoeltje publications relating to tcfp 1978 children's handclaps: informal learning in play. austin, tx: southwest educational development laboratory.10 1 a precursor, setting out the frame of reference that shaped the tcfp, this article was reprinted in language and cultural diversity in american education (1972), edited by roger d. abrahams and rudolph troike and published by prentice-hall. 2 see the reprinted version of “ethnography of children’s folklore,” here: doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39023. 3 an updated version of this article was republished in 1980 as “narrative competence: a navajo example of peer group evaluation” in journal of american folklore 93(368): 158–81. https://doi.org/10.2307/541010. 4 "riddling and enculturation: a glance at the cerebral child" was re-issued in richard bauman’s and joel sherzer’s (editors) language and speech in american society: a compilation of research papers in sociolinguistics (1980, southwest educational development laboratory). see, also, the reprinted version of “riddling and enculturation” in this special issue: doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39024. 5 this article also appears in the 1982 issue of aztlán: chicano journal of the social sciences and the arts 13(1-2): 165 193. 6 children’s folklore was reprinted by utah state press in 1999 and is available via utah state’s digital commons. 7 available via the children’s folklore review archives, here. 8 pdf pending restoration; availability forthcoming via education resources information center (eric), here. 9 available online via education resources information center (eric), here. 10 see the reprinted version of children’s handclaps in this special issue: doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39025. https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39026 https://doi.org/10.2307/541010 https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/usupress_pubs/71/ https://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/cfr/article/view/25106/30980 https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ed199996 https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ed252062 https://doi.org/10.14434/cfr.2024.vol42.39025 1 cover vol 42 2 blank page 1 3 journal and editor info page 4 blank page 2 5 inside title page 6 blank page 3 7 contents page 8 blank page 4 9 from the editor 10 part i title page 11 blank page 5 12 bauman, texas childrens folklore project a retrospective 13 mcdowell, on the street with austins chicano kids 14 stoeltje, play and the performance of children's folklore 15 part ii title page 16 blank page 6 17 bauman, reprint ethnography of children's folklore 18 mcdowell riddling and enculturation 19 blank page 7 20 children's handclaps steoltje, 1978, children's handclaps steoltje, 1978, children's handclaps 11 21 part iii title page 22 blank page 8 23 tcfp a bibliography friendship bracelets, continued used in usually called embroidery, cross stitch, or floss thread. as with all of the materials used to make all of the friendship bracelets through time, these materials are very inexpensive to purchase and come in a variety of colors. i concentrated this research on those friendship bracelets made by children from grade two to grade nine, but the bracelets now in fashion are worn by people age six through forty and are made by people in the same age groups. the tradition of wearing and giving friendship bracelets will certainly continue among children for generations to come. making the bracelets will be an activity to keep children from boredom in a dull class, on a rainy day when they cannot head out to play, or on those dreaded days when they are kept at home as punishment. the bracelets will vary in materials used, in design, and in the shape of the finished product; but they will all serve the same purpose. these bracelets will be something inexpensive to make for friends and to be worn as a fashion statement. catherine klutz ~[jfj~rn[j[jfj~~d@[jfj~~mj~~g][j@olj[jfj~ill~~@@d~oo@[jfj for those of you who weren't at the last children's folklore section, ip a stands for the international playground association who now calls itself the international association for the child's right to play. it is an advocacy organization devoted to the safety of playground activity and design. for the folklorist, the work of the ip a can be of interest to those of us interested in the material culture of children as well as the creation of environments for children's traditions. at the last children's folklore section meeting, i described the work of the ip a and was then asked to report on the activities of the organization. here is what the december newsletter was about. the december issue was dedicated to the ipa/ usa meeting that took place in cincinnati in january of 1989,a short article on adventure playgrounds, announcements of meetings and call for papers, and summary of resolutions passed at the ipa conference in 1986and in november of 1988. i. the resolutions passed at the above meetings are all associated with the creation of standards for safe and well monitored playgrounds. these resolutions call for the use of equipment endorsed by the consumer product safety commission, and for playgrounds designed with children's desires and needs in mind. the resolutions also call for trained play leaders and a closer relationship with the american association for leisure and recreation (aalr) 2. debra a. johnson's paper on adventure playgrounds was published in this newsletter. "adventure playgrounds in after school programs" surveys the history of adventure playgrounds from their beginning in scandinavia in 1943 to their presence in the united states today. an adventure playground is based on the observation that children like to play with scrap materials on construction sites. the adventure playground is an outdoor environment in which these scraps are "transplanted" so that children can play in a safe place. they are also monitored by play leaders who are trained to advise without usurping the child's creative energies and abilities. 3. announcements a) meeting: association of childhood education international, 5-8 april 1989, indianapolis, hyatt regency hotel. contact: jerry odland, association for childhood education international 11141 georgia avenue, suite 200, wheaton, md. 20902 (1-800-423-3563) b) call for papers: for a special issue of environments quarterly on "the design of community and family environments for children with disabilities." contact elaine ostroff, adaptive environments center, 621 huntington avenue, boston 02115, or call (617) 739-0088 c) news from the consumer product safety commission: on a suit settled between the miracle recreation equipment company and people affected by the dangerous design of certain equipment. d) plae, inc. has launched" the playful city" "a national effort to create guidelines for the development of urban communities to support the needs of children, youth and their families. the program is funded by the national endowments for the arts." the guidelines are to be developed at a workshop-conference to be held at stanford university in the fall of 1989. for more information, contact plae, inc., 1824 fourth street, berkeley, ca. 94710, or call 415-345-7523 anyone interested in joining ipa may contact: helen stapel, 36 deerfield lane, simsbury, ct. 06070, 1-800-553-2446. jan rosenberg ~~~ [k1a]rnllijo~rn[j@~ [poo~~d@g)nd@ou@ simon bronner. american children's folklore. little rock, ar: august house, 1988. a survey/study of contemporary children's folklore. also available in an annotated edition. contains a picture of five-year-old simon bronner. bengt af klintberg. "black madame, come out!" scandinavian yearbook of folklore 1988(44): 155-167. a study of the spiritual; seance in which the black madame is called out of a mirror. c. w. sullivan iii. welsh celtic myth in modern fantasy. westport, ct: greenwood, 1989. a study of several authors' use of welsh celtic myths and legends in literature. 5 